Plead the First

Several eldercare homes in and around Greensboro are facing fines and increased scrutiny due to negligence and abuse towards some of their residents. It sounds like county social services are the first line of defense on behalf of the seniors in these situations. Unfortunately, they don’t actually have the power to do anything directly – only state agencies can impose disciplinary measures. The county appears to be stepping things up and making more of an effort to get the state involved, but in the meantime it’s got to be a horrible situation to live in some of these homes.

Before we get to the actual cartoon this week, I have a little treat for everyone – I’m going to share a couple of the steps that lead up to one of these cartoons. The very first step, of course, is coming up with an idea, which usually involves a lot of sitting still and staring into space. There is also occasional websurfing and newspaper reading involved, and I often need to chase the kids out of the room or grumble grumpily at my wife. At the end of all this, a sketch will appear:

That’s what initially gets sent to the opinion page editors at the News and Record. Pretty rough, but it’s only meant to get the basic idea across, so they can see what I have in mind for the week and make sure there are no heinous factual or spelling errors.

Next, I break out the good paper and the pens, and I produce a more refined version of the cartoon:

As you can see, there are a few changes compared to the initial sketch. The sketch dog was way too friendly – he needed to be much meaner. I also moved the guy holding the leash so he wouldn’t be hanging off to the side so much. It makes for a nicer composition and leads the eye around the cartoon a little better. The positioning of the leash and the label on the dog was also reworked.

Though I do a little bit of shading at this point, the bulk of that is done in the next step. I scan the artwork into the computer, and then using Photoshop, I clean up the lines and the lettering, and add in the rest of the shading:

Then I can sit back and relax and start staring into space looking for the next week’s cartoon.

A long discussion has developed at Ed Cone’s blog, initially focusing on the recent Kindley brouhaha and sidetracking into issues surrounding gay marriage.

In the comments, Sam Spagnola argues that homosexuals are not being discriminated against with regards to marriage, because they can indeed get married – they simply need to marry someone of the opposite sex:

The fact is that a gay man has the same rights as a straight man to get married. Thus he is not denied equal protection. He just can’t marry another man

The problem with this is that such an arrangement renders those benefits meaningless and useless to the gay person. Consider some of the benefits in question, as outlined in a comment by Roch:

• The right to make medical decisions for a partner in an emergency
• The right to visit a partner confined to a hospital
• Cannot be compelled to testify against a partner in a court of law
• Automatic inheritence without a will
• The right to live together in a nursing home
• Receipt of Social Security benefits upon a partner’s death
• Receipt of veteran’s benefits upon a partner’s death
• Copyright renewal rights granted to surviving partner

In taking advantage of those benefits, people are going to want them to involve the person they love, care about, and have decided to commit their life to. Most of them are useless if they can’t be applied to that person. Heterosexuals can commit themselves to a person they love, begin a family with that person, and convey all those benefits to that person. There is no way for a homosexual to share those benefits with a person whom they love and trust enough to commit their life to. For them there is no meaningful way to make use of those benefits.

Sam gives some further examples of how he thinks this is not discrimination:

Can a straight person marry a person of the same sex (for benefits, or any other reason?: NO.

Can a gay person marry a person of the same sex (for benefits, or any other reason?: NO.

They are both treated equally. Neither can marry a person of the same sex for any reason. Equal protection violations occur when persons similarly situated are treated differently. For example, anti-miscegenation laws that prevented interracial marriages violated equal protection. Why? Because those laws allowed a white man to marry a white woman, but did not allow a black man to marry a white woman. Both were similarly situated (members of the same sex) but one had a right that the other did not.

However, this just appears to be a word game with the phrasing. Consider this rephrasing of his anti-miscegenation example: Under anti-miscegenation laws a white man can marry a woman of the same race as himself, and a black man can also marry a woman of the same race as himself. We’ve just edited out the discrimination by changing the phrasing.

Can a woman marry a man? Yes. Can a man marry a man? No. Or more to the point, can a heterosexual marry the person he or she loves, trusts, and is committed to? Yes. Can a homosexual? No.

(To head off one potential criticism of that last phrasing: Someone might say that this reasoning would allow a pedophile to marry a child, since that may be the person he loves. However, as pointed out elsewhere, this is a completely different case since a child is not capable of giving meaningful consent.)

Finally, as more of an intuitive counter to Sam’s line of reasoning, I offer this hypothetical situation:

Imagine that Congress actually goes through with it and passes a Constitutional amendment defining marriage at the Federal level. But for some reason – maybe a slip of the pen, or maybe it turns out that every member of Congress is a closeted homosexual – they actually define marriage as only being between two men, or two women. All opposite sex marriages are invalid and illegal as far as the Federal government is concerned. Now your wife is no longer able to make medical decisions for you, or guaranteed the right to visit you in the hospital, or receive your social security benefits. Or you are no longer able to marry your fiancee and share those benefits with her. However, you can go ahead and marry a man (or a woman, if you are a woman) and share those benefits with him instead. Is that acceptable to you?

Over at Noteworthy, Bubba has posted another take on global warming, linking to an article by Alan Caruba, a writer and public relations counselor. Bubba quotes from the article, stating:

We could stop all industrial activity and require all cars and trucks off the roads of the world and it would not make a single bit of difference. It is not manmade carbon dioxide that is bringing about these changes. It is active volcanoes, some a mile or more high, yet entirely hidden from view under the oceans.

However, this is false. As Tim Lambert points out on his blog, Deltoid, there isn’t enough total heatflow from the Earth to make any meaningful contribution to global warming. Lambert notes:

Scientists have extensively measured the flow of heat from inside the earth—it amounts to 0.075 Watts per square metre, while incoming solar radiation is 342 Watts per square metre, about 5000 times as much. … [H]eat from the earth is not included in climate models—but that is because it is negligible.

So where did Caruba get the idea that volcanoes are to blame for global warming? According to the article, his source was Robert Felix, author of the book Not by Fire, but by Ice. On his website, iceagenow.com, Felix does indeed blame undersea volcanoes for increased ocean temperatures, and states that he thinks that the end result is going to be a new ice age. The data and evidence he used to come to this conclusion? As Lambert says:

Felix doesn’t haven’t any actual data or measurements to support his theory that volcanoes are warming the ocean. He just lists news stories about undersea volcanoes and asserts that they must be contributing a tremendous amount of heat, but without any actual numbers.

Furthermore, it seems doubtful that Felix has the background one would ordinarily look for in a primary source for an article about global warming. Lambert points to a quote from a Guardian article entitled “Junk Science”:

Is Felix a climatologist, a volcanologist or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a “former architect�. His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says.

Once again, it seems there’s a lot of hot air being circulated over this issue.

[Update: Alan Caruba, the author of the article cited by Bubba, has responded in the comments.]

In a circus of a meeting, Guilford County Manager Willie Best was recently fired. Between the nice severance package, getting a little time off if he wants, and not being forced to deal with the county commissioners anymore, I’d say he got a pretty good deal. In fact, if anyone wants to pay me $85,000 to not work with our county commissioners, I’ll seriously consider the offer.

In the meantime, Jim Rosenberg has some helpful tips for bringing some professionalism back to the commissioners’ meetings.

Glenn Greenwald points out an interesting question asked by John Amato:

[W]hy are all of the Bush supporters celebrating the unauthorized leak to the Daily News of the FBI’s arrests of alleged terrorists who were talking in Internet chat rooms about blowing up the Holland Tunnel (later news reports indicated that the plot was really aimed at the PATH commuter train)?

Greenwald notes all the outrage from the right over the recent leaks published by the New York Times, and contrasts that reaction with the cheers greeting this new story. Of course, the difference is that the New York Times stories reflected poorly on Bush, while the Daily News piece makes it look as though the administration is getting the job done. However, according to the FBI, this leak was not without harm to our interests:

Authorities said they hadn’t intended to release details about the plot this early and that whoever leaked the information had compromised the FBI’s relationship with some foreign intelligence services.

The person who leaked the details is “clearly someone who doesn’t understand the fragility of international relations,” Mershon said.

We attempted to go to Greensboro’s Fourth of July Parade this morning. Unfortunately, we got out of the house a little late, and missed most of the actual parade. We did catch the tail end and found this guy bringing up the rear:

Fortunately, there was plenty more going on, so we made our way from the parade route into downtown Greensboro to see what else was happening.

There were some protestors right by that funnel cake stand, who had a large, mock surveillance camera set up. They seemed to be concerned about our government spying on us. Looking over my shoulder, sure enough, Uncle Sam did seem to be keeping an eye on things:

As you may know, Joey Cheek was back in town, and he was there speaking and fielding questions:

He also flashed his Olympic bling:

Soon after that, the family and I retreated to the air-conditioned minivan as the morning became unbearably hot. Hope everyone else is having an enjoyable Fourth of July.

Bubba over at Noteworthy approvingly quotes an article by Richard Lindzen disputing that there’s any consensus on global warming. Lindzen takes issue with Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and sounds pretty sure that there’s not much we can be sure about with regards to global warming.

How sure is he? Not very, according to James Annan. Annan, a “scientist involved in climate prediction”, has challenged global warming skeptics to put their money where their mouth is – he’s offered to wager on whether average temperatures will be warmer or cooler 20 years from now. Lindzen is one of those skeptics that Annan offered to make a wager with:

Recently, my attention was drawn to some comments attributed to Lindzen: “Richard Lindzen says he’s willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now.” (thanks to William Connolley for the tip). Given his widely-promulgated views, I took this quote at face value and contacted him to arrange a wager. A payoff at retirement age would be a nice top-up to my pension.

Now here’s the kicker. Richard Lindzen will indeed accept a bet – but only if offered odds of 50:1 in his favour! He actually started out quoting 100:1 – but came down to 50:1 in what he described as a “special favor” to me. If the temperatures went down, I was to hand over $10,000, but in the event of a rise, I’d get a whopping $200. That’s worth around $8 per year on my pension. Whoop-de-doo. That’s not really quite what I had in mind.

What “50:1 odds” translates to is Lindzen is saying he thinks there’s a 98 percent chance that the average temperature of the Earth will be warmer in 20 years. He sounds pretty sure to me – but not of the skeptical side of the global warming debate.

I finally got to see An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. One of the most striking parts was when Gore addresssed the common argument that we’re simply experiencing nothing more than cyclical variations in temperature and CO2 levels. He displayed a series of charts showing data taken from ice core samples which did indeed reveal cyclical variations in temperature and carbon dioxide. However, when compared with the levels we are currently experiencing, it becomes obvious that this is no cyclical variation. Recent levels are well outside of the normal range from centuries past.

He also addressed the argument that aggressively persuing more environmentally-sound policies would be harmful to our economy. Pulling up two charts, he showed that our standards for automobile emmissions are actually well below those of many other countries – including China – implying that there is significant room for improvement in that area without sacrificing competitiveness. He also noted that the two main foreign automobile companies that offer hybrids – Honda and Toyota – are actually outperforming their U.S. counterparts who are lagging behind in hybrid technologies. Of course, there are many other areas to consider other than just the automobile industry, but this seems to show that its not a foregone conclusion that addressing the global warming problem will make us less economically competitive.

I’ve been looking for online versions of the charts he used in the movie, but haven’t been able to find them. If anyone knows where they can be found, please let me know.

For a state located this far south, we sure have been doing well lately with winter sports. Maybe it’s time for a sequel to Cool Runnings?

Regarding my post yesterday about the argument that only terrorists need to worry about government programs such as warrantless wiretapping: Yesterday’s episode of Ze Frank’s “the show” addressed the issue as well, and had a great example of how some people are missing the point:

The question isn’t whether this program would be effective at catching bad people. If we had mandatory anal cavity searches for every person that enters the United States, we’d find a lot more cocaine. The question is whether these kinds of programs upset the balance between government and personal liberty and therefore can lead to an abuse of power.