Wait a minute. Am I not getting this right?

The original plan was to require employers who provide health insurance to make free birth control available to their employees only if they requested it, the idea being that each individual has a choice–in particular, that employees whose beliefs differ from the beliefs of the organization they work for not be forced to follow the religious dictums of others and therefore not have their own beliefs repressed. Churches got an exemption, but not affiliated institutions, like hospitals or charities–places where people of different belief systems may work.

Organized religions and the religious right balked at this, claiming that their religious freedoms would be infringed by having to act as the go-between for a medical service they felt violated their religious beliefs–meaning that they held that the religious freedoms of the institutions was more important than the religious freedoms of the people they employed. As bad as that was, they could at least claim that some church staff–individuals–would have to be involved, and their rights would be compromised. Again, supposedly, their discomfort would trump the medicine needs and religious freedoms of others.

So Obama went further to ameliorate them: he made it so that the institutions did not have to be involved at all–that the path of contraception request and delivery would completely bypass the organizations, so that the individual would make all requests directly to the insurance company, which would deliver the contraceptive materials directly to the individual.

Organized religions and the religious right claimed that this was still “crushing religion” and constituted a “war on religious freedom” in the United States.

In short, the rights of institutions–not individuals in any way, shape, or form–to impose their belief system on others are so important that the religious rights and freedoms of individuals mean nothing in comparison? That an individual’s right to choose is so meaningless that an institution can invalidate those beliefs just because they employ the individual?

This is not about protecting religious freedoms, it is about controlling others and denying them religious freedom. It is about enforcing religious doctrine, even on those whose religious beliefs differ. This is not about religious freedom, this is clearly about the religious right trying to ban contraception. Not abortion, not even the day-after pill, we’re talking about the birth control pill.

This is so obviously hypocritical, extremist, and oppressive that it should be a matter of outrage–except that the outrage is just complex and slippery enough that far too many Americans, too lazy to engage their critical faculties beyond a single clause, will not comprehend exactly what is going on here. They will hear the religious right say “they are crushing religion,” but a counter-argument beyond “That doesn’t make sense because…” will be lost to them.

Afterthought: I wonder how they would feel about a law allowing atheists to deny Catholics access to wine and crackers?

Rumors are now solidifying, identifying a March 7 date for an Apple event announcing the iPad 3. The release is expected within a week after the event, in mid-March. The new iPad will almost certainly have a high-density 2048 x 1536 screen, a stronger battery, and likely a quad-core A6 CPU.

What about the long-rumored LTE, however? The most recent stories claim thew other features are expected, but that LTE is only “possible.”

That made me wonder, if there is LTE in the new iPad, how will Softbank be able to react to it? They don’t have LTE yet, do they? So I looked it up.

Softbank actually “soft-launched” (whatever that means) an LTE network last November, covering only parts of major cities. It plans to cover more than 90% of Japan by the end of 2012, with eventual 97% coverage of the country. They have been installing a very large number of microcells, as many as 150 base stations per square kilometer, in the hopes of handling high capacity traffic. The service will reportedly provide speeds of up to 110 Mbps download and 15 Mbps upload.

However, it’s not publicly available yet. So, when will it be commercially launched?

At the end of February. A week before the iPad 3 is announced, just a few weeks before it is launched.

Hmmmmm…

From the Middle East:

An association of Christian agencies and individuals advocating human rights of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, remained concerned Wednesday, October 22, over the situation of several Christian prisoners, some of whom may be executed under recently adopted legislation.

In ‘prayer alerts’ send by the Internet to supporters, Middle East Concern (MEC) said it was particularly concerned about detained Christians in Iran who it claimed may face the death penalty. “Iranian Christians have requested our prayers for Ramtin, an Iranian believer arrested on August 21 in [the area of] Mashad, and the son of pastor Hussein Soodmand who was [executed] in 1990.”

From Bangladesh:

For Bituni Ashru De Silva, a Jehovahʼs Witness Christian minority schoolgirl, being gang raped [by Muslims] wasnʼt enough; she had to be killed in the end. Rapists poured poison in her mouth first to kill her. She was rushed to the nearby hospital for treatment, by none, but her own mother, Sima D Silva, who had also been raped by culprits. Sensing Bituni Asru D Silva may survive and testify in court of the notoriety, the gang of culprits came back to the hospital and suffocated the girl till they were sure that she was already dead. Local police station refused to register murder case, although specific allegation was lodged by the victims father James D Silva. Inspector General of Police, Noor Muhammed, instead of taking action against the culprits, passed objectionable remarks, saying both Bituni and her mother were ʽprostitutesʼ.

From Africa:

In Eritrea, another African nation, those citizens that follow the Catholic, Muslim, Orthodox or Evangelical faiths are safe. Often people who have beliefs outside of the four are persecuted. A registration system was formed that made it mandatory for groups, outside of the aforementioned faiths, to provide information about themselves in order for them to worship. In addition, aside from the four faiths that have been listed, none other is recognized. Human rights groups often complain to practitioners about the many people throughout the African states that are being harassed and persecuted because of their religious beliefs.

Religious groups are forced to meet in secret. They have to meet in small groups to avoid the chance of someone going to the authorities. There have been beatings and arrests. Force and intimidation is even used to convert members of other faiths to those faiths that are accepted by the Eritrean leaders. Otherwise, they are declared as enemies of the state.

However, in America, it is far worse: according to Rick Santorum, Obama, liberals and secularists “are taking faith and crushing it.”

How so? What horrifically repressive acts are being committed against helpless Christians in America? Are they being executed for their beliefs? Are their women being gang-raped and then called prostitutes? Are they forced to worship in private lest they be beaten and arrested?

The truth is even worse: some religious institutions–not churches, but hospitals and the like–may be forced to provide contraception to people who work for them–only if the person requests it, and only if the institution, for some reason, decides not to employ any of the truck-sized exemptions and exclusions they are being provided.

Inhuman! Intolerable! This is almost as appalling as the outrage of persecution in which a few businesses print “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” thus instigating an all-out war against Christianity!

Okay, sarcasm off. But honestly, in the context of actual religious persecution going on in the world, the religious right in America comes across as the most pathetic, sniveling, gracious-me-I-have-the-vapors weak-ass self-martyred whiners imaginable.

Not to mention dishonorable, as the only two things they are actually protesting are, first, a separation of church and state which protects religious freedom, and second, laws preventing them from discriminating against others too much. In short, they don’t want freedom–they already have that–they want the power to repress others, and are “persecuted” because their campaign is being slowed.

Christians in America, far from being “crushed,” are the ones crushing others–trampling expression by other groups, excluding others on massive scales, denying other faiths the ability to build houses of worship–you know, real acts which are hostile to free expression of belief.

Any Christian who believes their religious freedoms are being “crushed” in America are at the very least deluded, and at the most hypocritical liars–either way, they are an inexcusable affront to people throughout the world, throughout history, who actually experienced religious persecution of any honest kind.

A 4.7 just hit a few minutes ago, epicenter 40 km / 25 miles north-northeast of here. Probably the fourth one big enough to feel in the last month or so, that I’m aware of.

Scientists released information today on the results of a NASA study of melting ice on Earth. Here is one story from the press:

NASA mission calculates global ice melt and rising sea levels

From 2003 to 2010, NASA satellites systematically measured all of Earth’s melting glacial ice–the results added up to 4.3 trillion tons of water and a global sea level rise of half an inch.

Put in perspective, that’s enough ice to bury the entire U.S. 1.5-feet deep.

These calculations are detailed in a new study released today by a team of scientists at the University of Colorado. The scientists used satellite measurements from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which launched in 2002 and focused on how melting ice from glaciers and ice caps is adding to global sea level rise.

“Earth is losing a huge amount of ice to the ocean annually,” said professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. “These new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change.”

Now, here’s the headline and first four paragraphs from the exact same story, but from a different source:

Himalayan glaciers have lost no ice in the past 10 years, new study reveals

The U.N. got it wrong on Himalaya’s glaciers — and the proof is finally here.

The authors of the U.N.’s climate policy guide were red-faced two years ago when it was revealed that they had inaccurately forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely in 25 years, vanishing by the year 2035.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, ultimately issued a statement offering regret for what turned out to be a poorly vetted statement.

A new report published Thursday, Feb. 9, in the science journal Nature offers the first comprehensive study of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and one of its conclusions has shocked scientists. Using GRACE, a pair of orbiting satellites racing around the planet at an altitude of 300 miles, it comes to the eye-popping conclusion that the Himalayas have barely melted at all in the past 10 years.

Guess which one is from Fox News?

Not hard to figure out, is it? Right away, you have a pretty serious problem: if your reporting can be identified purely by it’s specifically slanted perspective, then there is no question but that it has a heavy bias and a penchant for intentional distortion. Odds are that I could show you this story as reported by any other major media source and you would be completely unable to identify the exact source just by reading the beginning of the piece. Fox News stories are the only major outlet (note that I am studiously avoiding calling it a “news” source) which can be easily picked out by evaluating the skewed and heavily lopsided perspective it generates.

Not only that, you might note that the Fox story blatantly lies right there in the headline–claiming no ice melted from the Himalayas–when even in their own story (albeit in the fourth paragraph) they note that the mountains have indeed lost ice. They claim that the Himalayan ice “barely melted at all,” but the actual figure is in the billions of tons per year–hardly “none.”

So, what’s with the Himalayan deal which Fox zeroed in on? The first story (written by a journalist at CNet, by the way) explains in context:

Some of the study’s results are unexpected, such as the ice melt in Asia’s Himalayan, Pamir, and Tien Shan mountain ranges. Previously estimates were as high as 50 billion tons of ice loss a year in the three ranges combined, but calculations from GRACE put it closer to 4 billion tons annually.

“The GRACE results in this region really were a surprise,” Wahr said. “One possible explanation is that previous estimates were based on measurements taken primarily from some of the lower, more accessible glaciers in Asia and extrapolated to infer the behavior of higher glaciers.”

Although some of the findings in this study are lower than prior estimates, NASA warns that melting glacial ice and sea level rise are still a deep concern regarding climate change.

Fox News simply focused on a statement from the U.N. Climate Panel a few years ago which correctly reported global ice depletion but mistakenly attributed more melting to higher-altitude ice. Reading Fox’s story, you would think that ice is hardly melting at all; indeed, Fox buried any mention of global melting rates to the 11th paragraph.

Fair and balanced, right?

Romney is still the front-runner, but I’m still not calling it over. I noted in a previous post that the race is so volatile that I am not willing to conclude that Romney will absolutely be the winner. Tonight just cements that impression: Rick Santorum became the new Anyone But Romney, and swept three states–beating Romney in two of them by almost 30 points. True, the delegates were all unbound, and Missouri in particular is meaningless in terms of delegates, but tonight’s results do kind of emphasize what I was talking about: the race is still open.

What’s interesting here is that, before tonight, Romney had only won 3 of 5 states (one of them being heavily Mormon), and from tonight, he has won only 3 of 8–with Santorum, who eked out a win in Iowa after a recount, having won four states–one more than Romney.

There may also have been a recent shift, considering that up until just a few days ago, Romney led Santorum by 10 points in both Colorado and Minnesota. Whether or not Santorum will jump in Michigan or Arizona enough to make a difference is going to be a big question; we’ll see what the polls say in the next three weeks. A few other states will weigh in–Maine is underway now, and Washington votes in early March–but that’s all until Super Tuesday, on March 6.

Like I said, Romney is still the likely candidate, but I ain’t paying off no wagers till the fat lady sings, and she ain’t sung yet.

The economy continues to improve, as unemployment dropped to 8.3% and the number of new jobs created was the highest in almost a year. This is very good news for Obama, as a bad economy would help Republicans defeat him in the elections later this year–a goal they have clearly been shooting for.

So it should come as no surprise who is all alone trying to find the cloud in the silver lining:

Good to see conservatives cheering America on.

Update: They’re still at it this morning (evening in the U.S.):

I can only imagine that the right-wing core watching Fox has the impression that things are worse than before. Not that the news says that we’re free and clear, or that there’s no down side to it, only that it is hardly as negative as Fox is desperately trying to paint it.

While expression of the down side of the unemployment news is warranted–and all other news sites are including it–highlighting it consistently and downplaying the better aspects is, well, Foxlike.

And if we’re pointing out lesser-known facts about the unemployment rate, another point deserves to be made regarding the oft-noted “fact” that the rate is still “above” where it was when Obama took office (it was putatively at 8.2%). This is superficially accurate, but in truth, since the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, the “real” rate when Obama took office was between 9.5% and 10.1%–meaning that Obama has not only taken us from losing 750,000 jobs a month to gaining 250,000, a net gain of 1 million jobs per month, but has also lowered the unemployment rate, whatever its accuracy, by between 1.2% and 1.8%. They won’t mention that on Fox, though.

Romney is facing criticism even from his own party about his gaffe that he’s “not concerned about the poor.” What’s funny is that the right wingers are saying how stupid a statement this is while at the same time they are agreeing with it. Kind of like, “Hey, Mitt, no so loud!”

Jonah Goldberg, for example, says that:

…there are plenty of things one could say to defend Romney on the merits of what he says here. But great politicians on the morning after a big win, don’t force their supporters to go around defending the candidate from the charge that he doesn’t care about the poor. They just don’t.

In short, we’re with ya, Mitt, but let’s not go around telling people what we really feel quite so plainly, okay?

A man even more prone to inherent inconsistencies, Erick Erickson, said it best:

Not 12 hours after the networks called it for him, Mitt Romney went on CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien, spoke from the heart, and played straight into the liberal caricature that Republicans don’t have hearts. …

The issue here is not that Romney is right or wrong, but that he is handing choice sound bites to the Democrats to make him as unlikeable as he made Newt Gingrich.

The built-in contradiction here is that Erickson is upset that Mitt makes right-wingers look like they have no hearts–but not that he’s wrong or anything.

I’ve been saying for a while to people I know that Romney has a weakness which has not been widely discussed so far: he will fail to bring out the hardcore base, in particular the Religious Right.

In many recent elections, this has been a vital component for Republicans. They depend on the churchgoers, the people who are motivated by the kind of God-related stuff Newt has been peddling. Much of this is church-centered–their local churches are almost organizing centers, the church leaders tell them, directly or indirectly, who to go out and vote for, and they do. They are to the GOP what the African-American vote was for Obama in 2008.

For all of Romney’s other strengths, this is a key weakness: these people will see a Mormon who, despite his recent protestations, is on tape saying he believes strongly in a woman’s right to choose abortion.

These people will not head towards the polls with the same enthusiasm they have in the past few decades.

When I have said this, I kind of get lukewarm responses, like what I’m talking about won’t really be as much of an issue as I make it out to be. However, I just got an initial confirmation that it is, in fact, the case–this from a HuffPo contributor and professor from George Mason University:

In the graph I’ve plotted by county the percent vote for Gingrich against the percent change in turnout from 2008 to 2012. The graph tells a clear story. In counties where Gingrich did better, Republican turnout was up over 2008. In counties where Romney dominated, turnout was lower.

This is also reflected by the fact that GOP turnout was high in South Carolina, which Newt won, but low in Florida, which Romney won.

If, as people now believe, Romney will be the candidate (I draw no such conclusions myself, things being as volatile as they are), then the signs are excellent for the Democrats. Not just for Obama, mind you. If Romney depresses GOP turnout, this could give Obama significant coattails and could effect key Congressional races–and might guarantee Democrats control over the House in 2013. Newt will almost certainly lose the presidency if nominated, but he could at least bring out the core vote enough to generate victories for the GOP at the congressional level.

Sachi and I were woken up this morning not, as is usually the case, by Ponta, but instead by an earthquake. It wasn’t strong, and shook just a little, but enough to wake us up. Then, ten minutes later, a stronger quake woke us up again, this one rattling the house somewhat.

Turns out the first one was a 5.0 about two-thirds of the way from here to Fuji, 35 miles from here. The second was a 5.5, in the exact same location. The quakes hit at 7:44 and 7:54.

If you heard of a 5.6 quake hitting Japan, that was an hour and a half later in Iwate, northern Japan.

This is what you get for living at the junction of four tectonic plates.

Newt Gingrich, in the latest debate:

…one of the reasons I am running is there has been an increasingly aggressive war against religion and in particular against Christianity in this country, largely by a secular elite and the academic news media and judicial areas. And I frankly believe it’s important to have some leadership that stands up and says, enough; we are truly guaranteed the right of religious freedom, not religious suppression by the state.

The general claim is nothing new, but Newt’s statement is notable in two ways: how comprehensive it is, and where it was said.

Usually, such claims are made in specific circumstances. For example, Jessica Ahlquist, a high school student and atheist in Rhode Island, successfully sued her school to remove a prayer that it had displayed prominently in the school auditorium for nearly half a century. Her objection was proper, and, as the courts recognized, the entirely legal thing to do. A public school using public funds to deliver a religious message is absolutely illegal; that it happens so often is not an expression of the founders’ wishes, but a daily abrogation of one of their highest principles. That the case took down an infringement which had hung for so long, far from being a slap in the face to tradition, was a refreshing sign that perhaps other similar infringements–such as religious statements on currency or in a pledge children are forced to recite–may also someday be rectified.

However, the Christianists believe that “separation of church and state” means, if anything, that the state cannot interfere with whatever religion wants to do, including proselytizing from public office using taxpayer money; and that the prohibition of Congress against making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” means the state cannot create a religion from scratch all by itself. Thus, they see the accurate reading of the law as being not just wrong, but an actual assault against their freedom to express religion wherever and whenever they please.

As a result, you’ll hear Christianists complaining about a “war on Christianity” in that context, with the atheist or religious secularist getting bashed and smeared as some hooligan trying to rob people of their religious freedom.

Or else you’ll hear Christianists getting all upset whenever “Christmas” is referred to as a “holiday,” in the horrific context of other religious or secular celebrations being held equal to the Christian one. To the Christianist right, “Happy Holidays” is now a slur, a godless curse, an insult to their beliefs and an attempt to deprive them of their rights.

Gingrich, however, piled on the whole list of grievances in one short, clearly scripted utterance. Let’s look at it in chunks:

…there has been an increasingly aggressive war against religion and in particular against Christianity in this country…

First of all, we get the “War on Christianity” claim. This is a catch-all which includes the exclusion of school-directed prayer (individual prayer in schools is completely OK), Christian displays on public property required to share the stage with other beliefs, and the generalization of religious celebrations into a generic holiday description. The former two are often the result of lawsuits, which are focused on sharply as a primary source of attack.

What’s fascinating here, however, is Newt’s claim that not just Christianity, but religion in general is being attacked. Why is that fascinating? Because the people attacking religions other than Christianity are not the secularists, but the Christians themselves. When was the last time you heard of an atheist filing a lawsuit against an Islamic prayer? Almost never–and not because they favor other religions (which Christianists sometimes claim), but because no other religion is ever in a dominant enough position to infringe on the rights of others.

What is truly hypocritical is the fact that Christianists are the only ones who actually try to deny others the right to freedom of belief and legal expression. They openly discriminate against people who believe differently from them. They refuse to serve atheists or Muslims in their businesses. They clamor to take down atheist billboards and actually fight to prevent Islamic mosques from being opened, even in remote rural areas with no one else around. They’re the ones that howl in protest when any other religion aside from Christianity gets to deliver an invocation or inaugural prayer. They vote down anyone who is not Cristian from getting into public office. Even Gingrich himself has said he would not allow anyone who is non-religious to even serve in government, and you know he would shut out most non-Christians in the same way.

And the Christian claim to persecution? Despite being the dominant religion with their beliefs almost everywhere, including on the currency, in prayers before public sessions, in the Pledge of Allegiance and nearly all other public oaths, etc. etc.–the persecution against them is horrific because they don’t get to slather their religion in every last nook and cranny of society. Not because they’re actually being shut out, but because they are not allowed to dominate everywhere.

Who is doing this dastardly shutting out?

…largely by a secular elite and the academic news media and judicial areas.

This one prepositional phrase carries an amazing load of trumped-up and untruthful invective against innocent and even imaginary non-Christians.

First, the “secular elite.” Exactly who, pray tell, would that consist of? This is as false and dishonest a boogeyman as the “liberal elite” from which Gingrich pawned it off. According to Gingrich, there is some secret cabal of atheists out there plotting to destroy religious liberty in America. Boogah boogah.

Second, the “academic news media.” Academic? What, is there a news media made up of college professors and researchers that I haven’t heard of? Apparently, education, schools, and teachers are just as evil to Gingrich as “moderates” are, to the point where just saying “academic” (where it even makes no sense) is somehow a justifiable slur. As for the “news media,” that is, of course, the “liberal media.” But wait–how is the news media attacking religion? Truth be told, I hadn’t heard that one before. Is it because they report news Gingrich doesn’t like? That’s the only thing I can think of.

And finally–and this is the scary part when it comes to Gingrich–the judiciary. Long libeled and slandered by the right wing for deciding cases according to law rather then by far-right ideology, the judiciary has the utter gall to follow the Constitution as it was written and intended by the founders. Even conservative judges, like the Bush 43 appointee who ruled against Intelligent Design in Dover, PA, more often rule by the law rather than by their personal political preferences (although that balance is disturbingly migrating in the other direction).

Why is Gingrich’s focus scary? Because Gingrich himself actually suggested that judges could be arrested and hauled before Congress if they dared rule cases in a way that displeased the far right.

So, we come to:

And I frankly believe it’s important to have some leadership that stands up and says, enough; we are truly guaranteed the right of religious freedom, not religious suppression by the state.

“Suppression.” What he means is, Christians (just like everyone else) cannot promulgate religious doctrine using government funds, or via the office of public representatives. That is the only way Christianity (in the exact same way as every other belief system, including atheism) is “suppressed”–and it is that way for the sole purpose of protecting religious liberty, to keep a single religious sect from acquiring power and thus actually suppressing all other religious beliefs in all avenues of life, as it has in so many countries which marry church and state.

This protection of the freedom of belief is called “suppression.” Which makes me wonder how, exactly, Christianists like Gingrich define “suppression.”

Is it like when Christians suppress the right of Muslims to build a mosque? When was the last time Christians were barred from building a church in America?

Like when Christians suppress the right of atheists to erect a billboard? When was the last time an American Christian organization was harassed into taking down a billboard with an inoffensive message?

Like when Christians run a Jewish family out of their Delaware town for protesting when their kids are singled out in Christian prayer at school? When was the last time a Christian family was run out of town after an Imam, preaching in a public school, singled out the Christian child, surrounded by Muslims, and prayed for her to convert?

Like every single election in America, when, with only rare exceptions, you can only get elected if you profess your Christianity? When was the last time a candidate lost for being mainstream Christian? Christians are so vehement about this kind of suppression that even other Christians (today, Mormons, earlier, Catholics) are heavily disfavored?

I wanted to say that Christians suppress religion far more than others in America–but even that’s not true. Outside of church and state issues, as far as I am aware, Christians are the only ones suppressing the freedom of belief in America.

Gingrich is partaking in the long-favored conservative practice of accusing people he is persecuting of persecuting him.

Romney serves as an excellent example of the problem with today’s wealth-favoring tax structure: Romney paid a paltry 14% tax on $42.6 million of income over the past two years.

Aside from campaigning, how much actual work did he do? Probably little to none–in short, he just sat there as his assets made him more rich. What would he have done if his tax rate were 30% or even 40%? Quit investing and instead make no money? What a crock.

But wait, Republicans will say–the job creators need that money to create more jobs!!

OK, fine: exactly how many jobs did Romney create in 2010 and 2011? Directly, none. Not a single one. Indirectly? Not a single job more than if the money had been collected by the government and put towards, say, infrastructure or education. Had the income been taxed, in fact, the likelihood is that a lot more jobs would have been created–and that money would have been directed far more accurately at the American economy.

The value of enriching Romney is dependent upon Romney’s particular investments. Was the capital used to create jobs, or in the kind of destructive capitalism Romney himself used to engage in? Did he invest in American companies, possibly companies that maximized American profits?

Or did the money go to create more jobs in China than in the U.S.? Considering what American businesses are doing now, if Romney’s hoard actually did create jobs, they were far more likely overseas.

If it’s American “job creators” we’re supporting here, then how about a tax credit for actually creating jobs in America, and not just profiteering in a way that could potentially create jobs, probably more in other countries, as a by-product of getting even more filthy rich?

The whole “job creators” mantra is just as much a fictional piece of crap as everything else the right wing claims these days.

Tax the rich at 40% or even higher, pour the money back into infrastructure, education, and research, and the country stands a chance of coming back with a roar.

If you instead vote Republican and let the rich get off virtually tax free, you’ll get exactly what you deserve for being such a gullible rube: poverty.

The GOP candidate that I most feared in the election this year was Huntsman; he could sound reasonable, perhaps even get a good chunk of the Democratic vote, while still being a dedicated right-winger, and thus be a real threat to recovering what little of America remains after more than a decade of Republican trashing.

When the consensus seemed to be for Romney, my reaction was, “Are you kidding me?” The right wing wants to place as their candidate a plastic, super-rich, flip-flopping idiot like Romney? That’s the best you can do?

Now that the consensus seems to be swinging to Gingrich, my reaction is, “Are you freaking kidding me?” The right wing wants to replace Romney with a vitriolic, conniving, has-been serial adulterer with negatives as high as 60%? Sure, he’s more politically savvy… but the man is a cesspool of hypocrisy and slime. Sure, Obama won’t be able to make ads about how he got a blow job from a woman not his wife in a car while his kids walked past, or even hint about Newt’s requesting an “open marriage” with his… which wife was that? But not a problem, there is way more about Gingrich to bite into than just the salacious stuff.

I know their choices are bad this year, but to choose the worse of the bad is pretty pathetic. The only positive I see about Gingrich is that he’ll galvanize the religious right while the Mormon Romney might have made them stay home. But I hardly think either has much chance against Obama–unless the rather obvious Republican efforts to crater the economy work better than they seem to be.

Tonight is the second day we’ve had snow this year, and it’s coming down. What you see here may not look like much, but had been falling only a little over an hour by the time I took this photo. It was falling heavily at the time, but this is a time exposure and so the falling snow is not visible. (Click for a larger image.)

It should be quite a blanket on the ground by the time it stops, probably around of just after midnight.

The bills are in storage but not necessarily dead. Their seemingly inevitable momentum, however, is, at least for the moment, halted.

Ironically, these bills, which are supported by both political parties but overwhelmingly by conservatives, was taken down in no small part by something conservatives would have expected to come from the other group of business interests: a corporate strike right out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The thing is, the biggest giant to go on strike and stop producing for society was Wikipedia, a not-for-profit foundation. Yes, other for-profits joined in, like Google and Facebook, but those giants did not shut down, probably for the same reason true Randian corporate strikes never happen: they don’t want to stop making money.

Alas, the politicians are doing little but playing an evasive waiting game, knowing that momentum like we saw recently is hard to build, and they can just quietly come back to this issue in weeks or months. Hopefully, the protests will not subside.

When the iPad was first announced, it was panned. People called it an iPod Touch on steroids, made fun of the name in its similarities to feminine hygiene products, bemoaned all the things they expected but the device lacked, and dismissed it because it brought nothing new to the game of mobile computing.

I disagreed. And, as it turns out, I was pretty much spot-on. I noted that the paucity of features would be made up for over time, with software and hardware upgrades–and so it happened. I noted that the low capacity was OK because it’s a networking device–I was right, and even more so, we now have the iCloud. I noted that the device’s simplicity was an asset, that the user experience would be superior, and that the UI was a key to its success. That its success would lie not in bells & whistles, but in the potential of the software that could be written for it.

Then, a week later, I made another prediction: that textbooks would be the killer app for the iPad. Well, the iPad took off without textbooks, but now it may take off even faster with them.

Nice to see that I was not only right about the iPad when so many others were writing its obituary, but I was also right about why. In short, it was not just fanboyism, but recognizing what would and would not work.

While it’s a slightly encouraging sign that the White House has signaled its opposition to the SOPA and PIPA legislation, it does so only on some technical grounds, not on what I would think are the more fundamental grounds, leading to the distinct possibility that the worst of these acts will eventually pass.

If you get a copy of the legislation (PDF file), you’ll note an entire section (starting on page 34) which allows a “qualifying plaintiff”–effectively a corporation holding copyrights–broad powers to act against anyone they feel is infringing on those rights. All they have to do is try to send mail (pages 35-36), if any addresses are available, and the action has started. If there’s no mail or if no one responds in seven days (page 38), then their powers expand considerably. The corporation can then get a court order which will go into effect in any jurisdiction (no more of this filing individual actions in each district) which will, within 5 days, shut down the web site’s account, force financial services (e.g., VISA or PayPal) to cut off their accounts (page 38-39), force advertisers to cut off all ads for the site which could include normal search engine results (page 40), and allow the corporation to send threatening messages to the site’s users (page 41). If the site owner still hasn’t shown up, the corporation can get a court to force them to comply and fine them (page 42).

Let’s say you have a monetized blog and a music label doesn’t like how you quoted lyrics from a song they own. They can not only send you a cease-and-desist order, but now that is backed up by an effective nuclear arsenal of legal weapons which, within 12 days, can utterly destroy your web site. You might be on vacation, or simply didn’t post an email address. Too bad, sucker–Sony Music just had your site taken down, all your links struck, all your accounts shut down, and sent threatening messages to everyone who left comments on your site or whose IP got any content from you.

Or let’s say you have an online business selling items, which may include items which make fair use of copyrighted material, say in the form of satire, protest, or other protected speech. If the corporation which owns that content wants to, they can take you down–and your powers to fight back are now excruciatingly limited, considering that they can smother your livelihood virtually at will.

More to the point, they can threaten you with all this–unless you do exactly what they tell you immediately. If you want to fight it, you might have to travel a great distance at great expense on a very short timetable, hauling your attorney along with you–while the corporation threatening you has to exert only minimal effort and expense. This could make for the mother of all nuisance lawsuit runs.

The proposed laws would effectively give the music and movie industries a host of powers they have tried to abuse in the past but could not. Instead of having to threaten lawsuits in which people could defend themselves, they can now threaten immediate action which could cost the accused even more if they tried to defend themselves. No more “pay us $3000 or we’ll sue you” nonsense–now we’ll start hearing about threats where people are forced to cough up much more, once the amount of damage they can incur with only minimal expense has increased greatly.

Note also that these copyright holders are being given similar powers as law enforcement. I can’t be the only one concerned about this as a trend, can I?

The same copyright holders who routinely sue people for outrageous amounts based only upon an IP address, when it is clear the targets had nothing to do with the infringement? The same copyright holders who have made a habit of shaking down individuals for thousands of dollars apiece against the threat of costing ten times more to fight what may be specious allegations in a court of law–in effect, hundreds of thousands of sham nuisance lawsuits? The same copyright holders who then opened the door for innumerable scam artists to wield the same legal weapons as means for even greater shakedowns of the general public?

The same copyright holders who paid off politicians to get the DMCA, and made it the law of the land that stealing one song could incur fines of up to $150,000?

These same people are now paying money (let’s face it, our government was up for sale long before Citizen’s United) for legislation to get these new acts passed, ones where the copyright holders are given access to similar powers as law enforcement? Where they will be able to, with the same flimsy standards of “proof” that they have abused for years now, have any person they choose lose their web site and possibly their livelihood, have their access to advertising shut down, close off any methods of receiving income, and even force search engines to erase any sign that they exist? Even lead to their imprisonment?

Yes, yes, I know they will not start doing this to everyone. But from their past actions, it is clear they will cast a wide net and will not hesitate to ruin people who are clearly innocent in order to maintain the illusion that they don’t make mistakes because their system of collecting evidence is a sham. And yes, I know they are not becoming a new armed police force who can act independently and with impunity. But they are beginning to take on roles that traditionally have been wholly in the realm of public law enforcement.

This is what concerns me most: the precedent that is being set. The precedent that corporations are now active participants not only in creation of absurdly lopsided legislation (which gives then extraordinary awards for pedestrian crimes, the effects of said infringements being in fact very much debatable), but are also becoming active participants in the process of enforcement of these laws. Corporations as police, corporations which can act not just to sue people but to immediately erase their businesses in an age where many businesses are based on the web. And then, later, sort things out and maybe impoverish them or send them to jail for a few years. Based upon legislation they wrote to their advantage and then paid lawmakers to make into the law of the land.

Surely I cannot be the only one who sees this not only as an exercise in rabid plutocracy, but also as a trial balloon for future expansion?

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks opines that religion survives despite its functionality being replaced by modernity because:

My answer is simple. Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? … You can take science, technology, the liberal democratic state and the market economy as four institutions that characterize modernity, but none of these four will give you an answer to those questions that humans ask.

Sadly, what that boils down to is a fear of death. Finding meaning is part of that, as meaning gives a sense of fulfillment in the face of departure (having children or leaving works to be remembered by accomplishes this as well, but those also can be fulfilled without religion).

Ultimately, we sense demise as oblivion, and fear it like nothing else. Religion gives us an escape from that which horrifies us to our core–and thus explains why, then, people become so intensely charged when their religion is challenged or questioned. Tearing down even a part of that structure is, to many, equal to tearing it down as a whole; this explain why, when confronted over even trivial matters, some religious folk become highly offended and extraordinarily defensive. You’re not just questioning one part of scripture, you are, emotionally to them, trying to deprive them of their comfort in the face of absolute demise.

What would truly challenge religion is not science, doctors, credit cards, or psychotherapists. Instead, people facing and coming to terms with their mortality would accomplish that. To find solace and satisfaction with the fact that you have existed at all, the gift that life is all in itself, or even to know that oblivion would carry with it an end to even fear. If we could find a way to instill a comfort with mortality, religion would take a serious hit.

But not a mortal hit, because there is one other major reason religion survives: tradition. People passing religion on because they were immersed in it from their birth onwards, like an ancestral home. That all in itself has a powerful inertia, a momentum that could not easily be stopped.

When will Americans wake up to the fact that when Republicans say they will never raise taxes, they mean only on rich people? That Republicans are chomping at the bit to raise taxes on the poor and middle class?

Look at Romney’s new tax proposal:

Contrast this with McCain from 2008, where the proposal was to cut taxes for everyone, but mostly for the rich and only a little for the poor and middle class.

Note that in both plans, the cuts for the rich are not just bigger because they make more money, they grow bigger in terms of percentage of income. So it’s not just a matter of getting more cuts because you pay more in taxes, it’s a matter of getting more cuts simply because you’re rich.

Conservatives are not against redistribution of wealth, they are all for it–as long as it is redistributed upwards.

A tune comes to mind… Dennis Moore Dennis Moore, Riding through the land; Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, Without a merry band; He steals from the poor, And gives to the rich….

Fascinating how right-wingers are vilifying positive words.

They started with “liberal.” That word, when you look it up, has associations like tolerant, unprejudiced, open-minded, enlightened, permissive, free, easygoing, advanced, modern, forward-looking, flexible, free, generous, benevolent, charitable, altruistic, unselfish, and enlightened–and is the opposite of strict, miserly, narrow-minded, and bigoted (words which are, not ironically, associated with “conservative”). They attacked the noble term as the “L” word and made it an epithet. They similarly have been trying to besmirch the word “Democratic” by severing the ending and truncating it to “Democrat,” emphasizing the “RAT” at the end.

Then they went after “elite,” a word embodying the concept of exceptionalism (a term they favor), a word which signifies extreme talent and capability–the best, the crème de la crème. They then applied it to people who never suggested they were actually elite, and snidely implied that these “elite” were snobby, arrogant assholes who lorded their superiority over everyone else. Why? Because they “know better than you,” simply for forwarding their own agenda, something everyone in politics does.

Now, when you hear Newt Gingrich (the original master of the art of subverting language to political means) attacking Mitt Romney, you hear another word being defamed and reviled: “moderate.” This is indicative of how extreme the right wing is getting: the new aspersion is aimed not at liberals but at the less extreme members of their own party. They are actually vilifying a word which describes someone who is not a frenzied radical. And that pretty much tells you where the mainstream of the Republican party is nowadays.

So, if you want something good and clean to be soiled and besmirched, you know who the experts are.