Saturday Noon

Sully: Just Because

Scott Adams marvels at "The Power of Ridiculous Reasons":

The human mind is wired to accept ridiculous reasons as if they are legitimate. Studies have shown that people are more likely to agree to a favor if the word "because" is used in the request. It doesn't seem to matter what follows that word. As long as the sentence is in the form of a reason, people accept it as though some actual reason is present.

John Cole: Nail ‘Em To The Wall

Via the good folks at Pruning Shears, this story which just made my day:

Ron Grassi says he thought he had retired five years ago after a 35-year career as a trial lawyer.

Now Grassi, 68, has set up a war room in his Tahoe City, California, home to single-handedly take on Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. He’s sued the three credit rating firms for negligence, fraud and deceit.

Grassi says the companies’ faulty debt analyses have been at the core of the global financial meltdown and the firms should be held accountable. Exhibit One is his own investment. He and his wife, Sally, held $40,000 in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bonds because all three credit raters gave them at least an A rating—meaning they were a safe investment—right until Sept. 15, the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy.

“They’re supposed to spot time bombs,” Grassi says. “The bombs exploded before the credit companies acted.”

More of this, please. These guys have, as far as I can tell, gotten away with everything and really played an integral role in letting this mess happen.

Banner Day May 1: Rachel Re: It was six years ago that President Bush made that now infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. Rachel Maddow looks back on that day, and what's going on now.

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

Tristero: Nightline On Industrial Farming

I'm working my way through all the links in farmgirl's terrific post on "Swine Flu, NAFTA and U.S. farm subsidies." But I wanted to share with you a link she provided to a pretty good Nightline report on industrial pig farming including footage shot in La Gloria, Mexico, where, apparently, the earliest cases of the swine flu outbreak were reported and which lies some 12 miles away from a hug industrial hog farm owned by a Smithfield subsidiary. For those, like Digby, who were horrified by an earlier post of mine that quoted descriptions of the disgusting conditions on these farms, don't worry. The Nightline report shows nothing that will sicken you. Unless, that is, you realize that that beauty shot of a pond is not a pond of water.

Several commenters have objected to my refusal to accede to the wishes of corporate pork production and euphemize swine flu by calling it something else. Their argument is that calling swine flu "swine flu" harms small, independent pork producers. Farm Girl, who has studied food issues closely and certainly cares deeply about small, independent farming, agrees with me:

...Mexico's swine flu (and keep calling it that, no matter what the National Pork Producers say...)

In responding to the objections, I also posted several links to scientists' discussion of swine flu that make the point that the term is accurate (go here, here, and here, for example. ) In comments to my previous post, Glen Tomkins writes:

Long-established practice in the field is to characterize strains of Influenza A first and foremost by which species it attacks. Thus we have avian (or bird) flu, swine flu, horse flu, dog flu and human flu.

There are other ways to characterize a given strain, such as by which type of the two antigenic glycoproteins it displays, and by this scheme, this swine flu is H1N1, and the avian flu of recent concern is H5N1.

But characterization by the animal of origin is the more basic and informative classification, and the HxNx name should be used as the primary name only if we're talking about a strain of human flu. The animal vs human flu distinction is the most basic and informative because strains of flu adapted to animals other than humans tend to behave very differently in humans than strains adapted to us. The animal strains tend to cause more severe illness and death, because of some combination of our not being well-adapted to them, and their being not well-adapted to us. A microbe that uses us as its meal plan does not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,and tends to do so only insofar as it hasn't "learned" any better by long practice at adapting to us. But these animal strains also tend to not spread as readily among humans, presumably because that trick, much like not killing us, also requires adaptation to our peculiarities.

So it's "swine flu", not because we have it in for the porciculturists among us, or even because "swine flu" is a sexier phrase for CNN to use than "H1N1 flu", but because that's the way the nomenclature works, and works most effectively to convey important differences in expected disease behavior that calling it "H1N1" would fail to convey.

Exactly.

It strikes me as exceedingly weird to insist that we describe the agent of a potential pandemic with a pretentious, and less accurate, euphemism. To do so at the insistence of powerful corporations because it might hurt their profits is simply outrageous. Again, regarding the argument that no, it's not the big guys who will be hurt, but rather the small pig farmer -well, the real danger to small pig farming is not an ignorant and transient association - eating pork products, even disgusting industrially "raised" pork products can't give you swine flu, obviously - but rather the predatory, illegal, immoral, unhealthy, and downright repulsive practices of Smithfield and their ilk, who have consolidated production and ruthlessly driven many small producers out of business.

Benen: GET TO KNOW RULE IV...

With the Senate Democratic caucus up to 59 seats, chances are pretty good that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed, no matter how big a fit the right throws. Even if Republicans abandon everything they said during the Bush years and launched a filibuster, it'd be pretty difficult to sustain it.

The problem, however, might be getting the nominee to the floor.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has a procedural rule, Rule IV to be specific, that will require judicial nominees to get at least one vote from the minority party in order to advance to a vote of the full Senate. Up until last week, that one vote was likely to be Sen. Arlen Specter, the most moderate Republican on the committee.

Specter has, of course, become an ostensible Dem, and now there are no GOP moderates on the Judiciary Committee.

The current Republican Judiciary Committee members are: Orrin Hatch, Chuck Grassley, Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and Tom Coburn (Roll Call is reporting that Hatch or Session -- both conservatives -- are Specter's potential successors for the ranking slot). Most of these Republicans are pretty conservative save Graham, who was a member of the Gang of 14 which, you may remember, came up with the solution to avoid the nuclear option on judges.

If Obama comes up with a nominee opposed by the right, Graham will be under a lot of pressure to block the appointment -- essentially an insurmountable committee filibuster. Rahm may want to put Graham's # on speed dial.

For what it's worth, Graham, at least for now, doesn't sound like he's inclined to block the eventual nominee.

"The only way the Obama administration can screw this up is to nominate someone who is a radical," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee. Graham said Republicans understood that "you're basically going to replace one liberal with another."

Just one more angle to keep an eye on.

C&L: Ed Schultz: This is No Time for Bi-partisanship--We Need a Liberal on the Supreme Court
Heather Saturday May 02, 2009 5:00am

From the Ed Show May 1, 2009. Ed Schultz's "Op-Ed" on President Obama's choice for David Souter's replacement on the Supreme Court. Ed's got this one right. Elections have consequences. The GOP did nothing but carping over their desire for an "up and down" vote when they were wanting Bush's right wingers nominated to the point where I was ready to throw something through my television screen if I heard it one more time. Bill "the cat killer" Frist said it so many times I was wondering if he was repeating it in his sleep.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot we'll see what sort of three ring circus they put on to obstruct Obama's nomination. I await the WATB side show that is sure to come. Fortunately since we have so many of them recorded crying about getting Bush's nominees through the inevitable hissy fits will be much easier to be called out for that they are..feigned indignation and wanting things both ways. Whether our sorry ass excuse for a "mainstream media" will follow suit is another story.

C&L: Chris Matthews wonders what Jonathan Turley's motives are

John Amato Saturday May 02, 2009 6:45am

You would think that Chris Matthews would know something about Jonathan Turley, since he's been on MSNBC for years and has openly spoken about the Bush administration and torture, and has consistently said that waterboarding is a war crime and should be prosecuted.

The key exchange:

TURLEY: You know, Chris, the thing that disturbs me most, the thing that I think is most grotesque, is not the thought of prosecuting high-ranking officials, it's that high-ranking officials ordered war crimes. And if we need to prosecute it to show the world that we are not hypocrites...

MATTHEWS: When did you first say that?

TURLEY: When did I first say that we should prosecute?

MATTHEWS: Yes.

TURLEY: Back in the Bush administration.

MATTHEWS: And why—I remember that. Why did the—why do you think there was no call within the legal community to do what you‘re saying right now? Why was this country so relatively silent? You were out there alone. Why was this country so silent on the possibility that war crimes were being committed in this country for eight years?

TURLEY: Well, unfortunately, that was part of the distortive effect after 9/11. And quite frankly, we lost our bearings. And this really shows how dangerous torture can be. When you hate someone enough or you‘re afraid enough...

MATTHEWS: OK, so what you think is possible here...

TURLEY: ... that you can violate the law.

Transcript below the fold:

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