Later On

Interesting article, lots of photos, requires yet another kitchen appliance so I won’t be doing it.

Of course they do: it helps business, and the GOP has never cared for consumers. Heather at Video Café has an excellent post on this, including this video:

From Sen. Chris Dodd–Republicans Block Dodd’s Effort to Immediately Stop Credit Card Rate Hikes:

Senate Republicans blocked Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodds (D-CT) attempt to pass legislation to stop credit card interest rate hikes.

Dodd went to the Senate floor to ask for consent for the Senate to take up and pass his Credit Card Rate Freeze Act, which would prevent credit card companies from hiking interest rates, fees and finance charges on customers existing balances until Credit CARD Act protections take effect in February. Regrettably, Republican Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) objected to Dodds request, blocking the bill from Senate passage.

Consumers obviously have a responsibility to spend within our means and to pay what we owe. We bear that responsibility. But the credit card industry as well has a responsibility to deal with their customers honorably. There is nothing honorable about whats happened with these significant rate increases and fees. Most importantly, they dont have a right to rip off American families, especially when the Congress has already gone on record opposing the very actions they’re engaging in, Dodd said on the Senate floor.

Happy Holidays from the GOP.

John Amato:

This is outrageous. The Republicans are actually blocking freezes on credit card rate hikes as the holidays approach us? What would Santa say? Where’s the outrage from the Democrats and the Villagers? Will David Broder write a juicy article showing his disdain for the treatment of the American people by republicans? I mean he’s the ultimate bipartisan scold. I bet if you asked the teabaggers waiting to see Sarah Palin at a book signing, they would say that it’s un-American and Socialist to stop credit card companies from raising their rates. “That’s their right as Americans if you support freedom and the Constitution.” Maybe Palin will write something about it on her Facebook page for the media to lap up. You know, the Democrats are trying to use death panels on the poor credit card companies in a down economy. That’s can’t be good, right Katie?

Digby writes:

These people are sticking up for credit card companies who are gouging their customers during the holidays in the middle of a recession! What do they have to do to provoke some outrage from the Democrats, gun down Tiny Tim? (Of course, the Republicans would simply say they were defending their constitutional right to bear arms.)

Honestly, this should provoke a Democratic outcry of epic proportions because it’s good policy and it’s good politics. They missed the boat by failing to draw attention to the fact that the Republicans blocked the unemployment insurance extension for over a month but this issue is hitting both the employed and the unemployed, all across the country.

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This is great. Donny Shaw at the Open Congress blog:

As I pointed out in a previous post, one of the decisions Harry Reid had to make in reconciling the HELP Committee and Finance Committee was whether or not to require Members of Congress to purchase their insurance the same way everyone else does. The Finance Committee would have required all Members of Congress to give up their Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan and buy insurance through the new exchanges instead, while the HELP bill would allow them to keep their exclusive health care plans.

The final bill’s out, and Reid chose to include the Finance Committee language. Straight form the bill text:

(d) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.
(i) REQUIREMENT. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are
(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or
(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
(ii) DEFINITIONS. In this section:
(I) MEMBER OF CONGRESS. The term Member of Congress means any member of the House of Representatives or the Senate.
(II) CONGRESSIONAL STAFF. The term congressional staff means all full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.

Read the Reid health care bill on OpenCongress>>

Continue reading.

From the Center for American Progress in an email:

Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell (R) is proposing legislation that invokes the 10th Amendment of the Constitution to exempt his state from the recently passed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA), claiming it infringes on freedom of speech. Hate crimes laws have been on the books since 1969, but Russell seems to object only to this law, which expands the definition of such crimes to "those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation." Russell and other right wingers claim that anti-gay religious leaders could be "imprisoned for their speech" under the new law, or a "suspect could pass the blame onto a religious leader who preached out against" homosexuality. But as Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) noted, "Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American’s freedom of religion [or] freedom of speech," because the law "targets acts, not speech." Russell is echoing a common right-wing objection to health care reform — pushed by the so-called "tenthers" — which argues that because the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, the 10th Amendment leaves that power exclusively to the states. As Russell says, the HCPA "gives the federal government power that was not given to them in the Constitution." Russell and the other tenthers have flimsy legal basis for their claims. The Constitution gives Congress broad power to "provide for the common defense and general welfare," but as Center for American Progress Policy Analyst Ian Millhiser noted, tenthers "insist that these words don’t actually mean what they say." This fringe so out of touch with the mainstream that it believe landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the federal highway system, and rules regulating airplane safety are unconstitutional.

Klein:

E.J. Dionne has an interesting column today on the Republican party’s Senate strategy of forcing a cloture vote on everything, even on the few provisions they support. A few months ago, I wrote that the G.O.P. had become a party led by nihilists. This is further evidence of that. I have doubts about some of the legislation the Democrats are producing, especially those bills that aggrandize their special interests at the expense of the public interest. It would be nice if we had a proper opposition party to provide a creative check, and balance, on such bills. But we don’t. What we have is the Party of Snit, refusing to participate in the governing of our country. It would be nice if the public demanded a price to be paid for this, but I doubt that will happen.

Greenwald:

"What I’m absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism" — Barack Obama, yesterday.

"Holder said five other Guantanamo detainees would be tried by military tribunals. The five include Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen; and Canadian Omar Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan" –NPR, yesterday.

"’Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions . . . . and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material’ . . . If true, that means that there are 75 so-called ‘Fifth Category’ detainees who might be subject to indefinite detention without trial" — The Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder, yesterday, quoting The Washington Post.

* * * * *

Can anyone reconcile Obama’s homage to "our legal traditions" and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing:  i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all?

During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke.  He can’t possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system — the most potent argument justifying what he did — since he’s the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind.

Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials — as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly — what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York?  If you’re taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people — as Holder has done — then what is the answer to the Right’s objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission?  If the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without any charges, why isn’t that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?  By denying jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in giving Mohammed a trial in New York.

Even worse, Holder was reduced to admitting — even boasting — that this concocted multi-tiered justice system (trials for some, commissions for others, indefinite detention for the rest) enables the Government to pick and choose what level of due process someone gets based on the Government’s assessment as to where and how they’re most likely to get a conviction: …

Continue reading.

I’ve long been interested in organizational learning and once had a good library of books by Chris Argyris, who focused on that. I think I’ve been interested because I’ve worked in several organizations that were highly resistant to learning—which I think is typical: learning leads to innovation, which means change, and those in power strongly prefer that things not change for fear that their power will be diminished by change.

Bruce Schneier:

Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy (May 2009) was written by Michael Kenney for the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s long: 146 pages. From the executive summary:

Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy contains significant findings for counter-terrorism research and policy. Unlike existing studies, this report suggests that the relevant distinction in knowledge learned by terrorists is not between tacit and explicit knowledge, but metis and techne. Focusing on the latter sheds new insight into how terrorists acquire the experiential "know how" they need to perform their activities as opposed to abstract "know what" contained in technical bomb-making preparations. Drawing on interviews with bomb-making experts and government intelligence officials, the PI illustrates the critical difference between learning terrorism skills such as bomb-making and weapons firing by abstraction rather than by doing. Only the latter provides militants with the experiential, intuitive knowledge, in other words the metis, they need to actually build bombs, fire weapons, survey potential targets, and perform other terrorism-related activities. In making this case, the PI debunks current misconceptions regarding the Internet’s perceived role as a source of terrorism knowledge.

Another major research finding of this study is that while some Islamic militants learn, they do not learn particularly well. Much terrorism learning involves fairly routine adaptations in communications practices and targeting tactics, what organization theorists call single-loop learning or adaptation. Less common among militants are consequential changes in beliefs and values that underlie collection action or even changes in organizational goals and strategies. Even when it comes to single-loop learning, Islamic militants face significant impediments. Many terrorist conspiracies are compartmented, which makes learning difficult by impeding the free flow of information between different parts of the enterprise. Other, non-compartmented conspiracies are hindered from learning because the same people that survey targets and build bombs also carry out the attacks. Still other operations, including relatively successful ones like the Madrid bombings in 2004, are characterized by such sloppy tradecraft that investigators piece together the conspiracy quickly, preventing additional attacks and limiting militants’ ability to learn from experience.

Indeed, one of the most significant findings to emerge from this research regards the poor tradecraft and operational mistakes repeatedly committed by Islamic terrorists. Even the most "successful" operations in recent years — 9/11, 3/11, and 7/7 — contained basic errors in tradecraft and execution. The perpetrators that carried out these attacks were determined, adaptable (if only in a limited, tactical sense) — and surprisingly careless. The PI extracts insights from his informants that help account for terrorists’ poor tradecraft: metis in guerrilla warfare that does not translate well to urban terrorism, the difficulty of acquiring mission-critical experience when the attack or counter-terrorism response kills the perpetrators, a hostile counter-terrorism environment that makes it hard to plan and coordinate attacks or develop adequate training facilities, and perpetrators’ conviction that they don’t need to be too careful when carrying out attacks because their fate has been predetermined by Allah. The PI concludes this report by discussing some of the policy implications of these findings, suggesting that the real threat from Islamic militancy comes less from hyper-sophisticated "super terrorists" than from steadfast militants whose own dedication to the cause may undermine the cunning intelligence and fluid adaptability they need to survive.

The comments at the link are quite interesting.

Christine Dell’Amore at National Geographic News:

The world’s oceans, which normally gobble up carbon dioxide, are getting stuffed to the gills, according to the most thorough study to date of human-made carbon in the seas.

Between 2000 and 2007, as emissions of the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide skyrocketed, the amount of human-made carbon absorbed by the oceans fell from 27 to 24 percent.

In terms of ocean processes, “that’s a pretty large drop, and the trend is pretty clear: The ocean can’t keep up with [human-made carbon],” said study leader Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Khatiwala is careful to point out that the total uptake of carbon is not declining—the rate is just not growing as fast as it used to.

But if the oceans continue to be overwhelmed by carbon, more of the gas will remain in the already warming atmosphere, the authors say. (See global warming fast facts.)

“Ultimately the ocean is what’s controlling what’s going on here,” said Chris Sabine, a supervisory oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved in the research.

“It’s a big deal that it’s becoming less efficient in taking up CO2.”

Continue reading.

UPDATE: More info here.

As is my practice, I used the Semogue 2000 for a second day: two days for each outing. It’s breaking in gradually. I got a very good first and last pass lather since the brush was fresh from the soap—Tryphon Old American Barbershop. The second pass was still not so great, but serviceable.

The Gillette 7 o’Clock SharpEdge, made in St. Petersburg, is an excellent blade, more or less equivalent to Swedish Gillettes. I broke open a pack and will be using those for a while. In the Gillette English Aristocrat, it did a superb job: totally smooth face, no nicks or burn. (Note that this is NOT the 7 AM blade line—totally different blade.)

TOBS Shave Shop seemed the appropriate aftershave, and now I’m good to go.

Absolutely astonishing. The Maricopa County (Phoenix and environs) Sheriff’s Department is totally out of control. Watch the security video at the link.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

Have you ever purchased something online, pressed the "Continue" button, and then, months later, discovered that you had signed yourself up for a membership program that was charging your credit card 20 bucks a month for something you had never heard of and never knew you were buying?  Well, guess what: these scams are a multi-billion dollar business, they’re partnered with lots of brand name sites you’d think you could trust, and they do everything they can to sign you up for their "services" without you knowing about it.

More here from Felix Salmon, but make sure your blood pressure is in good shape before you click over to read about it.  Previous background about legal harrassment of a blogger who wrote about this a couple of months ago here.  (Note: blood pressure warning still applies.)

Do not trust businesses.

On the whole, has humanity proved an asset to life on earth? Or would life on earth had been better off if humanity had failed to arise?

Just thinking.

Jon Lehman:

How old is old enough for students to be approached by military recruiters?

High school? Junior high? Fourth grade? How about ten weeks into kindergarten?

Last week at the dinner table, my five-year-old son announced blithely, "Soldiers came to school today." He then added, "They only kill bad people. They don’t kill good people."
He made the announcement with the same levity he uses in recalling the plot line of Frog and Toad or a Nemo video.

My wife and I looked at each other incredulously.

"Soldiers came to school? What do you mean?" I asked.

He repeated himself and then I remembered – it was "Career Day" at school. My son mentioned a bus driver too, but it was the soldier who stuck out in his mind. When my wife asked if the soldier was cool, he nodded yes.

The soldier had given my five-year-old a gift. From his yellow backpack, he produced a six-inch, white, plastic ruler with big, bold, red letters reading "ARMY NATIONAL GUARD" next to a waving American flag and below that  www.1-800-GO-GUARD.com.

So, now we know the answer to the above question…

Continue reading.

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:

Opposition to the Obama administration’s plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates in a federal court in New York City is hardening into two camps. One is concerned that we may be unwittingly playing into the terrorists’ hands. The other is incensed that we already have. What both camps share, besides a kind of unhinged logic and complete disregard for the legal process, is an obsessive fascination with the accused. The result is a broad willingness to sacrifice our commitment to legal principles in favor of the symbolic satisfaction of crushing the hopes and dreams of a motley group of criminals.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, firmly in the first camp, is hopping mad that we are poised to make all the suspect’s dreams come true. As he said on ABC’s This Week: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when he was first arrested, asked to be brought to New York. I didn’t think we were in the business of granting the requests of terrorists."

Funny, that. I didn’t think we were in the business of caring one way or another what the terrorists want from us. The criminal justice system is as uninterested in advancing the goals of the accused as it is in frustrating them. The most vocal critics seem to forget that our legal system exists not to grant requests or dash hopes but to bring people to justice.

Giuliani seems to object mainly to trying terrorists in his backyard. Presumably, he would be fine prosecuting KSM in criminal court in Virginia. Or at least he was back when Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted on terror charges. At the time, Giuliani had this to say: "I was in awe of our system … that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law." What Giuliani objects to, it seems, is the symbolic defeat of trying these defendants in the same place the crime occurred—hardly an exceptional undertaking in the criminal justice system. In his view, it’s somehow rude to New York itself to try the terrorists there…

Continue reading.

David Randall in The Independent:

 

Evidence was growing this weekend that babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah – scene in 2004 of one of the few set-piece battles of the invasion – are exhibiting high rates of mortality and birth defects.

In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 – before the invasion – records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.

The data – contained in a letter sent by a group of British and Iraqi doctors and campaigners to the United Nations last month – presaged claims made in a report in The Guardian yesterday that there has been a sharp rise in birth defects in the city. The paper quoted Fallujah General’s director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais, as saying: "We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies… There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of brain tumours." Earlier this year Sky News reported a Fallujah grave-digger saying that, of the four or five new-born babies he buries every day, most have deformities…

Continue reading. George Bush’s needless invasion of Iraq continues its enormous human costs.

Ari Melber at Huffington Post:

See if you can follow this logic.

A recent article in Newsweek states that Democrats could have won a "very significant number of Republican votes in Congress" for the stimulus — had there only been a "meaningful tax-cut component." Political journalism is often imaginative, but this verges on delusion. After all, Obama labored to add about $280 billion in tax cuts to the stimulus — over objections from many Democrats — and still netted zero Republican votes in the House. Then, the piece asserts that Obama has no "coattails," based on 2009 elections, and reports "early signs of Obama fatigue are emerging." (Again, another observer might note that Democrats have won all 5 special congressional elections this year.) The article also predicts that gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey "will" make some Democrats "very nervous" about health care reform, which is a "political risk" for the party.

"We appear to be witnessing the beginnings of a significant Republican revival," continues the piece, bringing home its quirky counter-narrative. Lucky for struggling Democrats, however, this Newsweek item closes with some free political advice. "Liberals in Washington would do well to let go of the Republican breakdown narrative," notes the final sentence, "and pull back to the center–or suffer the consequences."

It’s the kind of article that might leave you wondering if the author simply works for the G.O.P.

Newsweek‘s byline states that the writer, Yuval Levin, is "editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center." It all sounds quite journalistic and non-partisan. But Levin is also a former aide to President George W. Bush. (He served on the White House domestic policy staff as recently as 2006). If anything, this government experience makes Levin’s political analysis more interesting. Why keep it from readers?

As it happens, Levin’s first piece for Newsweek, back in March, was prominently billed as Obama analysis from "a Bush veteran." So I put the question to Newsweek, and spokesperson Katherine Barna shares their rationale: …

Continue reading.

Here’s the test. I got them all correct. How about you? (Full disclosure: I’m a citizen raised in the US, so I have an unfair advantage.)

From a press release:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today unveiled a new website designed to provide a one-stop location for veterans and veterans organizations to learn about DHS’ many veteran outreach initiatives and hiring and contracting opportunities.

"This new website reflects the shared commitment across the Department to hiring American veterans," said Secretary Napolitano. "Veterans play a vital role in the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to protect the nation, and this website will help us build our veteran workforce to more than 50,000 Department-wide by 2012."

Today’s announcement comes one day after Secretary Napolitano joined President Obama as he signed an Executive Order on the Employment of Veterans in the Federal Government, which emphasizes recruiting and training veterans for employment at federal agencies, increasing the veteran workforce within the executive branch and assisting recently hired veterans in making the adjustment to service in a civilian capacity.

The new website, available at www.dhs.gov/veterans, features information for veterans about how to find employment opportunities at DHS, ways to get involved in community-based efforts like Citizen Corps, and special veteran programs such as Operation Warfighter and Wounded Warrior, which provide employment opportunities for severely wounded or recovering service members to assist their transition back to the military or civilian workforce.

The website also features DHS procurement opportunities for veteran and service disabled veteran business owners and information about DHS policies and news impacting the veteran community.

The new website is the latest step in DHS’ active engagement and recruitment of veterans and veteran-owned businesses. DHS’ civilian workforce includes approximately 47,000 veterans, comprising 25 percent of all employees—including Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute—in addition to the 42,000 active duty members of the U.S. Coast Guard.

On Oct. 29, Secretary Napolitano met with leaders of several veterans service organizations to discuss DHS’ ongoing collaborations with veterans on recruitment and other key DHS initiatives, such as the Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business contract program, which promotes contracting opportunities for veteran-owned businesses.

Secretary Napolitano also recently announced the DHS Veterans Outreach Steering Committee—a group of representatives from across the Department who will meet regularly and advise the Secretary on efforts to improve and integrate veteran outreach. At the Committee’s first meeting, held in October, she discussed plans to expand existing veterans programs and streamline the Department’s veterans outreach efforts to enhance openness and transparency—including the website overhaul announced today.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov/veterans.