Hope is not a plan

During our most recent presidential election cycle, Sarah Palin pandered to the rabid core of the retreating perimeter crew by asserting that some parts of our country constitute "real America," whereas those other parts that didn't support her did not. Naturally, she had to backpedal on this to some extent later, but the core message of making the political opposition into actual aliens was clear.

I found this all somewhat perplexing, since I am an Eagle Scout from California, with roots in another country and the American midwest. Hard to say what that makes me, right?

Tellingly, the "they're not really ours" line showed up again this week in the voice of Afshin Rattansi, a reporter for Press TV who is often interviewed by the BBC to provide a counterpoint from the official Iranian point of view, more or less. Although Afshin is not a government spokesman, Press TV is sort of like the Iranian equivalent of Voice of America, which naturally colors its point of view (as VoA's point of view is colored by its funding source). In response to a question about how the public would view the upcoming confirmation of Ahmadinejad's new term, he had this to say:

"Certainly, 60% are not the middle class in Tehran that we are watching on our TV pictures of demonstrations."

Which is to say that "real Iran" is not those effete bastards in the city, but, rather, is the rural areas. He then went on to accuse the BBC and others of misrepresenting Iranian society by focusing on the disgruntled minority.

Of course, the dramatic flaw in all of this is that tight press controls in Iran mean that no one can do what you really need to do here and carry out a large-scale, representative survey to see how people feel in general. Thus, the best the BBC can do is interview who it can, sneak reporters to villages to see how some people there feel, and so forth.

Outside of this issue, though, I thought it was utterly telling that this defense of Ahmadinejad fell back on the same divisive, alienating rhetorical tactic that the Republican presidential campaign leaned on. Just as that campaign wanted to pander to a core that it hoped it could ramp up for victory, rather than trying to convince the rest of America that it had the right idea, the Iranian religious establishment wants to lean on an appeal to its active supporters and hopefully make the unhappy group, however large it is, seem different enough to dissuade new members from joining.

It's a curious parallel.

The ever useful FactCheck.org recently wrote again about the increasingly nutty faction that insists that Obama can't be a citizen. The non-notable that they quoted on the side of that silliness said, paraphrased, "His father wasn't a citizen, so he can't be."

This surprises me as a statement, since I'd have thought that xenophobic, paranoiac fears would have meant that people on the "our president is an alien" side would know that being born in the United States makes you a citizen, regardless of how you came to be born here. Consider the 14th amendment again, which spells it out explicitly:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

My surprise at this gap in paranoid knowledge isn't because I expect them to actually know the Constitution; I certainly don't. However, I thought they'd be well aware of our "if you're born here, you're a citizen" rule inasmuch as that's a big fear related to illegal immigration.

Back when I was still maintaining my EMT certification, I had an interesting conversation on this topic with a Border Patrol agent in one of my refresher classes. He said that their number one priority when they intercepted a pregnant woman illegally crossing our border was to repatriate her to Mexico before she delivered. The career EMTs in the class were fairly aghast at this, and your opinion on this may differ from either side's, but it speaks directly to why I would have expected fear-filled fanatics to know how this works. It is, after all, the "scariest" part about illegal immigration - their kids get to stay!

This kind of idea is what I call a "lizard alien" belief. That is, much like the belief that lizard aliens have infiltrated our society and are controlling everything, it's not simply an edge idea, but actually requires the believer to have given up on reality entirely.

Besides, there are no lizard aliens. That's what the chemtrails are for - driving them off.

A recent CNN survey finds that a majority of Americans over age 50 oppose the current health care reform proposal, and a majority of Americans under 50 support it. What does this tell us?

Mainly that if you choose to target your false advertising toward a demographic, you can help sway their opinion. For example, you could show scared old people learning that their surgery isn't covered, but abortions are. Which is, of course, a lie. Or that your health insurance premiums will double. Which is, of course, also a lie.

Why lie to the elderly? Well, as the survey reminds us, that's an age demographic that is far more likely to talk to its representatives, and also generally more likely to vote. This is why it's important that you, regardless of your age, speak to your representatives and let them know you support health care reform. Click here to connect to your Congressional representatives.

I had the opportunity recently to randomly acquire a staph infection from a cut. It was ably handled by my local hospital, which I like quite a bit, and it was significantly reduced in cost by my health insurance, which (now) comes from a provider I also like. If I hadn't had insurance? $2,000+ right off the top. Consider what that would do to a low-income family, and that's for a condition that wasn't particularly preventable and that could actually kill you if untreated.

Shouldn't we make it so that our fellow Americans don't have to choose between eating and, say, having a staph infection eat them?

But now I sound like I'm trying to scare you. With that in mind, let's leave you instead with this highly relevant ad for Old Glory insurance:

CNN article

Mr. President --

I'm writing to say how happy I am at the successful return to our country of Euna Lee and Laura Ling. It was an admirable effort done in a very American style, by a private citizen helping out a friend.

Following on this successful return, there will be criticism. I encourage you to ignore it. Rants from frustrated little boys in suits, like John Bolton, are simply about the adventure in their heads where they're the hero, war is amazing, and at the end of the day, they can feel worthwhile. They're the ones who push us into war and then, in the tradition of Henry Kissinger, sell out their country for personal or party advantage.

It takes significantly more bravery and will to do things right then it does to do them loudly. After eight years spent eschewing the wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt, I appreciate the return to an America that puts American citizens ahead of personal ego.

(Sent today. As always, click here to send your own message to the President.)

The nice folks over on Factcheck.org just got the opportunity to tell us that Glenn Beck can't read. During one of his more recent rants, he misunderstood the click-through agreement on the dealer-oriented financial transaction site related to the "Cash for Clunkers" program to mean that the Federal government would suddenly magically own everything in your computer. Or possibly your house.

Glenn is scared, and he doesn't know why, but he sure knows who's to blame!

Perhaps he and Lou Dobbs can join up for a big fear-off, to see which fine, robust American is more afraid of the world.

Following on the heals of the killing of a human rights activist in Chechnya, two more people have been killed, although this time it's not clear just how they would have angered anyone in the establishment there.

Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Djabrailov were kidnapped by armed men from the offices of the charity that Ms. Sadulayeva headed up and found later, dead, in the trunk of their car. Although this kind of killing is increasingly common in Chechnya, it's not clear how Ms. Sadulayeva, who heads a charity that provides care for children injured in the conflicts in Chechnya, would have inspired someone in the government and militia establishment to want to kill her. Unlike earlier killings, the target this time was not an active human rights campaigner.

That said, once kidnappings and killings become the norm, it's easy enough to roll any personal cause into the murder package, so it may not be worth trying to figure out a "why" on the ones that are unclear from a political standpoint. For all we know, some loser in the Chechen establishment was spurned by Ms. Sadulayeva in the past. It doesn't matter why, as the real issue continues to be the condoning of disappearances and killings by the Russian-backed government in Chechnya.

BBC article
New York Times article

The Alaskan legislature recently overruled Sarah Palin's decision to not take $28 million in Federal stimulus financing meant to promote energy efficiency (although she was happy to take the rest of it). There were some initial concerns that taking the money would obligate Alaska to enact stricter building codes, but DOE clarified that they just require that the state "encourage" local municipalities in enacting their own energy codes. Which is, by all accounts, a pretty softball 'requirement.'

In defending her sudden and deeply uncharacteristic unwillingness to suckle at the Federal teat, Ms. Palin said, among other things, this:

"As Governor, I did my utmost to warn our legislators that accepting stimulus funds will further tie Alaska to the federal government and chip away at Alaska’s right to chart its own course."

Really? Will another $28 million make a difference? Given that Alaska pulled in $3.2 billion in Federal earmarks in the 2004-2008 period, and that Alaska took down nearly two dollars in Federal money for dollar paid into the Federal government, a little bit more cash with no strings attached seems, well, like a gimme.

Alaska as a state has been happy to be incredibly dependent on the Federal government. There's nothing to chip away at there that hasn't already been thrown away by state officials such as Ms. Palin.

It's more likely that Sarah Palin chose to exercise what she thought would be an inoffensive veto of a relatively small amount of Alaska's share of the Federal pie as a way of trying to establish her credibility as an 'independent' for some kind of future life in politics, hopefully giving her something to point out so fewer people would call her on her massive hypocrisy in pretending to be an independent actor.

Fortunately, the state legislature is wiser than all that, and decided that picking up some money to promote efficiency and maybe generate some more local jobs was a better idea than helping to bolster the platform of a career hypocrite.

Today's breaking news from the Gaza strip is of a gun battle at a Mosque, between the de facto rulers of the strip - Hamas - and a radical Islamist group that thinks Hamas is too liberal. The group's apparent leader, Abdul Latif Musa, has called for Sharia and stricter application of Islamic principles in the strip, with his group threatening to burn down Internet cafes.

Apparently, that's one step too far for Hamas.

Is it going too far for Hamas to be shelling a mosque? No idea.

al Jazeera article
BBC article

The current debate on healthcare seems to be boiling down to an argument between people who think health care for all Americans is vital and those who have bought into a pathological fear of the Federal government doing anything on a large scale. Given the ideological basis of most modern Americans as "not Communist" - something I can relate to having grown up in the 70s and 80s - it's not surprising that there's a fear of government programs even as we've already adapted to and become used to many large-scale programs such as farm subsidies, Social Security, and Medicare. Considering how many people think it's critical that we fix the latter two programs so they continue to operate, it's a little fascinating to see how many people have bought into the idea that health care for everyone - not just older people - will be a horrible thing.

There's a tendency among the more fanatic opponents of anything the Federal government does to point to the United States Constitution, try to read into its authors' intent, and treat it as a religious text. While it clearly is not a religious text, being instead a compromise document that was meant to be changed from time to time, it's still worth considering some authorial intent every so often. The best marker of Constitutional intent, much more so than reading the actual Articles, is the preamble. Let's take a look:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In order to "provide for the common defence" and "promote the general Welfare." Those are two of the key founding points of the Constitution, and by extension, our nation. Clearly, universal health care has a lot to do with the general Welfare (we'll capitalize it like they did), but consider what it has to do with the common defence as well (note the "British" spelling of defense there).

The estimated rate of excess deaths among uninsured adults in the United States is 22,000 people per year.

22,000 people.

We haven't lost that many civilians to any war since the Civil War. If we were losing that many Americans per year to terrorists, we would pull out all the stops in hunting down and eliminating that threat. Although it's much easier for us to miss this threat to America, because it doesn't happen with bombings and splashy attacks, it is nonetheless a tremendous death rate that is, at its core, preventable - and we don't even have to kill anyone to defuse the threat.

When people buy into the message of fear that says that "government health care is evil," they are fundamentally buying into propaganda pushed by people who are willing to sacrifice 22,000 Americans a year to support their own financial gain. If we really want to cleave to the ideals of this nation, we must provide for the common defense, and in so doing, promote the general welfare.

22,000 American lives a year depend on our good decision right now.

Self identification is an issue that can be at once both very personal and extremely significant for the internal structure and cohesion of nations. In the United States, our current "debate" over national identity and the integral qualities of being American most often revolves, in an often unspoken manner, over whether that identity is a quality of a national ideology or, in two words, being white.

Elsewhere, this ongoing problem has boiled down to a similar trait - do we gain our identity from nationality, or nationality from identity?

Kenya is approaching its first national census since the late 90s, and the Kenyan government has caused some degree of consternation by including a question about tribal affiliation. This is particularly troubling in light of the deaths of more than a thousand people in ethnic violence a year and a half ago. In combination with the question of "How is this relevant?" it's motivated many people to protest the inclusion of the question in the first place, and to plan to answer the tribal affiliation by saying, "I am Kenyan."

From the Kenyan government, here's an opinion on the positive value of this question:

Collins Opiyo, from the National Bureau of Statistics, said it would have been "an exhibition of professional recklessness" to leave out questions about tribes.

"If we do not have the official position and people come up with figures and numbers we cannot be able to dispute them," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

That said, if enough people 'jam' the question by refusing to answer, the value of that specific data point in the census will be in doubt anyway.

Generally, I think that there's value in having reasonable estimates of ethnic groupings, but only when they can be defined in specific, actionable ways. For example, the self identification as an ethnicity actually has a different value than an externally defined definition of ethnicity, and a government would do well to act on these two types of data independently.

BBC article

While we fumble around with efforts to reduce global warming, some people are looking at the warming we can expect even in the best case scenarios and trying to find ways to keep us going through it. Although rather a lot of work has already gone into plants, especially in drought-resistant strains, there's less attention paid to animals. One group, however, is planning ahead and trying to maintain our dairy yield even in the face of warmer weather.

In their paper A Validated Genome Wide Association Study to Breed Cattle Adapted to an Environment Altered by Climate Change, Hayes et al did a survey cross-comparing historical milk and weather data with the genetics of cattle in Australia. They've discovered genetic markers that associate with maintaining milk production under higher temperature conditions, which could point toward the proper breeding direction for dairy cattle in preparation for the coming century.

This is an example of work that is neither overoptimistic nor the simple "we give up" approach pushed by our wingier of right wingers. We hope that we will reduce carbon, methane, and other problem emissions, but we must use the realistic estimates that show global warming will continue to occur, and in that case, it behooves us to plan ahead to minimize its impact.

The full citation:

Hayes BJ, Bowman PJ, Chamberlain AJ, Savin K, van Tassell CP, et al. (2009) A Validated Genome Wide Association Study to Breed Cattle Adapted to an Environment Altered by Climate Change. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6676. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006676

Given finite resources, healthcare and medical treatment is a matter of continual cost-benefit analysis. Consider, for example, concerns over whether or not regular mammograms actually reduce breast cancer deaths, or the debate over how to spend our current healthcare dollar.

Compared to how relatively flush America is - flush enough to horrendously misspend a lot of healthcare money - other regions must take a more parsimonious approach to health care. In this vein, Nickerson et al have evaluated Factors Predicting and Reducing Mortality in Patients with Invasive Staphylococcus aureus Disease in a Developing Country (in this case, in Thailand).

What's exciting about this study, from a cost-benefit perspective, is the authors' ability to discern between factors predicting mortality and those reducing it. Specifically, they discover that while the presence of genes encoding the Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL) factor is predictive of significantly greater mortality, it makes no difference in how you treat the disease. The only value, at present, of running a PVL test on a new patient is to have this conversation:

"The Staph is PVL positive, so you're much more likely to die."

"That sounds terrible. What does it means in terms of treatment?"

"Nothing. Treatment efficacy is the same whether you're PVL+ or PVL-."

That is, it's a waste of time and, more importantly in this context, money. So instead of spending money on this test, we instead want to spend our third-world healthcare dollar on draining pus and applying immediate antibiotic therapy.

One potential concern in the United States is that a test like the PVL test would be run purely to protect against litigation. It's hard to say how to handle that; harder still because the law does not intersect with scientific, empirical evidence nearly as often as it might.

Citation: Nickerson EK, Wuthiekanun V, Wongsuvan G, Limmathurosakul D, Srisamang P, et al. (2009) Factors Predicting and Reducing Mortality in Patients with Invasive Staphylococcus aureus Disease in a Developing Country. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6512. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006512

Going into 1990, Iraq had the sixth-largest (if not the sixth-most-effective) airforce in the world. With the initiation of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the Iraqi airforce took the unexpected defensive posture of ceding air superiority and fleeing to neighboring Iran, which took the less surprising step of simply keeping all the aircraft.

However, that's not the end of the story for Iraqi airpower. Recently, the current government of Iraq, in doing some internal auditing of old military records, realized that nineteen jets, comprising a mix of MiG-21s and 23s, were sent to Yugoslavia for repairs in the 1980s and never made it back to Iraq before the blanket of sanctions fell on the country starting in 1990. The current government has now asked Belgrade if they could perhaps have the aircraft back.

Similar searches have turned up equipment elsewhere:

The Iraqi defence ministry spokesman said four Iraqi navy vessels had also been discovered in Egypt and Italy, as well as "aircraft and equipment in Russia and France".

This does not do much vis-a-vis the political state in current Iraq, but is fascinating nonetheless. I'd like to see an interview with the person or people who've been warehousing those MiGs for the last two decades.

BBC article