Later On

I almost always think little of what Ms. Dowd writes, but today she hits one out of the park:

Angry nuns have been calling Congressman Bart Stupak’s office to complain about his dismissive comments on their bravura decision to make a literal Hail Mary pass, break with Catholic bishops and endorse the health care bill.

As a Catholic schoolboy, the Michigan Democrat had his share of nuns who rapped his knuckles when he misbehaved, like the time he crashed a kickball through the school window.

So, of course, he’s having some acid flashbacks, but he told me, “They’re not printable even in The New York Times.”

Like that other troublemaking Bart (Simpson), Stupak, who wants to kill the health care bill because he thinks the language on abortion funding is not restrictive enough, should have to write on the blackboard a hundred times: “I will listen closely when the nuns tell me I am wrong. I will not be an obstinate lawmaker.”

Stupak got in hot holy water when he told Fox News, “When I’m drafting right-to-life language, I don’t call up nuns.” He followed that with more scorn for sisters, telling Chris Matthews that the nuns were not influential because they rarely try to influence — which makes no sense — and because “they’re not the recognized spokesperson for the Catholic Church.” He listens to the bishops, he said, and antiabortion groups.

We might have to bang Bart’s head into a blackboard a few times before he realizes that in a moral tug-of-war between the sisters and the bishops, you have to go with the gals.

The nuns are giving the Democrats cover. As Bob Casey, an abortion opponent who helped negotiate the abortion language in the Senate bill, observed, quoting Scripture: “They care for ‘the least, the last and the lost.’ And they know health care.”

On Friday, Tim Ryan, an antiabortion Democrat from Ohio, took to the House floor to say he had been influenced by the nuns to vote for the bill.

“You say this is pro-abortion,” he said to Republicans, and yet “you have 59,000 Catholic nuns from across the country endorsing this bill, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes endorsing this bill.”

For decades, the nuns did the bidding of the priests, cleaned up their messes, and watched as their male superiors let a perverted stain spread over the entire church, a stain that has now even reached the Holy See…

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And if I knew I had the votes to pass the legislation, I’d call the first Democratic Representative (in roll-call sequence) who is expected to vote “No.”

I’d say something like this, “We have the votes now, and we know the measure will pass. And, as you know, when it passes, some of the benefits will be felt immediately—no more recission, no more pre-existing condition, money to small businesses—and certainly will be evident long before November. So people are going to like it, and they are going to remember how you voted.

“By far the best outcome for you individually, for the caucus as a whole, and for the American people, is for this measure to pass with a unanimous vote from Democrats: by standing together, we can credibly portray the enactment of the legislation as a great victory, which it is. And since it will be a victory, don’t you want to be on the winning side and not the losing side?”

I think you could talk him/her around (and, if not, go to the next in line—in fact, the same conversation should be going on simultaneously with the top three). And when the nation is watching with bated breath as the vote is taken, and the first “certain” Democratic vote for “No” votes “Yes” instead, imagine the impact. And then when the second follows, and the third… It would be a rout.

And, speaking of rout, think about November: by then, people will be seeing the benefits—and news media will be seeking out stories of big impacts on various individual lives for their human-interest feature stories. And if the Democrats all voted “Yes” and the GOP all voted “No”: it could wipe out the GOP right there, especially as the country in general sees the Tea Party and extreme right as the hate-filled small minority that they are.

Tom Ricks ran a contest, and the best response he got—and it’s dead on—can be read here.

If, after reading it, you think it’s a “must-read,” please comment below. Thanks.

And, at this link, you also have links to a video of him speaking.

John Markoff and David Barboza in the NY Times:

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.

Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.

“Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. “Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.”

Mr. Wortzel’s presentation at the House hearing got a particularly strong reaction from Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who called the flagging of the Wang paper “one thing I think jumps out to all of these Californians here today, or should.”

He was alluding to concerns that arose in 2001 when The Los Angeles Times reported that intrusions into the network that controlled the electrical grid were traced to someone in Guangdong Province, China. Later reports of other attacks often included allegations that the break-ins were orchestrated by the Chinese, although no proof has been produced.

In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.

“My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,” he said.

But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.

“Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,” Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. “Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.”

The issue of Mr. Wang’s paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally …

Continue reading.

Quoted by Kate Pickert in TIME:

"We feel like we’ve been pregnant for 17 months, let’s get on with it already." Those were the words of Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, on Saturday, as she moved health reform one step closer to the finish line.

Continue reading.

Karoli writing in Crooks & Liars:

While Bart Stupak and the Catholic bishops continue to shill for the US Chamber of Commerce and health insurers with their ridiculous stand on abortion and health care reform, Arizona’s Republican governor affirms what we already knew: "life" to Republicans is nothing more than a talking point.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed legislation today ending the CHIP program in Arizona, effectively tossing 47,000 low-income children off the insurance rolls and out of doctors’ offices.

Not content to stop there, the state is also rolling back their Medicaid coverage to toss an additional 310,000 adults off the rolls, claiming the state budget is simply too stressed to handle the load, which is strange, considering the federal matching funds they sacrifice along with the state’s children.

The cuts also mean the state will forgo hundreds of millions of dollars in federal matching aid, and could lose far more if Congress passes a health bill that requires states to maintain eligibility levels for the two programs.

Ms. Brewer, a Republican, has warned that more cuts will be needed if voters do not approve a referendum in May to raise the sales tax by a penny for three years, to 6.6 cents per dollar.

“Arizona is navigating its way through the largest state budget deficit in its long history,” said Ms. Brewer, a staunch conservative who said she had never previously supported a tax increase. “With my signature on this budget, the first major step to recovery has been taken.”

Let me see if I understand this. A Republican governor wants to raise the sales tax to balance the state budget, which is operating at a shortfall like most state budgets right now. Part of balancing the budget is to forgo federal funds which would boost state resources to assist with covering children. Instead, Arizona has decided those children can die or end up in emergency rooms, which will then threaten hospitals’ financial solvency. If those hospitals go bankrupt, then children, adults and seniors will have no access to any medical care, which will certainly make that state more attractive to commercial interests.

This smells like a temper tantrum to me, driven by teabaggers and extremists who would shut down abortion clinics but leave those now-born children in the desert to die. What I’m not seeing is an end game. How does this end well for anyone? Senior citizens would be hurt by bankrupt providers, too, and there are plenty of them in Arizona. If Governor Brewer gets her sales tax increase, will she reinstate the children’s insurance program?

Please, make it stop…

Brian Beutler at TPMDC:

Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today’s protest on Capitol Hill–the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation–went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming "kill the bill"… and punctuating their chants with the word "nigger."

Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, "kill the bill and then the N-word" several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Canon House office building.

"People have been just downright mean," Lewis added.

And that wasn’t an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed "Barney, you faggot"–a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.

After that incident, Capitol police threatened to expel the protesters from the building, but were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed. Tea party protesters equipped with high-end video cameras were summoned to film the encounter and the officers ultimately relented.

After the caucus meeting, TPMDC’s Evan McMorris-Santoro caught up with Frank, who reflected on the incident.

"I’m disappointed at a unwillingness to be just civil," Frank said. "[T]he objection to the health care bill has become a proxy for other sentiments."

"Obviously there are perfectly reasonable people that are against this, but the people out there today on the whole–many of them were hateful and abusive," Frank added.

Asked by TPMDC whether today’s protesters were more hateful than at other rallies, Frank took issue with party leaders for aligning themselves with the movement.

I do think the leaders of the movement, and this was true of some of the Republicans last year, that they think they are benefiting from this rancor. I mean there are a couple who–you know, Michele Bachmann’s rhetoric is inflammatory as well as wholly baseless. And I think there are people there, a few that encourage it.

"If this was my cause, and I saw this angry group yelling and shouting and being so abusive to people, I would ask them to please stop it," Frank concluded. "I think they do more harm than good."

Shortly thereafter, the same group of people surrounded Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as he entered a first-floor elevator. Above the cacophony, I heard one man call Waxman a "crook" and a "liar."

"This is incredible," House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told reporters of the slurs. "It’s shocking to me." He said he hadn’t heard such vitriol since March 15, 1960 when he was protesting segregation laws that forced him to sit in the back of buses. "A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this, is not about health care at all," Clyburn said. "I think a lot of those people today demonstrated this is not about health care."

What is it about, a reporter asked?

"It’s about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."

Amanda Terkel at ThinkProgress:

Today’s Code Red rally appears to be one of the most raucous Tea Party gatherings on Capitol Hill yet. In addition to protesters shouting with rage at federal lawmakers, Sam Stein reports on some more disturbing incidents:

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a ‘ni–er.’ And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

“I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus,” [said Clyburn.]

Clyburn added, “I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care…it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.” TPM, Mother Jones, and The Hill have reports of similar behavior by the Tea Party protesters.

UPDATE: On Twitter, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) wrote that he was "grateful for the thousands of patriots who are storming the Capitol today protesting government healthcare and defending freedom."

Of course, DeMint is himself a racist bigot.

Very interesting talk, from this post at Treehugger, where you will find much more information:

Take a look:

I’m seeing a lot of these in Pacific Grove:

The Monterey County Herald:

First and foremost is the perennial shrub called pride of Madeira, Echium candicans or Echium fastuosum, which sports gorgeous cone-shaped flower spikes this time of year. You’ll see these plants blooming profusely from now through May.

Their flower spikes, each of which contains thousands of individual blossoms, attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds in droves. You’ll see them not only in blue, but in many shades of purple and lavender, as well as a dusty pink.

Pride of Madeira, which can be found in gardens and along roadsides all over the Central Coast, is native to Portugal’s Madeira Island. Because it flourishes in Mediterranean climates and likes dry conditions, it is perfectly suited to our part of California.

In fact, pride of Madeira does best when left alone, preferably in poor soil and with little water — a lazy gardener’s dream. Rich soil and too much moisture are actually detrimental to the plant and can kill it. Some sources say it doesn’t do well in clay soil, and too much shade will keep the plant from blooming.

Pride of Madeira reseeds freely and so it’s easy to get babies if you have a friend with mature plants. Plants also can be started from cuttings. They’ll require occasional water during the first summer in order to get established, but after that need little or no care.

The only caveat with pride of Madeira is that the plants tend to get very large very fast. They can easily grow 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide within two to three years. Experts recommend pruning or pinching back once or twice during the year to maintain shape and keep the plant from getting lanky.

I like to do things like this (in my imagination):

I have become gradually convinced that Israel wants territory and the end of Palestinians, not peace, but I’m still reading about the situation. A good article in the New Yorker by David Remnick:

For decades, mainstream Israeli politicians have taken pride in their fingertip feel for the subtleties of American life and politics. Israeli diplomats know the meeting halls of the Midwest almost as well as they do the breakfast room at the Regency Hotel. So it has been disturbing to see, during the 2008 Presidential race and after, that some right-wing members of the Israeli political élite, along with some ordinary Israelis, often seem to derive their most acute sense of Barack Obama from Fox News and the creepier nooks of the blogosphere.

Polls and conversations with right-leaning Israelis have long reflected a distrust of Obama and a free-floating anxiety about what they imagine to be his view of the world—specifically, his indifference to Israel. At the margins, and sometimes within them, one even hears the familiar aspersions about the President’s middle name, his childhood interlude in Indonesia, and his marination in a South Side milieu supposedly composed of incendiary preachers, black nationalists, fading Weathermen, and (Oy! Vey ist mir!) Palestinian intellectuals.

Most Israelis were convinced of Bill Clinton’s capacity to reconcile a deep admiration for Israel with a desire to end the occupation of the conquered territories and the suffering of the Palestinians. The Israeli right certainly appreciated George W. Bush for his unquestioning embrace, though most Israeli politicians say they would have preferred that more attention had been paid to the nuclear plants in Iran than to the phantom weapons in Baghdad. In Obama, however, many Israelis think that they are dealing with an American leader who, as one official put it, “has no special feeling for us.” Obama’s customary cool feels icy.

This month’s diplomatic drama, which was set off during Vice-President Biden’s visit by the announcement of sixteen hundred housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, reached its sad nadir last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Hagai Ben-Artzi, declared on Israeli radio that Obama was an “anti-Semite.” No one, not even Netanyahu, should be denied his right to an idiot relation, but the remark is less readily dismissed when one recalls reports (later denied) that the Prime Minister himself has referred to David Axelrod (whose West Wing office featured an “Obama for President” sign in Hebrew) and Rahm Emanuel (a civilian volunteer in the Israeli Army during the first Gulf War) as “self-hating Jews.”

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Via Boing Boing:

Leo Tolstoy slammed the Great Man theory of history, instead talking about the summation of millions of individual decisions and yearnings as the prime mover. It wasn’t Napoleon so much as the French people. OTOH, after watching the story of Alexander the Great in the series Engineering an Empire (highly recommended), it’s hard to dismiss the idea entirely.

When Philip II of Macedon (Alexander’s father) was assassinated when Alexander was 20, Alexander became king. He subsequently invaded (and conquered) the Persian Empire, the superpower of the time, then went to Egypt, which immediately accepted him as king and (when Alexander was 24) as a god. Alexander continued his conquests, going even into India.

The result was that Hellenic ideas and ideals and the Hellenic model of a city were spread across the known world, altering the culture and views of all nations at the time.

Consider an alternative: that there were two assassins, and both Philip II and Alexander were killed in 336 BCE. There would have been no successful invasion of Persia. Instead, a succession struggle would have broken out, to determine who would rule. The conflict would preclude any unified invasion, and besides, few men ever elicit the loyalty that Alexander did. The world would look completely different, and who knows whether the Hellenic model would have been influential at all.

Steve of Kafeneio posts a link to a site discovered by his daughter:

Imagine a site comprised entirely of photographs of luscious dishes drawn from every food blog on the internet. Then imagine clicking on any image and going directly to the recipe at its original source.  And just when you thought it couldn’t get better, imagine a search engine (top right hand corner) where you can enter any ingredient hanging around your fridge and you get all the recipes associated with that ingredient. Well you don’t have to imagine, ’cause it’s here. A really terrific foodie web site, courtesy of my daughter.

A great find!

I’ve been watching Molly the owl struggle with her first clutch of eggs. You can watch, too. The Wife, who watches more than I, told me that when Molly laid the first egg, she was very puzzled and kept turning the egg over, trying to figure out what it was. Then she laid more eggs, and started trying to keep them warm. That was quite difficult at first, but she finally figured out how to corral them so she could cover them all. One egg, apparently bad, she ate, apparently with some signs of emotion. (The suspicions are that this was that first egg.) None have yet hatched, but they’re due any minute.

For a first time mother, who has to depend totally on instinct, she’s doing pretty well.

I mean, of course, the Ensign scandal. I can’t embed the clips, but this is well worth the click: Rachel Maddow reviews what we’ve learned to date. It’s strange how the mainstream press is ignoring this. An FBI investigation is currently underway, but the Washington Post, for example, hasn’t even mentioned it.

One thing that Maddow reports that I hadn’t realized: Sen. Ensign called for President Clinton to resign after the Lewinsky affair became public. Ensign also called for Larry Craig to resign after the rest-room incident. But when Ensign’s own affair came to light, Ensign did not offer to resign, probably on the basis of “it’s ok if you’re a Republican.”