Rob Rogers, cartoonist with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has an answer:
3,756
Tip of the old scrub brush to Devona Wyant.
Is Fox News a barrier to further evolution of humans?
January 14, 2012
3 Comments | 
Evolution, Humor, Politics | Tagged: Evolution, Humor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Politics, Rob Rogers, Strauss | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Quote of the moment: Accurate history in New Hampshire, ask the drag queens
January 10, 2012
RuPaul
“Remember, this country was founded by a bunch of men wearing wigs!”
— RuPaul, touring New Hampshire to make sure no one confuses Ron Paul with him
More accurate than history we’ve heard from Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and others. Only in America, eh?
Leave a Comment » | History, Humor, Politics | Tagged: History, Humor, New Hampshire, Politics, RuPaul | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Why we worry about global warming: It ain’t the climate, it’s the people
January 9, 2012Alun Salt gave great advice about not bothering to engage idiots, pigs, denialists or trolls (here, among other places). He said I should avoid lengthy answers to blogs that have little audience.
This is probably one of those occasions.
But in a running attempt to stimulate serious thought at a denialist blog, I got a question that has been rather common, and a question which indicates the deep serious misunderstanding denialists and even some well-meaning, overly-skeptical sensible people have:
Why worry about climate change, since the climate is changing all the time? Especially, why are people like Al Gore urging that we stop climate change, when CO2 has no great direct effect on human health? Shouldn’t environmentalists be cheering climate change on, since it’s a “natural process?”
The answer is lost on the other blog, as Mr. Salt predicted it would be. But since I’ve gotten some version of the question repeatedly in the last month, I may as well repeat the answer here, for the record.
The short answer to why we worry about climate change is that, as with almost all environmental protection, we are worried first about the quality of life of humans, and ultimately about the ability of human life to survive at all.
Here’s the question put to me there:
Ed I’m a little confused. I thought we were talking about the effect of co2 on the climate not the effect of co2 on human health. Co2 is not a toxic gas and would have no effect on human health. The fact that humans weren’t around when co2 was 10-20 times higher has absolutely nothing to do with its effect on climate.
Ed there was no runaway greenhouse effect or climate catastrophe. The planet was fine during the phanerazoic. There is actually a lack of co2 in the atmopshere comapred to that time.
Here’s my answer, with a few more links than their format would allow:
No, you’re not a little confused. You’re a lot confused, greatly misinformed, and not thinking hard.
We worry about CO2’s effects on climate only because we worry about the future of humanity. Many of us who have children and wish them the same blessings of having children and grandchildren, have thought through the truth of the matter that we don’t possess and rule the Earth for ourselves, but instead act only as stewards for future generations.
No Earth, no humans; but at the same time, no habitable Earth, no humans. In the long run, Earth doesn’t care. It’ll do fine — without humans.
We can’t damage the planet. We can only damage its habitability for humans.
I don’t know what sort of dystopian Randian future you and other Do Nothings hope for, but it’s a future contrary to human life, American values, and all known religions.
We’re talking about the future of humans. I tell “skeptics,” “If you don’t care, butt out. You’ll be dead in the short run anyway, but that’s no reason to stand in the way of action not to ensure a livable planet for our grandchildren.”
You also fail to understand chemistry, pollution, and how the world works. CO2 is indeed a toxic gas. For about a century now we’ve had indoor air standards that require air circulation to keep CO2 down below concentrations of about 500 ppm, because at that level it starts to have dramatic effects on humans working. It clouds their thinking and causes drowsiness. CO2 is a conundrum, in that it is also necessary to trigger mammalian breathing. If CO2 drops too low, we don’t take in enough oxygen and may pass out. Too much oxygen in place of CO2 is a problem in that regard. A substance can be both essential and a pollutant, at the same time. (This has vexed food safety experts for years, especially after the 1958 Delaney Clause; substances we know to be essential nutrients can be carcinogenic, in the same concentrations, or in the same concentrations with a slight twist in chemical formula — how do we regulate that stuff?)
CO2 is toxic in much greater proportions — it was a CO2 cloud that killed thousands in Cameroon 30 years ago or so, if you know history.
Clearly you did not know that we’ve regulated indoor CO2 for decades. Clearly you haven’t looked at the medical journals‘ discussion on CO2 — and I’ll wager you’d forgotten the Cameroon incident, if you ever knew about it.
CO2 is a toxic gas (the dose is the poison); CO2 has dramatic effects on human health — too little and we die, too much and we die.
The fact that humans were not around when CO2 was much higher is exactly the point. That was presented here, as it is in most venues, as support for a claim that we don’t need to worry about CO2 pollution. Well, that’s right — if we don’t care about a habitable Earth. But when CO2 was higher, life for humans was impossible.
I think it’s reckless to run an experiment on what would happen with higher CO2 levels, using the entire planet as a testing place, and testing the hypotheses on just how much CO2 will kill us all off, and how.
How about a control group, at least?
In the past, massive CO2 created massive greenhouse effects that would devastate us today — not as a toxic gas, but as a result of the warming that greenhouse gases do.
Let us understand the physical conundrum of CO2 here: Without the greenhouse effect from the human-historic levels of CO2, this would be an ice planet. Our lives today depend on the greenhouse effects of CO2.
Consequently, anyone who claims there is no greenhouse effect fails to understand physics, chemistry, biology and history. (Heck, throw in geology, too.) Life would be impossible but for the greenhouse effect. Life is impossible without water, too, but you can’t live totally surrounded by water.
Can it be true that there can never be too much of a good effect, with regard to greenhouse gases? Ancient Greek ideas of “all things in moderation” applies here. We need a Goldilocks amount of CO2 in our atmosphere — not to much, not too little; not too hot, not too cold.
To the extent that higher CO2 levels didn’t produce a total runaway greenhouse effect, as some hypothesize exists on Venus, we know that was due to other feedbacks. Early on, for example, CO2 began to be reduced by photosynthesizing life. Animal life today would be impossible but for that occurrence. Few if any modern chordates could breathe the very-low oxygen atmosphere of the early Earth, and live. Those feedbacks and limiting situations do not exist today.
So now we face a double or triple whammy. The reduction in CO2 in the air was accomplished through a couple billion years of carbon sequestration through plants. In fact, a lot of carbon was sequestered in carbon-rich fossils, stuff we now call coal and oil. Oxygen replenishment was accomplished with massive forests, and healthy oceans, with a great deal of photosynthesis. This created a rough CO2 equilibrium (with fluctuations, sure) that existed we know for at least the last 50,000 years, we’re pretty sure for the last 100,000 years (we know that from carbon-dating calibration exercises).
Today we have removed fully 30% of the forests that used to replenish oxygen and lock up a lot of CO2 (some estimates say 50% of the forests are gone); modern plant communities cannot pluck CO2 out fast enough. Plus, we’re releasing a lot of that old, sequestered carbon in coal and oil — at rates unprecedented in human history.
Will more CO2 warm the planet? We know from the fact that the planet is warm enough for life, that more CO2 will warm the planet more. Anyone who says differently does not know physics and chemistry, nor history.
Is there anything that can stop that effect? Sure — healthy, massive forests, and healthy oceans. Reducing carbon emissions could help a lot, too. But we’re committed for about a century. CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t fall to the ground like particulate pollution. it drifts until it is incorporated into something else, either through photosynthesis or other chemical reactions. It takes a mole of CO2 a couple of centuries to come out of the air. We’re stuck with elevated and elevating CO2 regardless our actions, for a century or two, even if we are wildly successful in reining in emissions and creating sequestration paths.
What happens when CO2 levels get higher than 350 ppm? History, physics and chemistry tells us glaciers will melt, rainfall patterns will alter dramatically, sea levels will rise, carbon will be absorbed by the seas in increasing amounts (causing acidification — simple chemistry).
It’s a very exciting experiment. The entire human race is at stake. How much CO2 will it take to produce the effects that kill us all? It’s likely that changing rainfall patterns and rising sea levels will produce wars over resources, long before CO2 itself starts being physically toxic. That’s what the Pentagon’s big thinkers say. That’s what the Chinese big thinkers say, which is why they are working to reduce emissions even without an enforceable treaty.
As experiments go, I think it’s immoral to use humans in experimentation without getting their consent, and without passing the entire experiment through the Institutional Review Board to make sure the experiment is useful, necessary, and done ethically.
Do you have those consent statements? All seven billion of them? Have you got approval from the research overseers of the institution?
If you don’t have permission to proceed with this progeny-killing experiment, why do you propose to proceed? Many people believe that, if the courts on Earth don’t get us, a higher court will.
How will you plead wherever the call to justice is delivered?
2 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, CO2, denialism, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Science | Tagged: Climate change, denialism, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore at 212 – boiling mad?
January 7, 2012Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800. Had he lived, Millard Fillmore would be 212 years old today, very cranky, and looking for a good book to read. Had each year been a degree Fahrenheit, he’d be boiling!
Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida - Free! Click image to go to USF site.
Would you blame him for being cranky? He opened Japan to trade. He got from Mexico the land necessary to make Los Angeles a great world city and the Southern Pacific a great railroad, without firing a shot. Fillmore promoted economic development of the Mississippi River. He managed to keep a fractious nation together despite itself for another three years. Fillmore let end the practice of presidents using slaves to staff the White House, then called “the President’s Mansion,” eight years before the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Then in 1852 his own party refused to nominate him for a full term, making him the last Whig to be president. And to add insult to ignominy, H. L. Mencken falsely accused him of being known only for adding a bathtub to the White House, something he didn’t do.
As Antony said of Caesar, the good was interred with his bones — but Millard Fillmore doesn’t even get credit for whatever evil he might have done: Fillmore is remembered most for being the butt of a hoax gone awry, committed years after his death. Or worse, he’s misremembered for what the hoax alleged he did.
Even beneficiaries of his help promoting the Mississippi River have taken his name off their annual celebration of the event. Fillmore has been eclipsed, even in mediocrity (is there still a Millard Fillmore Society in Washington?).
Happy birthday, Millard Fillmore.
Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida
Millard Fillmore was a man of great civic spirit, a man who answered the call to serve even when most others couldn’t hear it at all. He was a successful lawyer, despite having had only six months of formal education (a tribute to non-high school graduates and lifelong learning). Unable to save the Union, he established the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. During the Civil War, he led the local militia in support of the war effort, many rungs down from his role of Commander-in-Chief. And, it is said of him that Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she had ever met.
A guy like that deserves a toast, don’t you think?
Resources:
- Gateway to Millard Fillmore history at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
- Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 1, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature. This volume contains the autobiography Millard Fillmore did not finish, but which contains the only serious treatment of his youth, including the story of how he threatened to kill the first man to whom he was apprenticed as a wool carder. Particularly for those elementary and junior high school students looking for stories of presidents’ youth, this is the most authoritative account.
- Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 2, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature.
- The Gospel of Millard Fillmore, a sermon by a Unitarian minister with a solid narrative and a view to redeem the reputation of Fillmore
- Looking for Millard Fillmore, a post at American President’s Blog, listing resources on Fillmore.
- Gateway to Fillmore sources at Electratig
- Resources on Millard Fillmore from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
- Fillmore entry at WhiteHouse.gov
- MFB entry on Fillmore’s Birthday, 2008; also here; 2007 entry here
- Did Fillmore actually say that?
- Even William Federer, that great distorter of history, gets some things right about Fillmore — but he leaves out the important stuff, and the best stuff.
- New in 2012: Trail Baboon wonders how a hoax affects your personal morality and life
Leave a Comment » | Civil War, H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Japan, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: Civil War, H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Japan, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Republicans Unfit to Govern Dept: All laws must quote from the Magna Carta
January 5, 2012For a biologist, P. Z. Myers is really good at finding historical and legal error, you know? He’s got this post up at his FreeThoughts blog — I copy here in the entirety because I’m laughing too hard to rewrite it. And P. Z. writes well, and he won’t mind:
New Hampshire has some world-class lunatics
Too bad they’re in the legislature. The latest wacky idea from a trio of Republicans is to require that all new bills reference the Magna Carta.
House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.
“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.
You might be wondering why the Magna Carta . . . I think the three stooges should be wondering that, too.
Vita admitted he needs to “bone up” on the content of the charter
In other words, he has no idea what’s in the Magna Carta. I’m guessing he’s also a Christian of the the type that has a similar reverence for the contents of a document they’ve never read.
Yeah, I’ll have a little more to say about it later — especially about how this cuts just the opposite of what Republicans have been screaming about for much of the last four years.
11 Comments | History | Tagged: History, Law, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Republican Party | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Promise keepers
January 3, 2012Sometimes Santayana’s Ghost weeps a bit with joy, with those who know history.
10 Comments | Barack Obama, History, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: Barack Obama, History, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Geographic literacy and logic become victims in Republican presidential campaign in Iowa
January 3, 2012
Rick Perry shooting at the coyote in the sky - Mad Mike's America
Sidney Crosby, Toronto Maple Leafs - Business Insider
_____________
I have it on good authority that Rick Perry will not be taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) Exit Level test for juniors this spring. He’s probably not ready for it, according to this report in the New York Times. It may be that no Republican in Iowa is ready for it, either.
Energy: The audiences at Mr. Perry’s events seemed somewhat unmoved by parts of his speech that talked about job creation. But when it came to energy and oil, they perked up.
“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Mr. Perry said in Clarinda, earning a loud round of enthusiastic applause.
Later, the audience reacted again to Mr. Perry’s assertion that buying so much energy from foreign countries is “not good policy, it’s not good politics and frankly it’s un-American.”
I wonder if it’s un-Canadian.
See also:
- Blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Does Rick Perry plan to annex Canada?”
- Daily Kos wonders: “I can’t imagine why Republicans aren’t rallying around this guy. He’s perfect for them.”
- Mad Mike apologizes to Canada for Rick Perry
- Addicting Info
- Jeff Weintraub worries that Perry may be making Ron Paul into a prophet
4 Comments | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Humor, Politics | Tagged: geography, Humor, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Rick Perry | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Why you should be concerned about mercury pollution
December 28, 2011Mercury poisoning marches through our culture with a 400-year-old trail, at least. “Mad as a hatter” refers to the nerve damage hatmakers in Europe demonstrated, nerve damage we now know came from mercury poisoning.
In the 20th century annals of pollution control, the Minimata disaster stands as a monument to unintended grotesque consequences of pollution, of mercury poisoning.
A key Japanese documentary on the disaster is now available from Zakka Films on DVD, with English subtitles.
Anyone who scoffs at EPA’s four-decades of work to reduce mercury pollution should watch this film before bellyaching about damage to industry if we don’t allow industry to kill babies and kittens in blind, immoral pursuit of profit at public expense.
American Elephants, for example, is both shameless and reckless in concocting lies about mercury pollution regulation (that site will not allow comments that do not sing in harmony with the pro-pollution campaign (I’d love for someone to prove me wrong)). Almost every claim made at that post is false. Mercury is not harmless; mercury from broken CFL bulbs cannot begin to compare to mercury in fish and other animals; mercury pollution is not minuscule (mercury warnings stand in all 48 contiguous states, warning against consumption of certain fish). President Obama has never urged anything but support for the coal-fired power industry — although he has expressed concerns about pollution, as any sane human would.
Republicans have lost their moral compass, and that loss is demonstrated in the unholy campaign for pollution, the campaign against reducing mercury emissions. It’s tragic. Action will be required in November to stop the tragedy from spreading. Will Americans respond as they should at the ballot boxes?
Can you watch “Minimata: The Victims and Their World,” and not urge stronger controls on mercury emissions? Can you support the murder of children and workers, for profit?
2 Comments | air pollution, Coal, Disasters, Disease, Environmental protection, Health care, Politics, Public health, Rampant stupidity, Science | Tagged: air pollution, Coal-fired Power Plants, Disasters, Disease, Environmental protection, EPA, health, History, Mercury Pollution, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Cartoonist’s patent racism — disqualifier for New Jersey Hall of Fame?
December 24, 2011What, exactly, are the requirements to be elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame?
Thomas Nast is the great cartoonist whose pen launched crippling blows to the institutions of corrupt politicians including Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed. Nast generally gets the credit for inventing the symbols of the two major national parties, the donkey for the Democratic Party (or jackass, as in the first cartoon), and the elephant for the Republican Party, the party Nast favored.
Santa Claus’s commonly-accepted image owes a lot to Nast, who drew Santa Claus supporting the Union efforts in the Civil War. Between 1855 and 1900, Nast supported the winning cause in at least seven presidential elections, illustrated the effects of America’s industrialization and rise as a world power, fought political corruption and campaigned for equal legal rights for immigrants and ex-slaves.
Thomas Nast’s tribute to the Emancipation Proclamation in Harper’s Weekly, 1863 – University of Michigan, Clements Library image; click image for a larger version
Lady Liberty? Columbia? An invention of Nast. Nast’s image of Columbia was more than minor inspiration to the French friends of America who created the Statute of Liberty. New Jersey is guarded, literally, with one of Nast’s creations.
Through it all, he clung to biases that, amplified by 1870s and 1880s politics, some people find less-than-acceptable today. When Catholics raised money from Europe to establish schools in America so Catholic children would not undergo Protestant indoctrination, Nast sided with the public schools (and, perhaps, with the Protestants). When immigrants, whose rights he defended, blindly turned the control of their votes over to corrupt political machines, he depicted those immigrants as louts, thugs and oafs. On the issue of temperance, he sided with those who wanted to restrict alcoholic beverages, in opposition to German and Irish brewers and distillers.
Through it all, his pen brilliantly and clearly stated his positions, in images. Nast’s work inspired Edgar Degas and Vincent van Gogh.
What should we make of the late-to-the-table complaints about Nast’s induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame? Opponents say Nast lampooned Catholics. True. Nast lampooned anyone whose policies he opposed.
Zeno presents a very good case that the opposition is wrong-headed, and ironic, coming from the voluble-and-usually obnoxious Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (a self-proclaimed name that many people find inaccurate), a guy who might well be a target of Nast had Nast and Donohue occupied the same place in time. (Though I quote Zeno at length here, go to his site to read the full piece.)
It was a theme to which the cartoonist returned whenever he wanted to inveigh against Romish influence (the Church was on record in opposition to the separation of church and state) or Irish immigration (Nast had decidedly nativist tendencies). Today we can look at Nast’s cartoons and see them as over the top. In high dudgeon, however, Bill Donohue cannot help but demonstrate once again his unerring instinct for avoiding le mot juste in favor of the words least apt:
[H]e demonized bishops by portraying them as crocodiles with miters for jaws; and he also depicted them as emerging from slime while prowling towards children.
Really, Bill? You had to go there? Silly man.
You just depicted Thomas Nast as a prophet.
Nast’s work provides us with a conundrum. On one hand he ardently and fervently supported the Union against the Confederacy, especially with regard to emancipation of slaves. On the other hand Nast ideologically opposed the Democratic Party — perhaps an easy thing to do in those days when the Democratic Party was on record supporting slavery — and portrayed anyone with Democratic links as a beast or thug.
Should Nast’s biases against Catholics and Irishmen who unthinkingly gave their poll power to Boss Tweed disqualify Nast from a spot in New Jersey’s Hall of Fame?
Here is a list of people elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame over the past four years:
CLASS OF 2008
Buzz Aldrin
Clara Barton
Yogi Berra
Bill Bradley
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Malcolm Forbes
Robert Wood Johnson II
Vince Lombardi
Toni Morrison
Norman Schwarzkopf
Frank Sinatra
Bruce Springsteen
Meryl Streep
Harriet TubmanCLASS OF 2009
Bud Abbott & Lou Costello
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Althea Gibson
Jon Bon Jovi
Jerry Lewis
Guglielmo Marconi
Shaquille O’Neal
Phil Rizzuto
Paul Robeson
Carl Sagan
Walt Whitman
William Carlos WilliamsUnsung Hero:
Captain Brian BrennanCLASS OF 2010
Count Basie
Judy Blume
Justice William Brennan
Danny DeVito
Larry Doby
Michael Graves
Carl Lewis
Jack Nicholson
Alice Paul
Les Paul
Phillip Roth
Susan Sarandon
Wally Schirra
Frankie Valli
President Woodrow WilsonUnsung Heroes:
Marc DiNardo & James D’heronCLASS OF 2011
John Basilone
Tony Bennett
Governor Brendan Byrne
Mary Higgins Clark
Admiral William Halsey
Franco Harris
Leon Hess
Queen Latifah
Bucky Pizzarelli
Martha Stewart
Joe Theismann
John Travolta
Bruce WillisUnsung Heroes:
9/11 Victims & First Responders
Generally a well-deserving group of heroes, don’t you think?
Careful students of history may blanche a bit at one name there, in consideration of the flap against Nast. Woodrow Wilson had his own biases — he resegregated the White House as president. He opposed civil rights for African Americans. He invited the racist, pro-Ku Klux Klan movie, “Birth of a Nation,” into the White House and praised it for its accuracy and advocacy.
Wilson led the nation into World War I (after promising he would not), and he campaigned unsuccessfully for a peace treaty that might have prevented World War II, had he been listened to. Wilson campaigned to create an international peace-keeping organization, the League of Nations, an agency doomed to failure because the U.S. Senate rejected Wilson’s every imprecation to ratify the treaty that ended the Great War and created the agency.
Can Bill Donohue actually make a case that the great cartoonist, Thomas Nast, does not belong in a pantheon that includes Frank Sinatra, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and ex-con Martha Stewart? Is Nast not at least as deserving as Woodrow Wilson, on the same grounds?
Nominations for the class of 2012 include Aaron Burr, the vice president candidate whose overweening ambition nearly derailed the nation’s Constitution in 1800, the man who shot Alexander Hamilton fatally, and a man who plotted the overthrow of the government of the U.S.
Nast is nominated in the “General” category. The others nominated there are Alexander Calder, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Addams, Doris Duke, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Porter Wesley, Joyce Carol Oates, Milton Friedman, and Gov. Tom Kean.
Uh, Bill? Did you see Milton Friedman there? Yeah, he was a great economist and he made popular television and book explanations of economics (that Republicans eschew today, to the detriment of free markets and political freedom) — but should he be there considering his work for the Pinochet regime in Chile? I mean, Bill, can we be consistent? Chile is a chiefly Catholic nation, you know, and surely the murders of 10,000 Catholics should weigh in here, shouldn’t it?
(New Jersey’s ability to produce such a body of notables is, itself, notable. Probably each of those people deserves commemoration in the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Second place, two spots in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.)
Is this really what Catholics are reduced to, today — a pointless, silly campaign against commemorating a great cartoonist? May we assume Donohue and the Catholic Church oppose Nast across the board, in Nast’s campaigns against corruption, his work against slavery and support for the Union, and his support of the rights for immigrants?
Perhaps Donohue should review the situation, like Fagin.
And you, Dear Reader, should go vote for Thomas Nast’s inclusion, warts and all.
More:
- Bill Donohue’s bigoted and incomplete tirade about Nast
- P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula comments
- “New Jersey lawmaker wants cartoonist Thomas Nast removed from Hall of Fame nomination list,” New Jersey Star-Ledger
- Editorial favoring Nast’s inclusion, at the New Jersey Star-Ledger
- Letter of complaint about Nast to the blog of the New Jersey Star-Ledger
15 Comments | Cartoons, Civil War, History, Political cartoons, Politics, Racism, Religion | Tagged: Cartoons, History, New Jersey Hall of Fame, Political cartoons, Politics, Racism, Religion, Thomas Nast | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Tea Partiers slip into “elite lifestyle,” with parties and aides to do everything . . .
December 20, 2011From the venerable and regenerated Capitol Hill journal Roll Call:
Heard on the Hill: Steven Palazzo’s Staffers Tapped for Odd Jobs
- By Warren Rojas and Neda Semnani
- Roll Call Staff
- Dec. 8, 2011, Midnight
Covering the office of Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) has almost become a job unto itself for HOH. There are his staffers’ wild parties in Annapolis, the fallout of which involved pecans. There are his Mississippi accounting firm’s interesting ownership and business classification issues. And now there are his, or more specifically his staffers’, adventures in odd jobs.
Sources close to the office revealed that Palazzo and his wife, Lisa, used at least two staffers as de facto babysitters here in Washington and tapped federal employees to help the family move into a new apartment.
House ethics rules prohibit Members of Congress from using staffers for their “personal benefit” — see the farmer-staffer program of ex-Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) — though some personal tasks, such as picking up dry cleaning, can occasionally be categorized as official business.
One former aide apparently logged about 40 hours helping the Palazzos relocate from Capitol Hill to Penn Quarter in August. That time was spent moving and arranging the Palazzo personal effects as well as pingponging between the new apartment and home-decorating stores at the behest of Lisa Palazzo.
Palazzo aides confirmed that fellow staffers participated in the move but maintain those involved were compensated for their time from the Palazzos’ personal accounts.
During the course of a month, “the employees worked nine and 15 hours [during work days] respectively,” Palazzo Deputy Chief of Staff Hunter Lipscomb asserted. According to Lipscomb, the then-office manager and Lisa Palazzo calculated the staffers’ hourly wages to be $16.83 an hour. The office deducted $151.47 and $252.45 from the respective staffers’ paychecks to account for the Congressional work hours lost.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the office budget manager, who has over twenty years of Congressional pay roll experience, recommended the strict following of standard Pay Roll Office practice of reducing pay and reimbursing with personal funds for work voluntarily done by the two former staffers during office hours. Any out of pocket expenses incurred have been reimbursed to the former staffers and they were compensated with personal funds for any additional after hour voluntary work. The office fully followed the recommendation of the office budget manager and has been in consultation with the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer to ensure total compliance,” Palazzo Chief of Staff Jamie Miller explained in an email statement.
At least one staffer acknowledged receiving a check from the Palazzos in October.
Whether any money changed hands for untold hours of babysitting remains in question.
Sources say that during the summer, the three Palazzo children were chauffeured to the weeks-long Capitol Experience Camp in the Cannon House Office Building — where Palazzo’s office is located — by a staffer each morning. After camp let out, a staffer — sometimes two — would collect the children and then return them home. Aides would routinely bathe and feed the children, chaperone them at the pool or movies and eventually put them to bed.
By all accounts, Palazzo covered all meals and extracurricular activities. The office insists staffers were also paid in cash for their lost personal time, a claim at least one babysitter refuted.
WarrenRojas@cqrollcall.com | @WARojas
NedaSemnani@rollcall.com | @neda_semnani
So now we know: What will Tea Party people do to bring government closer to the people when they get elected? They won’t do anything, but, perhaps, suggest the people should eat cake. That could be the new Tea Party bumper sticker: “Let them eat cake!”
Will the Tea Party complain? I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s a “party” after all, right?
Will the news even make it back to Mississippi?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Sojourner Jim Stanley.
Leave a Comment » | Politics, Scandals | Tagged: Politics, Scandals, Tea Party | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
SkepticGate II: Fizzled assault on science
December 19, 2011
This Anderson cartoon from the Houston Chronicle in 2009 gets the facts right, but sadly, is still accurate
Remember the pathetic, disgusting attempt to derail the climate talks in Durban, just a few days ago? The “climate skeptics”™ dumped a bunch more private e-mails from the scientists who work on climate. (Stolen e-mails, here; be prepared to be bored, with no smoking guns, no cold guns, no guns at all.)
Unless one thinks the self-proclaimed skeptics are James Bond nemesis enough to actually hope for the end of the world (as opposed to just being monumentally, stupidly misled), their train still can’t get back on the tracks. Revealing that someone among them has stolen more e-mails than previously known, didn’t help. Here is a list of just how bad the derailment has been for the denialists:
- No great world-changing agreement, but the climate talks in Durban, South Africa, produced a consensus that a massive treaty is not coming soon, and that action to save the planet can’t wait for guys in suits who defer by people like Ralph Hall to do the right thing. Generally, the comity at Durban is bad for the denialists — Christopher Monckton went into full panic mode, suggesting the language of the agreement available isn’t the whole story and something else — something sinister — is really going on. (One wonders how Monckton can stand to turn out the lights at night.) They can’t tell the difference between their burro and a burrow, and with Ralph Hall leading them they’re likely to find the edge of the cliff and leave it before they realize just how far up they are and how far they have to fall. (Skeptic/denialist Judith Curry carried a rundown of headlines from Durban, with links — remember her bias.)
- British authorities raided the digs of a skeptic blogger, seizing his computer upon which he got the first round of stolen e-mails. It’s unlikely the raidee is guilty of much beyond making the stolen stuff public (is that a crime in Britain?), but one hopes Britain’s crime fighters have access to cyber trackers who may be able to learn more from the signatures on the posts. Searches have been noticed for other bloggers, including Jeff Id at the Air Vent, but warrants and actual searches haven’t taken place yet.
- One paper in climate science was officially retracted — alas for the denialists, it was one of theirs. Plagiarism and rank error in the so-called Wegman Report to a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives prompted the call-back. John Mashey’s gumshoe work in the libraries of academe lent a new shine to the word “scholarship.” Republicans have yet to admit the paper’s errors. (
- Texas Congressman Ralph Hall granted a rare interview, and spoke out about climate change. He revealed that he doesn’t know much about one of the hottest issues facing the committee he chairs, and what little he knows, is wrong. Cue the Kin Hubbard/Mick Jagger duet.
- Skeptics actually completed a research project and prepared it for publication. A group at Berkeley, with funding from conservative warming denialists like the Koch brothers, and featuring the work and cooperation of leading anti-science people like Anthony Watts, took on the challenge of looking at temperatures reported from weather stations, especially in the U.S., and especially those Anthony Watts had targeted as providing unduly warm and inaccurate readings that skewed all of the science of global warming. The not-loudly-mentioned target, of course, was the “hockey stick” graph. Alas for the skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study produced results that verify the accuracy of measurements that show warming, and which suggest the IPCC-published hockey stick is accurate enough that it deserves credence. Anthony Watts promptly disavowed all his own work on the project.
- Meanwhile, warming continued unabated by almost every measure. Galileo could say: Eppure, lei si scalda!
One question we need to be asking is why the incidents around the stolen e-mails are known as “Climategate” in the circles of warming denialists. The thieves in this case came from the ranks of the so-called skeptics, and the release of the e-mails was done on the blogs of those who deny warming, or human causation, or human ability to mitigate at all. (Fox News got it bass ackwards, of course — wondering whether the government is somehow complicit in hiding information, while all the information is public and almost all of the private communication is public. At Fox, they don’t even get Homer Simpson doh! moments of understanding — that’s how bad it is in Denialville.)
So far no one’s listening to the bear on this one — follow the money, and bring the criminals to justice.
It’s really SkepticGate, with a more-than two-year coverup and continuing, and the recent release is SkepticGate II.
Denialists, and even those who question global warming on legitimate grounds, must be frustrated. Nothing they do stops the world from warming. As the massive wave of evidence demonstrating the Earth warms and humans share the blame turns to a tsunami, even policy makers (Ralph Hall excepted) look for solutions to warming problems. It’s so bad for the skeptics that even the old trick of stealing e-mails from the scientists, the trick that helped fog up the Copenhagen proceedings, did almost nothing to the Durban talks. While no treaty came out, none was expected — but the sudden action in the last couple of days of the conference to get action despite the continued interference by climate skeptics and their political allies, must have caught them off guard.
Now the cops are after them, too.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Cool KWAANZA, Ebullient Edwin Hubble Looking Up Day, Happy New Year!
10 Comments | Cartoons, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, Geography - Physical, Global warming, History, Political cartoons, Politics, Research, Science | Tagged: Climate change, geography, Global warming, History, IPCC, Political cartoons, Politics, Rep. Ralph Hall, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Banksy’s modern Nativity, revisited
December 19, 2011Thomas Nast helped bring down the crooks at Tammany Hall with cartoons. Boss Tweed, the chief antagonist of Nast, crook and leader of the Tammany Gang, understood that Nast’s drawings could do him in better than just hard hitting reporting — the pictures were clear to people who couldn’t read.
But a cartoon has to get to an audience to have an effect.
Here’s a cartoon below, a comment on the security wall being built in Israel, that got very little circulation in the west at Christmas time. Can you imagine the impact had this drawing run in newspapers in Europe, the U.S., and Canada?
It’s a mashup of a famous oil painting* related to the Christian Nativity, from a London-based artist who goes by the name Banksy. (Warning: Banksy pulls no punches; views shown are quite strong, often very funny, always provocative, generally safe for work unless you work for an authoritarian like Dick Cheney who wants no counter opinions.)
Banksy's modern nativity -- does he ever bother to copyright his stuff, or would he rather you broadcast it?
* At least I thought so in 2008. I can’t find the painting now. Anybody recognize a work underneath Banksy’s re-imagining? Let us know in comments, eh?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Peoples Geography.
More, in 2011:
Leave a Comment » | Art, Cartoons, Dissent, Israel, Palestine, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: Art, Banksy, Cartoons, Dissent, Israel's Wall, Mary and Joseph, Media, Palestine, Political cartoons, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Oh, say, can Republicans see?
December 18, 2011Old Jules was referring to something else, a serious enough issue on its own, and not necessarily the lack of vision among Republican presidential candidates.
But it fits from time to time:
Zero Visibility, a warning sign - photo by Old Jules, perhaps
Bill Cosby once asked if anyone else had the same chill of fear he gets when the lights start to go down at the theater: Are the lights getting dim, or are you going blind?
Is there zero visibility, or are our eyes shut tightly? Can the candidates see what it takes to get us out of this olio, this olla podrida of messes, or is there too much fog, or are they just not looking? Worse, is it dark AND they are not looking?
What say you?
5 Comments | 2010 Elections, Economics, Leadership, Philosophy, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: 2012 Elections, Campaign 2012, Economics, Leadership, Philosophy, Politics, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Encore quote of the moment: Robert Kennedy on what really matters
December 18, 2011This is borrowed from Harry Clarke (with a few minor corrections in the text):
Robert F. Kennedy speech at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, March 18, 1968 - Photo by George Silk, Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images
RFK said this in 1968. In a speech I heard today it was quoted and it stirred me.
Too much and for too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP — if we judge the United States of America by that — that GNP counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Kennedy delivered these words in an address at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, on March 18, 1968.
Here’s a video production from the Glaser Progress Foundation which includes an audio recording of the speech:
More resources:
- Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights
- Biographical essay of RFK at Wikipedia
- Transcript from PBS’s American Experience, of the film “RFK”
- Text of the Alf Landon Lecture, on Vietnam policy, delivered the same day at Kansas State University
Most of this post appeared originally here in 2009. We need the reminder.
1 Comment | 1968, Campaigns, Economics, Famous quotes, History, History audio sources, Leadership, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: 1968, Economics, famous speeches, GDP, GNP, History, Leadership, Politics, Quotes, Robert F. Kennedy | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Republicans beyond comprehension: The $10,000 lie, and boomerangs
December 14, 2011Okay, I’m giving up trying to figure out the Republican race, and Republicans.
Once upon a time you could count on getting the ear of Republicans with a wave of the U.S. flag, a reference to patriotism, and an appeal to time-honored values, like telling the truth.
But no more.
In the last round of the Debate-That-Never-Ends, Mitt Romney in essence called Rick Perry a liar. Romney even offered to give Perry $10,000 if Perry could prove the smear he’d just made on Romney.
Perry, knowing he’d been caught red-handed in a lie, refused to take the offer.
So what happened? The political line is that Romney is “out of touch” for making it a $10,000 offer.
For free, Romney showed Perry to be a liar. And Romney gets the heat?
Just to confuse things further, Republicans aren’t voting for Perry, either.
Literacy test, hell. We need a sanity test for these guys — the Republican voters included. Republicans are close to reason only in the dictionary, and even there they are not on the same page.
10 Comments | Humor, Politics, Republican Party | Tagged: Humor, Politics, Republicans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 