I Promised You More

You mean my mortgage deduction isn't guaranteed in the constitution?

Post-Racial America (You Bet)

Thanks to a Brazilian friend for introducing me to the work of Barry Deutsch.  You can expect more.

It is all the more pertinent after reading Linda Greenhouse´s essay in today's NY Times.

Race is the project of the Roberts court – more than enhancing corporate welfare, more than lowering the barrier between church and state, more than redefining the boundary between state and federal authority.

The Shrub´s Official Portrait

I can see Dick Cheney´s hand.

Can't Help It, I Love This Picture

Trump has enough self-respect for the two of them.

Our Imbecile Constitution?

There's an interesting opinion piece in the NY Times today, called Our Imbecile Constitution.
Lest the title seem unnecessarily offensive, it is taken from the Federalist Papers, in which the authors referred to the Articles of Confederation as imbecilic.

Nowadays we have to speak of the constitution reverentially.  Mitt Romney and the Mormon church go so far as to think it was either written by Gawd (and, I don't know, maybe found under a rock in a forest in upstate New York?) or at least divinely inspired.

According to the author of this current piece, it hasn't always been so in our history:

In the election of 1912, two presidents — past and future — seriously questioned the adequacy of the Constitution. Theodore Roosevelt would have allowed Congress to override Supreme Court decisions invalidating federal laws, while Woodrow Wilson basically supported a parliamentary system...

Apropos of Wilson's ideas, I remember reading in the midst of the months-long "Watergate nightmare," how the situation was being prolonged because of our particular constitutional system.  In a parliamentary system, Nixon would have received a no-confidence vote and been gone in a relative heartbeat.

But if one must choose the worst single part of the Constitution, it is surely Article V, which has made our Constitution among the most difficult to amend of any in the world. The last truly significant constitutional change was the 22nd Amendment, added in 1951, to limit presidents to two terms. The near impossibility of amending the national Constitution not only prevents needed reforms; it also makes discussion seem futile and generates a complacent denial that there is anything to be concerned about.

By contrast, according to the author, there have been "more than 230" state constitutional conventions (how many more? one wonders). He claims that each state has had an average of almost three constitutions.


The electoral system is a good example of a discussion that seems futile.  Everybody agrees it makes no sense and needs to end, but nothing happens, or is likely going to happen.  In the meanwhile, the 2012 presidential election is going to be decided in 11 or so key battleground states.  We have the real possibility of once again electing a president who loses the popular vote...a sentence which ignores the dysfunctional nature of what our constitution allowed to happen in 2000, and presumes we actually did elect Bush over Gore.


Romney, in defending his courtship of Donald Trump's money and support was quoted today as saying:

“You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me, and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in....but I need to get 50.1 percent or more, and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”

My first thought is to wonder what planet he's been living on.  He should know that he doesn't need to get 50.1 percent of the vote.

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Liar

Fred, thanks for sharing this.

I was listening to a Bill Maher podcast today at the gym.   He commented on the assertion some people make that gay marriage diminishes traditional marriage.

This assertion is made by people who are apparently untroubled by the fact that Romney delivered the commencement address recently at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University....a diploma from which diminishes my diploma from a real university.

It is funny to hear Romney defend "tradtional" marriage between one man and one woman.  I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard recently that this will be the first election in US history where both candidates' grandfathers were polygamists.  I don't know anything about Obama's grandfather.

The Innocent Man

If there is anyone who still thinks the death penalty is a good idea (and apparently a majority of my fellow citizens do), they should be forced to read The Innocent Man, by John Grisham.  It's a non-fiction account of, despite the title, five innocent men in Oklahoma.  Two of them were on death row, one of whom came within 5 days of being executed.  Two of the five are still in prison, serving life term, with no chance of a DNA test proving them innocent because they were convicted without a body being found or a crime scene to investigate.

Grisham says, about the process of writing this book:

The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions, something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about.  This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it.  Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same--bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.

See also the website of The Innocence Project. They have helped exonerate close to 300 people, some on death row and others not, since they began their work in the late '80s.

My Favorite Headlines from the NY Times of the Last Couple of Days

Pope's Butler Arrested in Leaks Investigation

 

The Debate at Cannes Rages (as Always): What to Boo?

 

Arizona’s Government by Crackpots

Ok, this isn't the headline from a news story; it's from an op-ed piece.

 As regards this last one, we learn that the Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, has backed off from his threat to keep Obama's name off the ballot unless Obama could prove to Bennett's satisfaction that he was born in Hawaii.  "If I embarrassed the state, I apologize," Bennett said.  By the way, he is also the co-chair of Romney's campaign in Arizona. 

I believe Bennett's original justification was not that he, personally, believes Obama is a Kenyan, but that several people had asked him to investigate.  Before he backed off from his ridiculous position, apparently 17,000 people signed an on-line petition requesting that Bennett investigate whether Mitt Romney is a unicorn.

In the meanwhile, everyone's favorite lunatic, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who even old-fashioned conservatives are going to have to finally admit is over the top, has sent a deputy to Hawaii to investigate:

 “We feel that document is a forgery,” he said of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, in an interview with the Republic. “We’re trying to figure out who did it. That’s good police work.”

 As the authors of this piece point out:

There’s no mystery what a nation run by the Tea Party and talk-radio zealots who’ve taken over the G.O.P. would look like. It would be Arizona.

Sitting Comfortably?

Nicholas Kristof, in his Saturday column, highlighted a four-part series of investigative reports in the Chicago Tribune called "Playing With Fire," which is an instance of journalism at its best.

IF you want a case study of everything that is wrong with money politics, this is it.

Chances are that if you’re sitting on a couch right now, it contains flame retardants. This will probably do no good if your house catches fire — although it may release toxic smoke. There is growing concern that the chemicals are hazardous, with evidence mounting of links to cancer, fetal impairment and reproductive problems.

The problem with flame retardants is that they migrate into dust that is ingested, particularly by children playing on the floor. R. Thomas Zoeller, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, told me that while there have been many studies on animals, there is still uncertainty about the impact of flame retardants on humans. But he said that some retardants were very similar to banned PCBs, which have been linked to everything from lower I.Q. to diabetes, and that it was reasonable to expect certain flame retardants to have similar consequences.

The Chicago Tribune series shows yet another story of industry deception from beginning to end.  The very existence of fire retardants in furniture is a result of deception by the tobacco industry in order to shift the focus away from cigarettes as a cause of fire deaths.  One almost has to marvel at the chutzpah of the tobacco companies in organizing the National Association of State Fire Marshals and then leading them around by the nose to support the industry's position.


After reading this series, you will feel personally violated and manipulated.  Why, always, does the public have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the harmfulness of products instead of the industries involved proving their safety?  It is always the same.

This campaign season, you’ll hear fervent denunciations of “burdensome government regulation.” When you do, think of the other side of the story: your home is filled with toxic flame retardants that serve no higher purpose than enriching three companies. The lesson is that we need not only safer couches but also a political system less distorted by toxic money.

Remember Him?

This Modern World

Ok, so it's a little out of date in the details, but not in the big-picture sense.  I'm glad to have rediscovered Tom Tomorrow.  He's about the best, in my book.

This Is Going To Get So Freaking Ugly

I guess Romney has repudiated the ad, or the proposed ad, or the denied-that-it-was-proposed-even-though-it-really-was ad, of "his" super PAC to link President Obama with "the incendiary" Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  The rules are so complicated.  Candidates can't coordinate (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) but they can repudiate.

“I repudiate that effort,” Mr. Romney told reporters at an impromptu news conference Thursday in Jacksonville, Fla. “I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign.”

But you can only expect so much from him.

At the same time, Mr. Romney stood by remarks made in February on Sean Hannity’s radio show that Mr. Obama wanted to make America “a less Christian nation.” 

 “I’m not familiar, precisely, with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was,” Mr. Romney said.

He's the Decider

Perhaps this topic seems like last week's news cycle, like Obama eating dog meat, but some stories are worth hanging onto, and this cartoon is so good.

By coincidence, and as more evidence that this story isn't completely fading away, there is a great article in the NY Times today by Anne M. Butler, called "Nuns on the Frontier."  It puts the current church discord in a larger historical perspective.

And makes me rethink one of my reactions to the Clint Eastwood-Shirley MacLaine movie, "Two Mules for Sister Sara."  The story sounds much more plausible now.

Insanity

This is just too good to be true.

George W. Bush is going to be publishing a book this summer on strategies for economic growth.  It´ll sell for $24.95, so we know one of his strategies.

As Paul Krugman says,

Killing satire isn´t enough.  Some people insist on waterboarding it first.

Everything Works Better At The State Level?

The next time you hear some politician (always a Republican) propose killing some federal program and instituting block grants to the states as a more efficient delivery process, remember this headline and the story that goes with it.

This particular story has to do with money that was part of a $25 billion national settlement negotiated with five banks over abuses in their mortgage and foreclosure procedures.  But there is nothing new about this; it happens all the time when the states receive federal money. 

Needy States Use Housing Aid Cash to Plug Budgets

 As part of the settlement, the banks agreed to pay the states $2.5 billion, money intended to help homeowners and mitigate the effects of the foreclosure surge. But critics complained that this was the only cash the banks were required to pay — the rest comes in the form of “credits” for reducing mortgage debt and other activities. Even that relatively small amount has proved too great a temptation for lawmakers. 

 Only 27 states have devoted all their funds from the banks to housing programs, according to a report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing group. So far about 15 states have said they will use all or most of the money for other purposes. 

 In Texas, $125 million went straight to the general fund. Missouri will use its $40 million to soften cuts to higher education. Indiana is spending more than half its allotment to pay energy bills for low-income families, while Virginia will use most of its $67 million to help revenue-starved local governments.

 When states misuse federal money, what are the options?  About all the federal government can do is cut off the money, which does nothing to help the people for whom it was intended in the first place, so the intent of the law (or settlement in this case) is still being thwarted.  Imagine the harm caused if Medicare became a block grant to the states, as some Republicans have proposed, and half the states decided to put half the money into their general fund.

Continuing A Theme

Pity the Perjurer

Roger Clemens must be feeling more than a little oppressed these days.  His first trial, for perjury in his congressional testimony about the use performance-enhancing drugs, ended in a mistrial with a judge that was severely pissed at the amateurish tactics of the prosecution.  Apparently secure in the righteousness of their cause, the prosecution is back at it in a second trial.

 Now I'm not in favor of allowing perjury to go unchallenged, but we certainly know that prosecutors are selective in deciding which cases to prosecute.

It might seem like ancient history and that, as Antonin Scalia likes to say in regard to Bush v Gore, I should just "get over it," but since we are all still living with the results, it is worth noting that, without a doubt, either Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas committed perjury in their congressional testimonies in 1991.  Why, in a matter as important as a Supreme Court appointment, with which we have already lived 20+ years and no end is in sight, has there never been any attempt, except by investigative journalists, to determine who lied and extract punishment?

Actually, I think all Supreme Court nominees (anyway since Bork) lie, at least in the sense of misrepresenting their judicial philosophies and their approach to controversial issues.  Yeah, for sure Roberts is just acting like an umpire in a baseball game (Citizens United?), and any number of nominees apparently never gave a thought one way or the other to the matter of abortion before their nomination. 

And then there was the sad case of Alberto Gonzales, whose total memory loss at such a young age was really tragic.

There are nuances to what one remembers and one doesn't.  One can finesse questions about judicial philosophy and what one might think about matters like abortion that are likely to come before the court.  But the Clarence Thomas case was different, in that he was responding to specific allegations that either happened or did not, and clearly somebody lied under oath.  And, frankly, it should not have been that hard to find out who.

There are allegations that the BP executives who testified before congress a few months before the blow out in the gulf of Mexico knowingly committed perjury by, among other things, not admitting to a similar blow out some months earlier off the coast from Baku, and misrepresenting the safety of their operations.

Roger Clemens has never been a favorite of mine, but he has my sympathy if he is asking himself these days, "why me?"  All he was trying to do was stay on a glide path into the Hall of Fame by maintaining a clean-cut image.  It seems a pretty minor offense in comparison with the other examples.

The Glorious Beacon Of Freedom Sauce That Is Us

In the words of the the cartoonist:

I'm growing increasingly worried about the impact of these noxious voter ID laws. Joan McCarter wrote over the weekend about a lawsuit brewing in my home state of Pennsylvania, led by a 93 year-old woman who has voted in nearly every election for 60 years. She now finds herself unable to cast a ballot, thanks to the fact that the state lost her birth certificate. And Ohio now allows poll workers to refuse voters information about where to vote. And we dare to call ourselves a glorious beacon of freedom sauce? Warning to the rest of the world: DO NOT EMULATE.

The so-called issue of voter fraud is a non-existent problem for which Republican state legislatures all over the country are defining their own special self-serving solution.

Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

According to a recent article in published by the CFA Institute, a study shows that one out of ten Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, as compared with one in one hundred in the population at large.

Another abstract below summarizes another seven studies:

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

There is a nice little article about this in The Week magazine and an essay published in the NY Times, from which I have cribbed the title of this post, that asks, essentially, "why is everyone so surprised?"

Kristof's Mothers Day Column

There really are people in the world who are dedicating their lives to improve the lives of others.  And, much as I hate to admit it, some of them are even missionaries. 

Most of them go unnoticed I'm sure, but if anyone is going to use his pulpit to call attention to the selfless people volunteering their time and skills around the world, it is Nicholas Kristof.  He is also one of the few Americans who pays any attention at all to what is going on in Africa. And he pays a lot of attention, by the way.

Here is another great column by Kristof.  The subect, obstetric fistulas, is gruesome even to read about, which makes the work of these dedicated people even more awesome, because they're doing more than reading about it.
 

“People in America can’t believe I left urology to do this, but this is about changing lives,” which is better than “listening to men tell me about the quality of their erections,” he said. “I’ve had my family held at gunpoint, I’ve had malaria, I’ve had a serious exposure to H.I.V., I’ve been separated from family, and I’ve spent about a million hours crammed into coach class on airlines, but it’s worth it. I’d much rather live a meaningful life than a comfortable one.”

Snopes Saves the Day Again

Because Snopes.com sends me weekly updates, I now know that:

Taco Bell is not closing due to allegations that their 'beef' is really cat and dog meat. (Or for any other reason, presumably.)

Entering your PIN in reverse at an ATM does not summon the police.

Burger King is not offering free food vouchers for inviting friends on Facebook.

By the way, did you know that the word "gullible" is not even in the dictionary?

A Footnote From Christopher Hitchen's Memoir, "Hitch 22"

An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days.  "My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States."  "Oh, really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States."  "Nobody does.  That's how it survives."

Obama and Gay Marriage

Some thoughts about Obama's announcement.

It was a courageous thing to do at this point, before what will probably be a very difficult election.  Whatever his motivation, even if he was pressured by circumstances beyond his control, it was still a courageous decision.

Heitor said that he assumed Obama and his campaign staff were savvy enough to have not made a decision which will hurt him in November.  My fear is that he saw this as the best of a bad situation, where the only other option, of continuing to "evolve" in his thinking, would have been seen as wishy-washy.  After his Vice President and cabinet member(s) started giving their opinions, the question of where he stood on the issue was not going to go away, and coming out in favor, despite the risk, was the better choice.

I deplore single-issue politics in all of its manifestations, and if we end up with a Romney presidency because Obama came out in favor of my right to marry, I will not be feeling very satisfied.  Much as gay rights groups have been critical of him for not doing more, on the assumption, which I share, that he as been in favor of gay marriage rights all along but preferred not to touch the subject, he has still done more than any of his predecessors.  His ending of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and his decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act were both significant steps.  I hate to think that age has made me a moderate, but I do think age gives one a different perspective about the speed of social change and allows one to accept a slower pace.  On the other hand, as someone put it, "There is no wrong time to do the right thing," and progress never happens without committed activists.

What I haven't read yet is exactly what Obama's announcement means in practical terms.  Much as I am convinced that this is a civil rights issue, I still think it is different from black civil rights in that the federal government probably has no jurisdiction over the fifty different state marriage laws.  A federal recognition of same-sex marriage would no doubt permit same-sex married couples to file a joint federal tax return, but beyond that I'm not sure.  Probably it would allow spousal rights in veterans hospitals (and federal prisons?).  Even if the Democrats were to enact gay civil rights legislation at the federal level similar to the civil rights legislation of the '60s, with the intention that it apply to all the states, which I don't think anyone intends, nothing would happen until it went to the Supreme Court and we'd be in the same situation we are in right now, waiting for the Supreme Court to act.

Something that makes me mildly hopeful, although it is still way too early to know how this will play out as far as the election is concerned, is this on line NY Times headline: "While Obama Trumpets Gay Marriage, Foes Seek New Topic."  It would be amazing if the Republicans actually run away from this issue, a real indication that the times have changed dramatically.  Probably they're doing polling to see how much emphasis they want to give this.

I don't know who said it, but it has been pointed out that Obama has finally caught up with Dick Cheney on the subject of gay marriage.  It would be supremely and delightfully ironic, if the Republicans want to make this an issue, to see some Democratic-sponsored ads featuring the speeches of Dick Cheney in support of gay marriage.

What  I really expect is that the Democratic message of  the campaign, overall, is going to be one of fairness vs. unfairness, whether the subject be the economy or gay marriage.  In that sense, this fits right in.

I just went to Romney's website because I was pretty sure I had heard or read that Romney is not only opposed to same-sex marriage but civil unions as well.  My first impression is that the website is devoted solely to refuting charges that Romney is a flip flopper.  The format of the site, on whatever the topic might be, seems to be "They say Romney said this...., but what he really said was...."

They claim Romney flipped on gay marriage. The fact is, Romney has consistently opposed gay marriage. 

 They say Romney changed his position on civil unions. In truth, Romney said he opposed civil unions but "would look to protect already established rights and extend basic civil rights to domestic partnerships". Critics who fail to distinguish legally between a "domestic partnership" and a "civil union" have falsely characterized Romney's statement as a support of civil unions while neglecting his answer about civil unions in that same questionnaire.

The only instance in which Romney considered civil unions was as a possible downgrade from same-sex marriage as imposed by the state high court. At the time, Romney stated he would prefer to not have either one but felt it was a necessary compromise in order to prohibit gay marriage, which redefines family. In Romney's exact words, "If the question is: "Do you support gay marriage or civil unions?" I'd say neither; if they said you have to have one or the other, that Massachusetts is going to have one or the other, then I'd rather have civil unions than gay marriage."

Maybe, if the polls support it, Romney will decide that his views are "evolving." And, by the way, what is the difference between domestic partnerships and civil unions?  As long as neither of them is called marriage and confers the accompanying rights, then isn't the definition whatever the lawmakers choose to make it?

What If?

Eulace Peacock, far right, beating Jesse Owens, center, in 1935.

I'll spare you the details, but alternative history has been a mini-theme in my life for the last couple of days, so I was pleased to stumbled on this article in the NY Times Sports section (one has to read the whole paper) that isn't particularly profound, but reminds us of life's little twists and turns, chances lost and opportunities gained.

We all know about Jesse Owens and his dominance of Hitler's 1936 Olympic games.  (It is more than a little ironic that we are taught the story of Owens vs. Nazi theories of racial superiority, but never taught Owens vs. the reality of American racism.  Still, in the words of Mark McGuire, we're "not here to talk about the past.")

The point is that Owens had a rival that most of us have never heard of, named Eulace Peacock who, but for a torn hamstring, would have been on the same Olympic team as Owens. 

At one point, after Owens was defeated by Peacock in consecutive races, the former Olympic sprint champion Charles Paddock predicted that Peacock, of all American sprinters, was the only sure thing for a berth on the 1936 Olympic team and said he felt Owens was burned out. 

 Owens seemed to agree. After losing to Peacock five straight times beginning in July 1935, he said Peacock was the better sprinter. “It’s going to take a special man to beat Eulace Peacock,” he told one newspaper. “You see, I’ve already reached my peak. Peacock is just now reaching his. He’s a real athlete. I don’t know whether I can defeat him again.”

The reason for the newspaper article is a new PBS documentary about Jesse Owens by Laurens Grant, which I think is for the American Experience series, and which I presume has not yet been aired, but don't know.

Peacock, meanwhile, is a prime example of the “what if” moments of sports, and life.

What if Wally Pipp had never had a headache?

What if Portland had drafted Michael Jordan instead of Sam Bowie?

What if Eulace Peacock had not pulled his hamstring? Would the history of the Nazi Olympics have been reconfigured?

“As a filmmaker I’m astounded at how literally history is made in the span of a few seconds sometimes,” Grant said. “In just a split second history could turn left or right or up or down.”

As I said, it's not profound, but it's an interesting story I didn't know.

2012 Profiles In Courage Awards

The three former Iowa Supreme Court Justices who were part of a unanimous decision in 2009 to legalize same-sex marriage in that state, and who subsequently lost their jobs when the voters ousted them, will all receive this year´s John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Monday.

According to the JFK Library website, 

 Former Iowa Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and former justices David Baker and Michael Streit were chosen in recognition of the political courage and judicial independence each demonstrated in setting aside popular opinion to uphold the basic freedoms and security guaranteed to all citizens under the Iowa constitution.

 Frank Bruni has an nice column today, based on an interview with  Marsha Ternus.

The Iowa Supreme Court Decision was unanimous, so I´m not sure why the award is only going to the three justices who were voted off the court.  The other four justices (it´s a seven-member court) showed an equal amount of courage in their votes.  Perhaps it is unseemly for a sitting justice to receive an award of this sort.

Iowa Supreme Court Justices serve for six years and face a retention vote just before the expiration of their terms.  The terms of the other four justices all expire in December 2012.  It is hard to believe, having tasted blood, that the same groups who organized nationwide to vote out the first three justices in 2010 won´t come back to try to do the same thing to the other four in November.  Let´s hope for a different result.

Sensationalist Science...Yeah, Of Course

In July 2009, Nicholas Kristof wrote about the dangers of endocrine disruptors.  They are ubiquitous in our lives, unfortunately, and solidly linked to innumerable sexual and genital deformities in animals and humans, and suspected of a causal relationship to a much longer list of health issues.

As Kristoff pointed out in 2009, there were naturally some uncertainties about the exact way in which these endocrine disruptors work in the human population, even though there was a mountain of evidence pointing to the dangers they posed.

Three years later, in another column this week, with even more evidence mounting up, and the uncertainties becoming fewer, the FDA has done nothing.  And, as Kristof points out, in an election year when one party is going to be complaining about supposed "over" regulation of business, what's the likelihood that they're going to? 

Of course the chemistry industry's response is "sensationalist science."

So far, it has blocked strict regulation in the United States, even as Europe and Canada have adopted tighter controls on endocrine disruptors.

It has always seemed to me a reflection of our skewed values that a manufacturer is allowed to use almost any chemical without providing evidence of its harmlessness (proof would obviously be impossible), but once it is in use, the evidence of harm has to be overwhelming and clear beyond any doubt.

It reminds me of another story I read recently.  There have been three studies published recently (I believe two were published in England by professors at Oxford and the third in the U.S. by a Harvard professor) linking the death of honey bees (there is a name for this bee-death syndrome but I don't recall it) to the use of a type of pesticide that is applied to seeds before they are planted (that too has a name I've forgotten).  Of course you know the immediate response from the manufacturer of the pesticide: faulty science.

There are no doubt many instances of faulty science, but the immediate knee-jerk reaction of manufacturers with a hefty financial interest is always suspect.  It is as predictable as the police union's response, in any city in the country, to accusations of police misconduct or that the sun will rise in the east.

Romney, Republicans and Gay Rights

Even though I reject the notion of single-issue politics, I still cannot understand the concept of gay republicans. Considering the fact that the Democratic party has always had influential fiscal conservatives and foreign policy hawks, and both pro and anti adherents on every social policy question, why would a gay person stick with a party that does not want him, that doesn't respect him and, in some cases, abhors him?  A gay man will bring Democrats over to his way of thinking about other issues a long time before he will bring Republicans over to his ideas about gay rights.

The case of Richard Grenell's experience with the Romney campaign is a great illustration of misguided allegiance and also of the backward way of thinking about gay issues evidenced by even more "progressive" Republicans.

Grenell is the foreign policy strategist / adviser /spokesman to the Romney camp who has resigned before he even got started because of the fallout among conservative Republicans over the fact that he is gay.  Never mind that he has excellent credentials from the Bush years.  Of course that opposition is to be expected, but the spinelessness of the Romney campaign is marvelous to behold.  Mind you, when Grenell brought up the issue in his initial interview with the campaign, he was assured by Romney's people that his sexuality wasn't an issue with them.  On a conference call about foreign policy last week with news organizations, Grenell was told by the Romney campaign to dial in from home and listen in on the call, but not to speak.  They explained he needed to keep a low profile "until this blows over."

Just like all the people who one used to hear say they had no problems with gays generally, but just with those one who act like fags. Blacks are ok as along as they act white, and gays are ok as long as they act straight.  Go slow.  Stay in the background.  Don't make a scene. To his credit, Grenell had enough sense of integrity to say screw you, and resign.

Mind you, Romney is the candidate who is already challenging Obama's credentials as a leader. In this case, he's leading from behind, as the saying goes....about 25 years behind.

Why is his association with the Republican party a misguided allegiance?  Because Grenell understandably purports to be a strong advocate of gay marriage.  The final decision on gay marriage inevitably is going to come from the Supreme Court which, as a human rights issue, it should!!  The next President is almost surely going to make one or more appointments to the Court.  A Romney victory, given the average term of service by Supreme Court justices, could likely prevent a final gay marriage victory until the middle of this century, and who knows how many more sterling decisions of the Citizens United quality.

According to Charles Blow, Romney has already named the agenda-driven Robert Bork as one of the chairmen of his "Justice Advisory Committee," and he has made clear what kind of justices he would appoint, even though with the state of the Republican party these days, there could have been no doubt anyway:

I would have favored justices like Roberts and Alito, Scalia and Thomas. I like justices that follow the Constitution, do not make law from the bench. I would have much rather had a justice of that nature.

Frankly, this issue of the makeup of the Supreme Court is reason enough to support a non-Republican President, and not just because of gay rights.  As Blow notes:

There is little ambiguity here. Which of these two men will pick the next justice is of grave significance. This — like budgetary priorities and economic stewardship, concern for the earth and the air, and a candidate’s penchants for war and appetite for peace — should be on the lips of every pundit and in the minds of every concerned citizen.

We don’t get a do-over.

In Search of Lost Time

You can hold your applause until I've finished all 7 volumes, but I will take a preliminary bow for getting through Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, the first two volumes in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.  Whoever wrote the Forward to the first volume commented on Proust's humor.  I wasn't aware of it so much in Swann's Way, but that may have just been the process of adjustment to Proust's style.  Below are just a few short passages from the second volume that illustrate some of his drollery as well as his sarcasm.

If you're like me, you've always been intimidated by the thought of reading Proust, and he can certainly write some complicated sentences (I think one of his sentences took up three pages on my Kindle.) but he is addictive.  After finishing the first volume, I read some little fluffy thing that I finished in a couple of days, and then, when I started thinking what I wanted to read next, I realized I didn't want anything so much as more Proust.  I won't wait very long before taking up volume three.

There are lots of translations available.  I'm reading the Modern Library series of books.  Apropos of not much, when I was in school, these books were always referred to collectively as Remembrance of Things Past, which baffles me.  My French is non-existent, but even I can see that the correct translation is the one being used now.

 All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.

In the words of a fine Arab proverb, "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on!"

 Victory is on the side that can hold out a quarter of an hour longer than the other, as the Japanese say.

We live in expectancy, constantly on the alert; the mother whose son has gone to sea on some perilous voyage of discovery sees him in imagination every moment, long after the fact of his having perished has been established, striding into the room, saved by a miracle and in the best of health.  And this expectancy, according to the strength of her memory and the resistance of her bodily organ, either helps her on her journey through the years, at the end of which she will be able to endure the knowledge that her son is no more, to forget gradually and to survive his loss--or else it kills her.

When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in arranging for tomorrow's rendezvous.

....hills of a harsh green and a disagreeable shape, like that of the sofa in one's bedroom in an hotel at which one has just arrived...

They gave to this room with its lofty ceiling a quasi-historical character which might have made it a suitable place for the assassination of the Duc de Guise, and afterwards for parties of tourists personally conducted by one of Thomas Cook's guides, but for me to sleep in--no.

...the international phenomenon of the "de luxe" hotel, having taken root at Balbec, had blossomed there in material luxery rather than in food that was fit to eat...

...a man with a receding forehead and eyes that dodged between the blinkers of his prejudices and his upbringing...

...a striking contrast to the the sort of people one usually saw at Balbec, whom she condemned as impossible to know so long as she did not know them.

...like those expressive themes invented by musicians of genius which paint in splendid colours the glow of fire, the rush of water, the peace of fields and woods, to audiences who, having glanced through the programme in advance, have their imaginations trained in the right direction.

....meals that my grandmother...described as "of a sumptuousness to make you die of hunger."

Hence, for Francoise, Mme de Villeparisis had to make amends for being noble.  But (in France, at any rate) that is precisely the talent, in fact the sole occupation of the aristocracy.

I felt that it was unreasonable to forfeit, for a purely conventional scruple, my share of happiness in what may very well be the only life there is...

People weren't so free then with the word 'genius' as they are now, when if you say to a writer that he has talent he takes it as an insult.

...the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants.  Often she had seen them born.  That's the only way to get really good ones.

...that vague respect which one has for the rights of other people, even if they do not know one's aunt, in accordance with which I did not behave in quite the same way towards an old lady as towards a gas lamp.

The hard and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from our complete ignorance of life.

In fact, all the famous people M. Bloch claimed to know he knew only "without actually knowing them..."

....a world where assurance, far from being tempered by ignorance and inaccuracy, is increased thereby.