Bush has jomentum
I don't usually call Bush stupid. I think he's an un-curious and anti-intellectual boob, but that's not the same thing as stupid. He has a certain kind of intelligence; it's just not the kind I respect. He clearly has a sort of mean canniness that is well suited to CEOs and playground bullies.

So about the time I'm straining my arm, patting myself on the back for my open-mindedness, he goes and says something that, from any perspective, can only be described as stupid. Really, really stupid.

Medicare has suddenly emerged as a volatile issue in this year's elections, as Democrats are vowing to roll back a sharp increase in premiums announced this month and the Bush campaign is seeking to blame lawmakers, including Senator John Kerry, for the rise.

The trading of accusations reflects efforts by both parties to seek advantage with older voters.

Democrats, hoping to reclaim an issue central to their success in past elections, said they would try to block the 17.4 percent increase that will come out of Social Security checks next year.

But in a new television advertisement and in official statements, President Bush's campaign is trying to pin the responsibility for the increase on Congress...

He's actually running for a second term by running against congress. Does he know which party controls both houses of congress? Does he know that he is the head of that party. Maybe Uncle Karl will explain this to him.

The last person to run for president by running against his own party was Joe Lieberman. And we all know how far jomentum got him.

Of typewriters and fonts
Right after I got to work yesterday a coworker e-mailed me the font comparison of the Killian memos. I wrote back that I remembered using typewriters with proportional spacing back in the seventies, so this didn't prove anything. I thought about blogging on it, but unwisely chose to do some work instead. I didn't know what a big brou-ha-ha fontgate was making until I got home last night. Sigh. I could have been one of the first rebutters, but I blew it.

Even so, because I think it says a few things about the nature of blogging, I'd like to throw in a few comments.

First a summary, in case you walked into the middle of this. Wednesday's "60 Minutes II" looked at Bush's National Guard service and produced some previously unknown memos from 1973 that reflected badly on the president. Sometime in the night, someone decided the documents looked more word processed than typed. At issue was the spacing of the letters. Most typewriters used monotype spacing. That is each letter took up the same amount of space regardless of the width of the letter. In a word like "woman" the "w" and "m" would crowd in on the "o", while in a word like "ill" the letters would look oddly wide spaced. Most fonts in word processors use proportional spacing, which adjusts the spaces between the letters (called kerning) in a style more like professional typesetting. By morning right bloggistan was all in a tizzy thinking they had proof positive that the new documents were forged. Their argument was entirely based on the idea that the documents had to be produced on a word processor in order to have proportional spacing.

Later in the day, hundreds of people, old enough to have actually used typewriters, came on-line to point out that proportional font typewriters were a common office machine in the seventies. IBM had been making them since 1941, and the mighty "golf ball" Selectric, in use since 1961, had this feature. That should be the end of it, but it won't be. Already, the right is howling that we can't prove the documents are not forgeries. Irritable wingnuts will bring this up from now until the election, pouting that we lefties are play unfair by bringing in our so-called "facts."

I think this tiny tempest is a good example of some of the strengths and weaknesses of the blogoshere. Up front is our ability to fact check and critique the mainstream news media and other official sources of information. That someone was able to notice something suspicious about the news and propagate their criticism in such a short time is a good thing. Equally, the fact that others were able to catch the error in his/her suspicion and propagate their counter-criticism in an equally short time is also a good thing. This is involvement by normal citizens acting as watchdogs over the powerful managers of information. This is dialog between the factions (however angry and accusatory it might be). This happens fast enough to matter. All good things.

The bad side of this is that their suspicions were wrong and, thanks to the permanence and immortality of information once released into the internet wilds, the accusation of forgery will pop up forever. Also, while there was some dialog between the factions, there is also a large spectator component to the blogoshere that only listen to the echo chamber of their own side. They will hear the original critique, but not necessarily the counter-critique. Our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses. The speed and broad spread of the internet allow a bad idea to become ubiquitous before anyone has a chance to notice how bad it is.

This is the kind of affair that the professional (i.e. "paid") news media have in mind when they sneer at blogs and websites for being untrained and lacking editors. There is some validity in their comment. Of course there is an equal amount of validity in our counter-sneer that, if training and editors are such an advantage, why does the news still suck?

The real problem is that bloggers lack training in research, evidence, and logic (and so do most paid reporters). In this case, the originator of the forgery idea noticed that the documents looked more like the word processed documents that they had encountered than the typed ones. Therefore it must have come from a computer. And they rushed to the web with no more than that thought. How many flaws are in this? From a professional perspective, it's flawed on evidence and logic. They assumed nonexistence of evidence (they had never seen a typewriter with proportional fonts) equals evidence of nonexistence (therefore they don't exist). It's also very sloppy research (they didn't try to find out if their assumption was true). Without digging, I can think of at least three ways a letter with proportional spacing could have been produced in 1973. The supporters of the forgery idea continue the assault on logic by reversing the normal burden of proof by insisting we have to prove that it's not a forgery (a negative proof).

Having insulted the mental capacity of the originator of the forgery idea, let me pull back a bit and say I think the real culprit here is over-eagerness. This is another case where speed is our enemy. When most bloggers have a good idea, our first priority is to get it on line and be the first to say it. Thinking the documents looked word processed was a good observation, it just didn't hold up under testing. Speed is not just a technical feature of blogging, it is one of our most respected values. Being first is one of the top claims to status in the blogosphere. Being clever comes in second. Being right or thorough is a distant third.

I don't exempt myself from this criticism. I'd sell my left kidney for a really good scoop. I'm not going to end with a pious call to reevaluate our core values. This is a young medium. Frontier wildness and adolescent mistakes are part of growth. There will be time for more reasoned consideration later. I just wanted to be the first one to say it.

Quote of the day

The Republican Party today is not at all the Republican Party that I observed growing up -- it is extremist ... dangerous, fundamentalist, naive, romanticist. They are as scary as I could possibly imagine. They're not conservative, they're not prudent. Quite frankly, they're not Republican.

--Andre Heinz

Perhaps Frist should rethink this
Interesting juxtaposition here. On the same day that this story gets play in the human interest section...

A man who tried to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs put its paw on the revolver's trigger.

Jerry Allen Bradford, 37, was charged with felony animal cruelty, the Escambia County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday. He was being treated at a hospital for a gunshot wound to his wrist.

Bradford said he decided to shoot the 3-month-old shepherd-mix dogs in the head because he couldn't find them a home, according to the sheriff's office.

On Monday, Bradford was holding two puppies -- one in his arms and another in his left hand -- when the dog in his hand wiggled and put its paw on the trigger of the .38-caliber revolver. The gun then discharged, the sheriff's report said.

...this story is in the politics section.

Congress will not vote on an assault-weapons ban due to expire Monday, Republican leaders said yesterday, rejecting a last-ditch effort by supporters to renew it.

"I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

The 10-year ban, signed by President Clinton in 1994, outlawed 19 types of military-style assault weapons. A clause directed that the ban expire unless Congress specifically reauthorized it.

[...]

In March, the Senate voted to add the ban to a bill that would have immunized gun manufacturers from liability suits stemming from violent gun crimes. But the Senate voted 90-8 against the final bill after the National Rifle Association urged its defeat.

By "American people" Frist, of course, means NRA lobbyists. Even if he won't listen to the stream of police chiefs that came to testify before congress, maybe he should consider this a matter of homeland defense. Every year, hundreds of homes and cabins are broken into and weapons stolen. Can we be sure people are doing this? What if the wild animals are taking advantage of the easy availability of military style weapons to arm themselves for the final showdown? Where did that puppy learn how to shoot a gun? And remember, there are people who have already sided with the animals and regularly exercise their constitutional right to arm bears.

Tangled Bank # 11
It's here! I received ten submissions on a nice variety of topics. The only fair way to present them is in the order they arrived, so without further ado:

Socar Myles of Ratty's Ghost tells how, after a quiet summer, her 19th floor home has been invaded by bugs, including one highly unpleasant hornet. Though she fought the hornet to a stalemate, the battle was not without collateral damage.

Prashant Mullick draws connections between the PBS show Evolution and recent news items about how homosexuality continues to be considered a criminal act in India. In particular, he confronts the common claim that homosexuality is "unnatural." Not only does homosexuality occur in nature, some of our closest relatives are enthusiastic practitioners.

Sean at Preposterous Universe just back from a rather busy summer of glamorous international conferences still has time to be interviewed for Sky and Telescope magazine. The author of a forthcoming article quizzed him about testing general relativity. He passes on some interesting Q&A.

From New Zealand, David Winter of Science and Sensibility talks about the way modern DNA techniques were used to solve old problems in moa taxonomy. The amazing diversity in the bones found for the moas have been a running problem for naturalists in New Zealand. Because most bones are young enough, DNA techniques offer some hope of unraveling this complex problem, while offering an interesting warning to paleontologists who do cannot use those same techniques.

Radagast of Rhosgobel takes exception to the oversimplified explanations of "photosynthesis" in most reference books. One of the most fundamental concepts in the biological sciences still seems to be taught by what Dave Berry calls the "bad" method. In grade school they teach us a bunch of facts that are wrong and then spend a decade or two more explaining that nothing works like we thought.

Tangled Bank founder and two-time host P. Z. Myers has a detailed post on neurulation in zebrafish. If you don't know what that is, be sure to read the comments. The key issue seems to be that the zebrafish are taking on the powerful mouse lobby for a position in the lucrative world of molecular genetics with the usual longterm goal of developing an army of invulnerable, giant, mutant zebrafish soldier-clones.

Having made your way through the previous two or three seriously educational dinner courses, you probably think you're entitled to some dessert. Mike at 10,000 Birds comes to our rescue with some peeps (not the marshmallow kind).

Wesley R. Elsberry of The Austringer gives us a short post on "Altruistic Punishment" (which does not mean "I'm doing this for your own good, young man"). Altruistic Punishment is the self-righteous urge to kill we all have when exposed to people breaking certain societal norms, especially when we are unaffected by their transgression. Think about people who take cuts in line or too many items through the express line.

S. Y. Affolee, a graduate student at Dartmouth in the microbiology department, sent in a review article called The Black Plague and Paleomicrobiology, which is right up my alley. The authors of the reviewed piece set out to examine the pathogen that caused the Black Plague and found themselves unable to prove the plague even happened. A revolution in Medieval Studies in the making or a D for sloppy research methodology? We report, you decide.

Jennifer Forman Orth, of UMass Boston, Department of Biology, gives us a round-up of interesting peer-reviewed journal articles about invasive species. This is a semi-regular feature at her place, the Invasive Species Weblog. Jennifer is very serious about her topic and has an entire store full of invasive species related goodies for the gardener on your gift list (the holidays are coming).

It's been fun to have an excuse to read more science and take some time off from politics. Now, I suppose I need to actually write something for TB.

The host of Tangled Bank #12 on September 22 will be Kevin, at Lean Left. Send your submissions to Pharyngula , Tangled Bank , or directly to Kevin at Lean Left. Tangled Bank is always looking for new hosts, too (write Pharyngula or Tangled Bank).

Update: I left one of the submissions out. This has been corrected. My sincerest apologies to the neglected writer.

Labor Day speeches
I like Labor Day. Labor Day is a holiday with a great concept, that hasn't yet been corrupted by mealy-mouthed, right-wing, false patriots or turned into a vulgar commercial exercise. Sure, there are endless season end and back to school sales, but these are more a coincidence of the calendar than a corruption of the holiday. So far, only the dreaded barbeque industry has managed to directly tap into the holiday itself.

On of the best things about Labor Day is that the workers' movement gets to come out in public and be unapologetically political. This is a holiday where left-wingers are expected to make speeches and we don't have to share the stage. Let's listen to one of those speeches.

Over the last few years, I've thought a lot about why America is heading in the wrong direction. Lost jobs, health care costs through the roof, the surplus gone, our alliances shredded, and our influence challenged. And then the other day, we were driving along the road in our campaign bus, and I saw a sign with a lone "W" leaning up against a post. At first, I was a little confused. But then, it all made sense.

As the president likes to say, there's nothing complicated about it. It does all come down to one letter -- W. George W. Bush. What do you think that W stands for? That W stands for wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction for America. And this election all comes down to one decision: Do we want four more years of wrong choices, or do we want to move America in a new direction?

The choice in this election couldn't be more clear. Do we want four more years of lost jobs and falling wages ... four more years of rising health care costs ... four more years of raiding Social Security to give tax cuts to the wealthy ... four more years of schools being shortchanged, leaving millions of children behind ... four more years of shipping jobs overseas and replacing them with jobs that pay you less ...four more years of a go-it-alone foreign policy. If you do, then you should vote for George W. Bush.

[...]

Of all George Bush's wrong choices, the most catastrophic one is the mess in Iraq. It's not that I would have done one thing differently in Iraq, I would have done everything differently. It was wrong to rush to war without a plan to win the peace. It was wrong not to build a strong international coalition of our allies. And it was wrong to put our young men and women into harm's way without the equipment and body armor protect themselves and get the job done.

[...]

At that convention in New York last week, the Bush Administration actually said that outsourcing jobs is good for this nation. That shouldn't be a surprise because that's what they've done for four years, and that's what they want to do for four more years. That's W and that's Wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction. It's time for a president who will lead America in a new direction.

[...]

At that convention in New York last week, George Bush actually promised the American people that after four years of failure, he now had a plan to get health care costs under control. Well, if you weren't suspicious of a plan announced just two months before an election, you got a quick dose of reality the next day. George Bush socked seniors with a 17 percent increase in Medicare. What's right about that? That's the biggest increase in Medicare premiums in the history of the program. Raising Medicare costs -- that's W and that's wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction. It's time for a president who will lead America in a new direction.

[...]

At that convention in New York last week, George Bush said that he actually had a new idea. And you know what it was? The bad, old idea of privatizing social security -- and cutting your benefits. That's W and that's wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction. It's time for a president who will lead America in a new direction.

[...]

On every issue, from Iraq to health care, from jobs to education, W stands for wrong. Wrong choices. Wrong direction. It's time for a president who will lead America in a new direction.

[...]

Four years ago, George W. Bush told us he wanted to create an economy where there was "high-paying, high-quality work" for everyone. He now says prosperity has returned and we've turned the corner. Well, that's just plain wrong. Most Americans I've met feel like they've been put in a corner. Prosperity hasn't returned. We've lost jobs. Wages are down. Benefits are down. And George Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression to actually lose jobs. That's George W. Bush. Wrong choices, wrong direction. It's time for a president who will America in a new direction.

That might not have been the best speech of the day, but it was probably the most important. And it was a good speech at that. Here's hoping we hear more like this.

I hope your weekend was restful, let's get ignore those polls and get back to work.

Tangled Bank reminder
We have less than a week before the next Tangled Bank is up and I can tell you the excitement is almost noticeable here at the crabgrass castle. But for those of you, who are late joining our show, let me take a moment to explain the Tangled Bank. Tangled Bank is a "Carnival of the Vanities" for science geeks and dilettantes alike. For those of you who haven't run across the carnival phenomenon in blogging, “a carnival is a weekly showcase of good weblog writing, selected by the authors themselves (that's the vanity part).” Every two weeks a different site hosts the Tangled Bank.

As our friend Pen Elayne says, “Oh, that's what a "carnival" is? Basically a blogaround? Geez, now they tell me...” She nailed it. It’s a fancy name for a blogaround. The Tangled Bank specializes in writing about the biological sciences in their broadest sense, including the politics of science, the history of science, nature watching, environmental politics, neurulation in zebrafish, or creationist bashing. If you’ve written a good post that relates to anything like that send me a link.

'Til now the Tangled Banks have all been hosted by science bloggers. This is the first Tangled Bank to be hosted by a humanities major. If you have an interest in science but no credentials, this is your chance to swim with the big kids. Wednesday morning when I get to work is the deadline. Go for it.

...I reach for my pistol
Various Nazis, usually Hermann Goering, are given credit for the quote: "Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol" (also variously translated, this is the most common version). I don't often claim sympathy for Third Reich war criminals, but I do understand the feeling that the Reichsmarshall was voicing. Some words used in public political discourse become so loaded with meaning--and frequently at odds with their dictionary meaning--that my reaction on hearing them is a barely squelched urge to violence. The more American way of phrasing Goering's thought would be, "if I hear 'em say that again, I'm gonna kill 'em."

I offer this as an explanation for my reaction to the President's speech yesterday. There are some words that are so cringeworthy that Republicans should be allowed to utter them. At the top of the list is "reform." Every time I hear a Republican mention reforming something, my fight-or-flight reflex goes into overdrive. Welfare reform. Tort reform. Medicare reform. Social Security reform. Any kind of deregulation as reform. Whenever reform crosses their lips it means the majority is going to be seriously screwed over for the benefit of the moneyed minority.

My normal reaction to a word being bled of its meaning is to announce a moratorium on using that word, to give it a chance to recover some linguistic credibility (not that anyone pays attention to my list). In pop culture, which is random and stupid, that would normally be enough. Pop culture overuse comes from a lack of imagination; words are damaged through linguistic faddishness, not sinister intent. But in politics, the problem is deeper. Words are misused in an attempt to camouflage actions. "Defense of the Family" doesn't defend anything, it deprives a group of rights. "Tort reform" means a limit on our right to seek legal redress. "Social Security reform" means gutting Social Security to provide investment funds. "Tax relief" is just a sick joke. George Orwell called this tactic "newspeak" when he watched the Department of War renamed the the Department of Defense. Despite the fact that we have had almost sixty years since he warned us, the tactic has just grown stronger and healthier. Et cetera, und so weiter, and so it goes.

When George Bush gives a full length speech, there are so many of these cringeworthy moments that I'm still twitching today. Good thing I don't carry a pistol; my TV and computor monitor would need weekly replacement if I did.

Butt covering disclaimer: This post is a semi-humorous, cumudgeonly rant. I have never, nor do I now, advocate violence by me, or anyone else, against anyone, anywhere. In fact, I'm a wimpy pacifist. Can't we all just get along?

Clinton in the hospital
Clinton is in the hospital with chest pains (they appear to be avoiding the term "heart attack") and needs a bypass operation. Ironic that this happened after he lost weight and is his best shape in years.

How long before the wingnuts start claiming it's a plot to steal attention from Bush? How long before Safire manages to work this into his Hillary for president conspiracy theory? How long before someone describes it as the wrath of God? Seriously, if you're the praying type, now is the time to do so.

This works for me
I love it when Kerry says just exactly what we wanted to hear him say.

I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

The Vice President even called me unfit for office last night. I guess I'll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.

It’s still my ideal to hear Kerry use lines like this as applause lines. Defend his honor (but not in a Zellous pistols at dawn manner), slaps the other side hard, but then push on to issues. He can win the pissing match and still lose the election.