Too Bad We Don't Have Phasers

Today's xkcd comic expresses a sentiment many of us can understand:



You have to love the geometric reasoning.

Another God-Bothering Imbecile

In front of a rapt audience, Rep. Shimkus offers his thoughts on elective cosmology. Image credit: screenshot of YouTube by Cujo359

Once upon a time, Mark Twain told this joke:

Suppose I'm an idiot. Now, suppose I'm a member of Congress. But then, I repeat myself.

These days, he could have substituted "God-bothering imbecile" for "idiot", I suppose. Here's a case in point:

Some people like to think that fundamentalist goofballitude is limited to southern states, which is unfair and untrue. For proof, I present one Illinois Congresscritter named John Shimkus. In a recent hearing, he claimed that man cannot destroy the Earth, only God can do that. Here’s the video[.]

Only God can destroy the Earth? Phew!

Rep. Shimkus believes that there's no use worrying about all that climate change stuff, since his god will protect us. Or at least, his god will protect him and the people he likes, one supposes.

This is what passes for reasoning in some dark corners of the planet, like Congress. It's hard to argue with something so batshit insane, and yet somehow I feel the need. Perhaps I hope to dissuade people who aren't batshit insane, but nevertheless think that there might be something to that argument.

So, here goes:

For the sake of argument, let's suppose that there are such things as gods.

Let's further suppose that there is one god.

Then lets suppose that this god is an entity with a personality - the sort of personality that leads him to prefer one group of humans out of all the others, help them escape from another group of people, and then help them slaughter all of their neighbors so they can have a place all their own.

It seems to me that with billions of galaxies in the universe, all of which have billions of solar systems, that this god just might be pretty busy. What do you suppose a busy, somewhat wrathful god would do for people who are always wasting his time with requests for stuff they could do on their own? [whiny voice] "Please help us get out of Egypt. Please watch over our friends and relatives, because we don't have time. Please don't let our planet burn up, because we don't want to stop emitting greenhouse gases."

Don't you think that, with perhaps millions of intelligent species to deal with, such a god might not decide that this planet needs a makeover?

Of all the suppositions I made in that argument, the one in the last paragraph is by far the least implausible.

I suppose the bottom line is that you can either assume that a book that was written two thousand years ago by people who didn't even know what carbon dioxide was, much less what its effect on themselves and their world might be, would somehow be right when people who spend all their lives studying something are wrong, or you can figure out that this book is just guidance when you don't have anything better to go by.

(h/t Blue Gal)

Just A Fresh Coat Of Paint

Just a fresh coat of paint, and this one will be back on the market. Image credit: Abandoned Places


Apparently, all our economy needs is a fresh coat of paint. At least, that's what I'm hearing from our President today:

President Obama announced what amounts to a do-or-die ultimatum for the struggling automobile industry on Monday, laying out strict standards that the carmakers must meet to get more government aid and declaring that the industry must survive because it is “like no other, an emblem of the American spirit.”

A failure of leadership “from Washington to Detroit” over the years has led the industry to the brink of collapse, the president said, and in more recent days both General Motors and Chrysler have failed to come up with plans adequate to justify the billions more in government help that they are requesting.

“And so today, I am announcing that my administration will offer G.M. and Chrysler a limited period of time to work with creditors, unions and other stakeholders to fundamentally restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional tax dollars; a period during which they must produce plans that would give the American people confidence in their long-term prospects for success,” the president said at the White House.

Obama Issues Ultimatum to Carmakers

These two automotive companies, and their employees, have already been through some painful transitions. The unions have renegotiated wages downward, and have agreed to take on more of the load of financing ex-employee's health care. General Motors, in particular, has been considering restructuring plans that close or sell off entire divisions, and close many plants.

I'd just like to tell President Obama this, should any of his staff show up to read this article: "restructuring" means "fire people". In the case of the automotive industry, that means firing lots of people - thousands of them. I think he knows that, but his use of the euphemism, plus this little gem from the press conference:

“The pain being felt in places that rely on our auto industry is not the fault of our workers, who labor tirelessly and desperately want to see their companies succeed,” [the President] said. “And it is not the fault of all the families and communities that supported manufacturing plants throughout the generations.”

Obama Issues Ultimatum to Carmakers

lead me to suspect that he thinks we citizens don't know what that means. Many of those families he referred to will be living on unemployment and food stamps after these restructurings.

Meanwhile, has there been a similar demand for the banking industry to restructure itself? Has there been any seeming thought to the idea that when banks become too big to fail, that maybe they're too big? None that I can see.

So far, the total aid to the auto industry has been about $17 billion. They are seeking an additional $21.6 billion. The New York Times has provided a nice graphic that shows the financial picture pretty succinctly. How much money have we poured into the financial black hole that used to be our banking industry? Try $10 trillion, and counting. Yet, the Obama Administration actively sought to exempt the people who run this industry from receiving the bonuses they were due for running their industry into the ground. They've made noises about how the good old days of little or no regulation are coming to an end, but so far that's only been talk.

Obama's attitude about the automotive industry strikes me as another example of his impulse to put a fresh coat of paint on our economy when what it really needs is to be re-roofed and strengthened. When you add it to his fetish for "fixing" Social Security, it adds up to a guy who doesn't want to take on the real work, because it's messy and difficult. Paul Krugman, referring to the leaked plan of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to fix the financial industry, summed things up pretty well:

This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.

After all, we’ve just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn’t do anything, and anyway it was someone else’s fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.

Financial Policy Despair

I'm not an expert on our economy, by any means. Nevertheless, there is a clear disconnect between the problems and the solutions proffered by the Obama Administration so far.

And I'm feeling that despair, too.

While it's clear that the auto industry could be doing better, it's also clear that they were able to make a profit until recently. Their troubles are partly thanks to the current fad for smaller cars, which should be more than a fad but probably won't be now that gasoline prices are lower. Their salary and benefits structure, particularly at the top, is little short of insane. But, they are also suffering because of the problem in the financial industry. As I've explained before, manufacturing industries can't go for long without financing. That's particularly true when sales are down, as they are now for both foreign and domestic companies.

I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but then so is the Obama Administration. They keep saying the problem with the economy is everything except what it really is, and I keep pointing out the obvious. Hopefully, one of these days I won't have to do that anymore. Until then, though, I suggest you go down to the nearest paint store and decide what color you want the economy to have. I'm thinking brick red, or maybe burnt toast.

Another Elitist Carnival Sets Sail

The eleventh Carnival Of The Elitist Bastards is over at Z's place, It's The Thought That Counts. As sometimes happens, Yours Truly has a couple of entries. Go on over and check it out.

I'll be hosting the COTEB in April. We're still looking for more bloggers to host the carnival in the months ahead. If you'd like to host a carnival, head on over and find out what months are available.

Today, We're All Driving While Black

(An infrared image of a house in the United Kingdom that was mistakenly raided for suspected marijuana growth. Image credit: London Daily Mail)

This story is fascinating because of what it says about us as a country these days, as the Philadelphia Inquirer summarizes from its wire services:

A Dallas police officer was placed on administrative leave yesterday after he kept former Eagle Ryan Moats in a hospital parking lot and threatened to arrest him while Moats' mother-in-law died inside the building.

Officer Robert Powell also drew his gun during the March 18 incident involving Moats, now with the Houston Texans, in the Dallas suburb of Plano, police said.

The incident was videotaped. When another officer came with word that Moats' mother-in-law, 45-year-old Jonetta Collinsworth, was indeed dying, Powell's response was: "All right. I'm almost done."

By the time the 26-year-old running back had gotten the ticket and a lecture from Powell, about 13 minutes had passed. When he and Collinsworth's father entered the hospital, they learned Collinsworth was dead.

NFL: Dallas officer put on leave after incident with ex-Eagle

The first thing that strikes me is how little about the incident itself seems surprising. We've become so used to having to answer to law enforcement personnel that it seems almost routine. At airports we're expected to endure searches of our persons and our luggage so that we can be allowed on a plane. If you drive around the Southwest, you can expect to have to explain who you are to Border Patrol officers. As a traveler in that region, I've had that experience several times. This is becoming increasingly true up here in the Northwest, as well. Fortunately, I don't look like a Mexican and I don't talk like a Canadian. It's not just paranoids who assume we're being watched these days. It's not just the neurotic who have reason to fear being at airports.

We've also become used to people not using the most basic powers of observation and reason. This incident happened in a hospital parking lot. How many people drive to the hospital for no reason? You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Mr. and Mrs. Moats were probably telling the truth when they said they were visiting a dying relative. They also, according to the Dallas police chief, did not behave inappropriately given the situation:

[Dallas police chief David] Kunkle adds Moats and his wife Tamishia Moats exercised patience and restraint when dealing with the officer, adding that Moats never mentioned he was a professional football player.

Officer Blocked Houston Texan From Reaching Dying Mother-In-Law

Thanks to some ludicrous overreactions to the sorts of things that go on in our society all the time, I'm seldom surprised by irrational behavior on the part of some law enforcement officials.

What appears to have prompted this investigation is also instructive:

Nurses, a security guard and a Plano police officer came to persuade the officer to allow Moats to see his mother-in-law, but he kept Moats outside for nearly 20-minutes.
...
Dallas police are trying to determine why they were unaware of the incident until nearly a week later.

The Plano police officer who confronted the Dallas officer at the scene, later went to his supervisor to inform Dallas police about the incident.

Officer Blocked Houston Texan From Reaching Dying Mother-In-Law

My guess is that if that Plano police officer hadn't made the complaint, one professional to another, then this incident might never have been investigated. Of course, had Moats not been a professional football player, it's unlikely this incident would have appeared in Google News and thus come to my attention. Had Moats been a black man who wasn't a celebrity, it seems possible that, if he had filed a complaint, they would have dismissed it as another "driving while black" complaint.

The only thing I find surprising, and somewhat pleasantly so, is that both the Plano officer and at least some parts of the Dallas police thought this worth investigating. Police officers certainly have their professional pride and ethical standards, but they sometimes are subordinated to an "us versus them" mentality. There have been enough examples of overuse of force that have gone unpunished that it seems extraordinary that they'd take this seriously enough to consider dismissing this officer. I wouldn't bet on that outcome, but that it's numbered in the possibilities is a good thing. A hothead with a gun is dangerous, whether in or out of a police uniform. As the Dallas police chief notes:

Kunkle says the essence of being a police officer is common sense and discretion, and the officer's behavior was inappropriate.

Officer Blocked Houston Texan From Reaching Dying Mother-In-Law

Police work is stressful and potentially dangerous. As part of their work, police officers often have to ask questions and do things to us citizens that we find annoying or even painful. People who can't do that work without losing their composure and behaving emotionally or irrationally shouldn't be doing it. Any police department that can't or won't investigate complaints against its officers is a potential danger to the people it's supposed to be protecting. In a time when both the presence of law enforcement and their power to monitor us are on the increase, it's especially so.

I wonder how many Americans see things that way.

UPDATE: Added the graphic, and amended the concluding paragraph. Originally, anyone reading it would have gotten the idea that irrational police officers were a good thing.

UPDATE 2 (Mar. 31): If you think that a police department wouldn't ignore a "driving while black" complaint, you might want to read this article and reconsider your opinion. Read the comments, too, particularly the one by a man who is afraid to leave his apartment at night, for having been harassed so many times by his local police department.

I'm not saying that no police department would take such complaints seriously, but it's clear that some don't, and they're a problem both for their communities and themselves.

A Bit Of Fresh Air

Besides its changes to science policy, there's one other thing I can now say unequivocally is better under the Obama Administration than the previous one:

The air inside the Los Angeles Patients and Caregivers Group was pungent with the aroma of premium hydroponic marijuana, but the proprietor, Don Duncan, said on Thursday that he was breathing a bit easier.

A day before, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had said that the federal authorities would no longer take action against medical marijuana dispensaries if they were in compliance with state and local laws.

While 13 states, including California, have laws allowing medical use of marijuana, they had not been recognized by the federal government.

Dispensers of Marijuana Find Relief in Policy Shift

The Bush Administration's position was that medical marijuana was illegal despite local laws to the contrary. This led to a lot of wasted time in court, and, as the article indicates, made dispensing marijuana according to local laws a hazardous enterprise.

While the best solution would be federal legislation that legalizes marijuana use, this at least will allow the Department of Justice to spend more time doing something useful in court.

Advice You Just Can't Get Anywhere Else

As part of the ongoing effort to bring you the news that's relevant to you, I often check the search terms that people use to arrive here. Traffic can arrive from many different paths, and I was pleased to find that SnS is number five and number six for the search string "how to not slobber when making out". Here's photographic proof:



Wait a second, what's this? "How do I tell my boyfriend he slobbers like a St. Bernard?" I'm not sure I see the problem here, but my advice? Avoid similes.

Buying Trouble A Few Billion At A Time

If you want to see an example of the combination of fecklessness and tin-eared incompetence with which the Obama Administration is handling the AIG bailout scandal, this is as good as it gets. In a New York Times article on Sunday, after having declared that they'd done everything they could do to stop AIG from paying outrageous bonuses to the division that broke the company, an anonymous Administration official went on to say:

[T]he Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken. The official noted that even a provision recently pushed through Congress by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, had an exemption for such bonus agreements already in place.

A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout

Since this is an unidentified Administration official talking to the New York Times, I know this is going to shock you, but this turned out not to be true. Jane Hamsher connects the dots:

But the bill that passed the Senate actually made the compensation limits retroactive, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The most stringent pay restriction bars any company receiving funds from paying top earners bonuses equal to more than one-third of their total annual compensation. That could severely crimp pay packages at big banks, where top officials commonly get relatively modest salaries but often huge bonuses.

As word spread Friday about the new and retroactive limit -- inserted by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut -- so did consternation on Wall Street and in the Obama administration, which opposed it.

Who pushed back against Dodd, and told him to neuter the provision? The WSJ says Geithner and Summers:

The administration is concerned the rules will prompt a wave of banks to return the government's money and forgo future assistance, undermining the aid program's effectiveness. Both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who heads the National Economic Council, had called Sen. Dodd and asked him to reconsider, these people said.

Treasury Attempts to “Blame Dodd” for AIG Bonuses

Jane's article is well worth a read, by the way. I just quoted the punch line.

I got really tired of this mendacity via anonymous government officials who turned out to be lying through their teeth on behalf of the Administration in the first couple of years of the last Administration. Why are Obama and his people of the opinion that we're just fine with them doing it? The last thing they need right now is for people not to trust them. At least, that's the last thing they need if they want to do anything good for the country.

What's worse, they pissed off a senior member of their own party, not to mention a Senator who chairs the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, an important committee under the circumstances. Do they really want to try to stick him with the blame for something they should have known better than to do? Does the phrase don't buy trouble mean nothing to the Obama Administration?

This isn't rocket science. Don't lie anonymously. It only pays if you're trying to pull something over on us. We know that now. What they appear to be trying to pull over on us this time is to let those outrageous bonuses go through. They also appear to be trying to distract us from other important issues, like where the rest of the money, the part that isn't going into the pockets of current and former AIG employees, is going.

Don't pointlessly piss off people you might need later. That never pays under any circumstances. Here's a quote from The Economist that explains why:

Mr Obama may have to go back either for a second stimulus package, as is constantly being rumoured, though the whispers are firmly denied by the White House, or for a third round of the TARP. If so, he could face not just angry Republicans, who are opposed to bail-outs, but Democratic ones infuriated by the thought of Wall Streeters being paid bonuses while ordinary Americans are losing their jobs and homes. Christopher Dodd, a senior Democratic senator and the chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, for example, has already spoken to the administration of an "unprecedented level of outrage".

Sound And Fury Over AIG

[bold emphasis mine]

Personally, I'd go with the truth. As I wrote once upon a time, people trust you more and it's a lot easier to remember.

If that doesn't work, just shut the hell up and listen.

(By the way, I love The Economist's photo. I wish I could have used it.)

UPDATE (March 19): Thanks to a tip from commenter Pro, I found out that a Bloomberg article from January revealed that AIG was handing out huge bonuses:

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer saved from collapse last year by government money, may have committed more than $1 billion to employees to keep them from leaving the company.

About 400 workers at New York-based AIG’s financial products unit may get $450 million in two installments, said two people familiar with the situation who declined to be identified because the plan is confidential. That is in addition to about $619 million in retention pay going to 4,200 executives and employees at subsidiaries including life insurance.

AIG Said to Offer $1 Billion in Retention to Workers (Update1)

I missed this, but then I'm not shoveling billions of dollars into this company, either. It seems extremely unlikely that Geithner only found out about this last week. If he did, he has only himself to blame.

What History Can Teach Us

[One of the Harolds discovers a flaw in his defense policy. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]


Admittedly, I don't know much about British history. There were a lot of kings named John, Harold, and William, and more than a few named Henry. One of the Harolds met one of the Williams in a place called Hastings, and that's why we have all those French words in our vocabulary. There was that Cromwell guy, and at least a few Welsh. It's all very confusing, and one might even say repetitive. How many civil wars where there? Three? Five?

Even so, there are lessons we Americans can learn from British history, if we're willing. One of them was provided courtesy of one of the Johns in 1215:

By 1215, some of the most important barons in England had had enough, and they entered London in force on 10 June 1215, with the city showing its sympathy with their cause by opening its gates to them. They, and many of the moderates not in overt rebellion, forced King John to agree to the "Articles of the Barons", to which his Great Seal was attached in the meadow at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. In return, the barons renewed their oaths of fealty to King John on 19 June 1215. A formal document to record the agreement was created by the royal chancery on 15 July: this was the original Magna Carta. An unknown number of copies of it were sent out to officials, such as royal sheriffs and bishops.

Wikipedia: Magna Carta

In those days, of course, lords and other important folks had their own armies. The king had to get their cooperation to wage war, and effectively needed it in other matters, too. Fortunately for most kings, the lords were ambitious and self-interested enough that they wouldn't cooperate with each other. King John's misadventures in France, among other things, united the lords against him. Once the Magna Carta was signed, the lords demonstrated their quarrelsome nature by starting the First Barons' War, which ultimately ended with one of the Henries becoming king.

The important point is that King John didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart. Had the barons not banded together, he would have continued his policies until they'd either failed utterly, or he'd been removed from power. He didn't do it out of some feeling that he should include others in the decision making process, nor was it due to a sudden realization that certain elements of his policy were mistaken. He did it because crowds of gruff looking gentlemen carrying battle axes and swords focused his attention on the opinions of others.

What does all this have to do with today? It's simple, really, because this is an age-old lesson. People who seek power, whether they're kings or presidents, don't want to be told what they're supposed to do. They acquire that power so they can do what they want. If you want them to do something differently, you have to focus their attention.

Just in the last couple of weeks, we've received some rather stark warnings that the Obama Administration isn't interested in our opinions. One was explained by Glenn Greenwald last Sunday:

After many years of anger and complaint and outrage directed at the Bush administration for its civil liberties assaults and executive power abuses, the last thing most people want to do is conclude that the Obama administration is continuing the core of that extremism. That was why the flurry of executive orders in the first week produced such praise: those who are devoted to civil liberties were, from the start, eager to believe that things would be different, and most want to do everything but conclude that the only improvements that will be made by Obama will be cosmetic ones.

But it's becoming increasingly difficult for honest commentators to do anything else but conclude that. After all, these are the exact policies which, when embraced by Bush, produced such intense protest over the last eight years. Nobody is complaining because the Obama administration is acting too slowly in renouncing these policies. The opposite is true: they are rushing to actively embrace them.

Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a familiar pattern

Yes, I've used that quote before. This article should make clear why I was making the point I made in that article. It's clear to more observers than just me that this is what's going on. The implications are ominous. There seems to be no one in the government who is willing to stand up against the President's declaration that he has the unlimited right to imprison anyone who he determines is associated with terrorism.

On the economics front, things are no better. In addition to having done nothing to prevent huge bonuses from being granted to the AIG executives who ruined the company, the administration has made every effort to hide the recipients of bailout funds. What's worse, as Jane Hamsher documented, they have attempted to blame this on Senator Chris Dodd, even though it was they who had insisted Dodd's amendment be modified to allow these bonuses.

The Obama Administration pattern is the same in both cases - say they're doing (or trying to do) what we need them to do, and then do the opposite.

Sadly, the days of private armies are over, but there are still things that can be done to reduce the power of an errant politician. As I have suggested, one way of doing this to Obama is to tie his actions to him visually. It's also possible to do that in other media. The basic idea is to make certain that everyone knows when his words don't match his actions, and do it in the strongest possible terms.

Another thing that can be done is to increase the power of Congress. The best way to do this is to elect progressives who are motivated to make Congress the equal partner it was meant to be in place of people who don't fit that description. Where that isn't possible, I recommend supporting any candidate who declares that he is willing to impeach a President who doesn't follow the law or respect Congress's budgetary authority, provided there's reason to believe him.

What should be clear is that without a motivation to change, Barack Obama will continue on the course he's set. Until we're able and willing to deny him political power, he's not going to be concerned with our opinions.

While you're figuring out how to make that happen, I'll be over here sharpening my axe.

In Case You Hadn't Heard

Over at FireDogLake, there's an online petition to Congress demanding that before any more money is obligated to help the banks, that we know where that money goes. Jane Hamsher provides a summary of why that's important today:

Geithner seems to share that assumption, namely that there is nothing wrong with this system that piles of money won't fix. That if you keep shoveling cash into it, some day things will get better. He has not addressed the crisis of public trust, the critical lack of faith that everyone -- both inside and out of the financial industry -- is gripped with right now. He wants to pay the very bankers who created this mess in order to buy up "toxic assets," which the public views as just another way for him to funnel billions to his Wall Street pals. As if the systemic problems that led to this crisis will just go away and the same thing won't happen all over again.

Great Idea, Let’s Let AIG Thieves Blackmail Everyone

After the last eight years of nonstop corruption and graft, trust doesn't come easily. Nor should it.

So, please sign the petition before 10AM Eastern time tomorrow, before it's delivered to Barney Frank and the House Financial Services Committee.