Remember all those silly foreign affairs positions held by Barack Obama?  You know, like meeting directly with our enemies, which showed that Obama was naive and inexperienced?  Like setting a timetable for Iraq which was not important but on the other hand could lead to chaos and genocide?  

Over the last couple of weeks, conservative Andrew Sullivan notes that the lines between Obama's positions and those of McCain and Bush are starting "to blur."  Only, that blur seems to be moving in a particular direction.  

Iran

Obama has famously argued that the US should deal directly with the mullahs, negotiate the nuclear question and have talks without the precondition that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment. This was a clear and vital difference, we were told only a short time ago, between a reckless, appeasing Obama and the resolute, Churchillian Bushies.

And yet last week Bush authorised William Burns, a high-level State Department official, to attend talks with Tehran’s representatives on the Iranian nuclear question.

Iraq

Obama’s position has long been that troops should be withdrawn expeditiously but with care, and that the US military should shift its emphasis towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. And, lo and behold, last week we were also told that Bush was considering accelerating the exit of Iraq troops to beef up the Afghan mission.

For good measure, McCain also gave a speech backing what he calls a "surge" in Afghanistan, with more troops and a counterinsurgency strategy in the style of General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces.

And that's before McCain has made any response to Iraqi President Maliki's agreement with Obama's timeline.  Sullivan notes that the candidates are now sounding an awful lot alike, and that they're having trouble "putting blue sky" between their positions.

One thing he doesn't make clear: the lack of sky is because McCain and Bush have adopted more and more of Obama's "naive" positions rather than his bowing to their towering experience.

Blurry.  It's all so blurry.  Sure, Obama has a timeline, but now Bush has a "horizon," and by tomorrow McCain will probably have a purview, or a vision, or a vista.  It's all the same.  Right?

The Christian Science Monitor's Dante Chinni compares the bad news for McCain... with the worse news for McCain.

If the 2008 campaign were a football game, the latest action would mostly be on Senator McCain’s half of the field. Battleground states that voted Republican in 2004 have been at the top of Senator Obama’s travel itinerary.

Thirteen of his 23 stops have been in solid "red states" since June 20, when Patchwork Nation last analyzed the travel schedules of the two candidates.

...

As Obama strides into Republican territory, however, his Republican rival has not seemed less eager to follow suit.

Of Senator McCain’s 18 campaign stops since June 20, four were in Ohio, two were in Nevada, one was in Colorado, and one was in Indiana – all of which President Bush carried in 2004. Unlike Obama, McCain has visited only two states considered a battleground in 2008 that went Democratic in 2004, Michigan, which he visited yesterday, and Pennsylvania.

That must be why J. Sidney McCain III went from naming the Packer's offense to the Steeler's defense as his squadron mates in his latest reminiscing.  Defense is all he's been playing.

According the late Civil War historian, Shelby Foote, the genius of the American political system is compromise. But if Lincoln had compromised as enthusiastically as the current crop of Democrats in Congress, there would still be an international border along the Ohio.  After giving in on FISA, now it's time to surrender on offshore drilling.

Faced with mounting pressure from voters to respond to record gasoline prices, some senior Democratic lawmakers Tuesday opened the door to a compromise with Republicans that would open more land on and offshore to oil and gas exploration and production.

Keep in mind that the "senior Democratic lawmakers" like Richard Durbin, who yesterday declared himself open to drilling, are fully aware that:

• Oil companies already hold over 7,000 leases for offshore drilling that stretch over 68 million acres.
• US Oil Production peaked in 1974 and no amount of drilling will reverse that trend or eliminate imports of oil.
• Drilling close to US shores has been the source of environmental disaster and that drilling the areas proposed this time threatens both scenic and environmentally sensitive areas.
• Drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge won't affect oil prices at all in the short term, and will have very little impact in the long term.

So they know that they're giving away vast swathes of ocean and land, putting our waters, beaches, and wildlife in danger, and doing it all for no reason other than show. It's buckling under at the first sign of a blip in the polls rather than even attempt to present the facts, much less make a stand on principle.

Following on the heels of the FISA "compromise," it's starting to look as if the Democratic strategy for 2008 can be summed up as "give in on every point of contention so they have nothing to complain about in November." Which, as a strategy, is about as effective as a teenager who commits suicide to "show them all."

The story of how the White House refused to read email from the EPA that included a report on climate change might be the most hilariously tragic incident of the last seven years.  Of course, the EPA -- rather than do anything so drastic as deliver the report by courier -- revised it to avoid the non-winger spam filter at the White House.  Which makes the story simply tragic.

As it turns out, it wasn't just their eyes that the Bush administration was covering.  Dick Cheney was making sure that the royal ears were protected as well.

Members of Vice President's Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney's office edited out six pages from the testimony of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last October.

The White House insists that it's common to go over testimony, and that there's "nothing nefarious" going on here.  Naturally.

What could be nefarious about excising scientific facts and covering up threats to public health?

Some politicians never seem to learn that a timetable equals marking a date for "defeat and retreat." It would be as good as throwing up a white flag, tucking our tail between our legs, turning over Iraq to the militants, and telling al Qaeda to just come and get it.  Who, knowing it would spell doom for the government of Iraq, would suggest such a thing?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect on Monday of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.

Oh.

With the UN mandate that sanctions the US presence in Iraq running out at the end of this year, negotiations for a "status of forces" agreement have been underway for some time.  John McCain and Bush officials have been looking at this as a chance to secure the next hundred years of US troops in Iraq.  The Iraqis seem to see it another way.

"Today, we are looking at the necessity of terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty," Maliki told Arab ambassadors in blunt remarks during an official visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Remember Freakonomics, the book co-authored by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt?  The central argument of the book is that people respond to incentives, and are willing to cheat if the incentives to do so outweigh the consequences.  A lot of attention has been given to the book's controversial contention that crime dropped in the 1990s because many would-be criminals were aborted post Roe v Wade.  Less attention has been given the reasons that the book cites as cause of increased crime previous to that point: a push for rights of the accused, concern that punishments being handed out were being too tough on blacks and Hispanics, and the "liberal ethos" of the time.  

Naturally, a book that makes such statements is in for an argument... from the right. This Chicago School tome has been singled out as being too liberal, and denying the righteous power of the free markets.

The response is Freedomnomics, by former University of Chicago economist John R. Lott, jr. If Lott's name sounds familiar, it may be because his theory about why crime dropped is explicitly mentioned -- and dismissed -- in the pages of Freakonomics.  Lott, the author of More Guns, Less Crime cited statistics that purported to show that where there were more concealed weapons, crime fell. This book was very important to the debate on that issue. It helped kick start drives that had been stalled at that point, and gave those in favor of carry laws a big academic stick, filled with graphs and charts, with which to beat their opponents. It also secured Lott a spot with the American Enterprise Institute.

Unfortunately, Lott's thesis had two problems:  

1. Other people were unable to find the results he cited when looking at the same numbers, leaving many people to believe that he had gotten to his conclusions through the application of a great deal of fudge.

2. John Lott -- professor and author -- was vigorously defended by Mary Rosh, a young female student who had attended most of Lott's classes and loved his work.  The trouble was Mary Rosh was a sockpuppet.  

Lott created the Rosh character to provide lots of virtual praise.

I have to say he was the best professor that I ever had," s/he wrote.  "You wouldn't know that he was a 'right-wing' ideologue from the class... There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material."

Mary was also a staunch defender of Lott's thesis that crime had been reduced through the application of shootin' irons. As a wee-little female who drew the unwanted attention of dastardly men, she championed his cause.

"Do you really think that most women can out run your typical criminal?...Even if I am not wearing heels, I don’t think that there are many men that I could outrun.

As a woman, who weighs 114 lbs, what am I supposed to do if I am confronted by a 200 lbs. man?"

Mary Rosh continued to blast Lott's opponents, and praise his work, showing up seemingly every time his name was mentioned.  Mary's postings went on for three years. Only after investigation revealed that there had never been any such student, did Lott finally confess.

At the same time Lott's sockpuppetry was being revealed, his research was also under attack.  The editor of Science called him simply, "a fraud," and the National Academy of Sciences launched a review.

This story may sound amusing, but there's an aspect of it that's simply amazing: through all of this, as Lott's lying and exaggeration was revealed, his post at the American Enterprise Institute was never in doubt.  Regnery Publishing, Inc -- which had no problem publishing such bits of tripe as The Secret Life of Bill Clinton and Unfit for Command despite their lack of facts -- was only too happy to publish his book. If you think there is a level to which AEI, Regnery, and their ilk will not sink, you haven't been paying attention.

John R. Lott, jr. is the poster child from the "conservative intellectual," a man who is a demonstrated serial liar, but who is still given voice and money by the right. Neither truth, nor any sort of moral code, are allowed to get in the way of propagating conservative talking points.

And what are those talking points in Freedomnomics? They are (and I'm not joking about this)

• The expansion of the federal and state governments, along with increases in both taxes and regulation, can be traced, not to war or economic turmoil, but to giving women the right to vote.


• Abortion caused an increase in crime -- including a rise in murder as much as 7% (the real culprit is sexual freedom).


• Problems of corruption, such as Enron, occur because there is too much government regulation.


• Another factor in the rise of crime is affirmative action, which has ruined our nation's police forces.


• Price gouging during a disaster is good for the economy.

Suffrage as the cause of government debt and high taxes. I wonder what Mary would think of that? Actually, I suppose Lott's attribution of a more oppressive government to the idea that women seem more motivated by fear than they are by hope, is perfectly fitting with his perpetually frightened alter-ego, running from dirty men in her heels.

Come to think of it, Freedomnomics has some reviews online that are pretty glowing.  

As far as what positions struck me as being the strongest, I'd have to say that his link between women's suffrage and the swelling of government was ironclad.

As far as the politics goes, Dr. Lott is obviously a man of the right but the book is not a partisan affair. It is a sincere attempt to demystify the innerworkings of economics.

Lott takes on very politically incorrect topics that the mainstream media would never touch such as how affirmative action influences police effectiveness and how giving women the right to vote has influenced the size of the government.

I wonder how many of these Lott wrote?

(Note: Yes, the book came out a year ago, but the weekend of the Fourth seemed like a good time to drag out a book with a red, white and blue cover decorated with a slice of apple pie, and to point out the silliness that pervades the right.)

For those not frequent readers of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, not every item that appears there is actually fiction -- though sometimes we may wish it were. This month's column by Robert Silverberg focuses on the depletion of resources that don't get as much press as oil.

The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc.

If some of these elements seem rather exotic, odds are you're looking at them right this moment. Both gallium and indium are used in the making of flat-screen displays (along with other electronics). If there's one name on that list that should stand out, it's zinc.  Zinc is not particularly rare, but we're consuming it at a rate that's far faster than we're finding new sources. That's also true of our old friend copper, which is why construction sites the world over are often plagued with thieves who ransack locations for copper plumbing and wiring.  

But the sobering truth is that we still have millions of years to go before our own extinction date, or so we hope, and at our present rate of consumption we are likely to deplete most of the natural resources this planet has handed us. We have set up breeding and conservation programs to guard the few remaining whooping cranes, Indian rhinoceroses, and Siberian tigers. But we can’t exactly set up a reservation somewhere where the supply of gallium and hafnium can quietly replenish itself. And once the scientists have started talking about our chances of running out of copper, we know that the future is rapidly moving in on us and big changes lie ahead.

Of course, we're not really consuming these metals, not in the way we do oil or coal.  They're not actually gone, merely spread out in forms that are extremely difficult to recover. Even with our best efforts at recycling electronics, it's likely that we're years, not decades, away from making do without some of these rare earth elements. In the last twenty years alone, we've consumed about one third of available resources.  Want to make a guess as to how long this can continue?

A 2007 study published in the journal New Scientist, looked at of the elements used in producing electronics and came to the same conclusion. Indium is gone within a decade. Zinc and tantalum in about twice that. The increasing scarcity of some metals is reflected in their prices.

He estimates that we have, at best, 10 years before we run out of indium. Its impending scarcity could already be reflected in its price: in January 2003 the metal sold for around $60 per kilogram; by August 2006 the price had shot up to over $1000 per kilogram.

This report also highlights a similarity between oil and rare earth elements used in electronics -- the vast majority are imported, often from politically unstable countries.  

In fact, these elements can contribute directly to that instability.  For some of the elements, like gallium, there's simply no good source of high quality ore.  Oddly enough, that's one aspect of this story that might be a good thing.  Those elements that are both extremely rare and isolated to a few high quality sources are a spark for corruption, murder, and environmental destruction. We may be currently engaged in a war for oil, but corporate proxies are also taking brutal actions in a war for tantalum, better known these days by the name of it's principle ore, coltan.  

There are steps we can take, including rethinking ordnances that require copper pipes and making it easier to recycle electronics (which is similar to broadband in that it's simple in many municipalities, while rural areas often lack access).  Those are good steps, and the sooner we act, the easier it will be to avoid fighting wars over copper, zinc, and their rarer cousins.

There are also those who suggest mining of landfills, and undoubtedly this is going to be tempting in the next few decades.  After all, rare elements may be found at a higher concentration in some landfills than can be located in any source of ore.  They're also a domestic source.  However, metals trapped in consumer goods are often soundly locked in stable, complex compounds.  Mining them, and freeing these elements for reuse could mean all the same disruptions to the water table, toxic chemicals used in extraction, and smelting familiar in traditional metals mining.  Anyone cheering for broad application of landfill mining as a solution to our shortage of rare metals needs first to look at the pits remaining from copper mines in the west -- then think about how many of these you want next to your home town.

Hercules had a single day to clean the Augean stables of their decades of accumulated filth.  The next president has only to shovel through the imperial ordure of the Bush administration.  

The good news is that the world's largest bond fund manager, PIMCO, is anticipating the day when President Obama takes office.  The bad news is that they're also anticipating the size of the heaping pile that Bush will leave behind.  With that in mind, chief investment officer, Bill Gross has drafted a letter to the next president.

"Dear President Obama," the letter began. "You have inherited a mess. Your predecessor, fixated on emulating a former Republican icon from a far different economic era, chose to emphasize tax cuts for the rich and excessive consumption for all Americans," Gross wrote. "He promoted deregulation and free markets when, in fact, the markets and their institutions needed tough love."

Note that this is a bond fund manager acknowledging that GOP deregulation of the market has been a catastrophe for that market, and that the trickle-on policies of Reagan are unsuited to our economy (if they were ever suited for any economy). In fact, that single paragraph indictment of the GOP economic plan needs to be carved into the sidewalk along both Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, along with Warren Buffet's observations on how Republican policies rewarded billionaires while punishing folks without a mouthful of diamond-inlaid platinum spoons.

Gross anticipates that, because of trends set in motion by Bush, the incoming president will inherit the first $1 trillion budget deficit and be faced with investors who are increasingly reluctant to buy US debt. He also sees the housing market continuing to decline, and the possibility of "Japanese-style" deflation.  Compared to what faces Barack, old Herc had it easy.

Of course there is something much worse than seeing President Obama take over a shattered economy and struggle with putting it back together.  That would be seeing don't-know-much-'bout-economy President McCain leaning on his broom.

If you were to visit the Earth in the mid-Cretaceous, you'd find the north pole a very different place. Despite the prolonged periods of darkness that the polar regions endured then as they do today, the northern edges of the continents were forested by broad leaf trees that today live only much further south.  Among those trees moved dinosaurs. Some of them appear to have migrated from more equitable climes, enjoying the growth of foliage that comes in light-drenched Arctic summers. Others probably lived out their lives in the north. Offshore, in the waters of the Arctic Ocean, swam long-necked pleisiosaurs and enormous mosasaurs. It was a much warmer pole -- perhaps as much as 8ºC warmer on average than those areas are today. Even so, the region still saw periods of freezing weather, and both the dinosaurs and trees that lived there must have had dramatic adaptions to living through the periods of long, frosty night.

The sea-going creatures of the time would have been better able to exploit the northern oceans without making big changes in their habits.  The Arctic Ocean was a warm sea, with some readings indicating water at 30ºC -- warm enough for a pleasant bath and about what you'd find today in the Caribbean. No ice bergs, much less sheets of ice, dotted this ocean. It was that much warmer.

By the late Cretaceous, well before the events that saw dinosaurs off the stage, the climate had already changed. It wasn't as cold as it was today, but it was a good deal colder. Bath time at the North Pole had ended.

Over the course of the last sixty-five million years, temperatures at the North Pole have fluctuated. It's not reached that balmy mid-Cretaceous toastiness, but it's certainly been warmer than today. About 2.7 million years, when world temperatures took a sudden shift for the colder, ice started to pile up in the Arctic. Part of the reason for this wasn't just a change to colder weather, but a change to more seasonal weather. The positions of the continents helped shape the flow of deep water currents, providing additional humidity -- and ice -- to the Arctic. The great Atlantic "conveyor" was at work, sending submarine rivers of water flowing north and south, both being shaped by and shaping the resulting climate.

The researchers are the first to find evidence showing that this was caused by the stratification of ocean water, due to an increase in freshwater. This means that water mixed less than previously, forming layers of different densities in different strata and at different depths. When spring came, the layers closest to the surface began to heat up. Since the water did not mix, the temperature of those layers continued to rise, and increasing amounts of water evaporated. During the summer months, this effect intensified, as higher temperatures increase stratification; in winter, however, the water began mixing again, and temperatures dropped more than in previous years.

Climate changes. And yes, it certainly did this long before we built the first coal-fired power plant -- even long before the coal itself was laid down. Even in the last 2.7 million years, there have been warmer periods at the poles, so that the oldest ice we know of is less than a million years old.

So does that absolve us of responsibility for the current period of global warming?  Hardly.  Trees fall in the forest without our intervention.  But when a tree falls after someone has applied a number of hard blows from a sharp ax, it's a good bet there's some relationship.  Global climate changes without our intervention.  But when it warms at the same time that we are sending CO2 levels to values not seen in at least the last 650,000 years, there's just as good a reason to be suspicious that we're the causative agent in this round of climate change, as there is to suspect that guy toting the ax is behind the felling of that unfortunate tree.

However, Republicans in Congress spent last week still sneering disdainfully at the whole idea of climate change as security agencies pointed out the threat to our nation.  Meanwhile, out in the real world, climate change carries on even without GOP permission. And, as it seems to do every time we make a measurement these days, change seems to be coming faster than expected.  Last year the Northwest Passage was ice free by September, setting off a more-than-minor earthquake in diplomatic relations as nations began jockeying for not just transportation access, but resources that lie under the Arctic Ocean.

This year seems to be headed for an event much more spectacular... and frightening.  An ice-free North Pole.

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

...

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

There are others who are more skeptical of seeing the North Pole without ice this season, and honestly, there are so many factors involved that it's very difficult to predict.  But the fact that "old" ice has been greatly reduced in the Arctic, to be replaced by thin seasonal ice, makes this event possible for the first time in... well, we don't know how long.

Will an event that may not have occurred this side of the Pleistocene be enough to wake up the doubters? Probably not. After all, don't forget that it was chilly in some parts of the US this spring and that proves global warming is a hoax perpetuated on the gullible public by "Algore."  Besides, many of the same people who don't believe in climate change, also don't believe there was a Pleistocene (since the world is only 6,000 years old).

In the meantime...

Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years.

While the Midwest is suffering through another round of flooding from record setting rainfall this spring, just next door in parts of Oklahoma, conditions are very different.  

Officials in the Oklahoma Panhandle are appealing for government aid to help with the effects of a drought that has harmed crops and livestock forage.

"This area is starting to look like the Sahara Desert," said Ann Boyd, a 76-year-old rancher in Cimarron County, at the western edge of the Panhandle. "There's just nothing here. Even the weeds are dying. The buffalo grass isn't coming up. There's nothing."

The US Drought Monitor just updated the drought in the panhandle area to "exceptional" -- its worst rating.  Less than an inch and a half of rain has fallen in the area so far this year, which puts western Oklahoma well below the average for the real Sahara Desert.  

How bad is it?

It's drier now than it was in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, and to date it's the second driest year on record for the Panhandle. ... Crops are failing. Cattle are starving. The winds are howling.

Drought conditions are also growing worse in Texas and other areas of the Southwest.  And if you thought that conditions had eased in the Southeast, think again.  Conditions there range from "severe drought" to "extreme drought," with river levels falling to record lows.

When scientists talk of the link between extreme weather and climate change, it's easy think of raging hurricanes or a plague of tornadoes.  When we look at the link between climate change and national security, thoughts may turn to floods rising in distant lands.  But devastation can come as quietly as a cloudless sky.  Day, after day, after day.

The Supreme Court today greatly reduced the $2.5 billion penalty from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  

In the court's opinion, Justice David Souter concluded that the $2.5 billion in punitive damages was excessive under federal maritime law, and should be cut to the amount of actual harm.

Apparently, an amount of money equal to what Exxon Mobil rakes in every 2.5 days was too high.  Instead, the penalty is limited to what the company makes in a typical afternoon.

Yeah, that'll be enough to make them change their ways.

Those voting to hand back $2 billion to the richest company in the history of the world were Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Souter.  Those thinking that it might take more than an half a day's pay to make protecting the environment more attractive than cutting corners were Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer.  Alito, who owns a big chunk of Exxon stock, sat this one out.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with Sony's gory series of video games.

In the 1980s, ultra-conservatives seized control of the Southern Baptist Convention and forced both individuals and congregations to either knuckle under to their radical revisions to the whole idea of what it meant to be Baptist, or leave.  Hundreds of churches, and hundreds of thousands of members, broke from the convention.  Among the prominent members lost were Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

That suited the new, hard-right leaders of the convention right down to the ground.  They aligned themselves firmly with the GOP, and became the centerpiece of the evangelical right.  In 2003, as mainstream churches (including George W. Bush's own Methodist denomination) condemned the invasion of Iraq, the Southern Baptist Convention proved its allegiance to politics above all.  It became the only major denomination to endorse the invasion of Iraq, calling it "a just war."

"Military action against the Iraqi government would be a defensive action. ... The human cost of not taking [Saddam Hussein] out and removing his government as a producer, proliferator and proponent of the use of weapons of mass destruction means we can either pay now or we can pay a lot more later," said Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics agency, in a Sept. 2002 article published by the denomination's news service.

...

[Everybody's favorite, yes that Chuck] Colson, in a Dec. 2002 article for Christianity Today magazine, argued that the classical definition of Christian just war theory should be "stretched" to accommodate a new age in which terrorism and warfare are intertwined. He concluded that "out of love of neighbor, then, Christians can and should support a preemptive strike" on Iraq to prevent Iraqi-based or funded attacks on the United States or its allies.

And as they advocated loving their neighbors with bombs, the SBC adopted the model of televangelists as their standard plan for building a church.  Across the nation, they constructed mega-churches, often in direct competition with congregations that had left when the church was abducted by the hard right. These huge churches contained their own exercise facilities, so members wouldn't have to socialize in environments as ungodly as the YMCA. They had their own youth sports leagues, so parents wouldn't have to take their children to the secular humanist Little League. They had coffee shops and arcades, classrooms and conferences, all designed to make sure that the church was a complete community in itself, where members never heard a word contrary to that of the SBC leadership.  They had sanctuaries echo chambers that would seat thousands, as they explained that being pro-choice was equivalent to being a slave owner and that John Kerry is a "functional atheist."

From all appearances, the takeover artists appeared completely victorious.  But appearances can be deceiving.

For most of four decades, Southern Baptists could boast of rising membership even as more moderate and liberal Protestant denominations lost members in droves.

But with membership slightly down last year, and flat for the past five, Southern Baptists face a growing anxiety about their future as they gather for their annual meeting Tuesday in Indianapolis.

What's more concerning to the SBC is that not only are the names on the roll books slowly declining, the number of people being baptized has been on a steady downward slope.  This would seem to indicate that the Convention has retained much of its aging base, but it is increasingly having trouble attracting young members, who may be less inclined to sign on to a church which has so deeply dedicated itself to entangling church and state.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the ever-diplomatic Richard Land from making a nuanced contribution to this year's race.

"What I hear from people," said Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, "is, 'John McCain was not my first choice, John McCain was not my second choice, John McCain was not my third choice. However, I would rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist.' And they view Obama as a first-class arsonist."

See that, it's arsonist.   Arsonist.  It's not at all like he called Obama a terrorist.  

Gee, with a spokesman like Land, it's hard to see what the SBC is doing wrong.

There are some ideas that make sense, but are a tough sell on Capitol Hill.  The classic example of recent years: gas taxes for public transportation. For years (decades), there were proposals on the tables that would have added to the cost of gas, with the money dedicated to reducing future need for that same product.  But every such proposal was met with screams of "a dime a gallon?  Are you kidding?  I can't possibly pay $1.80 for gas!"  And now we get to pay $4 a gallon, and listen to commentators pontificate about how gas price increases are tougher on America because we don't have good public transportation.  That's the price of ignoring the obvious.

On the other hand, there are bad ideas that make easy politics.  Recent example: casinos.  Terrified of uttering the T-word, politicians from coast to coast instead find it easier to put a slot machine in every kindergarten class. Somehow, it's immoral to ask that people pay for a society worth living in, but it's dandy to grab funds from those awful gamblers.  Where this is heading is also a foregone conclusion.

In any case, here are some good ideas that would take guts to move through the legislature.

A five year moratorium on new highway construction
Politicians love highways.  They love to fund them, love to tell you they've funded them, love to put their names and the names of their friends and colleagues on them.  Complain to your local congressman that you need a new food pantry in your area, and you're likely to wait a long time for a reply.  Casually mention that you've noticed a string of accidents along some winding country lane, and the next thing you'll see is the smiling face of Your Humble Servant as he announces the bill funding a new four lane past your door.  

Highways are visible.  They're big.  And they're a manifestation of the budgetary power your particular fat cat swings on the Hill.  

And most of them are really, really bad ideas.

The last highway bill topped 300 billion -- better than $50 billion a year, and yet the general state of highways is degrading and there are literally thousands of bridges just waiting to fail.  Multiple studies have shown that cities don't benefit from having more highway lanes routed to failing downtowns, but instead end up bleeding more people and jobs to sprawling suburbs.  Every study has shown that you can not build your way out of traffic jams.

And in most cases what your YHS is actually delivering to your door is one whopping great white elephant, a beast which not only comes with a shockingly high initial price tag, but which will deliver staggering vet bills in the form of maintenance costs that far exceed the value delivered.  Forever.  

So here's the deal.  Five years, no new highways.  No new bridges, bypasses, nothing.  Instead, we allocate the same money for highways, but we spend half of it on fixing up the infrastructure we already have, and the other half building up public transportation so we don't need as many highways.  Bonus funding for any city that gets rid of existing lanes.

End to single-purpose zoning
If you've ever lived in a county without zoning (as I do), you begin to see what caused people to embrace the idea in the first place.  There's nothing quite like discovering that the people moving into that lovely old house next door are not a young family, but a company that makes giant signs for fast food restaurants.  You know the ones that get put up on ten story steel posts so you can see them when you're screaming past on the new $50 billion a year interstate?  The ones that, close up, have letters bigger than the Goodyear Blimp and throw enough light to require sunglasses?  Yeah, those.

The trouble with most zoning plans is that in trying to keep people from living next door to a Hardee's sign the size of Yankee Stadium, they enforce rules so homogenized that they create neighborhoods as sterile as boiled custard.  Cities and counties end up divided into land that fits into categories like "Single Family Residence, minimum 1/4 acre lot size" and "Commericial (office and retail)."  The result is subdivisions devoid of anyplace to work or shop.

A few years ago, my county proposed a plan that would restrict new subdivision development to corridors along already existing highways, require light retail to mix with residential, and preserve blocks of the county for the existing agriculture and industry.  Naturally, the plan was defeated -- after subdivision developers spent a small fortune campaigning against it.  That doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

We took a bad turn toward Sprawlville somewhere around the 1940's, and we've been racing along that road ever since.  It's time to apply the brakes, and some national standards on zoning is a good place to start.  I believe that we can requires new developments (and old ones) to carry enough retail and office space to greatly reduce the highway miles people in that development would otherwise expend.  And we can do so without someone discovering that Bob's Package Liquor is our new neighbor. So let's.

Bus Rapid Transit with Dedicated Lanes
There's a social pecking order when it comes to public transportation.  Light rail is cool.  Subways, even older ones, come with a kind of panache.  Buses are... buses.  There's little romance in riding the bus (unless there's a mad bomber involved, and Sandra Bullock happens to be at the wheel).

But there's a middle ground -- the bus rapid transit.  Basically, the idea is to have large buses (many are articulated with multiple segments like train cars) with multiple doors so that people can get on and off quickly.  These buses stop only at special stations where people enter from platforms that put them at the same level as the bus.  So basically they're like trains... except they're buses.

There are a number of such systems operating in cities around the world.  In the United States, such systems have their detractors, particularly since one of the biggest pushes for bus rapid transit was from a group whose real goal seems to be sabotaging efforts to expand light rail.  But that doesn't make these systems the enemy of light-rail.  In my own area, light rail is doing fantastic and expanding steadily.  But even though I live along one of the area's principle corridors, they have no rail coming my way.  Not now, not ten years from now, not even on the "to be considered for the future" drawings.  There's simply no place to run the line.

But we do have a highway.  Bus rapid-transit, by it's nature, requires dedicated lanes.  So give them one.  Take a lane away from regular traffic, make it clear that to enter the bus lane will result in fines your grandchildren will still be paying, put up a few raised platforms, and let the bus-trains roll.  Good ideas don't have to be exclusive, and there's room for both light rail and bus rapid transit.
 
Relaxing automotive safety laws
45,000 Americans a year end up dying in traffic accidents.  So naturally I'm proposing that we relax safety regulations.

Before you have an accident in your haste to type a reply, bear with me a second.  I'm not advocating the end of seat belts, the death of the air bag, or even stopping motorcycle helmet laws (Geez man, get your helmet on. What are you, stupid?)  What I'm advocating is an end to the "5 MPH bumper" and the way that cars are certified.

There are dozens of new start up companies trying to produce lightweight, fuel efficient vehicles in the United States to replace our bloated fleet of fuelosaurs.  By a not too astounding coincidence, many of these companies are producing vehicles with three wheels.  Why?  Well, a tripod of tires does offer some advantages in a few of the designs, but the biggest reason is that for most states three wheels means motorcycle, even if those three wheels are topped by an enclosed cabin and a trunk.  Put four wheels on something, and it becomes a car, and once it becomes a car, it has to pass so many hurdles that most small companies can't even contemplate the idea.

The last small company I know of that tackled getting a car certified was Zap!, who is best known for their extremely odd three-wheeled Zap! Xebra.  Zap! (the exclamation point is part of the name, not my idea) decided some time back that it would a great idea to import and sell the Smart Car. Daimler-Chrysler had said they had no interest in bringing the car to the American market, Zap! thought the little things would sell, so they made a deal and started shipping them over.

But even starting with an existing design that was on the streets in dozens of countries, Zap! spent more than $20 million (and destroyed several cute little Smarts) before they got the certification to sell them in the US.  By which time Daimler had decided that maybe there was a market for the cars, and that they might just do it themselves.  So... ouch.

We need a simpler, cheaper system that will allow manufacturers to demonstrate that their cars are safe without making them spend a fortune.  Believe it or not, we're on the brink of an automotive renaissance in the US, and while we certainly shouldn't "get regulation out of the way," we do need to realize that our current regulatory process is as outdated as the Hummer.

Fifty-five Mile an Hour Speed Limit
Ah, the return of the ol' double nickle.  Think you'll see your congressman lining up behind that one any time soon?

Here's a funny thing.  While the Republicans are arguing that drilling every square inch of America will cut fuel costs, study after study has shown that the effect will be both minimal and several years down the road.  On the other hand, just dropping from 65 to 55 will net most cars a 10% savings in fuel costs.  That's far more than we'll get by turning Florida into the Tar Sands State.  And admit it, you're driving faster than 65, so your savings will be even greater.

There are other benefits to driving 55 that we can't even begin to quantify.  There's improved safety.  There's the huge boost in ticket revenue that might even slow down a few new casinos, and of course there's the inestimable boost to Sammy Haggar's career.

You can drive 55.  It's an idea who time has come... again.

Okay, there are five ideas from me.  What about you?  What ideas are you aching to see read on the floor of the Senate... even if you know they'll die long before Tom Coburn puts a hold on them?

Republicans are the party of optimism. Really. What you see as disaster, they see as opportunity.

For example, you see the tragedy and destruction of 9/11; they see an opportunity to create Disneyland Iraq. You see lives lost or displaced by Katrina; they see a chance to break up a bothersome concentration of Democratic voters. You see high oil prices forcing families to cut back on luxuries, education, even food; they see a buffet table loaded with more goodies than Thanksgiving dinner and a Fourth of July BBQ rolled into one.

With connections just as clear as those stretching between the Twin Towers and Baghdad, Republicans have advocated drilling off America's coasts and in our wildlife refuges as a remedy for today's pump prices.  That's despite reports issued from inside the Bush administration that these activities won't significantly affect the price of oil, despite the fact that they already have large undeveloped reserves, and despite the fact that it would take at least seven years before any additional oil could reach the market. They're betting you don't know that.  Really, they're betting you're in such a blind panic that you don't care.

It's a test, a kind of national SAT. Are you so desperate to cut down on the cost of filling your SUV, that you'll let us despoil the nation's most scenic places and wreck its last wilderness, even when the evidence shows that it won't help?  Republicans think you'll do it.

Even though the connections between what they want to do and the problem they're pretending to solve is just as tenuous as the connections between Osama and Saddam, they think you'll go along with it. You'll put a greasy thumbprint on that yellow ribbon magnet and salute, substituting fear of the gas pump for fear of al-Qaeda.  Heck, bin Laden's on the far side of the world somewhere, the gas pump is right down the street.  They're counting on you being more afraid now than on September 12th.

Earlier this week, John McCain swooped in for another serving from the oil disaster buffet.  

Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds "to make clean coal a reality," measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

There are currently 104 commercial reactors in the United States, generating from 19-25% of our national demand for electricity, so proposing 45 more plants is a tremendous increase -- and McCain wants another installment of 55 when those are done.  That's especially impressive when US demand for electricity went up only 0.2% last year and growth is expected to be 0.6% this year.  Forty-five new nuclear plants is simply more than we need -- that is, unless McCain plans to stop the 114 new coal plants (.pdf) that are planned, with 47 already under construction.  But of course, McCain won't do that, and in fact has pledged $2 billion toward "clean coal."  Based on what McCain has proposed for nuclear plants, and the coal plants on the way, we'll have enough capacity to meet demand through the end of the century and then some.  That's not counting the dozens of natural gas plants also on the way, and it's not adding a lick of renewable power to the mix.  And obviously it doesn't consider anything so silly as conservation.

John McCain is fond of saying that we should stay in Iraq 100 years, or 1000 years, or 10,000 years.  So why stop at 45 nuclear plants?  Make it 100.  Hell, let 1,000 nukes bloom in every neighborhood across this great country!  I suppose 45 does have something of a precision feel, like John McCain might actually know something, but as long as you're just making stuff up and proposing plants for which there's no economic demand, why stop with a piddly little number like 45?  After all, McCain is surely aware that this number of plants won't be built, not because hippie treehuggers stand in the way, but because there's very little interest in building multi-billion dollar facilities unless you can get a good return on your investment.  Let's settle on 10,000 nuclear plants -- one for each year McCain wants to spend in Iraq.

The goal of McCain and the Republicans isn't to build new plants, it's to tear down the regulations that make sure plants are sited and built safely, with opportunity for public feedback.  They're counting on your fear of the gas pump to provide the shock and awe they need to destroy federal oversight.  They want to wave the scary pump in your face, and use it to smash safety and environmental laws.

The Republican narrative for 2008 is that the oil crisis is your fault. It's not their fault for throwing the Middle East into turmoil.  It's not their fault for blocking decades of conservation measures and failing to support alternatives.  It's not their fault for voting just last week, to block legislation that would allow better controls on speculators.  It's your fault -- you and everyone else who ever spent a moment worrying about health or safety.  Because the Republicans don't see the problems at the pump as just an opportunity to walk off with prizes they've wanted for years, they see it as a political opportunity to smear Democrats for the direct result of Republican policies.

It may be too much to ask that the media do their job in taking apart this web of misstatements and exageration, but you know what would be really helpful?  What would please me no end?  If the press would point out, just once, that John McCain is lying when he says building more power plants would save oil.  Not exaggerating, not extrapolating, lying.  Prevaricating.  Telling a falsehood.  Bagging you big time.  Hosing us like there's no tomorrow. Lying.

Oil and nuclear power do not compete.  Say it with me again.  Oil and nuclear power do no compete.  Even if you park a reactor out back of every Texaco station, it won't save any oil.  None.  Not a drop.

Yes, there is a tiny amount of oil used in this country for electrical generation, but almost all of that goes to backup generators and small "campus" facilities.  Oil and electricity are not fungible.  Oil, is transportation.  Coal and nuclear plants are not.

When any politician tells you that by building more coal plants, or more nuclear plants, or even more wind farms, they are going to help our problem with oil, that politician is snickering at your ignorance.  And every time the press reports these stories straight up, without challenging that proposition, they're feeding that ignorance -- and displaying their own.

Could electricity and oil compete?  Yes.  If we had a significant number of electrical vehicles on the road, there might be some argument that more Midwest kilowatts equal less Middle East crude.  But we're not there yet, not by any stretch of the imagination, and building new power plants won't move us even one inch closer.  That's not an anti-nuclear statement, it's just a fact.  In fact, even if a significant number of our cars and trucks were running from electricity, it's not clear that we would need to build more power plants, since these vehicles could recharge at night when most plants are now running below capacity.

The next time John McCain suggests that building more power plants will reduce our need for oil, can't some reporter at least ask him how?  He's you're buddy right?  He's the guy who you say gives you such great access.  So go on, ask him how building forty-five nuclear plants and investing in coal will reduce our need for oil.  Here's a hint on how to interpret what he says: he's lying.

In his effort to run the best campaign of 1980, John McCain has hauled out the dusty tax-and-spend label from the GOP basement and tried to wrap it around Barack Obama.  He's even opened the crate where they keep the "biggest tax increase in history" banner (well-worn, since Republicans use it every election cycle) to attach it to Obama's proposed tax plan.  In a way, it's nice to see that Republicans don't bother to change one word of their approach, even when they've just finished executing the fiscal equivalent of a plane crash.  On a nursing home.  With nuclear weapons.

And of course, McCain's statements aren't talkin' anywhere near straight, as as fact-checker Larry Rohter points out.  

Economists of various ideological persuasions, however, view Mr. McCain's assessment as inaccurate or exaggerated. Some question whether Mr. Obama's tax plan can even be characterized as an increase. Some also argue that contrary to Mr. McCain's assertions, the Democrat's proposals, if enacted, would actually reduce taxes for the middle class — the voters both candidates see as the key to victory.

Hmm, inaccurate or exaggerated.  Yes, that sounds like the Bush third term, all right.  It looks like the Republican rhetoric is as stale as the Republican candidate.  

In a study of the candidates' plans made public Wednesday, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that in contrast to Mr. McCain, "Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers."

So wait, if Obama's plan offers bigger tax cuts than McCain, does that mean that McCain is threatening the super-duperest biggest tax increase in a jillion years?

Today is Loving Day, the anniversary of the day in 1967 when interracial marriage became legal across the United States.  

The seemingly appropriate name actually comes from a court case, one started by Mildred and Richard Loving, who were forbidden from marrying in their home state of Virginia.  At the time, Virginia was one of sixteen states that had laws making it illegal for couples to marry across racial lines.  The Lovings were married in Washington in 1958, but as soon as they returned to Virginia, the couple was arrested. The Lovings spent time in jail for violating Virginia's state law against people of different races "cohabitating as a man and wife."

It wasn't until nine years later that the Supreme Court set aside their conviction and ruled that the Virginia anti-miscegenation laws, and all other such state laws, were unconstitutional.  Loving Day is not remembered as a victory for Civil Rights, and there are commemorations of the day in several states.

Whether or not you're celebrating Loving Day, it's a good day to remember that this kind of discrimination is not the distant past. Barack Obama's parents would have been criminals in sixteen states when he was born, for the simple act of being married.  

It's also a good day to remember that this kind of legislation, including  the "Defense of Marriage Acts" now in effect in more than half the states, will one day be looked on with the same distaste as the law that put the Lovings in jail.

What happens when you've encouraged mining companies to evade existing law?  What happens when you greatly reduce fines, tolerate huge slurry spills, and become inured to such spectacles as a judge vacationing in Monaco on an indicted coal executive's dime?  What happens when you make it easy for companies to expand mountaintop removal operations, and acknowledge beforehand that public comments will be ignored?  What happens when mine safety officials walk out in the midst of a congressional hearing?

What happens is that companies get the message.  This administration doesn't care about the mountains, the environment in general, or the rule of law.  And companies then take the next logical step.

In Pike County, Kentucky, Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Company conducted mountaintop removal operations in an area near Fish Trap Lake, destroying the mountaintop and dumping the waste not only into nearby streams, but into Fish Trap Lake itself -- a lake which provides recreation, tourist revenue, and the water supply for the town of Pikeville.

They did all of this without bothering to pick up the required federal Clean Water Act permit.

Local Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth members discovered the damage, which was later confirmed by the Army Corps of Engineers.  On questioning the damage, they learned that Clintwood Elkhorn had apparently operated with the same kind of logic immediately understood by any three-year old -- act first, then fess up later.

The Corps told us that Clintwood Elkhorn went ahead and mined and then contacted the Corps to tell them what they had done, reported Sierra Club official Oliver Bernstein.

The Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth have sent Clintwood Elkhorn a notice of their intent to sue, but suing someone after the fact won't put the mountaintop back.  

There are dozens of MTR permits moving quickly through the well-greased pipeline, and in an atmosphere of lawlessness, where coal spot prices are soaring and those charged with enforcing the law are looking the other way, there may be many more Clintwood Elkhorns out there ready to tear down the mountain now, worry about permits later.  It's not know if the EPA or Office of Surface Mines intends to take any action in this case.

Clintwood Elkhorn is owned by TECO Energy, whose PAC and officers have contributed to the campaigns of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, KY-2 Representative Ron Lewis, KY-5 Representative Hal Rogers, and KY-1 Representative Ed Whitfield.  Maybe they thought that was plenty to provide political cover for a practice that's consistently been coddled by conservatives.

Update [2008-6-11 18:0:57 by Devilstower]:Sierra Club now has more info on their site.

After the site visits, Sierra Club officials contacted the local Sassafras office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to obtain information, and a Corps official confirmed that the mining had taken place without the required permit. The Corps official noted that the company had "self-reported" the violation back in March, but to date neither the Corps nor state agencies have taken any enforcement action.

All day today, the contributing editors will be offering different takes on why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary despite having started as the prohibitive favorite. These essays approach the question from differing angles and are not for the most part mutually exclusive, but attempt to address specific pieces of the complexity of this massive, drawn-out primary process.

I like Hillary.  Really.

I think my admiration for her started with the clear intelligence she demonstrated right back to her first appearance on the public stage.  It was nurtured by a nostalgic little biography that had lots of shots of this intense young woman in her college years and the service work she did then and after.  And my fondness was fanned by the hatred she inspired from the spewing heads of the right.  Anyone who can make Rush Limbaugh blow that many fuses is someone I just have to like.

Honestly, I could never discover the source of that right wing hatred.  From the moment she first entered the spotlight, it was as if Hillary Clinton had personally kicked every Republican dog and snickered at the contents of every pundit's shorts. The silliness she had to endure was painful to watch.  From the idiotic press over cookie recipes to the never ending scrutiny (and deep meaning assigned to) her various hair styles, it was sexism on parade, and she bore up under it well.  Frankly, she was (and is) a brilliant, funny, competent, and attractive woman, and that combination scares the right to death.

Her politics never really thrilled me, but then I was never thrilled by Bill's, either.  Both of them had a tendency to compromise when I thought they should stand tough, and stonewall when they should have been open.  The whole third way / DLC tactic looked to me like nothing more than an excuse to call weakness a strength, and I could never see any relationship between what passed for moderation and the success that Bill Clinton had in 1992.  Hillary's health care plan may look pretty good, especially in retrospect, but the process that produced it was both Byzantine and self-defeating.  Bill and Hillary were as much responsible for its failure as Harry and Louise.  But then my perfect politician probably doesn't exist, and when I compare the last seven years to the eight years under Clinton, it's like comparing midnight and noon.  

I was ready to cheer on Hillary's 2008 campaign and excited to see a woman not just as a candidate, but as the early favorite.  There was, of course, just one little thing: that vote.  You know the one I mean.  By 2008, I wasn't going to be satisfied with an "if I knew then, what I know now."  I wanted a full out realization that pre-emptive war is wrong prima facie.  Voting yes on going to war in Iraq wasn't a matter of being misinformed, it was a matter of making an immoral decision.  Hillary's failure to recognize that rankled then, rankles now, and will continue to be a burr under my blanket until I die or she repents.

Even so, the excitement of having a woman and an African-American among the top three candidates was irresistible.  When Obama took Iowa and Clinton took New Hampshire, I settled in for the best political show of my life.

But for me, the show ended in South Carolina.  It was there that the Clinton campaign took two unfortunate and related turns.  One was a shift away from ideological differences with the Obama campaign, and a turn toward basing her case along demographic lines.  The second was the full emergence of Bill Clinton, bulldog.

In many presidential elections, the vice-presidential candidate often gets that bulldog job.  It's the veep who throws out the tough statements, allowing the presidential candidate to glide along above the controversy.  The veep who says the things that may be below the belt, but which leave doubt in the voter's minds.  This season, Bill Clinton took on that role.  

But there's no room for a bulldog in primary season.  His actions served first to cause fissures in the party, and then the campaign became about those fissures.  Tearing them open generated votes by causing the same kind of fear that's soured that last seven years.  

There may be a need for a bulldog in the fall, but not in the spring.  A campaign run on splintering along demographic lines caused a loss of faith among those who put the good over the party over any candidate, and for a primary campaign, that's a fatal problem.