It's a Big Deal, Even If the Best Reaction is Ho-Hum

It's funny sometimes how we are all used/served/manipulated by the media. It is no accident that there have been a lot of rumors recently that a pro athlete in one of the four major sports was going to come out as gay. I recently wrote a post about a story in the NY Times that described an NHL program in anticipation of the big event, even though the NHL denied that was the reason for their program.

Just last night, Heitor and I were watching a baseball game between Atlanta and Detroit. We jokingly agreed that we both hoped the first pro athlete to come out wouldn't be Prince Fielder (yes, it is a very superficial observation; Fielder is probably a beautiful person inside that un-athletic-looking body).

And today, we find out there is nothing to worry about. It is Jason Collins. Everyone should want to read his cover-story essay in Sports Illustrated. What an articulate young man! And a hell of a lot cuter than Prince Fielder.

A Book To Put On Your List

From the book Half the Sky, by the husband/wife team of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn:

The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine "gendercide" in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.

I've writen before of my admiration for Nicholas Kristof. I can only assume the fact that his name comes first on the list of authors is because he wrote more of the book. He is an eminently fair man.

What's a Religion?

Just finished reading Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright (2013). It only confirms my belief that we need to end tax exemptions for all religions.

I've already forgotten the details, but I think it was as recent as the early-1990s that the IRS could have destroyed Scientology. The group owed many millions in back taxes and were fighting the IRS with everything it had to re-obtain the tax exempt status it had lost in 1967. The fight in the courts went on for more than two decades, and the "church" had more financial resources (and the will) to keep it going than did the IRS. Scientology as an organization and individual members filed over 2500 lawsuits against the IRS in every part of the country. If they had lost, and had to pay all their back taxes, it would have wiped them out. According to Wright, citing the Scientology leader, virtually the entire IRS budget for legal battles was consumed by the Scientology cases for several years. Finally, the "church" got what it wanted: tax exemption and release from its back tax obligation.

There are already so many abuses of the tax exempt status by organized  religions (OMG, this earlier post is already three and a half years old!). Rather than put the IRS in the hopeless position of having to decide what is and what isn't a religion, why not take them out of the equation altogether and say that no religion is tax exempt.

It seems to me that government recognition of religious belief in any form and the bestowal of tax benefits on  their organizations is a violation of the establishment clause and discriminates against tax-paying atheists.

Values vs. Applied Values

A story in the NY Times reports on an official, non-partisan report was issued today that will probably be lost in the coverage of the Boston bombings. It´s conclusion:

“it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” 

It describes the internal advice of the Bush administration's legal advisors which was used to justify the brutal methods as "acrobatic."

My first reaction was rather ho-hum. I mean who didn´t know that? The whole question had been reduced to one of semantics. Hadn´t the Bushies come right out and said, "Yes, we waterboard, but we don´t torture." (Never mind that we tried and executed a few Japanese after WWII for using that very procedure.)  In the recent HBO documentary, "The World According to Dick Cheney," Cheney openly ridicules the concept of national or personal honor in comparison with the value of the use of torture. Oops, I meant enhanced interrogation techniques. The very use of that euphemism, with a wink wink and a nudge nudge, has always been an implicit acknowledgement that we all know the score.

Still I think this report, from a panel convened by the The Constitution Project, is important. For one thing, one of the co-chairs was Asa Hutchinson, who served in the Bush administration as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and Under Secretary of Homeland Security. Also, because Obama refused at the beginning of his administration to support a national commission to investigate the nation's post-9/11 counter-terrorism programs, independent investigations such as this became necessary.

For all the debate about the Geneva Conventions and whether or not they are applicable, it has always been ignored that the U.S. "is a signatory to the international Convention Against Torture, which requires the prompt investigation of allegations of torture and the compensation of its victims." Remember how the right wing always used to oppose treaties with the Soviet Union because they never keep their word? Hmmm, maybe we're not so reliable either. Just sayin'.

And this isn't merely ancient history, or simply an indictment of the Bush administration. Read this story by one of the hunger strikers at Guantanamo and see how proud you are of your country and its applied values in year five of the Obama administration.

Just a Little Nonsense

French Boule

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I really have pretty much lost my sense of smell, which is one of the reasons for making bread it seems to me, and white bread is totally inconsistent with my good low-carb intentions. So what gives? Well, making bread is kind of relaxing (I've heard some people say the same thing about ironing clothes, which is incomprehensible to me, but it takes all kinds, doesn't it?) and Heitor absolutely loves it, so what the hell. It is my newest obsession.

A few weeks ago we bought a food processor, and I've used it a few times to experiment with various bread  recipes. But these are my best loaves so far, and I made them the old-fashioned way, by hand. All the recipes I found for boule involve letting the dough rise for long periods, like 24 hours in this case, but the flip side benefit is that you can keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to two weeks and make a loaf whenever you feel like it.

I have a recipe for boule that uses a mixture of whole wheat and white flour, for the next time, so I can feel better about slathering the butter onto a hot slice fresh out of the oven.

Some Restrictions

Clever Baseball Announcers

Some time ago in an earlier post I committed myself, whether anyone cares or not, to post things I hear on baseball broadcasts this year that I think are humorous, or otherwise worth noting.

I'm watching a game between the White Sox and the Nationals tonight. Alex Rios of the White Sox so far in the series has 7 hits in 11 at bats. The Nationals' announcers are discussing how hot he is (as a baseball hitter, although I think he's pretty hot in other ways too) and what they can do about him.

One of the announcers instantly said "Blame it on Rios." It just occurred to me now that the line may have been thought of last night over a few drinks in the hotel bar after the game, and I merely assumed it was spontaneous when I heard it tonight.

At any rate, I will credit it, whether spontaneous or the result of alcohol-induced creativity at some other time and merely remembered, which is noteworthy in itself, because I usually forget all the clever things that come to me while tippling.

The Times They Really Are A-Changin'

All of the major professional US sports associations have anti-discrimination policies with regard to sexuality, but according to a story in today's NY Times, the National Hockey League has taken the strongest and most advanced position in support of gay athletes.

The N.H.L. said it had formed a partnership with the You Can Play Project, an advocacy group pledged to fight homophobia in sports, and planned training and counseling on gay issues for its teams and players.

Professional sports represent what some have called the last major closet, and people who know say there are and have always been (is anyone actually surprised?) gay athletes in all of the pro sports. It is just that the history has been that they don't come out as gay until they retire.

The NHL denies that the new program is specifically designed to lay the groundwork for the first professional player to come out, but it might just have that effect.

Reading the Obits

McCandlish Phillips, Times Reporter Who Exposed Jewish Klansman, Dies at 85

How could you not read the story that comes under this headline?

What a complex person this Mr. Phillips was. Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of the NYT, called Phillips “the most original stylist" he had ever edited.

As a "general-assignment reporter" of the 1961 St. Patrick's Parade, he wrote:

“The sun was high to their backs and the wind was fast in their faces and 100,000 sons and daughters of Ireland, and those who would hold with them, matched strides with their shadows for 52 blocks. It seemed they marched from Midtown to exhaustion.”

His article about the closing of the original Lindy's Delicatessen in 1969 opened like this:

"What kind of a day is today? It's the kind of a day that if you wanted a slice of cheesecake at Lindy's, you couldn't get it."  

This next quote is so obviously the work of a genius that it doesn't even need a context:

“It is impossible to tell a plainclothes detective from a mugger here. You just have to wait to see what they do”

 And yet, if you needed evidence that people are complicated creatures, Phillips was an evangelical Christian who kept a bible on his desk and who led prayer meetings for like-minded colleagues at the NYT.  He left journalism in 1973 to devote himself to evangelical Christianity.

In 1962, he had helped found the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, a Pentecostal congregation in Manhattan. Its tenets, as Ken Auletta wrote in a 1997 New Yorker profile of Mr. Phillips, include the belief that “pornography, drugs, abortion and any form of fornication (including premarital sex and homosexuality) are sins.”

In the early 1970s, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship made headlines after the kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of several of its congregants by their families. The families maintained that the group had trained the congregants to repudiate them.

If you want to read about the Jewish Klansman Phillips exposed, you'll have to click on the link.

Oxymorons on the Supreme Court

I long ago decided it was appropriate to refer to Fox "News."

Now, stealing from a Donald Kaul column in the Des Moine Register of probably almost 30 years ago, I have decided to always refer to "Justice" Scalia when it is necessary to refer to him at all.


I believe Kaul's original column referred to the oxymoron that was known as "Justice Rehnquist." If Kaul had only known how much worse the court was going to become.

Extremely Cautious Optimism

I am afraid that when the Supremes decide the two cases related to same-sex marriage, we could be no better off than we are now, even if the rulings appear favorable on their surface.

My first fear is that the court will uphold the lower court's rejection of Prop 8, but on such a narrow basis that it doesn't affect any other state but California.

An even stronger fear, is that they will overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, not on the basis of equal protection under the law, but on the basis that marriage is a matter for the states to decide. Yes, that dumb-ass issue of Federalism again, which is the perfect excuse for inaction on a National level.

One of the reasons that these fears seem justified is that Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, one of the good guys, seems amenable to the idea that a ruling which finds a broad constitutional right to same-sex marriage under the equal protection clause would be a mistake.

Ginsburg is on record as believing that the Roe v. Wade ruling moved "too far too fast" and is actually the reason abortion is still such a divisive issue. According to her theory, the various states were moving in the direction of legalizing abortion and that the Supreme Court ruling short-circuited the process and created a backlash that we're still living with.

There was an excellent editorial in the NY Times a couple of days ago that shows Ginsburg has her history wrong as to the progress abortion rights was making in the states. Also what should be an obvious point, that the "fear of an angry reaction from some groups cannot be the reason to deny people basic rights."

The bottom line, as everyone has always said, is that everything probably hangs on Justice Kennedy. The conservative four are probably going to be very happy to declare marriage a decision to be made by each of the states. I would feel better about bringing Kennedy around if the four liberal justices presented a solid front for the equal protection position, but we may not be able to rely on Ginsburg. People who seem to have similar views as she does as regards Roe v. Wade apparently fear that a sweeping declaration of a constitutional right to equal treatment under the law would result in the kind of protracted culture war that we see with abortion, and that, if everyone will just be patient a little longer, all the states will come around on their own and legalize same-sex marriage.

"Be patient a little longer" reminds me of the great Nina Simone song from the '60s or early '70s, "Mississippi God Damn."

As I said in an earlier post, this kind of ruling that dodges the larger National issue would still leave the matter of full faith and credit among the states to be decided, which would result in another case for them to decide when Nebraska refuses to recognize a marriage made in Iowa.


I am still cautiously optimistic, but less so than I was before the cases were argued and we saw the statements and questions that came from the Justices.

I wish I could recall the source of this exchange:
Person One: I am cautiously optimistic that ....blah blah blah
Person Two: I think you are too optimistic.

Never Having To Say You're Sorry

Following up on the previous post about the change of heart among Republicans and right-wing pundits about the immediate crisis of debts and deficits, I would just once like to hear one of them say "I was wrong."

From a National Review Online interview in February 2009 with Brian Riedl, who is described as "the Heritage Foundation's leading budget analyst."

The government is going to have to raise interest rates in order to convince people to lend them the full amount they need. We’re already facing a deficit of $1.2 trillion this year, and 700 billion next year. We borrowed $700 billion for TARP, and now we’re going to borrow $800 billion for this stimulus package. Compare those numbers to the entire public debt, which was 5.8 trillion up until a few months ago. It’s going to be very difficult for a global economy, which is already in a recession, to supply the U.S. government with [$3 trillion] in new borrowing. Right now, a lot of banks are happy to buy Treasury bonds because they are safe investments . . . but overall, that may not be enough. The government may have to raise interest rates higher and higher and higher in order to persuade people to lend their diminishing savings to the government. And that’s going to hurt the economy for a long time.

Here's a Wall Street Journal story from March 6, 2009: Obama's Radicalism Killing the Dow.  Obama hadn't even been inaugurated yet, and he was the worst thing to happen since...I don't know...unsliced bread? Oh yeah, Obama's "radicalism" was just oh so extreme.

Simpson and Bowles predicted two years ago that, if we didn't adopt their proposals, in two years interest rates would be through the roof. Actually, they predicted it a little more than two years ago; we've passed their deadline for the apocalypse.

Of course these are just three isolated predictions, but everyone reading this knows that these opinions became the official Republican, conservative talking points that they stuck to for four years and are now apparently sort of half-assed abandoning. Being a politician may mean never having to say you were wrong. I guess being a pundit means the same thing.

For those inclined to automatically claim nobody ever admits their mistakes, I offer a Paul Krugman post from September 2012:

So, what big mistakes have I made over the years? Two, I think.

The first was in the mid-1990s, when I pooh-poohed claims about a surge in US productivity growth. I saw some bad logic in the arguments the productivity enthusiasts were making, and — being the professor I am — I extrapolated that into being dismissive of everything they were saying. In fact, the productivity surge was real.

The second was circa 2003, over the Bush administration’s use of the illusion of victory in Iraq to push through more tax cuts, even though the optimistic budget projections used to justify the first round had proved completely wrong. It’s worth pointing out that the situation was not at all like the present, where I support temporary deficit spending to deal with a depressed economy; the Bushies were pushing permanent tax cuts that had nothing to do with economic stimulus, and did so at a time of war with no offsetting spending cuts (and then pushed through an unfunded expansion of Medicare too). This struck me at the time as banana-republic behavior, and still does. 

However, I wrongly believed that markets would look at it the same way, and that they would lose faith in American governance, driving up interest rates on our debt. Instead, bond investors discounted the politics, and acted as if they believed that America would eventually pull itself together and start behaving responsibly. The jury’s still out on that, but clearly my short-run prediction proved wrong.

I learned from both these mistakes. In the 90s, I learned to take very seriously what people on the ground are saying about the economy, even if it isn’t well-argued. After 2003, I learned that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation — that markets give advanced countries a lot of benefit of the doubt.

Now, for those of you who think Paul Krugman is too partisan, too anti-Republican, your assignment is to find other examples of where his economic predictions were wrong. I'm sure it must gall you to think that, in 2012, he had had to go back to the mid-1990s to find one of his two mistakes. I'll give you a tip: go back before 2008, because otherwise you're just wasting your time...and time is money I'm told.

Slight of Hand

It hasn't been much commented on, but have you noticed that the Republican position on debts and deficits has changed? Even John Boehner now admits that we don't have a short term debt problem. My friend Bob Peterson recently sent me an op-ed column by Peggy Noonan saying we don't have a debt problem, we have a jobs problem (and, of course, it is Obama's fault).

Where is the admission that this is a reversal of everything the party leaders and media mouthpieces have been saying for the last four years?  Not only have they been saying it, they have been killing programs that tried to address the jobs problem because we supposedly had this immediate debt crisis that needed to be attended to.

Now the message has changed. We don't have a debt crisis, but it is "looming." And, of course, the Republicans are extremely concerned about the economic situation we leave for the next generation. But when Obama proposed public-private cooperative spending on infrastructure improvements, the forward- thinking Boehner actually said  " It's easy to go out there and be Santa Claus and talk about all the things you want to give away, but at some point somebody has to pay the bill."

And this is the Republican party leader who is supposedly thinking about the next generations?! Jeez.

For a party that has supposedly discovered the value of creating jobs, this willful blindness to the immediate advantage of infrastructure spending as well as it's future economic dividends is really almost mind boggling.

Cherokee Jeep Fryer

Car Talk may have gone off the air, but they still have a great website.

Reliable sources at the New York Auto Show tell Car Talk that Chrysler’s Jeep Division is preparing to introduce a special bio-diesel-fueled SUV to be co-branded with restaurant chain McDonald’s. The special edition Grand Cherokee will be painted in the familiar red-and-yellow colors of McDonald’s, and will be displayed in the parking lots of select McDonald’s restaurants as part of the promotion. The vehicle, the Grand Cherokee Fryer, is especially adapted to run on the used cooking oil that McDonald’s produces in abundance.


If you need another reason to invest in a Cherokee Fryer, above and beyond carbon neutrality, McDonald's is throwing in some free Happy Meals and other exclusive offers.
The 100 percent veggie oil cars will be sold by dealers initially in five states, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Texas, which have the highest per-capita consumption of fried foods. The co-branding extends to special signage at the dealerships and cross-promotions. Coupons good for free Happy Meals and exclusive offers (including half-priced drinks) will be mailed to each Grand Cherokee Fryer owner.

The new car is a modified version of one of the mainstays of the Jeep lineup, and is powered by a three-liter EcoDiesel engine, producing 240 horsepower. Connected to an eight-speed automatic transmission, it yields a very respectable 28 MPG on the highway. The first Grand Cherokee Fryers will reportedly be on the market in the summer of 2014.


If Chrysler's new bio-diesel-fueled Jeep Cherokee Fryer runs half as well as these french fries smell, then SUV fans will have something to cheer about.
The Massachusetts-based VegOil Alliance, a loose confederation of grease-car owners, reacted with cautious optimism to the news from Jeep and McDonald’s. “We hate to lose a very significant source of free grease,” said Dan Difino, the alliance’s outreach coordinator. “But it’s very important that our small, locally based cottage industry get some mainstream backing so we can make a big dent in emissions.”

Advocates point out that cars running on vegetable oil can be “carbon neutral,” because the carbon dioxide taken out of the Earth’s atmosphere while the plants (such as soybeans) are growing is replaced when the fuel is burned.

McDonald’s will also market its fryer oil, strained to remove impurities, as a point-of-purchase product called “McDiesel,” initially also in those five states. The two-gallon jugs, with built-in “EZ Pourer” spouts, will retail for $5.


Lucky McDonald's patrons in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Texas will be able to order a gallon of McDiesel along with their Big Macs and 1/2 gallon soft drinks.
McDonald’s also envisions a time when participating franchises will be outfitted with special McDiesel refueling drive-through lanes, permitting drivers to simultaneously fuel up themselves and their cars. The lanes will be strategically located near the exit of each franchise’s kitchen.


You're already planning on pulling into a McDonald's drive-through for lunch...why not fill your Jeep Cherokee Fryer up at the same time?
“Under normal circumstances, McDonald’s pays to dispose of that oil, so it’s a win-win for us,” said Ernest Tallow, chief sustainability officer at the company. “McDonald’s is working hard to reduce its carbon footprint, and this new initiative is also part of that effort. And, if our gently used vegetable oil can become a profit center, instead of a liability, so much the better. Our customers in those markets can ‘super-size’ their orders with a bargain-priced jug of McDiesel.”

Al Smith, Jeep’s project manager for the Grand Cherokee Fryer Project, said, “People always say that these grease-burning cars ‘smell like French fries,’ and in this case it will be literally true! We know that these vehicles have a passionate and devoted following, and the Grand Cherokee Fryer will be the first new car aimed at that small but influential market. It’s not just about 20-year-old, retrofitted Mercedes 300Ds anymore.”

The Grand Cherokee Fryer will roll out to a co-branded media campaign, aimed at bolstering the environmental credibility of both brands.

A Jeep source, speaking on conditions of anonymity, says that no more than 500 Grand Cherokee Fryers will be produced in 2014. “We’re testing the market,” he said. “This is uncharted territory for the Jeep Division, and for all of Chrysler, for that matter. But so far it looks good, and it smells good, too.”