Reform Dem

Sarah Palin Live! Listen to the 4/16/11 Madison Tea Party!

2011-04-19T22:14:00.012-05:00

Yes, once again I've risked life and limb to attend and record a Tea Party event. Thanks to my sacrifice you can now enjoy all the glorious paranoia and vitriol in the comfort of your own home! Just click on the player below (click twice if you have IE). The entire recording is an hour and forty-five minutes long, so I strongly recommend taking it in small doses.

If I get some spare time I'll do an update with the starting times of all the major speakers, and I might even post some pictures!

Killing the University, Softly

2011-02-17T23:43:00.000-06:00

UW-Madison is a great university. But it faces an attack that will destroy it as a public institution. State support for higher education in Wisconsin has been falling for decades, and Scott Walker and his conservative allies will reduce it even further. Unfortunately, Chancellor Biddy Martin is creating a situation which will doom future state aid, regardless of which party controls the Capitol.

We support public universities because they provide public good. If the average citizen can't see and recognize that good, support will dry up. For the vast majority of people in Wisconsin, the main public good provided by the UW-Madison campus is the opportunity to attend a world-class institution in their own back yard.

Biddy Martin is going to change that. With the best of intentions, she has signaled her willingness to accept a significant state aid cut in return for "flexibility". Flexibility means a huge tuition increase, ten percent fewer Wisconsin students , and dividing UW-Madison from the rest of the UW system

By making far more difficult for the average Wisconsinite to attend UW-Madison, while simultaneously separating Madison from the other campuses, Martin virtually guarantees continuing erosion of public support, and the eventual end of all state funding for the UW campus. It will take years, but as each reduction in state aid results in further tuition increases, and the need to accept even more out-of state (rich) students, the result will be inevitable. UW-Madison will evolve into an elite private university, no longer supported by, or accountable to, the people of Wisconsin, and out of reach of all but the most wealthy.

You might argue that the many other benefits from UW-Madison, including the billions of research dollars that it brings in, will protect it from such a future. You would be mistaken. Most Republicans, at least those in the Capitol, are perfectly happy with the concept of a privatized UW-Madison that serves the needs of business and the wealthy. And Democrats are not going to lift a finger to preserve an institution that their constituents can no longer hope to attend.

For better or worse, the Ivy League may finally invade Madison. The Wisconsin Idea will be the first casualty.

Why Are Conservatives Such Cowards?

2011-02-15T23:38:00.002-06:00

I've been to a lot of events at the Wisconsin State Capitol. From anti-war rallies to Tea party protests. A few dozen people to many thousands. Even helped organize a few myself. Yet I've never seen anything like the heavy and obvious police presence at the labor rally today.

The Capitol Police usually take care of security in and around the Capitol. In my experience they have always been extremely professional and capable, unobtrusive yet always there when needed. Good cops doing a good job without stirring up a fuss. And that's been good enough for every other governor, and at every other event, in recent history.

But not for Scott Walker and his fellow cowards. Walker brought in DNR wardens, UW police, State troopers, and Sheriff's deputies, and just to make sure folks noticed all the cops he dressed them up in bright green and orange vests. Lots and lots of wasted taxpayer dollars walking around Capitol Square to show everybody how tough Walker is. I'm surprised he didn't call out the National Guard as well.

Maybe he's saving them for tomorrow's protest.

Spencer Black Retiring

2010-05-10T13:09:00.001-05:00

I'm honored to say that Spencer Black has been my representative in the Assembly ever since we moved here twelve years ago. Spencer is a great guy, a true progressive, and a shining example of a truly dedicated and honest public servant. He's going to be be missed.

About a year ago I asked Spencer if he was going to run for Fred Risser's Senate seat should it open up. Spencer told me no, that he wanted to have more time to spend with his family, and that he was probably going to retire after this current session. I kept it quiet, partly because I didn't know if he wanted it public, but also because I was secretly hoping that he might change his mind. As good as Spencer has been in the Assembly, I think he would have been even better in the Senate! But it was not to be...

Best wishes to Spencer and his family. And if you do happen to read this, Spencer, please don't forget about the Democratic Party. We'd love to see you every now and then!

MASSIVE Drop in Attendance at Madison Tea Party Compared to Last Year!

2010-04-15T22:08:00.022-05:00

Actual photographic count shows that the 2010 Madison Tax Day Tea Party rally was only ONE-THIRD as big as 2009!

Despite the perfect weather, attendance at this year's Madison Tea Party was FAR lower than last year. Based on an actual photographic count, there were only 2,600 people at the event earlier today, compared to 8,000 in 2009. One-third the size of last year! This is a massive drop, and it indicates that both the size and the influence of the the Wisconsin Tea Party are rapidly declining.

Below is a picture showing the actual crowd count from today's Tea Party rally, with a red dot placed on every visible head. Click on it for a much larger image. It was taken at 12:15 PM, about 45 minutes into the rally, when the crowd was at its peak. There are 1,972 people visible in the picture, but the actual attendance was higher because some folks are obscured by other people or objects in front of them, and the picture cuts off the edge of the crowd, particularly on the left side. Perhaps somewhat generously I estimate that I missed one person for every two or three I counted, meaning that the actual crowd size was 2,600 to 3,000. I have similar pictures taken from other high vantage points around the event, and they are all consistent with this estimate. Public claims by Americans for Prosperity and other event sponsors that attendance was 12,000 are simply ludicrous, if not outright lies.

Much more to come from the Madison Tea Party, including some great pictures and audio. Stay tuned!

Tea Party Express Sponsor ResistNet Actually GOP Front Group

2010-04-09T13:53:00.017-05:00

Why am I not surprised? I had never heard of ResistNet before I attended the Tea Party Express stop in Madison a few days ago, so I decided to check it out. Turns out that ResistNet was created, and is presumably controlled, by a GOP public relations firm called Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. SourceWatch has more details.

ResistNet's motto is "Home of the Patriotic Resistance." Seems like "Home of the Republican PR Operatives" would be a lot more accurate. Or maybe "Home of the uninformed teabaggers who are too dumb to figure out that they're being used."

To be fair, I should point out that the left also has its share of astroturf front groups, although they're not nearly as pervasive as those on the right. The Democratic and Republican Parties pretty much work from the same political playbook, but in this arena Republicans are much more successful. In part this is because Republicans and business interests simply have far more resources to throw at such efforts, but also because it's easier to manipulate the grassroots right, which is generally both less educated and less politically informed than the activist left.

Report and More Pictures from the Tea Party Express Stop in Madison

2010-04-07T19:17:00.069-05:00

UPDATE: Somebody leaked a document to Politico which shows that the Tea Party Express is a pure astroturf operation created and run by Republican operatives through an outfit called Russo Marsh & Rogers. More and more it's looking like the entire Tea Party phenomena is just a very sophisticated PR campaign intended to help the Republican Party.

(Click any picture to enlarge)

Reform Dem attended the recent Tea Party Express stop in Madison so you wouldn't have to make small talk with folks like the women in the picture above! Despite the presence of a few crazies it was an interesting and entertaining experience. What it wasn't, despite the repeated refrain of the speakers, is grassroot. The event was very professionally run and produced. The very essence of astroturf, although the crowd seemed quite willing to ignore the evidence right in front of their faces. Ah, to be a teabagger and believe whatever I'm told...

Speaking of truth, it doesn't seem to be much of a requirement at Tea Party events. Some of the whoppers I heard from the speakers were truly amazing. Peter Cobb, the Wisconsin director of ResistNet.com, kicked the evening off with, among other things, the most bizarre global warming diatribe I've ever heard. He claimed, as you would expect, that global warming is a hoax, then that carbon dioxide is actually a good thing because it's natural and helps plants grow, therefore environmentalists should support increased CO2 because they're opposed to erosion, which more plants would help to reduce, and if we get rid of the CO2 there will be too much oxygen anyway, so the real problem is that we need better science to find the truth. Whew! Maybe the real problems is that folks like Cobb shouldn't make shit up about subjects in which they're obviously clueless.

But the crowd loved it!

It's pretty obvious that the folks behind the Tea Party groups are worried about the reputation teabaggers have earned as nasty racist thugs. The theme that the Tea Party is a respectable nonviolent mainstream movement was hammered constantly. Did you know that it's actually impossible for a teabagger to be violent because the Tea Party is a human rights organization? I didn't either, but that's what they said, so it must be true.

Mark Neumann was up next, and I have to admit that for a wacky conservative he sure gives a good political speech. If he gets his campaign act together Neumann could potentially beat Scott Walker in the primary. Barrett is my guy, of course, but between Neumann and Walker I'd take the far more moderate Walker in a heartbeat. Following Neumann was Sarah Palin impersonator Rebecca Kleefisch, who is running for Lt. Governor. I have a previous post up about Kleefisch's rather despicable dog-whistle homophobia at the event, including audio of her entire speech, so I won't go into it here.

Then, finally, the main act arrived. The three big buses of the Tea Party Express!

The Tea Party Express is a conservative vaudeville act, a bunch of entertainers who speak, sing, and even dance a little, all while spouting Tea Party propaganda. Sounds corny, but they're quite talented and a lot of fun to watch, even if you don't agree with their extremist politics. The organizers obviously went to great lengths to make sure the Tea Party Express performers and staff are as diverse as possible. Gotta prove to the media that teabaggers aren't racists. Probably a third of the folks that got off those buses were black or brown, while the only person I saw in the crowd who wasn't pasty white was a Hmong guy trying to earn a little extra cash selling buttons.

The performer that the crowd seemed to like best was Polatik, a Mexican-American rapper. He really was quite good, despite some problems syncing with his background vocals. Wish I had audio of him to post, but I didn't have my recorder on. I cut out just after Polatik finished. It was getting late and I was thoroughly chilled by then. Here are some more pictures from the event, I apologize for not having more crowd and general shots, but most of the time it was just too dark to shoot without a flash. Enjoy!

Happy teabaggers! I blurred the face of the person in the center because he was clearly a minor.

One side...

And the other. Wonder if he knows that Rand was actually an atheist who practiced free love and once wrote "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"

There's a popular misconception, which I once shared, that many teabaggers are moderates or disaffected Dems. Not true! In reality they're almost all extremely conservative, although many are so far to the right of the Republican Party that they label themselves as independents. Pollster has a good article examining this issue.

I certainly agree with the first part of this bumper sticker, and I understand the point of the second, but it sure is a xenophobic way to express it.

The Tea Party can complain all the want about being misrepresented as violent extremists, but as long as they condone signs such as this, and make claims, as one of the speakers at the event actually did, that "Obama is a domestic enemy," then they fully deserve that condemnation.

And why are all these folks so radicalized and disconnected from truth and reality?

Of course.

Dog-whistle Homophobia from GOP Lt. Governor Candidate Rebecca Kleefisch

2010-04-07T07:33:00.013-05:00

Tea Party events seem to bring out the worst in some people, and GOP Lt. Governor candidate Rebecca Kleefisch is no exception. She used yesterday's Tea Party Express stop in Madison as an opportunity to serve up a little dog-whistle homophobia to a receptive crowd. Many folks probably missed her double entendre, but the social conservatives in the audience certainly didn't. Using sex education as an example of unwarranted government involvement in personal matters, Kleefisch said that she wanted her children to learn about the birds and the bees from her, not from "Jim Doyle and Mark Pocan."

Kleefisch will undoubtedly claim that she's simply using Mark Pocan as an example of a big bad Madison liberal, and that Pocan's sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with it. But given Kleefisch's background, and her knowledge of Wisconsin politics, she knew exactly how the social conservatives in the audience would interpret her words: Democrats have put gays in charge of sex ed so that they can corrupt your children. Be afraid, be very afraid.

UPDATE: I've uploaded an MP3 file of Kleefisch at the 3/6/10 Tea Party Express event. The comments I referred to above occur about three minutes into her speech. It's worth listening just to hear hear how well Kleefisch imitates Sarah Palin. Quite deliberate no doubt, and the teabaggers love it!

Oh, the Irony...

2010-04-07T00:51:00.011-05:00

A picture from the Tea Party Express stop in Madison earlier this evening. You'd think they'd notice something like this.

More pictures and info from the Madison event later. Some pretty shocking stuff.

Terrence Wall: Teabagger?

2010-04-05T14:32:00.013-05:00

Will Terrence Wall show up at the Tea Party Express Tour stop in Madison tonight? Wall has donated the use of one of his properties for the event, and it would be a perfect opportunity for him to start cozying up to the radical right.

Although being closely associated with an increasingly strident and violent fringe group like the Tea Party could hurt Wall in the general election against Russ Feingold, he has a much more immediate problem: Tommy Thompson. Current polling shows that if Thompson enters the race he'll crush Wall in the primary. How can Wall even the playing field? Perhaps by going the populist Tea Party route while painting Thompson as a corrupt Washington insider.

Will he or won't he? It will be very interesting to see if Wall takes the plunge tonight. At the very least, the fact that he's providing a free venue for the event shows that he's keeping all his teabagging options open.

Health Care Reform Passes House! World Doesn't End!

2010-03-22T07:35:00.009-05:00

The problem with predicting the apocalypse should your political opponents pass a bill you don't like is that if they pass it, and if the world doesn't end, you look rather foolish.

The health care reform bill is a centrist measure which concedes almost nothing to progressives. Yet Republicans bet the farm on painting it a radical socialist attack on "The best health care system in the world", a high-risk gamble they now appear all but certain to lose. November is suddenly looking a better for Democrats.

Climate Change - Is Wisconsin Warming?

2010-03-01T14:27:00.023-06:00

Is it getting warmer in Wisconsin? Given all the recent controversy over climate change, I thought it would be interesting to look at historical Wisconsin temperature data to see if there are any discernible trends. Although the continental US is warming significantly slower than most other temperate regions, we have good temperature records going back more than a hundred years, so if it is getting warmer in Wisconsin we should be able to see it.

And we can. The chart below shows the statewide average annual temperature since 1895, overlaid with a linear trend line. The increase is only about a degree, but it's quite clear.

(Click for larger chart)

Now, folks who don't believe in global warming will probably look at the chart above and say it doesn't prove anything. That the relatively small increase it shows could be due to the "heat island" effect, bad temperature stations, the sun, or perhaps even astrology, as the rather conservative South Dakota legislature seems to believe. But, with the exception of astrology, we have enough data to examine those possibilities. Climate models predict that human-caused temperature increases in Wisconsin should be seen mostly in the winter, but biased temperature measurements or changes in solar output should affect all four seasons more or less equally. As you can see from the next chart, almost all the warming in Wisconsin has indeed occurred during the winter, exactly as one would expect from anthropomorphic global warming.

(Click for larger chart)

While a one-degree increase in average yearly Wisconsin temperature over a hundred years isn't much, the three-degree winter increase, which has occurred mostly in the past thirty years, is a significant and noticeable change!

So, is this the final nail in the coffin of Wisconsin global warming deniers? Unfortunately, no. Their beliefs are based on ideology, not science or data. No amount of evidence will change their minds because they simply ignore or distort anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions.

The data I used in the charts came from the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. It's a great resource for looking at local climate issues and concerns.

Conservative Economics Coming Home to Roost

2010-02-23T12:46:00.019-06:00

The American dream is dying. Every year we have to work longer and harder for less and less. Except, of course, for the very wealthy. If you're one of the fortunate few at the peak of our socio-economic system, not only has your income increased significantly in recent years, but your federal tax rate has dropped almost in half. The charts below say it all:

This might be defensible if our economy was doing well, or, to use a Republican analogy, if a rising tide was indeed lifting all boats. Unfortunately, as the rich have become ever richer, the rest of us have not. Average income has been stagnant, despite significant increases in worker productivity.

These trends are the inevitable result of conservative policies designed to benefit business and the wealthy, and to weaken organized labor. Policies that began during the Reagan administration and reached fruition under George W. Bush. Policies that, unfortunately, have been aided and abetted by far too many "moderate" Democrats.

Bankers Love Them Some Teabaggers!

2010-02-01T10:53:00.002-06:00

Teabaggers may not like bankers, but bankers sure do love teabaggers. Just look at the donations that poured in at the last minute to Scott Brown's campaign for US Senate in Massachusetts. Almost half a million bucks from the financial industry in less than a week! The big money folks think they can let the teabaggers do all the work, and then just buy out their candidates if it looks like they're going to win. Unfortunately, teabaggers, at least judging by the ones I've talked to, aren't smart enough to figure out that they're being taken advantage of.

While it'll be kind of fun watching teabaggers getting used and abused, the resulting damage will be considerable. The left and the populist right share a common concern about the abuse of corporate power, even if we prefer somewhat different solutions. Unfortunately, teabaggers are uniquely vulnerable to corporate manipulation, both because of their anti-intellectualism and because of their conservative/libertarian ideology. We've already seen several cases of the Republican establishment running roughshod over various teabag groups, with varying degrees of success, but the corporate boys are a hell of a lot better at this game than party operatives. The teabaggers aren't even going to know what hit them.

A New Approach for Democrats

2010-01-27T16:44:00.003-06:00

Great humor from Liam Sullivan.

And the best comment from YouTube:

Democrats with Balls? You're kidding right?

Supreme Court Opens Door to Foreign Influence in US Elections

2010-01-21T12:31:00.002-06:00

In today's 5-4 Supreme Court decision on corporate election spending, conservatives once again showed that they're willing to sacrifice American sovereignty at the alter of corporate profits.

This risk is clearly noted in Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion:

"In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters."

Nonresidents are quite properly forbidden from spending money to influence US elections, but this decision opens the door to unlimited spending by foreign individuals, groups, and even governments. All they have to do is set up an American corporation or nonprofit, and use it to funnel as much money as they want into "independent expenditures". Perfectly legal. China doesn't have to bother with diplomacy anymore, now it can get what it wants by simply buying our elections.

It's the American way.

Pity the Poor Widdle Teabaggers...

2010-01-09T08:40:00.019-06:00

Seems a few teabaggers are all bent out of shape because some cartoonist made fun of them. Mark Fiore does Flash-based animated cartoons from a liberal perspective, and last November he published the cartoon below, poking fun at teabaggers as dummies who are unwilling, or unable, to deal with complex policy debates.

Not exactly subtle, but it's clever and contains more than a grain of truth. Classic Fiore.

All was well until Bill O'Reilly noticed Fiore's cartoon. Then the wailing began. The left is trying to "...marginaliz[e] opposing views by any means necessary." Tea party members actually want polite and intelligent policy discussions, but those big bad leftist bullies, knowing they can't win a rational debate, actually sink to the level of ...political humor!

It might be easier to take the complaints from teabaggers seriously if O'Reilly's minions of hate weren't flooding Fiore with death threats, and if there weren't quite so many signs containing words like nazi, communist, socialist, and anti-Christ, at tea party events. It is rather difficult to contemplate having a thoughtful policy discussion with the guy in the picture below, who I met at the Madison tea party this past spring. Teabaggers may not like the scorn Fiore has heaped on them, but they've certainly worked extremely hard to earn it.

Don't want to be treated like an idiot? Try not acting like one.

See more pictures of considerate well-informed teabaggers at my post on the '09 Madison, Wisconsin tax-day tea party.

Letter to a Denier

2009-12-12T12:58:00.007-06:00

I moderate a progressive email group, and recently a global warming skeptic joined in. We've had several private email exchanges regarding his posts. This is the most recent message I sent him:

Hi V-,

I'm not going to put your latest post, "Nature will decide Earth's future", on the group. It's not science in any real sense of the word, and posting he said/she said articles from the popular media doesn't advance the debate. It would be better if you were to write a post explaining why we should believe that article, although you'd get shredded by others making the same point that I just made: It's not science.

Last night I was thinking about our email exchange regarding lunar warming, and it occurred to me that you're missing the big point. Debating lunar warming is pointless unless you can tie it to the Earth's climate. The denialist argument that warming on other solar system bodies explains warming on Earth has pretty much fallen by the wayside as the quality of solar monitoring has improved. Given the current state of the science it's not really a viable argument anymore. Pretty much never was, for that matter. There was no real science behind it, just speculation by people disinclined to believe in AGW.

I'm somewhat unusual, V-, in that I straddle the technical and political worlds. I know enough about the politics, the science, and about both politicians and scientists, to understand who the players are and how the game is played. The stakes may be larger this time around, but the pattern is the same every time science collides with politically powerful vested interests. I watched it play out over the smoking-cancer link, CFC's and the ozone layer, and SO2 and acid rain. I see it now in the approval and regulation of medicines, where I just happen to have a bit of an inside seat. If your goal is to maintain the status quo as long as possible, despite the science, the most effective way to do so is to make sure that the debate isn't about the real science. And there's a well developed and profitable industry to do exactly that.

If you don't believe me try doing a little research about the Heartland Institute's role in the smoking debate. Do you really think it's a coincidence that they're also at the center of global warming denailism?

The techniques to to obscure and denigrate science were first developed by the tobacco companies decades ago. They include things like paying scientists to take positions against the scientific mainstream, creating "independent" scientific organizations and think tanks that support the industry's view, cherry-picking the science to create seemingly plausable alternatives, finding flaws in research, no matter how minor, and using them to discredit the entire body of knowledge, planting psuedo-science to blur the real science, particularly in the minds of the public, and attacking individual scientists to turn the debate to their motives and personal fallibilities.

You're being used, V-, by a bunch of very smart people who earn their living by manipulating the public. I know, because I play that game too, although on a much smaller scale. The difference is that I believe right and wrong should be based on the common good, not profit. And I think you feel the same. That's why it bothers me so much to see how you, and so many other good people, have become pawns of powerful forces that don't give a damn about our individual welfare.

Those prospering under the status quo will always seek to preserve it. That's human nature. But in an era of multinational corporations that rival governments in terms of power and influence, the risks of putting profits ahead of science are far greater. In the end, of course, science always wins, as it did in each of the controversies I mentioned earlier. You can only spit in the face of reality for so long. The only question is what price we will pay for ignoring the lessons of the past.

Russell

Extraordinary Atmospheric Phenomena

2009-12-08T22:53:00.014-06:00

Given the weather tonight this seems appropriate. Here are a couple of beautiful pictures that caught my fancy. The first, by NYT photographer Ragnar Axelsson, shows the northern lights over a house in the tiny Inuit village of Tinnittaqilaq in Greenland. Many more great pictures at the link.

The second shows a phenomena few people have witnessed. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint: If you do see something like this it'll probably be about the last thing you'll ever see. Click on it for a bigger version.

Those beautiful white trails in the sky are eight nuclear warheads falling towards their targets during the test of a Peacekeeper missile. Dummy warheads in this case, but if real each would be twenty times more powerful than the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WMC Opposition to Global Warming Regulations Based on Bogus Model

2009-12-07T14:33:00.018-06:00

If you've been following "climategate", you know that one of the denialists' main lines of attack is that the stolen CRU emails "prove" that current mainstream climate science can't be trusted because climate scientists are hiding their models and data.^* Given that, you might believe that the folks who oppose global warming regulations, like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, would base their opposition on actual verifiable facts and research.

Not so much. A couple of weeks ago WPRI released "The Economics of Climate Change Proposals in Wisconsin" a study they commissioned from the Beacon Hill Institute, which uses an economic model called STAMP. A proprietary economic model. As in top-secret. Beacon Hill won't release their computer code, the model's coefficients, or their input data, so none of it can be independently verified by real economists. Sounds kind of fishy, doesn't it? Now, why would Beacon Hill be so reticent about sharing the fruits of their research? Perhaps there's a hint in their mission statement, which says, in part, "Grounded in the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets...".

It's fairly simple to rig a complicated economic model to get answers that support your ideological preconceptions. Just looking at the limited info on STAMP that's publicly available I can see some pretty obvious biases. Without open and independent verification WPRI's study is completely worthless. They might as well have pulled the numbers out of a hat. Beacon Hill lets groups like WPRI and WMC slap a pseudo-academic veneer of respectability on their policy positions, but it's all just smoke and mirrors designed to take advantage of the public's, and the press', gullibility.

Paul Soglin has a nice post on this issue, and he beat me to the punch by a couple of weeks!

------------------------------------------------------------------

^*The denialists' claim that climate models and data aren't available is simply a lie. All the significant climate models and almost all of the data (with the exception of data that was purchased from vendors with non-disclosure agreements) is easily available, most of it online.

Killer Koi

2009-12-04T12:54:00.010-06:00

I keep koi; the picture above is a few of my fish. Koi are a domesticated version of the common carp, Cyprinus carpio, which is a widespread invasive species. There are common carp in almost every lake and river in Wisconsin, and they cause significant problems in some areas due to their habit of stirring up the mud to look for food. Common carp are actually pretty good eating, although most people in the US consider them trash fish.

But there's a far more evil side to carp. They can be killers. A species called the silver carp has the bad habit of leaping out of the water when boats scare them. For most types of fish that wouldn't be a problem, but silver carp can grow to over forty pounds and jump ten feet high! Getting slammed by one when you're cruising at speed can be lethal. I don't know much about the first picture below, but the women in the second picture ended up with a broken jaw.

(Picture source)

(Picture from Troutunderground.com)

Silver carp are one of several large introduced species collectively referred to as Asian carp. Far more important than their attempts to assassinate fisherman is the damage they can do to our native aquatic ecosystems. Asian carp have spread throughout the Mississippi River basin and are now on the verge of getting onto the Great Lakes. The only thing keeping them out is an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. If that barrier fails, and it inevitably will, Asian carp will get into almost every major lake and river in the Eastern US.

Map - 2008 Hate Crime Rate by State

2009-11-23T15:46:00.012-06:00

The map below shows the reported number of hate crimes per million residents in 2008, color-coded by state. The data is from the FBI's latest hate-crime report, which came out earlier today. Wisconsin, with a rate of 16.3, is in the low-middle of the range, but comparable with neighboring states. This is a significant change from a few years ago when Wisconsin had a extremely low hate crime rate, although that was probably due to under-reporting. Click on the map for a larger version.

To be included as a hate crime in the FBI statistics, a crime must first be reported to a local law-enforcement agency, which then makes a determination if it is a hate crime. That agency must then report it to the FBI, either directly or through the state's Attorney General or Department of Justice. Not all law-enforcement agencies report data to the FBI, and many that do probably do not accurately characterize hate crimes. Hate crimes also tend not to be reported or investigated in jurisdictions that that are hostile to the victimized minority.

There are obvious discrepancies in the map. Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia appear to vastly under-report hate crimes. There are a number of possible explanations, but given the clear state-by-state differences, the most likely is that hate-crime investigation and reporting by local law-enforcement agencies is not supported, or perhaps even discouraged, by the Attorney General and/or the Department of Justice in those states. Other states, Delaware for example, appear to have anomalously high hate-crime rates. This could be real, but it could also be the result of particularly intensive hate crime reporting and investigation efforts.

UPDATE: Some links and additional info:

FBI 2008 hate crime statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html
Caution on conclusions: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/variables.html

Some of the reporting on the new hate crime statistics, like this story from Fox, have been somewhat irresponsible. Fox's headline is "Reported Hate Crimes Surge in 2008". Reported hate crime did rise by 11%, but as Fox actually points out in the story, this could be due simply to improved reporting, not an actual increase in crime. The discrepancies in the my map clearly show that hate crime reporting is, at best, extremely uneven across the country.

To make the map I used Index Mundi's map creator. Very highly recommended.

US Verses the World in Wind Power

2009-11-19T22:21:00.033-06:00

I saw an article recently about the success of wind power in Spain. Made me wonder how we compare to other countries in terms of what percentage of our electricity comes from wind, but a quick Google search didn't turn up much of an answer. So, as usual, I collected the data and made myself a chart. Click on it for a larger version:

That's us in red, way down in fifteenth place, getting about 1.3% of our electric power from wind. Given all our big talk about investing in green energy, it's pretty darn disappointing.

The raw data is from the US Energy Information Administration. The EIA is a goldmine of information, and their online tools make it easy to pull the data you want into Excel. Well worth poking around their website a bit if you're into energy issues.

Don't Get Married in Texas...

2009-11-19T13:34:00.002-06:00

...because it looks like Texas accidentally outlawed all marriages in its rush to keep those awful gays out. The anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment that Texas passed in 2005 says in part:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

See the little itty-bitty problem with that? Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Democrat running for Texas AG, just pointed out that the current AG, Republican Greg Abbott, really screwed up when he approved the amendment wording.

Love it! Conservatives can't even try to legalize discrimination without shooting themselves in the foot. And even the freepers are debating this mess.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project - DPW Membership Data 1998 to 2008

2009-11-17T10:06:00.015-06:00

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is a membership organization, and membership dues are its single largest source of income. Thus, membership levels are an important indication of the health and vitality of the party, both at the county and state levels. Unfortunately, membership data is one of those things that tends to get lost when physical records are moved or computer systems are updated, so I've created a spreadsheet containing DPW membership by county from 1998 to 2008 and uploaded it to Google Docs.

Historical membership data like this is invaluable for determining the factors that drive party membership, evaluating membership building efforts, and holding party leaders accountable for their success or failure in building the party. Yet many county parties do not have accurate historical records because standard DPW membership reports only cover the prior two years, and older records are often lost when county party leadership changes. It also appears that much of the DPW's membership info prior to 1998, which is when the current membership database was developed, is inaccessible or missing.

For these reasons I've created a permanent depository for this data. If anybody has DPW statewide or county membership info prior to 1998, even if it's incomplete or fragmentary, please contact me (russwallac@aol.com) and I'll add it to the database. It would be great to be able to look back over the years and see the broad trends and issues that have affected the Democratic party in Wisconsin.

---------------------------------------------------------

Here are some notes on the data. They're included at the bottom of the spreadsheet, but they're hard to read online:

1. I have conflicting data for Menominee County for 2006. One source gives a partial year count of 3, while other sources do not show Menominee County as an active party unit after 2005.

2. Although listed separately in 2005, Waupaca and Waushara Counties were combined that year with a joint membership of 150.

3. The DPW incorrectly lists the 2005 membership total as 9116. This is a result of counting Waupaca and Waushara counties twice: As separate county parties and as a combined party unit.

4. Prior to 2003 there are discrepancies between the county membership sums and the official DPW totals, particularly in 2002 and 2001, as shown below. I can't resolve these differences with the data available to me.

Year - County total - DPW total - Difference

2002 ----- 8352 ----- 8594 ----- 242
2001 ----- 8262 ----- 8389 ----- 127
2000 ----- 7489 ----- 7495 ----- 6
1999 ----- 7410 ----- 7414 ----- 4
1998 ----- 7356 ----- 7362 ----- 6
1997 ----- 6097

5. DPW membership for other years:

Year - Membership
1972 --- 18,410
1967 --- ~8000
1964 --- ~27,000

(According to The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999, the huge drop between 1964 and 1967 was due to President Johnson's support for the Vietnam War)

Federal Stimulus Dollars - Wisconsin Ranks Dead Last!

2009-11-16T21:57:00.013-06:00

Wisconsin, which historically has received far less back from the US Government than we've paid in federal taxes, is getting screwed once again by the federal stimulus program. We rank dead last, by a large margin, in terms of how many stimulus dollars we've received per unemployed citizen. The national average is roughly $9200, but Wisconsin has received only about a third of that. The map below, from News With Numbers, tells the story.

This information deserves a lot of attention, both from the media and from our elected leaders. The only way to get our fair share is to make lots of noise, so please spread it around!

Map - Wisconsin Unemployment by County

2009-11-16T20:40:00.007-06:00

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is the first fruit of an experiment to fully automate ReformDem maps. It's based on the work of Nathan Yau, who uses Python scripts to do all the heavy lifting for the choropleth maps on his very impressive blog, FlowingData.

Previously I've used a spreadsheet to calculate RGB color values for each county, and a paint program to manually apply them to a blank map. The results are nice, but it takes about half a day to make one map. If I can get the rest of the bugs worked out I should be able to make maps in a matter of minutes.

One interesting thing to notice in the map above is that Menominee County has one of the highest unemployment rates in Wisconsin. Menominee County is basically the Menominee Indian Reservation, and, as you can see from Nathan's national unemployment map, counties with high Native American populations also tend to have very high unemployment, and are among the poorest areas in the US.

Fort Hood

2009-11-05T23:31:00.004-06:00

I have a personal connection to Fort Hood that makes today's events even sadder for me. I lived there as a kid, and many of my earliest and happiest memories are of our house in Comanche Village (now called Comanche I), just north of Tank Destroyer Blvd., on the west side of the base. The shootings, at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on Battalion Ave., occurred about a mile from where we used to live.

Everyone who joins the military knows the risks, but you never expect something like this. My heart goes out to the dead and injured, and to their families and loved ones.

For Democratic Candidates to Win, Democratic Voters Need to Vote

2009-11-05T16:48:00.004-06:00

You might think that's pretty obvious, but apparently not given what just happened in the Governor's race in Virginia.

Unfortunately for us, the Deeds campaign freaked out and read these polls wrong over the summer. Instead of attempting to energize more young and minority voters to the polls to make the electorate more representative of Virginia–they began running a campaign targeted to the people already planning to vote. Creigh began bashing federal Democratic priorities like “Cap and Trade” and health care reform to appeal to the conservatives that were headed to the polls.

And every time he did it, polls indicated turnout shriveled even further among Democrats and progressive voters–making the electorate even older, whiter, and more conservative. To which Creigh responded to by bashing federal Democrats more–which resulted in even more progressives becoming disengaged. Over and over, the cycle continued. Over the last six weeks, PPP polls indicated the share of the electorate that identified as Democrats declined from 38% to 31%. In other words almost one out of every five self-identified Democrats planning to vote on Labor Day has since then looked at Creigh Deeds and his conservative message, and decided they weren’t voting. Ouch!

I doubt Deeds could have won even if he hadn't run away from the Democratic base, so in this case it may not have made much of a difference, but in many 2010 races it probably will. Be interesting to see what lessons Democratic political "professionals" draw from this, and how they apply them next year.

Nope, No Racism Here...

2009-11-04T23:22:00.006-06:00

Comment posted earlier today on the Wisconsin page at freerepublic.com regarding Obama's visit to Wright Middle School:

>> Obama ... promotes the Race-to-the-Top initiative

Yeah? Which race does he intend to push to the top? Probably not mine, I’m guessing.

You gotta love freepers, the intellectual godparents of the teabaggers. Click on the link above and read the whole thing. These are the folks who claim to be the true voice of American conservatism.

Can the Policy Positions of Elected Dems Damage the Democratic Party?

2009-11-02T21:25:00.007-06:00

The relationship between Democratic elected officials and the Democratic Party is complex. Usually the Party, local, state, or national, is controlled by the most powerful elected official at that level, although that isn't always the case. The Democratic Party of Dane County, for instance, is essentially controlled, quietly and behind the scenes, by a union, AFSCME Council 40.

But I digress. The question is if unpopular policy positions taken by Democratic elected officials can significantly damage the Democratic Party. The answer is clearly yes. Back in the mid 1960's the Democratic Party of Wisconsin lost more than two-thirds of its members because of Lyndon Johnson's support for the Vietnam War, dropping from 27,000 in 1964 to 8,000 in 1967. Even today, after more than forty years, the DPW has never come close to its former size, with current membership hovering a little under 10,000. There are many reasons for that, but one is a divisive war fought a generation ago.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project

2009-11-01T13:28:00.028-06:00

Have you ever been curious about the history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin? To the best of my knowledge the only relatively recent info published on this subject is The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999, by Dr. Richard Carlton Haney, Professor (now emeritus) of History at UW Whitewater, Erica Feldkamp, past DPW Intern, and Paul Tewes, past DPW Executive Director.

Unfortunately, this pamphlet is out of print and very difficult to obtain, although a few libraries have copies. Several years ago Dr. Haney and the DPW granted permission to put the newer edition online, and after a long delay here it is:

The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999

You can read it online, print a copy, or download it as a (rather large) PDF file. It's short, only about twenty-five pages of text and ten pages of pictures, and reads like a magazine article (which it originally was), although the additional material added in the second edition makes it somewhat disjointed at times.

One thing I find particularly interesting is the ideological struggles within the party over the years. Ideology and primary fights are two things that can tear a political party apart faster than just about anything else. There are important lessons here for today's DPW, although they're not always quite as obvious as one might think.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project is my effort to preserve documents and other materials from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and whenever possible to make them available on the web. I have two reasons for doing so. First, as I've learned from trying to trace my own family history, unless there is an active effort to preserve historical information it will inevitably be lost. Second, I hope that making such information more easily accessible will help current party leaders make wise decisions and lead to a bigger and more vibrant Democratic Party.

Please help me with this project. If you have material from past party conventions, DPW reports, newsletters, pictures, or personal stories about the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, contact me (russwallac@aol.com), and I will digitize them and put copies online to protect and preserve them for posterity.

Health Care Reform: Michael Steele Better Get Out of the Way...

2009-10-14T17:37:00.003-05:00

If you don't read DailyKos, you really should...

Was Obama's Nobel Prize Really Aimed at Bush?

2009-10-09T10:45:00.002-05:00

Seems to me that the Nobel Committee may have given Obama the Peace Prize not so much for what he's done, but for who he isn't: George W. Bush. I'm sure this whole thing will drive the wingnuts crazy, but you reap what you sow...

Those Liberal Dummies at Isthmus

2009-09-10T23:25:00.009-05:00

I hate it when liberals hand ammunition to conservatives by making stupid mistakes. And I mean that quite literally in this case.

The latest Isthmus has an interesting story about a proposed program that would help Madison cops buy personal AR-15 assault rifles, which they would then presumably carry in their patrol cars in case they need extra firepower. To add some kick to the story the folks at Isthmus included a nice picture of an AR-15 with the caption "An AR-15 like this for just 52 easy payments!" Except it's not an AR-15. Not even close. Took me a while to recognize it because it's so obscure, but the weapon in Isthmus' picture is an antique WWII-era German StG44, the worlds first true assault rifle.

The problem with this sort of dumb and easily preventable mistake is that it plays right into the conservative stereotype that liberals hate guns, even though we know nothing about them.

Of course, we believe pretty much the same thing about conservatives and science...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a real Colt AR-15 A3 Tactical Carbine. Probably quite similar to what the Madison PD would buy. Picture from Wikipedia.

Ten Year Old Hunters

2009-08-28T15:27:00.006-05:00

As of next week, ten year old children in Wisconsin will be able to hunt with adult supervision. Previously the minimum age was twelve. This doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

I'm not anti-gun, or even anti-kids-and-guns. My father gave me my first gun, a .303 Lee-Enfield, and taught me to use it when I was four. Even so, I waited until my kids were around ten before I offered to teach them how to shoot.

So, if I would let my own kids shoot at ten, why would I have a problem with them hunting at that age? The reason is that there's a big difference between a shooting range and a hunting trip. Lot easier to control things at the range, and with kids safety is all about control.

Think of how often you hear about hunting accidents. Now try to remember the last time there was an accident at a shooting range. Doesn't happen very often, even though far more rounds are fired at ranges than on hunts. My opinion is that kids should be at least fourteen before they're allowed to hunt. Safer for them, safer for everyone else.

Jim Doyle: Doing the Right Thing for Himself... and for the Democratic Party

2009-08-26T09:28:00.008-05:00

I've been working on a major post showing what polling tells us about the likely direction of Jim Doyle's reelection campaign. I collected all the available polling data on Doyle over the past four years, including cross tabs which are where the good stuff is buried, and I put everything into Excel so I could slice and dice it.

Big waste of time, given Doyle's announcement that he won't be running. But I thought I'd share a few charts because they show just how tough it would have been for Doyle to win. Doyle's predicament is largely due to national trends beyond his control. Nothing fair about politics. Announcing fairly early that he won't be running again cripples Doyle legislatively, and makes it harder for him to solidify any sort of positive legacy, but it does give Democrats the best possible chance to win next year. Got to admire him for that...

Anyway, on with the charts. This data is from the SurveyUSA tracking poll, which they do almost every month for every federal elected official and governor. The benefit of a tracking poll is consistency. All pollsters have biases (intentional or not) due to the choices they make in their sampling techniques and models. This makes it difficult to spot more subtle trends when comparing polls from multiple pollsters. Tracking polls have the same sort of biases, of course, but as long as the pollster doesn't change anything, those biases have no effect on trends.

The first chart shows Doyle's approval and disapproval from the end of '06 until now. It's pretty grim:

The next chart shows Doyle's net approval (approval minus disapproval) for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Doyle has lost significant ground with all three groups. This is probably why he decided to throw in the towel. There's just no obvious policy or ideological direction that will win him enough support to succeed in '10. If he tries to appease one group he'll just piss off the others:

Doyle's misfortune is a blow to the Party, but it opens new opportunities for other Democrats. The next year or so is going to be very exciting for political junkies in Wisconsin. I can hardly wait!

Note on the charts: The trendlines in the first chart are three month moving averages; in the second they are six month. The data in the second chart is noisier because it's a sub-sample of the total data, so I used a longer average to make the charts more comparable.

PhRMA Firing a Shot Across Tammy's Bow?

2009-07-15T12:36:00.007-05:00

Just heard a very odd ad on the radio. It urged listeners to contact Tammy Baldwin and thank her for supporting biomedical research. The ad was paid for by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

PhRMA is the velvet glove of the big drug companies. It exists to increase drug company profits through coordinated PR campaigns and lobbying. PhRMA doesn't spend money without good reason, so why the heck would they be running ads praising Tammy? It's an off-year, and even if it wasn't, Tammy certainly doesn't need PhRMA's help. She's essentially unbeatable short of a Ensign-sized scandal.

Seems to me that PhRMA may just be reminding Tammy that they're keeping an eye on her. The ads, which are probably being run on more "liberal" stations, will undoubtedly prompt a bunch of phone calls to her office, and few things get a politician's attention like lots of constituent calls on one issue. While PhRMA undoubtedly knows that taking Tammy out would be extraordinarily difficult, they're playing the long game. Tammy is ambitious, and may well run for another office eventually. By flexing their muscles now, in a nice way, Pharma is making it very clear to Tammy not only how much muscle they have, but also that they're willing to use to use it for, or against, her down the road.

An Unusual Place to Work

2009-06-28T21:56:00.007-05:00

Just took the picture above of my work site for the next couple of weeks. It's the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on the summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The telescope is at 13,800 feet/4,200 meters, although the dorms where we eat and sleep are at 9,500 feet, which is much more comfortable.

If we're lucky, and nothing goes wrong or breaks, I should have some time to work on some interesting posts. Of course, things rarely seem to go smoothly on jobs like this...

The Dangers of Socialism, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market

2009-06-24T08:50:00.005-05:00

Great video from HAARM!

AMA to Rename Itself "The Greedy Bastards Club"

2009-06-11T23:06:00.013-05:00

UPDATE! Less than a day after announcing that it opposed health care reform, the AMA is backing away from that position. They deserve credit for doing the right thing, even if has more to do with fear of being left out of negotiations than any real change of heart.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

True to form, the American Medical Association has come out against Obama's health care reform plan. The AMA has a very long, if not exactly proud, history of opposing any effort to extend health care to the poor, the elderly, or the uninsured. Here's what the president of the AMA said in his 1963 Congressional testimony about the proposal to create Medicare:

[Hospital insurance for the aged is not] "only unnecessary, but also dangerous to the basic principles underlying our American system of medical care."¹

The AMA was so concerned about the dangers of helping sick old people that they even cut a secret deal with the tobacco industry to downplay the risks of smoking in return for tobacco state congressmen agreeing to vote against Medicare!² As the head of the British Tobacco Association observed at the time, "The AMA appears more concerned with safeguarding the financial interests of doctors through political lobbying than with the doctor's patients." It's been almost fifty years, but apparently not much has changed.

Look, I understand that the AMA's basic job is to protect doctor's earnings. I don't expect them to lead the charge for reform; they have a mighty sweet deal under our current system. But I thought they'd show some decency and at least stay out of the way this time around. Nobody knows better than the AMA's members that we that spend twice as much money per capita on health care than any other country. They see it in their paychecks every month. Yet even with all that money, twenty to thirty percent of Americans lack access to basic care because they're uninsured or underinsured and simply can't afford it.

It's time for the AMA to realize that American doctors won't do well unless America does well. We can't continue spending more and more on what is arguably the world's least efficient health care system. It's bankrupting us, and making it increasingly difficult for American business to compete against countries with much less costly "socialized" medicine. The AMA is killing the goose that laid their golden egg, and we'll all pay the price for their greed.

Ronald Reagan starring in a 1961 AMA anti-Medicare effort.

1. The Politics of Medicare, second edition, by Theodore R. Marmor, p28.
2. A Question of Intent, by David Kessle, p207.

"Aid and Comfort"

2009-06-01T20:30:00.012-05:00

Article III, Section III, of the U.S Constitution says in part "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

As more and more incriminating links are found between Scott Roeder and Operation Rescue, it will be interesting to see if there is a legal crackdown on militant anti-abortion groups. When it comes to Islamic terrorism we've applied the concept of "aid and comfort" very broadly, preemptively closing American charities that had any ties, however innocuous, to groups like Hamas. There is certainly justification to call the actions of many of the individuals tied to the anti-abortion movement, and perhaps those of the movement itself, terrorism. Do our homegrown Christian terrorists deserve the Islamic treatment, or should we just turn the other cheek in the hope that they'll realize they've strayed from the path of righteousness? Watch Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry in the video below, and let me know what you think.

What amazes me...

2009-05-29T16:06:00.003-05:00

... is not that a Republican would say something incredibly stupid like "La Raza (is) nothing more than a ... Latino KKK" on national TV, but that Republicans still think they can succeed by pissing off every group in this country other than white male Christian conservatives.

Good luck with that.

Judicial Activism: A Proud Conservative Tradition

2009-05-28T15:13:00.014-05:00

Conservatives usually use "judicial activist" as a code word for liberal. But are liberal judges really more activist than conservative judges? The answer is no. Conservatives judges, at least on the modern Supreme Court, are far more judicially active than liberal judges.

The chart below shows how often recent Supreme Court justices have "legislated from the bench" by overturning existing federal law and regulations. Conservatives loudly claim to abhor such judicial activism, yet the trend is remarkably clear: Conservative justices have been far more willing than liberals to impose their views on the elected Executive and Legislative branches of government. Click on the chart for a larger version:

The chart is drawn from two examinations of the decisions made by recent Supreme Court justices. The first, by Paul Gewirtz, a professor at Yale Law School, looked at how often justices struck down Congressional law from 1994 to 2005. The second, by Cass R. Sunstein, currently at the University of Chicago Law School, compared over 20,000 individual decisions to determine how often the justices overturned federal regulations passed by Executive branch agencies.

To create the chart I averaged the two data sets to create a composite measure of how often each justice overturned existing law and regulations. Justices Roberts and Alito are not included because they haven't been on the Court long enough to collect meaningful data. I first saw these studies mentioned in this Meteor Blades diary on DailyKos; many thanks to him for doing the hard work of digging them out.

What Are You Made Of?

2009-05-19T23:41:00.017-05:00

There are many answers to this question, ranging from the philosophical to the scientific, but here's an intriguing new possibility: We might all be nothing more than a big bunch of microscopic black holes. Unless you're a science nerd this might seem a little weird, but bear with me.

Although we usually think of black holes as gigantic things that suck up stars and even whole galaxies, they can actually be any size. And black holes "evaporate" by giving off energy and getting smaller, so there could be lots and lots of really tiny black holes floating around. So what would all those microscopic black holes look like?

That's the sort of question physicists love, and a couple of them recently made a very interesting discovery. Turns out that when you apply the rules of quantum mechanics to tiny black holes the result looks exactly like elementary particles, the stuff atoms, and therefore you and me, are made of. And quantum mechanics tells us that things which look the same are the same (I'm simplifying this just a bit here). Anyway, the implication is that all matter may be made of microscopic black holes. How cool is that!

Of course, even if we are made of microscopic black holes it doesn't really change anything. The value of this discovery is that it may open up a revolutionary new way to look at unified field theory and the very early history of our universe, two of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.

Here's the original paper (not exactly light reading): Quantization of Black Holes in the Shielded Strong Gravity Scenario (I. Neutral Scalar States)

(Black hole image from Wikipedia, originally created by NASA)

Gallop Poll Shows Midwest Trending Strongly Democratic

2009-05-19T12:03:00.005-05:00

Gallop released a new poll yesterday showing that Republican party ID in the Midwest has dropped more than in any other region of the US!

The poll also has plenty of other good news for Democrats. It shows that the Republican Party is getting grayer, more conservative, and becoming a regional party concentrated in the Southern United States. Young people are fleeing the Republican Party in droves, as are moderates and college graduates. It doesn't get much better than that!

There was a time when Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News crazies were a real threat to progressives and the Democratic Party. No longer. They've spent years pushing Republicans to the right, enforcing a rigidly conservative ideology, and driving away anybody with the least hint of human decency and common sense. That strategy was successful for quite a while, but they overdid it and now it's killing them.

Below is a chart from the Gallop poll showing the decrease in Republican Party ID among various groups from 2001 to 2009. The only group that hasn't become less Republican is people who attend church frequently. Interesting that another recent poll shows that this same group is also most strongly supportive of torture. Click on the image for a a larger version.

Now I Understand...

2009-05-09T07:21:00.001-05:00

Lefties run the country and worry about the economy, two wars, healthcare, energy, and education. Righties seem to be obsessed with ... mustard.

No wonder the GOP is a disaster.

What does the Military think of Obama's first 100 days?

2009-04-30T13:47:00.003-05:00

Looks like a solid B, and given the current political leanings of the US military that's saying a lot:

First 100 Days A Mixed Bag (from Military.com)

In his campaign for president, Barack Obama pledged a swift end to the war in Iraq, a new commitment to the defeat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a strong emphasis on veterans' care and military families and a critical look at Pentagon spending, strategy and conduct in the war on terrorism.

Since his inauguration 100 days ago, Obama has made good on his promise for sweeping change in the military, a new tone in the White House's relationship with troops and a personal investment in easing the burden of military service.

But take a look at the comments following the story. Makes you understand why the Justice Department might be concerned about radicalization of military veterans.

Israeli West Bank Settlement Growth, 1972 - 2008

2009-04-23T08:11:00.011-05:00

UPDATED, see below.

I've heard critics of Israel claim repeatedly that the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased every year since the settlements were founded. This seems counter-intuitive given that you would expect Israel to reign in the settlements during periods of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. So, being a data geek, I decided to check the numbers myself.

I quickly found that it was difficult to locate credible and comprehensive data on settlement population. Lots of sources give partial (and often conflicting) numbers, but I couldn't find any single source with complete population by year back to the early 70's when the settlements were started. As a result I decided to do my own research, and what I discovered is quite interesting.

The critics are right. West Bank settlement population has indeed increased every single year. But what's really surprising is that the general trend has not changed significantly even when Israel was intensely negotiating a two-state agreement with the Palestinians. This implies that Israel has never actually been serious about a two-state solution.

Here's a chart showing West Bank settlement population from 1972 to 2008. Click on it for a larger version. All the data is from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.

The data is listed below. The 2008 number is preliminary. Caveats: For a couple of the years I had to calculate the total from the populations of individual settlements. I checked this by doing the same for a year where I had the total from the Bureau of Statistics, and the result matched within a percent. It was necessary to estimate population for a few smaller settlements for the missing years based on their population trends. I reconciled, as best I could, conflicting numbers in different reports from the Bureau of Statistics by again going back to the individual settlement numbers. Many reports are partially or completely in Hebrew, which complicated my research and undoubtedly increased the risk of error. Despite these qualifications, I believe this data is as accurate and complete as reasonably possible.

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ISRAELI WEST BANK SETTLEMENT POPULATION 1972 - 2008
(DOES NOT INCLUDE EAST JERUSALEM)

YEAR POPULATION
-------------------------------
2008 285,800 (preliminary)
2007 282,000
2006 268,400
2005 258,988
2004 234,487
2003 224,669
2002 214,722
2001 198,535
2000 192,976
1999 177,411
1998 163,300
1997 154,400
1996 142,700
1995 133,200
1994 126,200
1993 111,600
1992 101,100
1991 90,300
1990 78,600
1989 69,800
1988 63,600
1987 57,700
1986 51,100
1985 44,100
1984 35,200
1983 22,800
1982 21,000
1981 16,119
1980 12,424
1979 10,000
1978 7,361
1977 4,400
1976 3,176
1975 2,581
1974 2,019
1973 1,514
1972 1,182

UPDATE: In an article published on 6/1/2009, the New York Times claims that previously unpublished Israeli documents show that Israel has approved plans to almost double the number of housing units in West Bank settlements over the next twenty years, from 58,800 to 105,300.

Report and Pictures from the Madison Wisconsin Tea Party

2009-04-15T14:24:00.032-05:00

I attended the Madison Tea Party yesterday. Very professional and well-run. Americans for Prosperity may be a right-wing corporate front group, but they sure know how to put together an event. Democrats, and the left in general, could learn a lot from these guys.

I arrived early with my cameras and recording equipment, and as soon as I started to set up the nice AFP staffer in the picture below came over, introduced himself, gave me a press packet, explained the event schedule, and offered to arrange interviews with AFP officials or the speakers. There was a media platform, a bit small, but properly positioned to take advantage of the sunshine, and a professional sound and video system with a trailer-sized Jumbotron.

One of the many AFP staffers. Easily identified by their headsets and earnest expressions.

The crowd started to build as the buses from Milwaukee and other parts of the state arrived. A lot of folks drove to Madison and parked at the Alliant Energy Center, and then took a shuttle bus to Capital Square. Buses, parking, and shuttles were all free, courtesy of AFP.

As I said in my earlier post, AFP put tens of thousands of dollars into this event, and organized and ran everything from top to bottom. How anybody could believe this was a grassroots event is completely beyond me, but the crowd lapped it up every time one of the speakers played up the grassroots angle.

It was a big turnout, AFP is claiming 5000, but I think it was maybe 3500 or 4000. I have good crowd pictures if anybody wants to actually count heads. I expected a lot of mainstream conservative Republicans, given AFP's close ties to the Republican Party and because the chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin was one of the featured speakers, but the majority of the crowd seemed to be libertarians. Anti-tax, anti-government, and deathly afraid of "terrorists", "socialists", and "communists". Mad about taxes and deficits, but whether they were Ron Paul or McCain supporters what they seemed most upset about was simply that Obama won last November.

One thing that surprised me was that the vast majority of the crowd seemed to be from the Milwaukee area. I assume this was driven by righty talkers on Milwaukee radio, so if you can confirm this please leave a comment. The area around Milwaukee, particularly to the west in Washington County, is the most politically conservative part of Wisconsin.

Seems to me that the tea parties are basically an attempt by the Republican Party, working through front groups like AFP, to electorally harness the anger generated by a black president and a poor economy. It's a high risk strategy, given the extremism of people attracted by such movements, but the Republican Party, both in Wisconsin and nationally, doesn't exactly have much to lose. They've driven away moderates, so all that's left are the radicals.

Enough writing, on with the pictures. Click any of them for bigger versions.

This sign says it all.

A friendly teabagger. Seems like the folks with the most extreme signs are often the least informed. This guy couldn't put together a coherent argument to save his life, but he sure knew he was right and everybody who didn't agree with him was wrong.

The crowd, or as much of it as I could get in one picture. Mighty white, not that I expected otherwise.

Plenty of libertarians.

Jumbotron. Very nice. Very expensive. Boy, right-wing grassroots organizers sure have a heck of a lot more money than left-wing grassroots organizers.

One of the main themes of the event was trashing Jim Doyle.

Another Doyle fan.

Not much love for Obama. I didn't see any blatantly racist signs, not that AFP would have allowed them, but anything short of that seemed to be fair game.

It's Nobama with the "O" replaced by a hammer and sickle! After all, any black president who was once a community organizer is by definition a communist!

More of the communist theme. I doubt many of these folks could even define communist, but they know one when they see one.

When calling Obama a socialist or communist just isn't enough, there's always the terrorist card.

...Anti-Christ works too.

Let's see, Obama, Hitler, Marx... Wait a minute, where's Saddam Hussein? I guess the crazy right-wing sign painters must be slipping...

I asked this guy if his sign meant that he also opposed laws restricting abortion. He said "Oh no. That's completely different..." He also had no idea how much other western countries spend per capita on health care, or how life expectancy and other healthcare outcomes compared. But he sure knew that government-run healthcare doesn't work and will destroy our country!

Yeah, impeach those damn congressional socialists! All ... one of them!

A sore loser.

There were a few birthers, but not as many as I expected.

Scot Ross and the One Wisconsin posse. They were able to get right up in back of the speaker's platform with their signs. The AFP folks actually had to protect Scot and his crew from the teabaggers. Guess they didn't want a fight to spoil their carefully constructed media image of moderation and rationality.

Right-wing American political philosophy summed up in one sign. We're all just helpless victims of God and the wealthy...

The Teabaggers are Coming to Madison...

2009-04-13T21:44:00.004-05:00

...and Appleton, Eau Claire, Fort Atkinson, Fond Du Lac, Lacrosse, Racine, and Wausau. See below for links and details.

I find the Tea Party movement quite interesting. A prime example of how conservatives are manipulated by their corporate and political masters. While I'm sure that a few Tea Parties really are local grassroots efforts, most are organized and funded by conservative astroturf organizations and the GOP. Very well funded, judging by what I see here in Madison. More on that GOP connection in a later post.

When I mention the rather obvious top-down organization of the Tea Parties to my conservative friends, one of the standard responses I get is "So what, you do whatever MoveOn tells you to do!" Now, I've organized several anti-war events through MoveOn, including two that were attended by over four hundred people, so I know a bit about how this stuff works. The only support I got from MoveOn was access to their web tools to list my events. That's it. No money. No staff. No logistics support. No training. No Rush Limbaugh or Fox News hyping things 24/7. And absolutely no help, or even recognition, from the county or state Democratic Party.

Now compare that to the upcoming Madison Tea Party. Somebody is putting up mighty big bucks for this event. Several tens of thousands of dollars from the looks of it. Free buses from all over Wisconsin. Free parking and shuttles from the Allient Energy Center (a great idea, but not cheap). A big sound system and crew. Professional web presence and PR. All very nice, but not very grassrooty.

So, who's paying for all this? Americans for Prosperity appears to be the major culprit. AFP is basically a corporate-funded astroturf group that has an anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-regulatory agenda. They seem to particularly have it in for environmental regulations. Just like Exxon-Mobil, although I'm sure it's just a coincidence. AFP also has strong ties to the Republican Party, which might explain why they didn't make a peep when George Bush was destroying our economy and turning a huge suplus into record deficits. Be a good dittohead and repeat after me: Republicans good, Democrats bad. Republicans good, Democrats bad. Republicans good, Democrats bad...

Here are all the Wisconsin Tea Parties I know about. This site has the biggest list I've seen, although it doesn't include them all. Given how paranoid, bigoted, and violence-prone many of the teabaggers already are, I'd suggest giving them a wide berth.

Still, it might be kind of fun to yell "Get a job!" if you just happen to be passing by...

---------------------------------------------

Appleton - Fox Banquets, 111 E. Kimball
April 15, 5:30 pm - 7:00pm

Eau Claire - City Hall
April 15, 12:00 noon - 3:00pm

Fort Atkinson - Municipal Building, Main Street
April 15, 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Fond Du Lac - Veterans Park (across from City County Government Building)
April 15, 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm

Lacrosse - Location TBA
April 15 - Time TBA

Madison - Capital Square
April 15, 11:00am - 1:00pm
(Facebook page)

Racine - City Hall
April 18, 2009 - 12:00 - 1:00pm

Wausau - City Square Downtown
April 15, 2009 – 5:00-7:00pm
(Facebook page)

The Scariest Gaza Video I've Seen...

2009-01-16T13:44:00.005-06:00

"They are forcing us to kill their children to defend our children."

Drudge Trashes Madison (Again)

2009-01-15T00:47:00.003-06:00

Matt Drudge, the closeted gay conservative proprietor of The Drudge Report, has taken another of his periodic shots at Madison. Drudge posted a link to a story titled "City of Madison, Wis. Eyes Draconian Zoning Ordinances to 'Adapt to Climate Change'", from The Business & Media Institute.

The story says that Madison is doing absolutely terrible things, such as considering zoning rules that would...

"...adapt to meet the demands of climate change; use zoning to address or mitigate effects, or adapt to climate change; remove any barriers to mitigating the effects, adapting to climate change (trees, green space, mobility, renewable energy, land use)."

And that we're...

"...dramatically limit(ing) free enterprise and personal liberty, all in the name of environmental sustainability."

How awful! No doubt all these loony liberal policies have destroyed Madison property values and driven unemployment to French-like heights!

What's that? Madison property values have held up far better than the country as a whole? And Forbes just rated Madison as the best place in the whole darn US of A to find a job?

It's enough to make a conservative's head explode!

Or not. You see, facts are for liberals. Conservatives simply "create their own reality." Which is something they've had plenty of practice doing over the last eight years.

Tammy Balwin Votes to Unconditionally Support Israel's Attack on Gaza

2009-01-10T15:46:00.007-06:00

Yesterday Representative Tammy Baldwin voted for a resolution that unconditionally supports Israel's attack on Gaza, and places full blame for both the attack and the resulting civilian deaths on Hamas. The resolution passed overwhelmingly. Here's the heart of it:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) expresses vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and recognizes its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas's unceasing aggression, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter;

(2) reiterates that Hamas must end the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel, recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, agree to accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, and verifiably dismantle its terrorist infrastructure;

(3) encourages the Administration to work actively to support a durable and sustainable cease-fire in Gaza , as soon as possible, that prevents Hamas from retaining or rebuilding its terrorist infrastructure, including the capability to launch rockets and mortars against Israel, and thereby allowing for the long-term improvement of daily living conditions for the people of Gaza;

(4) believes strongly that the lives of innocent civilians must be protected to the maximum extent possible, expresses condolences to innocent Palestinian and Israeli victims and their families, and reiterates that humanitarian needs in Gaza should be addressed promptly and responsibly;

(5) calls on all nations--
(A) to condemn Hamas for deliberately embedding its fighters, leaders, and weapons in private homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human shields, while simultaneously targeting Israeli civilians; and

(B) to lay blame both for the breaking of the `calm' and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas;
(6) supports and encourages efforts to diminish the appeal and influence of extremists in the Palestinian territories, and strengthen moderate Palestinians who are committed to a secure and lasting peace with Israel;

(7) calls on Egypt to intensify its efforts to halt smuggling between Gaza and Egypt and affirms the willingness of the United States to continue to assist Egypt in these efforts;

(8) calls for the immediate release of the kidnaped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been illegally held in Gaza since June 2006; and

(9) reiterates its strong support for a just and sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict achieved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in order to ensure the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and a viable, independent, and democratic Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the State of Israel.

To say that this resolution presents a simplistic and rather one-sided view of the conflict is an understatement. It reads as if it came straight from AIPAC, which it probably did. I doubt it accurately reflects US public opinion, and it certainly puts us in direct opposition to almost every other country in the world. But the real problem is that it makes it even more difficult for the US to play a constructive role in any negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

As I argued in my previous post, I believe that Israel, as a Jewish state, is doomed. The attack on Gaza will do nothing to change that. The only real question is if Jews will be allowed to continue living in Israel when it inevitably becomes an Arab-majority nation. The US can help ensure that they will by working for a equitable negotiated settlement to this conflict. Or we can keep doing what we've been doing, and guarantee that the Jewish People will once be again scattered to the corners of the earth.

--------------

The full text of the resolution is below. Unfortunately it's not linkable on the House's website. It passed 390 to 5, with 22 "present" and 16 not voting. The Wisconsin congressional delegation voted for it with the exceptions of Gwen Moore and Steve Kagen. I believe Kagen is recovering from knee surgery and wasn't there.

--------------

Whereas Hamas was founded with the stated goal of destroying the State of Israel; (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)

HRES 34 EH

H. Res. 34

In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

January 9, 2009.

Whereas Hamas was founded with the stated goal of destroying the State of Israel;

Whereas Hamas has been designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization;

Whereas Hamas has refused to comply with the Quartet's (the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations) requirements that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and agree to accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians;

Whereas in June 2006, Hamas illegally crossed into Israel, attacked Israeli forces, and kidnaped Corporal Gilad Shalit, whom they continue to hold today;

Whereas Hamas has launched thousands of rockets and mortars against Israeli population centers since 2001, and has launched more than 6,000 such rockets and mortars since Israel withdrew its civilian population and its military from Gaza in 2005;

Whereas Hamas has increased the range and payload of its rockets, reportedly with support from Iran and others, putting hundreds of thousands of Israelis in danger of rocket attacks from Gaza;

Whereas Hamas locates elements of its terrorist infrastructure in civilian population centers, thus using innocent civilians as human shields;

Whereas Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement on December 27, 2008, that `We strongly condemn the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and hold Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence there';

Whereas on December 27, 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, `For approximately seven years, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens in the south have been suffering from missiles being fired at them . . . In such a situation we had no alternative but to respond. We do not rejoice in battle but neither will we be deterred from it. . . .The operation in the Gaza Strip is designed, first and foremost, to bring about an improvement in the security reality for the residents of the south of the country';

Whereas the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including shortages of food, water, electricity, and adequate medical care, is becoming more acute;

Whereas Israel has facilitated humanitarian aid to Gaza with hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian assistance and numerous ambulances entering the Gaza Strip since the current round of fighting began on December 27, 2008;

Whereas on January 6, 2009, before the United Nations Security Council, Secretary Rice stated that: `The situation before the current events in Gaza was clearly not sustainable. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived under the daily threat of rocket attack, and frankly, no country, none of our countries, would have been willing to tolerate such a circumstance. Moreover, the people of Gaza watched as insecurity and lawlessness increased and as their living conditions grew more dire because of Hamas's actions which began with the illegal coup against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. . .A ceasefire that returns to those circumstances is unacceptable and it will not last'; and

Whereas the ultimate goal of the United States is a sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will ensure the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and a viable, independent, and democratic Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the State of Israel: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved,

(1) expresses vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and recognizes its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas's unceasing aggression, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter;

(2) reiterates that Hamas must end the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel, recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, agree to accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, and verifiably dismantle its terrorist infrastructure;

(3) encourages the Administration to work actively to support a durable and sustainable cease-fire in Gaza , as soon as possible, that prevents Hamas from retaining or rebuilding its terrorist infrastructure, including the capability to launch rockets and mortars against Israel, and thereby allowing for the long-term improvement of daily living conditions for the people of Gaza;

(4) believes strongly that the lives of innocent civilians must be protected to the maximum extent possible, expresses condolences to innocent Palestinian and Israeli victims and their families, and reiterates that humanitarian needs in Gaza should be addressed promptly and responsibly;

(5) calls on all nations--

(A) to condemn Hamas for deliberately embedding its fighters, leaders, and weapons in private homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human shields, while simultaneously targeting Israeli civilians; and

(B) to lay blame both for the breaking of the `calm' and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas;

(6) supports and encourages efforts to diminish the appeal and influence of extremists in the Palestinian territories, and strengthen moderate Palestinians who are committed to a secure and lasting peace with Israel;

(7) calls on Egypt to intensify its efforts to halt smuggling between Gaza and Egypt and affirms the willingness of the United States to continue to assist Egypt in these efforts;

(8) calls for the immediate release of the kidnaped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been illegally held in Gaza since June 2006; and

(9) reiterates its strong support for a just and sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict achieved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in order to ensure the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and a viable, independent, and democratic Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the State of Israel.

If I Were an Arab...

2009-01-06T23:19:00.010-06:00

Probably the best summation of the Israeli-Palestinian mess I've ever seen, and the reason Israel's attack on Gaza is doomed to failure, is this quote from David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

During and shortly after its formation, Israel ethnically cleansed (al Nakba) much of the Palestinian population. This might have worked had Israel's neighbors been willing to accept and resettle the Palestinians, but they weren't. Instead, the Palestinians piled up in refuge camps on Israel's borders like so much driftwood. And they're still in those camps, more than fifty years later, because Israel won't let them return, and the countries that host them won't allow them to become full citizens.

This is why a military solution, short of outright extermination, will never bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No matter how successful it is in the short term, Israel's attack on Gaza is simply guaranteeing that the next generation of Palestinians will want to keep on fighting.

In the end Israel must either reach some sort of negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, or it will be destroyed. Not militarily, but demographically. The Palestinian population, both inside and outside of Israel, is growing far faster than the Jewish population. The reason Hamas keeps lobbing rockets into Israel isn't because they ever expect to do any significant damage, it's because doing so makes Israel a rather unpleasant place to live, which discourages Jewish immigration and encourages emigration. The Palestinians may be stuck where they are, but many, if not most, Israeli Jews aren't. They can return to their home counties, and they will if it gets bad enough inside Israel. About half of all Americans who have immigrated to Israel have since come back to the US. They are the real targets of Hamas' rockets.

No matter what Israel does, within fifty years it will no longer exist as a Jewish state. How Israel treats the Palestinians between now and then will determine if Jews are able to remain in their ancestral homeland, or if they will be driven out, just as they drove out the Palestinians.

It doesn't look very promising.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Pictures from the conflict. Some are quite disturbing:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/israel_and_gaza.html

Legal status of Palestinians:
http://www.medea.be/index.html?page=2&lang=en&doc=179

Good analysis from Juan Cole:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/gaza-2008-micro-wars-and-macro-wars.html

Jane's analyst says a military victory over Hamas isn't possible:
http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=13286

Israel's secret web propaganda campaign:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/01/05/gaza-foreign-ministry-media-manipulation/

The UN map below shows the location and size of Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian populations around Israel. Click on it for a larger image.

Loss of Big Three Would Cost Wisconsin 85,000 Jobs

2008-12-08T12:54:00.011-06:00

A new research study from the Economic Policy Institute says that if the big three automakers go out of business it will cost Wisconsin about 85,000 jobs, and drive our unemployment rate up an additional 0.8%. Not good.

EPI is a somewhat left-leaning think tank which receives some of its funding from labor unions, and the study will undoubtedly be attacked for that reason. But the question should be if EPI's methodology is justified, and therefore if its estimates are accurate. I'm not an economist, but here's what I found when I researched the numbers.

EPI breaks job auto-industry dependent jobs into three categories: Direct, indirect, and re-spending. Direct jobs are the 123,000 people who work for the Big Three. Indirect jobs are in industries that supply parts, materials, and services to the Big Three. EPI estimates indirect jobs by looking at how much the Big Three spend on parts, materials, and services as a proportion of the total income of those industries in the US. Pretty straightforward, and EPI comes up with 650,000 indirect jobs.

Re-spending jobs are those that result from the roughly 775,000 workers in direct and indirect jobs spending their salaries. Here's where it gets trickier. EPI calculates a re-spending multiplier of 1.7; in other words, every auto-industry job results in an average of 1.7 jobs in the consumer retail and service industries. Sounds reasonable, and certainly within the range of similar economic studies, but EPI doesn't really explain how they derived it. The reference they give is to the appendix of another EPI paper that doesn't have anything to do with the specifics of the auto industry. So although the 1.7 number is probably in the ballpark, it's the easiest thing in the paper to attack because EPI did a lousy job justifying it.

Anyway, taking everything together, EPI estimates that 2.1 million US jobs will lost of the Big Three go under. And a big bunch of those jobs will be right here in Wisconsin.

If you're wondering why Republicans seem so reluctant to help US automakers, yet just a few weeks ago were tripping over themselves to throw money at banks and insurance companies, the EPI study provides a clue. Can you guess which part of the US the will be least damaged by a failure of the Big Three?

Turns out it's Washington DC...

Give Thanks for Turkey Basters

2008-11-26T11:52:00.009-06:00

So, big turkeys are "inefficient breeders", which means there's one more thing we should all give thanks for tomorrow: The humble turkey baster. Turns out that without this versatile tool far fewer of us would be able to enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving meal...

Anderson, who has bred the birds for 26 years, said the key technical advance was artificial insemination, which came into widespread use in the 1960s, right around the time that turkey size starts to skyrocket. The reason is that turkeys over 30 pounds are "inefficient" breeders: It's difficult for them to actually perform the natural mating act. With artificial insemination, the largest birds can still be used as sires, even if they have a hard time walking, let alone engaging in sexual reproduction.

"You can spread the one tom around better. It adds a whole new level of efficiency. You can spread him over more hens," Anderson said. "It takes the lid off how big the bird can be. If the size of the bird keeps them from mating, then you're stuck."

Comments are now open for big turkey jokes.

Bush to Conservatives: It's Time to Move On

2008-11-24T22:43:00.001-06:00

"The Last Time We Vote For Bigotry"

2008-11-22T21:19:00.012-06:00

My title is from a Huffington Post article in which the author argues that gays should never again back a presidential candidate, like Obama, who doesn't support gay marriage. While you can debate the effectiveness of such a strategy, it looks like it's already happening. Exit polls from November's election show a startling trend: Gays have deserted the Democratic party at rates far higher than any other group.

The chart below, from pollster.com, shows shifts in presidential voting patterns compared to 2004. Groups below the horizontal line voted more Republican in 2008 than in 2004. While Obama did amazingly well with almost every demographic, there are three groups where he lost votes compared to Kerry: "Small town" (-6%), "Decide last three days" (-8%), and "Gay" (-11%).

(Click on the chart for a version you can actually read)

Although I don't have the data to prove it, my guess is that this is a result of Democratic-leaning gays not voting, rather than gays as a group becoming more Republican. If so, this likely occurred more in safe states like California than in swing states like Wisconsin.

This trend will probably continue, and perhaps even accelerate, until the Democratic Party finally elects a presidential candidate who openly supports gay marriage. While it's unlikely to affect the top of the ticket, it could have an impact in close races further down the ballot.

In the past Democrats have almost always paid a price for supporting gay rights. In the future they will increasingly pay that price for not doing so.

Obama's Lieberman Gamble

2008-11-20T09:04:00.006-06:00

On the flip side, the best argument I've seen for being nice to Lieberman is this Time Magazine article. Only time will tell if Obama made the right decision, but I sure hope it was made very clear to Lieberman that if he steps one inch off the ranch in the future he'll instantly be demoted to bellboy with a brand new office somewhere in the boiler room of the Senate Office Building.

Why I Love Dailykos

2008-11-17T17:47:00.005-06:00

Markos tells it like it is...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VA-Gov: Would you buy shit from McAuliffe?
by kos, Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 03:00:04 PM PST
Huh?

[Terry] McAuliffe’s pals dismiss such criticism and say his unique blend of charm and cash will prove irresistible.

"Terry could sell shit to the zoo," explains longtime pal Paul Begala. "He’s the best salesman in the world."

Right. Is that why Democrats made huge gains during his tenure as DNC chairmanship in those ass-kicking 2002 and 2004 elections? Is that why Hillary Clinton is President of the United States?

Terry McAuliffe can obviously sell shit to Paul Begala. He has a harder time selling it to people outside his circle of shit-buying friends.

2008 Presidential Results and Analysis - Part 2

2008-11-07T13:05:00.007-06:00

This map shows the number of votes Obama or McCain won each county by. You can clearly see the electoral importance of the larger urban areas in Wisconsin, particularly Milwaukee and Madison. Three-quarters of Obama's 412,000 vote margin came from Milwaukee County and Dane County alone. But even if you ignore those two counties completely, Obama still would have won the state by more than 100,000 votes, ten times Kerry's total margin in 2004.

(For higher resolution versions of any of my maps please contact me)

Obama ran a truly statewide campaign, with almost sixty campaign offices, some in parts of Wisconsin that had never before seen a presidential ground presence. Many of those offices were cooperative efforts between the campaign and county parties, and the eagerness of so many county parties to grab the ball and run with it was amazing. Those local grassroots efforts will result in a bigger and stronger Democratic Party, and bode well for even more success in the future.

Obama's victory represents, in a very real sense, the culmination of Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy. You can't win if you don't play, and Obama played, and won, almost everywhere. I was an early Dean supporter because I recognized that Dean's vision for the Democratic Party represented our best hope to turn around three decades of Republican domination. Although Dean didn't win the nomination in 2004, his willingness, as DNC Chair, to push for new ideas and strategies, despite relentless opposition from the party establishment, paved the way for what happened on November 4th.

Democrats have an awful lot to be thankful for this year, and we owe most of that to two extraordinary leaders: President-elect Barak Obama, and DNC Chair Howard Dean.

2008 Presidential Results and Analysis - Part 1

2008-11-07T11:27:00.005-06:00

The map below shows the Wisconsin county-by-county percent margin in the 2008 presidential race. I'm working on several additional maps that will show vote totals by county, and trends since the 2004 election, but that will take a bit longer so I wanted to get this one up now.

(For higher resolution versions of any of my maps please contact me)

To me the most interesting thing is that although Wisconsin is far more blue than in 2004, the overall pattern is amazingly similar. Partisan identities are remarkably stable, and although swing voters may trend one way or another in any given election, the underlying demographics change quite slowly. Anyway, this will all be easier to see when I finish the maps and get the rest of them posted.

The Palin Formula

2008-08-29T14:15:00.002-05:00

McCain's logic:

"Let's see, my veep has to help fire up my base and pick up Democratic votes. Obama won the Democratic primary because he's young and pretty, and Hillary almost won because, well, she has boobs.

So Democrats will vote for me if I pick a young (hell, everybody is young compared to me), good looking women, but she has to be really conservative to keep the religious nuts happy.

Maybe Palin? No experience, but if she has to take over I sure as hell won't be around to worry about it...

Gotta give her a call ASAP.

Damn cell phone, how do I turn it on?"

Trophy Wife, Trophy Veep

2008-08-29T13:27:00.005-05:00

John McCain sure seems to have a thing for ex beauty queens...

Ireland!

2008-08-25T19:16:00.011-05:00

(Boats on the River Corrib near Galway Bay. Click for larger image)

I haven't been doing much political stuff lately because I'm in Ireland. Right now we're in Galway on the west coast. Beautiful area! The locals tell me that this has been the wettest summer in Ireland's history, but that doesn't seem to slow the Irish down. Check out the guys below who were out swimming yesterday even though it was sixty degrees, raining, and blowing so hard that the raindrops hurt. I know the picture could be better, but even for a photographer the conditions were rather tough...

(The diving platform, Galway/Salthill. Click for larger image)

Bartoshevich Bites Back -or- Spite Makes Right!

2008-08-25T18:08:00.008-05:00

Debra Bartoshevich is the Clinton delegate from Waterford who was (rightfully) stripped of her credentials for saying she would vote for McCain. Now Bartoshevich is starring in the new McCain ad below.

I understand Bartoshevich's pain and frustration, but not her willingness to try to extract revenge by selling out both Hillary Clinton and the Democratic values that Bartoshevich claims she believes in. I suspect that this is an act that Debra Bartoshevich will look back on with well deserved shame.

Classy

2008-08-09T23:37:00.007-05:00

So I was watching the Olympics opening ceremony with my family last night, and on comes the McCain ad you see below. An attack ad! On the first night of the Olympics!

I used to have some respect for McCain, but he's turned into a real piece of crap. Seems the only thing he learned from the vicious smears about his adopted daughter in the 2000 campaign was to hire the guys who did them this time around.

John McCain: Proving that if you're old enough, integrity is just another word you can't remember.

Another One Bites the Dust

2008-08-05T19:26:00.021-05:00

The Republican effort to kill the UW system seems to be working. Another prominent scientist just left UW-Madison for greener (in more ways than one) pastures.

Jon Foley, the founder and director of the UW-Madison's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, was earning about $115,000 here at the UW. Not bad, but the University of Minnesota offered him a position as head of their Institute on the Environment, at twice his UW salary, plus a cool 1.2 million dollars of start-up mad money. Pretty sweet! UW-Madison wasn't able to come anywhere close to matching such an offer, so we lost one more of our heavy hitters.

Usually when a superstar like Foley gets lured away it's difficult to pin the blame on anything specific, but in this case we have a pretty good idea what happened. Seems Foley explained the situation in an email that he sent to friends, and that email was leaked to the State Journal. Here's part of what he had to say:

"It is remarkable how big a difference having a constructive and supportive legislature — even when money is still tight — makes in campus morale and attitude. There is a startling difference between the two universities (UW-Madison and the University of Minnesota) right now."

Perhaps influenced by their party's growing antipathy towards science and education, Republicans have spent the past two decades trying to turn Wisconsin into an intellectual and economic wasteland by cutting money out of higher education and putting it into prisons. Our great universities may be rotting from the inside out, but being Tough on Crime^® has sure helped a lot of Republicans get elected. Besides, we've locked up a heck of a lot more scary black folks, and who could complain about that?

Check out the chart below showing how state funding for UW-Madison has changed over the past twenty years. Pretty sad, although there has been a slight improvement recently. No doubt just a coincidence that the upturn occurred as Democrats took more power in the legislature. Click on the chart for a larger version. Email me if you'd like the data in a spreadsheet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full disclosure: My wife is a professor at UW-Madison. Coincidentally, she was also recently offered a significantly higher salary to take a high-profile position at a school in another state. Although she turned it down, we probably would have left if our kids weren't still in primary and secondary school here.

My wife is prominent enough in her field that she'll continue to be recruited by both private industry and other universities in the future, and in a few years our kids will be old enough to no longer be a factor. Unless state funding priorities change drastically, it's likely that she'll become one more symptom of the brain-drain that threatens the UW system.

Money isn't everything when it comes to academia, but only fools, and some Republicans, seem to think that it doesn't matter.

Is Coal the New Oil?

2008-08-05T13:32:00.007-05:00

Something very strange is happening to coal prices in the US. A massive discrepancy has opened between prices east and west of the Mississippi, with the far west flat at around $12 to $15 per ton and the east soaring to nearly $150 ton, triple last year's prices.

Because coal is expensive to ship, and rail and barge transportation is limited, coal is usually three to four times more expensive in the east than in the west. But as you can see from the chart at the bottom, the current trends are extraordinary.

Coal matters because most of our electricity comes from coal. Higher coal prices inevitably mean higher electricity prices, which we all pay. But what could be causing such an odd and dramatic price increase? The usual market forces don't seem to explain things. Demand for coal in the US has been flat, exports haven't increased significantly, and inventories are reasonably high. This leaves market speculation as a real, and likely, possibility.

Speculation in energy markets tends to occur where there's the least regulation and, perhaps even more importantly in the Bush era, the least regulatory attention. After Enron it became very hard to manipulate the electricity market. Too many nosy people keeping an eye on things. As a result, over the past five years or so, speculators moved into oil, but given all the attention they've been getting in that market, perhaps they're starting to put their money elsewhere. Coal would be a logical choice. The coal market is much more geographically fragmented than oil, making it easier to control and manipulate. And, at least in the eastern US, the coal market is also fairly inelastic, again making it easier to manipulate.

Looks like coal could become the new oil. Enormous profits for the few, much higher energy costs for the rest of us. It's the American way.

Click on chart for a larger version. Source: EIA. The Powder River Basin is in Montana and Wyoming, and the Uinta Basin is in Colorado and Utah.

Jim Doyle Leaving, Barbara Lawton to Become Governor!

2008-07-28T11:11:00.008-05:00

I'm jumping the gun a bit, but every indication is that Jim Doyle is packing his bags for an appointment in the Obama administration. The positions I've heard mentioned include AG, Health and Human Services, perhaps an appellate court judgeship, or maybe even ambassador to Ireland. Doyle really likes Ireland.

Normally the transition to a new governor in a situation like this would be fairly smooth. This one might be a lot more interesting due to the rocky relationship between Doyle and Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton. While I don't expect any big immediate policy changes, there might be an awful lot of Doylies looking for jobs when their patron saint leaves town.

No matter what position he takes in the Obama administration, Doyle is unlikely to bring more than a handful of people with him, and that means a bunch of folks who hitched their star to his are going to be out of luck. Few Doylies have ever shown Lawton much love, so she has little incentive not to roll heads at the capital and at party headquarters. Expect to see a lot of resumes floating around Madison during the next few months.

But it may not play out that way. Looks like Doyle has a plan in the works that would create a safe haven for many of his most loyal servants. A plan that would turn the Democratic Party power structure on its head. A plan that would also be an extraordinarily nasty parting shot at Barbara Lawton.

But more on that later...

Iowa Republicans Eating Their Own

2008-07-27T21:40:00.009-05:00

The Iowa Republican Party is self destructing. It was taken over by Christian fundamentalists a few years ago, and they're rather successfully running it into the ground. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

Their latest faux pas was to boot their own US Senator, Charles Grassley, from their delegation to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, and replace him with ... the President of the Iowa Christian Alliance!

Grassley's a moderate who isn't exactly loved by the nuts in charge of the Iowa party, but his real sin in their eyes seems to have been digging too deeply into financial irregularities surrounding certain prominent televangelists. Looks like the good Christians running the Iowa Republican Party see honesty as a virtue that only applies to the little people.

Love It!

2008-07-22T21:24:00.004-05:00

Just When You Think Conservative Talkers Can't Get Any Worse...

2008-07-22T14:04:00.013-05:00

...Michael Savage lowers the bar (again).

It's a new world's record! Listen to Savage mock and insult blacks, crippled kids, and women, all in less than two minutes of completely fact-free ranting!

(Download mp3 here)

And his audience loves it! Of course, they're too dumb to know that blacks die from asthma at a rate two-and-a-half times higher than whites. Or that the risk of autism is more than 90% genetically determined (sorry, paid link). Or even that being a women doesn't mean being a weak crybaby. If you don't believe me I'll send my little sister over to kick your butt.

And she can!

New High Voltage Transmission Lines - Needed or Not?

2008-07-22T09:45:00.004-05:00

Yesterday the Wisconsin State Journal published an editorial in support of building new electrical transmission lines. While I don't agree with their damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead approach to the issue, they raise some important points.

Despite our best efforts at conservation, electricity usage will increase significantly over the next few decades as we move away from liquid fossil fuels. In twenty years most of us will drive plug-in hybrids or electric cars, and heat our houses with electricity.

Unfortunately, while the editorial mentions this increased demand, it misses the fact that increased electrical demand alone doesn't necessarily mean we need more transmission lines. Improved peak load control and distributed generation can let the existing electrical grid handle a lot more power, greatly reducing the need for new transmission lines.

But we're going to build a bunch of new transmission lines anyway. The main reason isn't demand, but supply. What the editorial gets exactly right is that increased use of renewable energy will result in significant geographical changes in electrical power generation. You build wind turbines where the wind is good, not next to existing power plants, and you need new transmission lines to get that green power to where it's going to be used.

This doesn't mean that every new transmission line is justified. But don't make the mistake of thinking that we're going to simply conserve our way out of this issue either.

Madison Robocall Credit Card Scam

2008-07-17T13:39:00.007-05:00

Watch out! I just got a robocall from "Visa and Mastercard" saying that my credit card rate was going up, but that I had been selected to receive a lower fixed rate. To receive this special rate all I had to do was press six to talk to a customer service representative.

Of course I pressed six. I let the guy go through his spiel , then I asked him what company was doing the calls. He said "Visa and Mastercard." So I said, "No, what company are you working for?" He immediately hung up on me. Pretty safe bet this is an identity theft scam. If you get a call like this, particularly if you have caller ID and can get the originating phone number, please call the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection, 608-224-4949, and let them know about it.

Why is Gas So Cheap?

2008-07-11T10:16:00.003-05:00

Gasoline is amazingly cheap. I know this sounds stupid, but bear with me. If you drive a car the implications are important.

Gasoline is made from oil. At the current price of $147 a barrel, a gallon of crude costs $3.50. Historically gasoline has retailed between 1.5 to 2 times the cost of the oil it's made from. Today that ratio is 1.2. By historical norms gasoline should be well over five dollars a gallon, and probably closer to seven. This means that even if crude oil prices stabilize or drop a bit, gasoline prices could still soar.

But they probably won't.

Diesel prices will go up. So will heating oil, and jet fuel. But we got lucky on gasoline. Most of the world is switching to diesel engines, and for good reason. They're a lot more efficient than gasoline engines. But the result is that there's a relative glut of gasoline, forcing prices down compared to other oil products. Refineries can't quickly or easily change the mix of products they produce, so as worldwide demand increases for diesel fuel, they end up with lots of gasoline that they need to get rid of, so they're willing to sell it cheap.

Eventually refineries will fix this problem, and gasoline prices relative to crude oil will increase significantly. But this will take years, and until then we're getting a break compared to the rest of the world. Gasoline prices are still directly tied to the price of crude, so if crude oil prices go up so will gasoline, just less than other fuels. Of course, if we do something stupid, like attacking Iran, you can expect gas prices to go through the roof.

The big question is if we'll use our temporary cost advantage compared to the rest of the world to smooth the inevitable and expensive transition away from liquid fossil fuels, or just piss it away by continuing to drive big cars and SUV's. Given that this is America, it's pretty safe to bet on the latter.

For a good, if rather wonkish, discussion of gasoline prices relative to other fuels check out this post and discussion on The Oil Drum. It's a great site if you're into peak oil and energy policy.

Get Your "McCain is Aware of the Internet" Shirt While They Last

2008-06-29T08:10:00.005-05:00

At a Personal Democracy Forum event a few days ago, one of John McCain's technical gurus, trying to defend MCain's complete lack of computer skills, claimed "John McCain is aware of the internet."

Wow! Who knew McCain was so so sharp?

But it gets even better. CNN, which broadcast the event, apparently thought the comment was so newsworthy that they made a T-shirt out of it! Twenty bucks, including shipping. But you better get one soon if you're interested. I'm sure the McCain folks aren't very happy with the situation, and they're probably going to bring the hammer down on CNN.

America's Funniest Political Videos: Republican Logic!

2008-06-27T14:14:00.006-05:00

Watch Mitt Romney try so hard to stick to his talking point that McCain is bipartisan and Obama isn't that he backs himself into a logical corner and is forced to claim that nuclear nonproliferation is a "liberal" position. Hilarious!

Hard to believe this guy was a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, I feel the same way about Mr. no-idea-how-to-use-a-computer McCain.

Nice catch by TPM TV!

FISA - Good Dems and Bad Dems

2008-06-26T16:04:00.002-05:00

FISA, almost certainly including telecom immunity, is a done deal. The cloture vote to stop debate passed 80 to 15, and below I've listed the Dems who voted for and against cloture.

Although the vote on the actual FISA bill may not occur for a while, it's the cloture vote that really counts. The lopsided vote clearly shows that the Democratic leadership supported the bill, despite Senator Reed's "reservations".

It's now unlikely that telecom immunity will be successfully stripped out unless Obama personally leads the charge against it. And although some of the Democrats who voted for cloture will likely vote against the eventual bill, don't be fooled. They knew that cloture, which requires 60 votes, was the only real chance we had to defeat the bill and thereby obtain any meaningful compromise from the White House.

Senator Feingold, as usual, fought the good fight. Senator Kohl, as is too often the case, sold us out. Obama missed the vote, as did Hillary and McCain. Shame on them. Regardless of where they stand, every elected official should be on the record when it comes to important issues like this.

FISA GOOD DEMS

CA - Boxer
CT - Dodd
DE - Biden
IA - Harkin
IL - Durbin
MA - Kerry
NJ - Lautenberg
NJ - Menendez
NY - Schumer
OH - Brown
OR - Wyden
VT - Leahy
WA - Cantwell
WI - Feingold

FISA BAD DEMS

AR - Lincoln
AR - Pryor
CA - Feinstein
CO - Salazar
DE - Carper
FL - Nelson
HI - Akaka
HI - Inouye
IN - Bayh
LA - Landrieu
MD - Cardin
MD - Mikulski
MI - Levin
MI - Stabenow
MN - Klobuchar
MO - McCaskill
MT - Baucus
MT - Tester
ND - Conrad
ND - Dorgan
NE - Nelson
NM - Bingaman
NV - Reid
PA - Casey
RI - Reed
RI - Whitehouse
SD - Johnson
VA - Webb
WA - Murray
WI - Kohl
WV - Rockefeller

If any of my Democratic friends are considering letting loose on me in the comments, be aware that I fully understand the political calculus behind the vote. I just don't agree with it.

Democrats succeed when we stand up for Democratic values, not when we cower and pretend we're corporate Republicans. That's the fundamental political lesson we should have learned over the last thirty years. Unfortunately, far too many Dem leaders aren't smart enough to realize that, or are simply too comfortable with the status quo to risk change.

Stop FISA Telecom Immunity: Call Obama

2008-06-26T08:24:00.002-05:00

The single most important thing you can do to stop telecom immunity is to call Obama's national campaign office and tell him how you feel:

866-675-2008

Obama's position is that while he opposes telecom immunity, he'll vote for the bill anyway. This is unacceptable. Call him:

866-675-2008

I spoke to the campaign folks earlier today, and they're getting lots of calls about FISA. They need lots more:

866-675-2008

Obama is the key. He's the nominal leader of the Democratic Party, and if he comes out strongly against telecom immunity the rest of the Democrats will fall into line. Do your part. Call Obama's campaign office and give them hell! (Politely, of course)

866-675-2008

Call now, or I'll have to repeat that number again!

Father's Day and PTSD

2008-06-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Father's Day, but I don't have many happy stories to tell about my father. Forty years ago, when I was nine, I lost him to the Vietnam war.

My father was a Major in the U.S. Army Special Forces, a Green Beret, who did repeated tours in Southeast Asia starting in the late 50's. His luck held for a while, but eventually he was severely injured in combat. Sadly, he probably could have been saved if he had received medical care in time, but the seriousness of his wounds weren't recognized until it was too late.

The reason that my father didn't get the treatment he needed was that his wounds were mental, not physical. He suffered from what we would now call severe post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and in the end he became so violent and dangerous that he had to be institutionalized.

Four decades later PTSD is still an enormous and unsolved problem. Many more soldiers who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up committing suicide due to PTSD than will be killed in action^*, yet we spend hundreds of times more on equipment and training to protect our troops in combat than we do on their mental health.

We ignore the problem because it mainly strikes after a soldier leaves the military. To put it bluntly, while every combat death is national news, a veteran who commits suicide is just a few lines in the obituary column of the local paper.

Please take the time to learn more about PTSD. A good place to start is a Washington Post article called The War Inside. It uses the stories of individual vets suffering from PTSD to explore the bigger issue, and it paints a picture of a military health care system that's crumbling under the strain of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan:

"The military is also battling a crisis in mental-health care. Licensed psychologists are leaving at a far faster rate than they are being replaced. Their ranks have dwindled from 450 to 350 in recent years. Many said they left because they could not handle the stress of facing such pained soldiers."

Father's Day will always be bittersweet for me. Although I have two wonderful sons, I never really got to know my own father. He served our country with honor, yet we failed him when he most needed our help. The children of today's soldiers deserve better. Learn about PTSD, and demand that we provide the best possible care, physical and mental, for our wounded soldiers and veterans. We owe them nothing less.

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* A recent study of over 300,000 US veterans showed that they have a suicide rate twice that of the general population. This means that almost 3% of all veterans commit suicide, with about half of those deaths being due to service-related mental illness, as compared to the current combat mortality rate in Iraq and Afghanistan of a little less than 1%. Analysis based on the current US suicide rate (2004) of 1.4%, expressed as the ratio of suicide deaths to total deaths from all causes.

Ron Paul Booted From RNC Convention, Will Have His Own!

2008-06-10T16:38:00.005-05:00

I love this. The RNC decided not to let Ron Paul speak at the Republican Convention in Minneapolis this summer, so he's going to hold his own convention. In Minneapolis. At the same time as the Republicans.

And we thought it was messy on our side of the fence...

US Special Forces Using Banned Ammo?

2008-06-09T23:55:00.022-05:00

Wars are about killing people, and the more quickly and efficiently you kill the other guy the more likely you are to win. But there are international restrictions, generally referred to as the rules of war, on the types of weapons you can use, and how and under what conditions you can use them. One of those restrictions, which we claim to observe but are not a signatory to, is the 1899 Hague Declaration, which forbids the use of bullets which expand on impact to create larger wounds. I'm not going to get into the philosophy or wisdom of the Hague Declaration except to note that we've always given it lip service, if little more, in the past. Even that may no longer be the case.

US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently purchased a new type of ammunition, referred to as "5.56 Optimized" or "brown tip" (because the tip is painted brown to distinguish it from other rounds), which appears to use a bullet based on the civilian Barnes Triple-Shock X hunting bullet shown in the picture below. As you can see, this bullet would be banned under the Hague Convention.

Bullets are designed for making holes in things, and from the military's standpoint the bigger the hole the better. The M16 and its variants fire very high velocity but small diameter bullets. Little holes aren't very good for killing people, but our standard M855 round, at typical combat ranges, fragments after impact to create a massive wound channel. It's perhaps the most effective and deadly small-arms round in the world. But the same round fired from guns with shorter barrels, such as the M4 carbine and some versions of the SCAR, doesn't have enough muzzle velocity to consistently fragment, making it much less lethal.

Enter the 5.56 Optimized. Expanding bullets are designed to work properly over a broad range of velocities, so they're deadly even when fired from more compact weapons better suited for urban warfare. The 5.56 Optimized is also "green" because it's made from copper rather than lead, which, believe it or not, is a major concern of our military right now.

And the Hague Declaration? Well, if necessary we'll just have to find a way around it. Considering that the M855 meets the letter of the Hague Declaration while violating everything it stands for, I can't imagine we'll let international concerns get in our way. Damn all those European humanitarians anyway. They have no idea what it's like to fight a real war!

Reform Dem Challenges The Proletariat!

2008-06-06T21:26:00.028-05:00

UPDATE: Henry has responded! Check the comments for the latest.

Henry Dubb (a pseudonym), on his blog The Proletariat, has been spouting a lot of wild and crazy stuff about Obama and the Democratic Party. He's certainly entitled to his opinions, uninformed though they may be, but now he's crossed the line, forcing me to bring out the heavy artillery. Henry is predicting that:

"Obama will lose big come November."

Well, I'm not going to take that lying down! Since we can't seem to discuss the error of his ways, mainly because Henry is still deleting most of the comments I leave on his blog, I issued him the following challenge:

Henry, I'll bet you a case of beer, or $50 to a charity of the winner's choice, that Obama wins this fall. Since you're so sure how things are going to turn out, this should be a no-brainer. My only condition is that both of us announce the bet, and the settlement, in posts on our blogs. No backing out when the going gets tough.

Talk is cheap. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Email me: russwallac@aol.com.

And you're still dumping my comments. Why do I scare you so much? If you can't go toe to toe with people who don't agree with you then maybe you should find a hobby that doesn't involve expressing your opinions quite so publicly.

Pwned!!!

So what will it be, Henry? I've thrown down the gauntlet. Is what you write just hysterical anti-Obama propaganda, or do you actually believe it?

I'll be waiting...

(That's me with the blue lightsaber, and Henry with the red. I don't think his horns are visible under normal circumstances.)

Why Obama Matters: Young Voters

2008-06-06T08:37:00.004-05:00

"Get 'em while they're young" is the key to making real political change in America. People tend to form their political identities based on the first couple of elections they participate in. Take a look at the chart below, it shows the big reason Obama has so much potential to move this country in the right direction.

Howard Dean to Remain as DNC Chair

2008-06-05T13:37:00.003-05:00

Just noticed this, and I'm a bit relieved. From The Fix blog at the Washington Post:

Dean Stays at DNC, Tewes Joins

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) is moving quickly to put his imprint on the Democratic National Committee, offering a vote of confidence in current chairman Howard Dean while also installing one of his most senior political deputies in a leadership role at the party committee.

In the days since Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday night, there had been speculation that Dean might be removed in favor of a party chairman of Obama's choosing.

Obama put that speculation to rest this morning.

"Senator Obama appreciates the hard work that Chairman Dean has done to grow our party at the grassroots level and looks forward to working with him as the chairman of the Democratic Party as we go forward," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton in a statement.

Although Obama is keeping Dean, he is also ensuring that one of the main pillars of his campaign is installed at the DNC. Paul Tewes, a longtime party operative who managed Obama's Iowa caucus effort, will take over the general-election strategy at the DNC, according to several officials briefed on the decision.

Dean will announce Tewes to the DNC staff this afternoon. No title for the nomadic political operative, who served as political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2004 cycle, has been chosen.

Those close to the DNC's operations insist that no wholesale changes will occur at the party committee. Instead, the current staff will stay intact while a number of Obama loyalists are added to bolster the committee's general election operation.

Who's the Star?

2008-06-05T11:32:00.010-05:00

A couple of months back, when Hillary Clinton praised John McCain as a way to attack Barak Obama, who could have possibly guessed that her words would come back to haunt Democrats in the general election?

Shocking as it may seem, Clinton is the star of the brand new anti-Obama RNC ad below. There are good reasons why a lot of Democrats, myself included, didn't like the way Clinton ran her primary campaign. This rather graphically illustrates one of them:

US to Iraq: We Own You!

2008-06-05T08:44:00.011-05:00

UPDATE: Some good historical background related to this issue here.

Somebody leaked the proposed status of forces agreement that Bush is trying to ram through the Iraqi parliament, and it's astonishing. As in we get to do any damn thing we want, and there's nothing you stupid Iraqis can do about it!

Fifty permanent US military bases, full control over Iraqi airspace, blanket immunity for US troops and contractors, complete US military freedom of action, right to arrest and hold anybody, for any reason, for as long as we want.

The pretense that one of our goals in Iraq was to establish a democracy is now gone. It isn't democracy when there's a permanent occupying force in your country that's above your laws and beyond your control.

Bush wants to get this agreement signed quickly so it will be binding on the next administration. Can't take a chance on Obama undoing all the fine work he and Cheney have done in Iraq. The sad thing is that the Iraqi government will probably go along, despite overwhelming and likely violent opposition from the Iraqi people. Why? Because everyone in the government knows that their livelihoods, and their lives, depend on staying in Bush's good graces. When the time comes most will decide it's better to be a live coward than a dead hero.

The Obama Haters

2008-06-04T08:38:00.006-05:00

I find it ironic that the the far-left and the far-right hate Obama for the same reason. They worry that if Obama is elected president he'll move the country to the left. And he will.

While it's easy to see why this bothers the right, you might think that the far-left would be pleased with the prospect. But many are not because they believe in revolution, not evolution. In their world anybody who makes things better, short of the true revolution, is a threat. A threat because revolution can only occur when the people are made to suffer.

Perhaps the oddest manifestation of this logic is the bizarre love affair some on the far-left suddenly have with Hillary Clinton. You can see this quite clearly on The Proletariat, a Madison area Green/Socialist blog. If you check it out don't bother leaving any critical comments; they'll probably just be deleted.

The Proletariat is a guy who would never vote for Clinton, yet he waxes poetic about what he sees as the unfair way she's been treated by Obama, the media, and the DNC. His real goal, of course, is simply to damage the Democratic nominee, whoever it may be, and Clinton is just a convenient club with which to whack Obama.

Intellectually honest? Not so much. But I guess anything goes in support of the revolution!

Excuse of the Week Award

2008-05-28T23:44:00.006-05:00

I've heard some pretty creative excuses for bad behavior from my kids. But our two boys have nothing on California Republican Congressman Dan Lungren, who explained a recent junket to Hawaii this way:

[Lungren] insisted he carried out important discussions with airport executives while at the pool. "I'm a California kid," Rep. Lungren told ABC News. "I grew up around pools. We do a lot of business around pools." Asked if he would have attended if the January conference were held in Pittsburgh, Lungren said, "Do I look like I go to Pittsburgh in January?"

At least you have to give him credit for being honest about Pittsburgh. And the guy looks like he could really use a little R&R

I should point out that the other politician along on the trip was Hawaii Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye. Lobbyists are equal opportunity corrupters.

The Times They Are A-Changin' - Majority of Californians back gay marriage!

2008-05-28T10:33:00.009-05:00

I didn't think I'd see this until my kid's generation were adults:

(AP) - More California voters now support allowing same-sex marriage than oppose it, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

The results mark the first time in over three decades of polling that more California voters have approved of extending marriage to gay couples than have disapproved...

The poll found that 51 percent of respondents backed legalizing same-sex marriage and 42 percent opposed it, DiCamillo said.

In 2006, when participants were asked, "Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?" 44 percent said they approved and 50 percent objected. In 1977, the first year Field posted the question to voters, 28 percent approved and 59 percent were opposed.

"The Times They Are A-Changin'", by Bob Dylan. This is the original version from Dylan's 1964 album of the same name. An oldie, but quite appropriate.

WMC Critics Get It Wrong

2008-05-28T09:15:00.004-05:00

I think a lot of critics of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) are making a big mistake. There's reasonably broad recognition that WMC's constant harping about Wisconsin's business climate is probably driving business away from the state. Most commentators seem to see this as unintentional, if somewhat ironic, collateral damage from WMC's war on regulation and taxes. But they're wrong.

Many of WMC's largest and most powerful corporate members directly benefit from a weak Wisconsin economy. While their markets are primarily national and international, their labor costs are largely determined by the local job market. It is very clearly in their best interests to make Wisconsin seem as unattractive to business as possible. Which is exactly what WMC is doing.

Of course this is completely counter to the interests of the majority of WMC members who depend on their sales in Wisconsin to make a profit. But, as in all organizations, the big guys at the top set the course, and the little ones at the bottom often get screwed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Soglin, on his superb and thoughtful blog Waxing America, has probably done more than anyone else to dig out the truth about WMC's claims. Well worth reading.

McKinney Goes Green

2008-05-27T21:33:00.004-05:00

Looks like former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has sown up the Green Party's presidential nomination. While I think McCain is more at risk from third party candidates this fall, McKinney will hurt Obama. McKinney herself has a rather strange take on the the potential impact of her campaign:

"Basically, what you are suggesting is by participating in the Democratic process the Green Party is going to become, quote, 'the spoiler.' "It is impossible to become a spoiler based on past experience when one examines the past.

"In the 2000 election, 6 million votes were not counted," she said. "They were cast but not counted. It is impossible that George W. Bush won the White House on 537 votes. That was constructed. That was contrived, and the Democratic Party failed to fight for the voters who voted it into the White House. In 2004, 3 million votes were cast but not counted."

Her points about election integrity and the Democratic Party's failure to contest undercounted votes are quite valid, but claiming that she can't possibly have any effect on this election because votes weren't counted in past elections is some seriously convoluted logic. Rather self-serving, too.

McKinney had a very progressive voting record in congress, somewhat to the left of both Obama and Clinton. She's a good speaker and a tough campaigner, and will certainly make November's election more interesting.

Time for Hillary to Quit

2008-05-23T21:20:00.011-05:00

When Hillary Clinton is reduced to claiming she's still in the race because "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," it's time for her to quit.

I realize that she wasn't saying she hopes Obama will be assassinated, but it sure came out that way. And this wasn't the first time she's invoked RFK. Once could be a mistake, but for a politician of her caliber twice is a campaign strategy.

Out of my belief in the benefits of the primary process, and my respect for friends who are Hillary supporters, I haven't previously called on her to drop out. But now it's time. Hillary Clinton is a great politician with enormous potential, but her ambition has become destructive. She's lost the race, and now she needs to ride off into the sunset while she has some credibility left.

Please call Tammy Baldwin and ask her to switch her support to Obama. I doubt anything short of a massive loss of superdelegate support will force Hillary to do the right thing and concede.

Tammy's numbers are: (608) 258-9800 (Madison), and (608) 362-2800 (Beloit).

Freudian Slip

2008-05-22T15:33:00.004-05:00

From the new conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Leadership. See if you can spot it:

"We must fix the Milwaukee Public School system which is not only a black hole for tax dollars..."

The Letter - Alder Eli Judge and the 911 Center Oversight Board

2008-05-22T12:42:00.005-05:00

Below is a open letter sent by a group of UW-Madison students to several Madison area news organizations regarding Alder Eli Judge's failure to attend meetings of the 911 Center Oversight Board in the year prior to Brittany Zimmerman's murder. I was given this letter by a local reporter who felt his organization had not appropriately covered it, and who wanted me to post it. Following the letter are related links including Eli Judge's response on his blog.

Before anyone tears into me, be aware that I fully understand the political and personal overtones here. This post is informational; my attempt to create a repository for everything that's been written publicly on the subject. If you know of stories or posts that I've missed, let me know. Also, given the history of some of the folks involved in this issue, please understand that I will delete any inappropriate or off-topic comments.

Open Letter to Alder Eli Judge

As your constituents, we and many other students were delighted that your campaign in 2007 was a positive, issue-oriented contest with your opponent, Lauren Woods, in which each of you testified over and over about your strong commitment to campus safety and women's safety. You each published plans for campus safety, and talked about it on your website and literature. This deep commitment to our safety was reiterated so many times that people truly believed it, voted for you, and gave you the weighty opportunity to put your words into action and fight to improve campus and community safety.

Given this background of your oft-professed passion for public safety, certainly you can understand why we are shocked and outraged at your failure to attend even one meeting of the 911 Center Oversight Board in the entirety of your term of service. This is completely unacceptable and unprecedented. It would be unacceptable if you missed nine consecutive monthly meetings of any committee, but to completely ignore the key issue that you made a centerpiece of your campaign smacks of an arrogance unrivaled even among the haughty club of elected officials you worked so hard to join last year.

Alder Judge, if you had a conflict in your schedule with the meetings of this committee, then you should have resigned your seat as soon as it was apparent so that the City of Madison could have been properly represented on the Board. To hold a seat on an oversight body of such a critical part of our public safety infrastructure, knowing that you were unable to fulfill the most basic of all duties, attendance, is to demonstrate woefully negligent indifference to the needs and safety of your constituents and Dane County as a whole. After the tragic death of Brittany Zimmerman and the galling failure of our 911 operations, many have wondered what role proper oversight could have played in preventing Brittany's unnecessary death. We will never know whether real oversight could have prevented this or other tragedies, because your habitual absences deprived the City of Madison of its role in oversight of the 911 Center operations, a critical inter-governmental public safety function.

We are left comparing your public expressions of condolence and care with your record of inaction, inattention, and indifference. Especially after an election campaign in which you raised and politicized the critical issue of public safety, as well as had surrogates criticize your opponent for missing far less important meetings, we are left with no other choice than to find your service unacceptable, and demand your immediate resignation from the 911 Center Oversight Board and the Common Council. The students of UW-Madison deserve better in a representative, and the City of Madison deserves better in its public safety efforts.

We understand that the Mayor is already taking long-overdue steps to remove you from the 911 Center Oversight Board, and we hope that you will do the honorable thing and resign your seat in order to allow service from a student who will not just talk about public safety, but who will actually show up and make a difference on behalf of the UW campus. As constituents on this campus, we deserve no less.

Sincerely,

Lydia Barbash-(I deleted the contact info originally here)
Mingwei Huang
Karren Lawson
Kari Muldore
Kelly Rentscher
Mathew Maus
Donald Spann
Brian Febbo
John Cokins
J. Aaron Blecher
Alex Ippolito
Nicholas McCann
Zachary Hirschtritt
Jake Guyette
Josh Guyette
Katherine Baeten
Alicia Abercrombie
Darin Gaffield
Anna Hundt-Golden

Eli Judge's response.

Original Channel 27 news article.

Second Channel 27 article.

Third Channel 27 article.

Critical Badger blog post 1.

Critical Badger blog post 2.

Critical Badger blog post 3.

Something Verbose blog post.

Isthmus forum thread.

Charter Cable Becomes Big Brother

2008-05-14T12:56:00.003-05:00

Looks like Charter Communications has decided that it can make more money by spying on its customers when they use the internet. Charter is going to record the web sites you visit and sell that information to advertising companies. Of course, they don't call it spying, they call it an "enhanced on-line experience".

I guess what makes it "enhanced" is that your loss of privacy enhances Charter's bottom line. Isn't the free market wonderful!

Might just be a good time to reconsider your choice of internet service providers if you're a Charter customer.

West Virginia

2008-05-12T13:54:00.006-05:00

I used to do a lot of windsurfing in the Outer Banks, and to get there from Wisconsin I would drive south to Louisville Kentucky, take Route 64 east across Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, then cut south into North Carolina. West Virginia is a gorgeous state, and it was always my favorite part of the long and often boring trip.

But West Virginia is also very poor (4th lowest household income in the US), uneducated (lowest college graduation rate), and extraordinarily white (96%). As a result Hillary Clinton is going to crush Obama in the West Virginia primary tomorrow, and McCain will almost certainly win the general election there in November.

It's a real shame because West Virginia had the potential to be a swing state. But, like most of Appalachia, West Virginia simply isn't going to support a black candidate with a funny name. Call it racism, or xenophobia, or ignorance, but that's the way it is.

Beautiful state. Wonderful people. But if you don't look and talk like them they tend not to like you.

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Update - Here's someone who explains this far better than I ever could:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/12/114237/630/544/513035

Expecting to be Reincarnated? Better Get Your Permit First!

2008-05-09T16:25:00.010-05:00

I'm a big believer in separation of church and state. Thank God our founding fathers included the establishment clause in the US Constitution! But China has no such restrictions, and this is one of the more bizarre results:

"On August 3, 2007, the [Chinese government's] State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) issued a set of regulations, effective September 1, 2007, that require all Tibetan lamas wishing to reincarnate to obtain prior government approval through the submission of a “reincarnation application.” In a statement accompanying the regulations, SARA called the step “an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas." - from "Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy", Congressional Research Service report RL34445, April 10, 2008

While this might seem rather silly, it's actually part of China's attempt to control Tibet by controlling Tibetan Buddhism. China has done a similar thing with Catholicism, creating a tightly controlled "fake" Catholic church structure independent of Rome and the Pope. If you can't beat them, subvert them.

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The image above is a Tibetan Thangka (painted banner) of the wheel of life, depicting the Six States of Existence of Tantric Buddhism. Image from this site, and a brief explanation of the wheel of life here. Click on the image for a larger version.