A $20 Billion, 1000-Year Frankenstorm? Sandy Slams East Coast, Smashes All-Time Records.

By Joe Romm on Oct 29, 2012 at 7:30 pm

UPDATE (9:22 EDT): CNN’s meteorologist just said: “There’s no one that’s not 300 years old that has seen anything like this.”

“Atlantic City is under water. The boardwalk is in the street.” via @MikeStacks609

Disaster modeling company Eqecat projected today that “Hurricane Sandy is likely to cause insured losses of $5 billion to $10 billion and economic losses of $10 billion to $20 billion.” If it hits $20 billion, it would be among the top 5 costliest U.S. hurricanes — and the costliest one to hit the Northeast.

The final storm track has made the too-aptly named Atlantic City ground zero for Sandy. CNN Weather Center tweets:

NEW #RECORD daily rainfall set at Atlantic City, NJ! 4.55″ of rain seen so far, shattering the old record of 2.33″ set back in 1908!! #SANDY

The New York Times reports:

“The city is under siege,” said Thomas Foley, [AC's] chief of emergency services. “Sandy is pretty furious at Atlantic City. She must have lost a bet or something. As we say in our slogan, ‘Do A.C.’ She’s doing A.C., all right.”

Or something! (see “Trenberth: Hurricane Sandy Mixes Super-Storm Conditions With Climate Change” and links below).

Weather Underground reported in its twitter feed today:

Atlantic City recorded a pressure of 959 mb at 4 pm, setting the city’s record for lowest pressure on record.

Twitter is definitely the place for finding the latest updates. The all-time record was 960.7 mb — and The Weather Channel’s Hurricane Central feed reported a few hours later:

Atlantic City down to 953.9 mb (28.17″) pressure and still plummeting.

TWC also tweets:

Barometric pressure in #Philly now 28.39″; this breaks their all-time low pressure record of 28.43″ set in March ’93 superstorm

In fact, the record was set today for the lowest pressure ever recorded for a hurricane north of the Carolinas!

New York City is also slammed. TWC tweets:

The water level at the Battery in #NYC has reached 11.25 feet, surpassing the all-time record of 11.2 feet set in 1821.

Eric Holthaus tweeted for his Wall Street Journal weather feed:

NYSE closure tomorrow will mark first time the market closes FOR WEATHER on consecutive days since 1888.

The WSJ blog has reported, “NYC Subways Could Be Crippled for Days“:

Floodwaters rushed through Lower Manhattan on Monday night, inundating subway and automotive tunnels and likely forcing a prolonged shutdown of New York City’s mass-transit system. No clear estimate was available, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not provide a timetable for reopening the subways. But the extent of flooding and the height of the storm surge appeared likely to meet or exceed the level of a 1992 nor’easter….

Jon Passantino tweets:

Wow: Floodwaters inundate Ground Zero construction site in NYC (via AP) pic.twitter.com/hiJFeHJW

Meanwhile, the Washington Post Weather Gang posted:

How historic would the amount of rain forecast be? Weather Decisions Technology (WDT) has prepared an analysis shown below. Its model projects Sandy to be a 500-to-1,000 year precipation event for some parts of the Mid-Atlantic with a 100-250 year precipitation event for broader areas….

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Security

Does Publicly Discussing The Consequences Of Iran Attack Undermine The U.S. And Help Iran?

By Ben Armbruster on Oct 29, 2012 at 6:51 pm

Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic and a Bloomberg News columnist, today criticized the Obama administration for publicly discussing the consequences of war with Iran.

Goldberg emailed Mitt Romney wondering if his Iran policy had changed given his relatively moderate tone during last week’s foreign policy debate and published Romney’s response in a Bloomberg piece published today. Romney replied with some of his standard boilerplate answers on Iran but criticized “the president’s top advisers and cabinet secretaries broadcasting the risks of the military option, therefore conveying to Iran’s leadership that the threat is simply not real.”

Goldberg agreed with this latter assessment, writing, “it doesn’t help the American negotiating position to publicly telegraph to the Iranians these sorts of doubts” (although he didn’t say how exactly discussing the consequences of war with Iran would undermine the U.S. negotiating position). But in a follow-up article for the Atlantic, Goldberg went a bit further, saying that having a public discussion of the repercussions of attacking Iran is a “relief” for Iran’s leaders:

President Obama has been undermined from time to time by his own team on the Iran question — whenever a senior official of his administration analyzes publicly the dangers of a military confrontation to the U.S., we should assume the Iranian leaders breathe a sigh of relief, and make the calculations that Obama is bluffing on military action.

Again, Goldberg doesn’t explain how having an open and public discussion about the consequences of war with Iran harms the U.S. negotiating position or how exactly it means President Obama is not sincere that “no options are off the table” when dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. We asked Goldberg on Twitter but he has yet to respond.

Joel Rubin, Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, pushed back on Goldberg’s assertion. “Does this mean that the administration, if it disagrees with Congress or other critics, has to be silent?” Rubin asked. “Are we not a democracy? Is the only voice that’s allowed the one that calls for military action?” Rubin said, adding, “This implies that there’s only one correct policy towards Iran, and that any debate about it is counterproductive.”

And in a twist to Goldberg’s comments, Iran’s leaders might actually “breathe a sigh of relief” if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. From the Green Movement protests in 2009 to the strains on Iranians caused by tough international sanctions, Iranian society is currently deeply divided. An attack could end all that and cause ordinary Iranians to rally around the regime. We know this precisely because this administration has fostered a public discussion of the consequences of war with Iran. But it’s not just the Obama administration saying this. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said an attack “would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue.”

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Economy

‘Fiscal Cliff’ Would Cause More Austerity Than European Debt Crisis

By Travis Waldron on Oct 29, 2012 at 6:35 pm

The spending cuts and tax increases that will occur at the beginning of 2013 — the so-called “fiscal cliff” brought about by Congress’ deal to raise the debt ceiling last year — would cause more budgetary contraction than the austerity measures used to address debt crises across Europe.

The cliff would cause deficit reduction that totals 5.1 percent of gross domestic product, making the fiscal cliff a bigger package of austerity measures than those that have occurred in Europe as Quartz’ Tim Fernholz reports:

Absent new action, next year the US government’s budget footprint will contract more rapidly than those of Greece, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, all countries where post-crisis austerity measures sent protestors into the streets and growth plunging.

Across Europe, fiscal contraction caused by austerity has pushed unemployment to record levels, plunged multiple countries into double-dip recessions (perhaps even depressions), and caused cuts to social programs that have sent protesters rioting into the streets.

Many of those austerity packages have been instituted as a condition for bailouts or financial aid. Similarly, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia have instituted austerity measures in the past as a condition of bailouts and assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

In the United States, where borrowing costs are at historic lows, none of that is the case. The IMF is urging Congress to avert the cliff. The U.S. is hardly facing a debt crisis. And the economy is steadily recovering, however slowly. There is ample evidence that the American tack toward economic stimulus bested the European emphasis on austerity, and that Republican-led spending cuts have already held back economic growth at the state and national level. And yet, the fiscal cliff, a result of GOP insistence on taking the government to the brink of default in 2011, could cause even more unnecessary pain.

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Education

Ann Romney: We Need To ‘Throw Out’ The Public Education System

By Josh Israel on Oct 29, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Romney Visits Philadelphia Charter School Ann Romney told Good Housekeeping magazine that the campaign issue closest to her heart is taking on teachers unions and dismantling public education as we know it. In an interview, she told the publication:

I’ve been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people’s lives if they don’t get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers’ unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.

This attack on public school teachers echoes one that has been frequently heard in her husband’s stump speeches and debates. In his Friday economic speech, he said “It matters for the child in a failing school, unable to go to the school of his parent’s choosing, because the teacher’s union that funds the President’s campaign opposes school choice.”

Both Romneys have it wrong. President Obama has also consistently supported charter schools as a supplement to traditional schools. In May, he declared in his “Charter School Week” proclamation, “charter schools serve as incubators of innovation in neighborhoods across our country.” Obama has opposed, however, proposals to take taxpayer money out of public schools and to fund private and parochial schools that do not have to achieve the same standards. Romney has embraced a risky school voucher scheme. Studies have also shown that charter schools may not necessarily improve children’s education.

Unlike Mitt Romney, President Obama’s campaign has not taken a single contribution from political action committees — teachers’ unions or otherwise. The National Education Association’s super PAC, NEA Advocacy Fund, has not made a single expenditure on the presidential race. While some individuals employed by the union have donated to the Obama campaign out of their personal funds, those contributions amount to less than one 1/100th of a percent of his total contributions.

Mitt Romney has made the questionable boast that as governor of Massachusetts, he made the state’s public schools number one in the nation. Those schools — with great union teachers — show that standards and certification are part of the solution, not the problem.

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Health

Massachusetts Cracks Down On Unregulated Compounding Pharmacies Linked To Deadly Meningitis Outbreak

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 29, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Contaminated steroid injections that led to meningitis infections

Now that the current deadly meningitis outbreak — which has infected an estimated 337 Americans across 18 different states, and caused 25 deaths so far — has put a spotlight on compounding pharmacies that currently fall outside the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration’s safety regulations, state officials are beginning to crack down on the pharmacies that produce compounded drugs.

In Massachusetts, where tainted steroid shots produced at the New England Compounding Center (NECC) first exposed thousands of Americans to a rare strain of fungal meningitis, local officials are taking a more serious look at compounding pharmacies that remix and repackage drugs for widespread sale. As the New York Times reports, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is working to address the public health risks posed by compounding pharmacies in the absence of FDA regulatory oversight, and recently shut down the third compounding pharmacy in his state that did not meet inspection standards:

Gov. Deval Patrick last week directed the state’s Board of Registration in Pharmacy to immediately start unannounced inspections of compounding pharmacies that prepare sterile, injectable medications. There are 25 such pharmacies in Massachusetts, and Mr. Patrick has acknowledged that the state rules governing them were insufficient. Although the Food and Drug Administration can inspect compounding pharmacies and issue warnings, the agency says states have ultimate jurisdiction.

At the news conference on Sunday, Dr. Lauren Smith, the interim commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said the state was bringing on five additional inspectors to help with unannounced visits to compounding pharmacies. The goal is to inspect all of them by Jan. 1, she added.

Smith told Reuters that the statewide inspections are part of “a series of aggressive and necessary actions to protect public safety and enhance oversight of this industry” after the contaminated steroid shots from the NECC brought on the national meningitis epidemic.

Although public health advocates have called for strengthened FDA regulatory power over compounded drugs for decades — warning that since compounding pharmacies are not currently subject to the FDA’s health and safety guidelines, they are able to distribute products like the tainted steroids that pose serious public health risks — the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied to prevent the agency from having any additional oversight in that area. Some members of Congress have already called for a criminal investigation into the meningitis outbreak.

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Justice

In SCOTUS Review Of Government Surveillance, What We Don’t Know May Kill The Challenge

By Nicole Flatow on Oct 29, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Undeterred by Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. Supreme Court justices were back in their chairs Monday morning hearing arguments in an important case about government eavesdropping. The case takes up one of several challenges to the government’s broad post-9/11 power to electronically monitor foreigners and Americans. The plaintiffs – human rights activists, journalists and lawyers – say this eavesdropping is invoking a justified fear that their confidential conversations about sensitive foreign information will be intercepted. This has had a chilling effect on their work, and has prompted them to travel abroad to have confidential conversations, rather than have them via phone or electronically, they say.

But there is an obstacle to their challenge that has plagued almost every other attempt to question the sweeping federal policy: the plaintiffs must show that they particularly have been harmed by the government’s policy, i.e., that have “standing” to sue. While the federal appeals court in this case found that plaintiffs did have standing because they incurred significant expense traveling abroad, other courts have held otherwise (including the trial court in this case), reasoning that their fear is merely “abstract,” since they cannot prove whether their communications are actually being intercepted.

Of course, this is precisely the problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – no one will know if they are under surveillance or not because, under 2008 amendments to the law, the government does not have to share much of anything at all – not even with the secret FISA court tasked with reviewing the government’s actions. Here are some of the many things we don’t know about the government’s spying:

We don’t know whether the government is following its own law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was initially passed in 1978 to set limits on surveillance, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that held warrantless surveillance of Americans unconstitutional. But after President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 disregard for FISA’s limits, Congress passed amendments to FISA in 2008 that in many ways codified Bush’s approach and rolled back the requirements for obtaining surveillance permission by a secret FISA court. The result is that, while the government is still technically required to target only foreigners and not Americans, we don’t know if they are actually doing so, because the court charged with vetting FISA surveillance has very limited power, and its determinations may be ignored by the government.
We don’t know who the government is targeting. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government is supposed to limit its spying to cases in which the target is a foreigner (though the foreigner can be communicating with Americans). But under the 2008 Amendments, the government doesn’t have to disclose who the targets are.
We don’t know if the government has a justification for its spying. Typically to obtain a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, the government has to show that it has “probable cause” to search the particular person or place for the particular information it is seeking. But under FISA, no such justification is necessary. Instead, the government merely has to show that there is probable cause that the target of the surveillance is a “foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” As Garrett Epps writes in the Atlantic, “It’s a license for wholesale spying, as long as the communications involve one party in another country.”
We don’t know what type of information the government is gathering. Not only is the government exempted from identifying its targets; it also doesn’t have to identify the places, facilities and phone lines it is monitoring, let alone the type of information it is seeking.
Even if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the 2008 Amendments to FISA (however unlikely), we won’t know if the government is spying on us. From the U.S. government’s brief: “Even without the FAA, the United States could monitor such persons abroad with, for instance, ‘NSA surveillance programs’ not covered by FISA or surveillance under traditional FISA orders.” Epps interprets the government’s argument in a must-read piece about the case:

In other words: You’re right. Big Brother is watching. Whatever the Court decides, Big Brother will still be watching. Big Brother may be watching you right now, and you may never know. Since 9/11, our national life has changed forever. Surveillance is the new normal.

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LGBT

Wisconsin Bishop: Vote Against ‘Intrinsically Evil’ Homosexuality And Abortion

By Zack Ford on Oct 29, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Green Bay Bishop David Ricken

Another member of the Catholic hierarchy has used his godly decree to condemn liberal social values, calling them “intrinsically evil,” including homosexuality and abortion. Green Bay, Wisconsin Bishop David Ricken penned a letter to parishioners last week urging them to consider social values when they vote for president, though mentioning neither candidate by name, including five “non-negotiables” that they must consider lest they risk putting their “soul in jeopardy”:

I would like to review some of the principles to keep in mind as you approach the voting booth to complete your ballot. The first is the set of non-negotiables. These are areas that are “intrinsically evil” and cannot be supported by anyone who is a believer in God or the common good or the dignity of the human person.

They are:

1. abortion
2. euthanasia
3. embryonic stem cell research
4. human cloning
5. homosexual “marriage”

These are intrinsically evil. “A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.” Intrinsically evil actions are those which have an evil object. In other words, an act is evil by its very nature and to choose an action of this type puts one in grave moral danger.

But what does this have to do with the election? Some candidates and one party have even chosen some of these as their party’s or their personal political platform. To vote for someone in favor of these positions means that you could be morally “complicit” with these choices which are intrinsically evil. This could put your own soul in jeopardy.

These are clearly the words of a religious leader abusing the power of his position. Ricken may not mention Barack Obama or Mitt Romney by name, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t clearly threatening Church-goers with the fate of their souls in this election. One’s fear of Hell should not be a factor in making a thoughtful vote, and Ricken’s letter makes evident how little respect the Church has for the people impacted by these issues. (HT: Towleroad.)

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Alyssa

Arthur Krystal Revives The Genre Fiction v. Literature Debate

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 29, 2012 at 5:02 pm

The debate over whether genre fiction can ever count as literature is back, this time in the form of an essay from Arthur Krystal at the New Yorker. I don’t much agree with the piece, because I think it’s totally ludicrous to say that “Writers who want to understand why the heart has reasons that reason cannot know are not going to write horror tales or police procedurals. Why say otherwise?” when environments of stress, grief, or transitions between old worlds and new ones are precisely those that expose the reasons that reasons cannot know. But I actually think it’s a great example of the dodge people like Krystal perform to justify treating genre as lesser than an amorphously-defined “literature.” He writes:

The science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, for instance, announced that literature “is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.” Is that so? A novel by definition is “written art”? You know, I wrote a novel once, and I’m pretty sure that Le Guin would change her mind if she read it…

What I’m trying to say is that “genre” is not a bad word, although perhaps the better word for novels that taxonomically register as genre is simply “commercial.” Born to sell, these novels stick to the trite-and-true, relying on stock characters whose thoughts spool out in Lifetime platitudes. There will be exceptions, as there are in every field, but, for the most part, the standard genre or commercial novel isn’t going to break the sea frozen inside us. If this sounds condescending, so be it. Commercial novels, in general, whether they’re thrillers or romance or science fiction, employ language that is at best undistinguished and at worst characterized by a jejune mentality and a tendency to state the obvious. Which is not to say that some literary novels, as more than a few readers pointed out to me, do not contain a surfeit of decorative description, elaborate psychologizing, and gleams of self-conscious irony. To which I say: so what?

What he’s doing here is clever: essentially, Krystal is holding genre responsible for the worst stuff written in its name, while literature doesn’t have to be responsible for, say, romance novels, or Nicholas Sparks weepies. Genre is determined to be genre because it includes certain kinds of plots or takes place in certain kinds of settings. Literature is a determination of quality. Treating them as if they’re similar categories for sorting out novels, film, or television is a brilliant dodge on the part of people who don’t want to recognize that genre fiction can be literature. Why they’re resistant to that recognition is the really interesting question.

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Security

New FBI Initiative Will Identify And Trace Hackers

By Hamed Aleaziz on Oct 29, 2012 at 4:23 pm

FBI Director Robert Mueller (Photo: FBI)

On Friday, the FBI announced a new initiative to track down and identify hackers. The program is an attempt to respond to hacking that had led to “malicious software in two million computers” in early 2011. The FBI describes the program as a way to “uncover and investigate web-based intrusion attacks and develop a cadre of specially trained computer scientists able to extract hackers’ digital signatures from mountains of malicious code.” Besides its relevance to individual computer users, hacking and the need for cybersecurity is becoming increasingly relevant to national security.

Word of the FBI’s new initiative comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s strong call for action earlier this month, when he said that cybersecurity is at a “pre-9/11 moment.” The FBI will share the information it gathers with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency.

Earlier this month the military announced similar efforts to counter cyber attacks directed at the U.S. But Panetta said there should be more emphasis on cybersecurity. “We know of specific instances where intruders have successfully gained access to these control systems,” he said. “We also know they are seeking to create advanced tools to attack those systems and cause panic, destruction and even loss of life.” Panetta added that the private sector and government should share information about cyber threats.

In the past year alone there have been several reports of international hackers targeting and attacking U.S.-based agencies and organizations like NASA and the Chamber of Commerce.

In July, John Arguila, a defense expert and professor, told the Guardian that the U.S. needed to recruit more hackers to join its side, adding that finding them through traditional means probably wouldn’t work because “most of these sorts of guys can’t be vetted in the traditional way. We need a new institutional culture that allows us to reach out to them.”

The Obama administration, hoping to circumvent a stalled Congress, is finalizing its draft executive cybersecurity order. The Associated Press, which received a copy of it last week, said the order “would put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of organizing an information-sharing network that rapidly distributes sanitized summaries of top-secret intelligence reports about known cyberthreats that identify a specific target.”

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LGBT

All Four Anti-Equality State Campaigns Run Misleading ‘Parents’ Rights’ Ad

By Zack Ford on Oct 29, 2012 at 4:20 pm

The campaigns against marriage equality in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington are all running some variation on an ad featuring David and Tonia Parker, a Massachusetts couple who in 2005 objected to their kids learning in school that same-sex marriages existed. Conservatives regularly highlight David Parker as a victim to scare voters, but his story is told in incredibly misleading ways.

There is a big difference between mentioning that some kids — including students in the class — have same-sex parents and teaching about same-sex sexuality. The former is what happened in schools, but the latter is what the Parkers claim they objected to. In fact, David Parker so objected to the use of materials including all families that he appeared at the school to protest and refused to leave, forcing an arrest for trespassing. Parker then sued and a federal judge dismissed his complaint, saying that schools are “entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy.” Parker has since become an outspoken enemy of LGBT equality; Jeremy Hooper has a round-up of his various interviews, in which he calls homosexuality a disease, claims that gay people “use” and harm their children, and urges schools to promote harmful ex-gay therapy.

Parker responded to Hooper’s clips to make one clarification about whether homosexuality is a “disease,” choosing instead to describe it as an “addiction” that people are “drawn in” to:

PARKER: I could have been more clear about the “disease” correlation. If you really listen — I was led down this thought path unprepared — and went reluctantly and clumsily. Let me clarify — I believe that engaging in homosexual conduct becomes more addictive with practiced frequency until a person “feels” like that’s “who they are.” It shouldn’t be contriversial [sic] that a “sexual feeling” has a physiological addictiveness — when something “feels good” to a person — psychologically, they are compelled to do it more. I also believe that intense love for the same gender is NOT “homosexuality” — as is commonly understood. I also, VERY strongly believe that sexuality is fluid — especially when young. And, I do not look down on persons with same-sex attraction; my worldview informs me that ALL of humanity has urges and temptations — and the more you “give in” the more you are “drawn in.” I hope you except [sic] the authenticity to genuinely put forth my clarification, though, I know this is not an explanation that you will embrace.

David Parker does not have any known psychological qualifications to inform his positions, which is likely why his understanding of homosexuality in no way aligns with what all professional social science organizations have been saying for decades. Given that many consider addictions like alcoholism to be a disease, his clarification here is a distinction without a difference. He clearly sees gays and lesbians as disordered and troubled and not worthy of respect in society, which is why he has no problem serving as a spokesperson against equality at every opportunity.

Watch a mash-up of the Parkers’ ad as it’s running in all four state campaigns, with comparisons to fear-mongering ads of the past:

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