Happy May Day, everyone. And it’s not just May Day — it’s the fourth anniversary of our victory in Iraq. (No, really! Remember “Mission Accomplished?”)
As my office-mate just said, “Wow. Sounds like a reason for a parade in Red Square or something.”
The ice models are wrong.
Polar ice retreating much faster than climate models predict.
Something I’ve been saying for a while: The ice modeling in the current gold-standard models (like GISS-E) is Just Plain Wrong: it doesn’t adequately account for positive feedback in ice-melting, such as the way meltwater changes the ambient environment for ice, or the way that ice melt affects ambient atmospheric properties. A calculation like that is pretty much guaranteed to predict that ice melts only very slowly and adiabatically, instead of quickly and with marked “tipping points”.
Conclusion: We’re going to have a seasonally navigable North Polar Sea a lot sooner than many people anticipate.
What a difference an election makes…
Right now, Alberto Gonzales is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firing of 8 US Attorneys. And what a difference. The last time I heard him testify about potential serious wrongdoing was before the election; the chair of the committee basically said “oh, we can trust him, we don’t need to swear him in” (and didn’t), the Republicans on the committee basically used their time to make speeches about Gonzales’ probity and judgement, and anyone who asked hard questions got evasive – and I suspect, outright false – answers.
Now? He was sworn in immediately and without discussion, and Sen. Leahy started asking him detailed, factual questions (“when did you have this conversation?” “on dates X and Y you publicly stated your absolute faith in [US Attorney] Iglesias; on date Z you stated that you dismissed him because you had lost faith in him. When and why did you lose faith in him?”). And Gonzales was on the ropes from question 1.
We’ll see what comes out of this. But it’s damned good to see our Congress taking their oversight role seriously.
News clippings
Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales’ senior counselor, took the fifth and refused to testify before Congress about the prosecutor scandal. It’s a bit surprising, since nobody’s mentioned criminal charges as yet, but as Sen. Leahy (D-VT) said, “The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling’s concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the committee under oath.”
Horse-race coverage of the upcoming (as in, almost two years from now) election is going on in full force. Clinton brought in $2.6M at a fund-raiser, twice what Obama got at his recent fund-raiser, and this is of course worth being in the papers right now.
Please, in the name of the dog, if we are doomed to have a campaign season that lasts two years, could we at least spend the first part of it — say, the first year or so — finding out something about issues and people’s platforms, instead of watching the daily statistics? (My urge to strike pretty much the entire media in their collective nuts is waxing again, and I suspect it’s going to get pretty high before this is over)
My current take: Edwards, as always, has well-thought-out and well-conceived plans about things like health care, poverty, and so on, far above the rest of the field. I’m not convinced that he has any deep plans for things like foreign policy, though. Times like this, I wish we could have two presidents. I can’t actually tell you what any of the other candidates stand for, because they seem to be carefully avoiding discussing any real issues this far in advance — after all, why alienate potential voters? The media stories about Clinton raking in the money suggest to me that the press may start describing Obama’s campaign as “insurgent” (which is a kiss of death, meaning that it will be popular among younger voters and not have enough support from the party elites — cf. Howard Dean) and coalescing behind something like Clinton / Edwards as “inevitable” early on in the game; which, given the primary schedule, would make it so. It could be worse, I suppose, but I’m really sick of having to say that every election cycle.
Vote in Congress
The bill to strip the President of the authority (granted by the PATRIOT act) to appoint prosecutors without consulting Congress, the abuse of which is part of the current scandal in Washington, passed the Senate on a vote of 94 to 2, with four abstentions. Here’s the roll call.
Interestingly, one of the two “Nay” votes came from Chuck Hagel, R-NE. Hagel is very likely to run for the Republican nomination for President, and is considered one of the strongest candidates in that field. Remember this vote for future reference. This scandal is probably going to expand somewhat more, we’ll have some high-profile resignations, and probably a few prosecutions for perjury or obstruction of justice. So later on, if and when Hagel enters the race full-force, this will be a good question to ask him: Why, even after the nature of the abuses of authority became publicly clear, did he vote against restoring to Congress the right to approve the appointments of federal prosecutors?
Unfortunately, the Democratic party — at least, the main machine part of it, that’s pushing so hard for Clinton — seems to be run by spineless fools, and I seriously doubt that they will have either the presence of mind or the courage of their convictions enough to actually remind the American people of the details of a scandal once the media is no longer focused on it. They’ll make it sound like a question about his vote on some minor technical issue, and the larger issue, of subversion of the democratic process by a sitting president and Hagel’s tacit encouragement thereof, will go unnoticed.
On the subject of the machine of the Democratic party, I don’t know how many people have seen this ad that some unknown person made for Obama. (It wasn’t made by Obama’s organization, as far as anyone can tell) It’s based on Apple’s famous “1984” ad:
Apart from being a lovely little hatchet job, it’s been making me realize how strongly I dislike the idea of Clinton running for president. (Which, media furor to the contrary, has nothing to do with Clinton’s gender, or Obama’s race, or whatever the fuck else is the “interesting topic” of the moment) Clinton represents what in my mind is a failed generation of Democratic leadership, one that Bill Clinton succeeded in as a shining exception rather than by any design. I see her as the emblem of a party that’s incapable of defending itself against even idiotic accusations, that allows another party to lie, cheat, and harm the interests of the country without having the brains or the balls to publicly say that this is wrong, and that in general has no clue of which way it would like to lead the country. Nothing that Sen. Clinton has said or done in the 15 years that she’s been in national public life has convinced me that she’s any different.
This isn’t to say that I don’t think she’s a good senator — in fact, I think she has the potential to be an extraordinary one, a powerful force in that house for many decades to come, and a key player in making the United States successful. But I don’t think she’s a good leader for the party, much less for the country as a whole. Her entire generation, AFAICT, has blown it badly, with one side running half-witted demagogues and the other side unable to tell why that’s a bad idea.
I don’t know much about Obama’s politics, yet. His speeches are all well and good, but he hasn’t really gotten down to brass tacks so far. But I do know that he seems to have a clear understanding of the mess, and to not be infected with the mental malaise that seems to permeate the party. If the primary were held today, he would get my vote. For basically the reasons that this ad hints at.
Random snippets of news
Bush affirms his “strong backing and support” for Gonzales. Let us hope this is the latest equivalent of the “heckuva job” kiss of death. (For those who haven’t been following the news: Congress is investigating the firing of 8 US attorneys, apparently as part of a scheme to force prosecutors to actively investigate charges against Democrats, especially ones in the midst of reelection campaigns, and ignore charges against Republicans. The White House’s explanations of this have shifted on a day-to-day basis, but at this point it’s become clear based on internal memos that Rove and Gonzales were both intimately involved in the process, and the process was very explicitly based on the attorneys not being “loyal Bushies.” (The words of a memo) Gonzales’ chief of staff has already resigned, and the cover-up alone is likely to bring various charges of perjury)
Interesting editorial by Nicholas Kristof on Cheney and Iran (requires real subscription) The gist is that Cheney’s actions as VP have been so systematically towards Iran’s benefit (deposing the governments of all of Iran’s chief enemies, dismantling the Ba’ath party and installing a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad, etc) that it brings up questions about his loyalties. Brad Hicks has an editorial suggesting much the same about our President, titled “George Bush: #2 in al Qaeda?,” which requires no special login and frankly is somewhat better written than Kristof’s.
Now, both of these editorials are using the allegation as a rhetorical device, saying at the end that they don’t really believe that either of these men are traitors. But when the number and scale of derelictions of duty and malfeasances of power (such as, say, the deliberate use of federal prosecutors to manipulate elections by investigating only political enemies and shielding friends) exceeds a certain threshold, at what point does intent become irrelevant? Is there a notion of “willful blindness” in betrayal?
Random things.
Went to see “300” last night. The NY Times review that described it as “all the violence of ‘Apocalypto’ and twice as stupid” is pretty much bang on, so if you go in expecting that, you will not be disappointed. The story bears only a passing resemblance to Herodotus, which is a pity — the actual story of the last stand of the 300 would have made for a much better movie. Probably the biggest surprise from the film was that the thing that broke my suspension of disbelief the most was neither the guy with axe hands nor the armored rhinoceros, nor even the various things that required credits like “über-immortal” and “transsexual (asian, #2);” it was hearing a bunch of Spartans give lectures about the virtues of reason, liberty, and Greek national identity.
(The government of Iran has apparently lodged a protest about the depiction of their country in this movie, and for once I agree with them; the Persians are portrayed as what I can only describe as depraved and both physically and morally monstrous, while the Spartans all look like some weird cartoon versions of body-builders.)
Decompressed a bit more by re-watching “Chungking Express,” a movie which I really enjoy for reasons that I can’t really put a finger on. (Gods know, it’s messy enough, with the plot and set of characters being completely replaced about halfway through)
And then finished reading Rudy Rucker’s “Mathematicians in Love,” which was absolutely fantastic. It’s a novel about mathematicians discovering some equations that allow them to reshape reality, all the while fighting over women, status, and a budding career as rock stars. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a while, although I have no clue what it would read like to anyone who hasn’t done mathematics professionally. But it did answer one question that’s bugged me for a while:
“Unger is a point-set topologist turned transfinite set theorist,” said Unger. “He can’t tell a raven from a writing desk.” Pause. “That’s a joke. The raven’s, ah, digestive tract and two beak-nostrils being homotopic to the three holes formed by the desk’s, ah, four legs and three cross-bars?”
(No, the book isn’t quite that ridiculously obscure most of the time. Rucker is actually a remarkably good writer)
Now I’m testing out some new speakers by playing the Pogues’ “Turkish Song of the Damned” at high volume. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend.
We live in a strange world.
From the news today: In response to a mounting scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors for failing to prosecute enough Democratic candidates and political targets, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that “mistakes were made,” presumably by space aliens or some other third party.
Halliburton, the contractor formerly run by now-VP Dick Cheney, and recipient of over $25B in no-bid Iraq contracts (several of which are under investigation for things like fraudulent cost overruns) has announced that it plans to move its corporate headquarters to Dubai. Predictably, people are not amused.
And Israel recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and wearing nothing but bondage gear and a ball gag in the embassy complex. (You know, Israeli politics is just fascinating some days…)
In slightly less apocalyptic news…
Check out Israel’s entry to this year’s Eurovision, Push the Button. It’s disturbingly catchy. Lyrics (in a combination of English, French and Hebrew) are here. The runner-up, Salaam Salami, is also pretty… um… extraordinary.
(For those of you who have never seen the Eurovision song contest before, yes, pretty much all of the music is that bad. But of course, there’s controversy — the contest organizers want to ban Israel’s entry because of “inappropriate political content.” This link also has translated lyrics)
Since nobody seems to have translated Salaam Salami, here’s a go at it
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 