Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
7 December 2010, a Tuesday
Some still remember Pearl Harbor, but apparently increasingly fewer. And the lesson seems to have been lost by tying it with Japan, now an ally, because it wasn’t really a lesson about the Japanese themselves but about being wary of an unexpected attack. It’s all about not dozing off in a dangerous world, and not taking what your diplomats are saying in the embassies to represent all that might happen in the real world.
And those lessons are perhaps even more true today than they were in 1941, as the surprise event known as 9/11 clearly showed.
Kind of too bad these two stories in our local A.M. Costa Rica newspaper had to run next to each other:
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Long-term look at El Niño By the Kent State news services
For more than a decade, Joseph Ortiz, associate professor of geology at Kent State University in Ohio and part of an international team of National Science Foundation-funded researchers, has been studying long-term climate variability associated with El Niño. The researchers’ goal is to help climatologists better understand this global climate phenomenon that happens every two to eight years, impacting much of the world. El Niño is the periodic warming of central and eastern tropical Pacific waters. The last El Niño occurred in 2009, Ortiz said, and its impact was felt in the United States with flooding in the south and wildfires in California. Climate in Costa Rica also was affected. The research team looked at El Niño-Southern Oscillation (which is often just called "El Niño"), reconstructing sea surface temperature of the equatorial Pacific over the past 14,000 years. "If we understand how El Niño changes over thousands of years, we can better predict climate changes on societal time-scales of years to decades," Ortiz explained. "El Niño variations lead to drought, famine, landslides, fires and other natural disasters, depending on where in the world you happen to be. Our findings can help lead to better ways to predict El Niño-Southern Oscillations, mitigating the natural disasters associated with it." The findings will appear in Science, the prestigious journal published of the world’s largest science society. The paper, "Dynamical Response of the Tropical Pacific Ocean to Solar Forcing During the Early Holocene," helps to establish the linkage between changes in solar intensity and the strength of El Niño on millennial time scales. The work was funded by the Marine Geology Subdivision of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Sciences Division. "The climate system is very sensitive to subtle external forcing," Ortiz said. "We determined that the sun has an impact but is not the sole factor driving changes on these millennial time scales. Other studies have tried to show a solar linkage to El Niño-related climate variability, but our study indicates a convincing linkage due to the continuity of our record. This paper confirms the ‘ocean dynamical thermostat’ theory, showing that solar-forced changes in ocean circulation have an impact on El Niño."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Using charts, graphs and maps, the report entitled "Vital Climate Change Graphics for Latin America and the Caribbean," produced by the U.N. Environment Programme, depicts the major signs of climate change in the region, its physical impacts and calculates current levels of greenhouse gas emissions and possibilities for mitigation. Adverse weather conditions have cost the region more than $40 billion over the past decade, according to the report, which was unveiled at the U.N. climate change conference in Cancún, Mexico. Produced in collaboration with the Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the Programme’s Polar Research Centre, the report also forecasts future climate scenarios for the region. Graphics show that by 2050, rises in the temperature of ocean surfaces will result in more frequent bleaching of coral reefs, with a negative impact on tourism and fishing. In 1970, only a small number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean were home to mosquitoes that transmit yellow fever, dengue fever and malaria. However, by 2002, the vast majority of the region was affected by these tropical diseases, the report says. |
One report deals with how the earth’s temperature on a worldwide basis, with the amount of heat contained within circulating ocean currents controlled by the sun, affects climate changes over thousands of years. The authors say they hope to use this scientific study to "enhance" short-term predictions.
The other looks at selected events in a limited geographic area during a short-term period (30-35 years) and tries to use those observations to CREATE "graphics" which will "show" what will result in the future.
Nor is it clear when reporting the number of people affected how the effects of world population growth plus immigration have been factored in. People in my personal family unit, for instance, have gone from only 1 in the middle 1960s, only my own self, to over a dozen (depending on how you count) by today, so measuring events by the number of people affected is not really a very good way to measure the frequency or intensity of those events.
Hurricanes are often measured by the amount of damage they do, for instance, but clearly the identical hurricane hitting New Orleans in 1705 would not do the same damage as Katrina in 2005.
For instance, when Arenal volcano erupted in 1968 it seriously affected 100-200 people, killing 87, but if the same eruption took place today, one of identical force, the number of people affected would very easily be far greater than a mere multiple of 8 cited in the U.N. Report on Monday.
The mosquito which transmits dengue and yellow fever is
Aedes aegypti is widespread around the world.Worldwide, this species has a cosmopolitan range extending from 40 degrees N to 40 degrees S latitude. The species is found throughout most tropical to subtropical world regions. Survival is poor in hot, dry climates. In the eastern United States, Ae. aegypti occurs in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Western states i n c I u d e Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. Densities are greatest in the Gulf Coastal states.
Human malaria is transmitted only by females of the genus Anopheles. As
this citation notes:Anophelines are found worldwide except Antarctica. Malaria is transmitted by different Anopheles species, depending on the region and the environment.
Anophelines that can transmit malaria are found not only in malaria-endemic areas, but also in areas where malaria has been eliminated. The latter areas are thus constantly at risk of re-introduction of the disease.
Which means that is not the presence of the two different mosquitoes themselves which spread yellow and dengue fevers and malaria but the presence or absence of the infectious agents carried within the mosquitoes.
The U.N. report seems to imply that the mosquitoes themselves were not present in those countries mentioned, but I doubt that is true. The diseases themselves may not have spread before that time, perhaps, but the mosquitoes still lived there because they live for other purposes, just as do bats and birds and butterflies, and not simply to spread those three particular diseases. Anopheles can bug you out of your mind even in areas where malaria has been eradicated. And the same is true of Aedes aegypti and yellow fever and dengue.
My goodness, is the NYTimes going to start actually
admitting to Obama’s former attitude?For the first time since his party’s drubbing in last month’s election, and arguably for the first time on a major domestic policy since he took office, Mr. Obama forged a deal with the Republican opposition, swallowing hard to give up a central campaign promise while maneuvering to win enough other priorities to declare partial victory.
They admit that the argument actually does exist that he never tried to compromise before! Well, whoever thought that was going to actually be written by the NYT?
"This is the first in a series of painful deals that the president will have to cut if he is to move us forward for the next two years," said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, an advocacy group of moderate Democrats, and a veteran of Bill Clinton’s White House. "It is proof that he is governing as an adult, looking for opportunities to negotiate."
Make that "he is going to start governing as an adult," if you please, because his previous opportunities to negotiated began and ended with one phrase: "I won."
"Obama may have just ensured that he’ll face a significant challenge to his renomination in 2012 from inside the Democratic Party," said Norman Solomon, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America. "By giving away the store on such a momentous tax issue, he has now done huge damage to a large portion of the progressive base that helped to make him president."
Mr. Solomon added, "If he thinks that won’t have major effects on his re-election chances, he’s been swallowed up by a delusional bubble."
For the moment, no credible primary challenger to Mr. Obama has emerged. But the anger on Monday extended beyond party activists.
Here’s the funniest part:
Because they hold solid majorities in both chambers, Democrats must provide many votes for the tax package to become law, even if Republicans overwhelmingly support it.
No one has much wanted to acknowledge that they’ve held those majorities for FOUR years now.
This falls into the category of things you thought were so obviously the right thing to do that you had no idea they weren’t being done. Learned as a result of a recent California prison case:The lower court’s decision requires California to reduce its prison population to about 110,000 inmates from 144,000 by next December. Risks to public safety from releasing that many prisoners will make this almost impossible. But the federal government can take one important step to help states comply: deport many immigrant criminals before they enter prison, not after.
I mean, wouldn’t that be the obvious thing to do in the first place? A lot of the rest of this is hard to believe, too.
Non-citizen criminals represent a significant percentage of American prisoners: in 2009, some 25 percent of federal prisoners and a smaller fraction of state prisoners were non-citizens; in California, 18,705 inmates were non-citizens. Although the federal government can deport many of them as soon as their criminal convictions become final, a century-old law provides that immigrants can be deported only after they have served their sentences here.
This provision, intended to ensure that the criminals are punished, was enacted in 1917, long before severely crowded prisons were deemed unconstitutional. This was also before legal and budgetary pressures forced prison officials to prematurely release inmates, even those with a significant recidivism risk (in California, as many as 58 percent commit new crimes within three years). Deporting criminal immigrants would make it easier to keep these potential recidivists behind bars.
Sloppy reporting makes it difficult for us to distinguish between "non-citizen" criminals and "immigrant" criminals. This sloppy journalism (do these guys actually go to school?) also created the term "illegal immigrant" since there really isn’t such a thing...if you are an illegal entrant then you are not an immigrant, you are a criminal.
Fortunately, the law now contains a potentially useful loophole: deportable criminals can be deported without serving their full sentences if they committed non-violent offenses (with some exceptions), and if the appropriate officials request earlier deportations.
As simple as it seems, this exception has rarely been employed. The federal and state governments should use it to remove as many deportable criminals as possible from their prison populations.
This is certainly not a panacea. Not every immigrant prisoner is deportable; it depends on their particular crimes and whether they can obtain a waiver. Also, the immigrants’ home countries might refuse, contrary to international law, to repatriate them, and some treaties require the prisoner’s consent. Even those countries that do accept convicted citizens may not imprison them at all, or not for long. There’s also the prospect that repatriated prisoners, once free, will try to re-enter the United States illegally.
These objections are manageable. Diplomacy, and American cash, might persuade home countries to incarcerate repatriated criminals. The prisoner transfer treaty with Mexico can be renegotiated. And better border enforcement is already reducing re-entries.
Can we really be that stupid? What do you mean their home countries might refuse to honor their agreement? Do that one time, Mr Home Country, and your immigration rights have just been terminated. Period. No more from you under any circumstances, we don’t need that kind of attitude.
And need the prisoner’s consent? My ass! They’re criminals and that involves losing a lot of their rights, such as liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and consent it another one of them. I don’t care if you consent to deportation any more than I care if you consent to incarceration...good Lord, what a stupid system. "No, I won’t consent to letting you deport me...and, by the way, I no longer consent to being locked up, so adios, I’m outta here." Ha, I’d laugh, at least you got the last part right.
Do we actually care that much about punishment or do we simply want the American people protected from crime? They are your citizens, Country X, so if you want them running free in your society then go ahead, we just want them gone.
As for illegal re-entry...well, come on, what do you think all of the fuss and furor has been about recently? Illegal entry is illegal entry is illegal entry...you don’t need to complicate that further. Yes, improve border enforcement,...what a novel idea!
I keep reading these complaints by losing Democrats than Republicans and conservatives don’t have any idea where budgets can be trimmed, it’s all rhetoric. Well, chalk at least this one up to a concrete suggestion.
To be sure, resolving the problem of so-called illegal immigrants who have not committed any other crime but that one is a more complex issue, but we should easily be able to pick the low-hanging rotten fruit when it’s dangling right in front of our eyes and smelling up the place.
Back to politics, where
The Fix presents an interesting set of numbers:The rising din of criticism from the left raises an obvious question: Does Obama have a liberal problem?
The answer, polling suggests, is not really.
In the latest
While just 48 percent of the overall sample approve of the job Obama is doing, 80 percent of self-identified liberals feel the same -- a stratospherically high number.
The problem is, of course, that only 20% of the country identify themselves as being liberals.
And don’t you love it when Liberal columnists like
Katrina vanden Huevel start spouting their Liberal Logic for all to see? Like this complaint about the tax cuts:The $60 billion each year in Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans could pay for universal preschool for America's children, or tuition and board for half of America's college students.
Uh huh. Assuming that’s what they’d spend it for. But, wait, she complains:
This president has a historic mandate. Just as Abraham Lincoln had to lead the nation from slavery and Franklin Roosevelt from the Depression, this president must lead the nation from the calamitous failures of three decades of conservative dominance. This requires beginning to reverse the perverse tax policies that have contributed to gilded-age inequality and starved the government of resources needed for vital investments.
By this time she is apparently oblivious to the fact that a few paragraphs earlier she was going to spend the money on preschool and college tuition and board. You have to laugh at their self-absorption.
Ok, maybe I’m envious...we didn’t have pre-school in my day, Grandma stayed home with us while Mom worked in defense industries during WWII. And I lived at home and rode the bus to college every day, working summers and Christmas vacations and all I could find time for in between to pay my college tuition. I took every job I could find...delivered mail, sold shoes, fought forest fires, delivered blocks of ice complete with apron and tongs...whatever. Then I joined the Marine Corps during Korea and earned my GI Bill.
I guess I simply don’t feel her passion that dayschool, college tuition and board, are vital government investments.
She is also, of course, oblivious to the fact that twice as many Americans self-describe themselves as conservatives rather than liberals. She doesn’t believe in a "majority rules" country when it is the conservatives who dominate, it’s as simple as that.
This line is good, too:
This demands correcting destabilizing global imbalances, laying a new foundation for reviving American manufacturing and shackling financial speculation. It means ensuring the United States leads rather than lags in the green industrial revolution.
Of course, America’s disappeared manufacturing fled because others could do it cheaper, thanks to American tax policies among other things, And it wasn’t green industry, nor would it be if it returned. At the moment the "green industrial revolution" is mostly mythical, supported by taxpayer subsidies and otherwise non-profitable.
This daunting project is not a matter of ambition or appetite - or even unconscious Kenyan socialism. It is the necessary function of a progressive president elected in the wake of calamitous conservative misrule.
See, all she has to do is merely TELL you that it isn’t unconscious Kenyan socialism and lo, it will not be so. Of course not, because she has spoken. And for whatever reason got Obama elected, the 2010 results made it quite clear that it was not to dismantle conservative policies. Two people out of three think Obama is leading the country in the wrong direction and responded with one of the most sweeping changes of political governance the nation has ever seen, going far, far beyond the Senate and House races.
Katrina says we’re all wrong, because she’s part of the one-third who knows better because they are liberal intellectuals who always know better, it’s their curse, their cross to bear.
I think it has been generally agreed that the underlying cause behind this financial crisis began when Fannie and Freddie abandoned conservative lending principles under the popular theory...which even Bush bought into...that even financially unqualified borrowers DESERVED to own their own home, a very progressive notion.
See, for decades conservatives believed that home buyers should have well-documented and reasonably secure jobs, good credit histories, and a 20% cash down payment towards the purchase of a home which was subject to a conservative value appraisal by the lender. To be sure, homes were occasionally foreclosed, but no financial crisis occurred as a result.
And to the extent that the derivatives and other complicated financial packages were created in a poorly-regulated financial market to buy, sell and lever those unusual instruments, would any of them have gone tits up if the underlying home loans were truly conservatively made? I spent nearly 30 years in the residential real estate business before all this happened and I don’t think so, because no real estate "bubble" was created as a result of these progressive policies during that time. In order to buy a home you needed to be a solid citizen, reliable and dependable, a guy who did not walk away from his bills because something had been set aside for that rainy day they warned us about.
No, the progressives said, even poor people DESERVE to own their own homes, and nothing bad will happen because homes always, always go up in value and no one can possibly lose or get hurt.
Katrina may talk about conservative misrule all she wishes, but this was not an example of it. Quite the opposite.
Well, what can you expect from someone so intellectually dishonest? She complains:
On bipartisanship, the president seems to think that cooperation requires self-abasement. He apologized to the obstructionist Republican leadership for not reaching out, a gesture reciprocated with another poke in the eye. He chose to meet with the hyper-partisan Chamber of Commerce after it ran one of the most dishonest independent campaigns in memory.
This apparently would be the same president who, after his election in 2008, told Republicans seeking political accommodations the blunt facts of life: "I won." A poke in the eye? No, I’d call that more like a KO punch to the chops. He knocked them out.
Even not all that long ago, this same president told Republicans that they might be allowed to ride in his bus, but just like other minorities in history they’d have to sit in back.
No, I couldn’t possibly make those things up.
He needed Republican bipartisanship not at all, as he passed Health Care and Financial Reform and whatever else he is credited with passing without a single Republican vote. He knocked them out in the beginning and then wondered why they stayed out...but not all that much. He didn’t need them. Republicans were hysterically described as obstructionist but in actual fact they were merely absent, since that’s all they had it in their power to be. They simply refused to sign on for things Obama believed but they did not.
It would be interesting to look at the history of Chamber of Commerce support for Obama prior to his election and after he spent the next two years totally discrediting its members. Fair disclosure, I was a Chamber member for decades, but the fact is that we’re going to support the guy who supports us, and Obama thought that he didn’t need to do that any more than he needed to court Republicans. I won, he said. He forgot that the Chamber was not composed entirely of members of Big Oil and Big This and Big That, but also hundreds of thousands of small businessmen all across America, not only Wal-Mart but every Mom&Pop Shop in the country.
Try to imagine for one moment why a Chamber of Commerce representing this many millions of Americans would run a dishonest independent campaign against someone truly intent on helping them prosper in America’s businesses, big and small. Any good answers come to you?
Obama, smarter than Katrina, is now belatedly realizing that he could be the baby thrown out with the bath water. Maybe now he regrets his "I won" and "you have to ride in the back" displays of his previous arrogant attempts at bipartisanship, but I sort of think that isn’t going to work out well for him. And Katrina is not going to be a loyal member of his team, win or lose, as she says.
This isn't about conventional politics. This is simply about the fate and future of our country. This president has a clear and imperative historic mandate. If he shirks it, he risks more than failing to get reelected. He risks a failed presidency.
She is incapable of understanding that 2/3 of the people think the future of the country should be headed in the opposite direction from the way she thinks it should be. That is simply not believable to her. She is incapable of accepting the notion that twice as many people call themselves conservatives as call themselves liberals...after all, as the famous phrase goes, nobody she knows voted that way.
Which makes her wrong about Obama’s clear and historic mandate, to use her terms. Nothing about it was clear...if you set aside partisan politics and forget the Republican candidates, he beat Hillary only by virtue of outpositioning her early because she was overconfident and became careless. Hillary still believes she should have won, and so do her supporters. The mandate does not exist even for Democrats, and boy can we ever see that today!
Democrats are increasingly upset because they are forced to realize that the complaint they used to glibly toss off at George Bush has come back at them in transformed fashion.
All mortarboard and no thesis.