Exceptional

If it's too hard to read, a bigger version is here.

Let's imagine a revised version ten years hence, if teabaggers have their way. And let's hope it'll only be imagined.

One thing that's clearly exceptional about the US: the number of people who think saying it's exceptional suffices, and substitutes for making it and maintaining it that way.

Fracture Lines

This is from an interesting article, titled "Shibboleths." It begins with the fact that a majority of potential Republican voters believe Barack Obama is not a US citizen:

...birtherism is a shibboleth, that is, an affirmation that marks the speaker as a member of their community or tribe. (The original shibboleth was a password chosen by the Gileadites because their Ephraimite enemies could not say “Sh”.) Asserting a belief that would be too absurd to countenance for anyone outside a given tribal/ideological group makes for a good political shibboleth.

It’s clear, as Dave Weigel points out, that beliefs of this kind are a marker for partisanship, as witness the high correlation between stated birtherist beliefs and approval of Palin. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the statement isn’t actually believed. ...

... we can distinguish numerous different belief states that go along with birtherist answers to opinion poll questions. There are lots of nuances, but most are combinations of the following

• A conspiracy-theoretic view of the world in which liberal elites (a term encompassing Democrats, unions, schoolteachers, scientists, academics and many others) are plotting to undermine the American way of life and replace it with some unspecified, but awful alternative. In this case, answers to these questions reflect actual beliefs
• Partisanship as suggested by Weigel in which Republicans choose to give the most negative answer possible about Obama as an affirmation of tribal identity.
• Doublethink in which people are aware that in some mundane sense Obama was born in Hawaii, but also believe that Republican ideology is true and implies the birtherist answer
• Conformism, in which people know the truth but give the culturally preferred answer, or choose some evasive form of words, as with John Boehner recently.

Does all this hurt or help the Republicans? In short-run electoral terms, I think it helps. A base of loyal supporters who, for one or other of the reasons mentioned above, are immune to factual evidence has to help win elections. (emphasis mine, as it's the whole Rovian point.) There are, however, two big costs

• First, people have noticed that Republicans have a problem with reality. That perception, which undermines the rationale for all sorts of thinking about policy, will take a while to sink in, but it will also be hard to erase once it is generally accepted. In the long run, this has to turn off a fair number of Republican-leaning independents and any remaining Republicans with a capacity for embarrassment.

• Double-think is very difficult, and people will start to act on the basis of their beliefs. If those beliefs are ludicrously false, trouble is likely to follow.

It's among the most puzzling phenomena with which I wrestle daily: the fact that acceptance or rejection of undeniable facts should fall so sharply along party lines. Deniers of anthropogenic climate change, rejectors of evolution, believers in Obama's foreign birth -- they're all Republicans. I get that hating Obama is politics as usual; but birtherism simply has no explanation in reality as understood by those living in, well, reality.

I've said it before: I think it's no accident that there is a strong religious undercurrent that flows through the separation between Ds and Rs. Which is not to say that Ds aren't religious: many are; maybe even most (I'm sure there are polls out there). But, from what I observe, there are very few biblical literalists on that side of the breech. Few who would force their beliefs on others, and substitute them for public education. The sort of religious certainty that demands rejection of the observable resides, it seems, essentially exclusively on the other side.

So it comes back to neurophysiology, as it always seems to: our brains simply work differently. Unfortunately, there's no vive la difference there, no "it takes all kinds," no tangoing by twos. When the gears of a major political party are turned by those who actively and proudly reject reality, it does few of us any good. Oh, John Boehner sheds happy tears, Michele Bachmann thinks her shit don't smell. But for those of us whose eyes are open and able to look from side to side, there's trouble coming, as the above author said; and it's heading here fast and hard.

I've expressed the unlikely hope that at some time before it's too late, people will realize that teabaggers have long since passed through the departure gate from reality. It's why I continue to write. The article posits that it could happen, too. It's a question of how many critical thinkers there are out there, unheard from; and how willing they are to employ their brains, when so many have already chosen not to and seem happy as clams at high tide. When the tide is out.

Cry, The Beloved Country

Referring to the teabagger-inspired House R budget, John Boehner was asked (and Dana Milbank writes about it):

"Do you have any sort of estimate on how many jobs will be lost through this?" Pacifica Radio's Leigh Ann Caldwell inquired at a news conference just before the House began its debate on the cuts.

Boehner stood firm in his polished tassel loafers. "Since President Obama has taken office the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs, and if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it," he said.

"Do you have any estimate of how many will?" Caldwell pressed. "And won't that negatively impact the economy?"

"I do not," Boehner replied, moving to the next questioner.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I do. I checked with budget expert Scott Lilly of the Center for American Progress, and, using the usual multipliers, he calculated that the cuts - a net of $59 billion in the last half of fiscal 2011 - would lead to the loss of 650,000 government jobs, and the indirect loss of 325,000 more jobs as fewer government workers travel and buy things. That's nearly 1 million jobs - possibly enough to tip the economy back into recession.

So be it?

It's a dilemma: what to wish for?

A cockeyed optimist, I keep thinking that once people understand the devastation that would be brought upon us were the current crop of Republicans to have their way, it'd be the end of them and we'd get back to trying to make sense. So there's a part of me that says, screw it: let them catch the car they're chasing and see what they do when they have it. Let voters have the opportunity to say, gee, I didn't know that would happen.

But I also know that if they actually get their way it's likely we'd never recover. We have once, sort of, barely. I can't imagine how it could happen again. The next time will be different: instead of starting with a strong economy and budget surplus, we'd be kicking ourselves while we're still down. Hard.

Here's the sort of thinking, from a conservative, that is so far beyond teabaggers as to be in another universe:

Conservatism could once be described as a three-cornered stool: social, economic and national security conservatives.

Today though it’s more relevant to think of conservatism as an attempt to draw a line connecting four points:

1) No tax increase
2) No defense cuts
3) No Medicare cuts
4) Rapid move to a balanced budget.

Obviously it’s impossible to meet all four of those commitments. It would be difficult enough to combine #4 with even two of the first three...

... Much of the 2012 GOP presidential nomination will attempt to send signals as to which commitments each candidate will sacrifice. Since so much of this signaling is non-verbal, it will be hard to pin down who truly is committed to which. ...

... You can play this game at home too – and it may tell you a lot about the kind of conservative you really are.

In the spirit of full disclosure, here’s how I’d square the quadrangle.

I don’t think we should be moving rapidly to budget balance. The time for budget austerity begins when unemployment drops below 7%, not before.

I don’t think we can cut defense spending before we have successfully concluded commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. And generally I favor the Herb Stein approach to budgeting: First you decide how much it costs to maintain America’s global supremacy. Everything else comes after that.

I affirmatively want to see Medicare squeezed. The American health system is wasteful, wasteful, wasteful.

I am prepared to accept tax increases provided they fall on consumption and pollution rather than work, saving and investment. A carbon tax yes, a VAT if need be, but no increases in personal or corporate income taxes or capital gains taxes. On the other hand, the 15% tax rate on corporate dividends seems to me a laughably unjustifiable giveaway, even though I personally benefit from it.

With the exception VAT, which I think is much more regressive than income tax, there's much in it that makes sense to me.

The problem is, it's clear that teabaggers and those that love them simply don't have the ability to visualize. If the idea of consequences had any meaning to most of them, if they were inclined to think things through, they'd be on the other side of the argument. Except, of course, for the "so be it" faction: those that couldn't care less what happens to the country toward which they make exclusive claims of patriotism, as long as they have theirs and don't have to spend any of it in taxes.

Given the inability of most teabaggers to think sequentially, and given that the rest of them don't care, trying to point things out in advance is futility. And yet, to wish they'd get their way as a sort of final and undeniable proof of their simplistic solipsism would be a dark perversion of the Make-a-Wish Foundation: the last thing we do before we die.

Food For Thought

I liked President Obama's words at his press conference more than I like what I understand to be his budget. At this point, having not read the whole thing, what I know is what I've read in various commentaries. My conclusion is like the line in the Woody Allen movie: the food is terrible and the portions are too small.

The first problem is that I'm still persuaded by economists I respect that this is the wrong time in the recovery to be cutting spending. Stiglitz, Krugman, Reich and others say pretty much the same thing. And it would seem that history backs them up, as the Depression was followed by recession when FDR moved too soon in that direction. So I understand.

The next is that a budget claiming to address deficits but which ignores defense spending and entitlement reform is hard to take seriously, at least as advertised. During the press conference, on the other hand, Obama said what I believe; namely, that any cuts must be assessed in terms of harm they'd do both to the needy and to the recovery. He also indicated the top-end Bush tax cuts aren't sustainable, but, having agreed to extension, they're not addressed in the budget. Maybe he figures anything is better than the scald and burn of teabaggers.

I think he knows what constitutes the right things and the right time, so I'm disappointed that he seems to have punted on both. Maybe he's concluded that he'll never get anything he proposes, and his only option will be the veto pen if the teabag budget is as crazy and dangerous as it threatens to be. But I think he'd be in the stronger longer position were he to state and defend, clearly and simply, what needs to be done, and when, straight up, no towing of the cow; and let the Rs make their case for why he's wrong. They claim he is, continuously and loudly. They have yet to propose workable alternatives.

In the long run, whether we can solve our fiscal problems will depend, I think, on how pervasive is teabaggerism. It gets all the attention and it certainly has plenty of votes. But are the sane ones completely and forever outnumbered? Rush Limbaugh has once again claimed that the people in the White House literally hate America. Only a few conservatives recoil from such talk. Nearly half of Republicans believe Obama is not a US citizen. Of those, 83% love Sarah Palin.

So, who has the budget ball? The crazy paranoid haters seem to be the ones for now. The only way out is for people to speak up; and that ought to start with the president. It wouldn't hurt, either, if there were more Rs willing to say this, and fewer going with crap like this.

We need smarter Republicans and a bolder president. The former, clearly, isn't going to happen, at least before it's too late; the latter, I'm pretty sure, is still possible, and it's our only hope. He has the intelligence and the knowledge. He just needs to trust himself -- and, more importantly, US -- a little more.

Next

And thus spake the icon of the teabaggers, with purpose, comprehension, and incisive clarity, simultaneously bringing into focus for us all the path best taken in Egypt, and solidifying her status as the next to assume the mantle of leadership.

How fortunate that such a leader has arrived on the scene in these momentous times, and how propitious that we have teabaggers to have discovered and promoted her brilliance. Without them, I might have entirely missed it.

Spent

A study of spending under President Obama:

The math isn’t particularly complicated. So far, the Obama administration has pushed for six major, immediate spending increases that aren’t offset elsewhere in the budget: the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (aka “the stimulus package”), which had a 2009-10 price tag of $340 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office; the GM/Chrysler bailout and other portions of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which have largely been paid back ($25 billion); unemployment-insurance extensions ($67 billion); COBRA extensions ($9 billion); Cash for Clunkers ($3 billion); and loans to automakers for energy-efficiency improvements ($8 billion). That’s $452 billion. Factor in $296 billion in stimulus funds that have yet to be spent and $136 billion in refundable tax credits that passed in December as part of Congress’ bipartisan tax compromise, and you wind up with $884 billion on the spending side of the equation...

And here's the concluding paragraph:

.... during an accounting argument, it’s useful to have real, live numbers to battle over. On the rare occasion Republicans do allude to real stats, they tend to shout about the growing short-term deficit, a problem that has a lot more to do with declining recession-era tax revenues and increasing safety-net outlays than anything Obama has done, or not done. Instead, Republicans should be referring to the amount the president has decided to spend so far: $884 billion. They can say it’s too much, and that a thriftier approach would’ve been better for the country. Democrats can reply that rescuing the U.S. economy from a second Great Depression for less than the price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was a relative bargain. Both sides, meanwhile, can debate the wisdom of cutting more than $900 billion in taxes while spending is going up. At least they’ll be arguing about facts, not fantasies.

Precisely. That's exactly the sort of discussions we (by "we" I mean teabaggers and our politicians, and the talking heads) should be having. Fair questions, tough ones, based on reality. Will they wake up and do so, before it's too late?

A Hymn For Sunday

A Good Speech, And Simple

And the most important words, in such times, were these:

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they've done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

Perhaps, too, the message to the Egyptian military will be heard in other despotic places:

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect.

We can hope those who would give support to terrorists, because they felt they had no other option, will have heard it all, that they, too, might change history.

High-Speed Railing

Our president would like to see high-speed rail move forward in this country. Not only would it provide countless construction jobs in all parts of the country for several years, and many that would continue for as long as the tracks remain, it would decrease our energy use and greenhouse gas production. (Here's what we're missing.) Republicans consider that "insanity."

What would they do instead?

More cuts in spending on the most needy: hungry kids, sick moms. Law enforcement. Research. Education. Amtrak, of course (it's communism.) And how much does their we're-in-it-separately vision cut the deficit? Barely at all.

As things now stand, the budget deficit will be $1.500 trillion for this fiscal year. If the GOP has their way, it will be $1.477 trillion. That's a cut of merely 1.5% . Despite everything the GOP is going after, our budget deficit will be 98.5% of what it would have been otherwise -- virtually unchanged. In other words, the only thing they didn't slash was the budget deficit.

Why? Well, in part it's smoke and mirrors:

The proposed cuts are not always as big as they seem, because they are reductions from President Obama's never-enacted budget proposal for this year.

So, having campaigned on jobs jobs jobs, Congressional Rs have yet to propose a single bill that addresses that. Instead, it's showy cuts that hurt the vulnerable while in actuality being the anti-Suttons: going where the money ain't. And, really, this stuff is just the afterthought anyway: their relentless focus is on abortion. They're so concerned for life that they would allow hospitals to let pregnant women die. You know, out of conscience.

How can you even argue with people who think like that?

Who knows? Maybe the teabaggers were in on the scam. Maybe the Koch brothers paid for their rallies on the condition that baggers play along: make it seem to be about jobs while the real agenda was the Rovian one: hooking the "values" voters and deceiving all the rest.

Some "values." Cutting loose the most vulnerable, the least among us, in order never to raise taxes. On the Koch brothers. And, while we're at it, letting them die.

These are the same folks that call us a "Christian nation."

Missing Doc You Meant

As if there's not enough to worry about in the political realm, I came across this article about my chosen profession, general surgery. (I'm pretty sure you can't read it without a password, at least at Medscape. It's by a David W Page, MD, FACS, and originally appeared in The Southern Medical Journal, South Med J. 2010;103(12):1232-1234). While it's not really anything I didn't know, it crystalizes what will surely be an increasingly severe problem. The following is from the part titled "The Consequences of Inexperience":

... it is crucial to reassess the challenges, cognitive and technical, that face our trainees as they enter private practice. To reach a level of basic competency in performing most laparoscopic operations–not to become a master surgeon–the learning curve (number of cases versus complications) requires between 30 and 50 cases or repetitions. For laparoscopic hernia repair, the number is closer to 100 to 200 cases. Laparoscopic groin hernia operations are true ergonomic and technical challenges. Despite this fact, most graduating residents do ten or fewer casesduring their training. These trainees are, by definition, not competent to perform laparoscopic hernia repairs but do them in practice.

During the most frequently performed laparoscopic operation (cholecystectomy), the incidence of common bile duct injury continues to fall as far out as with the surgeon's experience of 200 cases. Graduating residents do about 84 cases in their five years of training. Bell et al conclude, "Even for more commonly performed procedures, the numbers of repetitions are not very robust, stressing the need to determine objectively whether residents are actually achieving basic competency in these operations."

In a related presidential address entitled, "Why Jonny Cannot Operate," the same Richard H. Bell, MD, stated that chief residents in surgery spend between 1148 and 2753 hours performing the essential 121 and other operations. This is only 6 to 14% of the resident's total working time during a five-year training program. ... Clearly, surgical residents are not exposed to an adequate number of cases nor do they practice enough to achieve minimum competence in a wide range of surgical procedures...

How we train surgeons remains part of the problem. In 2007, a survey revealed that there is a wide disconnect between what teaching surgeons felt residents needed to do to prepare for a case and what the residents felt was proper preparation...

... the system remains weighted with inertia. All of which leaves one to react with little surprise to the fact that 13% of today's general and vascular surgery patients develop complications and 2% die postoperatively.

I can't vouch for those last numbers, and they're way higher than I saw in my practice, or in those of surgeons around me. WAY higher. But from my several friends in academic surgery, the trend toward less and less rigorous experience in a training program is inarguably true.

Rightly or wrongly -- depending on whether you were one of my patients, or are a current student or trainee -- when I learned to be a surgeon (the process never stops; but I refer to residency here), there were no limits on hours spent at work other than the number of hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month. Nor was there much in the way of touchy-feely, unless you count the occasional rap on the knuckles with a surgical clamp. Techniques of surgery were, in some sense, the least of it: pounded in hourly, daily, at conferences, on rounds, in the operating room was the sense of personal responsibility, of commitment. Doing everything necessary to be able to make a proper judgment, being held accountable for anything less than perfection, taking care of what needed doing no matter if you (theoretically) had the night off or not. In my several years of training, it was far less than half of nights that I spent at home. Many were the rotations in which I got out of the hospital only every other weekend and no weekdays at all. In my final year, as Chief Resident on the trauma service, I didn't go home for two straight months.

I'll leave it to others to argue whether such training -- the way it was since William Halsted picked up a knife and until only a handful of years ago -- was inhuman, brutal, dangerous, or necessary. Whatever else is true, I came out of it with the ability to operate safely, to know when to operate, when not, which operation to do, and which not. Perhaps more important, I had a sense of commitment -- probably based on an unrealistic sense of my own importance and indispensability in the care of my patients -- that had me making rounds several times a day, day on, day off. As Mr Miyagi would say.

I don't blame the trend entirely on reduced training hours. I recognize there's more to know every year, and that assimilating what's known and what's coming down the pike is increasingly impossible. Sub-specialization is the inevitable consequence both of receiving less initial training and of the desire to limit what one does, in order to become and remain expert, and to de-stress one's life. But I loved being a general surgeon, able to provide a wide range of care, to be for some their "family surgeon." To be, as we liked to imagine in training, "an internist who can operate."

Those days are surely on their way to being irrevocably gone, and given the fact that we're never going back to the kind of training I had, I think it's best: we'll have some surgeons capable of doing a few things well, leaving much of the post-op care to someone else, and that's all we can hope for. The article also refers to the decreasing numbers of people choosing to become surgeons, and, as reimbursement continues to decline and various annoying paper requirements continue to increase, I don't see that changing, either.

The author includes mention of the problem of burnout -- which I experienced -- and ends with a few suggestions for changing training. To me, they ring pretty hollow, in part because the list assumes mostly laparoscopic procedures (which lend themselves to recording and reviewing), and because, given the time constraints, I don't see much of any of it happening in a meaningful way. Too, it seems to ignore the idea of being a physician along with being a surgeon. Unimportant? I don't think I know anymore.

Bell has suggested seven recommendations to improve surgical education:

1. Insure that the trainee has undergone both cognitive and skills training (simulation) with the procedure before going to the operating room.
2. Have the resident assessed (using validated metrics) before going to the operating room (OR) so the faculty surgeon will know the resident possesses a basal level of ability.
3. Rehearse the operation on a simulator and discuss with the faculty member where major intra-operative decisions need to be made before going to the OR.
4. After the operation, debrief with the faculty member and review areas of accomplishment and parts of the operation that need more work.
5. Grade the trainee's performance and file the report in the resident's portfolio.
6. Have the resident review a video of the case and practice in the skills lab those maneuvers proven to be difficult for the trainee.
7. Keep a national database of resident experience for the purpose of research and norm-setting.

Near the conclusion is this uplifting view of the future:

These and other related issues conspire to make quality surgical care problematic for Americans in the future. Without change, we will almost certainly witness the disheartening 1990 prophesy by Griffen and Schwartz who stated, "Eventually, our society will be "served" by a medical community that is less talented and definitely less interested in providing medical services in the tradition of its predecessors."

In that spirit, here's my personal plan, as I view my potential patienthood: don't get surgically sick. And if you do, aided as necessary by decent pain medication and gin, and if all else fails, by a hose to the tailpipe of your car, let nature take its course.

If you're a teabagger, think of the money you'll remove from government spending, just like you want. (I'll avoid any sort of cheap reference to the gene-pool.)

And with that, I'm off to the OR to assist in a cancer operation. Have a healthy day.

"News" Flash

Stipulating that it's based on an unnamed source, I nevertheless find this article credible and unsurprising. Credible because the site is always factual, if partisan; unsurprising because it states what's obvious to everyone except the Foxobeckified:

Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Mattersconfirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

And that’s the word from inside Fox News. ...

... The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods. ...

... "anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”...

... “And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”...

... The source continues: “I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.”...

... The former insider admits to being perplexed in late 2009 when the Obama White House called out Murdoch’s operation as not being a legitimate new source, only to have major Beltway media players rush to the aid of Fox News and admonish the White House for daring to criticize the cable channel.

“That blew me away,” says the source, who stresses the White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true.”

This is the point in the conversation when the aggrieved predictably begins to shout, "They want to take away my first amendment rights. Patriot that I am, I'm standing up for free speech." In other words, I have a right to say whatever I want, but you have no right to point out my bullshit. Sarah and gunsights. Sharon and second amendment remedies. Glenn Beck and pretty much everything. Fox "Whateveritis."

Fox "news" has a right to say whatever they want. The rest of us have not only the right but the duty to point out how dishonest and destructive it is. If comments from within the teacups on this blog are any indicator, however, the information will be rejected like a mismatched kidney.

Which is hardly a news flash.

Lunatics/Asylum

The new chair of the House Committee on the Environment marginally believes, with eyes lowered and face turned away, that there's global warming going on, but doesn't think human activity has anything to do with it. Well, I guess it's better than nothing. He can read thermometers.

So all we need to do is convince him of what 97% of scientists in the field say. Which, admittedly, is no walk on exposed shale, given the teabagger propensity to recoil at the very mention of science, like Lestat from a crucifix. In educating (another recoil word) the guy, maybe we should start with ocean acidification: the numbers are there, it's pretty straightforward, doesn't require much in the way of deductive or inductive reasoning -- no ice cores, only a pretty rudimentary knowledge of chemistry. Dissolve CO2 in water, get carbonic acid. Not hard, makes sense. Observe what happens to the calcium in coral reefs as the water becomes more acidic. Then tell us where that CO2 is coming from.

But, heck, it's only fish, right? I mean, who cares about the ocean? Too salty to drink, that's for sure. Or coral. CORAL? What's that all about?

Okay, then let's ask the congressman how he explains the above graph, in which he evidently sort-of slightly kinda believes, and the rise in which -- whaddya know -- coincides with the arrival of the industrial revolution. If he's gonna discount all of science, and given that he's pretty literally in charge of our future, ought he not be expected to produce some alternate explanation? Some way to justify not doing a damn thing about it? (Note to Mr Upton Down: sun spots have already been eliminated.)

No good can come of this. We've handed enormous power to people who lack the most basic rudiments of common sense, let alone the ability to think with any part of their bodies residing in a location above their waistbands. It's not good enough simply not to believe. Not in the halls of Congress. You wanna ignore something that science says has cataclysmic potential, you gotta say why. You gotta learn about the science and tell us why it's wrong. "I don't believe it" might not kill us when it's about evolution (other than the fact that brainwashing kids will make us a nation of dunces that can't compete with anyone on anything). Take to your churches and disbelieve till the cows come home. Or drown. But "I don't believe it" WILL kill us when it comes to climate change, if the scientists are right. So you owe us a lot more, Congressman. Put your mouth where your money is.

Acting Down

I find it interesting that the House failed to renew the Patriot Act. It's a little tricky, because they actually had a majority in favor, but since the R leadership chose some method or other, it required two-thirds. But let's just consider the fact of its "rejection."

Washington • The House on Tuesday failed to extend the life of three surveillance tools that are key to the nation’s post-Sept. 11 anti-terror law, a slipup for the new Republican leadership that miscalculated the level of opposition. ...

... The Republicans, who took over the House last month, lost 26 of their own members, adding to the 122 Democrats who voted against it. Supporters say the three measures are vital to preventing another terrorist attack, but critics say they infringe on civil liberties. They appealed to the antipathy that newer and more conservative Republicans hold for big government invasions of individual privacy....

.... Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said Republican supporters of the tea party movement should show their opposition to big government by joining Democrats in opposing the measure.

“How about the Patriot Act, which has the broadest reach and the deepest reach of government to our daily lives?” he asked.

I've always thought that true conservatives would have recoiled at the Act when it was first proposed. What greater example of big-brotherism could there be; what anathema is it to those who distrust government power, who believe in small government? When, I wondered, would they change their tune? When there was a Democrat as president? What about a black one? Not that that would ever happen.

Leaving the snark aside -- and admitting I don't have the names and affiliations of the Rs who said "no" -- I must say it does impress me that there were some Rs who voted nay, and that the obvious conjunction of liberal civil libertarians and conservative big-government worriers finally became apparent. One can only speculate on the extent to which the R-noes came there from a black place.

None of which is to opine about the merits of the act per se. I think the government needs effective tools to intercept messages from and otherwise track bad guys. I was among those, however, who thought it could be done legally -- as opposed to the way President Cheney chose: no oversight at all, no restrictions whatso. It's an argument that was made only at the edges back then, as any attempts to keep our leaders within the law were shouted down as treasonous by the RWS™.

Interesting how things have changed, to the extent that they actually have (which is not much, in that it'll no doubt come up again in a manner that allows majority vote. But it does make for a nice, if short-lived, headline.)

Anyone Surprised?

Americans have no idea what they're talking about when discussing the federal budget. Stop the presses.

If the media -- particularly that most-trusted network -- were doing their job instead of deliberately spreading lies, people would know better, and we'd be able to have meaningful conversations. It's what President Obama said to Bill O'Reilly, off of whom the words bounced as if they were balls in a cage. Teabaggerism will, as I've said many times, be the death of us.

I'm referring to a recent poll which shows how woeful is the general understanding of what we spend as a nation. Delusional data drives dumb decisions. Duh.

.... when it comes time to get specific, the cuts that Americans are by and large in agreement on don't add up to much. While they want Congress to drastically reduce spending overall, they overwhelmingly oppose doing so by scaling back some of the budget's biggest pieces.

Essentially, Americans want to have their budget cake and eat it too.

For instance, foreign aid is one of the only areas that most Americans are willing to squeeze for savings....

.... So how much money do Americans think could be slashed from international aid?

In a World Public Opinion poll conducted last November, respondents guessed, on average, that foreign aid spending represented 27% of the federal budget. To trim spending, the same respondents suggested that, on average, foreign should make up a slimmer 13% of the total budget, surely delivering massive savings.

The problem? Foreign aid is actually a minuscule 1% of the total budget. Even eliminating it altogether would do little to balance the budget or reduce the deficit...

.... When it comes to defense spending, Americans generally oppose cuts and wildly underestimating how much is already being spent.

In the previously-cited Gallup poll, nearly six in ten respondents opposed cutting defense spending. Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll released last week found that 37% of Americans thought defense outlays were fine at their current levels, while 32% thought defense spending was too high, and 27% thought it was too low.

Yet the Rasmussen survey also asked this question:

To ensure its safety, should the United States always spend at least three times as much on defense as any other nation?

Only 25% of respondents agreed with that statement, compared to 40% who disagreed.

In reality, though, the U.S. spends more than that -- much, much more...

...In effect, that meant that the poll's participants contradicted themselves in the span of a few questions, both opposing cuts to defense spending, while also -- unknowingly -- saying the U.S. already spends too much on its military.

Simplistic and fact-free bloviations of the teabagger variety -- the idea that balancing the budget requires no more than eliminating PBS and aid to Israel, that it can be done without raising taxes -- go largely unchallenged by the legitimate media (and actively promoted by the illegitimate ones). And the result is an uninformed public, easily lied to and led into fantasy beliefs. It's no way to elect people willing and able to get things done.

I'm not suggesting that ignorance about government is entirely new. There was a time, however, when it didn't include -- to such a degree as now, anyway -- most of the legislators in one of the governing parties. We had Dirksens, and Javits', and Doles, Fords, Eisenhowers, and, yes, even Goldwaters to lend seriousness to the debate. There was a time, too, when we had Cronkites and Murrows and Huntleys and Brinkleys to produce actual information, on the basis of which it was possible to make thoughtful decisions. There were even -- you'll have to take my word for it -- voters interested in making that kind of decision.

The harder things get, the easier the imaginary solutions. The more vital it is to be informed, the less people want to be. The more we need the sort of press the founding fathers envisioned as central to the workings of a democracy, the more people instead turn to Fox "news," a blatant and unapologetic propaganda organ of the right wing, whose business model is actively to misinform....

.... Sorry. I've been told to lighten up. Completely out of context, then, but to honor the request, I'll end with a joke I used to tell at college parties:

At opposite ends of a town square were two Romanesque statues, a nearly-nude young man and beautiful young woman. For decades they graced the park as people enjoyed the peaceful place. One day an angel appeared and said to the statues, "For the joy you've brought you've been granted the gift of humanity: for one hour you'll be allowed to take human form." And so it was. The two stepped down from their pedestals, walked tentatively toward each other, feeling the warmth and passions of their bodies. Faster and faster they moved until they fell into each other's arms and disappeared into the bushes, from which, for the next forty-five minutes, was heard thrashing and grunting and moans of pleasure. Hand in hand, glowing and smiling, they emerged from the brush. The boy looked at the girl and said, "It seems we have a little time left. Do you want to do it again?"

"I'd love to," she said. "But this time you hold the pigeon and I'll shit on it."

Gas

I think my dad was, at one time, a good driver. He taught me to drive, and I'm a very good driver. In the last, oh, twenty years of his driving life, however, it was an adventure, speaking kindly, to ride with him. He'd put on turn signals for no reason, slow down and speed up like a fan in a brown-out, come to a stop before driving through a tunnel on a highway, veer toward mail boxes as if they were magnets and he were iron filings. Harrowing. Unlike some -- I wonder if I'll be one -- he did come to recognize his infirmity behind the wheel before he killed himself, my mom, or anyone else, and sold his car just before we were ready to steal it from him.

In his eighties, driving downtown in Astoria, Oregon, he was delivered a glancing blow to the rear quarter panel of his car by a guy carelessly pulling out of a parking lot. Not Dad's fault. But his reaction, instead of hitting the brake, was to stand on the gas pedal, launching himself and car into a concrete abutment, breaking several ribs, turning a minor fender-bender into a potentially fatal horror.

Which is why I've always had skepticism about all those reports of sudden acceleration, be it the recent Toyota trump-up, or others before it. The just-released government inquiry confirms:

The Transportation Department, assisted by engineers with NASA, said its 10-month study of Toyota vehicles concluded there was no electronic cause of unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. The study, which was launched at the request of Congress, responded to consumer complaints that flawed electronics could be the culprit behind Toyota's spate of recalls...

...NHTSA Deputy Administrator Ron Medford said that in many cases when a driver complained that the brakes were ineffective, the most likely cause was "pedal misapplication," in which the driver stepped on the accelerator instead of the brakes.

The article suggests it was a pretty rigorous study; nor does it discount the other issues of sticky pedals or entrapment by floor mats. And it includes the comments of the unconvinced.

One thing is certain, though. We'll be hearing conspiracy theories from the Foxobeckian. Toyotas, after all, are the favorite vehicles of terrorists.