El Nino Triggering Greater Arctic Instability And Record Heat, Melting

When climate scientists - real ones, not pretenders in the employ of the fossil fuelers - worry about records for low sea ice, or rapid melting of glaciers, or new heat records - are they exaggerating? When exactly is a climate record really a record? When is melting sea ice in the Arctic (or Antarctic) a record? When is collapse of the Greenland ice sheet a record? When is the increase in sea level a record? When is the increase in global mean temperature a record?

To the denier contingent, of course, there are no such things as any climate change records, because they are convinced it's all some grand, convoluted conspiracy by government and climate scientists. To these mostly brainwashed fools climate change is just an elaborate hoax. Never mind that, as in the case of rising seas, the Vietnamese are already having to build coastline dikes and massive seawalls to fortify earthen levees against rising seas. The latter are allowing seawater to penetrate as far as 60 km inland (in the Mekong delta) ruining rice crops.(WSJ, 'Vietnam's New Tack In Climate Fight', Feb. 25, p. A9)

Clearly, it's pretty easy to be a denier when your own life and livelihood isn't adversely affected, and you can just sit in your comfy chair and make vapid armchair pronouncements- when superior minds (scientific ones) actually have the data and first hand accounts.

The accumulating data over the past seven or eight years is now consolidating the current picture of the world we inhabit and it isn't pretty. It shows we may have already entered the world of initial climate anomaly that is likely to soon become permanent. This could be interpreted as meaning we are already on the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect.  In that case, we're not just talking about global warming but warming on 'steroids'.

 New data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that January was, for the entire  globe, an extraordinary month. In particular the data showed the Arctic to take the brunt of heating (see graphic) with a temperature increase more than 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 1951 to 1980 average in this region. (This data constitutes a "zonal mean" temperature map, which shows how the temperature departures from average change based on one's latitude location on Earth.)

This Arctic heat emphasis exposed in the zonal temperature map dovetails with Prof. Gunter Weller's predictions (from the mid -1980s) - based on his ice core analyses- that future warming would be greatest in the Arctic.  This is  a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification".

It also means we have much to fear in terms of climatic-based catastrophes. For example, a much warmer Arctic means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions of the polar vortex,  leading to frigid temperatures in parts of the U.S. but with the added potential of triggering severe, violent storms when the cold fronts spawned collide with warmer air

Let's now move on to records while we're at it. The Arctic heat anomaly has been accompanied by a new record-low level for Arctic sea ice extent during the normally ice-packed month of January, According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center more than 400,000 square miles of the region is below average  for the month. This in turn is closely tied to warmer Arctic air temperatures. According to Mark Serreze, Director of the Center:

"We've looked at the average January temperatures, and we look at what we call the 925 millibar level, about 3,000 feet up in the atmosphere. And it was, I would say, absurdly warm across the entire Arctic Ocean."

He added that the Center reports temperature anomalies at this altitude of "more than 6 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above average" for the month. Bear in mind that a 6C increase for the entire globe would be associated with the onset of the runaway greenhouse effect, as Carl Sagan first pointed out in his essay, 'Ambush, the Warming of the World' in his book, 'Billions and Billions.'


The low sea ice situation has now continued into February, as Serreze observes:
.
"We're way down. We're at a record low for this time of year right now.  When it comes to the rest of 2016 and the coming summer and fall season when ice melts across the Arctic and reaches its lowest extent, we are starting out in a deep hole."

The cause is tied to El Nino which is also an offshoot of the global warming phenomenon as S. George Philander originally showed. (Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (March 31, 1998):‘Who is El Nino?’)   Philander pointed out that exacerbated ocean temperatures are largely tied to heating effects  in El Nino years. Notably,  for the past several months these ocean temperatures have reached 3.6F higher than normal - so no surprise at the record sea ice melt.

Jennifer Francis, a climate researcher at Rutgers who focuses on the Arctic has argued that Arctic changes are changing midlatitude weather by causing wobbles in the jet stream. We've actually seen multiple instances of this over the past couple months. According to her:

"We've got this huge El Niño out there, we have the warm blob in the northeast Pacific, the cool blob in the Atlantic, and this ridiculously warm Arctic. All these things happening at the same time that have never happened before."

And ultimately, they are all tied to climate change- global warming. Look for more records to be set this spring and summer.

WSJ's Dan Henninger: Trump Running As An Independent Within Republican Party

I really had to laugh yesterday a.m. as I read the WSJ front page piece ('Some Married Couples Vow, Til Death- Or Donald - Do We Part')  on how married Repubs have to now avoid watching political TV at the same time, if one is a Trumpster.  The piece focused on several couples in different cities, including one featuring a "normal" wife who blurted: "I don't know who he is any more. Is this the man I married?"   Her hubby meanwhile, fairly gushed over the attributes of the Donald including saying he was a "breath of fresh air" and now he will "go all the way".

Well, maybe, unless the GOP establishment can find some way to halt his Donald Trump steamroller.

Meanwhile, the pundits and media have been scratching heads furiously to try to figure out why so many are rendered delirious and hang on his every word. Two nights ago, one night before last night's GOP debacle....errrr....debate....MSNBC's 'All In' featured a clip from VOX trying to explain Trump's appeal - across all class lines, ideological lines and even education. We learned:

"the psychological trait undergirding Trump's popularity is authoritarianism — a personality style characterizing people who are particularly sensitive to signs that the moral order is falling apart. When they perceive that the world as they know it is descending into chaos, they glorify their in-group, become highly intolerant of those who are different, and feel drawn to strong leaders who promise to fix things, and who do not seem shy about using force to do so."


Not long ago, The Economist (Dec. 5, 2015, p. 30)  posited Trumpsters as single mindedly seeking "scapegoats" for the nation's ills - including Obama, immigrants, Muslims, and other perceived "out groups" and also these supporters are:

"Typically members of the white lower middle class, they are at once jealous of the small privileges that distinguish them from the toilers below, and bitterly resentful of the faraway government that provides their Social Security, VA care and Medicare."

All this has, in turn, has incited controversy over whether Trump is a genuine conservative politician or a poseur, a pretender. Some opponents, including in the conservative media, have gone so far as to label him a "Clinton plant" to put up a candidate sure to be overwhelmed in the general election so that if he loses "the GOP will look like a forest shredded by a tornado"

Those words were written by the Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger  (Feb. 25, p. A11) who recognizes the threat if Trump is nominated and gets blown out as many predict. But at the same time he offered perhaps the most insightful take on the Trump candidacy as he noted (ibid.):

"Donald Trump is properly understood as running an independent candidacy from inside the formal structure of the Republican Party, as Mike Bloomberg did to run as Mayor of New York City. Nothing remotely resembling a political party is associated with Mr. Trump."

This is important to explore as it also shows the basis for Trump support. Henninger is averring that Trump is in reality an independent - with no allegiance to Republican Party principles or agendas. In this sense, we recognize that all political parties are formal political structures with consistent principles and platforms reached by consensus by the party's Pooh-Bahs. But Trump is outside this constellation of insiders and that's exactly what energizes his supporters.  He is also beholden to no one for his financial support so doesn't have to abide by what one or other Pooh-Bah dictates or tries to impose.  Again, it is this independence from the Beltway insider network that excites his supporters.

If Henninger's take is correct, and I believe it is, then if the GOP attempts to undermine Trump or contest his nomination, he will break off and go the independent route- fulfilling the role that he actually represents. At that juncture his independent candidacy will itself become formal and no longer a 'Trojan horse' within the formal party structure.

The problem is that not only will Trump likely lose the general election, but also peel off enough GOP votes (like Ross Perot did in 1992) to cause the Republican "formal" candidate - whether Rubio or Cruz - to lose as well.

Super Tuesday will certainly show who the pretenders are and whether The Donald's subversive indy candidacy within the Repub party really has momentum.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/66178/the-gop-debate-another-roiling-party-collapse

Pope Francis' Zika & Contraception Remarks Show There Are NO Moral Absolutes

Amidst the recent uproar over "building a wall" and whether Trump is a Christian, many people may have missed an even more significant papal comment, to do with artificial birth control. To fix ideas, Pope Francis suggested  last week, on his way back to Rome from Mexico, that artificial contraception may be morally acceptable to avoid spreading the Zika virus.  In framing his answer to a reporter's question, he intimated the use of such contraception as "not an absolute evil". So ah, what? It's an intermediate evil? Or a lesser evil?

One can surely argue that if it is not an absolute evil in this case, it shouldn't be in any other. To go one better in terms of situational ethics (which is what the Pope is interjecting) he noted that in the 1960s Pope Paul VI permitted nuns in the Belgian Congo to use artificial birth control to prevent pregnancies because "they were being systematically raped."

But again, why is this ethical dispensation for a nun superior to that for a working class mother, already burdened by 4 or 5 children, who simply cannot afford one more mouth to feed (and with Repukes in charge of the House she can't expect anything more from the SNAP program) . The fact is, it isn't and hence there is no reason other than sophistry to split the issue into more and less evil parts.

In the case of Zika virus, the Pope's pronouncement was quite justified given there is now strong suspicion as well as some hard evidence (which I will get to) that Zika infections - as in Brazil- are increasing the chances for a horrific birth defect known as microcephaly. This is a condition in which affected infants are born with extremely small heads, as well as brains.  Often they don't survive to adulthood but those that do are either warehoused at enormous costs because they cannot care for themselves, OR  (if minimally functional) they end up as circus freaks (such as the several depicted in Tod Browning's 1932 flick 'Freaks', e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA)

Does a papal dispensation,  say to a Brazilian woman whose pregnancy is threatened with Zika,  trump that for a mother - or even a single woman in the U.S.- who doesn't wish to be burdened with an unwanted pregnancy? Especially as she can expect no medical or other support from the Republicans. I don't believe so and indeed made the case in previous posts (as well as in my atheist books)  that there is no moral violation to do with the use of artificial contraception.

This is despite a number of Catholic bishops and others in Latin America proclaiming it is "immoral". Meanwhile, Francis' comments have the Vatican's dino heads ready to explode with at least one spokesman (the Rev. Federico Lombardi) forced to try to clarify (WSJ, Feb 20-21, p. A7) asserting: "the Pope was speaking of exceptional circumstances" then explaining that the pontiff meant that "in situations of grave urgency a well-informed conscience can see if there is the possibility (or not) of recourse to contraception".   But cutting through all this convoluted, qualifying bafflegab,  the point is the Pope - as Paul VI before him - did allow an exception and it only takes one to disprove the rule,  i.e. that artificial birth control is invariably "evil".

Where do the Vatican's moralists get this nonsense anyway? As a matter of theological record the anti-artificial birth control dogma was based on "natural law". The problem is that there is no genuine theological or other (scientific) basis for this antiquated belief. It rests entirely on reducing human sexuality to the state of lower animals, at the behest of their "natural" reproductive cycles. But it ignores that, unlike the lower animals, humans have the intellectual capacity and sense of novelty to introduce a vast variety of pleasure-play into their sex relations - none of which require conception. Thus humans aren't yoked to  primitive instincts to simply mount and hump at specific times.

As observed by Biologist Elizabeth A. Daugherty,  ('The Lessons of Zoology'. in Contraception and Holiness, pp. 96-97):

"Humans are free from physiologically determined sexual desires so we possess a more or less permanent sexuality from adolescence to old age."

So this lays waste to the whole natural law moral underpinning, which is more subjective moralism.

Historically, Catholic impediments to a sane birth control policy began with the misguided encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. Paul VI, the Pope at the time,  issued this document in direct opposition to his own specially appointed Papal Commission on the matter. Author David Yallop, in his book In God's Name, has portrayed Humanae Vitae in stark terms indeed, as well as its paradoxical consequences^[1]:

On a disaster scale for the Roman Catholic Church, it measures higher than the treatment of Galileo in the seventeenth century

The implicit assumption in Humanae Vitae and later Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor, has been that procreation takes precedence over any other function of sexual intercourse. This is observably true in most other animals (with estrus cycles) but it certainly doesn’t apply to humans who exhibit a diverse array of sexual play.

All of which reinforces the point that there is no moral dimension to the use of artificial birth control at all, irrespective of the situation. It is a carryover from Aristotelian thinking (which permeates Church canons and dogmas) .  Julian Pleasants has observed (op. cit., p. 88) the Vatican has always been hostage to:

"Aristotelian modes of thought which tend to fix behaviors within very limited and fixed definitions and categories."

Thus, the Church once believed it "natural" that some men be enslaved because they were “unable to manage their own affairs”  (ibid.)So why be surprised when the same Church seeks to ordain all her members abide by a sexuality more fitting of lower primates?  Clearly, the Church changed its natural law position on slavery as it now needs to do so on contraception. At least the Pope's recent pronouncements on allowing exceptions to the dogma (invoking the Zika virus) allows the door to be flung wide open to finally rid  the Church of this ridiculous baggage. (And let's not forget that back in 2010 Pope Benedict XVI allowed that using condoms to prevent HIV infection "can be a first step in moralization". In fact the very act of connecting the two discloses the 'horse has already left the barn'!)

What about abortion? In the same general response as the one for birth control, Francis did insist that:

"Abortion is not the lesser of two evils. It is a crime. That's what the Mafia does".

But indeed, abortion is and can often be the lesser of two evils. It is certainly the lesser of two evils if a woman, denied access to affordable contraception, has a child she can't cope with and ends up brutally beating it to death.  This actually happened here in Colorado barely a month ago  as one young woman hurled her 2 month old infant against a wall to shut it up .  Given that a two month old infant is more developed than a 4 month old fetus say, abortion is clearly a lesser evil than outright murder. (Specifically defined by our laws for killing an ALREADY born person).

In the case of this Zika virus, we have already seen in the news that a young Slovenian woman - returning from Brazil (and after having sexual relation there),  did a test for microcephaly on her return to Europe and found it to be positive.  Unwilling and unable to bear the costs of future care, she had the fetus aborted. Was she right or wrong? She was right insofar as it was far better to eliminate the primitive fetus than to, say, murder the suffering microcephalic person later.

In this case, she did one better and gave the fetus to medical specialists in Slovenia to further research into the effects of Zika virus. The researchers were also able to genetically sequence the virus from the fetal brain tissue. A step which can mightily help future projections for the spread of the disease, especially in the U.S. (predicted for the Gulf states early this summer with mosquito season onset.)

Little reported in the media (but in Europe) a post- abortion autopsy found the Zika virus nestled in the fetus' brain but in no other organs. This showed the medical team that Zika zones in on the brain . These researchers at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia found that the fetal brain was totally "devastated".  Not only was it a fraction of the proper size but it lacked the usual neural folds that enable a brain to manifest consciousness and thought. The entity - had it been allowed to be born - would have been a literal vegetable with absolutely no life quality of any kind to look forward to, and few resources to depend on from its parent.

The error made by Pope Francis  in condemning abortion as a crime inheres in committing  the "genetic fallacy",  as first described by Antony Flew ('Thinking About Thinking'). That is, arguing that because a thing is going to become something, it IS something. It would be like me picking up an acorn and claiming it's an oak tree. A   person, a human person, must have at least minimal capacity for basic cognition and rudimentary choice. It must possess a brain, at the very least, which evinces definite brain waves. Anything that doesn't is a proto-human entity, but clearly not a person. The microcephalic fetus aborted in Slovenia was such a proto-human entity - reduced to that state by the Zika virus.

Lastly, the current crop of Catholics ought to be reminded that the Church DID ALLOW abortions to be performed up until the third trimester, and until 1869. John Connery, S.J.,  a leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, has been quoted as citing a long standing collection of Canon Law that “it was not until 1869 that abortion for any reason became grounds for excommunication” (See, e.g. Druyan and Sagan, PARADE, April 22, 1990)

The larger point here is that clearly, the fact the Church has already changed its doctrine on abortion shows its moral positions are malleable and not set in stone!

What this means is that the Church itself cannot be free of errors in faith or morals if it has already made one that was since covered up. Obviously, if you can alter a position, it is hardly "absolute". In his marvelous book, Infallible?, Hans Kung observes (p. 143):

" No one, neither Vatican I, nor Vatican II, nor the textbook theologians, has shown that the Church - its leadership or its theology - is able to put forward propositions which inherently cannot be erroneous."

So my point remains: there are no moral absolutes. There is rather such a thing as a provisional ethics which changes, alters in response to circumstances over time. The Church's changing moral positions are proof of it.  Conservative Catholics will, of course, object and have apoplectic reactions to this, fearing that moral provisionalism or the exercise of conscience means "licentiousness". But they are the ones who really need to expand their own purview outside the bounds of a solipsistic, self-ingratiating sanctimony.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/08/absolutist-ethics-needs-to-be-replaced.html

Conservative Establishment & Its Media Grow More Hysterical At Trump's Rise

WSJ's Brett Stephens - wrote a blistering polemic against Trump and "Trumpkins" yesterday.

Even before Donald Trump's landslide victory in the Nevada caucuses last night the knives of the conservative media (and even center-right media) and the GOP establishment were out in force trying to undermine the blustery real estate mogul's creds.

Exhibit 'A' was WSJ columnist Brett Stephens' article 'The Trumpkins' Lament'  wherein he quoted noted Right wing talk radio shock jocks, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin - who ridiculed the notion Trump is a real conservative.  Quoting Limbaugh (referencing Trump's blaming Bush Jr. for 9/11, e.g. "it happened on his watch":

"Trump sounded like any average host on MSNBC and he defended Planned Parenthood in language used by the Left".

And then quoting the even more irascible Levin:

"He sounds like a radical kook. To have the leading Republican nominee for President of the United States to make these kinds of statements - and he's even been praised by Code Pink and every left wing kook organization that hates America, To have him praised for what he said? For what?"

Stephens is not sympathetic to the whining of these radio jocks, observing:

"Where were the Messrs. Levin and Limbaugh last summer when the Trump candidacy was still a big  soap bubble waiting to be popped by the likes of them?"

In other words, the two Right wing blowhards had the ability to halt and maybe overturn the Trump bandwagon but didn't.  Hence, it's too late for these two original "Trumpkins" to be lamenting his rise now. 

Still, Stephens holds out hope that the lone "establishment" guy - Marco Rubio - can prevail. He writes:

"It is a lucky thing for conservatives that the likeliest alternative to Mr. Trump is 'the very establishment Republican', Marco Rubio, the non-jerk of the season who could actually win in November".

Echoing the conservative media's polls (e.g. WSJ/NBC from 2/21) that Trump has even higher negatives among the general electorate (33%) than Hillary (13%) and also much higher opposition in his own party. In other words, polling discloses even if the anti-establishment Bernie Sanders doesn't win, his supporters will still vote for Hillary by 79%-19%, while the voters for other GOP candidates would only turn to Trump by 51- 39%.  In other words, Hillary grabs more of the leftover Sanders' votes than the Donald does of those other GOP candidates who drop out.

Hence, the conservative media conclusion he can't win in November because he can't get the general support he needs to beat Hillary. (Now the presumptive Dem nominee, and certainly from her superdelegate count).

As another WSJ columnist (Gerald Seib, Feb. 22, p. A4) also notes:

"there is little consolidation in the anti-Trump lanes and still too many of them to suit party establishment figures eager to stop Mr. Trump"

Adding:

"Big money and big establishment support will be flowing to Mr. Rubio in coming days; the establishment will effectively anoint him the alternative to Mr. Trump".

A WSJ editorial, meanwhile ('America's Moment of Trump'),  seems to blame a certain core of Trump voters who it terms "confirmed cliff divers".  I.e. jumping off a high cliff with no thought whatever of Trump's capability to win in November. The Journal's consistent knocks have been that Trump isn't a genuine conservative - even economically.

WSJ's Greg Ip writes,  for example (Feb. 18, p. A2):

"Thus far there is no coherent economics evident in the policies of Mr. Trump."

Noting - like other commentators - that Trump's tax plan would blow a hole in the budget bigger than the Donald's ego. (And then the media establishment has the gall to describes Sanders' plans as 'pie in the sky' or 'unworkable').

Numerous other WSJ analyses as well as one appearing in the Financial Times yesterday a.m. ('FT View: How To Stop Trump')  point out that Trump is exploiting a deep seated anger, perhaps even rage, in a sector of the electorate. The FT observed that there seems to be scant ideology shared by the supporters, and more an enthusiastic embrace of the Donald's yen for 'uncouth rhetoric' and 'un-PC zingers'.  In many respects, Trump appears to be channeling that segment's Id or even "hate" of whatever - maybe Obama, maybe Dems, or the political establishment itself.

Hence the drive to try to disrupt Trump's momentum and ultimately knock him off his track to the nomination. The FT, for example, advocates the media and other pols using Trump's own uncouth language and zinger style against him. Be uncouth, up to a point. My problem with that is what is "up to a point" and why would anyone believe it'd convince Trumpies to back off? Clearly, if some uncouth establishment alternative existed he would already be embraced as the front runner. The NV win shows this is a myth, also that the Cuban upstart Marco Rubio is not that guy.

Trump, according to the FT, The Economist, and even WSJ, is giving bombastic voice to powerful anger seething in the 30-40 percent of GOP voters backing him. Those media mavens and the conservative establishment are hoping fervently that the other 60-70 percent (of non-Trump voters) will keep the faith by adhering to the party's stated aims and real conservative norms,  not blindly jump ship for Trump.

But that remains to be seen, and it could just be a lot of wishful thinking.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/66121/the-end-of-the-establishment

Dems Need Bernie Sanders To Transcend Wuss-hood And Become Warriors For The People

Author Michael Tomasky ('Dems Fighting Words',  The American Prospect, Aug. 26, 2006 once observed that he Republicans s are "unified around a central idea which can be expressed in both positive and negative language: that they are the conservators of liberty and morality, and that liberals are sending the country to hell in overdrive. Whatever Republicans do or don't believe they believe in those two hypotheses. This unity gives them their passion."

 I'd add  that it also gives them their power of continually beating the Milquetoast Dems in political showdowns, whether in dealing with budget face offs, taxes, raising the debt ceiling,  or in Supreme Court nomination battles such  as now transpiring in the wake of Scalia's death,

In effect, the Repubs KNOW what they are fighting for, the Democrats do not. (Else they wouldn't so often splinter in their voting - as with the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and later in extending them, and also on the TPP etc).  Tomasky argues that the Dems have paid a huge price in lost voters for their turning to "reason and balanced" talk, rather than appealing to emotions (at least some of the time) like the Rs do. In addition, their lack of aggression at critical points during the past 30 years - when they had the opportunity to define themselves- have left many others yawning and not too impressed- hence the conscious choice to be independents - like me.

Basically, the Dems eschewed political point-making and "hard nosed", no-holds barred political partisanship sometime in the early 70s. They thereby lost their political balls even as a Dem mutation (DLC known as 'Democrats for the Leisure class') surfaced to make them more like the Repukes in one way (moving away from FDR's norms via deregulation, privatization etc.) but less in another (less fight for social benefits, fewer daring actions to thwart R nonsense) Thus, they  replaced the hard nosed, brass knuckles style  with discussing fact-based policy points, which appeal to "reason" and "temperance" but do little or nothing for core partisans. The very people Dems need to get out to the polls each mid-term election. As he observes:

"Apart from judicial battles, the Democrats don't have much fight in them."

Tomasky attributes this substitution of rational" policy talk for good, old-style politicking to a loss of identity that particularly accelerated with the onset of the Reagan plague years. The problem was that, in making this conscious switch of emphasis, the Dems lost the ability to really fight.(Note how often they lose the critical language wars to the Rs, e.g. "death taxes"  then punk out totally and retreat from defending their earlier positions).

 

These issues are now playing out again in this election year as we hear the pundit class and the wine and brie faction of the Dems -  the "sober voices of well-compensated moderation" (according to one salon. com writer) -  professing to not like Bernie Sanders’ proposals. They are too impractical, off the wall, and besides no Repuke will accept 'em (as if they will accept any of HRC's) These voices  include influential liberal economists like Paul Krugman of the New York Times and Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress.

Neither of those stalwarts appreciates or admires Sanders' targeted rhetoric to fight Wall Street and the banksters because well, they are part and parcel of the comfy class of leisure Dems that doesn't want to rock the boat of financial funding for a party now turned corporate.  And while this lot often has given pithy journalistic or rhetorical defense of the interests of the poor and besieged middle class, they turn tail and hide when the rubber meets the road. As they did when the Ds punked out on the public option for the ACA.

Not to put too fine a point on it but they are emphatically not fans of Sanders' hardball rhetoric. To the pretentious  realists of the Democratic Party's Leisure class  he’s making impossible promises, employing the dreaded “unicorns” and “magical thinking” of those vile Republicans.

As Tim Donovan writes (ibid.)

"It’s telling that in Krugman’s most full-throated critique of Sanders’ proposals, he whines that “it would probably create many losers as well as winners — a substantial number of Americans, mainly in the upper middle class, who would end up paying more in additional taxes than they would gain in enhanced benefits.” There’s Krugman, bravely imploring his New York Times readership to find it in their hard hearts to pity the poor upper middle class. "

Donovan then goes on to echo the take of Tomasky:

"At their heart, appeals to moderation willfully ignore an obvious and indisputable aspect of our presidential system: the ahistoric procedural tactics marshaled by the Republican Party to accomplish their objectives are adopted because they usually work. And despite brief episodes of political blowback when the party reaches too far, Republicans have done incredibly well for themselves by pushing the limits of acceptable political behavior to their advantage."

The question then - for an independent like me (and others) is: Why aren't the Dems ALSO capable of pushing the limits of acceptable behavior to their advantage? Why are they almost always acting the part of nails rather than hammers, serfs rather than masters, whiners rather than winners? Why did they allow no less than two successive cuts to the SNAP program creating more hungry kids to cede power to the Repubs? Why did they allow a poison pill amendment (in 2013) to be passed as part of a gov't spending bill that enabled the FICA to insure toxic credit default swaps? Why did they not use the "nuclear option" in filibusters to blow up the Alito nomination when they had the chance - as opposed to forming a 'gang of 12' to obliterate it, thereby confirming conservative control of the Supreme Court?  Why did they allow passage of the Military Commissions Act de facto repealing habeas corpus? Why did they allow the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003? Why did they allow the budget to balloon to unfathomable heights by extending the odious Bush tax cuts and also cutting the payroll tax (crucial to Social Security's survival) for two years - generating an additional hole of $200b?

In game theory,  "the Prisoner’s Dilemma"   outlines how two seemingly-rational parties can behave in a manner that’s mutually self-destructive.  It is summarized by Wikipedia as follows:

"Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:

• If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
• If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
• If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)"

The problem for would be players A and B is twofold: 1) not knowing in advance what your opposite will do, and 2) not trusting your opposite  to work toward the common good. Now translate this scenario  to a nearly evenly divided nation wherein the politics of cynicism, brinksmanship, and mounting constitutional crises is endemic. Then let "A"  be the Democratic Party and "B" the Republicans.

 A simple examination of recent events in the past 10 plus years will disclose that "A" is the proverbial prisoner (Dems)  still holding out hope that their craven, beastly opposite party "B" will play by the damned rules and not bend them or kick them to the curb. (The Reepos say the Dems are doing this but they're living on an alternate Earth) .

Let's even go one further and suppose the Dems were to really resort to extreme tactics  like their prisoner counterpart Reeps, say:  fiscal brinksmanship, judicial stonewalling, Senate filibusters, and even nuclear options in the latter etc. Even allowing the gov't to shut down rather than allow or enable a poison  pill banking amendment (risking the whole banking system) to pass. This would be only  after the unwritten rules discouraging such behavior have already been broken by their Republican opponents, B.

If we’re being especially generous (or blind), perhaps we can view this reluctance to take B to the mat as evidence of civility or noble sobriety. . But let's get real. Even if that interpretation is true, so what? Once the norms are cast aside and the Democrats  agree to play by the new ugly rules of political reality  what does refusing to play hardball  really accomplish? Well, a big fat nothing other than to depress your most fervent supporters - the ones you need to come out at midterms (say to keep control of a branch of congress)  Besides, not playing to win - calling it uncivil or "ugly", whatever-   gives the Republicans the political equivalent of one free punch before the fight.

It stands to reason that playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules while your antagonist is playing with knives and Glocks means you are a sucker and playing on a losing wicket. It means you are destined to lose most political battles because you treat them as scholarly debates and not warfare.

 

 

But this was also the point brought out by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their terrific book, Banana Republicans, e.g. http://www.prwatch.org/books/bananas.html

Rampton and Stauber observed that  while the Reeps treat political altercations as warfare, Dems treat them like debate society meets. No wonder, the authors noted, the Ds get their butts handed to them so often.
 

This extends to the current election campaign and how as many Dems are coming down on Bernie Ssanders as dumb Reepos. For example, consider Hillary by contrast. She has no coherent unifying message or narrative as Sanders does with Wall Street and the banksters. This vanilla approach assures her "moderate" wine and brie corporate class dems will be content but not the most energetic partisans - the very type the Ds need to show up at midterms.

By contrast, Sanders' Wall Street theme provides an overarching narrative that can account for all aspects of our misshapen political and economic system. Thus, the Wall Street yen for ever more monies with which to speculate drives the impetus for Social Security (and VA) privatization, the demand  for ever higher share increases for health insurers, like Aetna, UnitedHealth etc.,  forces them to jack up rates leading to ever higher deductibles- as well as closed state  health exchanges (like here in Colo.)  if profit margins don't meet the mark. By the same token, similar pressure on private lenders forces them to insist on ever higher student loan rates - thereby increasing student debt. Meanwhile, Wall Street demand for more mobile global capital and resources leads to more wars and occupations such as Iraq and Afghanistan - but with designed cover stories (if we don't fight them there we fight them here)

Lastly, all these imperatives are driven by the enormous sums of Wall Street money poured into political campaigns which gives the movers and shakers dubs on driving economic policy - as it turns out for both parties. Thus, the infusion of corporate cash into the Dem party essentially breeds political eunuchs, balless wonders with no fight left in them since they're on the take like the Repukes.

Incredibly, the Dems in this critical election year have had a born fighter - Bernie Sanders -  drop into their collective laps,  but they want to eschew him as a full throated class warrior on their behalf. They want to banish him to the political hinterlands using the cowardly ruse of "super delegates" to prevent any breach of their perfectly vanilla Neolib  moderate-corporate  political style. And then these nimrods wonder why they are losing the Millennials in terms of preference and why - as in a poll cited this a.m. on CBS- this demographic believes Socialism can work for them by a 58 percent to 33 percent margin. Capitalism not so much, because it's been perverted by the corporatists and their lackeys into crony capitalism and corporate welfare! This latter will survive so long as corporate money buys our elections and corrupts the process

Will they use him, given most polls show him beating any given Repup? Hell no, because they themselves are too terrified of a real class fighter, given this party is now allied with the monied Overclass.. They have been reduced to ninnies - such as the four economists (Austan Goolsbee, Alan Krrueger, Christina Romer and Laura D'Andrea Tyson) who the idiot media refers to as "liberal" but who are in fact bought and paid for Neoliberals.  These four turkeys - all former WH advisors (no wonder) evidently penned a missive to Sanders,  arguing that the "extreme claims" of his proposals "could undermine the credibility of the progressive agenda".   The honest to God truth? These pawns wouldn't recognize a progressive economic agenda if it bit them in their collective asses.

That's how inured their brains are to real liberalism and its principles, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/02/bernie-has-to-teach-hillary-what-it.html

Goolsbee, recall, back in 2011, floated plans for Social Security "fixes" to "insolvency" including privatization. The guy is another Pareto -based economist from the U. of Chicago and totally sympathizes with the Overclass. This is because he and the 3 other econ imps value the Banking hegemony and Wall Street moneymen Sanders has been inveighing against. Why? Well, they are the main pillars of financial support for the Dem party and also probably fund most of Goolsbee's academic research.

As if all this isn't enough we have - from across the 'pond' - another Neolib hack whore  and former Labor PM (Tony Blair) bloviating that Dems must "avoid nominating Sanders" who this dick brain actually compares to the UK's Jeremy Corbyn. See e.g.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9c70cae8-da55-11e5-98fd-06d75973fe09.html#axzz411k0EU3O


For those who need a memory jog,  recall it was Blair who supported Gee Dumbya's invasion of Iraq which has directly brought us the ISIS scourge in the Middle East. That this asshole is even putting his two cents in on an American election - praising Hillary- reminds our citizens which two sides are in play.

Look, if this is how Bernie stands to be treated then perhaps he needs to strike out as an Independent (Democratic SOCIALIST as opposed to "Democrat") and fight the good fight without the pseudo-support of puppets and poltroons using a rigged superdelegate system. I am ready to back him, because I'd rather have a real fighter in my corner than a damned pretender.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/paul-buchheit/66115/why-we-need-democratic-socialism-to-fix-our-educational-system

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/66090/why-the-deafening-silence-on-cutting-the-military-budget

Smart Phone Zombies A Danger To Themselves And Others

Ok, in the interest of preliminary full disclosure I do not own a smart phone, Call me a Luddite or Neo-Luddite if you want but this is the truth. I have no use for the damned things (besides I am a typer not a texter) and the tiny screens are way too small for my current vision capabilities. Besides, when I go out for a walk or exercise, I like to take in the world and be "present in the moment" (in the parlance of Buddhists) not distractedly become enmeshed in a tiny, electronic facsimile of reality. (My wife does own a smart phone and loves it - but then she can see the damned screen and has fingers nimble enough to text).

But the point of this blog post is not whether smart phones themselves have value in our modern world, it is more how they are used. And by all indications they are not being used intelligently or in a way that even advances the survival interests of many users. (Making them all unintentional candidates for a collective Darwin Award). For those in doubt or mystified I invite you to Google: "smart phone users in near accidents while texting", or "smart phones and accidents". It will be sure to be an eye opener.

These obsessed texters and smart phone gazers have actually been seen walking into freaking traffic, falling off curbs, walking into each other, walking into street signs and even (in Chicago) walking while texting until falling onto a subway track. You'd think this collection of clowns would have the good sense to put their gizmos away until they at least get to café or park bench where they can focus on getting their text out or seeing their Instagram feed - but no, they're too damned into navel gazing obsession to do that.

To be sure, it is a public safety conundrum as we're soon reaching a point where some places are having to hire actual street and traffic guards to call out to motorists to save the "smart" phone dopes from themselves. ("Hey, bub, watch the idiot there walking into the street texting!"). One columnist from the WSJ has even opined that "it's a design failure in smart phones". I believe he is getting at the phones sounding some kind of a loud alarm when the Zomboid user, errr......human, is still texting while approaching an intersection or a subway station.  Or better yet, the phone goes blank when the user gets into any imminent danger. (Better than accidentally earning a "Darwin award"!)

The situation has gotten so ridiculous in Deutschland that the Germans have now coined a name for these detached nitwits: "Smombies" - that is the combination of smartphone plus zombie. In some quarters a new malady called "inattentive accident" has been coined to describe the sometime catastrophic encounters between texters and inanimate objects.

One set of data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, crunched by the same WSJ columnist, found that emergency room visits involving distracted pedestrians using cell phones increased 124% in 2014, up from 2010.  Also, up tenfold from 2006. It seems as the damned buggers get jazzier more and more people are converted into smombies with the inevitable consequencs. These increases are also consistent with a separate study by Jack Nasar a professor at Ohio State who found a similar uptick.

The gizmos are now being blamed for at least ten percent of all pedestrian injuries, including broken legs, fractured skulls and even shattered spines.

Maybe the best option is for the geniuses at Apple and elsewhere to design a new generation of i-phones etc. with protections for distracted dopes. In the meantime,  when walking on the streets - especially busy ones, perhaps users need to put the things away until settled or ensconced at a defined place where texting or stupefied screen gazing can be done without walking into a mailbox, fire hydrant, street lamp or an oncoming truck.


See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-note-to-selfie-takers-not-at-baseball.html

The Rigged Market System Redux: Stock Buybacks At Epidemic Levels and Slowing Growth

Greg Ip's recent (Jan. 29) WSJ expose of business buybacks of its own shares merits commendation for exposing an underlying source of continued slow growth, and system gaming. As he noted in his piece:

"Companies are splashing out staggering sums to buy each other's or their own stock while maintaining a tight grip on capital expansion."

He points to a scandalous increase in stock buybacks by U.S. firms since 2009. adding that it attests to a "troubling malaise in the global economy. Nearly seven years into an expansion risk aversion remains pervasive."

Ip adds that if this continues the world is in for "an era of growing worker dissatisfaction and political upheaval".

Well, think about it. Sitting on over $1.4 trillion in capital and plowing most into stock buybacks, to inflate P/E ratios, why the hell would these business buzzards invest in more plant, more jobs? They wouldn't, hence reinforcing the premise of William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their 1997 work, 'The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital And The Betrayal of Work'.  The authors made a point of noting the modern Neoliberal state had no interest in human labor, paying it properly, or re-investing. It is only invested in its own aggrandizement and proliferation at the expense of citizens.

Thus, stock buybacks represent yet another symptom of the rigged economy which the Neoliberal elitists are doing their damndest to try to defend against Sen. Sanders' pointed attacks. The latest canard being he is a "single issue" candidate, missing the point that Wall Street Neoliberalism is what underpins the whole perverted system - from elections, to underpaid labor, to overpriced health care, to crumbling roads and bridges. Indeed, only an ignorant or blind person would not be able to see the thread of Wall Street's speculators running through all of these.

Back to the stock buybacks. Mr. Ip observes that since 2009, U.S. firms - entrenched in their own myopic interests- boosted capital investment by only 43%, dividends by 67% and stock buybacks by a whopping 194%. This according to Jason Thomas of Carlyle Group. In addition, rather than investing in new plants for new jobs, businesses have squandered $2 trillion on mergers and acquisitions - a third more than the previous annual record in 2006. This is what has directly led to a distortion in the economy and the failure to grow more decent paying jobs.

Ip does try to justify some of the business risk aversion by asserting it is a reaction to increased government regulations, especially on the banking system - which is then more leery of lending.  For example banks are being required to hold more capital and liquid assets, and also penalties have "been increased for wrong doing". Well, excuse the hell out of me, but banks should be forced to hold more capital, and should be penalized for wrongdoing! To me this is just a dodge to get businesses off the hook.

The reality is American business has become self-invested and fat off its own capital and no longer willing to invest in the American worker. Also, sitting on over a trillion they're not exactly bleeding capital nor do they need a lot of bank loans. They are just plain selfish and interested only in their own expansion.

Stock buybacks help them by inflating their share prices without the need to really improve a product or service. Hence, it's all smoke and mirrors and BS.  Columnist Jonathan Clements in an Oct. 26, 2014 piece in the WSJ Section of the Denver Post, observed:

"Many companies were big buyers of their own stock before the 2007-09 market decline, only to scuttle their buyback programs during the market crash. In recent years with share prices up sharply they have begun to voraciously buy back."

And why not, because they are then reaping the bounty of their own high share prices? Buy backs also make management's stock options more valuable - so what better way to compensate the Street's honchos?  Strangely, all this has selectively blinded investors to the lack of dividends. As Robert Arnott, quoted by Clements, stated:

"Dividends are reliable, You cut them at your own peril - but you can cut a buyback and hardly anyone notices."

And then we beheld this in the The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 22, p. C2):

"U.S. companies are increasingly using the bond market for the benefit of shareholders, a move that is starting to raise alarm among some debt investors.

Proceeds from some of the largest bond sales, including those from Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Oracle Corp., were earmarked for share repurchases...

Buybacks can boost stock prices by reducing the number of shares available. Some analysts warn that the tactic risks eroding corporate financial health by diverting cash that can be used to fund debt repayments and make investments that can boost corporate earnings power over time."

Thus,  share buybacks are in fact undermining corporate health for short term gain, even as they fuel the ongoing equity asset bubble to absurd proportion.

To her credit, as the WSJ piece noted, Hillary Clinton called for "greater disclosure of buybacks amid concerns they come at the expense of longer term investment"

This ought to be a given. But Bernie Sanders solution to this racket would pack an even bigger punch: imagine imposing on each and every share buyback a 50 cent transaction tax. In no time you'd have more than enough of the $70b needed to fund Bernie's free public college tuition proposal. Make the bastards earn their increase in share prices, i.e. by superior products and services, instead of gaming the system.