Rick Perry says states should be able to decide whether to "take away guns"

Granted, Texas Governor Rick Perry isn't the brightest bulb around.  But he sure seemed to have suggested, in the wake of the Texas A&M shooting (yes, there was another), that states have the right - should have the right even - to "tak[e] guns away from law abiding citizens."

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Video: Stunning dolphin footage

Some guys were fishing, then realized they were being followed by some dolphins, so they lowered a camera into the sea to see if they could catch the dolphins on film. Here's what they found. The dolphins appear about a minute into the film. I have to admit, the video almost looks fake.


The Blue from Mark Peters on Vimeo. Read the rest of this post...

Ryan: Team Romney hasn't run the numbers on Romney's own budget plan

(Photo via Shutterstock)

Uh, when exactly do they plan on running the numbers? After the election is over? Isn't it customary to run the numbers before you endorse a budget plan, not after it? From PBS' Newshour:

Ryan also deflected questions about the budget proposal he authored, trying instead to shift the focus to the blueprint Romney has put forward. But when asked by Hume when the Romney plan would balance the federal budget, Ryan could not offer a specific date.

"I don't know exactly when it balances. I don't want to get wonky on you, but we haven't run the numbers on that specific plan," Ryan said.

The Romney campaign hasn't running the budget numbers on Mitt Romney's plan for the budget, but Romney is still running around saying that his plan is better? (Putting aside for a moment that the reason they haven't run the numbers if because Romney has never offered a budget plan.)

That's a bit like a family making up a budget, but not running the numbers to see if the budget even works.

How can Ryan and Romney be pushing a budget plan that they haven't even run the numbers on?  And why haven't they? Read the rest of this post...

Remember the time Romney said he wouldn't have ordered the raid on bin Laden?

Mitt Romney thinks we
shouldn't be proud for
having caught Osama.
(WTC via Shutterstock.)

If Mitt Romney were president, Osama bin Laden would still be alive today.

Mitt Romney said in 2007 that he wouldn't have ordered the raid on bin Laden's compound, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

And now Romney is upset that President Obama is proud that American troops, under his command, killed Osama bin Laden.

The question isn't why President Obama is proud of killing Osama bin Laden.  The question is why Mitt Romney isn't.

What's next, a Romney apology to Al Qaeda?

Mitt Romney has repeatedly shown a reckless lack of understanding of foreign policy and military matters.

Americans are proud that we got bin Laden.  Maybe John Sununu can help Mitt Romney learn how to be a proud American too. Read the rest of this post...

Video: How Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard came up with their evil master plans (humor)

This is both excellent good humor and frighteningly correct. I couldn't have written it better myself (this really is fine writing).



So right it has to have happened:

Rand: "I wonder if I could take the worst, most selfish misguided people and make them worse. Oh that would be delicious. ...

"I got it! I'm going to take rich white college kids, and convince them that they're just ... too ... nice."

Evil indeed. Watch twice; every false word a true one. Thanks, folks at Cracked.

And thanks to Digby for bringing this to our attention. Her post was about the improbable Mormon founding myth, and includes a nice analysis of "the angel Moroni's" prose by Mark Twain. Do click; you won't be sorry.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Mrs. Romney: "There's nothing we're hiding" (except our tax returns)

(Hiding photo via Shutterstock)

Things must be bad - Mitt is trotting out the Mrs. again to do his dirty work, this time on NBC. Apparently doing her best Nixon, Mrs. Romney proclaimed about their missing tax returns "there's nothing we're hiding."

Then, for good measure, she that she and her husband would continue to hide their tax returns:

The criticism that plagued the Romneys during the 2008 campaign has continued, particularly in regards to their reported $250 million fortune and the issue of their tax returns.

When pressed by Morales, Mrs. Romney stood her ground. "We have been very transparent to what's legally required of us,” she said. “There's going to be no more tax releases given."

Mrs. Romney said if they release any more information, "it will only give them more ammunition."

In regards to their finances, she said "there's nothing we're hiding."

So how exactly does it give the Obama campaign "more ammunition" if "there's nothing" in Romney's hidden tax returns?  Maybe because the Romneys are alleged to have not paid taxes for ten straight years, and can't, or won't, produce any evidence to suggest otherwise.  Or maybe because the Romneys hid money from their church?

And more importantly, who do the Romneys think they are, deciding that they'll be the first presidential campaign in memory to refuse to release its tax returns?

What kind of a precedent does this set for the future, one in which presidential candidates will be less and less transparent about their past and potential conflicts of interest?  This is the same thing Sarah Palin did, refusing to talk to the press, refusing to let herself be vetted by the American people.  It's inherently dishonest, and it suggests a candidate with something to hide.

And finally, Mrs. Romney's assertion that she and her husband are doing "what's legally required of us" sounds an awful lot like "I didn't inhale" and haggling over the definition of the word "is."

How about what's morally required, or ethically required, or even politically required of you, Mrs. Romney?

Americans aren't looking for leaders who merely do what's "legally required."  We're looking for leaders with some kind of actual moral compass, actual character.  And saying "trust me," while continuing to hide tax returns that every other presidential candidate has released for decades, is a pretty poor excuse for character. Read the rest of this post...

Toward a climate solution: Why all of the current "solutions" deepen the crisis

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.

---

(Button via Shutterstock)

This is a preface to a series of posts on climate crisis solutions. This series contains my own suggestions for solving the problem I've described in the previous posts — avoiding climate catastrophe.

I'm obviously not the only person thinking about this, but I think I have a perspective that's not shared by many, so I offer these for consideration.

Assumptions

My thinking makes the following assumptions:

1. The problem is essentially political, not technological. To avoid the worst consequences of global warming involves the use of power along with education and technology. Without addressing the power dimension, the solutions project will continue to fail. (More on this below.)
   
   
2. The only "baked in" consequences are those that come with the 1½°C (3°F) increase we can't avoid. None of the other, more drastic scenarios is inevitable.
   
   
3. The war is worth fighting and we haven't lost yet, regardless of the odds against us.
   
   
4. Playing to win means playing to the end of the game.

If you don't share those assumptions, this series may not be for you. That said, onward to the preface.

Why technology alone is not the answer

There are several baseline ideas we need to accept in order to design effective solutions. They provide context and help us understand why no attempt at a solution has yet worked.

The fact is, we haven't even come close to a solution. We're drifting, circling ever closer to the climate catastrophe drain. And it's not because we're stupid.

In fact, our species is the opposite of stupid — we're the most effective, adaptive hominid species ever evolved on the planet.

We are the most recent of our relatives and the last to leave Africa. Even though we're the babies on the block and shared the planet with millions of our genetic cousins — homo habilis and homo erectus, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons — we out-thought and out-competed them all till we stood alone. There's no one on earth this good at problem-solving.

If we cannot solve this problem, it's not because of brains and technology. The truth is more stark. The lack of a solution proves that the answer isn't brains — that the key must lie elsewhere.

This series is an attempt to find that elsewhere. Make no mistake — new technology is critical. But it's not enough.

What we need to know to design a solution

The writer Naomi Klein comes as close as anyone to succinctly identifying the roadblocks to a climate crisis solution. Simply put, solving the climate crisis forces fundamental change.

Here she talks with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Listen first. I'll offer some notes after the video.



If you want to relisten, this segment starts at 42:45. For readers, a transcript is here.

First, on why denialism has taken such a strong hold, even recently, even while the message of our senses says denial is wrong:

[The increase in denialism in countries with strong culture wars is] remarkable, because what it means is that it no longer really has anything to do with the science. And the environmental movement has just been shocked by how it would be possible to lose so much ground so quickly when there is so much more scientific evidence[.] ...

And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right. ... [When you] ask why people don’t believe in it, they say that it’s because they think it’s a socialist plot to redistribute wealth.

This is the critical insight — it's what you need to know to solve this problem.

Note, this is not an insight about the right-wing rubes. There will always be right-wing rubes. It's an insight about the threat felt by Our Betters, who are ginning up rube-resistance as hard and fast as they can.

The rubes are being led to scream "wealth redistribution" because that's exactly the threat. As with other modern crises, wealth redistribution is precisely what this one is about. But it's not about the wealth of the rubes.

The solution to global warming is a direct threat to the greed and wealth of the lords of carbon, the Rex Tillersons, the David Kochs of the world.

These are powerful, wealthy, driven people, and fixing global warming threatens their whole way of life. Klein again:

Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. ... [A]ctually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. ... [H]ere’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. ... You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. ... You would have to regulate corporations. ... You would have to subsidize renewable energy[.] ...

And finally:

And then, layered on top of that is the fact that many of the "solutions" to climate change ... play shell games, right? We have to have carbon offsets there. We have to — we can keep polluting, but we’ll plant — you know, we’ll protect a forest in the Congo[.] [But] all of these solutions are actually deepening the climate crisis [elsewhere].

We have a problem that challenges our way of life, made many times worse by the monomaniacal greed of the very wealthy few, who offer "solutions" that solve nothing.

The "solutions" in fact are part of the problem, since they only serve to delay. Delay is the win-scenario of the other side; it's their only goal.

This is an excellent explanation of the context within which we're trying to solve our planet-wide global warming crisis. We can't be effective, in my view, if we don't start here.

That context again:

• Solving the climate crisis forces fundamental change.
• Education and technology are not enough.
• Negotiated "solutions" create delay.
• The other side is powerful and doesn't want to change.

Devolution scenarios — our comic-book future

It's an unfortunate accident of history that the worst political and social event of our time — the rise of the rich in the wake of the Nixon impeachment and the total capture of our government by greedy hippie-hating monomaniacs (every word a true one) — coincides with the eve of potential self-destruction.

More than coincides — to stop the self-destruction, we must stop the rich.

No other choice is pretty. How far backward would we like to devolve?

  ■ Where do the consequences of "only" 1½°C (3°F) warming take us? Combined with the rapidly widening wealth inequality, we could devolve to life in the 1930s — post-electricity but pre–middle class.

  ■ What about the consequences of 3°C (5½°F) — by 2100? James Hansen calls that "game over", leading to a "mass extinction" scenario. Easily a famine, drought, epidemic, mass-migration scenario. (Check the chart here for U.S. temperature predictions. Translate weeks to months to get the full effect.)

At that point, would most of the country be pre-industrial? I would think so. Politically, a famine-ridden, disease-infested, mass-dying, mass-migration America would certainly not be an orderly society. For starters, say goodbye to Safeway. And gas stations. And farming. Picture that life.

More food for thought: How much of the country would be under the control of the central government? Would the central government even try, or would they see as their mandate the only mandate they see today — protection of the very rich?

Who would run your town at that point? A state governor? A county strongman? This is a real science fiction scenario, and we're not at the worst one yet.

  ■ At what temperature point would global warming level off simply because of societal collapse? We're currently on track for 6°C–7°C (11°F–12½°F) — again, by 2100.

Would the Carbon Lords be able to drill, pump and sell enough CO2 to get us to those temperatures before the collapse that stops them? Because I swear to god they will try. If they succeed, the humans who follow will be mainly hunter-gatherers — they will look and live just like the homeless on our streets today.

The more I think about this, the more I want to laugh — this is so like a comic book story:

Daddy Doom (that's him in all-black pinstripes) has a planet-eating machine that will end life as we know it.

Will the Carbon Avenger, our green-draped hero, save us in time? Look, he's flying off to the final showdown now.

Actually, it's just half a comic book story. Daddy Doom (our aggregate Lord of Carbon) really does have that machine; it's called his psychopathic greed and our current way of life.

But there's no Carbon Avenger to save us. We have to do that for ourselves.

The problem in a nutshell

Which brings us to the umbrella problem statement. This is where we hug the monster, face facts, and focus our action where it counts.

Unless all of the science is wrong, the problem in a nutshell is to put the carbon industry out of business. And everything noted by Ms. Klein above is what's in the way.

How fast should that happen? Look back at the devolution scenarios and pick one.

Death of the carbon industry — if we don't do that soon, we lose. But if we do meet that goal, I'll guarantee that the rest — all the good technology — will follow as fast as man can do it.

Is is fair to them, the carbon lords, to destroy their businesses? Of course it is. They're risking the lives of 7 billion humans to satisfy hubris and greed. What could be more monstrous? Their offices are crime scenes. What could be more fair than stopping them in their tracks?

We don't have to negotiate. We don't have to discuss. We don't have to explain. No one needs to seek their permission, or slow to a rate of their choosing.

And we certainly don't have to reimburse them for their lost future profits — the real beneficiaries of this psychopathic process are wealthy enough already. In a truly just world, they'd be stripped of every dime to help pay to clean up the mess we're inevitably going to face.

What we do have to be is effective (sound familiar?). It will take a combination of actions — education, technology, and multiple applications of power — to mitigate the disaster.

But especially the latter — multiple applications of power — because these men and women are digging in and doubling down. They won't stop until we stop them.

Bottom line

This sounds daunting, I know, but I really don't think it's over, and as I said above, it's a fight worth taking on. I don't pretend to have the answers. I just want to help us think our way to solutions that work.

If none of this helps, it's mainly my own time that's lost, and it pleases me to use it this way.

Thank you for reading this far. The next post will look at layers of the solution — drilling down in a process that identifies goals worth achieving, targets of action (I see five groups) and tactics applied to those targets.

Much of what I'll say is already clear to many, but maybe this thinking hasn't been assembled in one place.

Until then, in the words of Alan Grayson — courage.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Soledad O'Brien, hot damn

I remember when Soledad O'Brien used to be on that MSNBC tech show back in the 90s.  She was always good, even from the beginning.  But damn she's gotten good.

She had Romney surrogate John Sununu on to talk about Medicare, and Sununu trotted out the standard GOP talking point that the President cut $700 bn from Medicare in Obama.  Only problem?  The Presiden't didn't cut $700bn from Medicare, and O'Brien called Sununu on it.  Then things got fun.

Raw Story wrote up some of the transcript:

“I understand that this is a Republican talking point because I’ve heard it repeated over and over again,” O’Brien observed. “These numbers have been debunked, as you know, by the Congressional Budget Office. … I can tell you what it says. [Obama's plan] cuts a reduction in the expect rate of growth, which you know, not cutting budgets to the elderly. Benefits will be improved.”

“Soledad, stop this!” Sununu shouted. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.”

“I’m telling you what Factcheck.com tells you, I’m telling you what the CBO tells you, I’m telling you what CNN’s independent analysis says,” the CNN host explained.

“Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this!” the frustrated surrogate shot back.

“You know, let me tell you something,” O’Brien said. “There is independent analysis that details what this is about. … And name calling to me and somehow by you repeating a number of $716 billion, that you can make that stick when [you say] that figure is being ‘stolen’ from Medicare, that’s not true. You can’t just repeat it and make it true, sir.”

O'Brien did a great job of standing up to Sununu's bullying. She exhibited a rare breed of journalistic ethics by not taking a lie for an answer. Read the rest of this post...

What are Obama's and Romney's positions on Medicare? This video will tell you in 90 seconds.

Brilliant video from the Obama campaign. In one video, in just 90 seconds, the Obama folks walk you through what Romney/Ryan will do on Medicare (end it - costing seniors thousands more a year), and what Obama has done on Medicare (not cut it at all, but actually provided more benefits). They even include the independent experts to debunk who's lying (they say Romney/Ryan are lying). Great video, watch it and spread it around.

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