Flying is the pits, especially in America. It's also getting worse:

A failure early Thursday morning of a system that feeds flight plans to air traffic controllers snarled thousands of flights in the eastern United States. By mid-morning the system was working again, but the backlog caused wide airport delays.

The same system failed in August 2008, but it was not clear if the cause was the same this time. The system, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network, situated in Atlanta with a backup in Salt Lake City, was a casualty of another failure in the tightly linked [system], one official at the Federal Aviation Administration said. Technicians were still trying to determine the cause of the glitch.

This is just another argument for a better, more comprehensive and expanded rail system in the United States. Sure, it's not a 'shovel-ready' infrastructure project, but it is one that will help grow the economy, create jobs and increase the quality of life for many Americans.

The airlines would surely lobby against such a thing, however, just like Southwest lobbied heavily against a high-speed regional Texas rail system several years ago.

The publisher--they wanted me to review the book?!?-- recently sent me a copy of Christopher I. Beckwith's book, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. I've already read the book and have my own well worn, dog-eared, underlined and highlighted copy. So, the first person to email me at my personal email address--or a PM--I'll mail this copy to, if you are so inclined.

Book has already been claimed.

And people wonder why I am not a Christian anymore:

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8” on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” …

Anyway, now it’s a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers . . .

However, as a number of commentators have noted, the wording that follows this bumper-sticker appeal is somewhat more disturbing:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Love thy neighbor, indeed.

Just because I'm on a zombie kick (I watched Zombieland last night, Fun movie):

Never underestimate the zombie

Zombies are not mindless hunters. They are swifter and craftier than one might expect. A lone zombie can burst out of hiding and take a chunk out of you in the blink of an eye.

Never engage a zombie if you can avoid it

Though zombies are surprisingly quick in confined spaces, they are not swift runners. Engage the zombie only when you are trapped, and escape is not an option.

Focus on the task; keep fear out of your head

No one, no matter what their powers of description, can fully prepare you for your first encounter with a zombie. Their grotesque appearance and smell, along with the inhuman noises they emit, can induce a level of fear and terror that precludes rational response and causes one to freeze. You must not react to the zombie's appearance. Focus instead on delivering a combination of offensive and defensive strikes that will buy you enough time to escape.

More at the link. Thanks MC.

I'm a frequent critic of President Obama, but sometimes it's really important to read between the lines. Yesterday the AP posted this story. In it the writer reports that the upcoming 'jobs summit' at the White House isn't about jobs:

President Barack Obama says creating jobs isn't the goal of a coming White House forum on jobs and economic growth.

And the headline reinforces the lede:

Obama: Job creation not goal of Dec. 3 jobs forum

However, a close reading of the story in question would leave the reader confused:

More after the jump.

The results of this poll are pretty interesting:

Americans don't want to shoulder the cost of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

I don't think it will happen that way, however. As a matter of fact, I know it won't. At least not yet. But it's another indication that Americans are much more progressive, especially when it comes to taxation, than politicians realize--I also think it is an indicator of just how pissed the middle class is with the wealthy in this country.

As I have noted many times here, I am in favor of a return to golden-era Eisenhower-like taxation, but I'm not holding my breath. If the Democrats really wanted a decent health-care plan, one that creates real health-care cost savings across the board, however, they could push one through. Instead we'll get a mushy-halfway plan that will be more of regressive tax on the middle class. But we all knew that, didn't we?

President Obama visited the Great Wall of China yesterday. Having seen the Wall in many different places in China, from the Badaling, where Obama visited, to the perilous angles and heights of Simitai and then all the way out in the West at the Jade Gate where the Han and T'ang walls peter out into the sand I can attest to its hold on the imagination. I've seen some amazing places in my travels but my first experience with the Wall stands head and shoulders above any other experience in China. The Great Wall is one of those places that is both cliche and profoundly impressing. It lives up to the hype.

If you are inclined to learn more about the Great Wall, its provenance and history I highly recommend this book by Julia Lowell. It is an insightful narrative history of the 'Long Wall,' its place in the Chinese psyche and that of the West. From the first tentative tamped earth ramparts built to keep out the marauding Rong and Di tribes to the massive Qing Walls that President Obama visited yesterday it is a wonderful, easy to read romp through Chinese history.

What am I missing? I keep seeing this woman's story pop up everywhere, from Daily Kos to the Huffington Post. I mean, who really cares? Why do we expend so much useless energy on stories like this? (And yes, I do recognize the irony of me posting about it.)

On that note: I had dinner with my Mom last night and even she was talking about her. Good grief.

Not ragging on Krugman here. Rather I'm pointing out a little irony in some of the economic arguments we've heard the last few years.

First this:

But with the financial crisis abating, this process is going into reverse. Last week’s U.S. trade report showed a sharp increase in the trade deficit between August and September. And there will be many more reports along those lines.

Wasn't the export sector, lead by a weak dollar, supposed to help the economy? (Of course, my contention has always been, how can you export your way into growth when you've eviscerated your manufacturing base, right?)

And then this:

Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to get it: rather than face up to the need to change their currency policy, they’ve taken to lecturing the United States, telling us to raise interest rates and curb fiscal deficits — that is, to make our unemployment problem even worse.

Isn't this what the IMF/World Bank tells developing countries to do in the even of a crisis? We dispense the medicine, but when someone tells us to take the same, well, you know.

I grew up a hunter. One of my fondest memories was learning to shoot a .410 with my Dad and then quail and dove hunting in the Brush Country of South Texas. One of the cardinal rules of hunting was, as my father always said, "never kill something you're not going to eat." I once shot a crow for the hell of it. My punishment was a healthy serving of real crow that evening. I can say I have literally eaten crow. (It's not so good. And the lesson was learned.)

I've hunted deer a few times in life as well, but as I grew older, sitting in a blind above a sendero waiting for a deer to show up and eat the corn below didn't quite seem sporting.

My father and I traveled to a lot of wild places in the US when I was younger, too. One of the joys was seeing the local wildlife. (At the time it was boring, but now I am grateful.) Somewhere along the line I developed a sense of conservation and appreciation for wildlife in its native setting. So I don't hunt now. If I had to, I could, but it seems pointless. I prefer to watch nature in all its glory. And that's what makes stories like this all the more heartbreaking.

I have seen a badger, ferocious but cute critters that they are. And I saw a mongoose in India. But I doubt I'll ever see a Tasmanian Devil in the wild.

Sometimes I think that if more people grew up hunting they might well appreciate nature's bounty even more. I know this may sound odd, but there is a strange communion between the hunted and the hunter at the time of death. I don't know why this is, but I was always grateful for the animal's sacrifice and the food it provided. It seems that appreciation is lost on we moderns. More is the pity.

This is golden:

2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault.

It's a brilliant take down of Rand.

One more quote. I just can't resist:

The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand's worldview vectored into his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction during which the intransigence of others—roommates, a coed the patient has been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone—are shown to be the product of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient's intelligence and talent. Days during which the infected comes to see himself and Roark/Galt as avatars of one another: superheroically mirthless protagonists in a drama of historical import. It's the damnedest thing. One day you've got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his liberal-arts education; the next, he's got Roark and Galt in the marrow and has become . . . an insufferable asshole.

Heh!

I'm not a contrarian, although I suppose on the face of it I probably come across as one. I'd label myself a skeptic more than anything else when it comes to markets. A skeptic in the sense that I rarely buy the official narrative. More of a realist I suppose. But that may just be a personal and intellectual conceit.

One of the official narratives I've been hearing a lot of lately--maybe not so much a narrative as a lot of cheerleading--is about gold. Now, there is a secular case to be made for gold. That case rests mostly on a falling dollar and the inverse correlation between our domestic markets and the rise in gold. The case has merit.

But when I see a story like this, one that says gold has a lot longer to climb, the red-flags of my bullshit detector go off. (Metaphor mixed on purpose.)

My question: where have we heard this before? And who's next? James Glassman of Dow 36,000 infamy?

Lex has a great post on the pretzel politics of Afghanistan:

Mikhail Sergeyevich applies the idiomatic phrase “…… vydelyvnet Krendelya” to Karmal. We could use it do describe Karzai, Obama, Clinton, McChrystal, et. al.. It translates literally as “….. is walking like a pretzel.” The figurative meaning is that someone is staggering and weaving like a drunk; that is, not being straight-forward.

The Soviets had the exact same problem with Afghan government legitimacy that the US is having now. They had the same problem with the Pakistan-Afghan border land that we have now. They had a better Afghan Army to work with and still had the problems we’re having. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes and in this case we’re merely looking at history translated from Russian to English.

As I have said, over and over again: Afghanistan is easy to conquer but impossible to hold.

And Chuck Spinney chimes in with some observations about this news story at the Times of London:

More after the break.

Yes, yes, I know I've been on my hobby-horse about women's rights in America most of this week. But really, can one describe the desire for equal pay and an equal choice set for fully half of our population as a hobby-horse? I think not. I do realize that women have it very well on our society. But it could be better. Much better, as this post demonstrates.

The only quibble I have with the post--and the report--is that it's too narrowly focused on economic determinants. Matters of choice, education and general quality of life measures would be most welcome too.

And yet, how can such things improve when women are only 3% of CEOS, or, even more worrisome, when women are 'losing ground relative to men in terms of salaries: female CEOs [of non-profits] now make only 66 percent of male salaries, compared with 71 percent in 2000,' or in politics: "In state politics, there are only six women governors, and women comprise only 15 percent of mayors of cities with populations of over 100,000."

I have a sinking feeling that there has been a steady erosion of women's rights in the country over the last twenty-five years and I'd like to see a study focusing on that. Sure, there has been some high profile window dressing in corporate America and in politics, but still. How can 78 cents on the dollar be a good thing?

Send a coat hanger to pro-choice Dems who voted for the Stupak Amendment, here.

This is an exceptional review not necessarily about the exhibition but some of the current thinking emerging about the role of the Silk Road on Western History. I suggest reading it. Here's the clincher:

[T]he critical intellectual shortcoming of the exhibition is that with Baghdad, the Silk Road seems to come to a prematurely celebratory end. Why, instead of dealing with the development of Arab shipping in a final gallery, didn’t the show follow a narrative, visible on one of its maps, leading past Baghdad and to the port of Venice? By extending the history another few centuries, we would have seen how the Silk Road led to a fertilization of Western thinking, not just with the discoveries of Islamic scientists but also with a variety of philosophical and religious perspectives that proved influential over the course of centuries. We know how deeply affected Marco Polo was by the Silk Road in the 13th century: he passed that enthusiasm on.

This would have helped the exhibition make a more cogent contribution to Western cultural self-understanding. It would have also helped explain why, once European shipping and exploration took off in the late Renaissance, the overland Silk Road route became more and more a commercial backwater, leading to centuries of cultural and political decline, whose effects are still being felt.

After my first trip across the Silk Road in 2003 I began to devour, wholesale, as much scholarship on it as I possibly could. And one thing that became very clear early on was that the official narrative of the Silk Road wasn't anything close to the reality. Sadly, it has been extremely slow going. (I now have an extensive library--at least two hundred books and countless scholarly articles relating to the subject. And growing.) Most of the scholarship is either at least a century old, or in Russian, German and French--of which I only speak one. (The Russian scholarship suffers from the Marxist dialectic, as well.) And yet I found a lot of truth in the old saw, 'read an old book and learn something new.' Even before I read Beckwith's book my ideas had shifted drastically towards his own. His book was a much appreciated validation of my own.

More after the jump.

As I recall Paul Krugman was very critical of the Germans in the early days of the recession. I believe his criticism went something like this: the Germans need to get on board a pan-European proposal to staunch the bleeding caused by the financial crisis. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

So what happened? Apparently Germany's plan was successful. I don't mean to single Krugman out here, as I usually agree with him. But I cannot help but to point out that sometimes the choices nations make, when they buck the economic consensus--like Malaysia telling the IMF and World Bank to go fuck themselves during the Asian financial crisis--are the right choices.

Even Krugman is prey to the consensus--especially when he's the leading voice of it.

Just something to keep in mind.

Lance Mannion writes and I suggest we all read it. Damn fine post.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This is rich:

The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers elective abortion – a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

Fail.

I got nothing today so how about a flame fest? Been awhile, yeah? Y'all know the rules. 1. Everyone is fair game. 2. Take none of what is said seriously. 3. No porn, or links to two girls and a cup or other, erm, crap like that. Have fun!

I have come to the conclusion that there is a direct correlation between a man's ability to say that icky word, vagina, and how he treats and sees women. If he can't say the word, he's probably a dick.

This post inspired by Digby.

And while we're on the subject of vaginas this is just wrong on so many levels. Clearly the influence of porn is deleterious on many levels.

This is unreal.

I could not agree more with this sentiment:

This is the argument made over and over again: If the repro rights activists would just stop agitating about the pro-life Dems, we could get majorities, and things would improve for women and men everywhere. I get that argument. Most days, I believe it. And then I wake up to a Democratic majority that will only pass progressive healthcare legislation if it includes antiabortion provisions.

These trade-offs build on each other. Stupak did not happen in a vacuum. It's part of a larger cycle. Is this the moment to stand up and say "no"? How could I say it is, especially when I am all too aware that if pro-choice Democrats were to revolt over this issue, they would be vilified and further alienated from a party that already allows the erosion of reproductive rights? We choose to play nice, our party trades on our freedoms. We choose to object, our party resents and blames us for failure. It's not exactly a bright set of options for anyone who has gotten into this quandary simply because they fervently believe that the rights of half the population to control its own reproduction are fundamental to full and equal participation in our democracy.

As I have noted in countless posts from multiple nations: when women are emancipated from the clutches of religion progress happens. And yet in America we are sliding backwards. At some point all of us have to stand up and say no more. And I don't see an issue that affects fully half of our population as one critic put it:' the same of sh&*^&%.' So, when are we going to heed the voices of fully half our population? Too add injury to insult, how's this for coverage:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological "well visit," leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from "cost sharing," which means that, depending on what's in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets. So far, mammograms and Pap tests are covered in every version of the legislation.

I guess this is what's meant by a 'sense of victimhood,' eh?