Your Government At Work Part 1

To date, only 22 people dead in a massive storm that raked the entire east coast. Even Republican governor Christie defended the pre-storm measures and dared his fellow anti-govnment types who will start whining about overkill to shut the f--- up; the "overkill" prevented deaths and Christie was firm that that's what government supposed to do -- protect life and limb beforehand, then stand ready to help dig out when terrible things happen.

After all, imagine what things would have been like if "heck of a job, Brownie" was still heading FEMA?

Your Government at Work Part 2

A drone strike killed Al Qaeda's second in command.  Buh-bye Atiya Abdul Rahman. 

Our County Governmnet At Work, Part 3 

And then there's our own SLOVille.  See "Warren Jensen, Please 'investigate' Your Own Clients, And Lemme Know If You Find Any Wrongdoing" at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/

Bwa-hahahah.  Yup.  Chinatown.

Daddy Neanderthal

There's a fascinating article in the August 15th New Yorker, "Sleeping with the Enemy," by Elizabeth Kolbert, about recent DNA evidence that indicates that early humans mated with Neanderthals (before (likely) wiping them out).  Even more interesting, there is also DNA strains from yet another hominid in some of our own DNA which means there were likely several strains of humanoids that we encountered and mated with (then wiped them out?) in existence on earth before the triumphant survival of modern man. 

Svante Paabo is heading up the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Antropology in Leipzig and is doing the DNA research and as more bone fragments come under study, it's likely that there may turn out to be even more branches of the human tree that still remain in our mitochondrial DNA.  Notes the story, "Neanderthals were very closely related to modern humans -- so closely that we shared ur prehistoric beds with them -- and yet clearly they were not humans.  Somewhere among the genetic disparities must lie the mutation or, more probbly, mutations that define us.  Paabo already has a team scanning the two genomes, drawing up lists of likely candidates.

"I want to now what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference." he said. " What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans.  There has to be a genetic basis for that, and it is hiding somewhere in these lists."

What makes Paabo's work so important is this: "Over the decades, many theories had been offered to explain what caused the demise of the Neanderthals, ranging from climate change to simple bad luck.  In recent years, though, it's become increasingly clear that, as Paabo puts it to me, "their bad luck was us."  Again and again, the archeologoical evidence in Europe indicates, once modern humans showed up in a region where Neanderthals were living, the Neanderthals in that region were actively pursued, or perhaps they were just outcompeted.  The Neanderthals' "bad luck" is presumbly the same misfortune that the hobbits [small hominids-- Homo floreniensis -- discovered in 2004) and the Denisovans [another extinct branch of the humanoid tree] encountered, and similar to the tragedy suffered by the giant marsupials that once browsed Australia, and the varied megafauna that used to inhabit North America, and the moas that lived in New Zealand.  At it is precisely the same bad luck that has brought so many species -- including every one of the great apes -- to the edge of oblivion today.

"To me, the mystery is not the extinction of the Neanderthals," Jean-Jacques Hublin, the director of the Institute for Evolutionary Antrhropology's department of human evolution, told me. "To me the mystery is what makes modern humans such a successful group that they have been replacing not just the Neanderthals but everything. We don't have much evidence tht the Neanderthals or other archaic umans ever led to an extinction of a species of mammal or anything else.  For modern humans, there are hundreds of examples, and we do it very well."

Their bad luck was . . . us.  If you think about the future of this globe, that's got to be one bone chilling sentence.

The author concludes with a visit to one of the prehistoric caves at Grotte des Combarelles to view the extraordinary cave paintings.  "In very recent times, the floor of the Grotte des Combarelles has been dug out, so that a person can walk in it, and the tunel is dimly lit by electric lights.  But when the etchings were originally created, some twelve or thirteen thousand years ago, the only way to gain access to the site would have been to crawl, and the only way to see in the absolute dark would have been to carry fire.  As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see.  Yet it also struck me that so much of what is distinctively human was here on display -- creativity, daring, "madness."  And then there were the animals pictured on the walls -- the aurochs and mammoths and rhinos.  These were the beasts that Paleolithic Europeans had hunted, and then, one by one, as with the Neanderthals, obliterated."

Your Sunday Poem

In an odd season without a summer, here's Jane Hirshfield, from her book, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."

Speed and Perfection

How quickly the season of apricots is over --
a single night's wind is enough.
I kneel on the ground, lifting one, then the next.
Eating those I can, before the bruises appear.

And Why Am I Not Surprised?

Recent Op/Ed in the New York Times cited the update of an original 2006 study of political attitudes by David Campbell and Robert Putman of Notre Dame University. The pair “returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we ca look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five ears later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously – isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.”

Among their findings: The Tea Party’s “origin story,” is fake. They were portrayed as “non partisan political neophytes,” when, in reality, they were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born,” and,write the authors, “. . . past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.”

Further discoveries: Tea Party members weren’t created as a reaction to the Great Recession. While many Americans suffered from financial problems, “they were no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party.” And a wish for smaller government and balanced budgets weren’t a predictor either.

Note the authos, “So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

“More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 – opposing abortion, f or example – and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek ‘deeply religious’ elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.”

Which makes the Tea Party’s professed reverence for the Founders (and the wearing of tricorn hats and the dragging around of muskets) while yakking about following the constitution hilarious. The founding fathers were clear on that: Separation of church and state and no religious tests for officeholders.

As for the racial dog whistle music, well, that comes as no surprise. That was present from day one. (As was the fake “grass roots” “origin story” which was, in reality, funded and fueled by huge infusions of cash from Dick Armey’s Republican PAC, among other conservative donors, Fox TV personalities, and “think tanks.” Nothing “grass-rootsy” about any of it.)

What may come as a surprise are the authors’ conclusions: “Given how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeing the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics.

“But in fact, the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion; among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans . . .” because “On everything but the size of government, Tea Party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans.”

And, irony, irony, the authors go on to point out that the there are parallels with “the anti-Vietnam War movement which rallied behind George S. McGovern in 1972. The McGovernite activists brought energy, but also stridency, to the Democratic Party – repelling moderate voters and damaging the Democratic brand for a generation. By embracing the Tea Party, Republicans risk repeating history.”

As someone who thinks the Republicans now running the Congress have proven themselves unfit to govern, the crash ‘n burn of a party that’s driven itself off the cliff can’t come soon enough.

I mean, Michelle Bachman? Rick “Yosemite Sam” Perry? Really?

Oh, Give It Up Already

Matt Fountain had an article in this week’s New Times on a proposed medical marijuana facility for Oceano. “On May 25, Grover Beach resident Tammy Murray applied with the county’s Department of Planning and Building to open a facility in unincorporated Oceano, she said, because despite several attempts by others, local qualified patients by and large remain without a place to get their medicine.

“According to Murray’s minor use permit application, the 5,500-square f-foot facility would be located in an industrial area on the 1400 block of South Fourth Street in northern Oceano, fitted with security cameras and staffed by a full-time guard.”

Oh, Dear. Poor Ms. Murray will now be subjected to the following:

1. Various public officials and politicians, including the Board of Supervisors, will chest pound about how they’re four-square in favor of “compassionate” use of “medical marijuana,” that nobody is more compassionate than they are, blah, blah, blah.

2. Various planning commissioners will scrunch their brows and earnestly pour over the submitted plans, niggling, snipping, adding, and forcing the applicant through all kinds of expensive hoops.

3. The sheriff will piously state that he will follow the law as written.

4. At public hearings, half the audience will stand up to tell horror stories about suffering people who can only get relief with medical marijuana while the other half will stand up to decry the evil weed and start screeching about SAVE THE CHILDREN!

5. When the matter finally comes before the Board of Supervisors, they will restate their profound compassion. Indeed they’ll vie with one another as to how much more compassionate they are than the other guy, then, with a huge sigh and crocodile tears flowing down the aisles, will, reluctantly vote the matter down.

6. IF by some miracle the dispensary does get voted into being, within a few months, the sheriff will head up a posse of federal agents who will raid the place, slap the owner into federal custody, drag him/her down to L.A. for trial, bankrupt him/her to pay for legal counsel, then he’ll/she’ll be found guilty under federal law and be slapped in prison for years.

Then everybody will go home, smugly satisfied that while, yes, yes, it’s unfortunate, that people suffering from cancer will have to suffer more, the community will be protected from the awful prospect that somebody somewhere might be getting high on “medical” marijuana.

The Creepy Factor

So, Rick Perry declares he's running for President and the media pundits start visibly drooling and swooning and getting shivvers up their spines at all the manly manliness of the Dude, and salivating at now being able to push the election coverage into a simple-minded 24/7 empty of content sports metaphor with ratings and rankings and minute by minute plays to be called, and suddenly, watching him on the news, everything blurs and doubles and suddenly its all deja vuish again as Perry morphs into George Bush and I get cold chills and think, Aw, Gawd, we're gonna now bomb Iran because they may have weapons of mass destruction and then put the war on the national credit card since deficits don't matter if it's a Republican who's running them up, and give more tax breaks to rich people and oh, God, in no time there he'll be in a crotch-stuffed jump suit and  Texas-sized boots, all hat and no cattle, clomping across the deck of an aircraft carrier only to fall to the deck to raise his arms to heaven and thank Jeeeesus for his Victory over the Heathen and, while he's kneeling, to also pray for rain for Texas, then go on to dismantle Medicare, Social Security, EPA regulations, education reforms so as to turn the U.S.A. into one big polluted states-rights successionist Texas filled with minimum wage jobs, a country being run by a handful of wealthy oligarchs overseeing the serfs. 

Oh, Boy, America can't wait. Yeeee haw!