Kit Stolz

John Cassidy: Start the blame game — it’s over for Mitt

From veteran writer/editor John Cassidy, blogging for The New Yorker:

When Romney decided to run in 2012, the best argument for his candidacy
was that he had nothing to do with the Bush Administration and could
appeal to moderate voters. But rather than trying to make a break with
the Bush Administration and portraying himself as a different sort of
Republican, one who has learned from the mistakes of the past, Romney
has embraced the Bush heritage—one that delivered the Presidency to
Obama in 2008. We see this in economic policy, where he has embraced the
Republican orthodoxy that tax cuts are a solution to everything and tax
increases are evil. We see it in the field of social issues, where he
has pandered to evangelicals and conservative Catholics on issues like
abortion and gay marriage. And now we see it in foreign policy, where he
has given a platform to the very folks who led us to disaster in Iraq.

Romney's blundering during the past couple of days is of a piece with
his entire campaign. A man with an impressive résumé, whose best hope
of victory lay in portraying himself as a moderate, independent
figure—somebody not beholden to tired old orthodoxies, Democratic or
Republican—has self-destructed by aligning himself with some of the
least credible and most voter-repellant groups in the G.O.P. If he had
kept quiet on Tuesday, he would be well placed now to raise some
legitimate concerns about what happened: Why was the consulate in Libya
so lightly guarded? What returns is the United States getting on the
billions of dollars in aid it provides to Egypt? Why did we intervene in
Libya but not in Syria? What’s our over-all policy for the Middle East?
If he tries to make these points today or tomorrow, his intervention
will be widely dismissed as another political ploy.

His electoral prospects have deteriorated to the point where about
his only hope is a grim one: that the situation in the Middle East
worsens, and more American embassies get sacked. That way, perhaps, the
alarmist warnings of Bolton and others about lack of leadership and
resolve on the part of the Obama Administration will start to resonate
with voters. As of now, though, I’m sticking with my initial judgment: it looks like curtains for the Mittster.

Famous election analyst Charlie Cook agrees, in a mealy sort of way, and a slew of polling from swing states looks bad, bad, bad for Romney.

Via Political Wire:

"New Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist polls show President Obama building leads over Mitt Romney in Ohio, Florida and Virginia among likely voters.

Florida: Obama 49%, Romney 44%

Ohio: Obama 50%, Romney 43%

Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 44%

"These states – all of which Obama carried in 2008 but which George W. Bush won in 2004 – represent three of the most crucial battlegrounds in the 2012 presidential election. And according to NBC's electoral map, Romney likely needs to capture at least two of these states, if not all three, to secure the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency."

Politico reports the numbers in Ohio "roughly match up with internal surveys conducted by both Democrats and Republicans recently."

Rumor has it that Team Obama thinks Romney is an inept politician, and Romney's definition of the middle-class today to ABC News would seem to prove the point:

Romney when asked if $100K is middle income: "No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less."

Perhaps he will claim to have been misquoted by the liberal media, but Derek Thompson takes him to task anyhow in The Atlantic, and helpfully provides a chart showing what Romeny thinks vs. what the Census Bureau has found:

The Census Bureau says that middle-class household income is about 50k.

Jamelle Bouie adds:

If you look at the last 30 years of Gallup polling, one trend becomes clear—the leading candidate after the conventions almost always goes on to win the election. This, of course, isn’t to say that the election is a lock for Obama, but that Romney’s odds have become longer than they actually look.

California (and the world) in 3012, with massive warming

Almost a decade ago, Chris Wayan took the George W. Bush idea of how things should go on the planet — a Business as Usual scenario, but without nuclear disasters — and projected it, with sea level rise, on to maps of the world. He calls the result Dubia:

Suppose we avoid war, plague, and famine, and the world goes
democratic and capitalist? That appears to be the dream of President
George W. Bush, or, as he's sometimes known, Dubya.

But part of Dubya's dream is that oil goes on ruling the world for
another generation. Despite all conservation attempts, carbon dioxide
levels go on soaring. Too many people burning too much fuel! Poor
countries industrializing will offset any efficiency-savings in rich
countries.

So our grandchildren live in a world with C02 levels double ours, 600-700 ppm. Double ya!

That world heats up. Climate zones move north until the poles thaw.
Greenland and Antarctica melt. Coastal nations are drowned. In the end,
the sea rises some 110 meters. Global hothouse! It's happened before, of
course, on this scale, but not in the last 50 million years or so.

But once the catastrophe's happened and the survivors replant, and
adjust to redwoods at the poles, and farms in Siberia, and jungles on
the prairies, and coral seas where great cities once stood… what if they don't change it back? After all, they may argue, why put the Earth through birth-pains TWICE? Double jeopardy! It's climate change, not climate, that's disrupts communities–both biological and political.

So… they leave the new world alone, to stabilize. We think of
global warming in the short range–the shock of change. But what's on
the far side? What would that world be like?

I couldn't resist–even though I admit that any climatological
projection this long-term and radical is inherently dubious…

Dubia.

Here's California and the Left Coast, complete with an inland sea where today swelters the Central Valley. Actually looks kind of appealing…if watery.

Different views, different news: Two polarizations

Four years ago the national consensus was that the economy had gone to hell, with handbasket potential for further destruction and damage.

In the politer words of Pew Research:

"Amid the nation’s financial crisis four years ago, there were virtually no differences in how Republicans, Democrats and independents viewed economic news. About eight-in-ten in each group said the news they were hearing was mostly bad.

Differences in perceptions of economic news emerged after Barack Obama took office. But they never have been as great as they are today. Four times as many Republicans as Democrats say the news they have been hearing about the economy is mostly bad (60% vs. 15%).

As in recent months, the views of independents are roughly equidistant from those of Republicans and Democrats. In the current survey, 36% of independents say they hearing mostly bad economic news, little changed from a month ago (40%)."

Or in other words, the views we hold tend to dictate the news we hear. To be fair, not always. Maybe not during national crises. Last election season, we could at least all agree we were watching the economy coming to a crashing halt. But often: This election season we don't agree even on its status.

'Course, all news people must admit that the media can outright mislead, sometimes blatantly. Most recently we have an flat-out lie on Fox, in a graphic which brazenly substituted oranges for applesc.

A HuffPo story explains here, carefully

"The show's mistake was to compare the official unemployment figure in 2009 with the so-called "real" unemployment figure in 2012. That figure takes into account data which is not included in the official number, such as people who have stopped looking for work. Thus, it is always higher than the official figure. (Official unemployment is actually .3 percentage points higher than in 2009, while "real" unemployment is .7 percentage points lower.

Fox News told Mediaite that a correction will air on tomorrow's "Fox & Friends."

But it's not just the media that's biased. It's us, too.

EPA appoints chem co rep to regulatory position

From the Chicago Tribune:

As a lawyer and scientist for one of the world's largest makers of flame retardants, Todd Stedeford vigorously defended chemicals added to scores of household products — often by concluding the substances are far less dangerous than academic and government studies have determined.

Studies, legal newsletters and letters he wrote or co-wrote while at Albemarle Corp. also frequently contradicted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's positions and statements about industrial chemicals.

He argued, for example, that people could be safely exposed to one flame retardant at doses more than 500 times higher than a standard set by the EPA and accused regulators of basing their decisions about toxic chemicals on emotion rather than reason.

Now Stedeford is in charge of an EPA program studying whether dozens of industrial chemicals, including flame retardants, are too dangerous. The risk assessments conducted by his office will determine whether the agency enacts more stringent regulations for certain chemicals, attempts to force some compounds off the market — or chooses to do nothing at all.

Stedeford, who worked as an EPA scientist from 2004 to 2007, rejoined the agency a year ago following a four-year stint at Albermarle, surprising some independent scientists and environmental groups.

"It's hard to imagine going from one job where you are a hired gun to another where you are supposed to be protecting the public," said Julie Herbstman, a Columbia University researcher who led a 2010 study that linked exposure to certain flame retardants with lower IQ scores in children.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has publicly backed an overhaul of the way the EPA screens chemicals and urged Congress to grant the agency authority to require more testing before chemicals are allowed on the market. But the EPA is under intense pressure from the chemical industry and its congressional allies to back off.

The EPA would not make Jackson or Stedeford available for an interview.

Troubling: Especially the strong hint that the EPA may be caving to the chemical companies, and doubly so for the hint that Stedeford supports greatly increasing our exposure to chemical contaminants.

Already flame retardants and water repellant plastics such as PFOA, a toxic substance found in the blood of 98% of Americans, have been shown to have endocrine disrupting and carcinogenic effects in parts per billion concentration. And earlier this year, a huge and definite study of endocrine disruptors from Laura Vandenberg and a dozen other leading researchers, found beyond doubt that endocrine disruptors demand a different method of toxins assessment, because they can be most damaging at low parts-per billion concentrations.

In Vandenberg's words:

My colleagues and I have concluded in a new report that there truly are no safe doses for hormone-altering chemicals. Academic, regulatory and industry scientists must work together to identify and replace such chemicals that are ubiquitous in everyday consumer products.

In other endocrine news, a new study of overweight teen found that beginning about age ten, the overweight actually ate less than their thinner peers. From NPR:

A new study published in Pediatrics finds that overweight teenagers eat fewer calories than their healthy weight peers.

That's right — they eat less.

How much less? The study found that among 12- to 14-year-olds, obese girls consumed 110 fewer calories daily than healthy-weight girls. And overweight boys between the ages of 15 and 17 consumed about 375 fewer calories a day than healthy-weight boys.

[snip]

"Once you become overweight, there are changes in your body that make you different from someone who's not [overweight]," explains Sophia Yen of Stanford School of Medicine. "You have extra fat cells, and you have different insulin levels," which can make it feel like you're eating less than you are.

"And once these effects have taken place, the fat deposition or the insulin changes in your body, then it's a lot harder to reverse," Yen tells The Salt.

Take fat cells, for instance. Once the body creates a fat cell, it lasts a lifetime.

"You can slim down that fat cell, but that fat cell will always be sitting there, waiting to be larger if you give it extra calories," she says.

As reported here a couple of months ago, leading experts now strongly suspect that endocrine disruptors contribute perhaps substantially to fat cell multiplication and growth in American young people.

Make It Green: Roger Ebert’s idea for a 9/11 memorial

Published on 9/14/2001, in the Chicago Sun-Times, by Roger Ebert, about a memorial for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Called Make It Green.

If there is to be a memorial, let it not be of stone and steel. Fly no flag above it, for it is not the possession of a nation but a sorrow shared with the world. Let it be a green field, with trees and flowers. Let there be paths that wind through the shade. Put out park benches where old people can sun in the summertime, and a pond where children can skate in the winter.

Beneath this field will lie entombed forever some of the victims of September 11. It is not where they thought to end their lives. Like the sailors in the battleship Arizona, they rest where they fell.

Let this field stretch from one end of the destruction to the other. Let this open space among the towers mark the emptiness in our hearts. But do not make it a sad place. Give it no name. Let people think of it as the green field. Everything living thing that is planted there will show faith in the future.

Let students take a corner of the field and plant a crop there. Perhaps corn, our native grain. Let the harvest be shared all over the world, with friends and enemies, because that is the teaching of our religions, and we must show that we practice them. Let the harvest show that life prevails over death, and let the gifts show that we love our neighbors.

Do not build again on this place. No building can stand there. No building, no statue, no column, no arch, no symbol, no name, no date, no statement. Just the comfort of the earth we share, to remind us that we share it.

via The Scream online.

Romney and Obama, at convention, on global warming

MItt Romney, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention:

"President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet," Romney said. "My promise is to help you and your family." He got a standing ovation [for promising inaction on the threat of climate change]

President Obama, in response, at the DNC:

"And yes, my [energy] plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it," Obama said, to a roar of approval from the hall.

It's something from the President. Perhaps as much as a line in the sand.

Digital movies: The New York Times and the AP

Today the juggernaut also known as the New York TImes had a thoughtful conversation between two of their excellent critics, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, on what digitization means for the movies.

An excerpt:

Within the next few years digital projection will reign not only at the multiplexes, but at revival and art houses too. According to an emerging conventional wisdom, film is over. If that is the case, can directors still be called filmmakers? Or will that title be reserved for a few holdouts, like Paul Thomas Anderson, whose new film,“The Master,” was shot in 70 millimeter? It’s not as if our job has ever been to review the coils of celluloid nestled in their cans; we write about the stories and the pictures recorded on that stock. But the shift from photochemical to digital is not simply technical or semantic. Something very big is going on.

But nowhere in all this discussion is a thought given to small-town theaters, many of whom simply can't afford to digitize. That's why we still need the Associated Press wire service:

For small-theater owners, the problem is the sudden switch from 35 mm film, an industry standard since about 1910, to digital – a format that's cheaper for both studios and distributors, and doesn't scratch as traditional film will. The switch means theater owners must buy new projection equipment, computers and a sound system.

Film studio 20th Century Fox has said it will phase out 35 mm film altogether by the end of 2013, and other production companies are expected to follow suit. Traditional film is expected to vanish over the next few years, despite the upcoming U.S. release of "The Master," which was shot with the rare but much higher definition 70 mm film.

Big chains can afford the digital transition, which can be cheaper when buying in bulk for multiscreen theaters. But those who own smaller theaters with one or two screens typically must take out a bank loan to pay for the equipment.

It's examples such as this that gives the Times its sometimes-deserved reputation for elitism. In this case, for a lot of small towns, sadly, this really will be The Last Picture Show.

Wouldn't have hurt the Times to mention that:

John Muir, meet RuPaul. RuPaul, meet…

You have to know hiking/backpacking is surging in popularity when TV stars take it up. From the fluffy Saturday section in the Los Angeles Times, a charming interview with the famous drag queen/unway artist RuPaul:

How has your life changed since you picked it up?

I
feel great throughout the day because I've gotten so much done so early
in the morning. I'm 51 years old, and I feel stronger today than I have
in my whole life.

It's also good to experience what a body feels
like when it's working at its full capacity. Your lungs are actually
doing what they're supposed to do.

This is also my time to meditate and to clear my head, work out issues and listen to music and actually get a good workout also.

By hiking, I really fell in love with Los Angeles.

The
fact that you can be in one of the most major metropolitan cities in
the world and then be in the wilderness, five minutes from the busiest
street in the city, is incredible. It's a great way to center myself in
one of the biggest cities in the world.

Now all we need to see on the trail, to prove the trend, is Kobe or LeBron…but for now, RuPaul looks good:

The conventions and global warming: Let’s forget

Jonathan Chait points out some perfectly obvious but little noticed national jujitsu that Bill Clinton threw us for last night:

In an otherwise factual and persuasive speech, Bill Clinton made one argument so astonishingly brass I half-expected the crowd to laugh him out of the hall. It came when Clinton cited his own presidency as a bygone era of partisan cooperation, when he couldn’t hate the Republican Party, and the two sides would come together for the good of the country. This nostalgic riff went down like a charm, not only with the partisan crowd but with the blown-away commentariat afterward. Did none of them remember the Clinton presidency? Where the mainstream Republicans accused him daily of socialism and the conservative ones accused him of being a murderer? The apocalyptic government shutdown fights? Impeachment?

Dave Weigel points out the man who wasn't there:

No Al Gore at this convention, at all, but nobody seems to care.

And Dave Roberts points out what's not being said:

Here we are, six days into the political conventions and no politician has even mentioned the biggest problem facing humanity.

Is there a connection of denial here?

Stray thought: What I'd like to see and hear Barack Obama talk about tonight is enemies.

Enemies in our present, real and imagined; and enemies in our future, real ones, like global warming.

Al Gore calls out media on Arctic ice: Editorials follow

Last week Al Gore called out the media for failing to cover the shocking decline in Arctic ice this summer, and made the point that our democracy itself is in peril when enormous stories go unreported because they might be unpalatable or difficult for the right:

The whole North polar ice cap is disappearing in front of our eyes.
Twelve massive million-dollar-plus climate-related disasters … and they
keep coming … Just as [the media] did not report the
truth about the proposal to invade Iraq, we are not getting the accurate
impression about this challenge that we have to face. To stop putting
90 million tons of global warming pollution up into the atmosphere every
single day … They aren’t only doing nothing about it, there’s hardly
any discussion about it. It drives me crazy.

A week later, this reporter hasn't seen any more stories on polar ice, but has seen several hard-hitting editorials.

From The Los Angeles Times, on extremism and reality denial at the GOP convention:

There were other messages, of course. Some were mendacious, such as
Ryan's misrepresentation of the effect of the Affordable Care Act on
Medicare benefits and Romney's tired canard that the Obama
administration has "thrown allies like Israel under the bus." Others
were merely misguided. Both in their platform and in speeches, the
Republicans left no doubt that extreme social conservativism and
science-denial now define the party's orthodoxy.

Romney's
gibe that Obama "promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and
heal the planet" was partly an attack on the alleged grandiosity of
Obama's 2008 campaign, but it also reflected the Republicans'
indifference to climate change, a term the GOP platform encloses in
mocking quotation marks.

From The Denver Post:

The Arctic ice cap is retreating at record rates. We had the hottest July on record. And one expert after another is blaming increasing temperatures on human-caused global warming.

Yet, despite the red flags, our political conversations during this presidential election year have largely skirted this important issue.

We were glad to hear the Obama administration last week announced strict new fuel economy standards. Those are projected to cut in half the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by cars and trucks by 2025.

It's a step forward, but others must follow. The evidence cannot be ignored.

The rapidly shrinking cap of ice that sits on the North Pole is not just a problem for polar bears and walruses, it will accelerate the warming process. That's because the light-colored ice reflected sunlight that a darker-colored sea will absorb.

According to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, the ice cap has shrunk to a record extent and likely will continue to do so. An area of ice equivalent to the size of South Carolina is melting each day. That's about twice the rate observed since 1979.

From The Washington Post, on the consequences of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere:

What’s alarming [re: the Arctic] is that in recent years scientists have detected a feedback effect: The seasonal sea ice melts more quickly, and the decline results in more heat absorption by open water, which in turn leads to more warming

The sea ice is not the only part of the Arctic cryosphere that is melting. Overall, in the past 30 years, the rise in annual average temperatures has been twice as high over the Arctic as over the rest of the world. Evidence from lake sediments, tree rings and ice cores suggests that Arctic ice temperatures have been higher in the past few decades than at any time in the past 2,000 years.

The implications of this are profound, not only as an indicator of global climate change but also of changes in sea levels, freshwater, the Earth’s energy balance, the biosphere and the livelihoods of millions of people.

Climate change is happening, yet humans have been terribly slow to curb fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases and cause the atmosphere to warm. The United States, caught in political gridlock and lacking consensus on the global-warming threat, has failed to take the lead. The latest reports of the shrinking Arctic ice should shock Congress and the president into more aggressive action, but both branches of government have been timid in the face of one of the great challenges of our age — and one that will haunt future generations.

Or, as Giacomo Cardelli put it for the international Cartoon Movement:

Probably it's a coincidence, but maybe doesn't hurt for Gore to work the refs.