What's in a name???

Yale Poll: Americans Much More Worried About ‘Global Warming’ Than ‘Climate Change’

By Joe Romm

Do we finally have the answer to the age-old (decade old?) question of what term is better for climate hawks to use: “global warming” or “climate change”?

In new polling by the Climate Change Communication efforts of Yale and George Mason, “global warming” is the winner — across the board:

We found that the term global warming is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term climate change. 

… the use of the term climate change appears to actually reduce issue engagement by Democrats, Independents, liberals, and moderates, as well as a variety of subgroups within American society, including men, women, minorities, different generations, and across political and partisan lines.

Here’s an even more amazing finding: “Within the Weather category, global warming generates a higher percentage of associations to “extreme weather” than does climate change, which generates more associations to general weather patterns.”

So for all those who think the term climate change is more closely associated with extreme weather — I’m looking at you Wall Street Journal editors — think again.

Indeed, as that WSJ article shows, it is difficult to separate the question of which term is better from the doubly wrong claim by conservatives that progressives are allegedly now using the term ‘climate change’ because the planet has supposedly stopped warming. Of course, warming hasn’t actually stopped, it has sped up. Similarly the melting of the great ice sheets has accelerated. In fact, recent analysis makes clear that even surface air temperatures are rising faster than reported by the global temperature records, especially the Hadley Center’s (see “Faux Pause 2“):

A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.

But since the deniers make up stuff about the science, why shouldn’t they make up stuff about everything else?

In fact it was the GOP’s spinmaster, Frank Luntz — the guy who pushed “death tax” to replace “estate tax” — who first urged conservatives to switch from “global warming” to “climate change” over a decade ago!
Scientists, environmentalists, progressives, and frankly the whole darn planet have always used both terms — hence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established in 1988.
In a confidential 2003 memo, Luntz wrote (original emphasis):

It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming…
1) “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”. As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

D’oh! And as it turns out, at least according to the Yale polling, Luntz was right. Yale explains that “the term global warming is associated with”:

• Greater certainty that the phenomenon is happening, especially among men, Generation X (31-48), and liberals;
• Greater understanding that human activities are the primary cause among Independents;
• Greater understanding that there is a scientific consensus about the reality of the phenomenon among Independents and liberals;
• More intense worry about the issue, especially among men, Generation Y (18-30), Generation X, Democrats, liberals and moderates;
• A greater sense of personal threat, especially among women, the Greatest Generation (68+), African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, liberals and moderates;
• Higher issue priority ratings for action by the president and Congress, especially among women, Democrats, liberals and moderates;
• Greater willingness to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action, especially among men, Generation X, liberals and moderates.
So it would seem that global warming is the term to use (though other polling has found little difference between the two terms).
For the record, widespread use of the term “climate change” long predates Luntz’s memo, particularly in the scientific literature:

Indeed, the term “climatic change” goes back to a 1956 paper by Gilbert Plass, long-predating the use of “global warming” by climatologist Wallace Broecker in 1975.

I have always used both terms, though, as I’ve said many times, I prefer “Hell and High Water,” since it is more descriptive of what is to come. Others prefer “Global Weirding.” Whatever you call it, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Real Origins

The Real Origins of the Religious Right

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.

By RANDALL BALMER

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti-Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

41 Republican Senators

41 Republican Senators Voted Against a Landmark Veterans Bill in February, Today They Blame the VA

By H. A. Goodman

Earlier this year, the GOP had a chance to prove that it could fund veterans' health care as eagerly as it borrowed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Long before the current VA crisis, an event described as "a gift from God" by Dr. Ben Carson, Senate Republicans had a chance to vote on a landmark bill. Before the Senate vote, organizations devoted to the needs of veterans and their families offered widespread support to the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014.

The "Turtle"

On January 21, 2014 the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) wrote a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing the legislation. The IAVA believed, "This legislation would accomplish many of the goals for which veterans and military service organizations have been advocating for years, including strengthening the Post-9/11 GI Bill, expanding advance appropriations for more of the VA's budget... and much more." The Veterans of Foreign Wars was just as enthusiastic in its support, and wrote a similar letter explaining how S.1982 would help veterans:

If signed into law, this sweeping legislation would expand and improve health care and benefit services to all generations of veterans and their families. Most notably, it would expand the current caregiver law to include all generations of veterans and provide advance appropriations to ensure monthly compensation and pension as well as education payments are protected from future budget battles. The bill also offers in-state tuition protection for recently transitioned veterans, improves access to mental health and treatment for victims of sexual assault in the military, and authorizes construction of more than 20 Community Bases Outpatient Clinics to serve veterans in rural and remote communities.

Echoing the IAVA and VFW, The Paralyzed Veterans of America stated that "This legislation marks one of the most comprehensive bills to ever be considered in the Senate or House." The PVA went on to state that, "If enacted, S. 1982 would accomplish some of the highest priorities for Paralyzed Veterans and its members." VetsFirst, another group devoted to disabled veterans, also explained "this legislation goes a long way toward fulfilling many of the current and future needs of our disabled veterans."

Furthermore, The American Legion lent "its full support" to the bill since it "addresses several high priority issues for The American Legion, like repealing the 1 percent retiree COLA provision, funding the stalled CBOCs for the VA, increasing access to health care for veterans at VA, employment and education fixes, and other programs that are important to us." In addition, The American Legion explained that the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 was essential to veterans in other ways:

The American Legion also appreciates the many areas in which this bill addresses needed attention regarding Military Sexual Trauma counseling, additional training and assistance for Traumatic Brain Injury victims, improvements and much-needed updates to the Dependency and Indemnification Compensation program, VA's Work-Study program, and its On-the-Job Training program.

Therefore, with so much positive feedback from veterans groups about the bill, it's only logical to assume that Senate Republicans would do everything possible to ensure it became law.

Unfortunately, S.1982 was killed by Senate Republicans, with a vote of 56-41 -- only Republicans Senators voting nay and with only two Republicans voting for the bill. The logic behind every vote against the bill being Republican rests in the following statement from North Carolina Senator Richard M. Burr:

With $17 trillion in debt and massive annual deficits, our country faces a fiscal crisis of unparalleled scope. Now is not the time, in any federal department, to spend money we don't have. To be sure, there's much to like in the Sanders bill. And if those components were presented as separate, smaller bills, as part of a carefully considered long-term strategy to reform the VA, hold leadership accountable and improve services to veterans, we would have no problem extending enthusiastic support.

Also, Republicans called for sanctions on Iran to be included within the veterans' bill, and since it wasn't included within the bill, they voted against the landmark legislation. As stated by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell regarding the Iran sanctions, "There is no excuse for muzzling the Congress on an issue of this importance to our own national security."

So how did veterans feel about the February 26, 2014 vote where 41 Republicans voted against a sweeping bill to help veterans? American Legion National Commander Daniel M. Dellinger expressed his frustration with the outcome by stating, "There was a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote today, and 41 senators chose the wrong way. That's inexcusable."

As for Senator Richard Burr, he recently received a scathing letter from the Veterans of Foreign Wars pertaining to his open letter to veterans groups about the VA crisis. In addition, Burr received another response letter from the Paralyzed Veterans of America stating that, "Rest assured, you do not speak for or represent the interests of Paralyzed Veterans' members-veterans with spinal cord injury or dysfunction or any other VSO."

It should not be overlooked that veterans have been committing suicide, enduring long wait times for disability benefits, and dealing with a wide array of others issues ignored by Congress for the past decade. Also, the most indignant Republicans like Sen. Burr of North Carolina have also voted against S.1982 and now blame bureaucratic issues, rather than funding problems, as the cause of the VA crisis. Therefore, it's safe to say that the latest VA crisis and the deaths of veterans in Arizona served as convenient opportunity for the GOP to feign indignation over issues veterans have faced for years.

What better way to circumvent responsibility for underfunding the VA and voting against veteran's legislation than blaming big government? Somebody should tell Sen. Burr and the GOP that we funded both wars with "money we didn't have" and we should fund veterans health care as enthusiastically as we paid (borrowed) for two war.

Gun Nuts

How the Gun Nuts Try to Excuse Away the Santa Barbara Slaughter—and Why They’re All Wrong

By Cliff Schecter

It has been nearly four days since the shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, and in that time the firearms fetishists have been up to their usual tricks trying to excuse away yet another gun massacre in America.

 They have their talking points at the ready for these, and they immediately got started: If we ban guns, they warned, then we have to ban knives and cars, because he used those to kill and injure people, too. California has liberal gun laws, and this proves they don’t work, they insisted. There is nothing we can do to stop gun violence, they recited; guns don't kill people, people do.

As usual, the gun nuts are wrong, and not one of these stands up to the slightest scrutiny.

Let’s start with the Right’s newest post-massacre trope: the banning of knives and cars, because the murderer in Santa Barbara used a knife to kill three people and a car to injure four.

Of course, compared to guns, cars are robustly regulated. There’s a strong registration regimen. More and more safety features have been added—including airbags and seat belts. There’s a long-standing war against drunk driving that’s included checkpoints, long sentences for offenders, and holding bartenders accountable who serve someone who’s clearly wasted. And, of course, there’s registration, licensing and tests required to prove you know how to drive an automobile. All of it has led deaths on our roads to plummet. This is why 2015 is projected to be the first year where gun deaths surpass traffic fatalities.

Cars also have a purpose other than killing. As do knives. And although, tragically, three young men were killed after being stabbed by the killer in Santa Barbara, perhaps the clearest comparison between gun violence and knife violence is provided by looking at the attack that occurred at a Chinese school in Henen Province the very same day as the Newtown Massacre. Twenty-three students were attacked in Henen and none died—as opposed to 20 murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. Or how about the 22 injured in a knife attack at a school in Pittsburgh this past April? Nobody died there, either.

Of course, to the family of a victim, one stabbing death is too many. But clearly knives can’t kill as impersonally, as many, as fast or as at far a distance. Which might be why there haven’t been presidents knifed from book depositories (or grassy knolls, whatever your preference), there aren't drive-by knifings, and we didn’t storm Omaha Beach throwing knives.

Knives also don’t have a powerful lobby to buy legislators, governors, judges, etc., with campaign contributions so they can enrich themselves with blood-stained arms dealer money. So please, put that pathetic talking point to rest.

Another favorite conservative retort to calls for stricter gun regulation has been to point to California's “liberal” gun laws, which supposedly didn’t help Santa Barbara at all. However, the fact that the shooter possessed only 10-bullet magazines and no assault weapon—or what he could legally buy—clearly did help.
As terrible as this was, it could have been much worse if the gun fetishists had their way, and any manner of weapon or magazine was for sale.

Additionally, and I know this is a tough concept to understand, but we have these territories separated only by an imaginary boundary known as states. They border one another. People can drive across them at will, as they often do from Arizona—where gun laws are among the most lenient in the U.S.—to California. It is also quite easy to drive from California to Nevada, which also has lax gun laws.

This might be why when John Patrick Bedell, another angry and troubled man with a hatred for his own government, decided to try to assassinate public servants at the Pentagon, he went next door to Nevada to get his guns no questions asked, once he couldn’t pass a background check in California. Wow, that was hard!

Of course, there is one easy case study that proves the rule: Hawaii, which is separated from every other state by quite a bit of ocean. The Aloha State, which boasts the lowest gun ownership rate and among the strongest gun laws in our country, has the lowest gun violence rate, according to The Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence. Meanwhile, in Arizona, with those ridiculously nonexistent gun laws, you're five times more likely to die from a gun than in Hawaii.

This pattern extends throughout the country, from lax regulation states like Mississippi and Alaska (18.3 and 17.6 gun deaths, per 100,000 people, respectively) to strong regulation states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts (3.5 and 3.6 gun deaths per 100,000, respectively). This really isn't that hard.

And for those of you about to point out that cities like Chicago have both strict gun laws and horrifying gun violence, well, you might want to do some reading about how many of those guns came from Indiana, which has much less strict gun laws, or other parts of Illinois, where laws don’t come close to matching those in the city of Chicago. Use The Google, my friends. It's free.

If lax guns laws and more guns overall made people safer, the United States would be the safest place in the world. Instead, that designation goes to countries like Japan and England, which have actually taken on this problem with the seriousness it deserves. And then there is the special case of Australia, which was heading down the same path as us until 1996, when they had their own Newtown, known a the Port Arthur Massacre. They passed not weak-tea gun laws, but a comprehensive package (passed by their Conservative Party). The results have been stunning, as not only has there not been a mass shooting since then (there were 11 in the 10 years before they passed this legislation), but their suicides and gun-related deaths have gone way down too.

In Santa Barbara, we had a young man who had been detained or interviewed three times by the police recently, including once for domestic assault. Both a social worker and his parents warned the authorities about his fraying mental state. But all of that led to no red flags popping up to stop him from buying three semi-automatic guns and enough bullets to take on the police department.

In England, Japan, Canada and Australia, that would have been enough to stop him cold. In these places, as is common sense, requirements exist such as third-party references from family and/or friends, rigorous psychological exams and background checks. Any blemish on one’s record pointing to violence would have been a red flag during these tests. Additionally, there are waiting periods before one can receive a gun after initial purchase, making it more likely someone mentally unstable would be caught doing something else in the meantime, or perhaps even get the help he so desperately needed before obtaining a firearm.

But, if like foaming NRA mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre, you still are a believer in the almighty assault weapon and like your guns plentiful and unregulated, I have a fantastic vacation destination for you! It’s called Iraq. Every household with a male in it is allowed to have an assault weapon, no questions asked. If that is not your cup of tea, may I suggest Afghanistan? They also love their guns. Perplexing, that surely as the NRA wouldn’t have predicted based on their high rate of gun ownership, both these countries are overflowing with gun violence. For some reason, being awash in guns has not led them to be modern-day Gardens of Eden.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, if we took gun deaths as seriously as we take terrorists (real and imagined), we wouldn’t have allowed a culture to proliferate in which we don’t allow law enforcement agencies to do their jobs by inspecting dealers and collecting and sharing information on gun sales, based on the most inane reasoning (Big Government & Black Helicopters and Agenda 21, oh my!) since Sarah Palin explained Paul Revere. We would make sure these systems ran smoothly and efficiently, make dealers report lost or stolen guns, force bad dealers out of business.

Other high-income countries don't purposefully ensure their national police charged with investigating gun crimes are hamstrung without funding and lacking a department head for seven years! (This is the part where the Fast & Furious conspiracy-bots chime in once the tin foil’s accurately applied). If we tried to use all the information at our disposal, and made stopping illegal gun sales a priority, we’d successfully stop it, just as these other countries have done. We have let right-wingers, the NRA and Republicans in general do just the opposite, with their constant attacks on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

However, If you do truly fear that “the government is going to use any information to come get my guns,” then I have a real three-letter organization, not part of the government, that you may want to fear. It’s called the NRA, and they’re collecting your private information as we speak. Good luck convincing the money-grubbing charlatans among their leadership not to sell what has been called a “massive secret database” of member information to any advertiser looking to make a buck.

Meanwhile, the most commonly abused talking point to come out of this tragedy was the old standby, that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” I don’t buy it, but here is my question, if you do. Wouldn’t you support background checks for People, require serious training for People purchasing weaponry that can kill, institute waiting periods for People who are angry or suicidal at a specific moment? Shouldn’t those People also have to have liability insurance as they do with cars (personal responsibility!), so society doesn’t pick up the cost of stupid decisions made by these People?

I know, your mind is spinning right now. Don’t bother. You are wrong on this one, as you are on everything else. Your reaction to shootings is to think first of your guns, which is shameful. The rest of us prioritize our children’s lives first. As my friend, the brilliant host of The Zero Hour--the #1 most downloaded podcast when it debuted earlier this month—RJ Eskow says, we’re not anti-gun. We’re pro-kindergartner.

We believe in that part of the Constitution—the Preamble actually, which comes before the 2nd Amendment you don’t even understand—that promises us that our government will protect “the general Welfare” and “domestic tranquility.” I’d argue that with weekly mass shootings occurring—in the short time it has taken me to write this, there has been another gun massacre, this time in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina—Congress is directly disobeying the Constitution, as well as the Will of the People, to give special consideration to an interest group that funds its members’campaigns.

This was put most eloquently and heartbreakingly into words by Richard Martinez, who lost his son to our gun culture, in Santa Barbara:

“Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” he said. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this’?”

SPECIAL NOTE
When I wrote about this shooting on Saturday, I relied upon the earliest reporting that said that the shooter in Santa Barbara had a high-capacity magazine. I was wrong. He had 41 10-round magazines, or 410 bullets at his disposal, and according to the Los Angeles Times, three semi-automatic pistols.

I also made the mistake of relying on reporting that he had shot all of his victims. Of course we now know he shot 12 people, killing three of them. He stabbed three others to death and hit four more innocents with his car, injuring them.

While not altering the thrust of the piece one bit, they were errors--not Mr. LaPierre’s purposeful lies about how “Obama Wants To Outlaw Guns in His Second Term” or shooters choose gun-free zones (tell that to Ronald Reagan’s Secret Service and police protection!) for their attacks. But they were mistakes nonetheless, and I apologize for these errors.

Leave Afghanistan

U.S. Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016

By MARK LANDLER

President Obama, declaring that it was “time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” announced on Tuesday that he planned to withdraw the last American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

Under a new timetable outlined by Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden, the 32,000 American troops now in Afghanistan would be reduced to 9,800 after this year.

That number would be cut in half by the end of 2015, and by the end of 2016, there would be only a vestigial force to protect the embassy in Kabul and to help the Afghans with military purchases and other security matters. At the height of American involvement, in 2011, the United States had 101,000 troops in the country.

Mr. Obama said the withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan would free up resources to confront an emerging terrorist threat stretching from the Middle East to Africa — a strategy he plans to detail in a commencement address on Wednesday at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

“Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them,” he said. “Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century.”

Despite Mr. Obama’s attempt to signal the end of 13 years of American military engagement in Afghanistan, the United States will continue to have troops engaged in lethal counterterrorism operations there for at least two more years. The president also conceded that the United States would leave behind a deeply ambiguous legacy.

“We have to recognize Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one,” he said. “The future of Afghanistan must be decided by Afghans.”

Republican critics in Congress said that even though Mr. Obama accepted the recommendation of his generals to leave behind a substantial residual force, the rigid deadline for the troops’ departure could expose Afghanistan to the same violence and instability that has erupted in Iraq since the pullout of the last American soldiers in 2011. Military commanders had recommended leaving at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan for several years after the formal end of the combat mission in 2014.

Besides carrying out operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda, the troops that stay behind will train Afghan security forces. But from 2015 onward, they will be quartered at Bagram Airfield and in Kabul, the capital. While they will be supplemented by NATO troops, alliance members are likely to follow America’s lead in pulling out by the end of 2016.

The unilateral nature of Mr. Obama’s announcement underscored the loss of trust between him and President Hamid Karzai, who has refused to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States. Any American deployments after 2014 will hinge on the Afghans’ signing the agreement, Mr. Obama said, though he noted that both candidates in the runoff election to replace Mr. Karzai have promised to do so.

Mr. Obama briefed Mr. Karzai by phone Tuesday morning, as well as leaders of three NATO partners with troops in Afghanistan: Britain, Germany and Italy. On Sunday, Mr. Karzai declined an invitation to meet the president at the Bagram base, north of Kabul, where Mr. Obama had made an unannounced trip to greet the troops.

A senior administration official said Mr. Obama was encouraged enough by recent developments in Afghanistan, particularly the first round of the presidential race, to avoid the “zero option,” which would have meant pulling out all troops at the end of 2014.

“The priority for General Dunford and his team has been to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan for the 2015 fighting season,” said Jeremy B. Bash, a former chief of staff at the Pentagon, referring to the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.

The White House did not say how many of the troops remaining after 2014 would conduct counterterrorism missions, but it would most likely be a small fraction of the 9,800. The Central Intelligence Agency has gradually reduced its presence in the country as it turns its attention elsewhere, and some of the Afghan militias that the C.I.A. created to fight militants in the south and east are being quietly disbanded.

The president is clearly driven by a determination to shift the focus of his counterterrorism policy from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to a more diffuse set of militant threats, some linked to Al Qaeda, that have sprung up from Syria to Nigeria.

On Wednesday, an official said, Mr. Obama will emphasize Syria’s growing status as a haven for terrorism and signal greater support for the opposition. Among the options on the table, officials said, is expanding the covert training program for rebels, currently run by the C.I.A. in Jordan — perhaps by bringing in the Pentagon to conduct the training.

The training could also take place in nearby countries. But the official cautioned that the president had not made a decision and was unlikely to discuss the matter in any detail at West Point. He is, however, expected to pledge greater American support for the counterterrorism efforts of Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and other countries that border Syria.

Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan announcement has ignited a broader debate about military strategy and the most effective way to wind down a war. A senior administration official said a fixed withdrawal schedule would provide NATO allies and the Afghans with “predictability” while also driving home the limits of the American effort.

“We never signed up to be a permanent security force in Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban,” said the official, who asked not to be identified under White House protocol for briefing reporters.

But some former military officers said that troop withdrawal decisions should be based on an assessment of the conditions on the ground, especially in a country as complex as Afghanistan.

The residual force is at the low end of what some military experts think is necessary to sustain operations. In 2015, the United States would be able to keep advisers at major Afghan regional military and police headquarters — a senior official described this as the “corps level” — but would not have advisers with tactical units on the battlefield.

Jack Keane, a retired general and vice chief of staff of the Army during George W. Bush’s administration, said the rigid timetable would hamper efforts to carry out counterterrorism operations and buttress the Afghan military effort. “Just arbitrarily pulling those forces out absolutely risks successful completion of the mission,” he said.

Some congressional critics said the deadline appeared to be driven by the political calendar: The last troops would be out 20 days before Mr. Obama leaves office in 2017, allowing him to claim success on one of his cardinal pledges in running for president.

“Holding this mission to an arbitrary egg-timer doesn’t make a lick of sense,” said Representative Howard McKeon of California, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Does the president seek to replicate his mistakes in Iraq, where he abandoned the region to chaos and failed to forge a real security partnership?”

David S. Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said the decision “gives on one hand (9,800) and takes away on the other hand (deadlines).”

Even defenders of Mr. Obama said they were concerned that the rapid pace of the drawdown would not preserve the security gains made in more than a decade of war in Afghanistan.

“Time will tell whether we can meet that standard at this pace,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, who was under secretary of defense for policy during Mr. Obama’s first term.

Cone Nebula, in NGC 2264

Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from newborn stars. The Cone Nebula, a well-known example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The Cone was captured in unprecedented detail in this close-up composite of several observations from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. While the Cone Nebula, about 2,500 light-years away in Monoceros, is around 7 light-years long, the region pictured here surrounding the cone's blunted head is a mere 2.5 light-years across. In our neck of the galaxy that distance is just over half way from the Sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, the Alpha Centauri star system. The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, seen by Hubble's infrared camera in 1997, is the likely source of the wind sculpting the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula's reddish veil is produced by glowing hydrogen gas.

New Station Trio Set for Wednesday Launch

While the orbiting Expedition 40 crew supported botanical research and robotics Tuesday aboard the International Space Station, the three crewmates who will return the station to its full six-person crew on Wednesday are in the final stages of preparations for launch.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, cosmonaut Maxim Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst are set to launch aboard their Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:57 p.m. EDT Wednesday (1:57 a.m. Thursday, Kazakh time). Less than six hours later, at 9:48 p.m., Soyuz Commander Suraev will dock the Russian spacecraft to the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing side of the station.

Commander Steve Swanson and Flight Engineers Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov, who have been aboard the complex since March 27, will welcome the new flight engineers aboard when the hatches open at 11:25 p.m.

Meanwhile aboard the orbiting complex, Swanson spent much of Tuesday morning in the station’s Kibo laboratory breaking down equipment used for the most recent session of the Resist Tubule experiment. This Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency study takes a look at the mechanisms for gravity resistance in plants. Results from this study will help researchers learn more about the evolution of plants and enable efficient plant production both on Earth and in space. During a long-duration mission beyond low Earth orbit, plants can provide future astronauts with regenerative sources of food and supplemental methods of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Congressional Bills

I found this site that lists the 20 most current bills under consideration, plus a list of all other bills. Some seem to make sense, others seem to be for specific people. Our government hard at work...

http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/congressional_bill_tracker/bill/113

Joe The Plumber is a tool......

Joe The Plumber To UCSB Parents: 'Your Dead Kids Don't Trump' My Guns

By Tom Kludt 

Samuel Wurzelbacher gave his condolences this week to the families of the victims of the mass shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara. But no tragedy is going to stop "Joe The Plumber" from defending the Second Amendment.

In an open letter published Tuesday on the website Barbwire, Wurzelbacher went out of his way to explain to the victims' parents that the deaths won't undermine his "Constitutional rights."

"I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now," wrote Wurzelbacher, who became something of a mascot for John McCain's failed 2008 presidential campaign. "But: As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights."

Wurzelbacher singled out Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher was one of the six students killed by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista, Calif. Since the deadly rampage, Martinez has twice railed against politicians and the National Rifle Association for the failure to pass new gun laws after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

"There are no critical words for a grieving father. He can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like – it’s okay by me. You can’t take a step in his shoes – at least I can’t," Wurzelbacher wrote. "But the words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming 'the proliferation of guns', lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left."

Wurzelbacher added that he has a responsibility as a "father, husband and a man" to protect his family. Addressing Martinez directly, Wurzelbacher wrote that "anyone calling for more restrictions on American’s rights need to back off and stop playing into the hands of the folks who merely capitalize on these horrific events for their own political ends."

Wurzelbacher closed with an admonition.

"In conclusion, I cannot begin to imagine the pain you are going through, having had your child taken away from you," he wrote. "However, any feelings you have toward my rights being taken away from me, lose those."

What's happening at the center of this nebula?

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this degree wide field of view spans almost 100 light-years. The sharp, composite, color image utilizing data from space and ground based telescopes, follows faint details of the region's gas and dust clouds against a backdrop of central Milky Way stars. Stellar winds and energetic light from hot, massive stars formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material producing the cavernous appearance and undulating shapes. M17 is also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula.