The State of the Union address is just downright creepy. It has been pointed out that it has become little more than a Kabuki play, and I agree. All those stupid applause breaks that both parties have to stand for, mostly in response to empty platitudes that no one can disagree with like, "we must honor the sacrifice of America's military families."

It's just embarrassing. Let's bring back the malaise! People gave Carter so much crap for being honest.

Anyway, I'm very impressed that Bush, when talking about energy actually said nuclear, rather than nucular.

Yes, that is how low my standards are. Proper pronunciation is about the best I can expect.

Our friend Jim has made the Hitler or Coulter quiz all pretty and well-programmed.

Take the quiz!

Tell me your score. If you do better than 7 out of 14 then you know more about Hitler or more about Coulter than you probably should.

Take the Pharm Free Pledge! I love this. PLoS Medicine this month includes this article on efforts by the American Medical Student Association to get medical students to commit to practicing medicine responsibly. I'll take the pledge.

Box 1. The AMSA PharmFree Pledge

I am committed to the practice of medicine in the best interests of patients and to the pursuit of education that is based on the best available evidence, rather than on advertising or promotion.

I, therefore, pledge to accept no money, gifts, or hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry; to seek unbiased sources of information and not rely on information disseminated by drug companies; and to avoid conflicts of interest in my medical education and practice.

This is really exciting. I was worried I would have to do this all by myself and be the usual obnoxious contrarian jerk on the wards, but now I've got company. Go AMSA! And check out their clean sources of medical information

The Heritage Foundation has released a report on the state of the national deficit. It's not pretty.

The reason these numbers are so much worse than the CBO predictions are because the CBO apparently lacks any ability to predict the budget deficit. Specifically, they refuse to include in their estimates the costs of rebuilding Iraq, rebuilding New Orleans, inflationary increases in spending, or even the cost of Bush's tax cuts. Doesn't sound like much of a budget office if they won't include our nation's expenses when they calculate the freaking budget.

Anyway, here's the relevant part of the report.

Budget deficits are far larger than CBO projects.

Realistic baseline assumptions show that the federal budget is in much worse shape than the CBO's baseline numbers indicate. While CBO projects a balanced budget by 2012, it is far more likely that the deficit will explode:

1. The deficit will reach $394 billion in 2006;
   
2. $412 billion in 2007;
   
3. $428 billion in 2008;
   
4. $436 billion in 2009;
   
5. $458 billion in 2010; and
   
6. $805 billion in 2015.

By 2015 it would it take a $6,500-per-household tax increase just to balance the budget.

Now, because Heritage is full of total fucking idiots, their solution isn't to eliminate tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans but to cut entitlement programs, by about 50%. Now there's some analysis, these jackasses think this is realistic policy advice? Or that even if it were good advice that any politician in their right mind would completely eliminate Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security or cut all of them nearly in half? Of course they wouldn't suggest in a million years cutting our military budget and all those cold war pork projects that should have been killed decades ago like SDI. No one in a million years would suggest that the country that spends more on defense than every other Western nation combined could stand to trim some fat out of the war machine. No, instead if making realistic changes to the reality of the post cold war era (15 years late one might add) it's screw the old folks time. Nice Heritage. Keep those winning ideas coming.

Thanks Kos.

Hmm, well, we kind of already knew this. Anyway:

For their study, Nosek, Banaji and social psychologist Erik Thompson culled self-acknowledged views about blacks from nearly 130,000 whites, who volunteered online to participate in a widely used test of racial bias that measures the speed of people's associations between black or white faces and positive or negative words. The researchers examined correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes and voting behavior in all 435 congressional districts.

The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces -- evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

I'll admit, I love taking these tests. I don't know why, it's probably some kind of self-love for receiving the science seal of approval for my lack of bias even against various religions (except I apparently have an implicit bias against conformists and fat people). Taking these tests is definitely some unhealthy form of self-obsession, but take them for yourself and see whether you have some form of hidden bigotry.

Alternatively one can say that it isn't our initial (and uncontrollable) responses to people that define us, but our actual actions towards others that define whether or not we are biased. I, however, prefer to maintain my self-superiority for lacking implicit biases. Maybe I could really throw a wrench in the system by lacking implicit bias, but still being a bigot in my actions. Seems like too much effort though.

You would think that at the very least this administration would be competent when it comes to jailing people indefinitely, but apparently not. This begs the question, if we're going to detain people without any due process for the forseable future, why wouldn't we start with this guy?

During the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when al Qaeda leaders were pinned down by U.S. forces, Tabarak sacrificed himself to engineer their escape. He headed toward the Pakistani border while making calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone as bin Laden and the others fled in the other direction.

Tabarak was captured and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was classified as such a high-value prisoner that the Pentagon repeatedly denied requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to see him. Then, after spending almost three years at the base, he was suddenly released.

Today, the al Qaeda loyalist known locally as the "emir" of Guantanamo walks the streets of his old neighborhood near Casablanca, more or less a free man. In a decision that neither the Pentagon nor Moroccan officials will explain publicly, Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004 and released from police custody four months later.

Now really, does Bush and Co. lack any skillset whatsoever? You think they'd at least be good at doing the bad the stuff we accuse them of, but apparently not.

It's amazing how many news stories on this president's incompetence you can find in such a short time.

First, we have the investigation into the White House response to hurricane Katrina suggesting (by Republicans no less) that the president's poor response was disturbing.

"We are left with a picture of a White House that was plagued by the fog of war," said David Marin, the Republican staff director to the House committee investigating the government's response to the hurricane. "The committee is likely to find a disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information — and that had consequences."

In the same article is this unintentional gem.

The investigators expressed frustration that the White House did not seem to have been more actively involved. But Mr. Duffy, echoing a point made by Mr. Rapuano, said: "The White House should not be making combat decisions in Iraq. The same is true for a domestic emergency response."

I get what he's trying to say, but it came out like he was saying this White House isn't fit to make any decisions at all. Which is probably about right.

Then there is this Salon Article discussing Bush's PFIAB (President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) designed to provide non-partisan interpretation of foreign intelligence that most members of Congress don't have access to. And guess what? All but 3 of them are total cronies, Bush rangers, pioneers and retired Republican lawmakers kicked out of their old jobs with no intelligence or foreign service experience.

Congressman Murtha has declared that Iraq is in a state of Civil War. We agree, for weeks now the "murder rate" in Iraq has been so high that it should have been more accurately described as a casualty rate. People being "murdered" in the thousands per month is no longer just crime, that's a freaking war.

Then there is the ultra-creepy appointment by Bush of the federal prosecutor pursuing Abramhoff, Noel Hillman the Chief of the DoJ's Office of Public Integrity, to the Federal Bench. That is an action that just does not pass the smell test.

Finally in the generalized incompetence file is evidence the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. The gap is apparently largest in New York, but I'm hardly surprised as it is the state with the highest per-capita income (it also has some of the highest wages for labor as well). That's where the richest freaking people in the world live at the same time you have constant immigration, but at least they have a social safety net. Anyway, the real question is, which states have the highest poverty rates. Oh yeah.



Ten States with Highest Poverty Rates, 2 year average from 2002-2003. The state with the highest rate is Arkansas at 18.8%, and the spread of the top ten is between 14-18.8%. Compare that to the individual poverty rate national average of 12.3% and the 5 states with the lowest poverty rates: Connecticut 8.2%, Delaware 8.2%, Maryland 8.2%, Minnesota 6.9% and New Hampshire at 5.8%.

Source: 2003 statistics from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business, See here.

What's up with all these conservative crazies threatening the lives of Supreme Court Justices? First it was a little meeting of conservatives called "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" run by Phyllis Schafly at which conservative Edwin Vieira quoted Stalin in discussing what to do about the Supreme Court.

Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

Now we have Anne Coulter suggesting we poison liberal justices.

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media."

I'm in stitches. Really, that was hysterical. Ow, my sides.

What is with these supposed opponents of "tyranny" talking about killing justices and quoting tyrants while doing it?

Speaking of Coulter and tyrants, don't forget to take the Hitler or Coulter Challenge available only at Give Up Blog. If someone out there actually knows how to make a real true false quiz out of this, I'd love to hear from them. Until then, you've got to keep score yourself and be honest.

Say what you want about his monopoly-ware, he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he's taking on TB in the third world.

So check out how each senator is rated for performance by their state's constituents.

Notice something promising?

Of the bottom 20 rated senators 16 are Republicans, or 80%. Of the top 10 rated senators 60% are Democrats.

So, has anyone else heard about Tennessee's Crack Tax?

Get this, if you want to sell illegal substances you pay for a stamp, and if you are caught selling illegal drugs without the stamp the cops confiscate your property for failing to pay the tax. The information in the stamp database is specifically barred from use by law enforcement.

Bizarre no? Maybe this is the first step towards ending the drug war.

This site has an algorithm similar to the amazon/netflix system of recommendations. You put in a band (or a movie), and it spits out a map of related musicians that you probably would like. It's a nifty way to identify groups you may not have heard of (their depth is pretty decent; I've only managed to stump them a few times). Alternately, it's a great way to play the 'six degrees' game - how else can you get from Belle & Sebastian to Warrant in five bands?

Just goes to show, newer and more expensive isn't always better. I was reading this paper in NEJM last night and shocked it hadn't gotten more press coverage once the embargo was lifted, well, now it is. The story is a drug, named aprotinin and made by bayer, has long been used to prevent excess bleeding during cardiac surgery.

The authors said that in light of their findings, and the fact that two other less harmful and far less expensive alternatives exist, it is no longer "prudent" for doctors to use the drug except in unusual circumstances. If they continue with the drug, the authors said, doctors have a moral obligation to inform patients about the risks.
...
Mangano's research, however, found not only a greatly increased rate of kidney failure, but also a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and an almost 200 percent increase in strokes. The study also found that two other generic drugs in a different class were as effective as aprotinin in stanching bleeding after surgery, were safer and cost less than one-tenth the price.

So, the question is, why wasn't the new fancy drug seriously compared to the generics it was replacing years ago? Could it be because no one wants to study generics? Because generics don't maximize profit? We should come up with a new medical saying for this effect, something like, "Newer! Less tested! More Expensive!"

I'd actually say that the probability is if there is a generic version of a drug that you need, not only will it be cheaper, but there is a good chance that it might be safer. **cough** Crestor **cough**. Certainly this is not a universal rule, but one that probably deserves attention when one prescribes, or is prescribed, a new drug.

Lovers of Katamari might be interested in English translations of the Japanese song lyrics.

Via BoingBoing.

Can anyone tell me why anyone bothered sticking up for the Palestinians?
Now really, electing Hamas?

It's also another nail in the coffin of Bush's exporting of democracy idea. Do we really want people who vote for Hamas to live in a democracy? Some people really are just too stupid to vote. What kind of political candidates campaign by driving around in pickups shooting rifles in the air? And what makes us think that the theocrats the Iraqis are electing will be any better.

This week has me down on democracy. First Canada, then Palestine. There don't seem to be any countries left where people vote in a sensible manner, and I'm including us.

And the winner is 2005! For Global Warming! The hottest year ever! Yay!

To those who aren't believers in this phenomenon, I can't blame you, it's been overcomplicated unnecessarily by oil-industry funded "scientists" and think tanks to make it sound utterly implausible. However, the issue is very simple. "Global Warming" refers to the change in one variable, one! That variable is Global Mean surface temperature.



The other thing people say is, "big deal, it's only a degree or two."

There's a basic thermodynamic principle here that eludes the simple-minded. If you manage to increase the surface temperature of our entire planet, even by one degree, thats a crapload of heat. If one calorie is the amount of energy it takes to increase the temperature of a gram of water 1 degree (calorie in nutrition by the way actually refers to a kilocalorie), imagine the amount of heat energy it takes to increase the surface temperature of earth by a degree. If you just consider warming up the 1st 10 meters of water that makes up 2/3 our surface 1 degree, that's about 3.6 x 10^15 calories. That's no small amount of energy, about the amount released by a hydrogen bomb except entirely absorbed by the ocean as heat (and maintained year round despite the rate at which the earth loses heat). Then, think about how weather like hurricanes is influenced by surface temperature of large bodies of water, and how one degree increase in temperature over, say, the entire surface of the Gulf of Mexico, might mean, say, a record year for number of hurricanes, and more destructive hurricanes. The full data isn't in yet, but from a thermodynamics perspective it's simple, more heat means more violent weather systems that are generated by warm water.

Starting to get a little scary. On a related note Al Gore has a film at Sundance called, A Matter of Degrees, WaPo profiles it here. Might be interesting, but then, it is Al Gore. Maybe Global Warming should get a more exciting spokesperson. I nominate Michael Jordan.

I see that West Virginia is importing Dance Dance Revolution into Public Schools.

They could save some money and just make the kids run around in circles while screaming like I remember the first 10 years of my life. But hey, anything to get the fat little kids moving. Other states should consider similar programs, such as these ones:



Obesity, states with higher than national average of 21% by percent prevalence. The five states with the lowest rates are: Connecticut 17%, Rhode Island 17%, Vermont 17%, Massachusetts 16%, and Colorado at 14%.

Source: 1991-2001 Prevalence of Obesity Among U.S. Adults by State and 2001 Obesity and Diabetes Prevalence Among U.S. Adults, by Selected Characteristics. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 1991-2001; self-reported data. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available here and here.

I like Harold Meyerson's Op-Ed today entitled, Bush the Incompetent.

It has reminded me that of all the retarded mistakes this president has made, the worst is this medicare fiasco. After all, it means he's pissed off old people. He's totally screwed!

....since Part D took effect on Jan. 1, the most acute problem has been the plan's failure to cover the 6.2 million low-income seniors whose medications had been covered by Medicaid. On New Year's Day, the new law shifted these people's coverage to private insurers. And all hell broke loose.

I can't wait for November now.
**Update**
This image should have been included with this post:


Remember, you can see get this image and many more at Freeway Blogger.

Rev. Dr., explain to us how this article in the New York Times supports the Give Up theme:

Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

"Everything we know about cognition suggests that, when faced with a contradiction, we use the rational regions of our brain to think about it, but that was not the case here," said Dr. Drew Westen, a psychologist at Emory and lead author of the study, to be presented Saturday at meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Palm Springs, Calif.

[...]

Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often predominantly emotional.

Remember when Bush said this?

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
September 1, 2005

Well, the Dept of Homeland Security apparently knew 48 hours ahead of time.

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.
...
The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

The best part of waking up, is incompetence in your cup.

Hey Red states. What's that you're standing in? Toxic waste?



These are the 15 states with the highest release of toxic chemicals into the environment.10 It is interesting to not that the 5 states with the highest release of toxic waste, Alaska (~550 million pounds), Nevada(~500 million pounds), Arizona(~330 million pounds), Texas(~240 million pounds), and Ohio(~210 million pounds) release between 5-10 times more waste into the environment than California (~45 million pounds), the most populous state.

Source, Environmental Protection Agency, Toxic Release Inventory 2002 (www.epa.gov). Total Onsite Releases of toxic chemicals by state. It should be noted that absolute levels of exposure do not necessarily indicate exposure of the state population to toxic chemicals, but I believe the data do indicate the relative difference between the environmental stewardship of the individual states.

It's happened again. Ford, whose practice of funneling all of its hopes, dreams, and capital into SUV development, has seen its market share erode, its profits dissipate, and is now contemplating cutting thousands of jobs and closing up to half a dozen plants. There's no word on whether or not any of the executives who approved the stupid strategy of "pour all of our money into SUVs" will get the axe, or if it's all going to fall upon the heads of the poor schlebs who work the line. I know which group my money's on.

As an aside, Ford is calling this restructuring the "Way Forward," which sounds to me like a certain economic policy in which tens of millions of people starved to death. Good job there, guys.

The NYT editorial page has written that Alito should not be confirmed. Given that his confirmation is all but assured by every other news outlet, they ask the relevent question. Why? Alito's confirmation was a joke, and a demonstration the process is defective. It's no longer about answering questions but erecting an impenetrable wall of noncommital to any ideology or opinion.

Then there is the Give Up aspect of the editorial which I agree with.

The real risk for senators lies not in opposing Judge Alito, but in voting for him. If the far right takes over the Supreme Court, American law and life could change dramatically. If that happens, many senators who voted for Judge Alito will no doubt come to regret that they did not insist that Justice O'Connor's seat be filled with someone who shared her cautious, centrist approach to the law.

Given that pro-life states are already gearing up for a Roe challenge this is not just alarmism. It is quite likely we will see a reversal in the next few years, especially if one of our aging liberals on the court decides to kick the bucket. If the loss of this battle is inevitable, we must begin planning for the resulting fight. The way I see it, we're witnesses to a slow-moving train collision. We can't stop it, but we need to make a point of remembering who was driving the train, and fully documenting the wreck. In a way, the NYT is trying to do the Republicans a favor. If they succeed they will only manage to destroy their party. The shitstorm they've blundered into with this course of action will be their undoing.

On the other side of the debate, William Saletan had an interesting Op-Ed on how the Democrats should steal the abortion issue from the Republicans, by declaring war on it. An interesting idea.

I don't know why I'm even bothering to try to give warnings to people who drive cars named after blow-jobs, but this Iran stuff may really make the shit hit the fan. Sanctions could apparently hit us where it hurts, those of us who drive the most. Hmmm, that makes me wonder, if oil goes over $100 a barrel who is screwed again? Oh yeah. These people.



Really puts a dent in a hawkish foreign policy doesn't it? And page down a bit to see general energy use. You have to wonder about people who vote for an oil man like Bush when their states are so dependent on excesses of energy consumption. You would think conservation would be considered conservative.

Man, Halliburton. What do you do with these guys? Now they're providing contaminated water to the troops?

But as usual, if you read down a little further you see the real culprits, as always, are Kellogg Brown and Root, the evil(er) wing of Halliburton.

The contaminated water came to light in internal company documents The Associated Press obtained from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry tomorrow.

One of the memos was written by the official for Halliburton's K-B-R subsidiary, which was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait. He writes -- quote -- "we exposed a base camp population to a water source that was not treated."

Man, those guys are just the worst war profiteers ever. Aren't governments supposed to hang war profiteers? If not, can we bring that practice back?

Energy has continued to be a strong point in the argument for blue state federalism, blue states just regulate it better. See this WP story "'Blue' States Tackling Energy On Their Own" discussing the effective regulation in largely blue states that makes up for the Bush administrations federal regulatory failures.

Democratic-leaning states increasingly are regulating energy use and emissions, working around a GOP-controlled federal government that state officials say has not done enough.

The states are creating energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs and household appliances, limiting power plant and automobile output linked to global warming, and requiring the use of renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

Leading the effort are "blue" states that voted Democratic in the 2004 presidential election. Even some of those states that have Republican governors, such as California and Connecticut, are making their own rules.

"In a way, the left is controlling that agenda," said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the energy program at Rice University in Houston. "They're just implementing it at the community and state level."


Woohoo. Go blue states. Want to see who in this country is wasting energy? Check out map 7.



As oil and energy prices skyrocket somehow I see some of these red states coming around to the blue states way. Give Up!

I am intrigued by this headline, "Bin Laden's No. 2 releases poetry tape Al-Zawahiri recording doesn't mention CIA attempt to kill him".

I think we should have a Give Up blog Poetry competition for titles and poems that sound like they would have been written by a member of al Qaeda.

I'll go first:

I think that I shall never see
a jihad as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose bloody sword is prest
Against the infidel's evil chest;

A tree that looks at Allah all day,
And kneels on barky knees to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
Plastic explosives in his hair;

Upon whose bosom sand has lain;
And a wish to destroy a train.

Jihads are made by holy warriors like me,
But only Allah can make a tree.

-- Ayman al-Zawahiri

This is just hysterical. I used to love text based games like Zork when I was a kid. Check it out, a text-based Bush presidency.

> GIVE CONTRACTS
Who do you want to give the contracts to?

> HALLIBURTON
What kind of contracts do you wish to give to Halliburton?

> NO-BID
You give the no-bid contracts to Halliburton.

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq remains unchanged.

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq remains unchanged.

> WEAR FLIGHTSUIT
You put on the flightsuit.

> SAY "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"
"Mission accomplished."

> EXAMINE MISSION
The mission is not accomplished.

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq remains unchanged.

Some insurgents arrive.

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq deteriorates.

Some insurgents arrive.
There is a small number of insurgents here.

Via boingboing.

Dominatrix chains man to torture device...

Dominatrix ignores man's death throes...

Dominatrix gets hacksaw and dismembers man...

Dominatrix dumps man's dismembered corpse in other state...

Or so the DA says. The priceless nugget from this article comes in the following sentence:

Lord [the man in question] died in July 2000 while strapped to a rack in her condominium in Quincy, Massachusetts.

A torture device I understand. But what self-respecting Mistress of Pain builds her dungeon in a friggin' CONDO?

Since I'm feeling guilty I figured I'd throw out a new map. Since everyone is talking about Roe v. Wade considering the Scalito nomination, I'd like people to see what infant mortality rates look like state by state. Just goes to show, abortion opponents are always decrying the loss of human life, but which states are failing to protect infants that are brought to term, and why don't they focus more on this?



Infant mortality rate (deaths per 1000 live births) by state 2000-2002. To put the numbers in perspective, Mississippi, with its stunning rate of 10.5 deaths per 1000 live births (or 1 in 100), has more than double the infant mortality rate of Massachusetts at 4.8, and places it somewhere between Macedonia and Uruguay on an international scale. It is also interesting to note that of the 26 states that have rates greater than the national average, 75% are so-called "Red" states, and of the 10 states with the lowest infant mortality 8 are "Blue". When you compare states with the highest infant mortality rates (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee all have rates of 8 deaths per 1000 live births or greater), and the states with the lowest infant mortality rates (California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and Utah all have rates of infant mortality in the range of 4.8- 5.5 deaths per 1000 births) you see that a certain portion of America actually enjoys comparable or lower infant mortality than the combined average for the EU or countries like Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Our infant mortality rate year to year is between 6.5-7 per 1000 per year according to the CIA factbook. However, the rate is being dragged up by the red states, particularly in the South.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2004 With Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans. Hyattsville, Maryland: 2004.

So PLoS has some great articles this month that are worth everybody reading.

The first, of particular interest to a lay audience, is this essay suggesting reasons why men succeed and science why women don't and how much elimination of bias will really help change this (and why that would be a good thing).

Then there is an interesting evolution paper disparaging the "grandmother effect." However, it is limited by being a study in guppies. Maybe PLoS is getting a little ahead of itself in suggesting a paper on fish provides answers as to why humans have menopause.

Finally a paper discussing the rather bizarre fact that our colon is chock full of plant viruses. Luckily they don't do anything to us, but we may be a vector for spreading plant viruses about the world. Humans are kind of gross when you think about it.

California is set to execute Clarence Ray Allen tonight for a whole slew of murders (firsthand and ordered while imprisoned for the first one) he performed/ordered back in the 70's/80's. His attorneys say that it's cruel and unusual to execute someone that old. Regardless of where one stands on the death penalty issue, though, you have to wonder. The man is legally blind, deaf, and confined to a wheelchair. This isn't an execution -- it's assisted suicide.

I think Krugman and I are in some kind of mind-control/time warp/psychic connection thingy.

As I wrote Sunday, the Bush administration seems determined not to fix Medicare but to destroy it with incompetence and mismanagement. Krugman today has an editorial entitled, "First, Do More Harm" that more or less repeats my give up argument.

It's widely expected that President Bush will talk a lot about health care in his State of the Union address. He probably won't boast about his prescription drug plan, whose debut has been a Katrina-like saga of confusion and incompetence. But he probably will tout proposals for so-called "consumer driven" health care.

So it's important to realize that the administration's idea of health care reform is to take what's wrong with our system and make it worse.
...
The bottom line is that what the Bush administration calls reform is actually the opposite. Driven by an ideology at odds with reality, the administration wants to accentuate, not fix, what's wrong with America's health care system.


Ha! Krugman is my brother in Giving Up. It's either that or Bush's particular form of incompetence and undermining of government is just really obvious. I prefer to think, however, that Krugman and I share a bond. A bond that can only exist when two men hate a third man so much that their minds start to merge even across great distances.

The WSJ editorial page, as I've mentioned before, is a lot like a zoo. You visit it, and you just wonder where the hell did they find these people. If ideas were like animals the WSJ would be a collection of zebras, red pandas and capybaras! Holy crap.

Except unlike a zoo, you hate the animals because they represent all that is wrong with the world.

Anyway, today's WSJ has a bizarre Op-Ed entitled, "Bleeding Hearts" which asserts that it is incorrect to equate a rejection of government spending on the poor with a lack of compassion. The argument? People who support government spending on the poor give less blood. I shit you not:

Once again, it is those opposed to government aid. These supposedly uncompassionate folks are 25% of the population, but donate more than 30% of the blood each year. Meanwhile, supporters of government spending to the poor are 28% of the population, but donate just 20% of the blood. If the whole population gave blood like opponents of social spending do, the blood supply would increase by more than a quarter. But if everyone in the population gave like government aid advocates, the supply would drop by about 30%.

In the wake of disasters like Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, and in the midst of ongoing needs in our communities, this gap in blood donations is more than an intellectual curiosity: It can mean the difference between life and death. It also represents the livelihood of important charities serving our nation's needy, such as the Red Cross, which receives nearly 70% of its revenues from blood sales.

Holy fucking shit. Where do they find these people? I mean, seriously, this passes for argument?

**Update** I took down the map until I can find a better data set to work with, I misread the OMB report to represent all charitable giving however it did not include individuals giving to charity.

This brings up three issues. One is my total and complete error in reading the report, sorry. The second is that the data currently being represented by the "Generosity Index" is over-represents giving to churches and only represents individuals who itemize, and is a highly flawed method. The OMB data is still interesting because it shows while evaluation of itemization biases the red states, focusing on giving by estates and trusts biases towards the blue states. It is possible that Blue staters are only over-donating charity in the form of taxes and when they die. For now reflect on this map.



There is a solution, but it requires me paying 35 bucks and waiting until I receive a report on charities in the mail. I will accept that as a fine for my error.

This makes me want to move to Chile. A female socialist atheist president? Holy Crap!

Congratulations to Chile. Hopefully she will represent liberal causes and prove to be progressive voice in South America without the shiftiness of Chavez. I've heard our Venezuelan prankster is something of an anti-semite, which is a universally recognized bellweather for idiocy. (To bypass latimes registration, right click and do a "save link target as" then save it and read it from your desktop)

I feel an irrational optimism about South America. They seem to be emerging from a long dark age inflicted by the cold war and the U.S.'s take no prisoners attitude towards progress in these states which were already victims of European imperialism. We've always maintained a self-superior attitude towards these countries, but it seems like some day soon people might start pursuing opportunities south of the border rather than the reverse. Good for them!

Buck brought this LA Times Article up last month as a sign that the Give Up philosophy of state activism and a retreat from seeking federal solutions to problems is historically common strategy to progressive movements.

But a counter-cyclical trend toward government activism is thriving in the states governed by Democrats and moderate Republicans. This isn't a new pattern. In earlier periods when conservatives controlled Washington, such as the 1890s, 1920s and 1980s, state-level activism flourished, notes Richard P. Nathan, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York. And these state initiatives, Nathan argues, usually provided the foundation for the next surge in federal activism.

"When conservative coalitions controlled national offices, programs that were incubated, tested and debugged in liberal states became the basis for later national action," Nathan, a former aide to President Nixon, writes in a paper to be released this month.

Nathan has a strong case. State-level innovations such as child labor laws and public health reforms during the late 19th century helped inspire the Progressive Era outpouring of federal initiatives under presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal built on state experiments in the 1920s that established minimum labor standards and public relief for the destitute.

Further, there is evidence liberals have become too reliant on federal policymaking to the detriment of our goals. The reason? The great society got us hooked on the federal government so we failed to maintain state-based power structures. In the absence of federal control for such a long period of time, however, states are reasserting themselves as powerhouses of progressive goals and strategies.


Two of the most intriguing, and widespread, priorities in the activist states are the promotion of energy independence and the combating of global warming. Here the contrast with Washington is especially stark.

Apart from some subsidies for the development of cleaner energy, the energy legislation Bush and the GOP Congress fashioned last summer excluded every systematic effort to reduce the emission of gases associated with global warming. Caps on carbon emissions, increases in automotive fuel economy, requirements for utilities to generate more electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind: all were rejected.

But in the states, those ideas are advancing — under both Republican and Democratic governors. "There is ever more interest and states are imitating and learning from each other," says Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the nonpartisan Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Twenty-one states have approved measures requiring utilities to generate more of their electricity from renewable energy sources, which would reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels. In a parallel initiative, the Western Governors' Assn. is completing a plan to increase the production of renewable energy more than tenfold across the 18 Western states by 2015; by then, it hopes renewable sources will provide as much as one-fifth of the region's power.

Ten states are poised to follow California in mandating that cars and trucks reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 30% by 2016 — if the California standard survives a court challenge from the auto industry.
...
But the ideas now germinating in the states may increase the pressure on Washington to address these concerns — especially when the cycle in national politics next tilts back toward greater federal activism. When the countryside rumbles, sooner or later the capital always shakes.

Sounds like Give Up no? Give Up on the federal government, blue states rule!

It's good for the Blue states that they have the type of income to handle failures of the federal government.

Take for example this article titled, "The States Step In As Medicare Falters
Seniors Being Turned Away, Overcharged Under New Prescription Drug Program"

This is confirmation of two aspects of the Give Up theory.

1. This administration is determined to disable the federal government not by cutting funding, but my rendering it defective.
   
2. In the face of an ineffective federal government, red states will suffer more than the blue states because they rely more extensively on federal subsidization of their defective economies.
   

From the article:

Computer glitches, overloaded telephone lines and poorly trained pharmacists are being blamed for mix-ups that have resulted in the worst of unintended consequences: As many as 6.4 million low-income seniors, who until Dec. 31 received their medications free, suddenly find themselves navigating an insurance maze of large deductibles, co-payments and outright denial of coverage.

Yesterday, Ohio and Wisconsin announced that they will cover the drug costs of low-income seniors who would otherwise go without, joining every state in New England as well as California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Jersey.

"This new prescription drug plan was supposed to be a voluntary program to help people who didn't have coverage," said Jeanne Finberg, a lawyer for the National Senior Citizens Law Center. "All this is doing is harming the people who had coverage -- America's most vulnerable citizens."

This is a perfect example of what this blog is dedicated to proving. Republican sabotage of the federal government makes peoples lives harder and certain states are better at making up the slack than others. Go look at the map in our banner and think "all of new england, Cali, Illinois, Pennsyvania, NJ, +4 red states." That means roughly 55% of blue states are already stepping in to help their citizens while only 4 red states or about 12% have done anything.

Keep voting Republican Red staters, at least our states can handle the fallout.

Apparently Virginia has a politician referred to as, no shit, Turkey Baster Bob. His name is Del. Robert Marshall, a Republican from Manassas, and he really doesn't want lesbians getting pregnant by artificial insemination.

I think he's watched She Hate Me a few too many times and thinks this bill might increase his chances of a getting into a hot lesbian freakout.

Of course, a bill banning unmarried women from getting artificial insemination will never past constitutional muster as a total and complete violation of the equal protection clause (the same way you can't only restrict birth control to married couples), but you gotta love the resulting nickname he gets. What a jackass.

What is with these politicians who are just way too interested in what happens in women's vaginas?

It's a relief that the WP is starting to report on the bullshit rather than simply reporting the bullshit.

Driven by the cost of hurricane relief, the federal budget deficit is expected to balloon back above $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends in September, reversing the improvements of 2005, a White House official told reporters yesterday.
...
This is the third straight year in which the White House has summoned reporters well ahead of the official budget release to project a higher-than-anticipated deficit. In the past two years, when final deficit figures have come in at record or near-record levels, White House officials have boasted that they had made progress, since the final numbers were below estimates.

I need to figure out how to incorporate this strategy in my daily life. Perhaps I could estimate I will only work one hour this week, then when I actually work a normal work week I can demand a raise for beating my estimate.

Do you guys remember when The Boondocks published that awesome set of strips with Huey trying to find the perfect man for Condoleeza Rice figuring that if she got laid she'd lighten up?

Well, apparently he's not the only one to think this is her problem. Check out what Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said:

Speaking with Pravda this week, Zhirinovsky chastised Rice for calling on Russia to "act responsibly" in supplying natural gas to Ukraine.

The fascistic pol attributed that "coarse anti-Russian statement" to Rice being "a single woman who has no children."

"If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear," Zhirinovsky ranted on. "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied.

"Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention," he added. "Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'

"Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though."

It's a bizarre combination of the insane, the sexist, and the borderline illiterate, but it's still friggin funny.

From the NYDN

Pat Robertson has apologized to Sharon's son for hearing over the God-phone that the big guy smote Ariel for withdrawing from Gaza.

Did he apologize for the smiting comment because he felt genuinely sorry?

Did he retract his statement that Sharon had been smitten because God hit *69 and told him to cut it out?

Do I love to use the variations of the verb 'to smite'?

Nope, nope, and yup.

More specifically, Israel's tourism ministry decided to cut Robertson out of a $50 million dollar project to build a tourist center for evangelical Christians. By now, we should know never to stand between Robertson and a shady business deal. Or a few more.

CNN reports that Bankruptcy claims have risen to an all new high.

I'll have to check the data to see if anything has changed from my 2003 map.



Take that red states! That's what you get for electing Republicans. Now it's even harder to file for bankruptcy, and you were the ones who needed it most!

I love how Fark has an icon dedicated just to Florida. And every day there are a few stories that just make you shake your head.

Today's news is that in Florida, they can't seem to muster up the legislative willpower to ban the use of tasers on children under 16.

The Senate Education Committee postponed the bills and chairwoman Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, said she was unsure whether they would be brought up again. The bills were filed after police officers drew criticism for using stun guns against children, including an elementary school pupil.
...
The bills were introduced after Miami-Dade County officers used a stun gun on a 6-year-old boy who was wielding a piece of glass in a principal's office and on a 12-year-old girl who was playing hooky. The girl was drunk and, while trying to escape the officer, was about to run into traffic when she was stunned, police said.

A Jacksonville officer received a three-day suspension last year for zapping a 13-year-old girl at least twice with a stun gun while she was handcuffed in the back seat of his caged patrol car.

Wow, a six-year-old and a girl handcuffed in a cruiser (behind a cage). I'm sure she was a real threat, or she called the cop a sissy.

** FLORIDA UPDATE **
Only in Florida. A woman was arrested for making a "training tape" for her children to show them what she would do if the misbehaved. In the process she went apeshit on two of her daughters whipping them with an electrical cord, on tape.

Ah Florida. You deserve your Fark tag.

CNN is reporting direct evidence of pay for play on the part of Tom Delay. It rhymes!

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tried to pressure the Bush administration into shutting down an Indian-owned casino that lobbyist Jack Abramoff wanted closed -- shortly after a tribal client of Abramoff's donated to a DeLay political action committee, The Associated Press has learned.

The Texas Republican demanded closure of the casino, owned by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas, in a December 11, 2001, letter to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The Associated Press obtained the letter from a source who did not want to be identified because of an ongoing federal investigation of Abramoff and members of Congress.

It also may implicate John Cornyn.

Ashcroft never took action on the request. The Texas casino was closed the following year by a federal court ruling in a 1999 lawsuit filed by the state's attorney general, John Cornyn, now a U.S. senator.

Do