The Seventh Sense

You May Be Getting Less Spam (For A While, Anyway)

Why?

One of the world's top spammers has been arrested, "and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail."

Good.

"Stupid In Space"

I heard this interview on NPR this morning too, and I almost fell out of the bed:

Showing that there is no place safe from idiocy, here's an absolutely astronomically stupid comment from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.  A statement so stupid, it makes the invasion of Iraq and the management of Katrina look like genius.

Michael Griffin NASA Administrator has told America's National Public Radio that while he has no doubt a trend of global warming exists "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

Griffin confirms that global warming exists, and in fact only hours before NASA had issued a report showing that ice in the Arctic was being lost at higher rates than previously predicted.  So what's behind Griffin's Qué será, será attitude?  Is it a fatalistic view that we can't do anything about global warming?  Nope.   

In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep that will air in Thursday's edition of NPR News' Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin explains: "I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

There you go.  Trying to stop global warming is arrogant.  Who are you to say folks in Norway that they can't have palm trees!

The part that Griffin seems to be forgetting is the billions of people who would die if our current economy collapses due to sinking cities and shifting growing regions.  Might the future inhabitants of tropical Greenland be happy as they gaze southward over the swollen sea?  Maybe.  But I'm not anxious to sink Miami to find out.  Idiot. 

Oh, and expect this to become part of the standard kit for those on the right.  I give it ten hours before Rush gets around to "trying to stop global warming is racist."  Start your stopwatch.

Griffin’s remarks are stunning, coming just days after his own agency released a report warning of the “disastrous effects” of climate change:

Even “moderate additional” greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past “critical tipping points” with “dangerous consequences for the planet,” according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute.

With just 10 more years of “business as usual” emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, “it becomes impractical” to avoid “disastrous effects.”

Chris Mooney weighs in on this too:

What Griffin is ignoring is the whole issue of risk and its distribution. Our global society is set up for--adapted to--the current climate. But now we're moving in the direction of raising the sea level considerably--even as much of the global population is coastal--and melting large amounts of ice, while also altering the occurrence of phenomena, such as droughts, that could have a dramatic impact on food and water supplies.

How can anyone think this is not a tremendous societal risk, even if there might be some people--in, say, Buffalo, New York--who may actually have more pleasant weather under global warming?

NASA is already backtracking. James Hansen, the agency's top climatologist, is slamming his boss. Assuredly there will be many more jeers and groans over the course of the day.

Some Free Legal Advice From Me (A Lawyer)

For the love of God, if you're sued, don't blog about your case and reveal your defense strategy.  Duh.

How Thin Is Our Army?

So thin that we're putting amputees back on the front line.

(That's okay apparently, as long as they're not gay).

It's All About the White Christian Male Power Structure

At least O'Reilly admits it:

O’REILLY: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.

MCCAIN: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.

O’REILLY: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.

MCCAIN: We do, we do. I agree with you.

And there you have it.  If your a woman, non-Christian, and/or a minority, the white Christian man owns you.

More On The Scripps National Spelling Bee

Oh, someone is liveblogging it! (UPDATE: Another bee blog here)

(You can also get updates of the results of each round here).

UPDATE:  Come on, Joshua!  The local boy is still in it, having correctly spelled "hybrid" in Round Two (not very tough, I admit) and "chattel" in Round Three.

It should be noted that two Italian food-related words -- "ricotta" and "minestrone" -- knocked out 2 of the 6 North Carolina kids in Round Three.  I'm not sure what significance to read into that...

UPDATE (4:30 pm):  Looks like Round Four has begun, with 94 still in the competition, and the words are a lot harder.  Several casualties already.

UPDATE (5:45 pm):  Winston-Salem's Joshua Wright made it through Round Four, correctly spelling "unguiculate" (a medical term meaning "having claws or nails"), so he'll be in the televised rounds tomorrow.  Otherwise, Round Four is turning out to be a bloodbath.

Heather & Jeff Maggs Do Not Need To Be Quarantined

AP:

A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 had health officials around the world scrambling Wednesday to find about 80 passengers who sat within five rows of him on two trans-Atlantic flights.

The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without treatment in the U.S.

***

He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385, also listed as Delta Air Lines codeshare Flight 8517. While he was in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed his TB was a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials.

On reading this, I immediately had to see when Heather flew to Paris on her honeymoon.

Sunday, May 13.  Out of Greensboro.  Okay, I figured.  But I just wanted to be extra sure.

By the way, how adorable is this?

Speaking of diseases, doesn't this lede sentence in another AP news story strike you as a tad alarming:

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

That's right.  The Bush administration is vowing to keep meatbackers from testing for mad cow disease.

And why?  Because one responsible meatpacking company wants to do it:

A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

And if one company chooses to be socially responsible, what does that mean?

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

So now, the government is trying to restrict Creekstone from performing mad cow testing.

This is bizarro.  The conservative mantra is that business should be self-regulating, without government interference.  Well, along comes a company that is trying to do the right thing and protect social wefare, and the Bush Administration wants it to not do it.

Go figure.

Imagine, if you will, that the Bush Administration is successful in blocking the testing for mad cow.  And then imagine, if you will, an outbreak of mad cow here in the United States.  Kind of reminds you of the August 2001 "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S." memo that the Bush team ignored, yes?

Rick Perlstein comments:

There's your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

Lou Dobbs Has A "Flexible Relationship With Reality"

Lou Dobbs reported in April 2005 (and repeated several times since then), that 7,000 immigrants into the U.S over the past three years have been diagnosed with leprosy.  FACT:  There have been only 7,000 cases of leprosy in the United States over the past thirty years, and not all of them are from immigrants.

Lou Dobbs reported in November 2003 that one-third of the federal prison population is illegal immigrants.  Way off.  According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

He's also provided microphones to nutjobs with "intriguing assertions" (Lou's words) -- like the guy who claimed that Hurricane Katrina was actually the result of eco-terrorism committed by terrorists.

Nice to see the New York Times do a number on Mr. Dobbs: Read Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs.

"Verschärfte Vernehmung"

Earlier this month, the Republican contenders for President were asked a debate question by moderator Brit Hume:

Imagine, Hume told the candidates, that hundreds of Americans have been killed in three major suicide bombings and "a fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured … and taken to Guantanamo…. U.S. intelligence believes that another, larger attack is planned…. How aggressively would you interrogate" the captured suspects?

This was where the GOP candidates -- with the exception of John McCain (a man who actually was tortured) and Ron Paul (a man with an actual brain and sense of morality) -- dropped their pants and showed the country just how BIG they were.  What would they do?  The answers were typified by Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo:

"We're wondering about whether water-boarding would be a — a bad thing to do? I'm looking for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you."

Yup, most of them would torture, just like you see on teevee (because teevee is, you know, real).

Of course, the most "presidential" of the pack -- candidates like Romney and Guiliani -- couldn't bring themselves to actually use the word "torture":

"Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

"Enhanced interrogation techniques".  Wink, wink.  Not "torture".  Get it?  Wink, wink. wink.

Well, Andrew Sullivan does a little research and discovers that the phrase "enhanced interrogation" was coined by -- you guessed it -- the Nazis:

It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president.

Sullivan continues, invoking Godwin's Law, and making it stick:

Here's a document from Norway's 1948 war-crimes trials detailing the prosecution of Nazis convicted of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the Second World War. Money quote from the cases of three Germans convicted of war crimes for "enhanced interrogation":

Between 1942 and 1945, Bruns used the method of "verschärfte Vernehmung" on 11 Norwegian citizens. This method involved the use of various implements of torture, cold baths and blows and kicks in the face and all over the body. Most of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the injuries received during those interrogations.

Between 1942 and 1945, Schubert gave 14 Norwegian prisoners "verschärfte Vernehmung," using various instruments of torture and hitting them in the face and over the body. Many of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the effects of injuries they received.

On 1st February, 1945, Clemens shot a second Norwegian prisoner from a distance of 1.5 metres while he was trying to escape. Between 1943 and 1945, Clemens employed the method of " verschäfte Vernehmung " on 23 Norwegian prisoners. He used various instruments of torture and cold baths. Some of the prisoners continued for a considerable time to suffer from injuries received at his hands.

Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end - all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases.

He concludes:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

So, as the issue comes up in the run-up to the '08 elections, remember one thing: "enhanced interrogation techniques" = "torture".  They're the same thing.  One just sounds nicer to our ears, but to the person at the receiving end, there is no distinguishable difference.

And why shouldn't we engage in torture enhanced interrogation techniques?  Because we're not Nazis, that's why.  Keep America safe?  Sure.  But it makes no sense to try to preserve American ideals through techniques that run counter American ideals.

Didn't We Settle This Before?

In a court filing today, Patrick Fitzgerald provides a summary of Valerie Plame Wilson's status with the CIA's Counterproliferation Division at the time she was outed to the press by members of the Bush administration. Guess what? She was covert:

While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.

At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson's employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.

For years, the rightwing blogosphere and Fox News pundits were crowing to anyone who would listen, that Plame was not a covert agent.  They were wrong then, as we all knew.  Glenn Greenwald looks back.

Christy Hardin Smith weighs in:

Now, let's see. Who called this correctly? Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, the Boris and Natasha of bobbleheads, who shilled their asinine fact-free "oh no, clearly not covert" bullshit on every talk show from here to China and back again? Nope.  Wrong. Over and over again. Completely wrong.  On cable teevee. In the WaPo. You name it.  And did I mention they were wrong?

Oh wait…and to Congress.

Waxman: Ms. Toensing, I just only can say that we are pleased to accommodate the request of the Minority to have you as a witness and some of the statements you’ve made without any doubt and with great authority I understand may not be accurate so we’re going to check the information and we’re going to hold the record open to put in other things that might contradict some of what you had to say.

Oooopsie.  Wonder if the time has elapsed to revise and extend Ms. Toensing's remarks to Rep. Waxman's committee?  Sure hope not, because I hear a perjury charge can really set you back.