Daily Kos

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:46:05 GMT

Tonight's Diary Rescue has been brought to you by the following Rescue Rangers: vcmvo2, ItsJessMe, ybruti, dadanation, sunspark says, and mem from somerville as well as the letters P, D and Q. and yes, dadanation also faked being the editor.

Rescued Diaries, The

Unenergy discusses the requirements for Building a country's energy infrastructure by drawing on much information from Australia and elsewhere. (ybruti)

KAMuston toasts a legislative victory with TINY BUBBLES and explains what the history of champagne reveals about capitalism and government regulation. (ybruti)

two roads digs into the details surrounding a famous sighting of a "UFO" in New Mexico's desert in Saturday Night Uforia: Death of a legend. (vcmvo2)

AKMask explores studies of newborn infants and how they respond to their mother's voice in Weekend Science: Language's influence in the womb.(vcmvo2)

BruceMcF discusses the importance of making biking much safer in this detailed diary: Weekend Bike Blogging: Bike Boxes I Can Believe In. (vcmvo2)

Contrary to the meme that the Democrats are in trouble, coonsey looks at current realities and predicts that a Tsunami: Will Wipe Out Republican Party in 2010. (sunspark says)

Time-travel with Username4242 and have a look around at a point when the mountain west was a different shade of blue in Prehistoric Weekly--Life in the Western Interior Seaway Part I. (mem from somerville)

Yosef 52 brings some philosophy to DailyKos as he ponders communication and The Existential Loneliness of the Human Being. (ItsJessMe)

jamess considers America's broken and aging infrastructure and declares that It's Time for a WPA -- It's Time to fix that Leaky Roof. (sunspark says)

nonnoboy discusses the validity of a soldier "just saying no" in Listen to our No-No Boys: Lt. Ehren Watada. (sunspark says)

goffchris wonders if we can stop the runaway train or if it will derail in Tinkering around the edges of disaster. (mem from somerville)

MattTX uses last night's votes to assemble a guide to suggested primary contests The HCR Primary Index - Naming Names. (mem from somerville)

Usual Extras, The

jotter brings us High Impact Diaries: November 7, 2009.

emeraldmaiden brings tonight's Top Comments - 11-8-09: Recovery Edition.

Closing Paragraph, The

Please use this as an Open Thread as well as your chance to promote your favorite diaries of the day. Respectful engagement is most welcome here. Please keep in mind that each Diary Rescue's daily purview extends from 3pm California Time yesterday to 3pm California Time today. Shamelessly self-promote or pimp for a friend in this Open Thread!

The Future of Marriage Equality in New Hampshire

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:04 GMT

In May, Maine's legislature and governor made marriage equality the law of the state. In June, New Hampshire's government did the same.

We all know what happened in Maine last week. And almost immediately, questions started flying about New Hampshire, especially if you read Politico and Political Wire, both of which ran posts selectively raising the possibility that the state would follow in Maine's footsteps.

New Hampshire, though, isn't Maine. That's true in a few ways. For one, we know that marriage equality is an issue on which opinions vary widely by age cohort. Maine's population is 15.1% over the age of 65. New Hampshire's is 12.9%. Given that older people vote more, that's a noteworthy difference.

More importantly, though, New Hampshire and Maine have different mechanisms for changing laws. That's what many of the national stories raising the issue didn't make clear.

There are two ways equality could be overturned in New Hampshire. One is legislation overturning June's equality bill. Defending Democratic majorities in New Hampshire's House and Senate must therefore be a priority for 2010.

The other way we could lose equality

is a constitutional amendment that would charge voters with deciding if "the state shall only recognize the union of one man and one woman as marriage."

Shades of California and Maine? Not really. Yes, equality could ultimately end up on the ballot. But...

Part II, Article 100 of the constitution provides for the following two methods of proposing amendments to the constitution:

General Court

A 3/5 vote of each house of the General Court is required to send a proposed constitutional amendment to the people at the next biennial November election. A 2/3 vote of the qualified voters participating in an election is required to adopt a new amendment.

Constitutional Convention

A majority vote of both houses of the General Court is required to place the following question on the ballot: "Shall there be a convention to amend or revise the constitution?" If such question has not been submitted to the people in ten years, the Secretary of State is required by Pt. II, Art. 100 to place the question on the ballot. A majority of qualified voters participating in an election is required to convene a convention. At the next election the delegates are elected by the people, or earlier as provided by the General Court. A 3/5 vote of the number of delegates is required to send a proposed constitutional amendment to the people at the next biennial November election. A 2/3 vote of the qualified voters participating in an election is required to adopt a new amendment.

So, marriage equality was passed in the New Hampshire state legislature by a vote of 198-176 in the House (yes, it's a very large legislative body) and 14-10 in the Senate. And repealing it would require either that those two bodies vote to do so and the governor sign such a bill, which will not happen:

Lynch wouldn't support repealing the gay-marriage law if it reached his desk, spokesman Colin Manning said. "It was carefully crafted legislation, now law, that protects the rights of all of our citizens and the governor would not support changing it," he said.

Or it would require a supermajority vote of that same legislature, followed by a supermajority vote of the people of New Hampshire. That's not going to happen. In fact, in July, Daily Kos had Research 2000 poll marriage equality in New Hampshire. At that point, 49% of people disapproved while 41% approved. But following the Maine loss, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley said that:

Our internal polling...

Show marriage equality in NH 8 pts ahead, there is zero evidence this will be a factor here in 2010.

Those of us who want to see civil rights advanced have to be constantly vigilant, and get way out in front of any threat to equality. We know that history is on our side and that even the horrible votes that have been taken in the past few years will be mostly overturned within a generation. But every setback injures people now, and injures justice itself. So it is absolutely right to turn our eye to New Hampshire and prepare for NOM and the rest of the bigots to make an effort there. Luckily, it doesn't seem likely to go anywhere -- even if it's a more attention-getting story the other way.

The Kids Are Alright: Some Thoughts About Same-Sex Marriage

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:00:05 GMT

The following, hard as it might be to believe, is a true story. The setting: Driving in the family car to a lavish lunch at the local Carls Jr. drive-thru. Saturday afternoon, November 1st. 2008.

My four year-old daughter is absorbed by a Disney cartoon on her seatback DVD player, while my seven year-old son fidgets in the back seat. I have lunch duty with my kids, because my wife is on a deadline, and needed to go into the firm on Saturday to tie up some loose ends. I am listening to a college football game on the radio when my son interrupts the play-by-play from the backseat:

"Hey, Dad, how are we going to vote on Proposition 8?"

Aside from the plural "we", which I found kind of cute, this was not the question I was hoping for. Discussions on marriage with a second grader is not my idea of a fun conversation, "traditional" or same sex.

"Why do you ask, buddy?"

"Well, Dad. I have been thinking about it. And I talked about it with some friends at school. And I think we ought to vote "yes."

Ruh-roh.

This comes, to say the least, as a shock. I am pretty well to the left-of-center politically, and my wife, if anything, is to my left. So, hearing my elementary school-aged son coming out as a proponent of marriage discrimination was a bit of an eye-opener.

I need to get to the bottom of this...

"Really, bud. Well, why do you think that?"

"Well, Dad, that would make it illegal for a boy to marry a boy, and a girl to marry a girl, right?"

"Yes, Cody, that's what Proposition 8 would do."

"Well, I think that it should be illegal."

This is where the speculation sets in. Has his teacher been pushing this? Is one of his buddies the product of a very conservative home, and they have pushed the issue with their kids? Who knows?

"Hey, Cody, why do you think it ought to be illegal?"

"Because, Dad, I don't want to marry a boy. I want to marry a girl. You know, like Kate or somebody."

I start breathing again. He thinks "same sex marriage" is somehow a mandatory thing, and that Prop 8 is the thin line between marriage the way he has always understood it, and some bizarre new world where only boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls.

"No...buddy. It is not like that. Prop 8 makes it illegal for boys to marry boys, or girls to marry girls, if they want to. It won't change who you get to marry."

Silence from the backseat. Wheels, quite clearly, are turning.

"Oh...well...that's okay then. Besides, why should I care who someone else marries??!!"

Kids get it.

And that is the only saving grace out of disappointments like California's Proposition 8 and Maine's Question 1. It was echoed again this week when in his moving post-mortem on Wednesday morning, Bill in Portland Maine found some comfort in the otherwise dreary data post-election:

This morning the words of America's first openly-gay Episcopal Bishop, V. Gene Robinson---who has endured bigotry of the worst kind, including an assassination attempt---are soothing my savage manboobs. Robinson visited Portland several weeks ago to talk about Question 1. He raised the all-too-real possibility that things wouldn’t go our way this time. And now that the results are in and the vote didn’t go our way, his words are helping me this morning. A lot.

He said that we've already won this fight, it's just a question of timing. Here's what he means. Look at this result from last night, courtesy of Adam Bink at Open Left. It is the only thing I've shed tears over this morning, and they are happy ones:

Final numbers are in from [University of Maine]-Orono campus- 81% No, 19% Yes.

A 'No' vote was a vote to keep the same-sex marriage law in place. Look at that: 81 percent No, 19 percent Yes. That's the future of gay rights in America. It's coming. It's on our doorstep. It's just a matter of time. All Schubert-Flint and NOM and the Catholic church did last night was kick the can down the road a bit.

More than any other demographic cohort, the issue of support of same-sex marriage, and, for that matter, all manners of gay rights, breaks down on the issue of age. More than race, more than wealth.

It is even greater than the red state/blue state divide, as evidenced by a fascinating table at the website Sociological Images (h/t: Taegan Goddard):

This chart comes from a demographic study which estimated support for same-sex marriage based on fifteen years of data (with the data weighted by most recent results). While it is an estimate, it is worth noting that its placement of California and Maine right on the 50/50 border is, at worst, only a slightly optimistic assessment.

One can draw a trio critical conclusions from this study:

The age divide is far greater than the gaping political chasm that exists between red states and blue states. Even in traditionally hostile states like Alabama and Mississippi, voters aged 18-29 are likely to be supportive of same-sex marriage at a higher rate than elderly voters even in traditionally supportive states like Massachusetts and Vermont.

There is a sizeable gap between the attitudes of voters aged 65 and over and those in the next nearest age cohort (45-64). In fact, the chart shows that a majority of the states in America have a higher rate of support for same-sex marriage among the voters aged 45-64 than the best state performance (Massachusetts) for voters over the age of 65. Indeed, a dozen states appear to see that age cohort with at least 45% support for same-sex marriage, a plurality that would certainly be pushed over the top by the support by youngest voters.

Conversely, in only a dozen states do we see less than majority support for same-sex marriage among voters 18-29. Even traditionally conservative states like Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming see majority support from their youngest voters.

The bottom line is this--not only, as BiPM noted on Wednesday, is the clock ticking on the political strength of the opponents of marriage equity, it could be coming quicker than we think. What this survey makes clear is that the elderly voters of the next decade are nowhere near as condemning of same-sex marriage as their elders.

We can already see it in the rare examples where similar measures have been on the ballot some years apart. Take my home state of California. In the Spring of 2000, conservatives placed an anti-marriage equity law onto the ballot. It was known as Proposition 22. It not only passed in this nominally blue state, it was not even close: the measure passed by 1.7 million votes (PDF file), a decisive 61-39 win.

Proposition 8 was a bitter pill for the gay community, indeed all progressives, to swallow. That said, there was some hope in how dramatically the landscape had changed in eight years: the margin had been cut from 22 points to just four points (PDF file). Even in the heavily enhanced turnout (13.4 million votes cast, versus just 7.5 million votes cast in the election which decided Prop 22), the margin was down to just 600,000 votes.

And the chart above makes something else clear: with each passing year, as macabre as it may seem to consider, a group of voters hostile to the issue of marriage equality are going to be replaced by voters who are substantially more likely to support the cause.

Bill in Portland Maine is right--the advocates for Question 1 only succeeded in kicking the can down the road. What might be greater cause for optimism is the data seems to hint that the can may not have been even kicked all that far.

Midday Open Thread

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:01:10 GMT

Lieberman Pledges To Filibuster House Bill: The Public Option Is ‘Unnecessary’. But please, please, please, Senator Reid, don't strip Joe of his chairmanship and shut him out of the Democratic caucus. Because then we would lose any leverage we have in getting him to vote our way. When he finally does switch parties, will that be enough to get you to act?

^{[h/t to dasheight]}

From Charlie's Diary via Andrew Sullivan:

So here's the upshot: of the 4.6 Gy of Earth's known history, there's only been enough oxygen in the atmosphere for us to survive for about 0.5 Gy. For roughly 90% of the Earth's history we couldn't even breathe the air. And about 10-25% of the time, there have been ice ages so savagely fierce that the glaciers reached the tropics: odds are good that any meat probe landing on solid ground during these periods would rapidly die of exposure. So historically, Earth has only been inhabitable about 8% of the time — assuming you are lucky enough to find some solid ground. Once you factor in the random surface distribution, we're down to about 2% survivability.

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones reports on Igor Panarin's Doomsday Tea Party: One ex-KGB analyst has been warning for years that the US will collapse in 2010. Conservative activists think he may be on to something.

Heavier Americans Push Back on Health Debate.

From emptywheel - Bart Stupak’s C-Street Sepsis:

As you read Bart Stupak boasting of taking reproductive choice away from women, remember that he’s not just an otherwise good Democrat (he’s not, in fact, a Blue Dog) who consistently lets the agenda of the Catholic Church override the well-being of his constituents, he’s also one of C-Street’s top Democratic members. This man, crowing over his legislative success is speaking as a representative of a group that preaches moral purity for others, but excuses itself from such moral guidelines with a back-slapping prayer lunch with the buddies. And then turns around and uses that moralizing to accrue political power.

While it looks increasingly likely that President Obama will approve the addition of 30,000 or more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, McChrystal seeks to keep UK troops 'out of harm's way': General aims to foil Taliban plan to make Afghanistan a British election issue.

The Gospel of the Golden Parachute:

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, believes banks serve a social purpose and are doing "God's work."

Thanks to the Swing State Project, here's a handy sortable calendar of 2010 filing deadlines and primary dates in all 50 states.

Over at the Wonk Room, Daniel J. Weiss, Jaren Love and Michael McGovern take note that The ‘Party Of No’ Becomes The ‘Party Of Slow’: Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses of progressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers voting for and against major energy legislation without such delay.

Driver Forces Passengers To Pray On MARTA Bus.

H1N1: More Illness, A Bit More Vaccine, Bruised Intentions

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:00:04 GMT

There are several really good flu pieces in the NY Times from the last few days. One set of stories is on the issue of vaccine distribution, including this one:

Citigroup has received 1,200 doses, more than half of what it requested, health officials said, and in late October, Goldman received 200 of the 5,400 doses it asked for. By contrast, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center received 200 of the 27,400 doses that it requested for its workers, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Jessica Scaperotti, a health department spokeswoman, said the priority was to get the vaccine to pediatricians, obstetricians, gynecologists, community health centers and public and private hospitals. Private companies that have asked for the vaccine are also eligible to receive it, as long as it is distributed to people who are considered at risk.

A follow-up story was based on the press conference at CDC Friday:

The federal health official in charge of immunization and respiratory diseases said Friday that swine flu vaccine should be distributed through many outlets, including workplace clinics, to get it to high-risk people as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The official, Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was responding to a furor caused by the revelation that the employee health departments of some big Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, had received small shipments of vaccine — while pediatricians, clinics and major hospitals waited for their full allotments.

"There’s nothing wrong with an employer-based clinic," Dr. Schuchat said. "When you look at adults and where they get vaccinated, it’s a common place. It’s convenient."

Workplaces often have employees who are pregnant, have newborns at home, or have asthma or diabetes, she said, adding, "Our goal is put vaccine in the path of people who are in those priority groups to make it as easy as possible for them to be vaccinated."

As noted when we discussed this on Friday, however it gets to high risk patients, it gets to high risk patients. This very-foreseeable furor is based on the idea that Wall Street isn't very popular right now (arrogance is out, humble is in) and that somehow, they were line jumping ahead of others. But here's what the experts say:

Local health departments decide who gets each vaccine lot, and the centers sent a letter to all state, county and city health officers on Thursday reminding them to make sure it was going only to people at risk.

The agency itself had "no evidence that providers were giving vaccine outside the recommended priority populations," Dr. Schuchat said.

Independent flu experts noted that workplace clinics could control who got vaccine, while public vaccination campaigns have been plagued by reports of people begging vaccinators for shots or admitting having lied about being pregnant or asthmatic.

Just assume there is no public trust, and document everything. Give them vaccine and make the companies accountable. Vaccinate the high risk group however you can. Do it transparently. Don't have the companies defend it (no one trusts them, and recognize that no one trusts them), have the health department defend it. And at the end of the day, recognize that our public health infrastructure is cobbled together with bailing wire and duct tape. Fix it at the state and local level before it breaks down altogether (and yes, the stimulus would have been a perfect place to get the money...)

Susan Collins: "Everybody in the room is concerned about a pandemic flu, but does it belong in this bill? Should we have 870 million dollars in this bill? No, we should not."

Actually, yes, we should.

...

Now, while Wall Street actually gives out vaccine, these outlier docs don't.

Public health leaders are at a loss to explain the skeptical minority, except to say that it mirrors the chronically low percentage of health-care workers who get the seasonal flu vaccine every year. Officials worry that these doubters could have a disproportionate influence in an already frustrating and confusing situation, and stress that the studies conducted so far and the intensive monitoring underway indicate that the vaccine is as safe as any flu vaccine.

"I am very disappointed, deeply puzzled and very disturbed by this," said William Schaffner, president-elect of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. "The people for whom these doctors are not recommending this vaccine are clearly high-priority patients who could have very adverse outcomes if they get infected with the virus."

I am completely with Schaffner. Patient questions about vaccine are one thing, medical profession harm from denying patients vaccine is another thing altogether. As a doc who treats high risk children, I am ashamed of my (occasionally) under-informed colleagues, but not surprised. Some people including docs put their finger in their ears and hum loudly whenever facts that distract them present themselves. To break through that, the professional societies need to do a better job educating the health profession (you can see it in the usually poor 50% compliance with seasonal flu shots, which is much better this year than most.) But you have to actively ignore the data sent out by AAP, AAFP, CDC and others to stay this ignorant. Just goes to show doing something of this magnitude (flu vax education) is of the herding cats variety of difficult.

Also, while Wall Street gives vax, swine flu clinics in NYC are not well attended.

Seven of the city's weekend swine flu vaccination clinics for middle and high school students opened Saturday - but turnout was so low that the Health Department invited more people in.

The presence of available vaccine, more than anything else, will defuse the Wall Street story.

...

Meanwhile, on vaccine, here's new polling data:

Only about a third of adults who have tried to get a swine flu vaccine have been able to get it, according to a new national poll released Friday.

That's true even for people who are at extra risk for severe complications and should be at the front of the line. The numbers are about the same for parents who tried to get the vaccine for their children, the Harvard School of Public Health poll found.

And here are the numbers:

Only 5% of those polled said they already had been inoculated. Of the rest, 52% said they did not plan to get vaccinated. Of the 40% who said they wanted the vaccine, 12% said they already had attempted to find it but failed.

Of those polled, 70% said they think the H1N1 vaccine is safe for most people, while only 17% said there was a strong chance the vaccine is unsafe.

As I noted yesterday, since 20-30% of Americans get a voluntary flu vax every year, we are doing better than the norm. And we are certainly doing pretty well on the vaccine safety issue, despite the occasional nutter who claims otherwise. The CDC vaccine safety page is here.

...

Finally, the big clinical issue is to treat or not to treat.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antivirals should be given in the most severe cases of the flu, or when a patient is in a high-risk group, which includes pregnant women and children under 2.

But that leaves a large gray area for mild or moderate cases or people who have simply been exposed to the virus and want to prevent its taking hold. For the moderately ill, the drug may shorten the duration of symptoms by about a day. But it is expensive, costing about $100 for a 10-pill adult course, and it can have side effects like stomach aches, nausea and, more rarely, confusion and nightmares.

There's some good advice within from flu experts Andy Pavia (I interviewed Dr. Pavia on Daily Kos here) and Anne Moscona (Cornell.)

It comes down to a judgment call for doctors and parents, said Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah and chairman of the pandemic influenza task force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

"There is no group for whom treatment is inappropriate if they are ill with influenza," Dr. Pavia said. But, he cautioned, "in mild to moderate illness, treatment has to be begun within 48 hours to have substantial benefit."...

The guidance "leaves room for clinical judgment," said Dr. Anne Moscona, a professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. "And it leaves room to decide on a case-by-case basis, thank God, but humans want to be told exactly what to do. If the C.D.C. gave more specific guidance than that, they would be making it up."

Still, best advice is check with your own doc. At this point in time, tamiflu shortage is not an issue. pediatric meds are in short supply, but pharmacies (you may need to call around) can make a suspension from adult capsules.

...

A joint Q&A interview (myself and CDC) is here on momlogic.

Interview with Elon Musk

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:58:15 GMT

If you ever read novels written by the late Robert Heinlein, you'd soon come across a character that was part scientist, part entrepreneur, part explorer, and wildly successful at all three. Of course, such people don't exist in real life, do they?

Meet Elon Musk (Wiki bio). If the name doesn't ring a bell, odds are you or someone you know uses the now familiar online service he developed on a regular basis. But Mr. Musk is currently involved in something even more ambitious. I had a chance to ask him a few questions about that.

DarkSyde: Why did you start SpaceX? (Company site here, My brief survey here)

Elon Musk: Extending life beyond Earth was my driver, the reason I started SpaceX in 2002. Making progress toward extending life beyond Earth is my overarching goal. I started thinking about it in college — 18 years ago, when I was 19. It seemed to me that there were three things that would have the biggest impact on our lives in the future: the Internet, transition to a sustainable energy economy, and, in particular, space exploration—the extension of human life to local planets. I’ve always been interested in space exploration as a mission, but I thought it wasn’t something that I could do right away because of its capital requirements.

So I began by founding PayPal, the Internet payment system that became quite successful. It attracted 200 million customers, became part of EBay and now constitutes a majority of EBay’s market. PayPal provided me with the capital to venture into space exploration.

DS: What services will the company offer?

EM: SpaceX is seeking to revolutionize access to space by developing a family of launch vehicles and spacecraft intended to increase the reliability and reduce the cost of both manned and unmanned space transportation, ultimately by a factor of ten. With its Falcon line of launch vehicles and the Dragon line of spacecraft, SpaceX offers light, medium and heavy lift capabilities to deliver satellites and spacecraft into any altitude and inclination, from Low-Earth Orbit to geosynchronous to planetary missions.

DS: Among the options offered by the Augustine committee is for a commercially derived heavy lift vehicle. Does SpaceX have something like that in the works?

EM: We will go beyond Falcon 9 to the Falcon 9 Heavy (Illustration right), which will have three times the payload of Falcon 9 and more payload capability than any launch vehicle since the Saturn 5.

DS: A manned flight to the ISS aboard a Soyuz currently costs about 50 million dollars. Where do you see this price in a few years when the Falcon 9 comes online and what are the benefits to US taxpayers?

EM: In contrast to the existing manned systems, a seat onboard the Dragon Spacecraft [Shown left; Company FAQ & photo gallery] launched by the Falcon 9 rocket and would cost less than $20M per seat and it is 100% manufactured and launched in the United States. We are estimating that it would create well in excess of a 1000 high quality jobs at Cape Canaveral and an equivalent number in California and Texas, where we do our manufacturing and testing. Moreover, the total cost would only be $1.5B, so taxpayers would save $2B.

DS: How far along is this system?

EM: NASA has already reviewed our cargo F9/Dragon and is comfortable enough to assign it the bulk of the operational transport duties following Shuttle retirement. Although a lot more work would be needed to certify it for astronaut transport to and from the station, which can readily be accomplished before the end of 2011, particularly given the empirical flight history it will have by then.

DS: There have already been private astronaut flights on Soyuz TMA's to the ISS - how long do they think before they offer flights to private astronauts, and are they looking at offering similar rides, that have private astronauts on board, like a manned version of Dragonlab?

EM: SpaceX is not a part of the "Space Tourism" market. The key difference between SpaceX and a company that offers rides to private astronauts is that SpaceX develops rockets which take cargo and eventually people into Earth orbit; nearly all private flights are sub-orbital, which means their vehicles only visit the edge of space for a few minutes. For orbital rockets like ours, the performance requirements and technological demands are orders of magnitude higher.

DS: Dragon has been identified at least once as a lunar capable vehicle, similar to an Apollo capsule, is that correct?

EM: After we master delivering payload and passengers to the ISS, we certainly have other destinations in mind ...

Elon Musk is the cofounder of PayPal, SpaceX, and the revolutionary electric car company Tesla Motors; if you think electric cars are clunky and slow, look below the fold! No guarantees, but he hopes to be available within the hour to respond to a few questions or comments. If you have a question for him, please help out by putting "Mr. Musk?" in the subject line.

The Case for Karen Armstrong

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:00:02 GMT

If you open Karen Armstrong's new book, The Case for God, expecting to find a list of mysterious cures, scientific curiosities, or certified miracles all pointing toward the physical presence of a divine influence in the world, you will be sorely disappointed. Armstrong has no interest in, and is in fact completely antithetical to, trying to prove God's existence. Despite this, her book is positioned -- both in marketing and from its opening pages -- as a direct challenge to books like Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. How can you make a defense of God if you've no interest in the existence of God? Quite well, actually, and if you do it as sharply as Armstrong, you can make hundreds of pages of what is basically theological analysis both entertaining and informative.

Armstrong argues for an idea very similar to the "non-overlapping magisteria" that were put forward by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (and in fact, Gould gets several nice mentions in The Case for God). She refers frequently to the idea that, in the past, people tended to break arguments into two groups for which she uses the Greek terms logos and mythos. Logos reflects practical, immediate reasoning -- how do we build that aqueduct, what can we make from this wood, which crop would grow best in that field? Mythos is more aimed at the why -- what does it mean that my friend has died, how can I recapture the joy I felt in a moment of pure experience, how can I find meaning and peace among the world's noise and violence? This sort of approach could easily fall into a gooey cheer for "being spiritual," but Armstrong is not talking about having a nice little breathing session now and then. She focuses on the 3000 year history of monotheism and the great effort that was put into building flexible, thoughtful religions, on how those religions continue to have a meaningful role in the life of millions, and how the recent history of those religions has led to unfortunate developments that are unique over those three millennia.

No civilization of the past thought it could get by without logos. Pyramids were built with extensive use of mathematics and the most advanced technology of the time. The same could be said of the Acropolis and of medieval cathedrals. When we see those past societies as ignorant and driven out of unreasoning "myths" it's because we are the oddities of history. Having acquired so much new data to feed logos over such a short time, we've become completely centered in scientific reasoning and entirely dismissive of mythos -- perversely, that's even true when we talk about fundamentalist religion. We look back on some ritual of the past and dismiss it as mindless following of tradition and superstition. You don't need to plant at midnight, or sacrifice a lamb, or ferry a statue around the town to satisfy some some dumb animal-headed deity. We search for the hint of reasoning that might be behind these rituals, and discount the idea that they served to establish meaning in lives that were just as busy, joyful, tragic, and brief as our own. We've turned "myth" into another word for fantasy, or lie. In doing so:

We lost the art of interpreting the old tales of gods walking the earth, dead men striding out of tombs, or seas parting miraculously. We began to understand concepts such as faith, revelation, myth, mystery, and dogma in a way that would have been very surprising to our ancestors.

In particular, the concept of faith comes in for a close examination. We understand faith today as a kind of blind acceptance -- like Indiana Jones stepping off into space in his quest for the Holy Grail. Religious people cheer this kind of "faith" and many Christians tout this as the one and only qualification to be among Christ's chosen. But that's not what the word translated as "faith" meant in Biblical times. It's not even what it meant when the Bible was first translated into English.

The term used in most New Testament texts (the Greek word pistis) meant something closer to loyalty or commitment, than unreasoning belief. When Jesus chastised his followers for their lack of faith, or commended a non-Jew for having faith, he wasn't talking about some unspoken creed. He certainly wasn't praising them for seeing that he was divine. He was talking about follow-through, about living up to ideas of selflessness and humbleness. Even the word "belief" has changed from a Middle English sense of "prize" to our modern idea of "accept at face value." Imagine how different every Christian creed would sound today if we replace "believe in" with "value" and "have faith in" with "commit myself to."

Unquestioning acceptance doesn't figure into the vigorous ethical and theological debates that ran through street conversations and popular songs of previous centuries, and Armstrong sees it as an invention of modern religion. Unable to separate logos and mythos, and trying to view everything through a lens of the logos-based society in which they live, fundamentalists reacted not by rediscovering the transcendent ideas of the past, but by inventing something new. Instead of science and religion, they tried to build a scientific religion in which every aspect of the world must conform to a literal interpretation of scripture (one that ignores the inherent, and quite intentional, contradictions built into that text). Blind acceptance had to be inserted into the mix because only blind acceptance allows stepping around the wreck trying to force mythos to conform to logos makes of both. If you look for reviews of Amrstrong's book, you'll find that that the harshest reviews are not from the general "secular" press, but from fundamentalists. "Demon inspired" is one of the milder phrases you'll encounter if you make a search for reactions from Christian fundamentalists.

Though the heart of the book is a lengthy examination of theology that starts with the paintings of Neolithic caves and ends with twenty-first century philosophers, don't get the impression that Armstrong asserts that the meaning of religion can be found in a text -- whether that text is the Bible, the Torah, or her own book. The Case for God might as well be called The Case for Religious Practice. And by practice she doesn't mean doing something once, she means doing it over, and over, and over -- like practicing piano -- until you discover the passion at the end of all that rote, mechanical repetition.

Religion... was not primarily something that people thought, but something they did. It's truth was acquired by practical action. It is no use imagining that you will be able to drive a car if you simply read the manual or study the rules of the road. You cannot learn to dance, paint, or cook by perusing text or recipes. The rules of a board game sound obscure, unnecessarily complicated, and dull until you start to play, when everything falls into place. There are some things that can be learned only by constant, dedicated practice, but you find that you achieve something that seemed initially impossible. Instead of sinking to the bottom of the pool, you can float, you may learn to jump higher and with more grace than seems humanly possible, or to sing with unearthly beauty. You do not always understand how you achieved these feats, because your mind directs your body in a way that bypasses conscious logical deliberation, but somehow you learn to transcend your original capabilities. Some of these activities bring indescribable joy. A musician can lose herself in her music, a dancer becomes inseparable from the dance, and a skier feels entirely at one with himself and the external world as he speeds down the slope. It is a satisfaction that goes deeper than merely "feeling good." It is what the Greeks called ekstatis, which means a stepping outside the norm.

Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. ... It is no use magisterially weighing up the teachings of religion to judge their truth of falsehood before embarking on a religious way of life. You will discover their truth -- or lack of it -- only if you translate those doctrines into ritual or ethical action. Like any skill, religion requires perseverance, hard work, and discipline.

Not only does Armstrong see the blind acceptance of doctrine as an impediment to religious practice, she discounts the idea that religious beliefs can have any value unless they are placed into a framework of daily practice, commitment, and ethical action.

If you're waiting for her to stop explaining where the fundamentalists went wrong and start her case against "Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens," you're going to be disappointed again -- because Armstrong seems them as both as flip sides of the same coin.

Like all religious fundamentalists, the new athesists believe that they alone are in possession of the truth; like Christian fundamentalists they read scripture in an entirely literal manner and seem to never have heard of the long tradition of allegoric or Talmudic interpretation... Harris seems to imagine that biblical inspiration means that the Bible was actually "written by God." Hitchens assumes that faith is entirely dependent on a literal reading of the Bible, and that, for example, the discrepancies in the gospel infancy narratives prove the falseness of Christianity: "Either the gospels are in some sense literal truth, or the whole thing is a fraud and perhaps a moral one at that." Like Protestant fundamentalists, Dawkins has a simplistic view of the moral teaching of the Bible, taking it for granted that its chief purpose is to issue clear rules of conduct and provide us with "role models," which, not surprisingly, he finds lamentably inadequate. He also presumes that since the Bible claims to be inspired by God it must also provide scientific information. Dawkins' only point of disagreement with the Protestant fundamentalists is that he finds the Bible unreliable about science while they do not.

Armstrong is not worried about the claim that God can't be found in science. Which is, in fact, a very old claim.

In fact, the new atheists are not radical enough. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is "nothing" out there...

Her concern is that the Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins camp concern themselves only with tackling a theology that is itself "decidedly unorthodox" and limited -- they want to knock down a sickly child and then proclaim they've won the heavyweight title.

By taking on fundamentalism at both ends of the scale, Armstrong has assured that her book will draw the ire of both camps. In the process she's written a book that's fascinating, packed with information about the history of religion and philosophy, and illuminating when it shows the paths we followed to end up where we find ourselves today (from a political point of view, it's very instructive to look at the origins of modern Christian fundamentalism and in particular to look at how mainstream Protestantism fanned the flames of a dying fundamentalist movement by heaping on ridicule). If nothing else, The Case for God is a terrific reference -- and a splendid bit of long form argument. If you've read any of Karen Armstrong's books in the past -- including her biography of the Buddha, or her personal account of losing faith as a young novitiate -- you'll find some of the same points repeated here, but in new historical contexts. If you haven't read her works before... well, she warns you right in the introduction that this isn't exactly light reading. If you don't want to face detailed descriptions of theological conflicts and the development of religious frameworks, turn back now.

Whether anyone will find that argument convincing, in a world that's increasingly divided into extremes, is difficult to say. But at least it should inspire some good conversations.

Update [2009-11-8 11:6:2 by Devilstower]: One thing that I greatly regret leaving out of the initial review: if there is a "hero" in this book, it's not God. It's Socrates. You can see the admiration that Armstrong has for that Socratic dialog -- a deep challenging of beliefs, but one that takes place in a friendly and open environment. The point of drawing a line between the fundamentalists and the Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris camp isn't to make an equivalence in beliefs, but an equivalence in approach. That is, yelling past each other doesn't lead to either side moving toward the middle. In fact, that kind of approach has, many times in the past, been the spark for more extremism. No matter what position we hold, I'd like to think that in this place we can take that Socratic approach -- challenging, tough, but still friendly and not resorting to punching below the belt.

Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:46:41 GMT

Lots of opinions, even on weekends.

WaPo:

In victory for Hill Democrats, historic legislation is approved by vote of 220 to 215; Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana is the sole Republican supporter.

Pre-vote "Divided Democrats" in trouble on House vote story, because Democrats are always divided. Oh, wait... Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House

The Arena on passage of House version health reform, including comments by Georges Benjamin (APHA), Meizhu Lui ("Teddy, are you watching?"), Bradley A. Blakeman, Pejman Yousefzadeh, David Biespiel and this guy:

The House has taken a historic and difficult step towards health reform, 220-215. It’s a not a bill to please everyone. This is a Democratic bill, passed by Democrats alone (save one lone Republican, Cao-LA, and I wonder what his email looks like this evening) after considerable and lively debate. Next up is the Senate, the place where health reform traditionally goes to die. It won’t be easy there, either. And while there are many bumps in the road ahead, congratulations are in order tonight for Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats for their work in doing the people’s business.

Frank Rich on NY-23 (with cautions to Democrats):

If the tea party right can’t win there, imagine how it might fare in the nation where most Americans live. Some G.O.P. leaders have started to notice. Mitt Romney didn’t endorse Hoffman despite right-wing badgering to do so. On Wednesday, Michael Steele dismissed the right’s mantra that somehow Hoffman’s loss could be called a victory and instead talked up the newly elected Republican governors who won by appealing to independents and moderates. Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are plenty conservative, but both had rejected Palin’s offers to campaign for them. They also avoided the tea party zanies, the fear-mongering National Organization for Marriage and the anti-abortion-rights zealots Hoffman embraced. They positioned themselves as respectful Obama critics, not haters likening him to Hitler.

and

The G.O.P. establishment’s one-size-fits-all panacea is tax cuts — thin gruel for those with little or no taxable income. The administration’s answer is the stimulus, whose iffy results so far, it argues, can’t be judged this early on.

Fair enough. But a year from now the public will register its verdict in any event. Meanwhile, both parties have their own delusions, not the least of which is the Republicans’ conviction that Tuesday was a referendum on what Obama has done so far. If anything, it was a judgment on just how much he has not.

Nicholas Kristof: On BPA in food and the need to be cautious.

Robert Reich: Why We Need Even More Stimulus

Kathleen Parker: Passion in the newsroom and fighting over words.

The so-called "newsroom brawl" between an editor and a writer at The Post recently has been a fine distraction for the health-care weary.

The two men apparently came to blows over, of all things, words. Not ad hominems necessarily, or at least not exclusively, but words as in the quality of writing. So began the argument that led to the scuffle heard 'round the Internet.

Be still, my fibrillating heart.

Sunday Talk - Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:47:48 GMT

What a week, sports fans.

Tuesday saw Republicans take back control of the ~~House~~ New Jersey and ~~Senate~~ Virginia Governorships. And although Democrats won the NY-23 special election, it was still a huge win for conservatives.

Then came Thursday. Thursday was the Super Bowl of Freedom. Somewhere between four thousand and one million teabaggers dissented on DC in a shocking victory for the 1st Amendment.

And yet just a few hours ago, in the Hyper Bowl, socialism prevailed.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:46:05 GMT

The rescued diaries are:

Morgan Sandlin caught a glimpse of the diabolical mastermind behind the Great Orange Satan on TV and wants him to know that Markos..at this point in time..I love you. (Got a Grip)

pollwatcher looks at the state of the economy and suggests that President Obama act now on what is truly Needed: A Government Green Jobs Program. (sunspark says)

Want to express your reason for supporting healthcare reform? redstatebluegirl has One word: Sophie. (watercarrier4diogenes)

leftyparent reminisces about days gone by, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Letting My Freak Flag Fly. (sunspark says)

TheUrbanRevolution calls out the troops to support OBAMA'S THIRD WAR - Reclaiming the Press. (sunspark says)

Rei examines the data and conditions on the ground to help us understand The return of pack ice (or this year's lack of it). (Got a Grip)

blueness takes a look at the political arm of the Catholic Church, jumping off from an Italian court ruling that displaying "The Crucifix Creates Discrimination". (sunspark says)

LaFeminist reports from inside CAMP: A Conservative American Motivational Project. (shayera)

RiotLibrarian went to a "Business Summit" so you wouldn't have to (although you really should) and ended up Telling Governor Sonny Perdue that small business people want a PUBLIC OPTION. (Got a Grip)

Unenergy looks at the control Rupert Murdoch has over the Australian media and ask Mr Murdoch, when did you run for election for PM/President? I think it's possible we here in America got off lightly. (shayera)

In LA Times: White House warns Democratic consultant after appearing on Fox News, nspguy relates the touching tale of one reporter's apparent audition for a job in Murdoch's pigsty. (watercarrier4diogenes)

In what has always been a land of opportunity, Jay Elias looks at the degradation of society and throws out a Quote for Discussion: We Are Blowing It. (sunspark says)

CatM finds a lesson for us all in literature and invites us to Meet the Frankensteins: Bachmann, Beck, and Limbaugh (updated w/picture). (sunspark says)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: November 6, 2009

carolita has Top Comments 11-7-09 Divine Science Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread (even if you're the author! Here's where that's actually appreciated). And, of course, since it's an open thread, PLAY NICE, OK? 8^)

64 Democrats on the Wrong Side of Stupak-Pitts

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:16:05 GMT

For future reference, here is the list of Democrats who voted "Aye" on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

AL-2 Bright, Bobby; AL- 5 Griffith, Parker; AL-7 Davis, Artur; AR-1 Berry, Robert; AR-2 Snyder, Victor; AR-4 AR-4 Ross, Mike; CA-18 Cardoza, Dennis; CA-20 Costa, Jim; CA-43 Baca, Joe; CO-3 Salazar, John.

GA-2 Bishop, Sanford; GA-8 Marshall, James; GA-12 Barrow, John; KY-6 Chandler, Ben; IL-3 Lipinski, Daniel; IL-12 Costello, Jerry; IN-2 Donnelly, Joe; IN-8 Ellsworth, Brad; IN-9 Hill, Baron; LA-3 Melancon, Charles; ME-2 Michaud, Michael.

MA-2 Neal, Richard; MA-9 Lynch, Stephen; MI-5 Kildee, Dale; MI-1 Stupak, Bart; MN-7 Peterson, Collin; MN-8 Oberstar, James; MS-1 Childers, Travis; MS-4 Taylor, Gene; MO-4 Skelton, Ike; NM-2 Teague, Harry

NC-2 Etheridge, Bob; NC-7 McIntyre, Mike; NC-11 Shuler, Heath; ND Pomeroy, Earl; OH-1 Driehaus, Steve; OH-6 Wilson, Charles; OH-9 Kaptur, Marcy; OH-16 Boccieri, John; OH-17 Ryan, Timothy; OH-18 Space, Zachary.

OK-2 Boren, Dan; PA-3 Dahlkemper, Kathleen; PA-4 Altmire, Jason; PA-10 Carney, Christopher; PA-11 Kanjorski, Paul; PA-12 Murtha, John; PA-14 Doyle, Michael; PA-17 Holden, Tim; RI-2 Langevin, James

SC-5 Spratt, John; TN-4 Davis, Lincoln; TN-5 Cooper, Jim; TN-6 Gordon, Barton; TN-8 Tanner, John; TX-16 Reyes, Silvestre; TX-23 Rodriguez, Ciro; TX-27 Ortiz, Solomon; TX-28 Cuellar, Henry.

UT-2 Matheson, Jim; VA-5 Perriello, Thomas; WV-1 Mollohan, Alan; WV-3 Rahall, Nick; WI-7 Obey, David.

Here is the list of 26 Democrats who voted "Aye" on Stupak but "Nay" on the final bill:

Altmire, Barrow, Boccieri, Boren, Bright, Chandler, Childers, Davis (AL), Davis (TN), Gordon (TN), Griffith, Holden, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Peterson, Ross, Shuler, Skelton, Tanner, Taylor, Teague (h/t to askew and Granny Doc)

President Obama's response to House bill passage

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:46:05 GMT

Statement of President Barack Obama on House Passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act

Tonight, in an historic vote, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would finally make real the promise of quality, affordable health care for the American people.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and the government while strengthening the financial health of Medicare. And it is legislation that is fully paid for and will reduce our long-term federal deficit.

Thanks to the hard work of the House, we are just two steps away from achieving health insurance reform in America. Now the United States Senate must follow suit and pass its version of the legislation. I am absolutely confident it will, and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.

History Made, 220-215

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:20:37 GMT

This is the first time a chamber of Congress has passed healthcare reform since Medicare was enacted. There's a lot of work left to do on this, and a lot of ugly to be undone, but we made it this far against long odds. Now the really hard work: the Senate.

HCR House Debate: Final Passage Up Next

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:55:45 GMT

The final bill vote is coming up next. Watch it here.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Update: And here we go.... Unless a lot of people have been lying to the whip and to leadership, the bill will pass.

Update 2: 212 with 9:00 minutes left. Just six more votes.

Update 3: 218!!! Too bad we can't get time-stamps with the votes, find out who is waiting around to the last minute to find out if they can take a free vote.

Update 4: CSPAN says the 1 R vote is Joseph Cao (LA-02). Hey, Landrieu, if a Republican from Louisiana can vote for it, I bet you can too!

Update 5: And hey, it's bipartisan now--who needs Olympia Snowe?

HCR House Debate: Still Voting

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:23:38 GMT

Voting continues on the Republican "plan." Keep talking.

And good lord, how do these anti-reform people calling into C-SPAN manage to breathe and dial the phone at the same time?

Update: We're saved from the Boehner "plan," with it failing 176-258. One R voted no.

Update 2: And here's the motion to recommit. I predict plenty of obnoxious.

Update 3: They decided it made more sense to go after trial lawyers than brown people in this one. Probably a good bet.

BTW, this should be a no vote for any Dem. But given that 64 of them are willing to sell out women's health, I wouldn't hold my breath on principled stands out of them now.

Update 4: Motion to Recommit is going to fail, with move than 225 no votes.

Update 5: Hoyer goes after the Rs on their "no time to read the bill" bullshit by calling them out. Kagro on IM:

Hoyer makes the key point that Republicans who are always screaming about needing time to review legislation have once again -- as the minority always does -- come to the floor with a motion to recommit that no one has ever read or had a chance to read. And it pisses them off royally!