Month: November 2012

Europe Hasn’t Forgotten About Syria

Syria_Mosque

The UK has recognized Syria's opposition. So has France. But Massie argues that European countries can't invade without American help:

[A]bsent American support for intervention, what can Britain or France realistically achieve? They retain some diplomatic clout at the United Nations but unless the United States moves, neither China nor Russia seem likely to be persuaded to lift their objections to foreign intervention in Syria. Even if Moscow and Beijing were to change their minds (an unlikely scenario), the British and French are likely to need American logistical and military support if they're to achieve anything. In this respect, they are not so much writing checks they cannot cash as forging American checks and trusting that Washington will not mind honoring them. This seems a mildly reckless course of action.

Larison doesn't foresee America intervening in Syria anytime soon. Thank Heaven.

(The rubble of a mosque destroyed during fighting between rebel forces and pro-Syrian government troops is seen in Maarat al-Numan, on November 17, 2012. By John Cantlie/AFP/Getty Images)

E Meets PTSD

MDMA_animation

In another sign that the lamentable taboo against "hallucinogenic" drugs is withering, new research shows the potential of Ecstasy for helping those with PTSD:

News that Drs Michael and Ann Mithoefers are beginning to test the drug in veterans is out, in the military press and on veterans’ blogs. “We’ve had more than 250 vets call us,” Dr. Mithoefer said. “There’s a long waiting list, we wish we could enroll them all.” The couple, working with other researchers, will treat no more than 24 veterans with the therapy, following Food and Drug Administration protocols for testing an experimental drug; MDMA is not approved for any medical uses.

The results are striking:

The Mithoefers administer the MDMA in two doses over one long therapy session, which comes after a series of weekly nondrug sessions to prepare. Three to five weeks later, they perform another drug-assisted session; and again, patients engage in 90-minute nondrug therapy before and after, once each week. Most have found that their score on a standard measure of symptoms — general anxiety, hyperarousal, depression, nightmares — drops by about 75 percent. That is more than twice the relief experienced by people who get psychotherapy without MDMA, the Mithoefers said …  The drug does not produce a “high,” but it usually brings some tranquillity.

Let me simply say I am not surprised. This research echoes the promising advances in psilocybin-based therapy. There was nothing wrong with the psychedelic culture of the past; but equally there is nothing wrong in finding medical uses for recreational chemicals.

I wonder, in fact, if the medical uses of MDMA and psilcoybin will become the foot in the door of the end of crude prohibition of hallucinogenics the way medical marijuana was for pot. The idea that they are a priori of no medical use – simply because a few people went overboard in the late 1960s – is simply anti-scientific.

(Gif: Animated picture of the chemical structure of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine.)

Grandfather Of The Year Nominee

Grandpa_Model

Shanghaiist introduces us to Liu Xianping:

A 72-year-old grandfather, Liu Xianping, has become something of an internet sensation after he began modelling for his granddaughter's online clothing store. Liu's granddaughter runs Yuekou, a partnership between herself and four other recent college graduates. While Liu was helping the girls unpack, "he picked up one piece and tried to give some advice on how to mix and match. We thought it was fun so we started shooting."

His philosophy:

Why unacceptable for someone like me to wear women’s clothes? Modelling for the store is helping my granddaughter and I have nothing to lose. We were very happy on the day of the shooting. I’m very old and all that I care about is to be happy.

The free market has responded: the "store's sales have apparently increased fivefold since Liu starting modelling."

Ceasing Fire

Al Jazeera reports:

Israeli sources said Israel had agreed to the truce but would not lift its blockade on the Palestinian territory, a condition earlier set by Hamas. Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste, reporting from Cairo, stressed that “the devil is in the details” of the agreement. “It will be the details that will determine whether this is just a pause in hostilities … or something that leads to a lasting solution,” he said, adding that Egypt had played an “absolutely crucial” role in sealing the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to “give a chance” to the ceasefire, a statement from his office said.

A tweet reax:

Joe Scarborough Is Part Of The Problem

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If you recall, Scarborough's original, slanderous words against Nate Silver were the following:

Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they’re jokes.

Scarborough called Nate Silver an ideologue and a joke. Instead of copping to his slander and his foolishness, he now writes a Politico column that is so brimming with, well Politico-style Village media horse-shit you need a medical mask to keep breathing to the end. First off, he starts with mockery of Upper West Side limousine hippie liberals and all the usual, lazy, exhausted boomer tropes that make Scarborough and all his flunkies as irrelevant as they are desperate for attention:

Just as the Beatles had the Maharishi to guide them through the tough times after the death of their manager Brian Epstein, progressives had Silver’s New York Times blog to comfort them after the first presidential debate.

Even if that analogy isn't itself stupid and lazy … so fucking what? Mr Scarborough, you were wrong because you have no understanding of statistics, and you slandered someone who was sincere and transparent and smart. So where's the apology? Not there yet. Instead we get this:

The Obama-Romney race proved to be the least fluid in a generation. As Mr. Silver noted this morning, public opinion surveys remained consistent from June through Election Day.

I'm not sure what Scarborough is talking about here – but this was a fluid race. The first debate scrambled everything dramatically. Go check out Nate's graphs. Yes, the outcome in June was echoed in November, but there was plenty of fluctuation nationally and on a state level in between. That very fluctuation in the polls is what made gave me a near-death experience and altered the dynamic in both campaigns. So we're still waiting for "sorry":

I won’t apologize to Mr. Silver for predicting an outcome that I had also been predicting for a year. But I do need to tell Nate I’m sorry for leaning in too hard and lumping him with pollsters whose methodology is as rigorous as the Simpsons’ strip mall physician, Dr. Nick. For those sins (and a multitude of others that I’m sure I don’t even know about), I am sorry.

Notice the old MSM I-Never-Screwed-Up crap. Notice the "I'm not really apologizing" – but I'll add in a generic mea culpa to insure myself. Notice also that Scarborough is still too stupid to understand that Silver's model included Gallup and Rasmussen and all those "Dr Nick" pollsters, showed considerable fluctuation in the race, and yet also correctly predicted the demographic mix and state polling consensus in ways that revealed the structural advantage Obama had throughout. This took intelligence and skill that Scarborough does not have. Neither do I. But then I didn't call Nate a fool who should be banished from the Internet. I saw him as a fantastic breath of fresh air in a tired, discredited and fathomlessly self-important commentariat.

Of which Scarborough is an almost text-book case. 

(Photo by Charles Ommanney/Getty)

The Thelma & Louise Caucus

That's what Daniel Gross dubs individuals who want to drive off the fiscal cliff. He belongs to it:

I’m not eager to see all the tax cuts expire, but I think the cliff does offer a rare opportunity to correct a historical error. The cuts introduced all sorts of harmful wrinkles and distortions into the tax code, in ways that privilege passivity over labor.

There’s no earthly reason why capital gains and dividends should be taxed at 15 percent while wages for hardworking professionals are taxed at twice that rate. There’s no reason estates should be taxed at such low levels. There’s no reason carried interest—the wages private equity and hedge-fund managers effectively take for managing other people’s money—shouldn’t be taxed as income.

All these low rates were intended by their designers to be temporary—the better to mask their long-term cost. But because these tax cuts have powerful, well-connected constituencies, it has been difficult to slay them. Once we’ve gone over the cliff, the conversation about taxes will take on an entirely different tenor than the pre-cliff one. After a lost decade in the markets and the economy, advocates for the absurdly low rates of taxation on capital will have to make their case for lowering them again. Good luck to them.

Earlier pushback against cliff-dive advocates here.

The GOP And Gays

In the WSJ today, Ken Mehlman makes a powerful case for the party to reverse course, as Britain’s Tory party did as they found themselves increasingly marginalized on a central social issue for the next generation. He homes in on one issue where conservative federalists really should care:

Our Election Night exit poll of 2,000 voters in battleground states (of whom 32% were Republican, 36% Democratic and 32% independent) showed a majority opposing the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996: 62% believe that if states recognize same-sex marriage, the federal government should grant same-sex couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples.

Exactly. How can the feds decide for a state which marriages are legal or not? I favor a federalist approach to this, partly because I am so confident, at this point, of the irresistibility of the argument for equality and integration, especially when viewed against the following data:

According to Jan van Lohuizen, a former pollster for President George W. Bush, public support for civil-marriage rights for same-sex couples increased by 1% each year from 1993 through 2009, and by 5% per year in 2010 and 2011. Other polls over the past year show majority support for civil marriage among African-Americans (51%, according to Edison Research), Hispanics (52%, according to Pew) and voters between the ages of 18 and 39 (66%, according to the Washington Post/ABC News). The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows a 41% increase in support among Republicans over the past three years, to 31% from 22%.

So the practical case for shifting to this question is getting to be overwhelming. The question is whether the current GOP, reliant as it is on those with fundamentalist hostility to anything gay, can overcome fundamentalist theology to engage in politics in a multicultural society. I can hope, can’t I?

Would You Like Some Crow With That Rice, Senator McCain?

The irascible douche now acknowledges there is no evidence that Susan Rice was responsible for editing CIA talking points after the Benghazi attack, and that the DNI gave her what she subsequently went on TV with. End of scandal. No formal retraction or apology of course:

Today’s news comes just a week after McCain went on national television and claimed that Rice’s "talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI. He added on Fox that "I think it’s patently obvious that the talking points that Ambassador Rice had didn’t come from the CIA. It came from the White House." For weeks, McCain has lambasted the administration for engaging in "either a cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence" on the Benghazi attack.

Of course, McCain believed it was perfectly obvious that Saddam had WMDs in Iraq. And so did I. I've learned to wait for the facts a little bit longer before jumping to conclusions of conspiracy or mendacity.

Ask McKibben Anything: Is It Too Late?

Bill McKibben is one of the world’s leading environmentalists and writers:

In 2009, he led the organization of 350.org, which organized what Foreign Policy magazine called “the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind,” with 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries. The magazine named him to its inaugural list of the 100 most important global thinkers, and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential men of 2009.

Bill’s previous videos are here and here. Read some of his Sandy coverage featured on the Dish here, here and here.