Charles In Charge

Other than being a much better and wittier writer, and having an immeasurably larger audience, Charles P. Pierce, whom I've quoted more than once here, and I could be superimposable:

... I continue to maintain that, when the history of this administration is written, its primary flaw is going to be reckoned as having been its assumption that the political opposition was made up of rational men dedicated to the public good. This belief was pretty hilarious to start with, and has only become more laughable the longer we go since the day the country has the audacity to re-elect a (black) president of whom these people, and the shoeless, Bible-bashing mouthbreathers many of them represent, represent. 

(Is that harsh? Tough. We are talking about voters who, by and large, vote against their own economic self-interest time and time again and who, quite honestly, are the biggest suckers in the history of representative democracy. They continue to support policies that render their states into third-world sweatshops for corporations headquartered thousands of miles away. They doom their kids to inadequate schools and themselves to the whims of free-market medicine. The problem, of course, is that the rest of us have to live with the consequences and, it should be noted, pay a fkload of the bills for it besides. You're welcome, idiots.) ...

You gotta love writing like that, and not just because it's 100% accurate and pretty much covers everything I've been trying to say here.

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Everything In Its Path

The entire cartoon is here.

Consequences

Duty hour restrictions on first-year general surgery residents have been linked to a 25.8% reduction in operating case load, according to a study published online July 10 in JAMA Surgery. 

The findings represent the first published data on the effects of the 16-hour cap implemented by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in July 2011, the authors report. 

"If the 16-hour shift were to be extended to all postgraduate year levels, one can anticipate that additional years of training will be needed to maintain the same operative volume," write Samuel I. Schwartz, MD, from the Harbor-University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, Torrance, and colleagues.

An old guy like me can't write about this without sounding like an old guy like me. But from the moment these restrictions were put in place, I predicted such consequences. Yeah, yeah, I trained in the days of the iron men (and, not all that frequently back then, women.) If it was borderline crazy to be in the hospital as much as I was -- on some rotations 12 out of 14 nights (the easier ones were 36+ hours of 48); and, as chief resident of the trauma service, for two months straight -- I always thought it was the only way I was going to learn everything I needed to learn, to see everything I needed to see before foisting myself upon a trusting public.

Friends in the world of academic surgery have told me of their concerns for years: that trainees behave as if it's shift work; that they're not getting the kind of experience we got when we were in residency. And it's been evident in those finishing their training: for one thing, they're not willing (not universally true, of course) to work as hard in practice as people of my generation did. Maybe that's not entirely bad: I burned out younger than I'd have thought. But they're also opting for post-residency fellowships in surgical sub-specialties: cancer, biliary, breast, etc. It has impacts both good and bad: the good is, probably, better training in those particular areas; the bad is the lack of surgeons capable of doing a broad range of things, which particularly affects smaller towns.

I've spoken a couple of times to friends I have in the American College of Surgeons, suggesting what's needed is a mentoring program for people just out of training, given the lower level of experience. It'd be a perfect thing for recently retired surgeons to do. But, far as I know, there's not any major movement afoot. I recognize the logistics would be difficult, especially in smaller locations.

The good news: I guess I don't have to care anymore. Until I need an operation. On the other hand, even if a fabulous surgeon were available, I'm half of a mind to let nature take its course and let Medicare spend its money on someone more deserving.

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What We're Up Against

Quoth a Republican House Science Committee member:

"Just so you'll know, global warming is a total fraud and it's being designed because what you’ve got is you’ve got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions," Rohrabacher said. "Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives." 

The friendly town hall audience appeared to agree with Rohrabacher's contention that humans were incapable of changing earth's climate, giving a collective chuckle. The congressman then appeared to make an offhand reference to Agenda 21, a set of UN-created sustainable development recommendations that the tea party and other Republicans have put forth as an example of how the government will use the threat of climate change to seize property and control the lives of its citizens. 

"It's step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades," Rohrabacher said. "Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that’s gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he’s a UN government official, not a US government official."

Not a guy frothing in a strait jacket. Not a guy on a street corner rambling about end times. A Republican member of the US of A Congressional Committee on Science. Science. Committee. And he's far from the only one. Virtually all of them, Rs, are of the same "mind" set.

I think the reason the friendly-chuckling audience agrees is because the issue is difficult, and solutions would go beyond tax cuts. It's a lot easier to believe it's all just made-up than to face facts. Which is, of course, the pattern ever since Ronald Reagan said tax cuts solve everything, and ignoring problems (like AIDS, for one, in his case) makes them go away. The world has become too complicated, thinking about it too hard and challenging; like a pinball machine pushed too hard, the Republican Party has, en masse, gone into tilt mode.

[Image source, and source]

Their Goals

Think it's an exaggeration when I (and many others) have pointed out how today's teabagging Republican party wants to gut education, diseducate our kids, and turn our country into a theocracy?

The fear-mongering in the Family Research Council’s latest mailing starts on the envelope:  

“Beginning THIS MONTH…they don’t want any American child to escape. Read how we can STOP them.” 

“They” turns out to be “government-run schools” and the “radical” teachers that infest them. 

If a foreign enemy had plotted to infiltrate America, I’m not sure an army of undercover subversives could have done more damage than our government-run schools…. Leftists don’t want a single American child to escape their thought control. And they are crowding out true education. 

Of course, Perkins has a skewed idea about what a “true education” includes. He complains that America used to be the tops in science – after all we put a man on the moon. But not any more: 

Today’s science classes often feature big-government political propaganda, taking time and focus away from true science. Not to mention attacks on the Bible and arrogant censoring of any theories like intelligent design that challenge their Darwinism.

I think this is deeply pernicious, and we ignore it at our own risk. Who's "we?" Anyone who's not a science-denying, education-fearing, theocracy-aspiring American. Anyone who's not a white native-born fundamentalist Christian male.

Honestly, I have no way of accurately assessing the danger; the degree to which people like Tony Perkins and so many others have the ability to make things work their way. But I do know they're infinitely patient, astonishingly well-financed, and, whether or not they represent a majority -- or even a plurality -- of voters, they have enough Congressfolk in their bag, and enough gerrymandered districts that'll keep them being elected, to do plenty of damage. If not in terms of achieving their ultimate agenda everywhere, at least in terms of doing so in many states; and in terms of obstructing the will of the majority, and legislative progress, in Congress. Elsewhere, in those laboratories of democracy knowns as states, they're increasingly taking over state and local school boards. City councils. Places where elections are decided by zealots.

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Sunday Column

This week's episode of my weekly column in our local newspaper, using a recent letter to the editor as a starting point to discuss our shrinking middle class:

This could get a little wonky. In today’s column I’ll be providing some links, because I’m responding to a letter to the editor from a while back, hoping to dent the disinformation. Maybe you saw it: the one that implied President Obama is fabricating the problems of the middle class, and supported the claim by pointing out that lots of people have two cars. I paraphrase. 

See, it’s not that there aren’t middle class people (whatever that means) in the US. It’s that the number is shrinking as millions fall out of it; and that the portals of entry are becoming sealed off. The point is pretty obvious, and it’s surprising that it can be so easily missed. Let’s take a moment to consider what the term even means. According to Mitt Romney, if you recall, and recently confirmed by Fox “news” commentators, people who earn $250 thousand yearly are, depending on context, practically in poverty if you’re talking raising taxes, or strictly middle class if you’re talking how Republican policies will help them. To me, though, it’s people who put in decent day’s work, earning enough to feed, house, and clothe themselves and their families, with a little something left over to sock away. Take a little vacation once in a while. Not have to choose between food and health care. Imagine their kids getting post-secondary education without having to take out a third mortgage. And, sure, own two cars if that’s what they need. We might disagree on details; but it’s a point of reference. 

So, for the edification of the letter writer, let’s look at some data. But before that, let’s acknowledge one more veridical point: if you look out your window and see two cars in your driveway, and note that your neighbors have them, too; and even if you drive several blocks in every direction and see more of the same, you really haven’t gotten the whole picture of what’s happening across America, or for how long, or why. 

Okay, golfers: to the links. Here’s one that slants lefty, but provides good data, and further references: http://tinyurl.com/mmtmnoz. And here’s one from a righty informant: http://tinyurl.com/m48skty. Finally, if you want a source that tea partiers can love, this is from one of their favorite screamers, also with lots more links: http://tinyurl.com/a9668cw. So take your pick. By any measure, from many authors, and for any of several proposed reasons, the number of people who are commonly considered middle class is declining dramatically in the US. Can we, now, accept that as fact? Because the truth is even worse: in “average” wealth, we’re near the top, but it’s mostly in the hands of a handful. (Remember “averages” in math class?) In size of our middle class, we rank around twenty-seventh in the world. 

Surely, there are explanations and blame to go around. We didn’t just arrive at this point yesterday; maybe it started with Reagan’s tax cuts that favored the wealthy, maybe it got worse as we hid in the Bushes, and maybe Obama hasn’t fought hard enough against efforts to prevent economic growth during his presidency.  But it’s easy to see why it’s a problem, and why we should all care, even the letter-writer. 

Believing that steadily increasing inequality of wealth is a bad thing is not – repeat: NOT – the same as being a socialist communist Nazi Kenyan capitalism-hating redistributionist. It’s simple and realistic recognition that for America’s capitalism to work, people need enough jingle in their jangle to buy stuff. Lots of people, lots of stuff. Yachts, private jets, and 90-inch flat screens don’t a vibrant economy make. It takes a bunch of villagers. 

We’re hearing a lot about wages lately. Despite what yet another letter-writer claimed, low-paid workers at fast food joints aren’t just kids: their median age nowadays is twenty-eight (higher for women). Meanwhile, McDonald’s profits were well over $5 billion last year. Across the land, corporate profits have been soaring, while their employees are stuck in neutral. Or reverse. 

Some immediate solutions are obvious: raise wages, and invest in infrastructure jobs. Pockets jingle. The economy grows, tax revenues increase, reimbursing the outlay. Corporations have more consumers to buy their stuff, covering the wage hikes. It’d work. Which is exactly why Congressional Republicans have done everything they can to prevent it while Barack Obama is president. Maybe it’s time for their supporters to wake up and think beyond party politics. Their current representatives never will; but voters can, if it’s not already too late.

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From Way Back

Scanning visitor logs, as is my wont, I occasionally come across a link to a post I'd forgotten (well, that applies to any that are more than a week old). In this case it was something I'd written that got published on one of my favorite sites, Pharyngula, quite a while back. (I have to confess I go there less frequently lately; much as I like his writing, my original attraction was to the science. It's become more self-referential in the last few years, and nearly exclusively devoted to atheism, which, while well-argued, gets tiresome. To me, anyway. Maybe for reasons mentioned in the post.) So here it is. I think I originally posted it here, matter of fact:

Here’s a confession: I find myself resisting describing myself as an atheist, and I wonder why that is. Since I can’t claim certainty, I suppose I could use the rubbery rubric of agnosticism. But right or wrong, I can’t believe there are gods (and there have been times when I’d have liked to). 

So why the reticence? Maybe it’s fear of reprisal; it is, after all, an untidy time for people like me, whose offense is only looking at the world with clear eyes, neither willing nor able to go beyond reality and the observable; the constitutional inability to make a leap of faith, even as our country seems unstoppably heading toward theocracy. But I think it’s something different. As I’ve thought about it, it seems that atheism ought to be the default assumption, for anyone. Certain things ought to go without saying. One should not have to describe oneself, for example, as a mathist. Or a gravitist. (Yes, I realize the analogy is sort of a semantic contradiction, but you get the picture.) 

I believe the grass grows; I believe in chlorophyll. I (sort of) understand radioactive decay, and I understand (to a degree) its relation to measuring the age of the earth. I know (mostly) why planes fly and I don’t need to claim an angel holds them up; I don’t think the earth rides on the back of a turtle, and it seems reasonable that anyone would assume that about me. Nor does the fact that I don’t know everything lead me to fill in the blanks with imaginary answers. I can wait. 

Belief in the demonstrable ought to be the default baseline for anyone, and it shouldn’t need a particular label. 

Okay, maybe “realist.” Or “normal.” 

It’s when you begin to come up with magical explanations (ones, I must point out, that other believers in other magic will decry ferociously and consider false magic, capital blasphemy, compared to their version of it, with no sense of irony whatever), that it seems labels should be applied. I think of those judges who sentence people to wearing a sign after they stole something. People who didn’t steal anything don’t need a sign saying so. Not believing in gods oughtn’t need particularizing any more than breathing does. I do breathe; I admit it. But it’d be strange to identify me as a breather, wouldn’t it? A world-view ought to start with reality. Reality is enough. Reality is, for one thing, real. Realists shouldn’t need to explain it, or to have (loaded) labels applied. 

Nor, for that matter, should they feel the need to brag about it, or get in the faces of others. Why should the world need a movement that announces its commitment to reality? Except for the fact that any realist can’t help being shocked, worried, and appalled at the direction we’re headed in the US, as magical thinking has become the basis for a major political party; as intelligence, the quest for knowledge, are considered elitist and abhorrent, actively and proudly mocked and scorned. In that party, belief in god seems to have become synonymous with rejection of science, with denialism, with economic amnesia. 

It needn’t be thus; it wasn’t always so. But those who wonder why there are suddenly a few highly outspoken and, as some have called them, “militant” atheists out there need only look at today’s Republican party, its teabaggers, its “values voters” for the answer. Scary, hateful, regressive, aggressively ill-informed people. 

There’s where labels belong, seems to me.

Hobgoblin

Somehow I'd missed this about the crazy that is Ted Cruz, favorite of teabaggers:

Ted Cruz rejected questions Sunday over his eligibility to be president, saying that although he was born in Canada “the facts are clear” that he’s a U.S. citizen. “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen by birth,” Cruz told ABC. “I’m not going to engage in a legal debate.” 

The Texas senator was born in Calgary, where his mother and father were working in the oil business. His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba in the 1950s to study at the University of Texas and subsequently became a naturalized citizen.

Some birthers are being consistent; but, wouldn't you know, many who scream about Obama are okay with Cruz' citizenship:

The Constitution requires the president to be a "natural born Citizen." Legal scholars agree that means a citizen at birth, as opposed to one who was naturalized, which is someone who immigrated to the U.S. and became a citizen later in life. 

This opinion is not good enough for the Cruz birthers but it is good enough for many of the birthers who rejected it when it was applied to Obama. King Birther Donald Trump has not decided whether he's a Cruz birther. Trump tells The National Review that he has "not studied his situation." Still, Cruz is "very different" from President Obama, because Cruz "has been very candid and open about his place of birth and his background." This would be a novel criteria to constitutional eligibility. But there's also another way Cruz's background is also very different than Obama's: Obama was born in America.

As teabaggers know, it's a lot easier to ignore facts than to try to bend yourself around them. It explains a lot.

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Incomprehensible

So, is this another example of Obama reaching out and getting his hand bitten off; or is it the McCain/Graham act going rogue on their own; or might have it somehow been the plan all along?

The Obama administration sends the dysfunctional duo to Egypt, for some reason. The jets not yet cool on their plane, they set about doing whatever they can to make things worse. As we know, the White House has, rightly or wrongly, and pretty unconvincingly no matter what, has studiously avoided referring to whatever happened over there as a "coup." Because foreign aid. So Mutt and Muttonhead immediately state it was a coup, and threaten cutting off aid. It does not go over well.

“We share the democratic aspirations and the criticisms of the Morsi government that led millions of Egyptians into the streets,” Mr. McCain said. But “the circumstances of the former government’s president’s removal were a coup, and we have said that we cannot expect Egypt or any other country to abide by its laws if we do not abide by ours in the United States.” 

The new government rebuffed them. The Web site of the flagship Egyptian newspaper, Al Ahram, said Tuesday night that a top government spokesman had accused Mr. McCain of “falsifying the facts” and said his “foolish statements are unacceptable.”

Whatever respect I had for John McPOW evaporated well before he chose the abstruse Alaskan to be first in line to the presidency should he have burst his own brain under the pressure of actual governance. And super-sincere Lindsey "It pains me to say this" Graham is about the most simpering, self-absorbed, phony there is in the world's greatest deliberative body. Why President Obama chose them I have no idea and probably never will; they claim they weren't speaking for him when they stepped so heavily on their tiny dicks. But it's somewhere on that spectrum of American politics that runs between riotously funny and suicidal-thought-provoking indescribably depressing.

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Good Point

Useful, now that I'm old. The entire cartoon, of which the above is just one window, is here.

Apple. Tree.

Looks like Liz Cheney, running for Senate in a state she's passed through a few times to visit her old man (one assumes), lied her way into a resident fishing license to save a few bucks (or, possibly to prove residency for later challenges). A big deal, not; but symbolically perfect. Not only did she evidently prevaricate; when found out she blamed a 47-percenter. What it takes, she's got. Where she got it, pretty clear.

Cheney, who last month announced she will challenge Sen. Mike Enzi in the 2014 Republican primary, received her resident license just 72 days after closing on her Wilson house in May 2012. State law requires residents live in the state 365 consecutive days before they can receive a resident hunting or fishing license, which are cheaper than out-of-state licenses.
Cheney’s application also lists her as a 10-year resident of Wyoming.
The Game and Fish records are incorrect, Cheney told the Star-Tribune.
“The clerk must have made a mistake,” she said. “I never claimed to be a 10-year resident.”

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Appeasement

Well, of course the RWS™ are pointing to the closing of US embassies because of terrorist threats as proof of Obama's weakness, of his policy of appeasement. This, despite the drone program, the NSA, and all the other -- what some might call -- evidence of the opposite.

On the other side, some lefties are seeing it as a bit too convenient timing, designed to imply the necessity of said NSA spying. For that one, at least, there's no compelling evidence of its falsity. The weakness stuff? The mind softly blows, and the guitar gently weeps.

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No Problem

From the latest report on state of world climate:

Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to the 2012 State of the Climate report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). ...

Conditions in the Arctic were a major story of 2012, with the region experiencing unprecedented change and breaking several records. ...

... Each indicator includes thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.

• Warm temperature trends continue near Earth’s surface: ... The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record...  
• The Arctic continues to warm; sea ice extent reaches record low: The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. ...The temperature of permafrost, or permanently frozen land, reached record-high values in northernmost Alaska....
• Antarctica sea ice extent reaches record high...
   
• Sea surface temperatures increase: Four independent datasets indicate that the globally averaged sea surface temperature for 2012 was among the 11 warmest on record.  ...
   
• Ocean heat content remains near record levels...
   
• Sea level reaches record high...
   
• Ocean salinity trends continue: Continuing a trend that began in 2004, oceans were saltier than average in areas of high evaporation...
   
• Tropical cyclones near average... 
   
• Greenhouse gases climb... In spring 2012, for the first time, the atmospheric CO₂ concentration exceeded 400 ppm at several Arctic observational sites.
   
• Cool temperature trends continue in Earth’s lower stratosphere: The average lower stratospheric temperature, about six to ten miles above the Earth’s surface, for 2012 was record to near-record cold, depending on the dataset. Increasing greenhouse gases and decline of stratospheric ozone tend to cool the stratosphere while warming the planet near-surface layers.

It's gotten to the point where even former Republican EPA heads are warning their fellow Rs to wake the fuck up. Not that it'll matter.

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What Might Have Been

The paper for which I write my weekly column was, until only a couple of months ago, owned by The Washington Post. Geez. I might have had free shipping for life.

According to my op-ed editor, the meme going around the newsroom is "Based on your recent purchases, Jeff Bezos, you might also be interested in: The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times..."

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Hyping The Scandal, Ignoring The Needs

When the IRS "scandal" broke, news sources across the political spectrum covered it fiercely. As it slowly fell apart, not so much; especially the right wing sources. The above graph shows it pretty well. The article from which it came also breaks it down with graphs of coverage by each outlet separately.

The problem is what we might call the “scandal attention cycle.” George Washington University political scientist Danny Hayes has described how the “issue attention cycle” results in a surge in news coverage of a new issue like gun control followed by a fairly rapid decline, which received increased attention after the Sandy Hook massacre but ultimately trailed off, following a similar trajectory to previous high-profile shootings. A similar pattern often occurs for scandal—there’s a surge in initial interest as reporters rush to embrace the scandal narrative, but the press quickly loses interest after the most sensational charges are not substantiated. The problem is that it often takes time for the full set of facts to come out. By that time, the story is old news and the more complex or ambiguous details that often emerge are buried or ignored.

It's almost beyond the point of caring, because I don't see how it'll change. Not, at least, before we've collapsed in on ourselves like a perfect implosion of an historic structure. Between the shallow and politically motivated reporting of most media (the NYT somewhat excepted), with the underlying aim of sensationalism for profit, and the resulting factless reinforcement of teabaggR intransigence and that of their supportive public, it's a vicious downward spiral; stupidity feeding stupidity until it swallows up all of us.

I can't imagine the set of circumstances, the political awakening or the acceptance of reality, or the pathway to getting there, that would bring the needed level of cooperation between opposing sides to address our myriad problems before they're beyond solving. Which they probably already are.