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Sunday, May 15, 2005
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Mayors Band Together to Implement Kyoto Accords.
I like this story: Unsettled
by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg
Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush
administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a
bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an
implicit rejection of the administration's policy. The mayors,
from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst,
Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to
Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet
what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush
administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in
heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by
2012. I like it for a whole bunch of reasons. First, this
is a good, concrete step toward actually helping the environment (even
if it is a small one). Second, the bipartisan nature of this group is a
great rebuff to the radical right-wing/Bushista fantasy that global
warming has been dreamed up by a conspiracy of patient nerds. And
third, I see no apparent reason why enterprising governors (or aspiring
governors) could not sign on as well. I think this could be a great
move for a guy like Eliot Spitzer, who has successfully brought a
number of important environmental lawsuits. Finally, I like this bit best: Jerry
Ryan, the Republican mayor of Bellevue, Neb., said he had signed on
because of concerns about the effects of droughts on his farming
community. Mr. Ryan described himself as a strong Bush supporter, but
said he felt that the president's approach to global warming should be
more like his approach to terrorism. "You've got to ask, 'Is it remotely possible that there is a threat?'" he said. "If the answer is yes, you've got to act now." Indeed, an approach similar to Ryan's is already advocated in environmental quarters, where it is known as the "precautionary principle."
I also think it's a good way to sell the public on environmental
protections in general: Life is risky enough - why should we take any
chances with our environment? P.S. If you want to find out more about the coalition, their homepage is here.
[Daily Kos]
9:22:21 PM 
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McConnell Goes With Pre-Debunked Lie on Byrd.
Josh Marshall reports: Third
try's the charm? With 'nuclear option' up in a mushroom cloud, and
'constitutional option' down the memory hole, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R)
of Kentucky this morning introduced "Byrd Option" as the new
GOP-approved word for abolishing the filibuster. Reporters should be getting their notices shortly. Well, dailykos was on the case YESTERDAY: There's
a persistent misunderstanding in certain circles about the nuclear
option, that is, the schoolyard taunt that, "they started it."
Underlying the charge: Senator Byrd, in his capacity as Majority
Leader, "has used parliamentary tactics and majority votes to
accomplish procedural rule changes." What such charges fail to note, in each of the examples cited, is that the
changes were always executed by means well within the contemplation of
Senate rules and not, as the execution of the nuclear option requires,
in contravention of them. We're always one step ahead of them. Heh.
[Daily Kos]
9:21:20 PM
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McCain vs. Neo-Republican SocialCons
John McCain found himself walking a very thin line, this morning, on
ABC This Week. While trying to appease the social conservatives
of his party, he called on moderates to stand up and regain control of
the GOP. MCCAIN: If people feel the religious conservatives have
too much sway within our party, then they should get more active and
regain their influence. The religious conservatives have every
right to affect the policies and programs and candidates of our
party. They...
- Rory
[Sunday Morning Talk]
9:20:21 PM
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Legal Notes...That Make You Wonder
Finals are over, which means, technically, anything with the word "law"
or "court" in it should be off limits because it's summer break, baby.
But I had to share these cases with you:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal appeals court agreed on Friday to reconsider the case of a female bartender who was fired from her job at a Nevada casino for refusing to wear lipstick, blush and other make-up. [...]
Harrah's
implemented a mandatory policy that it called "Beverage Department
Image Transformation," which required, among other things, that women
wear makeup. After refusing to comply with the policy, Jespersen was
fired in 2000.
See, I wouldn't have a problem with
it if the makeup was part of the uniform supplied by the company. Free
makeup? Where do I sign up? (and yes, I'm joking. Employment
discrimination should not be tolerated in any
workpl---uh....must...stop...analyzing.....finals....are..over)
And from Roma:
ROME (Reuters) - An impotent Italian man
who kept his problem a secret from his wife until after their wedding
must pay her damages for 'eroding' her right to have a family, Italy's
Supreme Court has ruled.
The, ahem, frustrated wife
said she was "robbed of her sexuality." I guess he thought he could
just fake it? Looks like Laura isn't the only Desperate Housewife.
Next story. And you thought Republicans were bad:
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Four Ecuadorean legislators were permanently expelled from Congress on Thursday for getting drunk and smashing up a hotel in Peru last month. One
of the lawmakers, Maria Augusta Rivas, had also accused another of the
four of trying to rape her in the alcohol-fueled incidents at a hotel
in Lima where they were attending trade talks in April. Note to Condi: Stay away from Georgie when he's with Johnnie Walker. - Georgia
[akou: a blog by georgia]
9:19:28 PM
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Russert Hits Hammer Hard. Blunt and Frank.
Rep. Roy Blunt (House Majority Whip) did his job, this
morning. He defended Tom Delay as Rep. Barney Frank and Tim
Russert did their best to make inroads. Russert's most damning
moments were when he carted out quotes from Republicans who have been
distancing themselves from Tom Delay, noted below. The shows
ignored this interesting article in today's Washington Post that noted
that charges of ethics violations are good business for Delay, with his
fundraising going through the roof. But,...
- Rory
[Sunday Morning Talk]
3:59:02 PM
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Niobrara What
do you think of when someone mentions the word "Kansas"? Maybe what
leaps to your mind is that it is a farming state that is flat as a pancake, or if you've been following current events, the recent kangaroo court/monkey trial, or perhaps it is the drab counterpart to marvelous Oz.
It isn't exactly first on the list of glamourous places. I admit that I
tend to read different books than most people, so I have a somewhat
skewed perspective on Kansas: the first thing I think of is a magic
word.
Niobrara. Late in the 19th century, there
was a stampede to the American West to search for fossils of those
spectacular beasts, the dinosaurs. Entrepreneurs everywhere were in on
it—P.T. Barnum bought up old bones for his shows—and even scientists
got caught up in the bone fever. Edward Drinker Cope of the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and Othniel Charles Marsh of
Yale were famous rivals in the bone wars,
sending teams of men to Wyoming and Utah and Colorado and other Rocky
Mountain states to collect the bones of the extinct terrestrial
behemoths of the Mesozoic. Kansas was also a target, most famously by
the Sternberg family, but it had a different reputation: Kansas is the place to go to find sea monsters.
There is a geological formation in Kansas called the Niobrara Chalk.
Actually, it's not just in Kansas; it extends all the way up into
Canada, but the Niobrara has been exposed by erosion over much of
northwestern Kansas, making it easy to dig into. And this is where the
Sternbergs and Cope and Marsh went hunting for sea monsters.
Chalk is interesting stuff. It's made of a mineral calcium
carbonate, that is formed into the shells of microscopic, one-celled
golden brown algae. These Chrysophyceae are photosynthesizing organisms
that float in large numbers at the surface of the sea, gather sunlight
for energy and scavenging calcium dissolved in the water to build their
protective shells. They occasionally shed the the minute calcium
plates, and when the plants die, their skeletons drift slowly downward.
The seas have a slow, soft, invisible rain of tiny flecks of calcium
carbonate that very, very slowly builds up at the bottom.
The Niobrara Chalk formation is 600 feet thick.
It was building up for a long, long time, tens of millions of years.
The exposed chalks of northwestern Kansas are also old, dating to
between 87 and 82 million years ago, near the end of the Mesozoic era
and deep in the Late Cretaceous (not up on your geological time scale? Here's a simple chart of geological eras.)
The inescapable conclusion is that Kansas was under water during the
age of the dinosaurs. During the Mesozoic, the world was warm and the
oceans were at a high level, and the entire central part of North
America was a great, shallow, inland sea, a warm soup rich in
microorganisms that were busily living and dying and slowly
accumulating into deep dense chalk beds on the bottom. The world looked
a bit like this:
It wasn't just coccolithophores living there, though. Shallow seas
are fertile places for life, and there were vast shoals of fish and
nautiloids, dense layers of bottom-dwelling molluscs and echinoderms,
and amazing predators. Here's a bulldog-jawed, snaggle-toothed Xiphactinus—over 20 feet long and 800 pounds of ferocious muscle.
 Xiphactinus
There were also snaky-necked plesiosaurids feasting on the smaller
fish. These are genuinely weird animals—we have nothing comparable to
them today—yet they were diverse and successful and found in numbers in
the Niobrara Chalk.
 Elasmosaurus
The predatory king of the Niobraran Sea was this fellow, Tylosaurus,
a mosasaurid that reached lengths of up to 50 feet. It's a giant,
air-breathing reptile, and is probably most comparable to a killer
whale.
I've only briefly visited modern Kansas, but the Kansas of my
imagination is a fiercely exotic ocean, a warm and savage sea richer
than any place still extant. Try mentioning the magic word "Niobrara"
to a paleontologist, or any enthusiast familiar with Mesozoic
reptiles…their eyes will light up as it conjures visions of the world
of 85 million years ago, a world well documented in the incredible
fossil beds of Kansas. It's a powerful, evocative word that links us to
a wealth of evidence and a complex, fascinating history.
Reading about the ridiculous anti-evolution trial going on there was rather depressing. It isn't just that the creationist arguments are so poor, but that they are making them in Kansas,
where beneath their very feet are the relics of an ancient world that
show them to be wrong. Don't schoolchildren there take pride in the
paleontological wealth of their home? Do the people bury their
imaginations and avoid thinking about the history that surrounds them?
During the course of the hearings, the lawyer on the side of
science, Pedro Irigonegaray, asked several of the witnesses for
Intelligent Design creationism what they thought the age of the earth
was. It's a simple, straightforward question with a simple answer:
about 4.5 billion years. The Intelligent Design creationists found it
difficult. Some answers were ludicrous, such as Daniel Ely's and John
Sanford's assertion that the earth was between 10 and 100 thousand years old. Others were evasive: Stephen Meyer and Angus Menuge refused to answer. Some of these "qualified witnesses" were embarrassingly ignorant: William Harris could only say, "I don't know. I think it's probably really old.".
All of this is in line with the intellectually flaccid position of the
godfather of the Intelligent Design movement, Phillip Johnson, who has
bravely announced that "I have consistently said that I take no position on the age of the earth".
Mention "Niobrara" to these people and their eyes will not light up.
At best you might get dull-eyed incomprehension, and more likely you
will see shifty-eyed evasion. Yet these are the characters who want to
dictate the scientific content of our children's educations. I swear,
if there were any truth to their metaphysical codswallop, the shades of
Cope and Marsh and the Sternbergs would have manifested in that
courtroom to denounce them, and the floor would have cracked open
beneath their feet to allow a spectral tylosaur to rise up and gulp
them down.
There are greater truths in the stones of Niobrara than in the
dissembling and ill-educated brains of the fellows of the Discovery
Institute. We need to teach the evidence, not this phony, ginned-up controversy from a gang of poseurs and theocrats.
(crossposted to The American Street) - PZ Myers (pzmyers@pharyngula.org)
[Pharyngula]
3:57:33 PM
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Bloodshed in Uzbekistan, and the U.S. double standard.
As you may or may not know, late last week, anti-government protests took place in Uzbekistan. On Friday, troops opened fire on the protesters, killing hundreds; it is estimated that the death toll could be as high as 500 people. Uzbekistan is a U.S. ally
in the War on Terror™. That seems to be reason enough, at least for the
Bush administration, to turn a blind eye on Uzbekistan's appalling
human rights violations, including torture of dissidents (e.g.immersion in boiling water). Needless to say, the Uzbek goverment is an autocratic regime, where dissent is not tolerated. Today's Guardian describes the reaction of human rights groups to the U.S. backing of the Uzbek regime: Heated
criticism was growing last night over 'double standards' by Washington
over human rights, democracy and 'freedom' as fresh evidence emerged of
just how brutally Uzbekistan, a US ally in the 'war on terror', put
down Friday's unrest in the east of the country. Outrage among human
rights groups followed claims by the White House on Friday that
appeared designed to justify the violence of the regime of President
Islam Karimov, claiming - as Karimov has - that 'terrorist groups' may
have been involved in the uprising. Critics said the US was
prepared to support pro-democracy unrest in some states, but condemn it
in others where such policies were inconvenient. Hypocrisy by the Bush administration? Impossible. I've never heard of such a thing. So what exactly were the comments from the White House? Scott McClellan had this to say: Scott
McClellan, the White House spokesman, tried to deflect accusations of
the contradictory stance when he said it was clear the 'people of
Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government.
But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence.' Not through violence? Talk about a double standard. Unseating a dictator without violence? Like we did in Iraq? Finally, here's more evidence that the uprising in Uzbekistan seems to be spreading. Also, check out Maxwell's excellent diary on Uzbekistan. You'll find more information there. Finally, click here for the transcript of McClellan's May 13, 2005 press briefing.
[Daily Kos]
3:55:36 PM
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Warren Buffett Joins the Order of the Shrill.
Calculated Risk Reports: Calculated Risk: Buffett and FDR: Warren
Buffett was on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight on Wednesday. Here is an
excerpt:
DOBBS: Are you surprised when you focus on the two deficits we just
talked about, the trade deficit, and the budget deficit? The budget
deficit is 3.6 percent of our GDP. The trade deficit is reaching just
almost 6 percent of GDP. And the president is talking about reforming
Social Security. Does that surprise you?
BUFFETT: Well, it's an interesting idea that a deficit of $100 billion
a year, something, 20 years out, seems to terrify the administration.
But the $400 plus billion dollars deficit currently does nothing but
draw yawns. I mean the idea that this terrible specter looms over us 20
years out which is a small fraction of the deficit we happily run now
seems kind of interesting to me. There is no question that the Bush
Administration is ignoring the most serious economic problems facing
America and that they are more interested in ideological driven issues.
The most serious fiscal issues are: the General Fund deficit, the
current account / trade deficit, and health care. Why are we talking
about Social Security? I'm reminded...
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal]
3:54:57 PM
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eBay for Workers?.
Hi again, everyone. It's Angelica, a.k.a Battlepanda. I'm going to be
filling in this weekend. Has anyone here heard about Jobdumping.de? I
blogged about it a few days ago at my blog because it is an interesting
idea that I...
[Ezra Klein]
6:05:30 AM
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If flowers were landmines..... 
Coming to a Saudi city near our oil
'Martyrs' In Iraq Mostly Saudis
Web Sites Track Suicide Bombings
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A01
Before
Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball,
he was young and interested only in "fooling around."
Like many
Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to
Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel
Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep,"
according to a posting on a jihadist Web site.
On April 11, he
died as a suicide bomber, part of a coordinated insurgent attack on a
U.S. Marine base in the western Iraq city of Qaim. Just two days later,
"the Martyrdom" of Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani was announced on the
Internet, the latest requiem for a young Saudi man who had clamored
to follow "those 19 heroes" of Sept. 11 and had found in Iraq an
accessible way to die.
Hundreds of similar accounts of
suicide bombers are featured on the rapidly proliferating array of Web
sites run by radical Islamists, online celebrations of death that offer
a wealth of information about an otherwise shadowy foe at a time when
U.S. military officials say that foreign fighters constitute a growing
and particularly deadly percentage of the Iraqi insurgency.
The
account of Qahtani's death, like many other individual entries on the
Web sites, cannot be verified. But independent experts and former
government terrorism analysts who monitor the sites believe they are
genuine mouthpieces for the al Qaeda-affiliated radicals who have made
Iraq "a melting pot for jihadists from around the world, a training
group and an indoctrination center," as a recent State Department
report put it. The sites hail death in Iraq as the inspiration for a
new generation of terrorists in much the same way that Afghanistan
attracted Muslims eager to fight against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Rosters of the Dead
Who
are the suicide bombers of Iraq? By the radicals' account, they are an
internationalist brigade of Arabs, with the largest share in the online
lists from Saudi Arabia and a significant minority from other countries
on Iraq's borders, such as Syria and Kuwait. The roster of the dead on
just one extremist Web site reviewed by The Washington Post runs to
nearly 250 names, ranging from a 13-year-old Syrian boy said to have
died fighting the Americans in Fallujah to the reigning kung fu
champion of Jordan, who sneaked off to wage war by telling his family
he was going to a tournament.
Among the dead are students of
engineering and English, the son of a Moroccan restaurateur and a
smattering of Europeanized Arabs. There are also long lists of names
about whom nothing more is recorded than a country of origin and the
word "martyr."
Some counterterrorism officials are skeptical
about relying on information from publicly available Web sites, which
they say may be used for disinformation. But other observers of the
jihadist Web sites view the lists of the dead "for internal purposes"
more than for propaganda, as British researcher Paul Eedle put it.
"These are efforts on the part of jihadis to collate deaths. It's like
footballers on the Net getting a buzz out of knowing somebody's
transferred from Chelsea to Liverpool." Or, as Col. Thomas X. Hammes,
an expert on insurgency with the National Defense University, said,
"they are targeted marketing. They are not aimed at the West."
Saudis, huh.
Did the neocons predict this little bit of pandora's box?
Next stop, Saudi Arabia. Well, actually, the next front in the war on terra.
[Steve Gilliard's News Blog]
6:00:15 AM
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ExxonMobil's echo chamber: well-funded pseudoscience.
A few weeks ago, I wrote
about ExxonMobil's funding of think tanks, religious groups, media
outlets and other organizations, to spread doubt about the reality of
global climate change ("it's a theory, not a fact"). I came across this gem.
It's a chart that tells which groups got how much money from
ExxonMobil, the lies they spread, and interesting facts about each
group. Some examples from that chart: 1. Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty. Received $155,000 from ExxonMobil. They say that carbon dioxide caps are "a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist." One of their advisors is an AEI fellow (American Enterprise Institute). 2.
The Advancement of Sound Science Center received $40,000 from
ExxonMobil. Guess who runs it? FoxNews.com's columnist Steve Milloy. 3. The American Enterprise Institute bagged a staggering $960,000 from ExxonMobil. Their publications include "Don't Worry, Be Happy"
in 2004, basically saying that global climate change is just something
us crazy, hysterical environmentalists have blown way out of
proportion. The real President of the US Dick Cheney is one of their former senior fellows. 4. The Heritage Foundation received $340,000 from ExxonMobil. They say: "For the next several decades, fossil fuel use is key to improving the human condition." In all, ExxonMobil donated $8 million to these groups and others like them. Click on the link and check out the rest of the chart, as well as the text on the sidebar. This is fantastic work.
Now, here's your challenge, Kossacks: Come up with as many GOP pseudoscience connections as you can. For example, Rick Santorum has worked with the Discovery Institute, which is the strongest proponent of "intelligent design". Here's something he wrote for them, in which he says: Where
biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to
understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy,
and prepare them to be informed participants in public discussions.
There are many, many more. Dig around on the internets and post your
findings in the comments. My goal is to create a master chart of
connections. Who knows, it might be useful someday... maybe in 2006.
[Daily Kos]
5:54:32 AM
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© Copyright
2005
Michael Mussington.
Last update:
6/1/2005; 1:34:14 AM.
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