El Swinebo "Apologizes" - WHO'S Buying?

"They all want to go to war with Iran, but they're afraid of Rush Limbaugh" - Conservative columnist George Will on the tepid responses of the Republican candidates to Limbaugh's outrageous remarks.

WHO are you going to believe? An articulate young woman fighting for reproductive rights for all her sisters...or a vile, right wing swine and his apologists?

We knew it was inevitable because when they're stuck, pigs squeal. And so it is also with the biggest 2-legged swine of them all, Rush Limbaugh, otherwise known as El Rushbo or (more recently to millions of young women) "El Swinebo" after his despicable remarks over the air concerning Sandra Fluke.

Anyone with two neurons in their gray matter knows this "apology" is bollocks. I mean, any sensible person - and that includes Ms. Fluke- can tell the genuine article from grandstanding and excuses wrapped in PR. Especially as El Swinebo made his vile comments for not one, not two but THREE days running, and then blamed liberals because he "made the mistake of following their example" as opposed to his own good conscience. (What's the difference if it's the conscience of a pig? Wait, I maybe ought not insult pigs here!)

The truth is that this odious, grunting porker miscreant: a) feared the exodus of no fewer than 35 major advertisers already, and b) oinked what was in his heart - which 'oink' also echoed what most of the Woman-hating GOP believe in their own heart of hearts (accounting for their tepid reactions), as well as Rush's sickening listener audience - wherever they are. Indeed, the news in today's press (Denver Post, p. 5A) was that "callers to the show urged him not to give in to critics and blamed the media for the pressure..." Between these knuckle -sucking troglydytes and those who yelped "Let 'em DIE!'' in a repuke debate (when the subject of what to do to help the uninsured came up), we ought to send all of 'em on a one way trip to MARS!

Typical rightist bullshit! Always crying then blaming being caught out on the 'librul media'! Any time you can, when caught with your pants down, pose as the victim in the piece! We've seen Sarah Palin do it any number of times, as well as Herman Cain (with his other woman he kept in Ga) and who can ever forget Newtie with his "threesomes"? It's the same shell game over and over.

Meanwhile, there is the quiet, articulate Ms. Fluke who with her characteristic poise and aplomb rejects what she sees as a manifestly insincere apology while noting it did nothing to change the "corrosive tone of the debate". As I watched again her eloquent testimony on C-SPAN,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlRC0nsjtKQ

then her reactions as viciously attacked by reich wing swine, I couldn't help but summon the compelling image of a modern-era 'Joan of Arc' - doing battle almost alone against the cultural knuckle-draggers who'd keep women chained to beds, though as Rachel Maddow's guest Connie Schultz put it last night, 'They are attacking not just Sandra but our own daughters!'

Indeed, all 22 million- odd women from 18-29 are under monstrous attack from a Right Wing scream machine that defies them to speak up for themselves, and would grind them into chattel and baby making machines with zero self-autonomy and determination if it could. This includes the Unholy Trinity of the GOP, the vitriolic Reich Wing media and its associated blogosphere- as well as the Catholic Church and its sick sycophants.

As Maddow's guest Connie Schultz also noted, though her age group can assist, this is now the battle of the younger female demographic. If they prevail, they will have established new freedom parameters and social justice for themselves and their sisters. If they fail,....well, we prefer not to go into that....but think of how women are regarded and treated in most fundamentalist-dominated nations.

Even as this front of the culture wars plays out, the Catholics and their apologists have tried to attack Sandra from the other side (thereby offering Limburger de facto support), such as in today's WSJ (p. A17, 'Limbaugh and Our Phony Contraception Debate') by Cathy Cleaver Ruse - a "senior fellow" at the extremist Right wing "Family Research Council".

Ruse claims to be a former graduate of the Georgetown Law School (20 yrs. ago), so from the get- go she posits credentials that she hopes will trump Sandra's as a 3rd year law student. This technique is frequently used by those who haven't anything but hot air in their quivers but they use it because it often works on susceptible minds.

Ruse then makes a big deal of the fact that Sandra told the Washington Post she "deliberately chose Georgetown knowing specifically that it did not cover drugs that run contrary to Catholic teaching."

Let me again remind readers of what I said before, that the Church's birth control proscription is not any kind of a central teaching, issuing as it does from the Magisterium or teaching office, and not ex Cathedra or from the 'Chair of St. Peter' (which office designates "infallibility"). Hence, and logically, as Hans Kung has pointed out ('Infallible?') it could be wrong ....so there is no absolute compelling reason to follow it and most priests in the day (late 1960s-70s) regarded it as matter of personal conscience.

Hence, Sandra in this light was perfectly well justified to choose Georgetown as her law school. In addition, it made sense because she reasonably perceived how young women's reproductive rights were being squelched by an iffy but anachronistic ruling, and saw it as her duty to be on the spot to offer challenge, i.e. through the 'Students for Reproductive Justice'.

Not content to try her hand at distortion here, Ruse goes on to blabber on all the ways Georgetown "flung wide its doors" to all manner of "clubs and activities that run contrary to fundamental Catholic beliefs ...but it is not inclined to pay for or provide them....and it has the right to say this far and nor further."

Which of course mixes chalk and cheese. Obviously, then, we aren't querying why Georgetown (just as Loyola University where I once went to school - 1964-67) won't pay to establish a Georgetown Atheist Club, or Jean -Paul Sarte Existentialist Organization, which may well challenge fundamental beliefs - such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, Mary's Immaculate Conception and Transubstantiation. What we are challenging - including Sandra- is the school's right to deny health service while operating in the public square based on an IFFY ruling that is not, nor ever has been, absolute in its truth claims.

There is a universe of difference here, but clearly Ruse even with her illustrious "J.D." doesn't get it. This is obvious, because Ruse then goes on to try and paint Sandra as belonging to the"victim" class of witness - noting there are "two kinds, experts and victims". How about just one kind, truth tellers! Thus, Ruse goes on to try and debunk Sandra's testimony as being more about trying to save money on contraception than health repercussions, despite the fact Ms. Fluke explicitly stated yesterday on a network appearance:

"I want to correct the misperception, which Mr. Limbaugh and a lot of other commentators have been putting out there to confuse the public, the idea that this is about taxpayers or the government paying for contraception. It is absolutely not. This regulation covers private insurance and it wants to have this type of medical drug treated in a way that’s similar to how other medical drugs are treated. And it is health care. "

But no, in the hallowed pages of reactionary finance, distortions like Ruse's get the ink! So it's no wonder Ms. Cathy Ruse follows this up by admitting that:

"What about Rush Limbaugh: I won't defend his use of epithets but I understand his larger point ...that contraception isn't like other kinds of health care..."

But that's the point! It is! She then goes on to claim, responding to Ms. Fluke's testimony as to treating other medical problems like ovarian cysts with contraceptives,

"Yes, birth control pills can be used to address medical problems, though that's extremely rare and the Catholic Church has no quarrel with their use in this circumstance."

Well, two lies here: first that these medical problems are "extremely rare". They are not. It's estimated (by The Guttmacher Institute) that nearly 1.7 million women suffer from endometriosis - treatable exclusively by contraceptives, each year. That is NOT "extremely rare"! Second, the Catholic Church obviously does have a problem if Georgetown U., for example,would not provide the pill for use to the student with ovarian cysts without having to pay for them. So ....is Ruse calling Sandra a liar, or is she the liar?

The last statement in Ruse's WSJ piece is its own way as vile and debased as Limbaugh's rant, when she writes:

"Should Ms. Fluke give up a cup or two of coffee at Starbucks each month to pay for her birth control, or should Georgetown give up its religion? Even a first year law student should know where the Constitution stands on that!"

But see, even a 1st year frosh from ANY Catholic university ought to know that allowing contraceptives to be dispensed as part of a a health care mandate and plan is NOT "giving up one's religion"! Especially as the anti-birth control ruling doesn't issue from any infallible edict or ex cathedra but from the Magisterium - in which self-direction and personal conscience is allotted paramountcy.

No one, certainly not Ms. Fluke, is demanding Georgetown U. recant on the true fundamental beliefs such as Transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception or the Trinity or even Papal Infallibility. So in the end, all Ruse's arguments amount to no more than silly straw men.

The most vile aspect is that millions will interpret this piffle to be ideological - theological support for Limburger which they are emphatically not! They are the spurious arguments of one zealous member of the Family Research Council, with a long history of war against reproductive choice.

Proper Birth Control: The Answer to Out-of-Wedlock Births

In Barbados over the 1950s and 60s, the island's population exploded mainly because of the sheer number of out of wedlock births, attributed to poor, working class women. Typically these were 16 to young -20 somethings who on average had 4- 9 partners over 5 years (on average) and as many kids born....all out of wedlock. (In Barbados, what has been called "common law marriage" was established many years earlier).

Not until Clyde Gollop began the Barbados Family Planning Association (BFPA) did the numbers fall under control, and out of wedlock births go down, as well as unwanted births overall. The arrival of the pill and condoms, then, provided a means of choice where the number and quality of births was concerned. Interestingly, as the numbers fell - so did the island's crime rate. (At least until the specter and scourge of drugs arrived in the mid-1980s).

This was shown to be paralleled in the U.S. by the authors of the book, Freakonomics, who traced the decline of crime from the mid-70s onward to the 2000s to the absence of uncared for, unwanted offspring - who had a higher probability of becoming muggers, rapists, burglars and murderers. Thus, the authors estimated our country was spared tens of thousands of otherwise vicious crimes simply by the non-births of tens of thousands of criminals thanks in no small measure to the appearance of 'Roe v. Wade' in 1972.

New evidence coming to the fore shows the U.S. needs to mount at least as efficient a birth control campaign as Barbados did in the 60s. Far from being the morally "degenerate" path as the right wing nuts proclaim, it is clearly the way to a higher moral order - if by that one means lessening unwanted and out of wedlock births.

One thing Clyde Gollop discovered very early in his Barbados mission, was that calls for "abstinence" didn't work. Almost invariably, the raging hormones took their toll and triumphed over the paltry efforts of youths, young adults to hold back. And since the only other feasible option for release- masturbation or mutual masturbation - is looked down upon, that meant birth control had to be available to cover all bases.

The situation is no doubt analogous in the U.S. What ought to then concern us is how the unwanted births are increasing again - after a brief (2004-07) respite. A recent Pew study, for example, has found that the percentage of children born out of wedlock has increased to 41% overall, and 53% for women under 30. A large contribution to this sad stat is that unmarried women in particular tend to be poorer and the 20-somethings are the fastest growing segment.

The sociologist Jennifer Manlove of nonprofit Child Trends notes that studies have disclosed that three fourths of births outside marriage are unwanted. Given the deleterious effects on the kids, this is a national tragedy of epic proportions that rivals the deteriorating state of our civil infrastructure. It's a worse tragedy when one contemplates (as Ms. Manlove points out) that while poor unmarried young American women often rely on "withdrawal" their European counterparts receive free, state-funded care including condoms or pills. It's no wonder Europeans regard us as knuckle draggers - because in this sense, we are.

Obviously, birth control, because 3/4 of births are unwanted, is the very device that would create more stable families. This would be a practical solution as opposed to one in the clouds based on abstinence. Neither is marriage the answer or remedy (as IQ and statistical boffins like Charles Murrary claim) because it makes no difference. According to Princeton professor Sara McLanahan: ""Bush era programs encouraging people to marry really had no effect."

She went on to observe that previously co-habiting American couples had higher average divorce rates. Of course, as I noted in an earlier blog - part of this is also economic. Because of the scarcity of jobs for young working class men more working class women end up having to go it alone. This also means often having to raise an unwanted child by their lonesomes. If even half the manufacturing jobs dispatched overseas to China and Bangalore were returned, the dismal marriage and out of wedlock birth numbers could be improved.

But make no mistake that the cheap moralizers of the GOP want no part of this. They will fight to the end to keep this nation poor, dumb, and overpopulated by the unwanted in order to try to drive them into the GOP "family" using the sticks of morality and "big gubmint". It is a plan that's destined to fail, just as the Catholics' plan to add to their numbers and win a demographic religious battle by seeking to ban artificial contraception.

The Stupidity of STUXNET

Anyone who watched the first segment of '60 Minutes' last night, would have been treated to the news (kept seemingly well concealed hitherto) of one of the most malicious pieces of software ever conceived - a worm called "Stuxnet". According to the 60 Minutes' piece, the noisome behavior of this worm eventually drew the attention of Liam O Murchu, an operations manager for Symantec, one of the largest antivirus companies in the world. As he noted in the interview:

"As soon as we saw it, we knew it was something completely different. And red flags started to go up straightaway."

Those red flags included the way this worm specifically singled out computing command and control operations protocols to take over sophisticated robotic -run systems and divert them subtly toward perdition - to the extent no one running any plant operations (mainly at Iran's nuclear processing plants) would be any the wiser. Thus the worm could carry on its destruction undetected.

In the case of Stuxnet, its malicious trail commenced in June of 2010, when it was first detected and isolated by a tiny company in Belarus after one of its clients in Iran complained about a software glitch. Subsequently, reports filtered in that Iran's centrifuges were somehow compromised, though they didn't let on that they were aware of the real culprits (which I suspect was the NSA, whose cryptological-computer-savvy 'fingerprints' are all over this. )

Meanwhile, also featured on the 60 Minutes' piece was Retired General Michael Hayden, a former head of the National Security Agency. As he talked about the damage inflicted by the worm he damned near gloated with self-satisfaction as he babbled:

"We have entered into a new phase of conflict in which we use a cyberweapon to create physical destruction, and in this case, physical destruction in someone else's critical infrastructure. This was a good idea, alright? But I also admit this was a really big idea too. The rest of the world is looking at this and saying, 'Clearly someone has legitimated this kind of activity as acceptable international conduct.' The whole world is watching."

Indeed, but WAS IT a "good idea" to bring this genie out of the bottle and introduce it to the world? Especially when the initiator -attacker nation - obviously the hubristic U.S. - believes itself beyond the range of retribution? This is the question that must be asked, especially when we have a creaky power grid that just barely functions efficiently in periods of high demand - such as this summer promises to be, what with global warming continuing its ramping up!

Evidently, Sean McGurk - former head of cyber defense at The Department of Homeland Security, in charge of protecting critical infrastructure in the U.S. - doesn't believe so. WHen interviewed last night, he pointed out (alarmingly):

"You can download the actual source code of Stuxnet now and you can repurpose it and repackage it and then, you know, point it back towards wherever it came from."

CBS' Steve Kroft then remarked: "Sounds a little bit like Pandora's box." To which McGurk responded, "Yes!"

McGurk added:

"They opened up the box. They demonstrated the capability. They showed the ability and the desire to do so. And it's not something that can be put back."

Kroft then pressed the issue, asking:

"If somebody in the government had come to you and said, "Look, we're thinking about doing this. What do you think?" What would you have told them?"

To which McGurk didn't hesitate in responding:

"I would have strongly cautioned them against it because of the unintended consequences of releasing such a code."

Kroft then surmised that one such "unintended consequence" is that this same code might be "re-purposed" and used against us. Perhaps against nuclear power plants or the power grid. Again, McGurk responded:"Yes", labeling the possible retributive cyber attack worm, "Son of Stuxnet".

But this is no laughing matter! Because of the hubristic, belligerent and arrogant actions of an enclave of pointy-headed computer geeks at the Puzzle Palace, we're likely all in jeaopardy (as we were with the Wall St. quants inventing insane credit derivatives using the Gaussian Copula formula before the financial meltdown). These sort of reckless actions do not bode well, and although their creators and the guilty agency might argue they were done with the "best intentions" , i.e. to slow down Iranian processing of nuclear fuel, we know the road to Hell is paved with them.

More than 15 years ago such malicious and aggressive cyber-actions were forecast by author Winn Schwartau in his book: 'Information Warfare:Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway', 1995, Thunder's Mouth Press. As Schwartau noted ( p. 297):

"At the pinnacle of the Information Army is what the military calls C3I: Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (some military planners now call it C4I, adding computers into the equation) - and what business calls 'the board of directors.' This is where strategic plans are made and directives for tactical support are calculated."

Schwartau also noted that "all money comes through C3I" (or C4I as the case may be), and much may emerge from "black budgets" or off the books funded operations to retain maximal security. Such levels of security are not as typical with the CIA or DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) but they are with the grandaddy of spookhood, the NSA, which oversees all others. (Two of the best exposes of this bunch based at Ft. Meade, MD and their methods appeared in James Bamford's book, Body of Secrets (2001), and the Baltimore Sun series: 'No Such Agency: America's Fortress of Spies', by Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, Dec. 3-15, 1995)

The different echelons of information warrior, in the Class III (global) arena include(op. cit. 298-311):

- 'Communications or C-group' - responsibility for all communications, networking aspects, including encryption schemes. They may even "use the Global Network to achieve anonymity and privacy". Also "to make interception and traffic analysis of their activities much more
difficult, convoluted routing of communications paths all over the country and the world will require C-group to be multinational."

- 'Mappers' - as the name implies, those who chart cyberspace, showing how all the connections occur - and the critical points - for future targeting of attacks.

- 'Crackers' - use special software tools to decipher passwords, or break encryption schemes, say trhereby allowing a "worm" or virus to penetrate firewalls.

- 'Sniffers' - e.g. 'sniff' out passwords using sophisticated programs, or install 'taps' to eavesdrop or monitor selected targets.

- 'Readers' - Monitor emanations from computer screens/monitors using Van Eck radiation detectors. A person can park in a specially outfitted truck (often made to look like the local phone service) and 'read' everything on your monitor screen from up to a half mile away.

- Software Development group - "duplicate field conditions reported by a mapper or cracker and then develop a reliable means to compromise it".

- 'Moles' "deploy malicious software, garner confidential information from the target, or provide valuable inside information to C3I (or C4I)."

- Analysts - as the name implies, responsible for sifting through the vast reams of information made available and separating 'signal' from 'noise'. These eggheads would've been able to assess the extent of damage inflicted by Stuxnet to the Iranian centrifuges.

- 'Public Relations Group' -will feed information to the press on a selective basis."

Readers interested in seeing the '60 Minutes' segment can find it here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400904n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

Sadly, this reckless and pre-emptive cyber attack, obviously initiated by our country (despite all the cloak and dagger BS), may well pave the way for a much less secure world affecting all of us. Let us hope if the Russians, Chinese or anyone else - run of the mill terrorists - mount their own attacks using "Son of Stuxnet" or an even worse variant, we are prepared and it doesn't lead to mass chaos!

Robert Samuelson's Dishonest Economics

Robert Samuelson, WaPo Neoliberal PR hack, has a solution for the ongoing deficit impasse ('How to Get A Deficit Agreement', today) which begins with the proposition that the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration are unfair and unbalanced. He further insists "the whole sequestration process is something of a sham". He claims, with straight face:

"The sequester is not neutral. though defense spending represents 19 percent of the budget in 2012 it would absorb half the cuts. Moreover, many entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) were excluded from the cuts."

He goes on to bitch:

"The sequestration now scheduled for next January means about another $500 billion in military cuts over the decade. These are in addition to the $487 billion in defense reductions already in the BCA and billions of earlier cuts ordered by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates."

Now, here are the facts and aspects this reprobate PR flack hasn't mentioned, for good reason:

- The military has been the beneficiary of a bloated, obscene budget - unpaid for by any taxes - since 2001! Indeed, the Pentagon budget doubled between fiscal year 2000 and 2001 and is now so big that it dwarfs the defense budgets of all the other nations of the planet together! Unlike any time in our previous history, when the military reaped its production and weapons via paid for taxes, this post--Bush pre-emptive war lot has been on the deadbeat end for over 11 years!

- Over this same time, I repeat the past 11 years, the beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare have continued to pay in their 6.2% in FICA taxes (the only respite being the recent payroll tax cut...which may not be a good idea in the end) and whose Medicare premiums -expenses have increased 133% over that time compared to only a 31% increase in paid benefits (COLAs suspended for over 3 years) hence amounting to a pure benefits cut!

- Given the military's unfunded liabilities, including $1.1 trillion reported "missing" since 1999 (which money they've been unable to account for) according to former defense analyst Chuck Spinney in an August, 2002, PBS NOW appearance, and their free ride via no tax support, the actual numbers show they've seized 58 cents of every federal dollar since 2001. Further, they've increased their share of GDP (unpaid for via taxes btw) to nearly 4.2% or in the words of Chuck Spinney: "Ensuring a war on Medicare".

- The "cuts" being bruited about for the military, that Samuelson has his panties in a twist over, are actually not direct military-defense cuts but ancillary cuts such as to VA funding including pensions, benefits, TSA support, and other security.....but not paring back on massive Pentagon boondoggles like the F-35 (estimated at $0.3 billion each) which provide jobs in mainly repup districts.

- The same "cuts", as numerous real world economists (e.g. Paul Krugman) have noted, do NOTHING to contain the GROWTH of Defense-Pentagon spending they only SLOW it! Given a whopping $750b a year budget (plus 'supplementals' for Afghanistan etc.) then the $98.7 b a year in proposed cuts Samuelson's yelping about appears for what it really is: a gnat in a snowstorm.

What this overpaid asshole really wants is simply to gut Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that, according to the Economic Policy Inst., the average income for seniors on SOCIAL SECURITY is $12,000! Thus his yelping about "unfair defense cuts" is merely the ruse and smokescreen to try to justify it and protect the interests of the Military-Industrial complex! His "solution" then to the sequestration he maintains is exactly what we'd expect of a pro-defense establishment PR mutt (ibid.):

"Instead split the $1.2 trillion in automatic savings (to defense) between across the board tax increases and automatic across the board cuts in entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare"

In other words, this dork wants NO further cuts to his precious military, and only across the board cuts to the programs on which so many seniors depend (he has to know that any increase in taxes will NEVER be accepted by the Goopers). What is truly amazing is not so much that he could propose such an outrageous solution, but that the fucker still has a job, period! But then we know that in the modern world of pretend corporate journalism, there's always a place for public relations hacks and their hangers-on.

Yes!....The Oceans Are Getting Ever More Acidic!

Some 6 weeks ago in his regular Weekend WSJ column, 'Mind and Matter', Matt Ridley opined that all the kerfuffle concerning the oceans becoming ever more acidic (pH being dangerously lowered even below 6.9) was a mere "storm in a teacup" and mostly exaggerated. Like all naysayers, the tactic Ridley used to cast doubt was that there was too much "variation" - and hence one could not be sure what specific pH level applied to any one area of the ocean, including those where human regularly fish or rely on.

The variation aspect is valid, but over-hyped by Ridley. It's somewhat like saying 'Well, we don't know how much hail will fall on any particular area ....so it's no big deal to be fretting over it since the average is low". But the point is, given the right cells in storm clouds, regions expecting hail often see major damage ...as we can often attest here in Colo. And just because ALL areas don't receive the same size hail (say golfball v. baseball) doesn't mean all areas escape! In the same way, because some remote areas of the oceans may have relatively normal pH values, that doesn't mean organisms in the oceans where the pH has been lowered aren't affected or that we can claim "no harm, no foul".

Now the evidence has been reinforced that not only is the acidity of Earth's oceans the greatest since the dawn of the Industrial revolution, but in the past 300 million years! Indeed, according to new research our oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon. And we won't even mention the phytoplankton which generate so much of the planet's oxygen!

The scientists from Columbia University, which led the research. have found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that forced down the pH of the ocean by overall 0.1 mean unit in the last century. This is 10 times faster than the closest historical comparison from 56 million years ago. It's deadly serious because - like the margins for ushering in a runaway greenhouse effect, the margins of safety for acidic oceans are extremely low. Hence, one can't tell by the small magnitude of numerical pH that the increment change is nothing to fret over.

As noted in earlier blogs: the seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid. The particular chemical reaction is:

H2O + CO2 -> H2 CO3

The lower the pH level in the seas ('7' is neutral pH), the more acidic they are. This is also worrisome because mass extinctions of marine creatures in the past have been linked to instances of ocean acidification. Thus the current incremental change could also threaten important species. This according to Baerbel Hoenisch, the paleoceanographer at Columbia who was lead author of the paper that appeared in the journal Science. As he noted:

“If industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon,”


Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said ocean pH may fall another 0.3 units this century, according to Columbia.

This could easily bring us into the pH ~ 6.5 range which would be catastrophic, at the same time that we're on the cusp of the runaway Greenhouse effect with temperature increases of nearly 6C since the Industrial Revolution onset.

The closest period change to the current pace occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago, when a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide may have pushed pH levels down by 0.45 units over 20,000 years, according to the Columbia researchers.

Fossil records of the time indicate as many as half of all species of seabed-dwelling single-celled creatures called benthic foraminifers became extinct, suggesting species higher up the food chain may also have died out, they said.

The Columbia scientists used fossil records including the preservation of calcium carbonate in ocean sediments and the concentrations of various elements to reconstruct past ocean conditions. Two other mass extinctions about 200 million years and 252 million years ago may also be linked to acidification, though there’s less fossil evidence, according to the study.

A major concern issuing from the research is the future projected impact on the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry. This is no small thing! As observed by the authors of the article,''Progress Made in Study of Ocean’s Calcium Carbonate Budget’ (Eos Transactions of the AGU , Vol. 83, No. 34), from August 20, 2002:

"Future decreases in sea water pH (and CO3(-2)) concentration will decrease the saturation state of the waters with respect to Ca CO3”.

This means that spillover effects become much more likely, as the saturation threshold is lowered, with masses of CO2 released additionally into the atmosphere. Melting ice from glaciers, etc. will then surely reduce further the sea water pH and accelerate the release of CO2 from the oceans ultimately triggering catastrophic release of CO2 from sedimentary carbonates, representing the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth.

In terms of the most recent work, researchers based in the United States, Britain, Netherlands, Germany and Spain contributed to the study, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The Bottom Pit Of Capitalism: Grisly "Dahmer Tours"

It is well known that capitalism in its most amped up version in the US of A, aims to deliver to every imaginable service or product desired within the law. Thus, it really ought not surprise us that assorted "entrepeneurs" will come up with services or products that are downright outrageous - including the recent efforts to auction off the paraphernalia of serial killers, as well as "products" which defy imagination and common sense .....such as "porker porno" in which sweating 300- pounders are featured engaging each other like over-sized, snorting rhinos on giant mattresses. Of course, other execrable products precede these, such as the fake vomit used by pranksters, fake dog poop with odor simulators to place on an unwary office worker's desk and "poop cushions" to place on sofas and simulate human flatulence.

But now a new low appears to have arrived in the guise of guided tours (3 per day) over serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's former haunts, in which he picked up dozens of innocent victims before luring them to his apartment, butchering them and eating them. See, e.g.

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/141320593.html

The saga of Jeffrey Dahmer, make no mistake, is one of the most appalling in the history of Milwaukee (writing as a former resident, also born there). Dahmer redefines what a human beast is, as he not only drugged his hapless victims, but butchered them after sexual congress, then ate selected body parts and often stored the heads in his fridge.

Hence, any revisiting is cause for alarm (never mind the idiots that carp "History is history and we need to own it!" -- sorry, nope!) and indeed has caused a firestorm of outrage in the city, e.g.

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/140979273.html

The tour begins at Milwaukee's former Club 219 and costs $30 for the one mile walk along with the description of which victims were picked up where, started yesterday on Milwaukee's South 2nd Street. According to Amanda Morden of BAM Marketing and Media:

"We are actually looking at different areas on the tour, where he has actually picked up seven of his 17 victims"

Even as tickets on Groupon already sold out, the doctor who examined Dahmer and testified at his trial says the tour is "in poor taste," and "could cause post-traumatic stress for the victims' families".

Well, uh...DUH!

According to one news item:

"Dahmer Tours hasn't reached out to any of the victims' families.They say they're responding to the curiosity that's already out there."

But of course this is the byword and motto of "anything goes" capitalism! Thus, the manufacturers of artificial dog poop and human vomit are "simply responding to the existing demand and curiosity" for such, even as the sick makers of "porker porno" are only meeting that demand. Well, how about not feeding such demands or curiosity in the first place! Must every skewed, sick desire be met by some capitalist service or product? If another city, say Chicago, expresses an interest in conducting "John Wayne Gacy" tours will another marketing outfit take up that banner - complete with a Gacy imitator dressed as a clown and luring young victims to his rat-infested redoubt?

Give me an effing break!

The truth is that we are seeing manifest what author John Kenneth Galbreath noted in his terrific 1955 book, The Affluent Society, that the entrenched capitalist system has now gone beyond delivering to needs, but is catering to and even feeding an unending vortex of "wants"!

This can't be healthy for any society, and as Buddhism teaches, the only way for the human to possibly approach any kind of happiness in this world is to try to reduce all wants to zero. Every want left festering as well as instantly gratified leads to an even more dire and perverse want which will ultimately acquire a life of its own. The person harboring such wants then becomes a slave to them and is entangled and manacled as his capitalist providers seek to satiate them.

What will be next after these Dahmer tours? Will sick people demand "tours of Hell" after being hooked up to an auto-suicide device such as devised by Jack Kevorkian? One is left to wonder!

Kudos to a Courageous Woman - Caught in the "Culture wars"

Sandra Fluke, testifying before House Democrats when the House GOP turned her down. They couldn't tolerate one woman's voice!


I am referring, of course, to 3rd year Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, an eminently articulate warrior on behalf of all women in this country. Ms. Fluke, some readers may recall, originally volunteered to be the only female voice to testify (on behalf of President Obama’s mandated contraception coverage) at Rep. Darrell Issa’s All-Male Committee hearing... errrr....Inquisition. See, e.g.:http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-are-rabbis-helping-out-vatican-in.html

As I noted therein, even Jewish Rabbis (who ought to have known better given the way the Vatican assisted S.S. butchers to escape on ratlines) agreed to participate in this travesty and kangaroo-clown PR court (made even more degenerate by the fact Issa had the balls to hang an image of JFK in the background - when JFK would have vomited at any such display!)

And yet Issa and his clown brigade couldn't even find it in themselves to allow the voice of one lone courageous female to represent the other side. So, Ms. Fluke then agreed (after the GOP congress critter shut her down) to appear in separate testimony to a sub-Committee sponsored by House Democrats as well as journalists.

Ms. Fluke related the enormous costs imposed on students and other employees because of Georgetown University's practices re: withholding contraception or making it prohibitively expensive (which we will see across the board if any of the Repuke clown candidates get elected). She related how a friend needed contraceptives to treat an ovarian cyst, and when the cost became unaffordable was no longer able to avail herself and had to have her ovary removed.

This simply provoked derision and laughter from über-swine and idiot Rush Limbaugh in a recent talk show. Limbaugh - with his usual bombast and more venom this time (evoking the misogyny emblematic of all Repukes) castigated Ms. Fluke for spending "$3,000 a year" on contraceptives, then derided her as a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and promised to buy Fluke and Georgetown women “as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want".

This fat slobbering pig clearly doesn't grasp the biology of women in conjunction with the use of contraceptives, and that unlike the Viagra El Rushbo is on (and which he was busted with carrying into a Dominican Republic airport some years ago) contraceptives must be taken every day if they are to have their desired effect. One doesn't just pop them before sex, like El Rushbo does his Viagra! But what do you expect? Of course these Gooper Anti-woman swine don't comprehend female reproductive biology and related health issues any more than the Catholic Bishop swine do. (Though yes, I guess the latter did comprehend pederasty when they moved all the padres that molested altar boys from parish to parish!)

The "aspirin between the knees" jabber was echoing the earlier remark of Santorum's Sugar Daddy Foster Freeze, who made a joke of contraceptive practices used in his heyday - which the GOP would like to uniformly return to, if they could. (Yes, there are a number of the Gooper punks issuing feeble reprimands of Rush, but you can be sure that secretly they 100% side with his fulminations and believe his crappola).

Another thing here is Rushbo crossed into new Slimeball territory with his attacks on Sandra, who is not and never has been a politician but is a private citizen working toward a Georgetown University law degree. That was until the Union of Catholic bishops meddled in American politics and in her personal life, and she decided to tell her story.

For telling her story, and showing the importance of this mandate, I nominate Sandra as Cultural warrior heroine of the year. Let us hope her voice continues to speak out and not be intimidated. Kudos also for President Barack Obama for his show of support by phoning her after the Limbaugh incident. I do hope this fires him up even more to maintain his stance in the face of further Gooper fury - which as we all know, the pigs can be expected to unleash (accompanied by squeals) when stuck.

Again, Bravo, Ms. Fluke! You are a model citizen which one hopes all young women would aspire to!