Osborne Ink

Quote of the Day

2009-11-12T11:00:00.001-06:00

Following Paul Krugman on Twitter so you can, too, I caught his blog post on Faux business Channel:

I gather that Fox Biz has managed to push up its morning ratings by hiring that great financial guru Don Imus. But that sort of proves the point; Fox Business can get viewers, but only by turning itself into … Fox News.

Quot erat demonstratum.

Cyborg Insects

2009-11-12T10:00:00.004-06:00

Yes, you read correctly. Cyborg insects:

For the first time, researchers have controlled the movements of free-flying insects from afar, as if they were tiny remote-controlled aircraft.

By connecting electrodes and radio antennas to the nervous systems of beetles, the researchers were able to make them take off, dive and turn on command. The cyborg insects were created at the University of California, Berkeley, by engineers led by Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz as part of a programme funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

I found this at the same site: the genes responsible for human speech may have been discovered.

(R)esearchers are uncovering the suite of genes that gave us our gift of the gab.

All of them appear to be controlled by a master-switch gene called Foxp2. When inactive, this gene causes severe speech and language problems in humans. Although other animals have versions of Foxp2, in 2002 a German team identified two small alterations in the protein the human Foxp2 produces that are not carried by our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This suggested that the human version of Foxp2 may function differently, and be a key element in our unique linguistic abilities.

The reason cyberpunk was only a moment in our culture is because one day we woke up and were living in a world where it wasn't fiction, but news. Which begs the question: once you're living in the future, have you reached the end of fiction?

Best Tweeter

2009-11-12T09:00:00.000-06:00

@willmckinley:

I told Pete Hoekstra that I like this girl in math class and now she totally knows! Pete can never keep a secret.

Context:

Morning Video

2009-11-12T08:00:00.001-06:00

Roomba Pac-Man: proof that grad students can do great things by goofing off between bong hits.

Music in the Morning

2009-11-12T07:00:00.000-06:00

Terence Trent D'Arby week continues with Delicate:

Prejean Flakes Out on Larry King

2009-11-12T06:00:00.000-06:00

My favorite part? She's afraid to take questions from callers. Hello, you're on a talk show...

It's not the first flaky behavior we've noticed in female culture warriors, is it? Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Miss California have a lot in common. All three are creatures of the strange nexus of right-wing evangelical movement conservatism and beauty pageants. Coincidence?

Adding: Prejean's 15 minutes are officially over. Can't we all just move along?

Intelligence Stupidity

2009-11-11T14:00:00.001-06:00

Republicans politicizing intelligence for self-aggrandizement at the cost of national security! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maddow does some crackerjack reporting:

For the record, she's absolutely right to question this man's access to classified information. The nightmare of every intelligence asset in the world is to hear anything connected to them come out of a congresscritter's mouth. If he were not an elected politician, Hoekstra would have several counterintelligence agencies looking up his ass with a microscope right about now.

Yet Another Bush-Cheney Failure

2009-11-11T11:00:00.001-06:00

In 2007, the United States was subject to a massive, successful cyberattack -- and the Bush administration thought it best not to cause panic by telling us.

John Allen Mohammed Checks Out

2009-11-11T10:00:00.001-06:00

I was in uniform and among a small crowd of very motivated soldiers when it was announced that Timothy McVeigh had been put to death. The sound we made was something like the Spartans responding to Leonidas in 300.

Soldiers have no time for former soldiers who stop defending America and start to kill random Americans. Something like that scene is probably going on across the Army today with the news that John Allen Mohammad, the "DC sniper," was put down by lethal injection last night.

Next to check out will be Major Nidal Hasan, about whom there seems to be no end of nebulous connections for media headlines. I've really passed beyond caring whether he communicated with al-Qaeda or Yemeni imams: he's awake, he's talking, and now he can start the checkout process with a guilty plea.

We can talk all day about "lone wolf" attacks and where they come from, or how their minds are warped by dangerous ideology; but ultimately, Nidal Hasan is responsible for what he did. He chose to pull the trigger. He chose to believe in death more than others believed in life, and for that he will burn.

Veterans Day Blog

2009-11-11T09:00:00.001-06:00

Regular readers will remember that telephone town hall I referred to last week -- the one in which a plurality of veterans said that health care costs are their biggest problem. Today, HuffPo reports:

According to a study released by the Harvard Medical School, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that "that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001."

Mind you, any vet with an honorable discharge can get free treatment for an illness -- at a VA clinic. Too often, veterans live far away from the nearest facility, and can't get insured on the private market. For one thing, we all have those preexisting conditions from the rigors of service: anyone with ten years of airborne "jump status" has an automatic disability rating whether they need it or not, because they almost certainly will. There is a reason why almost every military retiree looks a decade older than his actual age.

The AP also has a story this morning on the rising number of wounded coming back from Afghanistan, so this is as good a time as any to talk about the price of freedom. Quite literally the price of freedom, because it isn't free. Soldiers cost money, and when they get injured they cost even more.

Which is why the eleventh of November is always such a fun day for me: I'll go out today wearing some leftover brass -- my unit crest from the language school, a 1st Cavalry Division pin -- and inevitably, strangers will thank me for my service, at which point I always thank them for paying their taxes.

"Think of me when you write the check," I say.

Normally, this ends in careful laughter. Sometimes, it ends in bewildered awkwardness. But it is a conversation I have at least once a year, usually several times on this day, with people who have not made the mental connection between Republican orthodoxy and the perennial funding shortfalls of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They are the same people who think health care reform is the end of freedom.

Morning Video

2009-11-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

Via @GreatDismal: "Cockhead"

Music in the Morning

2009-11-11T07:00:00.000-06:00

Terence Trent D'Arby week continues with Dance Little Sister:

McChrystal Method

2009-11-10T11:00:00.001-06:00

According to CBS, Obama had decided to go with McChrystal's plan, giving him almost all the troops he asked for. Administration officials had acknowledged problems with Afghanistan's nominal president, Hamid Kharzai, last week:

"He's got to take concrete steps to eliminate corruption," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week. "That means you have to rid yourself of those who are corrupt. You have to actually arrest and prosecute them."

It's a throwaway line; Kharzai is not about to arrest and prosecute anyone for corruption when his government basically exists through baksheesh. By the same token, it's not clear how Kharzai will remain a legitimate leader when his election was self-selection and his own brother is on the CIA payroll.

But just before 10:00 PM EST, CBS updated with a denial from the White House:

"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."

CBS News correspondent David Martin cited that original headline on "informed sources" -- none of whom are quoted. It's another anonymous story the White House quickly denies. We have seen this pattern before in the lead-up to Obama's big health care speech; but in this case, Obama is raising expectations, not lowering them.

Just two weeks ago, he was "leaning" toward a smaller number of troops. Now it's "almost 40,000." Bear that in mind as we await his Oval Office address.

Beck Loses Suit Against Satire Site

2009-11-10T10:00:00.000-06:00

Glenn Beck has lost his suit against Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, a satire site that used his own nontroversy formula against him. Having made his point, the site owner turned the login and password over to Beck with a one-page letter for the ages. Money quote:

Rather than choosing to strive for excellence and civic contribution, you simply pander to the fears and insecurities of your audience. And in the process, you do them, and us all, a great deal of harm.

Damn right. Here's the letter (PDF).

Morning Awful

2009-11-10T09:00:00.000-06:00

Tell you what, Mr. Fischer -- since my own service disability was caused by a suicidal Christian from Missouri, let's ban all Christians from driving military vehicles until such time as we can perfect the "suicidal Christian" detector. That way we won't have young soldiers getting snapped in half at the lower spine when their self-loathing driver rams a telephone pole at 45 miles an hour.

Just to balance out the awful, here's a family of one victim saying exactly the opposite. Sorry, I can't do anything about the ad:

Morning Video

2009-11-10T08:00:00.000-06:00

Fastest goal ever:

Music in the Morning

2009-11-10T07:00:00.001-06:00

Terence Trent D'Arby week continues with Sign Your Name

Flashback to Cold War

2009-11-09T21:00:00.001-06:00

Some Reagan-era propaganda for your consideration:

Nothing Reagan says about the balance of nuclear forces was ever remotely true, nor were the Soviets ever in a first-strike kind of mood. What? You think Iraq was the first time a Republican president engaged in lies and fearmongering?

Why The Wall Came Down

2009-11-09T15:00:00.001-06:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and predictably the right is congratulating itself for Reagan's victory in the Cold War. Which is ironic, since Reagan had so little to do with it.

Essentially, the Reagan claim boils down to some variation on this theme: Reagan bankrupted the Soviets by escalating the arms race. He united the western alliance and the Soviets couldn't keep up. But it's bogus: the Soviet Union was bankrupted by falling oil prices, and Reagan wasn't doing anything particularly new, as containment was a bipartisan strategy begun under a Democratic president named Harry Truman.

In fact, "containment" had been the watchword of the Cold War since 1947, when George Kennan wrote the famous "X-Article:"

In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward "toughness." While the Kremlin is basically flexible in its reaction to political realities, it is by no means unamenable to considerations of prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of realism. The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of weakness. For these reasons, it is a sine qua non of successful dealing with Russia that the foreign government in question should remain at all times cool and collected and that its demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Russian prestige. (Emphasis mine)

Reagan began his presidency by denouncing previous efforts at improving Soviet-American relations. He made several inflammatory remarks in his first term that ratcheted Cold War tensions in exactly the way Kennan advised not to do.

Kennan also described the Soviet leadership as the generation most affected by the Great Patriotic War (WWII), saying that a new generation would eventually soften the Soviet system. Gorbachev was, in fact, the first Soviet leader born too late to fight in World War II; perestroika was no coincidence.

Reagan was actually quite suspicious of glasnost and perestroika. In the SALT-II talks, Reagan offered the verification regime as a "poison pill" to make the Soviets balk; when Gorbechev accepted it, no one was more surprised than Reagan.

Just as Germans tore down their wall, it's time America took down the myth-encrusted legacy of a B-list actor elevated to sainthood for achievements not his own.

Getting Fact-Checked

2009-11-09T14:00:00.000-06:00

I had just finished berating the LA Times for not source-checking its story when I decided to check my email for the first time since Thursday. Wonder of wonders, for the first time in my long history of writing letters to the editor, a newspaper's executive editor wanted to know what my sources were. He was asking about this paragraph:

The best argument for reform actually comes from its opponents. Bandying scare-words like "socialism," they remind us health care is more than 16% of our economy. But it was less than 14% just ten years ago, 12% ten years before that, 9% when Reagan took office, and just 7% of the economy in 1970.

My sources are the World Health Organization (cited here and here), the Congressional Budget Office (here), and the Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF here). I await the editor's verdict.

It's ironic, though, to be fact-checked by an op-ed page that regularly allows John Birch Society newsletter bullet points to masquerade as "opinion."

PCCF: Obama's Pakistan Policy

2009-11-09T13:00:00.000-06:00

Candidate Obama pledged to make nuclear security a key part of his foreign policy. President Obama made nuclear disarmament his central, long-term goal at the United Nations, promoting the security of nuclear weapons and materials. Now Seymour Hersh outlines the Obama administration's approach to the thorny issue of Pakistani nukes:

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.” (Emphasis mine)

PCCF: Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund.

Hersh cites strenuous denials about American units with permission to enter Pakistan. But the description of this "specially-trained unit" sounds only quasi-military:

Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said, a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in Dubai. (Emphasis mine)

"Experts"? Not quite your Tom Clancy strike team; more like a N.E.S.T team. But this is what I find most distressing, and it's just like Hersh to leave it for the end:

During my stay in Pakistan—my first in five years—there were undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam had grown. In the past, military officers, politicians, and journalists routinely served Johnnie Walker Black during our talks, and drank it themselves. This time, even the most senior retired Army generals offered only juice or tea, even in their own homes. Officials and journalists said that soldiers and middle-level officers were increasingly attracted to the preaching of Zaid Hamid, who joined the mujahideen and fought for nine years in Afghanistan. On CDs and on television, Hamid exhorts soldiers to think of themselves as Muslims first and Pakistanis second. He claims that terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year were staged by India and Western Zionists, aided by the Mossad. Another proselytizer, Dr. Israr Ahmed, writes a column in the Urdu press in which he depicts the Holocaust as “divine punishment,” and advocates the extermination of the Jews. He, too, is said to be popular with the officer corps.

A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. “They’ve penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army,” he said. (The Pakistan Army denies this.) In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to England for additional training.

“Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?” the Obama Administration official asked. “In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics.” (Emphasis mine)

So Obama is spending billions to improve Pakistan's military and soothe their fears that we're on India's side, and meanwhile that military has become more radicalized. Obama knew, and raised the stakes anyway. Don't hold your breath, as it will take years for us to find out if he's right betting long on peaceful relations with Pakistan's military.

This situation should have been avoided; but that is another tale. Go read Hersh to get filled in. Right now, I think it's time we remember something about the political geography of Pakistan and Afghanistan: both of them are very young countries, and neither is anything we'd recognize as a strong democracy.

That Loya Jirga sounds better all the time...

Cotton No Longer King

2009-11-09T11:00:00.000-06:00

From my local daily, a hard look at the future of cotton in Alabama and the effects of globalization:

In Alabama and nationwide, the cotton-ginning market has gone into a free fall. The number of cotton bales produced in Alabama dropped from 177,100 bales in 2006 to 76,300 bales in 2008, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. The total U.S. ginned bales decreased 60 percent between 2006 and 2008 to 2,027,100 bales.

Prices have pushed farmers to grow beans and grains. The financial crisis has added to the misery of gin operators. Worse, the all-but-complete offshoring of textile jobs means the cotton baled in Alabama gets shipped to China and India, adding export costs to the challenges of Alabama's cotton growers. In a classic third-world development trap, America is exporting raw material and importing the finished goods.

Afghanistan On The Brink

2009-11-09T10:00:00.000-06:00

Once again, the Christian Science Monitor is light-years ahead of the American media landscape. This report on the deteriorating relationship between Hamid Kharzai and regional governors has no analogue in American television at the moment, so if it blows up tomorrow the MSM will be taken completely by surprise:

Many of Afghanistan's most secure and prosperous regions voted for Karzai opponent Abdullah Abdullah. Now, they face the prospect that their provincial leaders – who are appointed by Karzai – will be removed and their regions allowed to backslide by a weak and antagonistic central government. As a result, all eyes are on the governors, who may argue that while stability rests on their willingness to stifle street protests, it is also linked to Kabul's willingness to loosen its grip in their provinces.

"If [the governors] just laid down the gauntlet, and said, 'Listen, I don't care what the Constitution says, your government isn't moving into the province without our say so,' that could have a lot of local support," says Thomas Barfield, an expert on Afghanistan at Boston University in Massachusetts. "If one person does it, it could spread like wildfire."

Bahij says he will take his cues from Dr. Abdullah, whom he doesn't expect to call for anything illegal. At the same time, he singled out Abdullah's campaign platform calling for governors and other provincial officials to be locally chosen.

Wow! So there were, like, real issues in that election? How come we never heard about them outside of NPR, the foreign press, and CSM? To watch what little coverage the Afghan elections got on CNN and Faux Noise, you'd think Kharzai was a popular leader and Afghanistan was well on its way to becoming a federalized Jeffersonian democracy.

The MSM also seems to be missing a key part of the Afghanistan story: we're running out of allies. British popular opinion has turned against the war. No one is sending fresh troops except the United States, where the public is also souring on the war. If Obama decides to send 30,000 more to the theatre as McClatchy DC reported,

The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

These numbers are still far short of the 600,000 called for by counter-insurgency doctrine. And all of this hoopla misses the basic fact that al-Qaeda is no longer a factor in the country. Except for propping up a corrupt and unpopular US client to maintain the fictional existence of Afghanistan, no one can say what "victory" looks like.

The MSM Stovepipe

2009-11-09T09:00:00.001-06:00

We've seen this pattern before. A non-sourced, anonymous story enters the right-wing blogosphere and gets picked up by mainstream media, allowing the right to stovepipe their insanity. This one began with a post at the Chicago Tribune Swamp page:

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, "We better not see you on again," said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue." (Emphasis mine)

Administration officials immediately denied the report:

“While we have our disagreements with FOX, administration officials appear on the network and we have no issue with others who choose to do so,” White House senior communications adviser Dan Pfeiffer emails me.

[...]

Needless to say, such a claim is gold for those looking to paint the White House pushback against Fox as a Nixonian campaign of intimidation designed to squelch Fox’s legitimate journalistic scrutiny of the administration. Right wing bloggers have been all over the story.

But Pfeiffer argues that the evidence proves the story false. “This is simply not true,” he emails. “At the same time the reporter was writing this story, David Plouffe was appearing on FOX and David Axelrod was on the day before.” (Emphasis mine)

But on Sunday, the LA Times was a willing patsy for Teh Wacky™, complete with a misleading source:

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues" and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an e-mail.

But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Carter, said he had spoken to Democratic consultants who said they were told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.

Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. (Emphasis mine)

"Former pollster for President Carter" sounds alright until you know Caddell's long history of pissing off Democrats, channeling talk-radio memes about Bill Clinton, adopting conservative talking points, calling the New York Times "the czar's secret police" and supporting Swift Boat Veterans, accusing Obama of "gangster politics," and going on Glenn Beck's show to promote a bizarre theory that George Soros runs the White House:

Caddell is hyping his own role on Faux Noise. Beck can introduce him as 'the Democrat Obama doesn't want you to see.' His career has never been about Democrats or a progressive agenda; it has always been about Patrick Caddell. None of that matters, however, as long as the LA Times can print "former pollster for President Carter" and pass him off as an unbiased respondent.

The Times' utter failure to do even cursory source-checking turns his exercise in self-promotion into fodder for the wingnutosphere. It adds to the delusion of a president gone bad. None of it is true, but it has all the truthiness needed to infect the minds of millions.

Morning Video

2009-11-09T08:00:00.001-06:00

In the health care debate Saturday, House GOP leaders apparently decided to adopt town hall teabaggery tactics and try to drown out debate with loud noises. It didn't work:

The Party of No is turning into a great, big flop. What I find most interesting is their apparent choice to target female Democrats, as if to emphasize their own bullying tactics.