Burton's Shore

By Carrie Jacobson

One of the reasons, I think, that Wachapreague and the surrounding areas on the eastern shore of Virginia are so beautiful and untouched is that there are really no beaches there.

Instead, there’s a gorgeous salt marsh that draws all sorts of birds, and deep inlets that are home to all sorts of sealife.

And there are barrier islands with beautiful, untrammeled beaches – but they’re out between the bay and the Atlantic.

I am thankful for this, much as I love beaches. It has kept the eastern shore from looking like Virginia Beach or the Outer Banks, or any of a thousand other seaside spots that have been built up and built up and overbuilt up.

Here and there, of course, there are strips of sand, small beaches – like this one, on Burton’s Bay. It is lovely, and filled with fiddler crabs. One of these days, I’ll go swimming there. This time, I just painted.

***

If  you’re looking for something to do this weekend, you might consider taking a drive to check out the Mt. Gretna Outdoor Art Festival, in Mt. Gretna, PA.  It is supposed to be an excellent show – I will report about it on my blog, The Accidental Artist, if you want to know how it came out…

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Ocean fish are the last wild creatures that people hunt on a large scale. We used to think of the ocean’s bounty as endless, but recently we have discovered its limits. Between 1950 and 1994, ocean fishermen increased their catch 400 percent by doubling the number of boats and using more effective fishing gear, according to Seafood Watch, a consumer awareness program at the Monterey Bay (Calif.) Aquarium.

In 1989, the world’s catch leveled off at just over 82 million metric tons of fish per year. We have reached “peak fish” and no amount of boats will help us catch more fish. Today, only 10 percent of all large fish – both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large ground fish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder – are left in the sea, according to research published in National Geographic.

“From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean. There is no blue frontier left,” lead author Ransom Myers told National Geographic. “Since 1950, with the onset of industrialized fisheries, we have rapidly reduced the resource base to less than 10 percent – not just in some areas, not just for some stocks, but for entire communities of these large fish species from the tropics to the poles.”

“The impact we have had on ocean ecosystems has been vastly underestimated,” said co-author Boris Worm. “These are the megafauna, the big predators of the sea, and the species we most value. Their depletion not only threatens the future of these fish and the fishers that depend on them, it could also bring about a complete re-organization of ocean ecosystems, with unknown global consequences.”

Marine biologist Sylvia Earle says, “I don’t blame the fishermen for this. We, the consumers, have done this because we have a taste for fish and ‘delicacies’ such as shark-fin soup. Our demand for seafood appears to be insatiable…driven by high-end appetites. I’ve always believed that even when there is only one bluefin tuna left in the sea someone will pay a million dollars to be able to eat it.”

Earle, who is also an author and sustainability advocate, points out that “Most people also don’t know how bad it is for us to be eating so much fish, not only because of the destruction of an ecosystem vital to survival but also because the big predatory fish are full of the toxins and other pollutants that we cast into the oceans. It’s not as healthy to eat fish as most people believe.”

Three factors are responsible for the depletion of our oceans:

–Coastal wetlands are a fertile habitat for fish and shellfish, but also popular places for people. More than half of the world’s people live near a sea coast, placing most of our large cities next to the ocean.  Bay waters are polluted by sewage, oil, chemicals and agricultural fertilizer. Paved surfaces near wetlands and tidal areas increase storm water run-off.

–Trawling and dragging are fishing methods that destroy habitat by dredging up the sea floor. Some trawlers put rockhopper gear, including old tires, along the base of their nets to roll over rocky reefs, giving sea life no place to hide. Dredges drag nets with a chain mesh base through soft sand or mud to catch scallops and sea urchins, crushing other life on the sea floor and damaging places where fish feed and breed. Some scientists believe that fishing with rockhoppers and dredges harms the ocean more than any other human activity.

–According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, one in four animals caught in fishing gear dies as bycatch (unwanted or unintentional catch). Tons of fish are tossed out because they’re not what the fishing boat was after, have no market value, or are too small to sell. Bycatch often takes young fish that could rebuild depleted populations if they were allowed to grow up and breed. It is estimated that for each pound of shrimp caught in a trawl net, an average of two to ten pounds of other marine life is caught and discarded as bycatch.

Some seafood can be sustainably farmed. Clams are raised in special beds on sandy shores, where their harvest does little to disturb the ecosystem. Oysters and mussels are often raised in bags or cages suspended off the seafloor, doing little damage as they’re harvested. Many farmed fish, such as salmon, are grown in net pens, like cattle in a feed lot. This is as environmentally damaging in the ocean as cattle feed lots are on land.

Additionally, mangrove forests have been cut down and replaced with temporary shrimp farms that supply shrimp to Europe, Japan and America until the water becomes polluted.

Pope John XXIII, artist Frederick Franck. From Pacem In Terris web page.

By Bob Gaydos

Spending a summer afternoon at Pacem in Terris, in Warwick, can be like being transported to another world. Which may well have been what Frederick Franck had in mind when he created his six-acre oasis/sanctuary/art museum/sculpture garden/spiritual retreat on the banks of the Wawayanda River. On special Sundays, magnificent music, such as was performed last Sunday in a stone grotto by the Loma Mar string quartet (playing Haydn and McCartney) , heightens the feeling of beauty and tranquility that is palpable almost everywhere one looks.

Franck, who died in 2006, was a pacifist, agnostic, painter, sculptor, dental surgeon, author and student of Zen Buddhism. Put prolific in front of everyone of those. A seeker of peace on earth and among all religions, he was among a select group of artists who sketched the sessions of Vatican II, presided over by Pope John XXIII, whom Franck greatly admired. Inspired by what he saw and heard, he came home to Warwick and created his “transreligious” sanctuary.

“Pacem in Terris,” of course, was the title of the encyclical issued by the pope in April of 1963, “on establishing universal peace in truth, justice, charity and liberty.” That remarkable doctrine, among many other things, encouraged religious orders to modernize, to bring the Catholic Church actively into the life of the 20th century. For many orders, this meant opportunities for greater education and learning skills to advance the causes of justice, liberty, charity and truth within their communities, not just in churches. For many orders of nuns the encyclical was, in itself, a symbol of individual liberty and justice. Instead of simply repeating church doctrine, they could actively spread the pope’s message of peace in various community settings.

And they did. And they have continued to do so. And for that, with a succession of more conservative popes since John XXIII, thousands of American nuns now find themselves threatened by the Vatican. The same institution that encouraged them to become educated, to proclaim their individual rights and responsibilities, now wants them to cease and desist. The nuns, members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 80 percent of American nuns, say this is not what Vatican II was about. Franck would likely agree. In fact, many lay Catholics agree with the nuns, staging demonstrations around the country to show their solidarity.

Last week, the nuns met in St. Louis to plan their response to a no-nonsense order issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The bishops said the sisters, through words and deeds had spread “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” The Vatican was particularly concerned with the nuns’ interest in sexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage and women in the priesthood. Although the group has taken no official stand on any of those issues, it has engaged in open discussion about them, arguing that they are vital issues of social liberty and justice of the times.

Which apparently everyone but the all-male Vatican can see.

The long-building ultimate confrontation has yet to occur as the sisters took a little detour after their conference, at which they took no official position. Instead, they met with Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, assigned by the Vatican to redraw the mission of the sisters to more accurately reflect what the men in Rome want. The nuns said they expressed their concerns about the Vatican report honestly and openly with Sartain, who, they said, was a respectful listener. The bishop has been mum since the meeting, but then he probably feels, as the Vatican’s point man, that he’s holding all the cards in this game.

For their part, the nuns do not seem ready to fold. In the spirit of respectful dialogue of Vatican II, more meetings with Sartain are scheduled for the fall. But they also said they “will reconsider if LCWR is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission.”

Perhaps more tellingly, the LCWR also issued a statement saying: “The expectation of the LCWR members is that open and honest dialogue may lead not only to increasing understanding between the church leadership and women religious, but also to creating more possibilities for the laity and — particularly for women — to have a voice in the church.”

One could say, in reading “Pacem in Terris,’ that a natural evolution of the church in light of a rapidly changing world, was what John XXIII had in mind. It would seem that any institution, even a religious one, must evolve with the people and society it professes to serve, else how can it continue to properly serve?

A voice for women in the Catholic Church? A radical idea? Maybe 50 years ago. Maybe not. Perhaps Sartain should spend a few hours in the gardens at Pacem in Terris reflecting on the spirit of “Pacem in Terris” before speaking to the sisters again.

 bob@zestoforange.com

Union members demonstrated against Mitt Romney's vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, in Las Vegas. (Photo: BuzzFeed)

By Emily Theroux

On Twitter, Rupert Murdoch called Mitt Romney’s V.P. pick an “almost perfect choice,” and a Fox News fanboy dubbed him “the rock star of American politics.”

So why does Witless Mitt appear to have a classic case of buyer’s remorse?

Wayward Willard apparently made the most important decision of his entire presidential campaign in full panic mode. His press secretary, Andrea Saul, had just committed the cardinal sin: forgetting to lie about “Romneycare.” During a Fox News broadcast, Saul was asked about a pro-Obama super-PAC ad in which a laid-off steelworker said that, after his former plant was shut down by Romney’s Bain Capital and he lost his company-sponsored health insurance plan, his uninsured wife later took ill and died. Observing that, if the family had lived in Massachusetts, they would have been covered by Romney’s universal health care law (a forbidden subject in MittWorld), Saul effectively implied that “Obamacare” was a pretty good deal for America.

Erick Erickson

A Full Fringe Freakout ensued. Erick Erickson of Redstate.com sent out The Tweet of Doom: “OMG. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election. Wow.” Laura Ingraham informed her TRN radio audience that, although she “might be the skunk at the picnic,” she had to say it: “Romney’s losing.” Rush Limbaugh mercilessly castigated Saul on Clear Channel. And Ann Coulter imploded on Hannity, demanding Saul’s head on a platter by the following morning. (As of press time, Saul still had her job.)

Mitt had already grown desperate to change the subject from relentless questions about his unreleased tax returns. Seeking immediate surcease, the Much-Maligned Mittster discovered all possible means of egress were marked “No Exit.” Terrified of spending all eternity with two or more raving partisans in Sartre’s cramped version of hell, Mitt jumped at his first chance to get back in the wingnuts’ good graces. Harry Reid, he could deal with, but being on the outs with El Rushbo & Co. was no freaking Pee-Wee boxing match.

The Mittbot clicked into autocorrect. Salvaging his doomed campaign became paramount; careful deliberation gave way to frenetic  forward motion. He had to do Something Big — and very distracting. Spurning the advice of seasoned pros with far better political instincts than his own, the one-term, faux-conservative governor flashed his only wild card, two weeks before the GOP convention was slated to begin in Tampa.

Whose budget plan — Ryan’s? Of course not — Romney’s!

Paul Ryan

The presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, Mitt announced, was Paul Ryan, 42,  the wonkish seven-term Wisconsin congressman of “Young Guns” renown (along with Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy). Ryan, an extreme social and fiscal conservative who serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee, has championed the obliteration of women’s reproductive rights and gay civil rights. He favors uncompromising, hard-right fiscal policy, devotes countless hours to manic P90X fitness workouts, and secretly worships at the bizarre altar of the fanatical ideologue Ayn Rand.

A post on Erickson’s blog gave Mitt props for picking Ryan — and also let him wriggle off the hook for Saul’s unforced error: “Contrary to some people’s opinions, Romney has run a stellar campaign. He can’t help it if Eric Fehrnstrom and Andrea Saul have had some brain-dead moments …well, maybe he could. There is no such thing as the perfect campaign.”

But almost immediately, mainstream reporters began clamoring to sort out how Ryan’s signal political achievement — his 2010 “Road Map for America’s Future,” a radical budget plan that would convert Medicare into a voucher system — would affect the campaign. That led to edgy, defensive bravado on Mitt’s part (Paul who? Who said anything about Ryan’s plan? Hey, I’m the candidate here. My plan’s not exactly chopped liver, ya know. )

Then why appoint Paul Ryan V.P.? they queried. This perfectly reasonable question visibly stunned Romney. His heretofore choreographed campaign began unraveling. His own budget plan remained vague and sketchy like the rest of his policies, but the Ryan plan was something the press — and unfortunately, the public — could sink their teeth into.

Mitt the Whiner

Once again, the Romney campaign backed away from focusing on the economy (his only imaginable path to victory) and started flailing away at Democrats on the stump with an ever-shifting drumbeat of lies and innuendos: Obama wants to keep soldiers from voting. Obama’s going to take the ‘work’ out of welfare reform. Biden is a racist. (Why? He said an unregulated Wall Street would put us “in chains.” Chains = slavery, no matter the context. He used the word “y’all,” so he must have been talking about race. Or something.) Resign, Biden! (Sez Sarah Palin.) Obama’s campaign is based on division and anger and hatred. (Dog-whistle translation: Obama is a scary, angry black man. Be afraid. Be very afraid.) Obama is being mean to me. Obama and Axelrod, go back to Chicago so ‘us decent Americans’ can take our country back!

(Romney himself once said, “There’s no whining in politics.” It’s available on videotape for anyone to see. So why is this man still whining, when it makes him look like such an insufferable ass?)

When the #MittHitsTheFan, GOP insiders remember to duck

Several days after Romney’s announcement, it emerged that, after publicly praising his veep pick, some three dozen GOP strategists and operatives  met individually with Politico reporters to express serious reservations about Ryan’s potential effect on Romney’s candidacy as well as Senate and House contests. “Away from the cameras, and with all the usual assurances that people aren’t being quoted by name, there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington,” Politico’s resulting scoop revealed. “Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong.”

Mark McKinnon

“(T)he most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election,” the Politico article, co-written by Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Martin, stated. Some even think the Ryan pick is “a disaster for the GOP” and might cost Republicans the Senate if voters latch onto “MediScare” again. “Very not helpful down ballot — very,” a top Republican consultant told Politico.

Why on earth would Mitt choose a candidate who’s going to tar down-ticket Republicans with the same “class warfare” brush — the “Medicare menace” that enabled a Democrat to win an upstate New York district that had voted Republican since before the Civil War? The risk-averse Romney should have refrained from prodding the dry tinder of districts whose GOP representatives are backing as far away from Ryan as possible, before a spark of doubt among an aging populace bursts into a conflagration.

Meanwhile, wrote a Daily Kos blogger, “The Florida papers are destroying Paul Ryan” — in a state that Romney desperately needed to win. ” So much so that a distraught and panicked Village (a term used by progressive bloggers to denote the mainstream media) believes ‘Mitt Romney is in big, big trouble’ for selecting the man who wants to pull the plug on Grandma.”

The only GOP strategist brave enough to speak to Politico for attribution, former Bush senior adviser Mark McKinnon, called Mitt’s decision “a very bold choice”  that meant “Romney-Ryan can run on principles and provide some real direction and vision for the Republican Party.” Then McKinnon added his single caveat:  “And probably lose. Maybe big.”

Ryan’s list of negatives continues to mount:

• “Willard’s Choice” has doubled the number of rich white men atop the GOP ticket. (Mitt could have picked Pawlenty or Portman — two boring white men — but that would scarcely have budged the Etch a Sketch.)
• Because Ryan proposed eliminating the capital gains tax and Romney’s income is derived almost entirely from investments, Romney would pay virtually no taxes under Ryan’s plan. (Way to pick a winner, Mitt!)
• In the 14 years since Ryan left Wisconsin for Washington, only two of his many proposed bills have ever been passed. One renamed a post office; nobody remembers the other one.
• Romney’s ratings haven’t received the customary “bounce” from his veep announcement.
• #MittTheTwit didn’t rack up any  points bad-mouthing Palestinians in Israel. Only six percent of American Jews answer “Israel” when asked what most influences their presidential vote, says Peter Beinart of The Daily Beast — who adds that Romney (the perennial outsider who never has a clue) probably lost the remaining Jewish vote by choosing Ryan. (The economy, health care, a positive view of government spending, and fear of the Christian right top the list. And get this, Mitt: “Almost 80 percent of American Jews think it’s fine for a woman to have an abortion for any reason.” Giving birth control to teens ranks right up there, too — and support for school prayer is a definite minus. Sorry, Willard — you’d be a lot more popular if you were still governor of Massachusetts!)
• According to the Gallup poll and reason.com, “a clear majority, 58 percent, of Americans” have never heard of Paul Ryan. Snooki, Kim Kardashian, or Donald Trump would have been more readily recognized by the typical American voter. (And maybe Chris Christie, if he keeps insulting people on a regular basis. He might even get his own reality show.)

Union demonstrators protest Ryan’s Vegas star turn

Out on the campaign trail, hecklers interrupted Ryan’s debut campaign appearance at the Iowa State Fair, where the veep candidate showed his snarky side while dodging reporters’ questions. “We’ll play ‘Stump the Running Mate’ later,” he snapped at an NPR reporter. “I’m just going to enjoy this fair right now.”

The following night, the man of the hour attended a GOP fundraiser at billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The event, however, attracted more than big bucks. Outside, several hundred union protesters filled the plaza, according to Alternet. Protestors carried signs reading  “Romney/Ryan Road to Ruin,” “Paul Ryan Hustling for the 1%,” and “This is What Democracy Looks Like!”

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, had come to Vegas for his union’s annual convention, BuzzFeed reported. “Romney Hood, Ryan Hood, not in our neighborhood,” Gage chanted.

The GOP strategists may not see eye-to-eye with the 99 percenters, but they are definitely worried about the added angst of a Ryan candidacy. “Everybody loves Paul Ryan. Everybody supported the Ryan plan,” one party insider told Politico in D.C. “But nobody thinks Ryan should be the tip of the spear.”

By Emily Theroux

It’s been a wild fortnight, as the Brits would say, in America’s homegrown “killing fields.”

Two shooting rampages have bookended the nightmarishly brief span of a mere two weeks, leaving the national psyche reeling from a surfeit of firearms carnage. On Sunday morning, the cable news channels were firmly focused on Mitt Romney’s propaganda prizefight with former boxer Harry Reid over whether the GOP candidate had paid any taxes during the past decade.

Meanwhile, at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a neo-Nazi white supremacist named Wade Michael Page allegedly opened fire on a dozen worshipers, killing half of them before being shot in the stomach by police and “finishing himself off” with a self-inflicted shot to the head. Amardeep Kaleka, the son of the temple’s slain leader, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, later said Page appeared to be deliberately picking off male members of the congregation who wore their uncut hair wrapped in turbans, in accordance with Sikh religious practice.

The mainstream press sat up that afternoon and took notice, however briefly — which, with the exception of CNN, appeared to be just long enough to ascertain whether any white people had been killed in Wisconsin. Here’s how I imagine the chit-chat in the afternoon news meetings went down: “Sikhs, you say? A 500-year-old monotheistic religion with 30 million members worldwide, approximately 500,000 of whom live in the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, those strange lefties who keep track of racist hate groups. It says right here: ‘Sikhs are not Muslims.’ Bet Wade Michael Page thought they were. So what are we looking at? Brown-skinned ‘other’ victims; tattooed skinhead member of the white-supremacist Hammerskins; disgraced ex-soldier; punk-rock musician “hate band” member; and drunken loser of a shooter who is already ‘history’ himself. Well, we all know what happened there. No pretty young white girls killed or kidnapped. Nothing to see here. Bummer — toss it to the bloggers!”

Riddhi Shah, who practices a related Indian religion known as Jainism, wrote an opinion piece in The Huffington Post asking why the American media appeared to care less about this attack than the one that had stunned the nation two weeks earlier in Colorado. The Week, a roundup of online news and opinion, offered four possible reasons:

1. Sikhs are being treated as second-class victims.
2. The relative randomness of the Aurora shooting is scarier.
3. The Oak Creek shooting wasn’t as dramatic.
4. It’s just media fatigue.

My vote, I’m afraid, remains largely with Numero Uno — not because the mainstream media are racist, but because I truly believe they peg their coverage primarily to readership and ratings. Round-the-clock coverage had already been designated to the Olympics; did TV viewers really want gymnastics superseded by wall-to-wall cable broadcasting devoted to members of an obscure religion that most Americans — including, very likely, their killer — confused with Muslims?

Unlike the cases of Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes, and even Major Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, the Sikh temple shooting by Wade Michael Page is reportedly being investigated by the FBI as a domestic terror incident. (Fox News, by the way, wasn’t at all pleased that the Hassan shooting case was classified as a “work-related” incident — and they’re not too keen on the shooting of non-white Sikhs warranting the domestic terror designation they expected for Hassan. The difference is that, while Page may have actually committed a hate crime targeting members of a specific ethnic and religious group, Hassan shot  co-workers of no particular race, creed, or nationality.)

Jared Lee Loughner sorry he ‘failed’ to kill Gabby Giffords

Two days after the Sikh temple tragedy, Arizona mass murderer Loughner — who killed six people and seriously wounded then-Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — resurfaced to plead guilty to his crime.

During the tense weeks after Loughner’s arrest, pols and pundits alike buzzed with speculation about whether the shooting rampage had a political motive. The gunman appeared to have targeted a Democratic congresswoman who had barely won reelection in 2010 in a blazing red state. At issue was the fact that 2008 GOP veep candidate Sarah Palin had included Giffords among 20 “vulnerable” Democrats whose districts Palin believed had a good chance of falling to their Tea Party opponents. Palin’s infamous “Don’t Retreat; Reload!” map featured what resembled a gun sight hovering over each “targeted” district.

As it turned out, however, Jared Lee Loughner was a schizophrenic who was probably too preoccupied with listening to the cacophony of incoherent voices inside his head to have been paying much attention to the rantings of wingnut radio haters.

All Loughner had to reveal this week was how sorry he was that he had “failed,” as he had in most of his past endeavors, in his mission of killing Gabby Giffords. (Loughner also admitted that he likes the menial jobs he is assigned in prison, because even he can succeed at them.)

Gov. Rick Scott vows to defend Florida’s  ‘Docs vs. Glocks’ law

Somewhere along the short and winding road from Aurora, Colorado, to Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Florida’s trigger-happy governor, “Sheriff Rick” Scott, stepped out into the public square, six-shooters blazing, for yet another “Second Amendment remedies” showdown: a solemn oath to appeal Florida’s controversial “Docs vs. Glocks” law, which makes it a crime for doctors to ask patients if they own guns.

“The NRA’s gun for hire” (as Adam Weinstein, Mother Jones’ national security reporter, tagged him), Florida firearms lobbyist Marion Hammer told The Tampa Tribune, “Patients don’t like being interrogated about whether or not they own guns when they take their child with a sore throat to a pediatrician, nor do they like being interrogated in an emergency room when their Little Leaguer broke his leg sliding into first base.”

“First, do no harm” is rapidly being replaced by “Shoot first; ask (no) questions later” in the clinic and urgent-care waiting rooms of America. While you’re filling out the standard physicians’ questionnaire about past illnesses and unhealthy habits (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, and fast food dripping in trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup), doesn’t it stand to reason that your doctor might also want to know about “risk factors” unrelated to stuff you consume — such as whether you sleep with a loaded 9mm handgun under your pillow? Or how about locking up that unsecured Uzi before it occurs to your 5-year-old to play “show and tell” with his little neighborhood friends?

Until a federal judge tossed the 2011 Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act out of court on the grounds that it violated doctors’ First Amendment rights, this bogus bill was capable of costing inquisitive physicians their medical licenses and a $10,000 fine, according to Weinstein. Since the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act in June, NRA supporters now fear that the feds could “coerce the names and habits of gun owners out of doctors’ medical records,” as one Florida gun-rights advocate told a local newspaper.

Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger of North Miami Beach, one of a group of physicians who successfully sued the state over the law, considers the governor’s quest dangerously quixotic.  Scott has already spent more than $880,000 in taxpayer funds, fighting largely unsuccessful court battles over conservative causes, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “My fear is the state will appeal and keeping wasting money to fight windmills,” Wollschlaeger told a McClatchy Newspapers reporter last month. “This is an ideologically driven, politically motivated vendetta by the NRA that has to stop.”

Motormouth Mitt confuses ‘Sikh’ with ‘sheik’ at Iowa fund-fest

It couldn’t have been more ludicrous if Mitt Romney had attempted the tried-and-true tongue-twister “the sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” at his recent Iowa fundraiser. Mitt made more moolah than any candidate’s ever pulled in at a single cash-bash in Iowa history — almost $2 million. (Looks like he’ll just have to undergo a news cycle’s worth of media humiliation to get his karma out of hock.)

Philip Rucker of The Washington Post took up the challenge of Mitt mockery, writing that, after getting the tricky articulation right Tuesday morning, Mitt muffed his lines at the Iowa fundraiser, where “he instead talked about the ‘sheik temple’ and the ‘sheik people’. Sheik is an Arabic honorific, whereas Sikh is a religion with roots in South Asia.”

Without a videotape, Mitt could just as easily have been talking about the  “chic people” — just doing a little bit of “framing” for his well-heeled audience. The outcome of this increasingly surreal election, after all, depends on how Mitt “sheiks” the dice.

Sen. Harry Reid: Show us the tax returns.

By Bob Gaydos

I don’t know if Harry Reid is a liar or a political genius. It’s possible he’s both, or neither. Or one or the other.

Whatever the truth, and that’s an elusive commodity in this election campaign, the Senate Majority Leader has managed to do what the Obama reelection team has heretofore not — delivered a verbal broadside to Mitt Romney’s election campaign which actually has the potential to increase in damage the longer it hangs around.

Reid has said publicly, repeatedly, and even on the floor of the U.S. Senate that Romney paid no income taxes for 10 years. Reid says a credible source who would know such things told him. Romney says the charge is false. Other Republicans have called Reid a liar. Reid, and other Democrats, have replied simply, “Show us the tax returns.”

Genius. If I’m lying, you can show the world right now. Harry Reid is a dirty, rotten liar. If I’ve sullied your reputation by implying you evaded taxes even though you’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars (at least), hell, sue me. I repeat: Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.

The whole tax thing becomes particularly difficult for Romney, of course, because his dad, George Romney, established the precedence for presidential candidates releasing tax returns for several years when he ran for president in 1968. In releasing 12 years of tax returns, the Michigan governor said it was the best way to let Americans know of any potential conflicts of interest their would-be presidents might have as well as providing some insight into their character. Guess he was right.

Thus far, Mitt Romney has released a tax return for one year — 2010 — and an estimate for 2011. He says that’s all he will release. Even that little bit of information has raised red flags about how he feels about paying taxes, investing in America and creating jobs. There’s stuff, for example, about a bank account in Switzerland. This account was apparently closed in 2010, but there’s no way to know if Romney paid taxes on the account in previous years and, if so, how much. And why mess around with Swiss francs anyway if you’re such a proud American?

Another item of curiosity in Romney’s tax return is a $100 million IRA. Now, Americans are by and large OK with people accumulating wealth legitimately, but it is hard to imagine contributing enough within even generous legal yearly limitations to build up a $100 million IRA. How did he do that?

These questions were raised by people with a far better understanding of the tax code than I. They were posed in a Time magazine article by Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor at Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. and former chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, and. Peter C. Canellos, a lawyer and former chair of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section.

The two also wonder about the Romneys’ 2010 federal tax rate of 13.9 percent on adjusted gross income of $22 million. That’s lower than the rate for the average American taxpayer earning abut $50,000 a year. Romney apparently used a tax loophole that allowed him, as someone who manages other people’s money, to claim an absurdly low tax rate.

With this attitude towards taxes and no previous returns to help make judgments, how are Americans supposed to know how a President Romney will address the tax code and the general inequity in wealth in America? How are they supposed to take an accurate measure of the man if he won’t reveal how he made his wealth, where it’s invested and why so much of it is in accounts in other countries?

Back to Reid. Some fact-checking web sites have jumped on him for not corroborating his claim with, you know, evidence. Fair enough. I’m very much in favor of corroboration. But the fact-checking web sites have gone so far as to say or suggest that Reid is lying because he has offered no proof. That is a reach too far. No one knows whether Reid is lying, save for Reid and Romney. Reid may be playing dirty politics. Then again, he may not. In either case, Republicans, who have made provably untrue claims about President Obama in their TV ads, have no credibility when it comes to accusing Democrats of making false accusations. Pot, meet kettle.

So what do Republicans do? They can keep calling Reid a liar and he can keep saying, “Just show us the tax returns to prove it.”

Or they can ignore the charge and let the questions linger: Why won’t Romney release his tax returns? Does he have something to hide?

Neither is good for Romney.

I’m no fan of Harry Reid or the politics of rumor, but when Republicans and their mouthpieces at Fox News — acolytes all of Karl Rove — start calling Reid a “hit man” for Obama and the Democrats, I have to confess thinking, what took them so long?

 bob@zestoforange.com

By Michael Kaufman

I had to smile when I saw the headline last week on the National Cancer Institute web site: “Multi-institution study finds high consumption of vitamin E may lower liver cancer risk” (http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter). I first started taking a vitamin E supplement in the 1970s after reading the book Vitamin E for Healthy & Ailing Hearts by Wilfred E. Shute, M.D. It seemed like a good idea back then and over the years several observational studies were published that associated lower rates of heart disease with higher vitamin E intake. As described in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) “Fact Sheet” on dietary supplements, for example, a study of approximately 90,000 nurses published in 1983 found that incidence of heart disease was 30 percent to 40 percent lower in those with the highest intakes of vitamin E, primarily from supplements (http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VITAMINE-HealthProfessional/).

In recent years vitamin E has been investigated in various types of cancer as well. Findings have been equivocal (as have recent findings of cardiovascular studies). The SELECT trial, which began in 2001 to determine whether long-term daily supplementation with vitamin E (400 IU), with or without added selenium supplementation, would reduce the number of new prostate cancers in  healthy men 50 years of age and older, was discontinued in 2008. Analysis found that vitamin E, alone or combined with selenium, failed to prevent prostate cancer. Furthermore, results from an additional 1.5 years of follow-up (during which subjects no longer received either supplement), showed that men who had taken vitamin E had a 17 percent  increased risk of prostate cancer versus men who took placebo. (No differences were found among groups in the incidence of lung or colorectal cancers or all cancers combined.) And in one one of the heart studies, participants taking vitamin E were 13 percent more likely to experience heart failure (and 21 percent more likely to be hospitalized for it) than those who took placebo.

So what are we to make of the latest findings published in the July 17 Journal of the National Cancer Institute with regard to liver cancer? Findings are based on two population-based cohort studies jointly conducted by the Shanghai Cancer Institute and Vanderbilt University evaluating 267 liver cancer patients (118 women and 149 men) at centers in China. “Overall, the take home message is that high intake of vitamin E either from diet or supplements was related to lower risk of liver cancer in middle-aged or older people…” said Xiao Ou Shu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Nashville, Tenn.

Have I increased my risk of prostate cancer by taking vitamin E all these years or decreased my risk for liver cancer? Have I experienced a cardiovascular benefit or am I at greater risk for some forms of heart disease, as indicated by findings of some recent cardiovascular studies? Frankly, I have no idea. I just continue to take 400 IU vitamin E daily and hope it is the right choice. But the example of vitamin E highlights some of the difficulties we all face in seeking to make informed choices about our own health. What are your thoughts on this subject and on the broader subject of regulation of dietary supplements?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

Wednesday Morning Salt Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

While the house is still a chaotic disaster, we are pretty much all moved, so breathe a big sigh of relief, and raise a cheer, and let me know if you need anything.

Table lamps? We seems to have six extra ones.

Nice drapey clothes that look good at work and are still comfortable? Finally, I am ready to let them go.

And if there’s anyone out there who needs plastic containers, kosher salt or throw rugs, drop me a line.

This morning, instead of unpacking, I went down the street and painted.  It’s so beautiful here in Wachapreague, it makes my heart ache. Even on a gray old Wednesday morning, with nothing spectacular happening, no special sky, no amazing sunrise, this is still one of the loveliest places on earth.

And it is quiet. Except for the sound of the gulls, there was no noise. You hear no traffic, no trains, not even anything off in the distance. It is quieter in Wachapreague than it was in Bolster’s Mills, Maine.

Yes, moving was tough, but it was worth it to end up here.

***

If you’re in Connecticut this weekend, stop by the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival! It’s an excellent and big show, with high-quality work – and it’s fun. Mystic is great for a weekend outing, too, as the Mystic Seaport, Mystic Aquarium and Olde Mystic Village shopping center are all there. Mystic is also just a stone’s throw from the Rhode Island beaches, some of the best in New England.

If you go to the show, please stop by my booth and say hello. I’ll be at the corner of Willow and Main, across from the post office and near the bagel place.

Sister Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious

 By Bob Gaydos

I venture with trepidation into the middle of a looming showdown of potentially historic magnitude. The trepidation is because the confrontation is of a religious nature and Americans have proven themselves incapable of conducting civil debate in this area. But my concern is not so much about the religious outcome of the showdown as it is with its more basic, universal, nature, if you will.

As I see it, the nuns of America versus the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church is a classic example of a group of women, given an opportunity to do and be more than silent, obedient servants within their institution, taking advantage of that opportunity and then being chastised and warned by the men who run the institution to, in effect, pipe down and remember their place.

Next week, American nuns will meet in St. Louis to discuss how to respond to a heavy-handed Vatican report that questioned the nuns’ loyalty to the church — a very male thing to do. The Vatican has appointed three bishops to oversee the restructuring of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents 80 percent of Catholic women’s religious orders in the United States. The Vatican has made it clear that this will not be an all-voices-heard, collegial makeover, but rather “an invitation to obedience.”

The LCWR has drawn the ire of the entirely male hierarchy of the church by taking to heart an invitation issued with Vatican II to study the founding of their orders, review and discuss their missions and renew them. Vatican II, issued almost a half century ago and intended to bring the church into the modern world, also gave nuns unprecedented opportunities for higher education and advancement in the Catholic hierarchy in many areas, except for the priesthood, of course. The nuns seized the opportunity and over time became influential in many areas as heads of colleges and high schools, hospital administrators, lawyers and social workers, outspoken advocates for immigrants and the poor and activists for racial equality and protecting the environment.

This is, of course, the stuff of the modern world. So are same sex marriage, birth control and women’s rights. The nuns have discussed — but taken no official stand — on ordination for women as priests, abortion, artificial contraception and gay marriage. But to the bishops, the mere discussion of these issues — all  opposed by the Church —  is described as disloyalty to the teachings of the Church. That traditionally means case closed. Even though 95 percent of catholic women say they have used artificial contraception at some time and a majority of Catholics support same-sex marriage and any honest man or women you talk to readily agrees that if women were priests –and monsignors and bishops — there would have been no worldwide scandal of Catholic priests sexually molesting young boys.

The nuns have been given an ultimatum from the holy fathers who claim provenance over the teachings of the church. It is not clear what the Vatican will do if the nuns refuse to simply bow and return to silently serving their self-proclaimed masters. Is there such a thing as “replacement nuns”?

There are marches and vigils planned in support of the nuns. The Leadership Conference is considering a range of responses to the Vatican. Sister Pat Farrell, the president of the conference, told the New York Times that while the nuns see their questioning as faithfulness, it is seen by the Vatican as defiance. “We have a differing perspective on obedience,” she said. “Our understanding is that we need to continue to respond to the signs of the times, and the new questions and issues that arise in the complexities of modern life are not something we see as a threat.”

But clearly the bishops do. The Church has been run the way they have decreed for centuries. Now, some women (radical feminists?) want to change everything and, dare we say, maybe take some of the power? The bishops deny this. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio to the United States, told American bishops at a meeting in Atlanta, “We all know that the fundamental tactic of the enemy is to show a church divided.” I’m not sure to what “enemy” the archbishop was referring (another typical male tactic), but the voices of questioning here are coming from within the Church.

If I may venture ever so slightly into religion here, I believe a central teaching of most religions is to exhibit a degree of humility in one’s life. Let’s just say the nuns have done this for centuries. Let us also point out that in this fast-moving modern world there are far fewer nuns than there used to be and they are getting older.

History says the bishops will not blink. But history is written every day and often by intelligent, dedicated, passionate women. Who says they can’t be nuns?

 bob@zestoforange.com

James Holmes, charged in Colorado mass shooting

By Gretchen Gibbs

David Brooks slays me. There’s so much that’s right about the New York Times columnist, and I want to be able to say, “I like some Republicans, for instance David Brooks.” But then in the midst of saying something interesting, he gets it all wrong.

Like his July 23 comment on the latest Colorado massacre, in which he said that we need more treatment programs to deal with the potentially violent. As a psychologist, I applaud any call to increase the number of treatment programs for the emotionally troubled. Let’s ignore for the moment that the mental health profession is not adept at either identifying potential violence or treating it. What I want to address is the thrust of his essay, the need for psychological approaches, not sociological critiques, to address violence. There’s the rub. Psychological factors operate within a social context and we ignore that at our peril.

All forms of mental disorder vary according to cultural norms. For instance, the percentage of individuals with eating disorders exploded in the 1970s as the approved image for women became thinner. Self-cutting and other self-mutilation became a serious clinical problem only in the last 15 years or so, along with the acceptability of body piercings and tattooing.

It’s hard to know what the factors are that contribute to our culture of mass violence, other than the notoriety that the perpetrators attain. Shooting a lot of people is a sure-fire way of attaining attention for individuals who feel they are not receiving their just desserts. There’s a copy-cat aspect, as when a teen commits suicide and then others who hear about it also make attempts. Perhaps restricting the amount of publicity the killer receives would be a good plan. Let’s focus on the victims.

Gun control plays some role, as it’s clear that having assault weapons available leads to a higher degree of potential havoc when somebody has a violent outburst.  Michael Moore explored the topic in a film, using the previous Colorado massacre, and concluded it wasn’t the guns per se, as Canada has similar gun availability yet much lower levels of violence than in the U.S.  Moore concluded that it was a culture of fear and distrust in the U.S. that led to so much violence.

We need to figure out what the factors are and address them, not just act as though a mass killer is some deviant human being in isolation from society. I see David Brooks’ attitude as part of a larger picture in which cultural factors are ignored in attempting to understand emotional problems.

The American Psychiatric Association is about to come out with a new version of its diagnostic manual. Lest you think this boring, remember that your insurance will only pay for psychological treatment for diagnoses that exist within this manual. For instance, if you have a marital problem, you’ll have a devil of a time getting your treatment paid for, as there are no diagnoses for marriage difficulties.

The premise used by the APA in this new version is that mental illness is an actual biological illness, to be treated medically. Seventy percent of the committee working on the revision of the manual has ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Some of their revisions seem an attempt to broaden drug treatment. For instance, at the present time there is a distinction in the manual between depression and experiencing grief after a loss. This distinction was going to be eliminated, meaning that normal reactions to a death or other tragedy would be labeled as illness, and millions of ordinary people would receive unnecessary prescriptions, with sometimes serious side effects.

Grief is painful, but it’s different from depression, and drugs are not the answer. After much criticism, the manual will retain the distinction between depression and grief. The committee, however, has not responded to the extensive criticism it has received from over 50 mental health organizations and 11,000 clinicians, including me, protesting the exclusively medical orientation.

What’s happened to the last 60 years of discoveries from psychology, sociology and anthropology?  Has everybody forgotten we’re products of our environment?

gretchen@zestoforange.com