The list has grown too long to ignore.  We are a country that exercises almost no foresight.  We wait for disasters to occur and only then (if then) does it occur to us to do something about the problem.

Here’s an especially heinous example: our government hires numerous financial experts, of course.  Alan Greenspan was one of them.  Why couldn’t any of them see the subprime disaster long before it occurred?  Instead, our government’s experts allowed unscrupulous mortgage companies to lend out far too much money to homeowners in the form of “exploding ARMs” such that it was entirely predictable that the borrowers would fall behind on their payments after only a few years, and that many would lose their homes through foreclosure.  Our government stood by while these loans were hyper-securitized to the point where the unscrupulous mortgage companies would go belly up, tranch-laden real estate trusts (who ultimately purchased the loans) would throw their hands and claim that they were innocent and Wall Street would laugh all the way to the bank.  That is, until Wall Street failed and successfully begged the federal government to bail out Bear Stearns.  All of this was entirely foreseeable.  The real disaster is that we failed to use our brains.

For another example, think of the Minnesota Bridge collapse. Let’s see… what might happen if you don’t allocate proper federal funding to fund sufficient bridge inspections?  Of course, it’s only after a huge bridge collapses or a major levee breaks that we start thinking about the resulting disasters here in America.

Do you want another example?  There are hundreds.

Remember when our president manufactured the need to go to war and all of the allegedly patriotic people (including many of your neighbors and friends, I’m sure) imposed group-think upon each other?  Voices trying to raise important concerns and objections were muzzled in the name of “freedom.”  What were we thinking?  That we were better off to parrot the President?  What we got is what we deserved: the low point was when Colin Powell lied to the American people, who patriotically nodded affirmatively, encouraged by their patriotic daily newspapers from coast to coast.  In retrospect, who couldn’t see that this type of “patriotic” group-think behavior would endanger our democracy?

Who couldn’t end see the problem with electing, as President of the United States, a man who lied about his military service and who had failed miserably in almost everything he had ever attempted, repeatedly covered up by his family?  What would you expect if you elected such a person to be president?  Why couldn’t we see all of this coming?

And look how we conduct “debates” to evaluate the next president.  They are largely substanceless and xenophobic, relying on soundbites and concocted personal attacks.  Why is it so hard to see that this is a terrible way to evaluate a President?

And why can’t we see that allowing large corporations to pour their money into the coffers of politicians will cause our politicians to do corporate bidding rather than responding to the needs of citizens?  Why is this so hard to anticipate or understand?  The fact that this legalized bribery goes on should be the front page headline in almost every newspaper almost every day. (more…)

The “bipartisan” telecom immunity bill is about to be made law.  It contains a specific provision granting amnesty to the telecoms which has been titled “”Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.”  How bad is this new law?  That depends on how badly you prefer that Courts be open and accessible to citizens.  You see, the proposed law provides for secret dismissals of lawsuits.

Glenn Greenwald has written a scathing review of the bill at Salon:

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that’s obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won’t ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they’re being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we’re all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we’re never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won’t we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

Unbelievable . . .  Not Greenwald who is an astute and highly credible media critic.  I’m reacting to the proposed law.

I highly recommend visiting Salon for a review of Greenwald’s entire article.

I’ve sometimes wondered what insiders think about pre-flight security. Here is a recent account by one pilot:

Before we take off, I would like to apologize on behalf of this and every airline for the hassle you just endured at the security checkpoint. As is patently obvious to any reasonable person, the humiliating shoe removals, liquids ban, and pointy-object confiscations do little to make us safer.

Unfortunately, the government insists that security theater, and not actual security, is in the nation’s best interest. If it makes you feel any better, our crew had to endure the same screening as the passengers. Never mind that the baggage loaders, cleaners, caterers, and refuelers receive only occasional random screening. You can rest easy knowing that I do not have a pair of scissors or an oversize shampoo bottle anywhere in my carry-on luggage.

Do you remember the little recital at the ticket counter prior to 9/11? They were required to ask you if any stranger asked you to carry anything in your luggage. That was back before officials realized that those who bomb planes might be willing to commit suicide in the process. I always thought it was naive to ask people if they were doing something dangerous or illegal. It was akin to a bank greeting its customers at the door: “Are you planning to rob this bank?” They should have, instead, posted a big sign at the security checkpoint with a simple list of do’s and don’ts. Something like this: “Don’t agree to carry anything on the plane for a stranger. It might be a bomb.” It’s as though the TSA hasn’t ever heard of big well-designed signs, though. It seems like most checkpoints still have security people barking the same four or five things over and over (”No big bottles of shampoo or other liquids!” “Take your computer out of its case”). There are better way to communicate simple ideas over and over–how about a video monitor that plays a well-designed security message?

Despite the silliness of some of the restrictions (my favorite was the banning of fingernail clippers), it is possible that the current version of the “security theater” has saved lives. It might intimidate someone who would otherwise try to destroy an aiplane. But are there more efficient ways to get the job done? The TSA is open to suggestions. In fact TSA has recently announced that it is going to

focus airport security more on passenger behavior and to rely less heavily on metal detectors and X-ray machines to find weapons. That reflects TSA’s new thinking that terrorists reveal their intentions through behavior, and an old reality that checkpoint machines can miss a lot of explosives, detonators and other bomb parts.

Amy Goodman recently interviewed Ralph Nader at DemocracyNow.  Nader was not sold on Obama:

Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z. In his voting record, he voted against reform of the Mining Act of 1872, which gives away our hard rock minerals. He voted for a terrible class-action restriction law that the corporations wanted him to vote for. He, in many ways, has disappointed people who had greater hopes for him. He’s voted for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. He refuses to even discuss—he’s vigorously against impeachment of Bush and Cheney. He won’t even support his colleague Senator Russ Feingold motion to censure the Bush administration for systemic repeated illegal wiretaps. He—you know, he’s letting the corporate-dominated city of Washington, the corporations who actually rule us now in Washington, determine his agenda. And that does not augur well.

If that sounds harsh, Nader was even more critical of John McCain.

When asked what Ralph Nader would offer, if elected, here’s what he said:

if you look at our website, votenader.org, you’ll see why: because we have a shift of power agenda. We want to galvanize the citizenry. We want to get them involved in shaping the campaign in city after city by getting citizen coalitions together to invite these candidates as they go through the city to their own auditoriums to respond to their own agendas. And when we talk about aggressive crackdown on corporate crime, fraud and abuse, that’s on our table; it’s not on McCain/Obama’s table, not on the corporate media’s table to discuss, although the corporate media reports it every day.

We have a security speculation tax. $500 trillion in security derivatives are going to be traded this year. A tiny tax on those transactions would relieve the federal income tax up $100,000 on American workers. We have solar energy, instead of nuclear power. We have single-payer health insurance, which replaces the health insurance moguls and their enormous administrative and bureaucratic waste and their denial of doctor discretion and their “pay or die” policies in America, unlike all Western democracies.

It’s the political season and there are a lot of bad arguments being made these days. There are plenty of non sequiturs, red herrings, ad hominem attacks and ex hominem attacks. It is the season when we vividly see that there is no such thing as pure reason. Instead, cognition is always infused with emotion (as Antonio Demasio described in his excellent work, Descartes’s Error).

This is also the season of unrelenting rhetorical tricks. One of the most common rhetorical tricks is the constant misuse of the word “because.” Simply uttering the word “because” tends to convince people that you are correct and logical even when you have said nothing meaningful at all. The great power of the word “because” has been demonstrated in a classic experiment involving a stooge trying to butt in line at a library copy machine. I discussed that experiment at a post that I entitled “Just Because.” I highly recommend a quick review of that psychology experiment before proceeding.

Considering the persuasive power of the word “because” reminded me of a special day in sixth grade, back in the late 1960s. This is a true story. I went to All Souls Grade School, a Catholic grade school in Overland Missouri. It was a school where boys wore pants and girls wore dresses (Catholic school girl’s uniforms, to be precise). A few times a year, one of the parish priests would drop by to teach religion to the students (we were usually taught by nuns). One of the parish priests at All Souls was an energetic, articulate and likable young man named Father Wilkins.

In order to convey the proper emotion of this story, I need to emphasize that the children in the sixth grade class were all starting to get laced with sex hormones, compliments of our maturing bodies. We were 12 and 13-year-olds. We were all fascinated with sex, but no one talked straight about sex back then (remember, this was back in the 1960s). It was a land of half-truths and outlandish lies. Now, back to the story.

Into the classroom walks Father Wilkins with a big smile. He sat at the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom, chatted with us a bit and then paused for a couple seconds before starting his lesson:

“Do you know why boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?

I remember feeling shocked to hear this question. And I was also excited because I had wondered about this precise topic and I was eager to learn the answer. But no one raised a hand. I vividly remember the silence and I remember everyone looking down, hoping not to get called on. Undeterred, Father Wilkins asked the question again.

“Come on now. This is a simple question. Why do boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?”

Again, no one raised his or her hand and there was painful silence. Although my knowledge of female anatomy was quite limited back then, I assumed (with some embarrassment) that girls wore dresses for a reason that had to do with their lack of penises. I wasn’t about to raise my hand and volunteer such an answer, however. No one else was willing to volunteer an answer either.

Father Wilkins was starting to look frustrated. He cajoled us a third time.

“Nobody knows? Nobody’s going to answer my question? Well then, I’ll answer it. Why do boys wear pants and why do girls wear dresses?”

Father Wilkins folded his hands on top of his desk and looked straight at us.

“Boys wear pants and girls wear dresses because boys are boys and girls are girls! Now do you see? Now do you understand?”

Father Wilkins uttered his answer in a proud, almost smug way. He thought he was really onto something big. He went on to explain that things are often the way they are because that’s the way they’ve always been. And that’s the way they should be, et cetera. This was a perfect sort of answer for the sort of fellow who believed in the virgin birth and infallibility of the Pope.

To this day, I remember the immense disappointment I felt upon hearing this “answer.” His “answer” was actually no answer at all. I was certain of this, but I was not about to raise my hand to accuse the parish priest of pulling an intellectual con job on a classroom full of sixth graders. I can guarantee you, though, some of the kids in that classroom found his “answer” to be meaningful in the same way that they found his sermons to be meaningful. They believed that they had been provided knowledge when they had been subjected to nothing but a tautology anchored by that magically powerful word “because.”

“Because” is such an incredibly powerful word that a politician who sprinkles into his or her speeches sounds like he or she is a bubbling ferment of precision logic. We needed to attack Iraq because of 9/11. We need to fight them over there because we don’t want to fight them over here. We need to privatize Social Security because we’re trying to save it. We need to torture innocent people because other people are trying to kill us. Or “[Fill in this blank] because America is the worlds greatest country.” Or “because we’re freedom loving people.” or because [whatever].

For many people, it seems, hearing the word “because” turns off all sense of skepticism. It is for this reason that “because” is such a powerful and dangerous word.

Epilogue

I’m wondering whether the real lesson of Father Wilkins was the importance of stare decisis, the importance of doing something a certain way because that is the way it’s always been done.

I now believe that I have a much better answer to the father Wilkins question (and I do believe his question was a good one). I believe that girls wear dresses to display their legs in order to convince potential mates that the girls are biologically fit. In other words, this is a question for which evolutionary psychology offers an interesting perspective. For more on this connection, see my earlier post, “Killer High Heels.”

Do it just because.

Why, we all wonder, is America alone among the “First World Nations” to have such a high proportion of science-denying religionists, and even in high offices? According to Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in Why the Gods Are Not Winning (that I found via this summary by Pharyngula) religiosity is higher as the more poor more envy the more rich. That is, the bigger the difference between the downtrodden and the ruling classes, the more people turn to religion to explain their lot. Our country may still be relatively rich, but as the government openly appears to ignore the needs of the sugffering (Katrina, Economic collapse, National Guard and “Stop Loss” in Iraq, etc) more people turn to religion for comfort.

These articles attempt to show that we are not actually being overrun by religious thinkers, that mega-churches are just a consolidation of the remnants of dying neighborhood churches, and that the best chance that churches have of taking over like they had in the dark ages is to increase the disparity between rich and poor. The current administration has been doing them a bonny service, but it is not enough to stem the tide of ever increasing rationalism. So they claim, and I hope.

Absolutely! As long as we teach ALL of the controversies. This is some clever science/religion/humor.

Jeffrey Klein has made a compelling case that there is something McCain is not telling us about his military service or, rather, that he is not being forthright about some of the claims he is making.   Since McCain has made this campaign about character, let’s talk about character.  Let’s start be looking at McCain’s entire military file.  He should release all of his military records, just as John Kerry did and just as George W. Bush should have done.  Here’s how Klein wraps up his detailed article on Huffpo:

Is McCain now getting away with more by hiding his official history and by having his national security adviser inflate McCain’s resume with a bogus promotion to admiral humbly declined? If so, McCain may be attempting to hide why the Navy was in fact slow to promote him upwards despite his suffering as a POW and his distinguished naval heritage.

One possible reason: After McCain had returned from Vietnam as a war hero and was physically rehabilitated, he was urged by his medical caretakers and military colleagues never to fly again. But McCain insisted on going up. As Carl Bernstein reported in Vanity Fair, he piloted an ultra-light, single propeller plane — and crashed another time. His fifth loss of a plane has vanished from public records, but should be a subject of discussion in his Navy file. It wouldn’t be surprising if his naval superiors worried that McCain was just too defiant, too reckless and too crash prone.

Regardless, McCain owes it to the country to release his complete naval records so that American voters can see his documented history and make an informed decision.

Harry Shearer has put together this little “number.” It has a simple theme that everyone should be able to follow.

McClatchy News is reporting this:

Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed “status of forces” agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties said in a series of interviews the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq. Lawmakers said they fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran.

“The points that were put forth by the Americans were more abominable than the occupation,” said Jalal al Din al Saghir, a leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. “We were occupied by order of the Security Council,” he said, referring to the 2004 Resolution mandating a U.S. military occupation in Iraq at the head of an international coalition. “But now we are being asked to sign for our own occupation. That is why we have absolutely refused all that we have seen so far.”

Other conditions sought by the United States include control over Iraqi air space up to 30,000 feet and immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops and private military contractors.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon provides a detailed commentary on this latest revelation, documenting that back in 2003, the Bush Administration vehemently denied having any intentions of permanently occupying Iraq.

On June 7, 2008, I had the opportunity to discuss the commercialization of American children with Josh Golin, the Associate Director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

Josh’s two-part interview was sponsored by—no one. Isn’t this total lack of commercial sponsorship a pleasant change of pace?

People who warn about the commercialization of our children sound quaint or even shrill to most other Americans. After all, how could it possibly be a bad thing to buy lots and lots of things for our children, to “spoil” them?

As Josh indicates in this interview, there is now scientific data substantiating that buying children more things is harming them. More stuff (and the anticipation of yet more stuff) leads to a warped set of attitudes and priorities, as well as obesity and attention disorders.

I enjoy talking with Josh because he makes his case clearly and enthusiastically. You can see this for yourself by clicking on the two videos of his interview. What CCFC offers in place of a chokingly endless stream of products is common sense: children can thrive without owning the toys hawked by merchandisers. Instead of more toys, children need more creative play and more time developing real life relationships with other children and adults in their communities.

Part I - Interview of Josh Golin

We all know that American middle class children don’t need most of possessions they have (they are a lot like their parents in this regard). Because there is a limited number of hours in a child’s life, giving children more of what they don’t need leaves them with less time and energy for the sorts of things they do need, such as physical fitness, healthy relationships and creative play.

As you can see from the topics I raised in this two-part interview, marketers have done such a superb job of characterizing wants as needs that parents (and their kids) are now doing the dirty work of marketing unnecessary products and services to you and your child. Those who don’t yet have children might doubt this claim. From personal experience, though, I can attest that it is almost impossible to spend significant time with another parent without someone earnestly suggesting that a child “needs” to purchase something that is unnecessary.

Part II - Interview of Josh Golin

It would be a rare day when you spot an anti-commercialism discussion like these on television, even on PBS (where commercials appear in the form of “sponsorship announcements”). Why not? Because acknowledging the toxic environment caused by the rampant marketing aimed at children would destroy the advertising revenue on which most “children’s” shows depend.

For more on the damage excessive advertising does to children, take a look at this image-laden trailer from the Media Education Foundation video, Consuming Kids:

(more…)

Speaking to the congregation at Apostolic Church of God  in Chicago, Barack Obama gave a speech critical of absent black fathers on Father’s Day. He urged the largely African American congregation:

to remember their filial responsibilities and be more engaged in raising their children. Obama reminded the congregation of his own experience growing up without a father, saying that if he could be anything in life, he would be a good father to his daughters.

Obama’s speech noted his concern with black fathers, many of whom “have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.  And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

Why are fathers important?  Here are a few of the points made by Obama, whose best attribute (in my opinion) is that he challenges us all to be better and doesn’t hide from the fact that this will require self-sacrifice:

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child - it’s the courage to raise one . . .

I know the toll that being a single parent took on my mother - how she struggled at times to the pay bills; to give us the things that other kids had; to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play. And I know the toll it took on me. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle - that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my girls; that if I could give them anything, I would give them that rock - that foundation - on which to build their lives. And that would be the greatest gift I could offer.

I say this knowing that I have been an imperfect father - knowing that I have made mistakes and will continue to make more; wishing that I could be home for my girls and my wife more than I am right now. I say this knowing all of these things because even as we are imperfect, even as we face difficult circumstances, there are still certain lessons we must strive to live and learn as fathers - whether we are black or white; rich or poor; from the South Side or the wealthiest suburb.

The first is setting an example of excellence for our children - because if we want to set high expectations for them, we’ve got to set high expectations for ourselves. It’s great if you have a job; it’s even better if you have a college degree. It’s a wonderful thing if you are married and living in a home with your children, but don’t just sit in the house and watch “SportsCenter” all weekend long. That’s why so many children are growing up in front of the television. As fathers and parents, we’ve got to spend more time with them, and help them with their homework, and replace the video game or the remote control with a book once in awhile. That’s how we build that foundation.

The flood waters are doing horrific damage in many places in Iowa. Down-river in St. Louis, we are not expected to sustain much damage, but you can see that the flood waters have arrived. The following photo was taken today. It shows two girls and a dog (all of them had the last name of “Vieth”) checking out the flooding of a major street near the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis.

Who is best prepared to deal with a severe economic depression?

Based on the work of educator and author Ruby Payne, the best survivors in difficult economic times might be those who are in the lowest economic class, those in “generational poverty.” Payne has spent her career studying the mindsets of economic classes and studying the best methods for crossing socioeconomic lines in education, work, and for social change. Her best known work is A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1998).

To understand Payne, it is important to understand her distinction between generational poverty and situational poverty.

Generational poverty [as opposed to situational poverty] is defined as two or more generations living in poverty. People in generational poverty exhibit certain ingrained patterns of behavior. These patterns are the result of having experienced the effects of poverty over time. The behaviors are part of their culture. For this reason, even though these individuals tend to have a much lower level of educational attainment, they do tend to have better coping and life skills than those in situational poverty.

The above is from a college outline produced by Kerri McCormack.

According to Payne, there are, indeed, class distinctions here in America and there is much more to these class distinctions than the amount of money the people possessed. We are each driven by a set of “hidden rules” that drive us along like psychological tectonic plates.

Hidden rules are the unspoken cues that dictate behavior. But these hidden rules apply to much more than just behaviors and actions. They are part of the culture of each socioeconomic class. These hidden rules are the basis for how individuals make decisions. For example, in the middle class, the driving forces for decision-making are work and achievement. In the wealthy class, decisions are based upon social, financial, and political connections. In generational poverty, survival, relationships, and entertainment are the forces that determine decisions.

What are some specific “hidden rules”? Payne has identified many of them (and this list is, again, from the McCormack Outline). They sound stereotypical, but they also ring true to me.

Food – Quantity vs. quality
Wealthy – The presentation of the food, making it aesthetically appealing, is what is important
Middle Class – The quality of the food is what is important
Generational Poverty – It is about quantity; having enough is what matters

Fighting – How conflicts are resolved
Wealthy – Done through social exclusion and lawyers
Middle Class – Done verbally; issues are discussed
Generational Poverty – Done physically with fists and bodies

The World – How individuals see themselves in the world
Wealthy – Part of the international / global world
Middle Class – National; staying within the continent
Generational Poverty – Local; rarely leaving the state or even the county

Possessions – What is important to own
Wealthy – One-of-a-kind objects, legacies, and pedigrees
Middle Class – Material items (cars, electronic gadgets, clothes, etc.)
Generational Poverty – People and relationships

Love and Acceptance – What determines love and acceptance
Wealthy – Whether the individual is connected and has social standing
Middle Class –Achievements and success
Generational Poverty –Whether the individual is liked

The images this list triggers for me are startling (and humorous). Imagine, during a severe depression, the class of people who have previously coped by drawing on their social prestige and constantly relying on their cell phones and wealth to get others to work for them. Compare the people with such a “wealthy” mindset with those who have had to fend for themselves for their entire lifetimes. There will be a steep learning curve only for the former.

The question, again, is who is best prepared to survive a severe and extended economic hardship? I’m writing this post to point out the irony. When a depression hits hard, those of us who are middle or upper class might find it worth our while to study the coping skills of those who have already proved themselves by surviving generational poverty.

It’s not that the middle and upper classes have nothing to contribute during desperate times. According to Payne’s theory, people of moderate or extreme wealth would be best placed to make long range changes regarding extended economic depression because they aren’t fatalistic (those in generational poverty tend to be fatalistic) and they tend to see beyond the immediate present (those in generational poverty have difficulty doing this).

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the government in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, finding that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in federal court. This decision strikes down a key section of the Military Commissions Act, the horrible piece of legislation passed by Congress in October 2006 that sought to condemn detainees to indefinite imprisonment with no real right to challenge their detention.

The MCA provided only for “Combatant Status Review Tribunals”, a farce trial that makes a mockery of the protections given by the Constitution to an accused person. Detainees are tried before military officers, rather than neutral judges. In these tribunals, they have no right to a lawyer, they can be barred from seeing the evidence against them, and they cannot call witnesses in their defense. In a number of cases, when the first CSRT concluded an inmate was not an enemy combatant, the government simply ignored the ruling and convened a second one to reach the decision it preferred.

These inquisitorial, rigged “trials” give further evidence of why the writ of habeas corpus is so vitally important. For over 700 years, it’s protected people against arbitrary and capricious imprisonment by their government. By forcing the government to publicly show the reasons why it has detained someone before a neutral magistrate, habeas corpus turns imprisonment into a tool of justice, rather than a tool of tyranny.

The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress may suspend habeas corpus, but only in cases of “rebellion or invasion”, when it is vital to protect public safety. Clearly, neither of these conditions is in effect at the moment. Thus, the MCA’s suspension of habeas corpus for detainees was unconstitutional, and the Court was absolutely in the right to strike it down.

The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been in detention, in some cases, for over six years without ever being given the chance to prove their innocence. The Bush administration’s attempt to put them into a legal black hole, beyond the reach of all law, is anathema to everything the American justice system stands for. It’s long overdue that this injustice was corrected. If any of these detainees are terrorists or have committed war crimes against the United States, then let the government prove that in a court of law. Our justice system has served us well against those who would harm us for over two hundred years, and it will continue to do so. On the other hand, if any of these detainees are innocent - a very likely circumstance, given the dragnet-like way in which they were swept up - then their detention is an outrageous evil, and they should immediately be released.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, concluded that neither the President nor Congress may “switch the Constitution on or off at will“. The Court rejected the legal fiction that, because Guantanamo Bay is technically part of Cuba, the detainees have no recourse under the U.S. Constitution.

This is a great victory for due process and for the American legal system, and a bright day for friends of liberty everywhere. The only dark spot on this decision is that it was by a narrow, 5-to-4 majority. (Scalia’s dissent begins “America is at war with radical Islamists” and goes on to cry about how the terrorists will kill us if we don’t lock people up indefinitely with no trial. I am not joking.) If John McCain is elected president and has the chance to make the next few appointments to the Supreme Court, the fragile constitutional bulwarks which still stand against arbitrary government power will be in extremely serious jeopardy.

Tim Russert is dead and it is certainly a tragedy for his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

Contrary to what numerous media sources are now reporting, however, Russert was not a great journalist. Rather, he was one of the many modern celebrity journalists who got so incredibly cozy with the politicians who appeared on his show that he either refused to hold their feet to the fire on substantive issues or forgot how to do this. For a guy who had such a great quantity of airtime, what’s most amazing is the lack of original insights attributed to Russert. He was Mr. Status Quo. Nothing meant more to him than playing footsie with those already in power.

Consider this recent appearance, where Russert appears to be at least two years behind the times when asked about the “revelations” of Scott McClellan’s recent book.

Russert too often refused to ask obvious questions about obviously important topics.

There have always been two legitimate sides to stories for Russert, the Republican and the Democratic, regardless of the fact that the Republican version has all too often consisted of shameless lies. He preferred to maintain access to celebrity politicians rather than practice substantive hard-hitting passionate and truth-seeking journalism that could actually achieve important things–such as save lives. Go here for dozens of additional illustrations.

On Meet the Press, Russert’s job was not serious journalism. He seemed like a pleasant fellow, but journalism will not suffer much without him.  Russert fulfilled the role of question reader, but that’s about all.  He had no stomach for aggressive pursuit.  He didn’t know how to puncture the official media bubbles generated by conniving pubic officials.  When powerful public officials sat across from him, he became a “pussycat.”

Being the well-recognized happy and familiar face welcoming the audience (and the conniving public officials) to a show doesn’t make someone a great journalist.   It’s time to set aside the spate of hagiographies and to try to put his death in better perspective.

For those wanting to see a great journalist at work, go to DemocracyNow and watch Amy Goodman for five minutes.

Why should President Bush be impeached at this point in time? That was the subject of this article at DemocracyNow. Dennis Kucinich, a member of the House of Representatives from Ohio pointed to the concern that President Bush intends to bomb Iran based on lies. He repeatedly indicated that impeachment is not a matter of politics:

There is arguable evidence that President Bush has committed war crimes. We have a moral obligation to have hearings in Judiciary to make a determination whether or not this is so. This goes beyond politics. I have a great respect for John Conyers, I have a great respect for Nancy Pelosi, but this goes beyond politics. This is not—you know, our whole government rests on moral principles, not just on political principles.

And so, we need to evaluate what Congress’s rightful role is here. You know, one of the founders of our nation made it very clear that Congress had a role that was not simply to pass laws, but to ask questions of the executive. This is what helped to create a powerful three-branches-of-government concept that was imbued in the Constitution, co-equality, so that we wouldn’t have a monarch. George Bush has acted in a way that has separated him from the rule of law. Congress must hold him accountable. And to say, “Well, we have more important things to do”—what could be more important than finding out whether or not the President of the United States has committed war crimes, whether or not he’s violated United States law and repeatedly violated the Constitution?

You know, you look at the price of gasoline today. Does anyone have any idea that the United States invaded Iraq for oil, that there were meetings with the oil companies laying out maps of oil fields in Iraq, that Congress has not been able to get full documentation from the Vice President as to what was said in those meetings? What about the pressures that are being put on the Iraq government right now to try to get it to turn over its sovereignty so that the United States can facilitate the control of Iraq oil for the international corporations?

We have to stand up for this country and for its people, and that’s what I’m doing.

See also Keith Olbermann’s take on Kucinich’s action.

This year’s presidential campaign offers a choice between 72-year old John McCain and 46-year old Barack Obama.  This large difference in age provoked Christopher Beam of Slate to review the scientific literature comparing the function of old brains versus younger brains.  Here are a few things to contemplate, assuming your brain is spry enough to carry out this contemplation:

As everyone with a grandparent knows, certain types of memory are affected by aging. Episodic memory—the ability to remember things that happened to you—declines. Same for prospective memory, or the ability to remember lists or agendas. You could argue these skills are less essential for a president, who has speechwriters to produce anecdotes and handlers to keep his schedule. But age also affects working memory, which we use to process, sort, and recall information on the fly. Mental arithmetic, for example, requires a good working memory. Fortunately, presidents have calculators. But working memory also translates into debating skills—the better your short-term retention, the better you can rebut your opponent’s arguments. Oldsters show fewer deficits in semantic memory, which includes vocabulary and general knowledge.

This straightforward Slate article presents many other effects of aging on the brain.

What are the reasons for voting Republican?  Here are a lot of them:

Listen to these reasons carefully, then remember to go out and vote.

Also consider this diagram of the anatomy of a Republican’s brain.

More and more Americans are foregoing vacations, according to this statistics-laden article in Slate.com:

Each passing year, more Americans view something that used to be an entitlement—paid time off—as an increasingly unaffordable or unavailable luxury. If John McCain and Barack Obama are serious about wooing working-class voters, they would be smart to pay attention to the lack of paid time off and the huge stresses this has placed on many workers and their families.

There are several factors at work here. To begin with, technology has helped iron downtime out of the economy. Many Americans are struggling to cope with job creep—the phenomenon of work quietly grabbing more and more of our leisure time. We are forever receiving co-worker or client messages on our BlackBerrys, or responding to work e-mails on our home computers on weekends, or lugging our laptops on vacation. . .

A common complaint is that it’s not worth going on vacation for more than two or three days because, with work piling up and hundreds of e-mails waiting to be opened, it is so maddeningly difficult to catch up after returning.

A good friend of mine once told me to “lead with the body” when you are struggling with anxiety or depression.  Talking things out has it’s limits, he said, as do drugs.  It was my friend’s belief that exercising the body will often allow the mind to clear itself up.  It appears that my friend’s instincts were correct:

In a Duke University research study, published in the October 25, 1999 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, exercise was found to be almost as effective as medication in reducing symptoms of depression.

Though medication can be a life saver for some and no one wants to suggest otherwise, these studies open the door for other or additional strategies. “One of the conclusions we can draw from this,” according to psychologist and study leader Dr. James Blumenthal, “is that exercise may be just as effective as medication and may be a better alternative for certain patients. While we don’t know why exercise confers such a benefit, this study shows that exercise should be considered as a credible form of treatment for these patients. Almost one-third of depressed patients in general do not respond to medications, and for others, the medications can cause unwanted side effects. Exercise should be considered a viable option.”

This is good news in these days of skyrocketing health care costs.   Walking around the block is a lot cheaper than most drugs, with fewer side-effects (unless you live in a dangerous neighborhood).

In 2006, Norman Solomon wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His book detailed the information tactics the American government uses to launch wars.

War Made Easy has been such an influential book that it has now been made into a movie of the same name. You can view it here or you can order a copy of the DVD here.

I was able to attend a viewing of “War Made Easy” last Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (NCMR2008). This crisply edited movie was narrated by Sean Penn. Much of what keeps this movie engaging are the dozens of carefully chosen news media clips generated during various American wars for the past 50 years, including large numbers of videos clips from the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation. The magic of “War Made Easy” is that the directors carefully edited and arranged these clips to show us that nothing much has really changed: If an American president has decided that he wants to go to war, the watchdog American media is likely to become a lapdog and we will inevitably go to war.

Following the screening of “War Made Easy,” I attended a discussion of the movie led by media critic Norman Solomon and the co-director and producer of the movie, Loretta Alper. The following morning, Ms. Alper granted me the opportunity to interview her further regarding the making of “War Made Easy.”

Whenever we Americans go to war, we get there through a well-documented series of stages. As I watched “War Made Easy,” I saw better than ever that these stages are entirely predictable in the context of America’s warmongering ways.

Perhaps this characterization of America sounds too shrill, but just look around. The evidence is everywhere that war is a sport in America just as sports are warlike. Our TV shows and movies overflow with violence as a first-rate method of dealing with conflict. The toys we foist on our boys extol violence as the most obvious way of settling disputes. We challenge each other with statements like “support the troops,” no matter what those troops are doing (and see here ). We are all too ready to invoke the word “war,” because that word triggers a ready-made conceptual frame for freely and guiltlessly expressing ourselves with bullets, bombs and blood. In America, this frame of war is such an incredibly effective filter that we proceed to consider only the “benefits” of war and we ignore the massive damages inflicted on both war-zone civilians and upon millions of Americans (and see here).

For most Americans, it is difficult to see that we are truly a nation of warmongers. After all, we are so absolutely used to being the way we are that even the most obvious things have become difficult to see. As George Orwell once noted, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Before seeing “War Made Easy,” I was already familiar with the FAIR study documenting the manner in which our media rolled over rather than risk being accused of being unpatriotic. How much does the media roll over? So much so, that Americans see only an extremely filtered set of images representing the war. We see pictures of happy soldiers shipping out to “do their duty.” Pictures of dismembered civilian children are much too inconvenient for American patriotism, however.

Yes, Americans have become warriors looking for wars. America is a place where the thinnest of excuses will get the whole war machine revved. It is one of the points made by “War Made Easy” that America is gasoline needing only a small spark of an excuse to get us exploding off to war. Almost any excuse will do, it seems, and it doesn’t matter whether that excuse entirely false. In the 1960s, all it would took was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an incident which never actually happened at all (based upon a recently declassified NSA document and other evidence). Nonetheless, the claim of the Gulf of Tonkin incident opened the floodgates to the American military buildup in Vietnam.

In 1993, all it took was a few well-placed public officials to stir up worries about “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist. At that point, the confirmation bias and the herd instinct take over. How warped has our national perspective become? Whatever any perceived outsider does, we will see in the worst possible light and we will make damned sure that every other American becomes equally xenophobic. When this level of dysfunction occurs in an individual, we call that individual mentally ill. When it occurs nationwide, we call it “patriotism.”

The above observations are necessary prelude to my understanding of “War Made Easy.” I needed to consider these issues because of a question I had trouble getting past: Why isn’t going to war easy for most countries other than the United States? One obvious answer is that most other countries have not invested in a massive military infrastructure. The U.S. is physically able go to war at the push of a button, while most other would first require a long-term military buildup. The next obvious question, though, is why most other countries have not invested in their military might to the same extent as the United States. My unfortunate conclusion is that the U.S. has a warmonger mentality. When the President of the U.S. says we need to go to war, the citizens are already half-primed to agree. This would not be the case with, for example, the Prime Minister of Norway.

“War Made Easy” is an illustration of the predictable steps that will occur as soon as the spark of a false threat hits the gasoline of American militaristic exceptionalism. We see this same pattern over and over. Here are some of the predictable steps that occur when an American president presses for war. All of these are well substantiated by “War Made Easy.”

I. Public dialogue becomes simplistic. Consider Pat Buchanan’s warning that “When the war begins, the debate ends.” The media clips offered by “War Made Easy” substantiate the claim that once war is under way, there is no more media coverage for the rationale for the war, but only for the progress of the war. Once war is under way, it is produced like a TV show. The information from the war zone is tightly controlled by the government. The media does not protest this tight control, because it desperately craves the access and the market share. Therefore, whatever labels the government gives to a battle or a war (e.g., “Shock and Awe”), the media readily embraces it.

II. The President’s case for war is always built upon deception; the official story is false or it omits numerous key facts. Instead, the case is made primarily upon spin.

III. Americans are portrayed as “reluctant fighters.” We’d rather not go to war, but circumstances are allegedly forcing our hand. (more…)

In brief, Stephen Jay Gould proposed the idea that evolution is truly stochastic (a particular technical kind of random), that if we started evolution over as of a million years ago, we probably wouldn’t be here in our current form. That is, any evolutionary step is contingent on the history of steps that went before, each based on a combination of random mutation and environment.

I’ve read several posts about the new discovery today, and the best summary with accurate excerpts and clear analysis is this one from Pharyngula (PZ Meyers Myers).

In brief: A single experiment ran over 20 years, or 33,000 generations of bacterial cultures, where they froze a sample every 500 generations from each of 20 separate populations, all nurtured identically over the entire time with a particular set of stressful conditions. When a particular beneficial change occurred to the population, they could track back genetically and see what the genetic change was, and what probably allowed it to manifest in a visible way. Then they tried to get the same thing to happen again starting from various suspected branching points. In some cases, the same mutation happened again.

Of course, Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute quickly posted a sort of rebuttal to the idea that yet another piece of evolutionary theory has been proven, so Meyers took him to task. Behe claims that the experiment proves how incredibly unlikely such changes are, and therefore they need an Intelligent Designer to guide them. Apparently he missed the point that the complex series of changes did happen, and were repeatable, but only in a statistical manner. As opposed to in a pre-ordained, designed sort of way.

Or possibly his point is that God individually guides the evolution of laboratory E. Coli to fool scientists into thinking that supernatural intervention is unnecessary. It’s hard to tell.

[Admin note:  here is the description of the experiment by New Scientist]

Let’s do a simple thought experiment. Let’s imagine you are the CEO of a company and you need to hire a manager to supervise some segment of your business. To keep things simple, let’s assume only two people apply for the job and that you interview both of them.

The first candidate believes you have a fantastic company with great resources, and is eager to do outstanding work that will improve the reputation of your company as well as the overall standard of living of everyone it serves.

The second candidate believes your company is a plague upon society, and is eager to dismantle and destroy as much of your company as possible.

Which candidate would you hire?

If you think this is a stupid question, because the correct answer is so clearly obvious, then let me point out that many Republican political candidates seek political office based on the beliefs of the second of the above two candidates. Many Republican candidates believe government is a plague upon society, and they are eager to dismantle and destroy as much of it as possible.

Is it any supririse, then, that when Republicans are elected to political office, failed government programs almost certainly follow? If you hire a candidate who is determined to prove your company is a failure, it should be no surprise that your company becomes one — not because your company inherently is a failure, but because you’ve hired the wrong person to manage it. Likewise, if you hire someone who believes your government can be a force for good, you will greatly increase the odds that your goverment will be a force for good; hire someone who believes your government is an evil plague, and you greatly increase the odds that your government will be an evil plague.

Bottom line: if you want your government to be a force for good, then you should not vote for people who believe your government is a plague upon society. If you do, they will surely make it one.

Every barrel of oil taken out of our planet has a cost associated with its extraction. This cost-per-barrel varies for different oil fields and also varies over time for a given oil field, which means some barrels are costlier to extract than others. When the market price for a given barrel of oil exceeds its extraction cost, that barrel becomes profitable to extract from the ground and sell. Naturally, as the price of oil increases, barrels that were profitable to extract at a previous lower price will remain profitable (in fact, will become more profitable), while other barrels that were previously unprofitable to extract at a lower price will become profitable. Thus, a higher market price for oil will increase the number of barrels that are profitable to extract, and oil companies will extract these barrels and sell them. Indeed, in some cases, entire oil fields have been shut down because the profitable barrels have already been extracted, and the additional barrels that remain in the ground are merely waiting for the day when a higher market price (or improved technology) will make those barrels profitable. All of this is basic economics and probably obvious to you.

So, why do I mention it? Because I have been hearing Bush and some Republican members of Congress this week once again calling for approval to allow oil companies to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). While it is true that oil in ANWR might (or might not) be profitable to extract at the current market price for oil, it is also true that known oil resources, in existing and fallow oil fields, have now become profitable due to the higher market price for oil. Extraction of this oil can thus commence, whether or not oil companies are allowed to drill in ANWR. Thus, the argument that higher market prices should justify drilling in ANWR is essentially invalid: high oil prices will make more known oil resources profitable, so there is no real need to drill in ANWR. The Bushites and their Big Oil pals know this, but are merely trying to exploit consumer frustration at the pump to ruin yet another wildlife area for the sake of short-term oil company profits.