Later On

Actually, I can play piano like that. Sitting down, I mean. The finger movements: those I can’t do. Few can.

For an entire sequence of Art Tatum videos, beginning with the above, go here.

Still have the cold, but my voice is marginally better. I took the first six 4-mg tablets of Methylprednisolone this morning, with breakfast (as instructed). This is the first direct assault on my plugged-up ear and I’m hoping it will quickly be successful. I did sleep well, and will probably have another nap this afternoon.

Megs seems very pleased that I’m home. She is getting into my lap in the afternoons for a good squishing, purring like an outboard motor the entire time. When I finally stop, she settles down and sleeps (as do I). At night, she’s sleeping on my hip and occasionally waking me to get a belly rub.

This morning’s shaving tools as shown. On the left is the Shea Moisture shaving brush, discovered from the UK and routinely sold in Target stores for $8. Badger, and not a bad beginner brush at all. It’s a bit more prickly than a silvertip, but not unpleasantly so.

The soap is made by The Gentleman’s Groom Room and is titled “Traditional Shaving Soap/Essence of Scotland/Sweet Gale.” The label also advises “Enriched & Fragranced with Bog Myrtle, Natural Honey, Mixed Spices, Cedarwood and Aberfeldy Single-Malt Scotch Whisky.” It provided a good lather, though I could not myself detect all those fragrances. This was a sample from Razor Emporium enclosed with my most recent batch of plated razors.

And the razor itself: a Gillette slim-handle adjustable plated now in rhodium. It gave a wonderful shave, set on 5 with a new Schick Platinum blade: three passes to perfection.

A splash of Floïd and I’m ready to go.

Here’s a look at how the brush appears on the shelf at Target:

Thanks to TYD for this:

Very interesting article by John Gravois in the Washington Monthly:

When my wife and I bought a house last year in the little town of Ukiah, California, the first person to offer us advice about growing marijuana was our realtor. The house was a stolid 1909 prairie box that had been partitioned into four units, with a front porch, dark green trim, and a couple of fruit trees in the yard. It was charming, but we probably would have settled for a yurt. What mattered most to us was having a foothold in Mendocino County, a place we had long ago decided was the most beautiful in America.

Our realtor, however, drew our attention to the house’s electrical meters. There were four in total, one for each unit. If we ever wanted to grow a few indoor pot gardens, he said, we had an ideal setup. I laughed and thanked him for the tip.

Then the advice kept coming. A neighbor offered to help me get started with a few plants whenever I was ready. The owner of a local hydroponics supply store shook my hand and encouraged me to stop by his warehouse. “We’ll set you up,” he said. Ukiah, I realized, was weirder than I thought.

I’d always known that pot was a huge part of the county’s livelihood, accounting for two-thirds of the local economy, by some estimates. But in eight years of visiting the place with my wife—including one gloriously unsuccessful four-month experiment in backcountry living—I’d never so much as set eyes on a seven-fingered leaf. Then, last year, I began exploring the region’s cannabis economy in earnest, setting out for dirt roads in the hills and basements in Ukiah, occasionally wearing a blindfold.

Gradually a new picture of Mendocino County began to emerge. Neighborhoods in town were dotted with light-flooded outbuildings packed with plants, quietly paying the mortgages of those who tended them. And the county’s amber and green hills were full of homesteaders who for decades had been leading the kind of existence we’d once failed at—men and women who’d come for the land but managed to stay because of marijuana. Many had built their own off-grid homes and outfitted them with elaborate solar arrays, potbellied stoves, and well-tended gardens. In an age of homemade baby food, fire-escape agriculture, and home-brew chic, they’d achieved an almost mythical ideal: economic independence derived from a small piece of earth.

The rub, of course, was that these paragons of yeoman virtue were often antisocial, paranoid wrecks. Marijuana’s high price under prohibition made it possible to earn a decent living from a small patch, but someone was always losing a crop, fleeing into the woods, or going to jail. “It’s like the sharks come in and just eat a few people,” one grower told me. Mendocino County, in short, is as tortured by prohibition as it is dependent on it. But what agonizes the county even more these days is the thought that it could all be coming to an end.

On November 2, Californians go to the polls to vote on whether to start treating cannabis as just another adult recreational drug. The Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010—also known as Proposition 19—would legalize the possession and cultivation of pot in small amounts for adults, while handing the authority to regulate commercial marijuana production and distribution down to counties and cities. Polls as of this writing show that the measure might well pass. If it does, the Rand Corporation predicts that the price of marijuana will fall by as much as 80 percent. But even if the referendum doesn’t pass, a new initiative will almost certainly reach the ballot in 2012, and growers, dispensary owners, and pro-pot local governments will continue to test the boundaries of the state’s fourteen-year-old medical marijuana law. Whatever happens on November 2, the edifice of prohibition is crumbling in California, and one of the largest informal economies in America is inexorably emerging into the mainstream.

In the process, a great scramble has commenced…

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Pareene writes in Salon:

Florida Republican state legislator William Snyder has proposed a great new immigration law for his state, modeled on that one in Arizona. But this one — which GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott supports, of course — has a special twist: White people are exempt!

The more articulate/acceptable-to-the-mainstream supporters of the Arizona law usually point out that the law forbids police from racial profiling. The proposed Florida bill doesn’t really bother pretending.

What few observers seem to have noticed, though, is a bizarre clause Snyder included on page 3. Even if an officer has "reasonable suspicions" over a person’s immigration status, the bill says, a person will be "presumed to be legally in the United States" if he or she provides "a Canadian passport" or a passport from any "visa waiver country."

What are the visa waiver countries? Other than four Asian nations, all 32 other countries are in Western Europe, from France to Germany to Luxembourg.

Others detained by the police would need to carry papers proving that they’re in the U.S. legally. Because, I guess, Canadians and Europeans are never in the U.S., on expired or no visas, working jobs illegally. It’s just the Mexicans.

(One more thing that will be tough for Florida’s law enforcement: Cubans that make it to the U.S. — including those who enter from Mexico — are allowed to be here. Just no Mexicans!)

Sounds easy and intriguing, and I point out to TYD the ancient Roman recipe. Hank Shaw writes at the Atlantic website:

"What do you mean you can make mustard at home?"

It was all I could do to say, "Well no shit, Sherlock! How did you think it was made? By mustard elves under a tree?" Thankfully, I am the age I am; a decade ago I might have let that one slip. But I did not. Instead, I said, "Why yes, and it is really, really easy to make."

I had this conversation with another blogger at the annual BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco last week. I will refrain from identifying the person, because s/he probably would not want to be outed as someone ignorant of the mysteries of mustard-making.

But I gotta tell ya folks, it ain’t mysterious. If you have mustard seed and water, you can make mustard. It’s that easy. And pretty much every nation in the Northern Hemisphere has done so over the years; mustard is a cool-weather crop, to the North what chiles are to the Equator.

Mustard is a condiment of a thousand faces. Some are smooth, others almost entirely made from barely cracked seeds. Vinegar is common, but wine, beer, grape must, and even fruit juices are sometimes used to moisten the seeds. Sweetness is usually achieved by adding honey; an American "honey mustard" can be a one-to-one ratio of mustard to honey. A Bavarian sweet mustard, however, uses only sugar and water—no acid, no honey. Italians put fruit preserves in their mustard, a practice I wholeheartedly endorse.

Mustard is one of Europe’s few native spices, although mustard also has been used in Chinese cooking for around 2,500 years as well.

Ancient Rome was quite the hotbed of mustard-making, and it is Rome that gives us our name for mustard: It is a contraction of mustum ardens, or "hot must," since the Romans often added crushed mustard seeds to unfermented crushed grapes. I’ve recreated a different Roman recipe for mustard that uses almonds, pine nuts, mustard seed, and red wine vinegar. The ferocious bite of this mustard—it should be made with black mustard seeds, the hottest variety—is mellowed by the richness of the nuts. It’s a great accompaniment to roasted meats.

The basic idea behind making mustard is this: Grind seeds and add cool liquid. At its most basic, this is all mustard is. Both Chinese and English mustard (think Colman’s) are nothing more than water and mustard powder. But there are some things you need to know to make great mustard.

First, you need cold liquid. What gives mustard its bite is a chemical inside the seeds reacting with cool or cold liquid. You also need to break the seeds to get at the fiery chemical—it’s like cutting an onion. Heat damages this reaction, however, so to make a hot mustard use cold water, and warm water for a more mellow mustard. Mustard sauces lose punch when long-cooked, and should always have a little extra fresh mustard tossed in at the end of cooking.

This reaction is volatile, too. Left alone, your mustard will lose its bite in a few days, or in some cases even hours. But adding an acid, most often vinegar, stops and sets the reaction in place—this is precisely what happens with horseradish as well. Adding salt not only improves the flavor, but also helps preserve the mustard, too.

Once made, mustard is nearly invulnerable to deterioration. Mustard is one of the more powerful anti-microbial plants we know of, and, considering it is mixed with vinegar and salt, it becomes a heady mix no wee beastie can survive in. It is said that mustard will never go bad, although it can dry out.

You have three choices when it comes to which variety of mustard seed you use: white, brown, or black. White mustard undergoes a different, milder reaction than do brown or black mustards, which are far zingier. American yellow mustard is made with white mustard seed and turmeric, brown mustards are in most of your better mustards, and black mustard is used in hot mustards or in Indian cuisine.

Incidentally, the wild mustard all over California is black mustard. You can thank Father Junipero Serra for that one: He used mustard, which grows like a weed, to mark his travels in Alta California 250 years ago.

The famous Grey Poupon mustard—Dijon has been a center of mustard-making for nearly a millennium now—is traditionally made with stone-ground brown mustard and verjus, the tart juice of unripe grapes. I prefer this style of mustard, and most of my homemade mustards are grainy like Dijon. I grind my seeds with a spice grinder, but you could get all old-school and use a mortar and pestle.

The best mustards, in my opinion, combine . . .

Continue reading.

Thanks to TYD for this.

I was watching a history of kung-fu films, and its thesis was that kung-fu films are at their heart dramas of vengeance, dramas that follow a standard pattern:

1. Protagonist is wronged, usually terribly (family killed, for instance)
2. Protagonist vows revenge and goes into training
3. A long sequence of training under the tutelage of a master or masters
4. Protagonist wreaks vengeance

This credibly describes martial arts movies from Karate Kid through Chuck Norris films to the Hong Kong films.

I commented on the revenge them in an earlier post. Now I see that the theme is indeed universal—at least so far as contemplating revenge. Now Marilyn Elias has more in the LA Times:

"Sweet is revenge," Lord Byron wrote in Don Juan — and how could it be otherwise?

Who wouldn’t enjoy getting even with a sadistic boss, a two-faced friend who slept with your spouse or that teacher who had it in for your child for no good reason?

Most of us have revenge fantasies, human behavior researchers say, and nearly everyone believes that punishing someone who did him wrong would feel tremendously satisfying. But new studies suggest the reality of revenge is far different. Acting on vengeful thoughts often isn’t nearly as gratifying as expected and — surprisingly — can even make people feel worse.

Still, the delicious pleasure anticipated from taking revenge is such a powerful drive that it appears to be hard-wired in the brain.
University of Zurich scientists found that merely contemplating revenge stimulates a region of the brain called the dorsal striatum, which is known to become active in anticipation of a reward or pleasure, such as making money or eating good food.

In the study, 14 volunteers earned money if they cooperated with one another in games. A double-crosser pretended to cooperate but secretly took an unfair share of the cash. Victims could retaliate by imposing a fine on the betrayer, though they sometimes had to spend their own money to carry out the punishment.

All 14 volunteers chose to retaliate if they could do so at no charge, and 12 out of 14 did so even if it cost them additional money. When they decided to seek revenge, the dorsal striatum lighted up on a PET scan. Those whose brains were activated the most were willing to spend the most to punish the double-crosser, notes study co-author Ernst Fehr, whose research was published in Science in 2004.

It’s not surprising that our brains signal "pleasure" at the prospect of punishing someone who wronged us, says Michael McCullough, a University of Miami psychologist and author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. Although it can be a misguided, costly craving in the modern world, evolutionary psychologists believe the thirst for revenge ensured our ancestors’ survival — retaliation was the only way for victims to deter aggressors from harming them or their tribes in the future.

"Revenge burrowed into the brain’s reward system — it hitched a ride on our neurons — because it really was effective at deterring future harm," says McCullough, who notes that revenge is ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom.

Acts worthy of vengeance are seemingly everywhere — we need look no further than across the room to find targets.

Revenge fantasies are rampant at workplaces of every type, says Robert Bies, an organizational behavior expert at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who has studied revenge on the job for 16 years. In roughly 1,000 face-to-face interviews, Bies has heard all about "free riders" who skated by on the work of others, bosses who took credit for their subordinates’ ideas, sneaky co-workers who stole plum assignments, managers who promoted their pets over more qualified employees and more. Although the employees in his studies said they yearned to get even, about one-third of them did nothing, he says.

The two-thirds who did act typically chose indirect or passive-aggressive methods, such as bad-mouthing the offender or giving someone the silent treatment. The retaliation was usually minor compared with the (perceived) harm that provoked it.

"These are mosquito bites; they’re irritants," says Bies, who co-wrote the 2009 book "Getting Even: The Truth About Workplace Revenge — And How to Stop It." But often people say they feel better after making even token attempts to retaliate, he adds.

Bies has seen the same revenge behavior patterns at diverse job sites — churches, high-tech firms, universities, consumer product companies, government agencies. There are gender differences, though. Men retaliate slightly more than women. And though the majority of their acts still are indirect, men use more overt weapons than women, who tend to stick to gossip and covert sabotage.

In the personal arena, revenge research is sparse. For instance, nobody knows whether . . .

Continue reading.

There are at least two approaches to answering a question like that: One way is to base your answer on your current beliefs, knowledge, and “common sense.” The other is to actually investigate the question and look for evidence for and against. For those who favor the second approach:

One med (the spray) I take only in the evening, another (the "6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Let it rip!" one) only in the evening, so at noon I had only the antibiotic, which of course has no visible effect. Still, a couple of aspirin and a nap helped a lot. But not much blogging today, I fear.

I’m still not 100% yet. I went to the doctor because of the plugged Eustachian tube—I wanted action before infection set it—and I got three meds: an antibiotic given the sinus situation, including the plugged Eustachian tube, a powerful nasal spray (once a day, two sprays in each nostril), and a mystery med that lasts six days: you take as many pills as will make the sum of the day and the number of pills equal to 7, a powerful magic number. That is: day 1, 6 pills; day 2, 5 pills; day 3, 4 pills; etc. The pills are MethylPREDNIsolone Tablets, 4 mg. So just 6 days for that one, and just 5 days for the antibiotic (once a day).

He suggested I try a magnesium supplement for the extra heart beats. Worth a try.

My morning aspirin has worn off, and I feel rather sore. Probably back to bed for me. Lunch was soup.

I used the Rooney 2 Finest on the same soap as yesterday and, as predicted, no problems at all: plenty of very nice lather. Above are two razors: the one in front is a Gillette Aristocrat from 1946-47: the center bar is still not notched. Behind it, the quite similar Diplomat or Ambassador (I can’t keep the names straight). The Aristocrat in front has just been replated in gold—gold was indeed the original plating (as for the razor in back), but it was worn and I thought sprucing it up would be nice. It looks now like a new razor. Click the photo to enlarge for closer inspection and comparison of the two finishes.

With a new Swedish Gillette blade, the Aristocrat provided a fine shave, and a splash TOBS aftershave readied me to go out.

Made a very tasty soup by first making the stock:

4 chicken backs

Place backs skin side up on a rack in a roasting pan. Roast at 400ºF for an hour or until thoroughly browned. Discard fat in bottom of the pan.

Put into a 7-qt pot:

5 qts water
1 large carrot, cut into chunks
1 large onion, peeled and cut into chunks
heart of a bunch of celery, cut into chunks (including leaves)
1 bunch parsley, chopped [I didn't have parsley, but here's where I would add it]
2 tsp salt
several good grindings black pepper
as much crushed red pepper as you want—I went mild, with about 1/2 tsp (for 7 qt soup, total)
the 4 roasted chicken backs

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for an hour. Then use a large slotted spoon to remove everything solid from the stock. You want just the liquid. Add to the pot:

2-3 cups chopped green beans (could use a bag of frozen—I used fresh)
1 bunch kale, washed, drained, and chopped well
1 3-4 lb chicken, cut into serving pieces and skin removed
1-2 14-oz cans diced tomatoes (or equivalent chopped fresh tomatoes)
1/2 cup pearled barley
zest of 2 lemons
juice of 2 lemons
2-4 Tbsp vinegar (I used sherry vinegar, but anything will do—you just want the acid)

After adding the above to the stock, add enough water to ensure everything’s covered. Don’t fill the pot—not yet. That will come after we add the final vegetables.

Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer covered for 45-60 min. I’ve read that the acids (tomatoes, lemon juice, vinegar) do not leach any significant calcium from the bones, and that may indeed be true. But the acids certainly melt the cartilage, making those proteins part of the soup stock.

Using tongs, remove chicken pieces to a platter. While those cool, add to the soup the following:

1/2 large red onion, chopped medium
4 stalks celery, chopped fine
1 large carrot, diced

Remove meat from bones, making sure it is in bite-size pieces. You may want to chop larger pieces. Discard the bones and add the meat back to the pot. Now add water to bring the level close to the top of the pot—as close as you feel comfortable.

Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer 20 minutes. Turn off heat, and let it sit until time to eat.

As I eat the soup down, I’ll add the following, one by one, to keep the soup interesting, simmering each time until the new ingredient is cooked (or warmed through):

chopped yellow squash or zucchini
chopped roasted butternut squash (Cut into 1″ cubes after removing seeds, brush with olive oil, and roast in 400ºF oven for 1 hour. Best to line baking sheet with foil. I don’t bother peeling these: roasting softens the skin.)
roasted pumpkin seed
chopped walnuts (not many: it’s a garnish, not an ingredient)

And so on: whatever you need to use up, basically—a coarsely chopped boiled egg wouldn’t be bad, for example.

Pretty damned disgusting ruling, given that the DoJ was unable to produce any evidence whatsoever that ending the policy would in any way harm the military in their appeal, which is why the district judge denied the appeal. But: stall, stall, stall. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Truly, I do not see the point. And I don’t understand the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. AP reports in the NY Times:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a government request to temporarily freeze a judge’s order telling the military to stop enforcing its ban on openly gay troops. [But WHY? Isn't that one of the key questions: the reason for the ruling? The ruling makes absolutely no sense on the face of it. Indeed, I can't see grounds for an appeal, to being with. – LG]

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the lawyers for the gay rights group that brought the lawsuit challenging the policy to file arguments by Monday. The 1993 "don’t ask, don’t tell" rule says gays may serve but only if they keep secret their sexual orientation.

Government lawyers sought to suspend U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’s ruling while appeals were pending, arguing that it would pose a major problem for the military. They said it could encourage service members to reveal their sexual orientation before the issue is fully decided.

President Barack Obama says he supports repeal of the policy, but only after careful review and an act of Congress.

A lawyer for the Log Cabin Republicans said the group was disappointed with the appeals court’s action.

"We view the decision as nothing more than a minor setback," Dan Woods said. "We didn’t come this far to quit now, and we expect that once the Ninth Circuit has received and considered full briefing on the government’s application for a stay, it will deny that application.

New Scientist reports:

Reward pathways in the brains of overweight people become less responsive as they gain weight. This causes them to eat more to get the same pleasure from their food, which in turn reduces the reward response still further.

Eric Stice, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used fMRI brain scans to monitor 26 obese or overweight volunteers as they sipped either a tasty milkshake or a flavourless liquid resembling saliva. They compared the effect of both drinks on brain activity in the dorsal striatum, a key part of the brain’s reward circuitry. Six months later, they retested the volunteers.

Those who had gained weight since the first test also showed reduced activity in the dorsal striatum in response to the milkshake. In contrast, no change was seen in people who had lost or maintained weight (Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2105-10.2010).

The result suggests that overeating may push people onto a slippery slope akin to a drug addict’s craving for ever-larger doses. "People are having to eat more and more to chase the high," says Stice. It remains to be seen whether losing weight can reverse the cycle and restore normal functioning of the reward pathway.

Just to be clear: I don’t think Iran is a great society. But this is interesting. Greenwald:

Here is the latest Outrage of Evil from the Persian Hitlers:

Iran’s intelligence minister confirmed on Wednesday that two U.S. citizens detained for more than a year will face trial, news reports said.

“The two Americans will be tried,” Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. “We will hand any evidence we have to the judiciary.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Tuesday that she had heard Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be tried on November 6 but she still hoped they would be released.

It’s high time that we teach those Iranians about democracy and freedom.  All civilized people know that this is how a Free and Democratic Nation treats foreign detainees:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

It’s hard to put into words how paranoid and conspiratorial those Iranians must be, thinking that Americans who covertly entered their country without authorization were there for purposes other than accidental tourism.  What ever could have put such a bizarre idea into their heads?

U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. . . .

One advantage of using “secret” forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

Just because we’re covertly infiltrating and interfering in virtually every Muslim country on the planet — and just because we’re actively aiding rebel groups inside their specific country — is no reason to suspect Americans who illegally enter their country of espionage.  That just goes without saying, and Americans would never harbor such untoward suspicions about Iranians caught illegally entering the United States.

Of course, none of this is new.  We previously witnessed the vast disparity in Freedom Values between the U.S. and Iran when the Persian Tyrants sparked a worldwide orgy of condemnation by holding an American journalist for a couple of months (after she was convicted in court of espionage) before an Iranian appellate tribunal ordered her release, in contrast to the way that the Leaders of the Free World imprisoned an Al Jazeera cameraman in Guantanamo without charges of any kind before swiftly releasing him after a mere seven years (along with numerous other incidents of due-process-free, years-long imprisonments of journalists in Iraq).  It goes without saying that the Iranian justice system is a travesty and a farce, but at least they go through the pretense of due process before putting people in cages.

* * * * *

Speaking of our need to teach Iran and other tyrannical nations about the values of Freedom and Democracy, note the following items:

(1) Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

Last Friday, in a brief filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,the Obama Administration continued the government’s half-decade-long battle to ensure that no judge ever rules on the legality of the National Security Agency’s warrantless dragnet surveillance program, a program first revealed in 2005 by the New York Times and detailed by technical documents provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein. . . . The government dedicates most of its brief to arguing the same thing it has been arguing for the past five years in every other warrantless wiretapping case: that any attempt by the courts to judge the legality of the alleged surveillance would violate the state secrets privilege and harm national security.

I spent this morning reviewing what Democrats and progressives said and wrote back in the day each time the Bush DOJ invoked the “state secrets” privilege in order to shield their illegal NSA surveillance program from judicial review.  I’ll probably write about this in the near future, but the condemnation was quite vehement, without very many rhetorical limits.  It seemed to be a consensus that such behavior was the nadir of lawlessness and removal of political leaders from any semblance of the rule of law.

(2) Harper‘s Scott Horton examines the evidence of the secret prison the Obama administration is apparently maintaining in Afghanistan and the serious abuse that takes place there.

(3) Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley had quite a good discussion on Monday night of the Obama DOJ’s efforts to shield all Bush officials from liability for their War on Terror abuses, their success in persuading the Supreme Court to review their immunity arguments, and what this likely means for democratic accountability and the rule of law.  It’s well worth watching:

[Astonishing video. See it here. Truly: do not miss this one. – LG]

Anyway, about Iran . . . .

UPDATE:  Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny are two young, very smart political commentators who host an engaging radio show entitled “Citizen Radio,” which can be heard here.  I was interviewed by them last week about a wide variety of topics (including Obama’s civil liberties record, the Drug War, support for third parties, America’s collapsing imperial status, and dogs).  The full 25-minute interview can be heard here (it begins at roughly the 28:00 minute mark of the episode), and an 9-minute edited video version is below.  Their guest this week is Noam Chomsky, and, for those interested, that discussion can be heard here.

Besides the specific example (from an election campaign) given below, consider also how the US preferentially supports right-wing dictatorships and brings down governments (e.g., Chile, Haiti) that it considers on the Left, even when those governments are put in place by a popular and legal election. From that, I assume that there is a large and powerful group within the government (specifically, within the State Department, the CIA, and the military) that actually like right-wing dictatorships and believe that they are worthy of support (and emulation).

Here’s some more handwriting on the wall:

One of the more disturbing election incidents took place in Alaska on Sunday night, when private "guards" working for GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller forcibly detained and handcuffed a journalist as he tried to ask the candidate questions which he did not want to answer.  This photograph shows the journalist, Alaska Dispatch’s Tony Hopfinger, handcuffed in a chair, surrounded by Miller’s guards.  This story became much worse yesterday when video was released that was taken by a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News showing that these guards thuggishly threatened at least two other reporters, from ADN, with physical detention as they tried to find out what happened, demanded that they leave or else "be handcuffed," and physically blocked them from filming the incident all while threatening to physically remove them from the event, which was advertised to the public (see video below).

But revelations today have made the story much, much worse still.  ADN now reports that not only was Joe Miller’s excuse for why he had hired private guards a lie, but two of the guards who handcuffed the journalist and threatened others are active-duty soldiers in the U.S. military:

Was Joe Miller required to bring a security detail to his town hall meeting Sunday at Central Middle School?

That’s what Miller, the Republican Senate candidate, told two national cable news networks Monday in the wake of the arrest by his security squad of an online journalist at his public event.

But the school district said there was no such requirement made of Miller . . . "We do not require users to hire security," she said. . . .

Meanwhile, the Army says that two of the guards who assisted in the arrest of the journalist and who tried to prevent two other reporters from filming the detention were active-duty soldiers moonlighting for Miller’s security contractor, the Drop Zone, a Spenard surplus store and protection service.

The soldiers, Spc. Tyler Ellingboe, 22, and Sgt. Alexander Valdez, 31, are assigned to the 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade at Fort Richardson. Maj. Bill Coppernoll, the public affairs officer for the Army in Alaska, said the two soldiers did not have permission from their current chain of command to work for the Drop Zone, but the Army was still researching whether previous company or brigade commanders authorized their employment.

If it’s not completely intolerable to have active-duty soldiers handcuffing American journalists on U.S. soil while acting as private "guards" for Senate candidates, what would be?  This is the sort of thing that the U.S. State Department would readily condemn if it happened in Egypt or Iran or Venezuela or Cuba:  active-duty soldiers detaining journalists while they’re paid by politician candidates?  The fact that Joe Miller has been defending the conduct of his private guards in handcuffing a journalist and threatening others with handcuffs should be disqualifying by itself.  That reveals a deeply disturbed authoritarian mind.  But the fact that these guards are active-duty U.S. soldiers makes this entire incident far more disturbing.  Shouldn’t American journalists of every stripe be vehemently protesting this incident?

UPDATE:  DoD Directive 1344.10 — governing "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty" — provides: "A member on AD [active duty] shall not: … [p]articipate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions."  The legality is the least of the concerns here.  That directive exists because it’s dangerous and undemocratic to have active-duty soldiers taking an active role in partisan campaigns; having them handcuff journalists on behalf of candidates is so far over that line that it’s hard to believe it happened.  The real issue, though, is Joe Miller: the fact that he did this and then emphatically defended it reveals the deep authoritarianism of many of these "small-government, pro-Constitution" right-wing candidates.  Any American of minimal decency should be repelled by this incident.

[Incredible video in the original column at this point. I can't embed, but you really should see this. – LG]

UPDATE II:  The more recent version of the relevant DoD Directive is here.  It is essentially the same as the one quoted in the prior update, with slight differences, and provides, among other things:  "A member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not: . . . [p]erform clerical or other duties for a partisan political committee or candidate during a campaign."

Speaking of the deep authoritarianism of many of these "small-government, pro-Constitution" right-wing candidates, Digby notes this video of what took place at a rally in a public park for GOP tea party Congressional nominee Allen West in South Florida, when a 23-year-old worker for West’s opponent — Democratic Rep. Ron Klein — showed up with a video camera:

It’s not nearly as bad as the Miller incident in Alaska, but it’s the same anti-democratic mindset driving it.

More problems arising as global warming continues with no significant action by any government, especially not the US. Janet Raloff reports for Science News:

Fresh water evaporates from the oceans, rains out over land and then runs back into the seas. A new study finds evidence that global warming has been speeding up this hydrological cycle recently, a change that could lead to more violent storms. It could also alter where precipitation falls — drying temperate areas, those places where most people now live.

Among the new study’s more dramatic calculations: River runoff into the seas has been increasing by some 540 cubic kilometers per year, or about 1.5 percent annually over the period analyzed (1994 to 2006). While that may not sound like much, “over 20 or 30 years it would really add up,” notes study author James S. Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Global annual precipitation also appears to be on the rise, but at only half the increase seen in river runoff. If prolonged, this differential would suggest that major terrestrial stores of water — such as ground aquifers and glaciers — are drying up (a trend that other studies have been chronicling). This would also be expected to eventually raise sea levels and generally dry temperate regions that depend on rivers to slake their thirsts.

Famiglietti and his colleagues reported their findings October 4, early online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists have been predicting climate change would intensify the global water cycle, Famiglietti says — “increasing the amount of precipitation and evaporation, globally, and stream flows from the continents.”

Computer models indicated that if this happened, there should also be “a redistribution of precipitation,” he adds. Driven by changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, rains and snowfall would increasingly ignore temperate regions in favor of zones nearer to the poles and tropics. Another feature of an intensifying water cycle: Storm intensity would also tend to increase.

With climate warming, long-frozen stores of water — glaciers and permafrost — could be gushing into the seas from regions largely out of humanity’s view. So fitting their contribution into the global tally would offer important clues to changes in water cycling, Famiglietti explains. But until now, calculating this has proven difficult.

In theory, one of the easiest ways to gauge ice and permafrost melting would be to tally stream flows around the world. Except that stream monitoring programs — never ubiquitous — have been diminishing in recent decades. So a large share of the water flowing over land escapes any accounting.

To estimate global stream flows . . .

Continue reading.

I don’t believe any action will be undertaken until it is way, way too late. Thank the GOP for the US paralysis.

Say it aloud: 10/20/2010. Even better European style: 20/10/2010.