Video: Dog has dream, then gets annoyed

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Pope fires bishop over "administrative issues"

Yet covering up child rape is still OK for the Vatican. Though this latest firing is completely different from the numerous child rape scandals within the Catholic church, there are implications for those cases.

In the face of U.S. lawsuits seeking to hold the pope ultimately responsible for abusive priests, the Holy See has argued that bishops are largely masters of their dioceses and that the pope doesn't really control them. The Vatican has thus sought to limit its own liability, arguing that the pope doesn't exercise sufficient control over the bishops to be held responsible for their bungled response to priests who rape children.

The ability of the pope to actively fire bishops, and not just passively accept their resignations, would seem to undercut the Vatican's argument of a hands-off pope.

"If the pope can fire a bishop, that implies he's their supervisor," said Nick Cafardi, a U.S. canon lawyer and former chairman of the U.S. bishops' lay review board that monitored clerical abuse. "This will invite more lawsuits attempting to sue the pope in American courts."

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ObamaCare: A personal note

Almost exactly a year ago my wife lost her job. As a result our family health insurance plan was terminated four days later and I had to scramble to convert a part time position without health care benefits into a position with benefits.

Without Obamacare 99% of the country is just one lost job, one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. And one frequently follows from the other.

Without insurance our family medical bill is in excess of $60,000 a year. That is a very large chunk of change even if you are a borderline 1%-er. It means that I have to continue to work just to keep our family health insurance. And not any job, it has to be a job with health care benefits.

People can argue that Obama could have got more or better. But the fact is that Obama delivered where Clinton failed and Bush never tried.

Update: Perhaps I should have mentioned that we live in Massachusetts where we have RomneyCare which will continue even if Romney succeeds in ending RomneyCare for the rest of you. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Americans want anti-Obamacare activists to move on

Independents are fairly close to the general numbers, though they are likely to be disappointed by the Teabagging extremists who will want to continue fighting.

In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of respondents said they prefer Obamacare opponents "stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems," while 38 percent said they prefer those opponents "continue trying to block the law from being implemented."

Kaiser, a nonprofit, independent foundation that studies health policy and opinions, polled 1,239 adults beginning last Thursday, when the Supreme Court upheld Obama's health law under Congress's taxing power.

Predictably, responses broke down on partisan lines, but independents who do not lean toward either party also preferred Obamacare critics drop their repeal push by a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent. Respondents favored the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent, Kaiser found.

Since Obamacare is Romneycare without support for abortion, can we at least get opponents to admit that they're against Obamacare because they simply don't like Obama because he's black? It's hard to come to any other conclusion based on the history of the right wing created plan. Read the rest of this post...

Anti-tax movement region of Colorado hit by fires, begs for federal help

By all means the people of this area should receive federal help during such an emergency, but they also ought to be charged heavily for it. Those same right wing extremists like to talk about personal responsibility, so surely they wouldn't accept freeloading off of the generosity of fellow Americans without paying them for the services, right?

The other obvious point of the Colorado fires is the link to climate change. This is not unlike the extreme weather that we also see in the south, also another region where many people don't believe it's a problem. How's that working out?

Bloomberg has more on the anti-tax extremists who now are looking for federal assistance.

The city where the Waldo Canyon fire destroyed 346 homes and forced more than 34,000 residents to evacuate turned off one-third of its streetlights two years ago, halted park maintenance and cut services to close a $28 million budget gap after sales-tax revenue plummeted and voters rejected a property-tax increase.

The municipality, at 416,000 the state’s second-largest, auctioned both its police helicopters and shrank public-safety ranks through attrition by about 8 percent; it has 50 fewer police and 39 fewer firefighters than five years ago. More than 180 National Guard troops have been mobilized to secure the city after the state’s most destructive fire. At least 32 evacuated homes were burglarized and dozens of evacuees’ cars were broken into, said Police Chief Pete Carey.

“It has impacted the response,” said Karin White, a 54- year-old accountant, who returned home June 28 to a looted and vandalized house, with a treasured, century-old family heirloom smashed.

Something about this story really bothers me because what I've come to dislike the most about the modern GOP is their brutality to others. The have no sense of community and never care about anyone besides themselves.

We see the same behavior throughout the extremist south every time a new tornado or hurricane blows through. These are the people who mostly receive much more federal revenue than they pay into the system yet they still want to slash taxes more so the supposed freeloaders up north (i.e. poor city people) don't get anything.

Each time a terrible storm comes through, there there are, asking for handouts and yes, each time they receive those handouts because there are still enough Americans who care about their fellow Americans. It's not their precious Bible that's saving them, it's federal goddamn dollars paid that come from those people that they hate.

It's going to be a loss for America if our old spirit of togetherness goes away but the anti-tax Republicans are trying their hardest to make it a reality. If that day comes where there are no federal handouts to handout, it is likely going to be those anti-tax extremists who pay the price much more than anyone else. Read the rest of this post...

Was Clarence Thomas behind leak of Sup Ct health care decision?

Just a newsy follow-up to this earlier post on the CBS News report that Roberts switched his vote — as well as to this post about the dissenting opinion itself.

So, who leaked to CBS News that Roberts changed sides? The reporter, Jan Crawford, said she had "two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations." That can only be justices, their clerks, or their confidants. As Noam Scheiber points out, if the leakers aren't justices, the leakers' careers are over.

Here is Think Progress on that very subject. Their proposed answer — Clarence Thomas (some emphasis and reparagraphing mine):

The biggest revelation in CBS News reporter Jan Crawford’s piece on the Supreme Court’s health care deliberations isn’t that Chief Justice John Roberts originally voted to strike down the Affordable Care Act and then changed his mind — Crawford merely confirmed what many people already expected based on evidence in the opinions themselves.

Rather, the biggest revelation is that fact that, in order for her piece to exist at all, someone inside the Court must have leaked confidential information to her.

Think Progress then quotes Adam Liptak at the Times, who points the potential finger at Clarence Thomas as the leaker:

[T]he possibility that conservatives had victory within reach only to lose it seemed to infuriate some of them. The CBS News report, attributed to two sources with “specific knowledge of the deliberations,” appeared to give voice to the frustrations of people associated with the court’s conservative wing.

It was written by Jan Crawford, whose 2007 book, “Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court,” was warmly received by conservatives.

In a 2009 interview on C-Span, Justice Thomas singled her out as a favorite reporter. ...

Of course, this is speculation; your call on how likely this is. As you make that call, however, remember the hook for the Think Progress story is something in the New York Times. Not nothing.

Think Progress then teases out the implications of this leak:

If Thomas is the leak, that would be a shocking escalation from the justices normal tactics — and one which could have lasting consequences for the future. ...

Click to read why. It matters.

And I'll tease you with the possibility that the second leaker may have been Kennedy — here's why.

I swear, everywhere these conservatives go, there's drama.

GP

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US govt issues report on Mermaids following citizens' angry inquiries

No amnesty for Mermaids.

This is the same citizenry that thinks health care reform should be repealed, but overwhelmingly supports most of the legislation's individual provisions.

Apparently, the Discovery Channel did a show on Mermaid that concluded that the evidence for their existence is "wildly conclusive."

Well, that got people writing to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, demanding that NOAA come clean on the Mermaid threat.  So NOAA did.

NOAA was, sadly, less sanguine. Read the rest of this post...

Andy Griffith died

Sad. I did not know that Andy Griffith was a big lib.  From Armistead Maupin's Facebook page:

"He's best remembered as Sheriff Taylor, but Andy Griffith's great gift to the world was 'A Face a the Crowd' - a film that completely retains its bite in this era of packaged political corn pone. I first saw Andy doing standup at the Raleigh Little Theater in the early fifties. My father got him a gig playing opposite my mother in a convention sketch for the North Carolina Automobile Dealer's Association. Then he hit Broadway and became a star. He was a good liberal Democrat (somewhat to the horror of my family) and that sweetness and generosity shone through everything he ever did."

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Busy, Inc.: Is being busy a lifestyle choice?

Women never retire.

That was my holiday epiphany last Christmas, or Thanksgiving, when I noticed that all the men in the house were watching TV, playing Xbox, or napping, while the women were busy cleaning house and making dinner for a gazillion relatives.

Even mom, at the ripe age of 81 (or 82?) doesn't get a respite.  It seems no one told her at age 65 that she could stop doing all that "woman's work" around the house at about the same time dad stopped being an auto executive.

The retirement gap between men and women is likely easing somewhat in "modern" families where men take on more of the traditionally feminine roles of "keeping house."  But still, it's an obvious, and probably overlooked, observation (by men at least) that women don't ever get to "stop" like we do (again, in traditional homes).

Which leads to articles in the NYT and Slate about "busy" people.  Hanna Rosin sums up the NYT piece in Slate:

The “Busy Trap,” after all, is written by a man and one who does not mention having children. And in his view a 23-year-old single man has a daily reality not all that different than a 40-year-old mother of three. “Almost everyone I know is busy,” writes Tim Kreider, “They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.”

But after that brief moment of revenge/relief I began to feel pretty uneasy, because what good does it do me that men live this way too? So many lines in that story made me cringe in self recognition: “Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half hour with classes and extracurricular activities.” And then this part, which really hit home: “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life can not possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy.” My one quibble with Kreider is his insistence that this kind of busyness is a form of bragging, a one-upsmanship over who worked more hours, familiar from how my investment-banker friends from the '90s used to act.

I've always been annoyed by "busy people."  I've never been one.  Perhaps it's my inherent laziness, or my inner Greek, but I've never understood people who "don't have time."  Putting parenthood aside (and even with parenthood, moms still seem to get the shaft), the busy people began about the time of college, which for me was the early 1980s, and it moved into full swing in law school.

The busy people were your friends and fellow students who always spent far more time than you did studying.  The thing is, it's not like they necessarily got better grades (though some did).  Which begs the question of whether busy-ness, in school at least, is a sign of the over-achiever or the UNDER-achiever (i.e., does the student study more because he's a geek, or because he needs to study more to keep up with the rest of us?)

There was certainly a "cult of study" when I was in law school.  People were insane.  They formed elite study groups at the beginning of the year, because "that's what law students do."  And they studied every night for a gazillion hours and never had time to do anything social because, you know, law school is just insanely hard.  I never understood that.

(It used to drive me nuts when people would find out I was in law school, and then wax about how "hard" it must be.  It was hard, like any good education at any good school.  But it simply wasn't nearly as bad as people made it out to be - which has always made me suspect that med school is its own busy-trap.)

Law school was certainly harder than undergrad (and harder than grad school, for me at least).  And undergrad was harder than high school.  But law school wasn't such a quantum leap harder than undergrad that everyone needed to suddenly stop having a life outside of school.  Yet many law students did.  And they were proud of their lifelessness.  For many, being busy was a form of bragging.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that they made themselves busy so that they could brag.  The bragging could have been an afterthought to the busy-ness - making ego lemonade out of busy lemons, as it were.

While my lack of busy-ness - I'm the last person who would say no to an invite to do something because "I have something else scheduled" (and I'm also the last person to schedule any weekend plans in advance) - is I suspect due in part to my own laziness, I sometimes suspect that the busy-ness of certain friends comes not from any desire to brag, but perhaps from the opposite of my lazy-ness.  While I like to turn my brain, and body, off after a long day of work, they like to turn it on.  Thus the endless tennis lessons, polo lessons, book clubs, etc.

And to some degree I'm jealous of my busy friends. There's a certain way of life in Paris, and I suspect NYC, where people tend to take advantage ("profiter", as we say in French) more of their surroundings.  In Paris, my friends are always going out to the latest show, exhibit, or just for dinner, or a nighttime picnic, with friends.  My New York friends are similar.

But, recently a New York friend complained that, yes, people are always out and about it NYC, but the problem is they're ALWAYS out and about, making it impossible to organize anything with her friends.  In Paris in August, the traditional vacation time, a friend posts a single message on Facebook that they're having a "pique-nique" at 7pm next to the Seine, and the next day somewhere between 7 and 20 friends will eventually show up, no further organizing necessary.  In NYC, she said, you'd have to organize the picnic a good month in advance, or no one would show (same in DC, I fear).  "Can you imagine just posting on Facebook that you're throwing a picnic, and then just expect people to show?" she asked me.

So I'm torn on the whole "busy" thing.  There is a part of me that feels like maybe I'm not "living" enough.  But there's also a part that feels far too many of my friends are living a bit too much, and thus not living much at all.  They've lost any sense of the impromptu, of caprice, in their lives.

I'm reminded of the T.S. Eliot passage:

We do not wish anything to happen.
Seven years we have lived quietly,
Succeeded in avoiding notice,
Living and partly living.
There have been oppression and luxury,
There have been poverty and licence,
There has been minor injustice.
Yet we have gone on living,
Living and partly living.

So is "busy" a prerequisite to living? Or an impediment? Read the rest of this post...

Romney to hold fundraiser with Barclays bankers in London

A trip to the Wild West of the banking industry for Romney. While shamed former CEO Bob Diamond has backed out, many more from the same side of Barclays will be present with open checkbooks for Romney.

Why is Romney showing such disregard for violations of the law by accepting Barclays money? It's as if he doesn't care how dirty the money is or how much the people paying have been involved in cheating people around the world.

Mr. Diamond had been one of 18 co-hosts for a dinner in London later this month in which guests are being asked to pay between $25,000- $75,000 to raise money for Mr. Romney, who will be in town for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Mr. Diamond is one of several top executives at Barclays who have thrown their weight behind Mr. Romney to help defeat President Barack Obama. He also hosted similar events in support of John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign.

At least 15 of Barclays Capital’s most senior bankers based in the US have donated $2,500 to the Romney campaign, the maximum allowable individual donation per election, Federal Election Committee filings show.

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We now know that John Roberts switched his ACA vote; what was he up to?

With CBS News reporting that Chief Justice John Roberts switched his health care vote, I've been looking for a way to get at the implications of that information, and also offer some analysis of the corners of the health care vote in general — for example, the consequences of the new opt-out aspect of Medicaid expansion.

I could not have done a better job than Digby and Joan McCarter did in this excellent episode of Jay Ackroyd's Virtually Speaking last Sunday.

First, the CBS News report, to bring you up to speed (my reparagraphing and emphasis):

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold. "He [Kennedy] was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this."

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.

There's more in the report, but I'll let you go there for that.

Keep in mind that, as we and others noted earlier, the dissenting opinion calls the concurring opinion "the dissent" quite a number of times. Given that Roberts switched his vote a month ago, that can't have been an accident.

A shot across the bow from the Republican justices, to embarrass (and publicize) Roberts' vote-switch? Speculation, of course, but not unlikely.

Now Digby and Joan McCarter on this and other topics. A brief rundown and comment follows the audio.

This discussion kicks off from the report quoted above. Listen:

A brief rundown of the main sections of this audio:

■ Start — Roberts' vote-switch and analysis.

■ 14:20 — The Medicaid expansion ruling.

■ 27:20 — A particularly clever Culture of Truth summary of the worst of the Sunday bobbleheads for July 1.

■ 35:20 — A pivot from the narrow failure of the Supreme Court to Chris Hayes' notion that all elite institutions have failed. Excellent discussion.

And two comments of my own:

Note how much of what Hayes says reflects badly on our modern love of "meritocracy." In my view, meritocracy fails — not just because it is so easily corrupted (Hayes' point, as well-articulated in the Digby–McCarter discussion) — but because at its heart meritocracy leads to profoundly undemocratic outcomes.

Yes, one "deserves" good according to one's "deserts," one's worthiness. In many arenas, the lazy should have less. But this so easily triggers our post-Renaissance love of punishing the less-hard-working "undeserving" (another reference to Erich Fromm's masterpiece, Escape from Freedom, by the way).

1. Some things in a society should be given because one is a citizen, because one is human and alive, regardless of "worthiness." If only practically, it's bad for the society as a whole to do otherwise. Consider health care, the present discussion point; think smokers and the emergency room. Sometimes punishing the so-called "unworthy" skins all of our hides.

2. The whole notion of tagging others as "unworthy" is itself profoundly arrogant. As Shakespeare observed:

God’s bodykins, man ... Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape [public] whipping?

Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

If you look deep in each heart, which of us is not a petty thief? Public whipping was a common punishment for small-time crime. It's the "cast the first stone" problem. Who will shed an arrogant face long enough to admit our common clay?

Will you stand before your brothers and sisters and say, "I'm more worthy"? I hope to god on earth that's never me.

Thus Digby's good point in the second half of the discussion about liberalism and the great "liberal" dream that everyone should have equal opportunity. To Digby's credit, in my view, she says that (paraphrased) if we don't get good outcomes that way (i.e. that "everybody should have a decent life"), then we should try another way.

She mentions not being "Marxist but" ... which implies to me that European-style socialism, which assigns essential benefits regardless of "merit" — my point above — may be a better way to go.

I hope I haven't mis-characterized her position. I certainly haven't mis-characterized mine.

And I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I have. Comment, as always, is welcome.

GP

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I'm back from ComEd and Comcast exile

So we got some storms in the Chicago area too.  This past Sunday the gusts were expected to top 100mph (which is insane, for here).  And it was one hell of a storm - amazing wind, hail, rain.  Even the dogs knew something was up (they were unusually clingy).  It didn't last long, but boy did it do some damage.

In our neighborhood, lots of trees lost some huge branches, and a few were broken in half, like this one about a block from us.  The trees seemed to break in clumps - meaning, half a block would be fine, and the other half would be branch after branch torn off.  I'm not sure how winds work exactly, but it's interesting that the damage could vary so much from block to block.

Our power went off in the middle of the storm, which hit noon-ish or so.  Apparently that happens a lot out here in Illinois, power going off during storms.  Like several times a year.  Mom and dad weren't amused.  We ran out and bought some cool LED lights that worked pretty well - a bit bright though to look at.  The best was one from Sylvania that was a tad more expensive (Home Depot sells them for like 13 bucks), but the light was soft white (interesting for an LED), and it lit up the room with a beautiful candlelight glow.  Putting aside the fact that the room was 80 degrees and humid, it was kind of neat.

About midnight Sunday night the power came back on, thank God, because it was nasty hot, but the Internet has been off since, thus my lack of posting - I finally tethered my laptop with my iPhone (hadn't tried it before) and the connection is surprisingly not terrible.  I'm keeping an eye on the data usage because I'm nervous as to how much data I'm using.  But so far so good.

Sasha caught in a rare moment of sleep.

Sasha didn't seem mind the Internet still being down (or the power being out, for that matter).  Once the storm was over, she was back in dog heaven, enjoying mom's furniture in ways mom never intended.

Eternally vigilant, even when resting. Though I keep
thinking of that Sopranos episode every time
I see her burrow like this.

The last few days Sasha has developed a new furniture trick.  About a week ago she discovered the dining room table - and that it gave her a unique vantage point for hunting squirrels in the backyard.  A few days later she discovered that sometimes the table is for more than squirrel hunting when she climbed on up right before dinner and helped herself to some corn on the cob, which she ate quite daintily and enjoyed immensely.  Mom was not amused.

During dinner, Sasha has taken, over the past few days, to standing on one of mom's chairs in the living room during each and every dinner, which gives her an eye on the local squirrel population, and anyone who might dare to walk by our house (with, or without, pet).  She dutifully barks incessantly should anyone, or anything, dare pass within 100 feet of the house, which was quite a thrill, mom tells me, the day the walkathon went right by our house.

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Barclays CEO Diamond resigns under pressure

Following yesterday's resignation of the Barclays Chairman, CEO Bob Diamond had suggested a hard fight to remain on the job. This morning Diamond resigned though the details of his exit compensation remain uncertain. As Joe Stiglitz has pointed out in his interview with The Independent, Diamond has spoken often about future bonuses being curtailed though nothing about the years of bonus money made based on phony business. Diamond, of course, has a lot of company in that department.

The Guardian is also reporting this morning that Barclays COO Jerry del Missier will also be resigning soon. Adding to the drama of the situation is Diamond's scheduled meeting with British MP's tomorrow. Diamond has allegedly told others that he would open up the scandal and detail how much previous (Labour) governments knew about the ongoing Libor scandal. Others have responded that unlike Capital Hill battles, the system in the UK is different and reacts quickly and harshly to such attacks.

Who will step in next to be Chief Gambler in Charge for Barclays? Anyone from his side of the banking world will be severely tainted. Not that being tainted has been an obstruction to power in the banking world.

The man who set up Barclays Capital and was responsible for much of Barclays’ increased profits stepped down as chief executive on Tuesday after calls for his resignation from politicians and shareholders.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne welcomed his resignation. "I think it's the right decision for Barclays, I think it's the right decision for the country because we need Barclays bank focussed on lending to our economy and not distracted by this argument about who should be in charge," Osborne told the BBC. "I hope it's a first step to a new culture of responsibility in British banking."

He led a storm of political criticism of Barclays in the wake of the London inter-bank offered rate (Libor) manipulation scandal.

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CERN expected to announce discovery of Higgs Particle

The establishment media is all a-twitter about the expected announcement that CERN has discovered 'trace evidence' of the existence of the Higgs Boson. Only instead of reporting that they are talking about the discovery of some 'God Particle' which is pure nonsense.

If it exists, there is nothing more or less remarkable about the Higgs particle than any other. The Higgs particle is a consequence of the Higgs field which mediates certain quantum interactions in a way that causes certain particles to have mass (or at least a mass-like property).

Far from being God-like, the Higgs particle is quite the reverse. According to most current theologies, God is omnipresent and immortal. The Higgs particle lasts for a billionth of a second (hardly immortal) and the only Higgs particles we have reason to believe exist were human-made.

While the discovery of the Higgs will (if confirmed) be an enormous achievement, it does not mean that that our theory of physics is complete. We won't even know if we have found the complete set of Higgs particles. At least not until we have found enough Higgs particle events to find out what they are and how they behave. In short the process of science, the process of skeptical inquiry based on empirical observation will continue.

Religious zealots hate science because it prompts people to ask skeptical questions. And the skeptical question that threatens them most is not 'does God exist' but whether God has chosen to speak through the likes of them as his interpreter. Read the rest of this post...