Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
This is just a weird idea. So of course I saw it on Slashdot.
ElectAura-Net is a novel indoor broadband networking and positioning system. A wireless(-like) communication is enabled by electric-fields (electric aura) emanated from the human body and the floor. The result: the world's first broadband (10Mbps) intrabody communication. ElectAura-Net also provides indoor positioning, which is urgently needed for "ubiquitous" communication.
Innovation
ElectAura-Net provides both broadband wireless(-like) networks and a meter-accuracy positioning system for indoor use. It is a kind of "intrabody communication" system that uses electric fields as transmission media, and the human body and floor as an Ethernet cable. In this system, a "communication-cell" (carpet size) can be shrunk down to one meter or less, and simultaneous access by many users can be realized. Ordinary intrabody communication systems cannot achieve long-distance communication between components such as body-worn devices and the floor. ElectAura-Net provides extra-high-sensitivity and high-speed capability.
We're so used to seeing reports and such come out that prove the Bushitas faith-based foreign policy is full of it, it would be easy to overlook the fact that this study started in April 2002.
Which is proof that plans for the invasion were laid at least early enough that all the participants could be selected and gathered together by that time.
Which makes it kind of hard to support the idea that anyone was taking the idea of NOT invading very seriously. Ever.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 -- A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.
Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.
Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.
Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq.
Streets Smarts
By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Published: October 19, 2003
Warsaw is full of white people. Obviously, that statement applies to the capital of Poland, but the Warsaw I'm referring to is a club in Brooklyn. It's a Thursday night, and I'm standing alongside 800 Caucasian hipsters in a Greenpoint rock venue, waiting to see the Streets. The Streets is technically a group, but it's really a group of one: Mike Skinner, a 24-year-old from Britain who looks as if he's 15. Do not feel depressed if you've never heard of him; he is not famous. Except that he is, if you happen to be the kind of person who searches for potential pop geniuses. In certain circles, in certain clubs and pretty much anywhere in London, Skinner is one of those ''voice of a generation'' types; as the writer-rapper-producer for the Streets, he has experienced the kind of meteoric ascension (at least among critics) that changes a messenger into his own self-styled medium.
His debut record, ''Original Pirate Material,'' sold slightly more than 100,000 copies in the United States, but it has been dubbed the first transcendent hip-hop album ever to emerge from England -- which is kind of like being dubbed the sexiest female at a hobbit convention. But Skinner, whose new mini-album, ''All Got Our Runnins,'' went on sale online this week, represents a British youth movement everyone else has ignored. The Streets' lyrics speak of the geezer lifestyle -- the mundane, day-to-day pursuits of antitrendy, blue-collar males in England's lower middle class.
…''Not a lot of people rap about playing Nintendo, but everybody I know plays Nintendo,'' Skinner says. ''That was sort of the point of my record: I'm like everybody else, or at least like everyone else I know. I'm not crazy, and none of the people I know are crazy. It's just that I can talk about Nintendo and drugs and watching the telly because I won't get fired for doing so. That's why people buy into my music, I think. What I talk about is what real people do.''
Can we all agree that this is getting carried away?
It was a rural arsenal fit for war.
After the peaceful arrest of a Cadillac-area man, authorities who searched his 40-acre compound discovered a stunning collection of firepower, including an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 550 rounds per minute up to four miles away. [P6: This is not a hunting weapon, or a self defense weapon. And I'm not sure I want to know how he got it. I AM sure I want the folks who sold it to him to explain a few things]
A van and a Jeep Cherokee, described by the suspect as his "war wagons," had machine guns inside, with one "locked, loaded and ready to go," Assistant U.S. Attorney Lloyd Meyer said.
Agents found an underground bunker, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder and manuals on guerrilla warfare, "booby traps" and explosives.
There were chilling pictures of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the cross-hairs of a high-powered rifle scope drawn over them, Meyer said.
At The Spy Game: NOVAK KNEW BETTER THAN TO BURN VALERIE PLAME.
Hypocrisies abound. I could do a theme week on it.
General Apologizes for Remarks on Islam, Says He's No 'Zealot'
Official said comments likening the war on terrorism to Islam fighting Christianity were misconstrued.
By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer
October 18, 2003
WASHINGTON -- A senior Pentagon official under fire for his comments about Islam said Friday that he never intended to denigrate the Muslim faith, and that he is not a "zealot or an extremist."
In his first comments on the controversy, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, deputy assistant secretary for intelligence, said that his earlier statements had been misconstrued. He said he did not believe that the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" was a conflict between Christianity and Islam.
"For those who have been offended, I offer a sincere apology," he said in a statement.
A highly decorated Special Operations specialist and born-again Christian, Boykin has spoken about his faith and Islam in a series of appearances before Christian groups. The comments, first reported this week by The Times and NBC, appeared to undermine President Bush's arguments that the American anti-terrorism effort is not aimed at Islam.
Last year, for example, relating how he had fought a Somali warlord, Boykin told an audience: "My God was bigger than his ... I knew that my God was a real God and that his was an idol."
In another speech, he said some Muslims hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy called Satan."
Boykin also told a gathering that Bush was in the White House although "the majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."
But Boykin said Friday that he had been misunderstood.
When he spoke of the Somali warlord, he did not mean that the Somali's god was Islam, but rather "his worship of money and power -- idolatry." Boykin said he did believe that "radical extremists have sought to use Islam as a cause of attacks on America."
As for his statement that God had installed Bush in the White House, Boykin said he meant that God had done the same for "Bill Clinton and other presidents."
Though he defended his comments, Boykin has told others at the Pentagon that he will stop making speeches to religious groups and will try to tone down his remarks on the sensitive subject of religion. Defense officials said his job was not in jeopardy.
New York's Native American Casino Contributes, but Not to Tax Rolls
By ELEANOR RANDOLPH
Indian tribes and states have to make certain the wealth brought in by casinos does not breed resentment.
Fuck. Them.
…are being made to look ridiculous by the big-"L" Libertarians.
Total population |
| Females 2001 | ||||||||||
Member State | At birth 2000 | At birth 2001 | At birth | Uncertainty interval | At age 60 | Uncertainty interval | At birth | Uncertainty interval | At age 60 | Uncertainty interval | ||
Canada | 69.7 | 69.9 | 68.2 | 67.6 - 69.1 | 15.3 | 15.0 - 16.0 | 71.6 | 70.9 - 72.7 | 17.9 | 17.6 - 18.6 | ||
United Kingdom | 69.2 | 69.6 | 68.4 | 68.0 - 69.4 | 15.0 | 14.7 - 15.6 | 70.9 | 70.1 - 72.4 | 16.9 | 16.5 - 17.4 | ||
United States of Americab | 67.4 | 67.6 | 66.4 | 65.8 - 67.5 | 14.9 | 14.5 - 15.7 | 68.8 | 67.9 - 70.2 | 16.6 | 16.2 - 17.3 | ||
Boston called ecstasy 'hot spot'
Ads will target teenage abusers
By Jim Geraghty, States News Service, 10/17/2003
WASHINGTON -- Boston teenagers are among the nation's leading abusers of the drug ecstasy, according to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. But parents do not seem to be addressing the rising danger.
"These are the notorious hot spots," said Steve Pasierb, president of the nonprofit Partnership for a Drug-Free America, pointing to a map that highlighted Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, and Seattle. "It's heavy in the Northeast, and spreading around the country."
Comcast Cable, with about 2 million subscribers in Boston and millions elsewhere in New England, announced yesterday that the company is donating $51 million in advertising time over three years to help the Partnership launch the nation's first media campaign warning teenagers and parents about the dangers of ecstasy.
Pasierb said his organization launched the campaign in response to a 71 percent jump in teenagers' use of ecstasy between 1999 and 2001. One in nine American teenagers has taken ecstasy at least once.
But a recent survey of 1,200 parents by the Partnership found that while 90 percent of parents said they had heard of ecstasy, only about a quarter had talked to their children about it.
"We think there are two possible explanations," Pasierb said. "One, parents are more comfortable talking about drugs that they have firsthand or secondhand experience with, whether it's alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, or other drugs. Ecstasy is new to the scene."
He said the second reason parents do not talk about the drug is the widespread sense that their child is not likely to use or encounter the drug -- a perception that is wrong, he added.[P6: Ah, yes. Denial springs eternal…never goes out of style]
They may not be best friends yet, but the budding relationship between President Bush and Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger could considerably thaw the chill that has grown between Washington and Sacramento in the last three years. It could only help California, which, according to the California Institute for Federal Policy Research, gets just 77 cents in federal services for each dollar it sends to the federal treasury.
Lieberman Heckled at Arab American Conference
The Associated Press
Friday, October 17, 2003; 4:21 PM
DETROIT -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman was heckled Friday by several Arab Americans angry with his support for Israel as he spoke about restoring peace and trust in the Middle East.
"What about the wall?" shouted several attending the Arab American Institute leadership conference as they interrupted Lieberman's speech. The reference was to Israel's plan to build a barrier that juts into the West Bank.
Lieberman, who is Jewish, insisted the wall is temporary.
"I regret the confiscations," said the Connecticut senator, referring to the Palestinian land that has been taken in the effort to build the wall.
Which is still not to say he wouldn't be an improvement on Bush.
I note with interest that the N.Y. Times is calling it "The Occupation." At last.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 -- Congress voted overwhelmingly on Friday in favor of President Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, handing him a solid mandate for the continued occupation and reconstruction of Iraq.
There were a few scattered rebellions. Both chambers trimmed nearly $2 billion in reconstruction projects they considered excessive, and the Senate voted to require Iraq to repay up to $10 billion in aid.
These issues will be negotiated in a conference committee next week where, the president's supporters predicted, they would eliminate the loan requirement and restore the original spending levels. Although Mr. Bush vigorously opposed the changes to his bill, he has not threatened to veto it if the changes remain.
Otherwise, the president received almost everything he asked for when he announced his postwar plans on Sept. 7. The $67 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was left virtually unchanged, and Mr. Bush won the control he sought to shape the reconstruction of Iraq.
The vote in the House was 303 to 125, with most Democrats voting against the spending bill and only six Republicans opposed. In the Senate, the vote was 87 to 12, with 11 Democrats and an independent voting no.
Most arguments in each chamber were about the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid, which members of both parties worried was excessive at a time of high deficits and tight domestic budgets.
Some Democrats said they had voted for the measure reluctantly, and were still critical of the administration's policies.
"My vote for this bill is for one reason only," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, "to give our troops the resources they need to carry out their mission. But my vote should not be interpreted as supporting this administration's postwar policy in Iraq, or the lack of one."
But Republican leaders ultimately persuaded broad majorities that improving the quality of life in Iraq was as vital as tanks and warplanes.
What about the quality of life in the USofA? At least you cheap labor Conservatives haven't bombed us yet. Excet maybe metaphorically…
I don't mean to embarrass anyone, but I do mean to challenge everyone.
In the comments to a recent post, and y'all are supposed to be reading the comments anyway, it was said:
I have a couple of serious questions for anyone who agrees with this statement.
Do you understand what universal literacy has done for this country? Or what decent health care means to a person's quality of life?
Do you think universal literacy is a good thing? If no, I need to know why it is good for some fraction of the populace to be illiterate and innumerate--and I don't care how big that fraction is.
And do you think quality health care should be available to everyone? If no, I need to know why it is good for some fraction of the populace to be unhealthy--and I don't care how big that fraction is.
And if you say yes to either, I want it explained to me how…under existing circumstances, not some ideal stae of existance…these things can be attained without government involvement.
You see, I have a STRONG libertarian streak, it rund deep and broad. But Reason is my toolset and Reality is the substance I work in. I see the abuses, I see the corruption—but it's not the society that must be disrupted. The society as laid out is capable of delivering great good.
It is the corrupters that must go.
Understand that.
A capitalist republic is a structure that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If it isn't corrupted.
A socialist society is a structure that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If it isn't corrupted.
There are any number of structures that can properly represent the will of the majority and still respect the minority. If they aren't corrupted.
You don't unwind thousands of years of human cultural development, dammit. And you can't convince me that's what you want to do. No, you want to unwind enough to loosen the strictatures you personally feel. And you haven't thought through the repercussions if everyone in the nation dissolves the particular part of the universal compromise called society that they feel restricts them. Because if you did, you'd recoil in horror.
SOMALIA: TALKS IN KENYA "ON COURSE", SAYS OFFICIAL
Organisers say the Somali peace talks underway in Kenya are on course, and contrary to reports, have not stalled. James Kiboi, a member of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) technical committee which is steering the talks, admitted that "some personalities are not at the talks", but that the proceedings were continuing.
I want to make special note of what the article says is the major reason peace is now possible in Africa:
The end of the cold war meant that the Soviets and the Americans no longer backed rival African movements as a way of undermining each other.
This week could mark something of a turning point for Africa: in Liberia a new interim government is due to be sworn in and peace talks aimed at ending the decades old Sudanese civil war get under way in Kenya .
This comes after last week's signing of a peace pact between the government and rebels in Burundi.
Does this mean that Africa - wracked by years of international strife and civil war - can finally look forward to peace?
Africa's wars earned the continent a terrible reputation. International business mostly gave Africa a wide berth.
Television screens filled with images of conflict, chaos and destitution did not encourage much confidence.
Active wars
But is this increasingly an outdated perspective? African analysts like Richard Dowden point out that 10 years ago the continent had 15 or 16 active wars.
"Most of Africa, right from the north-east tip right up in Somalia, right down across the whole of the continent to Namibia in the south, was involved in these chaotic wars," he says.
"Now, in terms of live wars, you can only pick three or four countries where there is active fighting going on."
The evidence to back this claim looks strong. Take Angola, which descended into war in the 1960s.
The death of the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi in February 2002 opened the way for a peace agreement - elections are in the offing and tens of thousands of refugees have streamed back home.
In Sierra Leone, British troops intervened to end a vicious civil war and the country is now largely at peace.
And the Democratic Republic of Congo, which drew most of its neighbours into its conflicts in 1998, is now at peace with a newly installed government.
'Lull'
Not that all Africa's troubles are over - the gun still rules parts of Uganda, Ivory Coast and Algeria.
There is also a feeling that countries whose wars have subsided may drift back into fighting.
"There is a danger that we may just have a lull in the fighting - partly because of the exhaustion of the warring parties and partly because international attention flags as media attention drains away," says Mr Dowden.
"If international attention diminishes, the diplomatic effort that goes into peacemaking may come to an end and the promises of aid and reconstruction don't get delivered".
Regional superpower
But there is no doubt that many long-running wars have been ended. The reason?
The end of the cold war meant that the Soviets and the Americans no longer backed rival African movements as a way of undermining each other.
The United Nations has also become far more actively involved - its peacekeeping troops are now in Sierra Leone, Liberia, DR Congo and along the Ethiopia - Eritrea border.
And South Africa has emerged as a regional superpower - using its diplomatic strength and its troops to end conflicts.
It is still far too early to declare the continent's wars at an end. But for once there seems more light than darkness on the African scene.
Racism Keeps Pressure on Blacks
By Christine Phillip, BET.com Staff Writer
A new study on hypertension confirms what some African Americans have been saying for years -- that racism raises the blood pressure of Black folks.
Researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, confirming earlier studies on the phenomenon, have found that Blacks who say they believed they had encountered a lot of racism over the course of their lives showed higher daytime blood pressure levels than Blacks who said they had less experience with racism.
It has been well documented that Blacks, in general, are more likely than whites to suffer from high blood pressure and related complications including strokes and kidney disease.
Dr. Patrick Steffen, author of the Utah study said that racism remains a pervasive problem in society and understanding the role it plays in health is helpful.
"I think the most important thing for people to realize is that racism is a significant stressor, and that stress typically has significant physiological effects," he said.
Also
The recommendations urge health care providers to manage high blood pressure in Blacks in three new ways:
Aaron at Uppity-Negro, attempts to shame the devil and instead invokes a reified Chaos Deity.
Do an entry explaining what the site's about:
And urge your visitors to click through.
See the upper right and consider yourselves so urged.
Are you reading the RSS feed? then here:
I'm only being so obliging because I'm rather fond of breastesses. For technical reasons, I'll be clicking next month, but I'm sure they'll find that acceptable.
CORRECTION: Click now, cash donation next month.
Not only have I answered the call, fugging up my achromaticity in the process, I've shaved off the little white corners that annoy Aaron so much. Download it from my site yourself, tough guy.
Furthermore, equally good causes can get equally good placement. Being beyond time and all that, someone's gonna have to tell me about these things and if I see them and call them Good, I shall exalt them.
Like it or not, the United States of America is a multicultural nation. There are those who decry the fact, those who wish to change the fact. But it remains the fact, and any plan with more than local scope that denies the fact is destined for failure.
The plans of human rights activists cannot be allowed to fail. However, the multicultural nature of our society makes planning difficult. Each subculture in each specific location has both subtle gross differences in priorities and needs that often make it difficult to even decide what to do next, much less how to do it. There have been successes, though, and by studying them we can gain insight into the possibility of a general approach to building coalitions.
This is the purpose behind the Applied Research Center.
Launched in 1981, ARC was born out of the community organizing experience. Both activists and academics recognized a need for rigorous study of the practice of organizing and the need for solid research into the issues around which organizers were mounting campaigns.
During the early years ARC worked closely with the Center for Third World Organizing producing publications, offering trainings and embarking upon the Community Strategy and Training Initiative, a model effort to improve the practice of organizing that has since been replicated in several states.
Moving into the 1990s, ARC published Beyond the Politics of Place, a landmark study of community organizing. This report ignited a controversy still raging about the importance of organizing around the identity concerns of the marginalized: people of color, gays and lesbians, and women.
Their most recent publication, MultiRacial Formations, focuses specifically on community organization of multiracial coalitions. By examining six efforts from across the nation (two issues based alliances, three electoral based alliances and the develipment of Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition) MultiRacial Formations presents the issues without rose colored glasses:
…while the civil rights movement yielded significant gains in legal equality, structural racism remains evident in myriad arenas, from family income levels, to education, to prison sentencing patterns, to healthcare access. Yet, that reality is juxtaposed with a growing neoconservative, colorblind ideology where, “Race-conscious remedies, policies, and practices—such as affirmative action, minority setasides, and redistricting—are increasingly being critiqued, contested, and dismantled. Any hints of race consciousness are now suspiciously viewed as inherently racist and impermissible in a good, just, and supposedly colorblind society.”
This disjuncture between grassroots reality and prevailing theory represents a major challenge to organizations confronted with the centrality of race in forging viable alliances. An additional and unanticipated barrier is the impact of September 11, 2001, especially in immigrant communities where civil liberties are being curtailed. This provides a new set of issues in the move towards multiracial formations.
Having been at this since 1981…in fact, having essentially created the “identity” political approach to organizing…ARC is very good at this. The report is clear, concise and closes with general observations, key lessons and suggestions for effective multiracial organization. And unfortunate though it is, I feel the need to point out that the first case presented is a coalition of Native Americans and White Americans against corporate mining interests in Wisconsin. The need to point this out is explained in the first chapter of MultiRacial Formations:
Few of these assumptions are true in every situation.
Points four and eight are those relevant to the need to explain. It is generally assumed that multiracial coalitions are for the benefit of minorities in struggle against the mainstream, when it is often the case that they are the best method for White Americans to address their needs. Not always, but often. It is a message that Americans of all races need to understand.
Multiracial coalitions are difficult, challenging…and necessary. The Applied Research Center has done a great service in producing this work. And an equally great service by making it available for download as a PDF. Every community activist, everyone interested in working for justice, should get a copy.
Now.
A significant factor in Ronald Reagan's successful destabilization of the ex-Soviet Union was the U.S.S.R.'s inability to maintain both the arms race and its internal economy in the face of Reagan's dramatic expansion of military spending. As a result of the economic…plan…we've been suffereing under, and past and projected war and reconstruction expenditures , I'm not at all sure we could do that to China.
It would be the greatest possible irony if our capitalist system were destabilized by China by essentially the same process that Reagan destabilized the Soviet Union's system.
By Toshi Yoshihara, 10/16/2003
WITH TUESDAY'S successful launch of the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft, China has become the third nation, behind the United States and the former Soviet Union, to place a human into the Earth's orbit. Not surprisingly, the Chinese government is now engaged in a full-court press to tout this dramatic event as a major scientific and engineering achievement, complete with full-color photos and large front-page stories in scores of newspapers around the country.
…China enjoys the resources and boasts the political will to invest in space over the long term. As such, even if China does not pose a credible threat to the United States, perceptions that the Chinese may eventually challenge US space supremacy could spur Washington to view Beijing as a future rival in space.
In other words, Chinese apprehensions of US space dominance might easily be reciprocated.
Senate Defies Bush On Iraq Assistance
Loan Provision Approved in 51 to 47 Vote
By Jonathan Weisman
Defying weeks of intense White House lobbying, a narrowly divided Senate voted last night to convert half of President Bush's $20.3 billion Iraq rebuilding plan into a loan that would be forgiven if other donor nations write off the debt incurred by the ousted government of Saddam Hussein.
…The Senate and House are poised to approve today nearly all of the president's $87 billion request for the military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate's version of the spending measure mirrors Bush's, although it contains the $10 billion loan provision. The House's version hews closely to the administration's but shaves $1.7 billion from the reconstruction fund, stripping out such items as the Iraq Zip code implementation, garbage trucks and a one-month business course that has become politically unpalatable to many Republicans.[P6: "Iraq Zip code implementation"???]
…Bush has maintained that a loan would confirm Middle Eastern suspicions of U.S. motives in Iraq, but Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said no amount of money is going to change the minds of those who believe the administration invaded for Iraq's oil.[P6: For instance, you'll NEVER change MY mind about it]
…"We will pay any price and bear any burden to advance the cause of human liberty," DeLay told lawmakers. "[P6: Except in Texas.]
The Sweet Spot
By PAUL KRUGMAN
…These middle-class tax cuts were designed to create a "sweet spot" that would allow the administration to point to "typical" families that received big tax cuts. If a middle-income family had two or more children 17 or younger, and an income just high enough to take full advantage of the provisions, it did get a significant tax cut. And such families played a big role in selling the overall package.
So if a Democratic candidate proposes a total rollback of the Bush tax cuts, he'll be offering an easy target: administration spokespeople will be able to provide reporters with carefully chosen examples of middle-income families who would lose $1,500 or $2,000 a year from tax-cut repeal. By leaving the child tax credits and the cutout in place while proposing to repeal the rest, contenders will recapture most of the revenue lost because of the tax cuts, while making the job of the administration propagandists that much harder.
Purists will raise two objections. The first is that an incomplete rollback of the Bush tax cuts won't be enough to restore long-run solvency. In fact, even a full rollback wouldn't be enough. According to my rough calculations, keeping the child credits and the cutout while rolling back the rest would close only about half the fiscal gap. But it would be a lot better than current policy.
The other objection is that the tricks used to sell the Bush tax cuts have made an already messy tax system, full of special breaks for particular classes of taxpayers, even messier. Shouldn't we favor a reform that cleans it up?
In principle, the answer is yes. But an ambitious reform plan would be demagogued and portrayed as a tax increase for the middle class. My guess is that we should propose a selective rollback as the first step, with broader reform to follow.
Schwarzenegger, Bush hit it off
Plenty of jokes, but no requests for U.S. aid or promises of help
…Bush, for his part, said Schwarzenegger will be "a fine and strong leader'' for California. The president also joked about how much he and the governor-elect have in common.
"We both married well," Bush said, people talk about "both of us not being able to speak the English language," and "we both have big biceps.''
I find it interesting that the NY Times spins the UN thing like this:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 -- President Bush's victory in the United Nations on Thursday has brought him at least the veneer of international backing, and expected Congressional action this week will provide new domestic financial and political support for the American enterprise in Iraq. But both developments will put sharp new pressure on the president to deliver on his pledge to create a safer, more democratic Iraq -- preferably, in the White House view, by the time he faces re-election next fall.
…and the Washington Post spins it like that
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 17, 2003; Page A24
The Bush administration, having won unanimous approval yesterday of a U.N. Security Council resolution that backs the U.S.-appointed Iraqi leaders, was muted in its celebration -- and for good reason.
President Bush greeted the vote with one sentence, thanking the Security Council, toward the end of a speech in California and an 80-word written statement. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, while calling it "a great achievement," was careful to add: "I don't see this vote as opening the door to troops."
The 15 to 0 vote, bringing in not just France, Germany and Russia but also Syria, was no small feat. But analysts and diplomats said the impact of the resolution would be limited, and perhaps not worth its cost of exposing the deep-seated resentments in the world community over the U.S. handling of the Iraq war. Few believe the Security Council's resolution will bring much in terms of pledges of troops or aid, even though the Bush administration originally sought the resolution for precisely that reason.
Though neither is particularly good news for the Bushitas, the NYT essentially sees it as domestic politics while the WaPo calls it foreign policy.
And check the L.A. Times' lead. It's like they squeezed every bit of good news out of it they could. Think they're trying to make up with Arnold?
October 17, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq won't bring Washington much of the aid or troops it covets. Yet in return for a vague promise to broaden international control, Washington has won a politically valuable U.N. blessing to continue reshaping the country.
The resolution means the United States can describe the occupying troops under its command as a "multinational force." And an Iraqi government that was handpicked by Americans now has official U.N. recognition as the entity that "embodies the sovereignty" of Iraq.
To be sure, Russia, France, Germany and Pakistan have made it clear that the resolution did not go far enough to persuade them to contribute troops or money.
But the U.N. stamp of approval means that some allied governments facing antiwar opposition at home -- including Britain's -- now have political cover that will make it easier for them to help out.
I said today's posting would be light because I had to work on a couple of posts for Open Source Politics. I thought I'd post a taste of them here. They'll be available tomorrow morning.
You have a choice: read the extended text, which will make you realize you MUST read the rest, or just cut to the chase. I'll still be here when you're done, trust me.
This is a review of a report analyzing several coalition building efforts. (It's not as bad as it sounds, really. But maybe that's just me.)
Like it or not, the United States of America is a multicultural nation. There are those who decry the fact, those who wish to change the fact. But it remains the fact, and any plan with more than local scope that denies the fact is destined
for failure.
The plans of human rights activists cannot be allowed to fail. However, the multicultural nature of our society makes planning difficult. Each subculture in each specific location has both subtle gross differences in priorities and needs that often make it difficult to even decide what to do next, much less how to do
it. There have been successes, though, and by studying them we
can gain insight into the possibility of a general approach to
building coalitions.
This is the purpose behind the "http://www.arc.org/index.html">Applied Research Center.
This one is more self explanatory, though the direction to other resources will take place in a future article, prolly next week.
That mathematical training needs to be improved in our public school systems is a commonly accepted idea. The usual reason given is the increasingly technical underpinnings of our daily lives, but that�s not actually correct. A small fraction of the population needs a familiarity with mathematical practices, and these people set up the technical supports for the rest of us�it�s the difference between being a mechanic and being a driver.
The real importance of mathematical training is not supportive, but subversive. Familiarity with mathematical practices enables you to better analyze events and understand your options on a day-to-day basis.
Bush orders officials to stop the leaks
He warned of action if anonymous sources were quoted, a senior aide said. Visiting senators also heard a stern line.
By Joseph L. Galloway and James Kuhnhenn
Inquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.
News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately.
Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.
via a couple of places, I'm not sure where I saw it first
No? Then you should read it. No new information about the Iraq deception, unless you believe Fox. But you get a really authoritative witness.
All of which begs the question, why now and not then?
As I write this I'm listening to Rush to Recovery, a savage bit of audio satire about Rush Limberger's drug issues. It's in RealAudio, and is the first six minutes of KCRW's "le Show," and I really wish I could keep that six minutes.
The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior
A Christian extremist in a high Defense post can only set back the U.S. approach to the Muslim world.
By William M. Arkin
…The photographs were taken shortly after the disastrous "Blackhawk Down" mission had resulted in the death of 18 Americans. When Boykin came home and had them developed, he said, he noticed a strange dark mark over the city. He had an imagery interpreter trained by the military look at the mark. "This is not a blemish on your photograph," the interpreter told him, "This is real."
"Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy," Boykin said to the congregation as he flashed his pictures on a screen. "It is the principalities of darkness It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."
That's an unusual message for a high-ranking U.S. military official to deliver. But Boykin does it frequently.
This June, for instance, at the pulpit of the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., he displayed slides of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and North Korea's Kim Jung Il. "Why do they hate us?" Boykin asked. "The answer to that is because we're a Christian nation We are hated because we are a nation of believers."
Our "spiritual enemy," Boykin continued, "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
Who is Jerry Boykin? He is Army Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin. The day before Boykin appeared at the pulpit in Oregon, the Pentagon announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had nominated the general for a third star and named him to a new position as deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.
In this newly created position, Boykin is not just another Pentagon apparatchik or bureaucratic warrior. He has been charged with reinvigorating Rumsfeld's "High Value Target Plan" to track down Bin Laden, Hussein, Mullah Omar and other leaders in the terrorism world.
But Gen. Boykin's appointment to a high position in the administration is a frightening blunder at a time when there is widespread acknowledgment that the position of the United States in the Islamic world has never been worse.
Alternate title:World's Major Centralized Economies Agree Who Is In Charge Of Iraq
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 16, 2003; Page A20
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 15 -- The Bush administration reached an agreement Wednesday with Russia, China and Pakistan on a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on U.N. members to supply more troops and money to support the occupation of Iraq, according to U.S. and U.N. diplomats.
That agreement assured that an overwhelming council majority would pass the U.S.-sponsored resolution, but the United States agreed to a Russian request to delay a vote until 10 a.m. Thursday.
The pact on the resolution, which will place U.S. forces at the head of a U.N.-mandated multinational force, was struck after the United States offered a final series of concessions. They included a wider role for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in Iraq's constitutional process and a guarantee that the mandate for the force will expire when a new Iraqi government is sworn in, probably at the end of 2004.
On Listening
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
There was a headline that grabbed me in The Times on Saturday. It said, "Cheney Lashes Out at Critics of Policy on Iraq."
"Wow," I thought, "that must have been an interesting encounter." Then I read the fine print. Mr. Cheney was speaking to 200 invited guests at the conservative Heritage Foundation -- and even they were not allowed to ask any questions. Great. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker through Fox. America is pushing democracy in Iraq, but our own leaders won't hold a real town hall meeting or a regular press conference.
Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated to run such stories. But I wish we had said to the V.P.: If you're going to give a major speech on Iraq to an audience limited to your own supporters and not allow any questions, that's not news -- that's an advertisement, and you should buy an ad on the Op-Ed page.
Such an approach would serve both journalism and the nation, because it might actually force this administration to listen to someone other than itself.
You ask me, it's a pretty sad state of affairs when the most prominent Republicans are a draft dodger that doesn't read for himself and a political tyro.
RIVERSIDE, Calif., Oct. 15 -- The meeting between the nation's two most prominent Republicans on Thursday will very likely be brief, cordial and largely confined to generalities.
Aides to the two, President Bush and Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, described the meeting as a "courtesy visit" between two men who have known each other for years but who are not close. In the time-honored fashion of superpower summits, advisers sought to play down expectations of any major announcements from the meeting.
"We already have the communiqu� worked out," an aide to Mr. Schwarzenegger said jokingly.
But the lingering question when the two sit down in a hotel suite here will be stark for both men: What can you do for me?
I have to write a couple of articles for Open Source Politics.
Remember my thought experiment on what would happen if all necessary goods and services could be produced by 25% of the available work force? And Paul Krugman's op-ed that, though not directed at me of course, showed how the "lump of labor fallacy" explained why that wasn't even a question to ask? Well, Calpundit links to a bit in the L.A. Times by Marshall Brain (what a name!) that's pretty much on the same subject.
With robots doing the work, we should all be on perpetual vacation. Unfortunately, in the structure of our current economy, that is not what will happen.
This is the same problem we recognized here, and Mr. Brain (I'm REALLY fighting the urge to make a Pinky joke) says:
Wrong link. See, the ideal state is, depending on your outlook, perfect efficiency or perfect indolence. Maximum output from minimum input means the ideal state is to get everything for doing nothing. This is a common thread stretching from royalty owning everything through investment capitalism, the trend in labor negotiations, playing Lotto, the fight against inheritance taxes, everything. Success is, by definition, breaking the link between work and income.
The problems caused by the transition to a robotic economy will be twofold. The easier one is the link between income and subsistence. The harder nut will be the link between work and self-image.
S-Train:
So if you just HAVE TO KNOW everything. Every detail. The entire record… Then you can meet me at the following location:
O'Malleys Boxing Club
6648 S. Troy
Chicago, IL, 60629
Ph: 773.434.6700
And you can fight me for the details. Immature you say? Easy way out? Naa... You got the ball rolling by attacking a SERIOUS EVENT IN MY LIFE! And according to thug rules, you got to beat the rest out of me. I only been to O'Malleys once but I like the FIGHT ATMOSPHERE. I think you'll like it to.
You pick an incendiary name, you get flamed.
LATER: Oh, yeah. You should know I called you a crakka-ass crakka MONTHS ago. Had nothing to do with Limberger's slur on McNabb. I NEVER read your blog; it only came up because of a few referrals. Made me say, "Whut? Whut dis crakka-ass crakka want?" 
You did make me temporarily change my policy of not mentioning pretenders. There's another one out there who actually asked for ad hominem but his name isn't incendiary enough and his intellectual pretensions aren't interesting enough for me to even pretend to be interested.
Seriously by accident I ran across 1Xtra by BBCi, BBC's interactive web group. They have Black music radio shows on demand. Right now I'm listening to The Basement - Old Skool, a two hour show. This week it's about Roy Ayers' career narratated and music selected by Mr. Ayers himself. Mad good, althought at 33 kbps it ain't audiophile quality.
They have Hip Hop, R and B, Garage, Dancehall and Drum and Bass shows.
via Daily Kos, up in his new digs a picture of Haley Barbour, former chief of the Republican Party and current Mississipi Gubernatorial candidate hanging out with the Klan.
This is the face of the current Republican Party. The GOP elders may point to Arnold, but the power is held by people like Barbour, Lott, and DeLay.
The picture was taken July 19 of this year. This can't be chalked up to "youthful indiscretion" or ignorance. Barbour knew exactly what he was doing.
Let me be clear. White folks have as much ground to be proud of their race as anyone else. But you don't have to be a hater to do that. And the CCC is an organization of haters.
SPLITTING HAIRS: Okay, not "white race." But European cultures have created much art, music, science, beauty…as much as any other culture. I happen to like Bach a lot…I have a thing for recursion in general. I recognize the Euopean influences on my development as much as the African…though Asian philosophies have had been the greater part of my intellectual training.
via Candicissima at Kitty Power. I'm seriously tempted to post the whole article.
The Fire This Time:
Why Kucinich May be the Right Guy at the Right Time
Daniel Patrick Welch
…The Emerging Democratic Majority is ours--but we have the power to blow it by convincing future generations of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and others that their growing numbers are not of interest to us and they have nothing to gain by participating. The right is quite justifiably following a smart strategy which is the only way they can win. They have even succeeded in getting most Democrats to follow a strategy which is the only way they can lose.
The last insurgent populist campaign the Democrats dispensed with was Jesse Jackson's, and his math is still sound. Consider this equation from his 1984 convention speech (still a great read-isn't it amazing what you can find online?):
Those who think that campaign never set off alarm bells in the halls of power need only remember the Newsweek cover four years later, when Jackson managed to break 50% in the Michigan primary by mobilizing tens of thousands of African American youths to vote in their first electoral experience. Somebody found a fairly scary close-up of Jackson in the throes of an intense speech, face contorted and sweaty in a way reminiscent of Hitler or Sun Yung Moon. The one-word caption, in large-type yellow letters, served as headline, heads-up, and horrified call-to-arms: Jesse?! It was apparently the moment when the establishment, although still dismissive, actually considered that he might win, and began to contemplate what it might mean.
The math, stripped of its eloquence, looks something like this: If minority constituencies could be inspired to vote in proportionate numbers and in line with their historical preferences, a populist candidate would need less than 40% of the white vote to constitute a majority. In other words, in a 100 million vote election, 12% Black at 90%, 12 Latino at 65%, Asian at 60%, White Women at 53%...leads to only 25% of white men needed�. Before you get out your calculators, remember this is only a rough sketch. The theory is that by truly energizing the progressive base, we can further effect this shift to the left.
The problem, of course, is that Kucinich isn't Black, and it remains to be seen whether he could mobilize the necessary base constituencies in sufficient numbers. Jackson had a special charisma, which Sharpton and Braun seem to lack in the same quantity. It may not only be about race, though white progressives have been saying this for generations. The difference is that the African American community still has a cohesive political consciousness: Black voters enticed to vote can largely be relied on to support progressive causes. The same can not be said for the alienated white votership, who occasionally sneak out in record numbers to vote for David Duke or worse.
And these tendencies aren't changing, much as we are led to believe otherwise. For one thing, the right would not be pouring money into vote suppression if they were.
UPDATE:All my people are fine, but like 10 people died.
Staten Island Ferry Hits Dock; Officials Fear Many Casualties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- A Staten Island ferry crashed Wednesday as it was docking, killing at least five passengers, the Fire Department said.
Some victims lost limbs as the accident ended an otherwise routine trip from lower Manhattan. Other commuters were trapped in piles of debris abord the 22-year-old ferry.
Victims screamed and dove for cover and the right side of the ship was fractured as the ferry slammed into the huge wooden pilings that line the dock.
"There were numerous injuries like fractures and lacerations," said Fire Department spokeswoman Maria Lamberti. "There were a couple of people with amputations -- legs and arms."
The victims were taken to Staten Island University Hospital and St. Vincent's Hospital following the accident around 3:20 p.m. Firefighters aboard the damaged ferry sifted through the rubble looking for victims, finding more than 20, some of them critically injured, said another fire spokesman, David Billig.
"Everyone just jumped for their lives," rider Bob Carroll told television station NY1. "It was like an absolute horror. ... The whole side of the boat looked like an opener on a can."
The accident occurred as the ship, the Andrew J. Barberi, arrived on the Staten Island end of its run across New York Harbor, said Mike Loughran, a fire department spokesman.
Justin Girard, a witness to the accident, told NY1 that he saw smoke and heard screams after the ferry crashed at the St. George Terminal. The front end of the ferry suffered extensive damage to the right side of its hull.
A debris field of about 400 yards surrounded the damaged boat, said Coast Guard Chief Dave French.
The ferry, which has three levels, has a capacity of 6,000, but it is unclear how many people were aboard at the time of the accident. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was attending the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game, left Yankee Stadium to head to the scene.
The ship sustained a huge hole on its side, the official said, and debris may have fallen on some passengers.
The Department of Transportation confirmed the accident, but could provide nothing further.
The ferry carries 70,000 commuters per day on the 25-minute free ride between Staten Island and lower Manhattan. Five boats make 104 daily trips between the two boroughs.
The accident temporarily suspended service on the ferry, and closed down traffic on the lower level of the nearby Verrazano Bridge.
On Sept. 19, 1997, a car plunged off the Andrew J. Barberi as it was docking in Staten Island, causing minor injuries to the driver and a deckhand who was knocked overboard by the car.
A side effect of all the nonsense that developed around S-Train is that I've encountered a number of people I'd have in no way met under the general circumstances in which I operate. Publicola is a blogger who focuses on the rights of individuals and in particular the Right to Arms—the capitalization is his, and semantically it indicates he deals with it as a high principle.
Based on his comments here, I believe his position is the most Libertarian I've ever encountered personally. There are several longish comments there, but I believe the the essential position is:
Now, this line of reasoning makes a nice, heretically sealed self-supporting value system. I do have a couple of problems with it. To begin with I believe the system is derived specifically to provide rational support for the Right to Arms. I believe the perception of the Right to Arms as high principle…or perhaps intense desire, or perceived need…came first. As such I see it as entirely optional, one of several ways to attain the desire or fulfill the need…and frankly I have no truck with high principles. High principles strike me as anither set of laws and hence indicators of some collective view if not an actual collective. Further evidence high principles have a collective root is Publicola's mention of a "Right to Arms world." I believe the Right to Arms is an artifact of the specific collective we exist within.
There are other issues, but I've learned to take things one step at a time.
Of course, none of this says anything about my opinion of the Right to Arms, which I was specifically asked. My opinion is, if anyone has it I want it too. It's a physical safety thing.
I haven't been reading j-notes for a year, but that's only because I haven't been reading blogs for a year.
Music is like oxygen to me. Most of my old vinyl has died and been reincarnated as CDs, all of them have been ripped to MP3s and Winamp runs 24/7, no joke. I don't even listen to commercial radio anymore. It's all MP3 streams, which has introduced me to now kinds of music I'd have never considered because I'd have never heard it.
But jazz is still the biggie. And jazz is what James covers at j-notes.
The only problem I have with it is that he rubbed my nose in the inabiliy to get to the Monteray Jazz Festival with his excellent reporting on it. But I forgive him, and wish j-notes a happy birfday
Coca Culture
By LEONIDA ZURITA-VARGAS
OCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- There has been rioting in Bolivia for nearly four weeks now. News reports say that the riots have been over the construction of a pipeline to ship natural gas to the United States. That's true, but there's a deeper anger at work: anger toward the United States and its war against a traditional Bolivian crop, coca.
You see, because of the American drug problem, we can no longer grow coca, which was part of our life and our culture long before the United States was a country. This is why many of the people protesting in La Paz and other cities are peasants whose families have cultivated coca for generations.
My tribe, the Quechua, comes from the lowland jungles of the Chapare in central Bolivia. We are used to chewing coca leaves every day, much as Americans drink coffee. We sustained ourselves by growing coca for chewing and for products like shampoo, medicinal teas and toothpaste. We did not turn coca into cocaine; the chemicals needed for that are made in countries like the United States. Bolivia now allows us to grow a very small amount of coca, but it is not enough.
I am a cocalera. I owe my life to coca. My father died when I was 2 and my mother raised six children by growing coca. I was a farmer myself, growing coca for traditional purposes. But the United States says it is better for us to just forget about coca. In the early 1990's, Bolivian officials distributed American money -- $300 to $2,500 per farm -- and told us to try yucca and pineapples. But 60 pineapples earn us only about eight bolivianos (about $1). And unlike coca, yucca and pineapples are difficult to carry to the cities to sell, and they spoil. So many farmers returned to growing coca.
Then in 1998, the Bolivian government announced it would eradicate coca farms through a military program financed by the Americans. Soldiers came to the Chapare and destroyed our coca crops with machetes. School teachers were beaten, and some houses were burned down.
When I saw that, I couldn't be quiet. I helped to organize people village by village, and I became leader of a national association of peasant women. Eventually we were joined in our protests by other social movements and unions. We have continued to grow. Evo Morales, the head of the national coca growers' union, even came in second in the 2002 presidential election. He got 21 percent of the vote, while the current president, Gonzalo S�nchez de Lozada, got 22 percent.
I think Mr. Morales would win today. Bolivians have grown tired of Mr. S�nchez de Lozada's free-market, pro-United States policies, which have not lowered our high rate of unemployment. The president's willingness to build a pipeline through Chile to export our natural gas to the United States has made many more people join the anti-government protests the cocaleros started.
To me, real success in the war on drugs would be to capture and prosecute the big drug traffickers, and for the United States to stop its own citizens from using drugs. The war on the cocaleros has brought Bolivia nothing but poverty and death.
Now tanks surround the presidential palace in La Paz. Fourteen people died in riots there on Monday alone. Unless the United States and its allies like Mr. S�nchez de Lozada stop their war against us, Bolivia will have neither peace nor a future.
I'm a bit of a gadgets junkie. Not a first adopter, but definitely an early adopter. I had one of those hand-held scanners way before I could afford one. Stylus tablets, Palm Pilots, CD burner when 4x recording was aMAZing. I've had two digital cameras and am really interested in Canon's new EOS Rebel Digital camera—a 6.1 megapixel SLR that's fully compatability with their autofocus lenses and all the capabilities of their film cameras. It's at a price a truly obsessive hobby photographer, such as I once was, would consider. But I used this stuff.
Maybe if I relate it to software I'd feel less annoyed at these folks.
Nah. I never bought what I didn't have a need for. Though I'll download an open source library in a heartbeat. Anyway…
Adam Lipson cannot decide which of the many gadgets he bought in the last couple of years proved most useless.
Perhaps it was the microscope that hooked up to his computer. Then again, maybe Mr. Lipson, 42, would choose the universal remote control that came with a manual as thick as a Russian novel. But that would be shortchanging the Webcam -- a video camera that transfers images over the Internet -- that he used once, stashed in a closet and finally threw away.
Mr. Lipson, who runs a computer security consulting company in Pearl River, N.Y., is but one of many shoppers who have bought electronic devices lately that end up stuffed into a bottom drawer, on the high shelf of a closet, or in the back of a garage. The lucky ones manage to unload them to somebody else through eBay, which is full of offers these days for "barely used" products or items still "new in box," a term that has become so common it is often shortened to "NIB."
Gadgets bought and barely used are the technology world's equivalent of exercise equipment. Often purchased in a well-intentioned bout of self-improvement, they are opened, used once or twice, then abandoned. Sometimes they never make it out of the box.
…Jonathan Chatham, 23, a mortgage broker in San Antonio, may have carried that point to an extreme. Before a trip to Russia with a church group, he spent $3,000 on a video camera with the idea of making a documentary about "The New Russians," as he describes it, and thereby start himself on a new career as a filmmaker. But no one seemed particularly interested in providing financial backing for his project.
"I thought all I had to do was buy the camera and everyone would be throwing these opportunities at me," he said.
Like other serial acquirers, Mr. Chatham is surprisingly introspective. "There's the theoretical life you live and the actual life you live," he said. He was hoping the camera would bridge the gap between theory and reality.
[P6: here comes the part I don't understand]
Mr. Chatham blames himself, but only in part. He also blames advertisers for persuading him of the transformative powers of the latest gear.
"The way it's advertised is that if I just buy it," he said, "all these other things will fall into place in my life."
sigh
I have to put together a screed about advertising and suckers. None of this crap would work if people didn't go into shut-off-your-consciousness-and-absorb mode when sitting in front of the TV.
Senate Backs Genetic Privacy Bill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 -- The Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to pass the first federal bill aimed exclusively at safeguarding genetic privacy, ending six years of legislative gridlock.
The White House announced that it supported the measure, which would bar companies from using genetic information to deny health coverage or employment.
Scientists and advocates for patients have been working for years to pass such a bill, which they say will encourage millions of people to have genetic testing without fear of discrimination. Dr. Francis S. Collins, a leader in mapping the human genome, watched from the gallery as the senators voted, 95 to 0.
"It's been a long and difficult road," said Dr. Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. "You could say this is a bill for people with D.N.A."
The insurance industry opposes the legislation, and the bill faces an uncertain future in the House, where Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, has been working on a similar measure since 1995. Mrs. Slaughter joined with the Senate supporters of the bill in urging the House to pass the measure immediately.
Name Sources, Judge Orders Five Reporters
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
ASHINGTON, Oct. 14 -- A federal judge has ordered five reporters, including two from The New York Times, to disclose the confidential sources they used in preparing articles about Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the former scientist at the nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.
The judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson of Federal District Court here, ordered the reporters on Friday to disclose their sources' names and provide Dr. Lee's lawyers with notes and other materials compiled in their newsgathering.
Judge Jackson ruled that First Amendment protections that shield journalists from government interference were outweighed in this specific case by the need of Dr. Lee's lawyers to provide evidence of government leaks in their suit against the government.
Court Orders Father to Speak in English
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PAPILLION, Neb., Oct. 14 -- A Hispanic man who spoke to his 5-year-old daughter in Spanish has been ordered to use primarily English around the girl as a condition of his visitation rights.
Judge Ronald E. Reagan of Sarpy County Court said the child did not understand Spanish because she met her father, Eloy Amador, only seven months ago.
Mr. Amador, who was released from jail after serving a five-year sentence for drug possession, told the judge that he spoke Spanish to his daughter to share his culture, not to force a language on her.
"I don't come to her speaking in Spanish, but there are times where I try to teach her what `hair' is in Spanish, what `hand' is, stuff like that," Mr. Amador said at a hearing on Sept. 15 on visitation.
The judge did not oppose such instruction, but said the rest of the communication should be in English for the sake of the girl's education.
The ruling was a victory for the girl's mother, Michaela Krayneski, who had asked that Mr. Amador speak English as a condition of visitation. Calls to Ms. Krayneski's lawyer were not returned on Tuesday.
LATER: Renaissance Woman at To The Barracades! has the deep story as published by the Omaha World-Herald.
I was going to say something about how nice it would be to see important legislation deal with strictly on the merits of its subject matter, but I decidd that would make me look more pollyannish than I'd like.
Pet Projects Flood Energy Bill Before Crucial Wednesday Session
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 -- When a group of senior Republican senators gathered recently to promote their vision of an energy policy, they pushed a very junior party member, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to the microphones first to discuss the benefits of a proposed natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48.
"It will be the largest project of its kind in the history of the country. Huge," said Ms. Murkowski, whose re-election prospects next year could turn on her ability to claim credit for winning federal aid for the proposed $20 billion 3,500-mile pipeline.
Ms. Murkowski is not alone among House and the Senate members who have personal stakes in the energy bill. The measure, which Republican leaders hope to break loose on Wednesday, is packed with pet projects, with total spending estimated by Taxpayers for Common Sense at $60 billion and growing.
"It is just chockablock full of favors to the oil and gas industry," said David Alberswerth, who has been following the sections on public lands for the Wilderness Society.
I'm always curious about the behind the scenes negotiations in situations like this. One wonders what was said the the Latin American and African players that caused them to give "informal signals" that they would approve the US resoution…it's not a UN resolution at this point.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 14 -- The Bush administration is virtually assured of gaining Security Council approval of a revised United Nations resolution on Iraq's future, diplomats here said Tuesday, but it remains unclear whether the measure will be adopted overwhelmingly or in a less convincing, abstention-riddled vote.
…A week after it had flirted with abandoning the resolution in the face of objections from Secretary General Kofi Annan and countries like France, the administration produced a new version that made symbolic concessions to some of those concerns. The ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, said there would be a vote on Wednesday.
In response, Russia, France and Germany presented amendments Tuesday morning that concede to the American-led coalition control over the gradual transfer of power to Iraqis, but gives the Security Council some oversight authority. In particular, they call on the coalition to give the Council a schedule for the transfer of power.
…Negotiations in the late afternoon among Council members at the American mission closed the gap between the two camps slightly, but one diplomat expressed concern that Washington had not gone far enough to win the broad-based consensus that it seeks. Among other things, the United States remained steadfast in its refusal to be pinned down to any specific timetable for transferring control.
Even so, Washington and London are expected to get enough votes to pass the resolution, although as many as 5 of the 15 members could abstain, including Syria, China and the amendment's three sponsors, diplomats said.
Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo provides a link to five minutes of audio that shows how Americans are doing business in Iraq. This particular guy had little success, but, well, listen to it for yourself.
Aaron McGruder is brilliant.
And yes, Caesar is the man.
Good thing Prop 54 failed, huh?
The whole cartoon from which this was extracted was good, but I think this image in "stand-alone mode" is great.
By William K. Reilly
…An industry spokesman quoted in The Post responded to the report by claiming that the EPA typically underestimated the costs when proposing new regulations. That is no doubt a widely held view. It is dead wrong.
…The electric power industry estimated that eliminating one ton of sulfur dioxide (the bill aimed to eliminate 10 million tons) would cost more than $1,300.The EPA, CEA and OMB ultimately agreed on a cost estimate of $600 to $800 per ton. We got it wrong: Over the ensuing decade the cost proved to be less than $200 per ton.
In fact, a review of some of the major regulatory initiatives overseen by the EPA since its creation in 1970 reveals a pattern of consistent, often substantial overestimates of their economic costs. Catalytic converters on cars, the phaseout of lead in gasoline, the costs of acid rain controls -- on each of these, overly cautious economic analysts at the EPA advocated proposals they considered important but projected high-end costs that undercut the acceptance of, and heightened the opposition to, their initiatives. In fact, the OMB report makes clear that the weakness in analyzing the likely impact of new environmental rules lay in a highly conservative calculation of benefits. Where the costs of four major EPA rules in the 1990s were $8 billion to $8.8 billion, the benefits are now calculated to have been between $101 billion and $119 billion.
It seems to me it's time that the EPA's critics acknowledged the care and sensitivity to costs, the overly conservative approach to benefits, that have historically characterized the agency's work. The explanation for the large variation between anticipated and realized costs of regulation lies in the difficulty in foreseeing what new technologies, inventions or replacement strategies challenged companies will develop to comply with new requirements. The agency has not assumed technological breakthroughs but acquitted itself cautiously in integrating the protection of health and the environment with concern for the economy. It has resisted the temptation to play down costs. And it has been directly responsible for fostering new technologies and promoting the genuine integration of the nation's environmental aspirations with its economic goals.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A22
YOU MIGHT THINK America's rigged system of congressional elections couldn't get much worse. Self-serving redistricting schemes nationwide already have left an overwhelming number of seats in the House of Representatives so uncompetitive that election results are practically as preordained as in the old Soviet Union. In the last election, for example, 98 percent of incumbents were reelected, and the average winning candidate got more than 70 percent of the vote. More candidates ran without any major-party opposition than won by a margin of less than 20 percent. Yet even given this record, the just-completed Texas congressional redistricting plan represents a new low.
Patriot Act Curbing Data Retention
By BOB TEDESCHI
COULD the Patriot Act threaten the growth of e-commerce?
That is the question being raised by some online booksellers and e-tailing analysts, who suggest that the Patriot Act, passed in October 2001 to give the government new counterterrorism capabilities, has already changed the way some companies and consumers do business online. For some consumers, it has meant fewer online purchases of politically incorrect books. For the Web sites, it has meant changes to privacy policies and marketing strategies, among other things.
Some moderate voices among online businesspeople see no true threat, and the Justice Department dismisses the risks of the Patriot Act altogether. But Phillip Bevis sees it otherwise.
Mr. Bevis, the founder and chief executive of Arundel Books, which sells used and rare books online and off line, says that his customers' concerns about the Patriot Act have forced him to severely curb the amount of customer data he retains, and to alter his marketing as a result. Because he no longer keeps information about customer purchases - so as to avoid the possibility of having to disclose it to the government - he can no longer discern the buying habits of his patrons and then offer them advertisements for books they may like.
"This has certainly had a chilling effect on us, and our customers," Mr. Bevis said.
At the core of his concerns is Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Under that section, businesses, organizations or citizens can be compelled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if it has a federal judge's order, to hand over any records the F.B.I. deems relevant to an investigation of terrorism or espionage, as long as the investigation is not based solely on actions already protected by the Constitution's free speech provisions.
If an investigation, for example, is based solely on a suspect's radical religious statements, which receive broad First Amendment protections, the investigator would very likely be denied access to records of related books the suspect bought. But if the investigation is based on suspected terrorist bombings, and a federal judge deemed the records of a suspect's book purchases on bomb making a necessary part of the inquiry, a bookstore might be required to produce the records.
Compared with companies that sell their wares only in stores, online businesses - particularly those engaged in selling so-called expressive materials like books, music and videos - are good candidates for law enforcement requests under the Patriot Act. While off-line customers can avoid creating an audit trail by paying cash for their purchases, consumer anonymity is hard to achieve online, where transactions typically involve credit cards and shipping addresses.
Paul Krugman points out today that the USofA would be getting the hairy eye from the financial markets if it were a "Third-World" nation following its current policies. And I'd find the colum highly informative had I not gotten the same information via Calpundit a couple of days ago. But Mr. Krugman still gets off a few nice lines:
You know us old-school types can appreciate a demonstartion of good skillz at playing the dozens. Krugman's gonna get nominated for a brother card if he keep playing like that.
Click it, I dare you!
Yesterday's Washington Post had an editorial by William Raspberry in his role as apologist for the Thernstroms. Hey, whatever pays the bills, right?
He tries to strike a properly balanced and sympathetic note in his description so that it can't be said he is factually incorrect
It is particularly hard if it is true -- as I believe -- that the gap has less and less to do with racism and more and more to do with the habits and attitudes we inculcate among our children.
I can almost feel the resistance from black Americans to the notion that there is something cultural about the underachievement of black students. Almost as palpable is the easy conclusion on the part of many whites (and I'm not talking about racists) that if black people would just buckle down as other disadvantaged groups have done, many of their problems would evaporate.
And yet -- how hard this is! -- the buckle-down crowd may be closer to the mark. That is not to say that the academic gap (as much as four years by the time of high school graduation) is merely the aggregate result of individual black laziness. It isn't.
But as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom make clear in their new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," a significant source of the gap is in the attitudes toward academic achievement that are prevalent in black America, even among the economically successful, college-trained middle class.
And but for a subtle disregard for reality he might have hit it. For instance, here:
…he doesn't actually SAY this is happening in the Black communities, just as he doesn't actually SAY it's not happening in the white communities. And had he written this:
…immediately before, rather than immediately after, this:
…the appearance of compassion may have been stronger.
Raspberry and the Thernstroms are far more sympathetic than they would have you believe. In holding Black Americans to a different standard than the mainstream (for instance, according to Raspberry's approving quote, the Thernstroms write "too few black and Hispanic youngsters -- particularly those in urban public schools -- have acquired the skills to choose their own path," and I would question how many white Americans outside the upper economic class choose their own path), in holding that Black Americans by dint of their own individual efforts can overcome racism (that they do not claim is negligible, but merely reduced) they imply that Black Americans are more capable than those who are not impacted negatively by that racism yet do not rise to the pinnacles of American society.
That oughta scare white folks that are inclined to be scared more than any number of of Black folks with guns. Because guns aren't going to change America. Anyone who thinks it will ought to just disabuse themselves of that notion right now. Egalitarianism, extended regardless of race, would be a fundamental change though…a change so great that most people (again, regardless of race) wouldn't have a clue as to how to proceed from there.
Raspberry closes with
sigh
You know, it's really, really not fair. No nation, no society, no culture has ever been consciously shaped from the inside. If Black folks can pull it off, it will be a first. The odds of success are vanishingly small.
Yet I'm going to climb on that soapbox too.
Not with the verbal lash. Not with willful blindness about the historical causes of the problems or the current processes that perpetuate them. But with a simple observation: we have no choice. And if we start from scratch, rejecting outside opinions and influences to choose that which is best for us individually and collectively, itself a huge task, we could master this requirement.
That, of course, isn't Raspberry and the Thernstroms' message. But the Thernstroms aren't writing for Black folks. And Raspberry has bills to pay.
LATER: I think the reasoning in Chris Bertram's post at Crooked Timber applies as far as assigning responsibility for the problem.
Prometheus is a Chaos God, which means I'm supposed to dish it out, not receive it. So when the American Philosophical Association publicizes a call for philosophical essays on the theme of the undead, it's time to go to bed.
Somehow it makes perfect sense that the crew actually calling for the papers is hosted on members.aol.com.
And thank you Crooked Timber for giving me an excuse to turn in early tonight.
When I saw the headline, I thought of titling this post "PleaseBabyPleaseBabyPleasePleaseBabyBabyPlease?" BUT…
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Bush administration, yielding slightly in its opposition to diluting American authority over the Iraqi occupation, proposed today that the United Nations recognize the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council as a unit that "will embody the sovereignty" of Iraq until the country returns to self-rule.
The shift is a linguistic attempt to enhance the status of the Iraqi council without necessarily giving it more power, American officials said.[P6: They admit it! How's that for sheer nerve and disrespect?]
The latest American proposal on the sovereignty issue was part of a renewed bid to get the United Nations Security Council to bless the American position on the speed of transition to self-rule and clear the way for international aid to secure and rebuild Iraq.
France has demanded that the Governing Council be vested with authority as the legitimate government of Iraq before it goes along with the American-proposed resolution. Ten days ago, Secretary General Kofi Annan more or less endorsed the French view, dimming prospects for a positive vote.
The United States opposes such a step, saying the Governing Council is not ready to govern Iraq. The Bush administration has also declined to put forward a timetable as to when the council may be prepared to take power, but in the new language disclosed today the council was given until December 15 to set its own timetable.
But it was unclear this afternoon whether the proposed new resolution, with its ambiguous language, would gain the votes of enough members of the Security Council to pass, thus encouraging other countries to send troops and aid. The crucial waverer is Russia, with which the United States has been negotiating on changing language on sovereignty and other issues.
I don't have any use for this any more than anyone else does. So what?
The touch of a button switches the display back to 2D viewing for standard applications such as spreadsheets, photo editing or email.
In addition to a software bundle designed to take advantage of the notebook's 3D capability, the Actius RD3D will include three of the hottest gaming titles available from Electronic Arts, Inc.
This weekend the NY Times Magazine published Enough to Make You Sick? By Helen Epstein, ten web pages on how the urban poor are dying so young…not of violence, but of diseases and accidents that are more typical of the elderly in the mainstream.
You should read it. If you don't have time to read all of it before it gets archived behind in pay-to-enter section, go there today and email it to yourself.
You have no excuse not to read this.
In the Bush administration, science…like truth…takes a back seat to politics. If it gets a seat at all.
Moore's Lore let me know of a paper posted to David Farber's Interesting People list about how the Bush administration's distate for scientific truth is just the culmination of an ongoing Republican problem. But he made me search out the original article.
By Nicholas Thompson
Not long ago, President Bush asked a federal agency for evidence to support a course of action that many believe he had already chosen to take on a matter of grave national importance that had divided the country. When the government experts didn't provide the information the president was looking for, the White House sent them back to hunt for more. The agency returned with additional raw and highly qualified information, which the president ran with, announcing his historic decision on national television. Yet the evidence soon turned out to be illusory, and the entire policy was called into question.
Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you say? Actually, the above scenario describes Bush's decision-making process on the issue of stem cell research. In August 2001, Bush was trying to resolve an issue he called "one of the most profound of our time." Biologists had discovered the potential of human embryonic stem cells--unspecialized cells that researchers can, in theory, induce to develop into virtually any type of human tissue. Medical researchers marveled at the possibility of producing treatments for medical conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and spinal cord injuries; religious conservatives quivered at the fact that these cells are derived from human embryos, either created in a laboratory or discarded from fertility clinics. Weighing those concerns, Bush announced that he would allow federal funding for research on 60-plus stem cell lines already taken from embryos, but that he would prohibit federal funding for research on new lines.
Within days, basic inquiries from reporters revealed that there were far fewer than 60 viable lines. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far confirmed only 11 available lines. What's more, most of the existing stem cell lines had been nurtured in a growth fluid containing mouse tumor cells, making the stem cells prone to carrying infections that could highly complicate human trials. Research was already underway in the summer of 2001 to find an alternative to the mouse feeder cells--research that has since proven successful. But because these newer clean lines were developed after Bush's decision, researchers using them are ineligible for federal funding.
At the time of Bush's announcement, most scientists working in the field knew that although 60 lines might exist in some form somewhere, the number of robust and usable lines was much lower. Indeed, the NIH had published a report in July 2001 that explained the potential problems caused by the mouse feeder cells and estimated the total number of available lines at 30. Because that initial figure wasn't enough for the administration, according to Time magazine, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson asked the NIH to see if more lines "might conceivably exist." When NIH representatives met with Bush a week before his speech with an estimate of 60 lines scattered around the world in unknown condition, the White House thought it had what it wanted. In his announcement, Bush proclaimed, without qualification, that there were "more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines."
After his speech, then-White House Counselor Karen Hughes said, "This is an issue that I think almost everyone who works at the White House, the president asked them their opinion at some point or another." However, Bush didn't seek the advice of Rosina Bierbaum, then-director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Hughes claimed that Bush had consulted other top federal scientists, including former NIH director Harold Varmus. That was partly true, but the conversation with Varmus, for example, took place during a few informal minutes at a Yale graduation ceremony. Later press reports made much of Bush's conversations with bioethicists Leon Kass and Daniel Callahan. Yet neither is a practicing scientist, and both were widely known to oppose stem-cell research. Evan Snyder, director of the stem-cell program at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, "I don't think science entered into Bush's decision at all."
The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk." Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.
…The split between the GOP and the scientific community began during the administration of Richard Nixon. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, protests against the Vietnam War captured the sympathy of the liberal academic community, including many scientists, whose opposition to the war turned them against Nixon. The president characteristically lashed back and, in 1973, abolished the entire White House science advisory team by executive order, fuming that they were all Democrats. Later, he was caught ranting on one of his tapes about a push, led by his science adviser, to spend more money on scientific research in the crucial electoral state of California. Nixon complained, "Their only argument is that we're going to lose the support of the scientific community. We will never have their support." The GOP further alienated scientists with its "Southern strategy," an effort to broaden the party's appeal to white conservative Southerners. Many scientists were turned off by the increasing evangelical slant of Republicans and what many saw as coded appeals to white racists.
…By the mid 1990s, the GOP had firmly adopted a new paradigm for dismissing scientists as liberals. Gingrich believed, as Nixon did, that most scientists weren't going to support him politically. "Scientists tend to have an agenda, and it tends to be a liberal political agenda," explains Gingrich's close associate former Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.), the former chairman of the House Science Committee. In 1995, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House committee dealing with global warming, called climate change a "liberal claptrap." In interviews with The Washington Post in 2001, Texas Republican Tom DeLay dismissed evolution as unproven, said that we shouldn't need an EPA because "God charges us to be good stewards of the Earth," and denigrated scientific Nobel Prize winners as "liberal and extremist."
…When required to seek input from scientists, the administration tends to actively recruit those few who will bolster the positions it already knows it wants to support, even if that means defying scientific consensus. As with Bush's inquiry into stem-cell research, when preparing important policy decisions, the White House wants scientists to give them validation, not grief. The administration has stacked hitherto apolitical scientific advisory committees, and even an ergonomics study section, which is just a research group and has no policy making role.
The administration has further used these committees as places for religious conservatives whose political credentials are stronger than their research ones. For example, on Christmas Eve 2002, Bush appointed David Hager--a highly controversial doctor who has written that women should use prayer to reduce the symptoms of PMS--to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Commission.
Bush has also taken to unprecedented levels the political vetting of nominees for advisory committees. When William Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, was considered as a candidate for a panel on the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he was asked his views on abortion, the death penalty, and whether he had voted for Bush. He said no to the last question and never received a call back. "Not only does the Bush administration scorn science; it is subjecting appointments to scientific advisory committees and even study sections to political tests," says Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, the community's flagship publication.
States trim prepaid tuition plans
Soaring costs give parents a harsh lesson in economics
By V. Dion Haynes
Tribune national correspondent
October 13, 2003
LOS ANGELES -- Last week, higher education officials in Ohio took drastic steps to grapple with severe budget cuts, soaring tuition and poor investment returns: They decided to halt new enrollment in the state's highly popular prepaid tuition program and prohibit current participants from making contributions in 2004.
In so doing, Ohio joined a growing list of states forced to scale back their prepaid tuition programs or hike fees to avoid running out of cash.
Introduced in Florida, Michigan and Ohio in the late 1980s, the prepaid tuition programs spread to 20 states over the next decade to help lower- and middle-income parents save thousands of dollars in inflation by paying the future cost of their children's college education at current prices.
But in recent months, officials in Ohio, Texas, Colorado, Kentucky and West Virginia have closed enrollment. At the same time, parents in Illinois, Michigan and several other states have faced contribution hikes surpassing the rate of tuition increases.
"If our projections for next year are accurate, tuition will have gone up over 50 percent in four years," said Jacqueline Williams, executive director of the Ohio Tuition Trust Authority, which administers the prepaid tuition program. "Over the last two years, we've had to raise our tuition units nine times."
Garrison Keillor in the L.A. Times
When Arnold takes office, he should do exactly what he promised not to do, and then smile and say that he didn't really do it, and if he did do it, which he didn't, he didn't mean to do it, the thing that was not done, and will never do it again. We eat the cake and after we eat it, there is even more cake. Yes, we have no bananas, but we do have apples, which also are oranges. And if Arnold can be a Republican, then we're all Republicans, and we Democrats are even more so.
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A18
PRESIDENT BUSH SENT the wrong message when he announced, in response to a reporter's question last week, that he has "no idea whether we'll find out" who disclosed the identity of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert D. Novak. Washington, the president said, "is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official." The president insisted that he'd "like to" know. But, alas, "this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials." And with "all due respect to [the press], you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."
…If the chief of a company like Enron said something similar to Mr. Bush's remarks about a Justice Department investigation, his words would be taken as a wink to those responsible that they won't be caught if they keep quiet. That, we trust, was not what Mr. Bush meant to convey. But the tone of his lament could well have that effect. The problem is not that reporters protect their sources, which they are honor-bound to do. It is that the president has not consistently and unequivocally sent the message that he means to find out what happened and who was responsible, that those who know must tell the Justice Department and that responsible parties should 'fess up.
GOP Lawmakers Seek Safety-Rule Exemption for Trailers
Moratorium Proposed For Data Reporting Draws Criticism
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A02
Two Republican lawmakers have added language to a transportation spending bill that would exempt some trailer manufacturers from having to report safety data to the federal government.
Manufacturers and their allies called the move a common-sense solution to burdensome reporting requirements. But safety groups and some trucking organizations have said the language could create a dangerous loophole. Congress imposed the safety rules in 2000, in the wake of numerous fatal accidents involving Firestone tires.
The proposed language -- just a few lines in a massive transportation appropriations bill that has passed the House and awaits Senate action -- would bar the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration from using money to enforce compliance with the reporting rules for trailers weighing 26,000 pounds or less. These trailers haul horses, boats, snowmobiles and other loads.
Under the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act, or TREAD, these manufacturers must submit an array of information to the safety administration including consumer complaints, field reports on possible defects and warranty information about tire problems. The measure imposes fines and prison sentences on executives who mislead the government on safety defects, and was aimed at major auto manufacturers such as Ford, whose Explorers were at the center of the Firestone tire controversy.
Open Source Politics has a number of articles about this problem: one by me and three by Jay Bullock. In addition, Mark A. R. Kleiman has an article about how NCLB inspires folks to game the system.
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A01
FAIRLEA, W.Va. -- President Bush's No Child Left Behind education program -- acclaimed as a policy and political breakthrough by the Republicans in January 2002 -- is threatening to backfire on Bush and his party in the 2004 elections.
The signature education plan is pledged to improve the performance of students, teachers and schools with yearly tests and serious penalties for failure. Although many Republicans and Democrats are confident the system will work in the long run, Bush is being criticized in swing states such as West Virginia for not adequately funding programs to help administrators and teachers meet the new, and critics say unreasonable, standards.
Alaska Wildlife Haven Pits Governor vs. Rest
Murkowski Vetoes Plan To Buy, Protect Island
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A03
PERENOSA BAY, Alaska -- If sea mammals, birds of prey and giant bears went to a shared heaven, it might look like Perenosa Bay.
This place is a storm-sheltered, plankton-rich, fish-packed playpen for whales, harbor seals, sea lions and sea otters. On shore, scores of bald eagles perch like Christmas ornaments in forests of 400-year-old Sitka spruce. Eagles are fat this time of year, after a long season of gorging on spawning salmon. So are the kodiak bears that have left thousands of calling cards on riverbanks: gnawed salmon, the bears being too full to eat all they can easily catch.
There is a fully funded plan -- hugely popular here -- to protect this bay, which is located on the north shore of Afognak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. It would buy 18,000 coastal acres and timber rights to an additional 2,000 acres for the state -- with $10.4 million of the $1 billion that Exxon Corp. paid as reparations for the oil spill that occurred 14 years ago in nearby Prince William Sound. The Exxon money would be matched by donations from hunting and land conservation groups in the Lower 48, a federal grant and a gift from Paul G. Allen, a high-tech billionaire in Seattle.
The plan has almost universal local support, including native groups that own the land and would retain access for subsistence hunting and fishing. Business leaders who want to expand high-end tourism here support it, as do politicians who want to be reelected. Also on board is a sprawling bipartisan cast of current and former state and federal leaders, plus the dominant newspaper in Alaska and conservation groups in the Lower 48. The Republican-controlled Alaskan legislature and a state-federal council that controls the Exxon money have approved the plan.
One well-placed Alaskan, however, seems to have killed it, at least for the time being.
Gov. Frank H. Murkowski vetoed the deal this summer. None of the money for it would have come out of the state budget, but Murkowski did it as a matter of principle, he said in a phone interview.
A Republican and a former U.S. senator, Murkowski said it is inappropriate for oil-spill money to be used to buy land from natives, even if they want to sell. The governor would prefer that the money be spent on scientific research into the long-term effects of the oil spill.
…A longtime opponent of public ownership of Alaska's land, he believes land kept in private hands would create more jobs and higher tax revenues for the state.
Most of the $1 billion from Exxon has been used to buy large parcels of native-owned land for habitat preservation. In most cases, the purchases have locked up land where wildlife habitat was harmed by the oil spill, preventing timber logging or other development.
Most of the deals, however, have guaranteed natives permanent access for subsistence hunting and fishing. They have also put more than $300 million into the coffers of native corporations. Nearly all the money, with one notable exception in the past year, has been saved in trusts or invested in native-owned businesses.
As for economic growth, there appears to be a bipartisan local consensus that the best way to make money off land around Perenosa Bay is for the state to buy it and it be opened up for high-priced tourism.
Publicola, I still owe you some conversation. Be back at you tomorrow.
well, I've been talking, no... hollering at S-Train during football day (GO TITANS!) about him blogging. seriously, I can't fill my friend's shoes. 'Train's something else. So I told him I co-author the blog with ya. We can do it together. He tells me he is too pissed to blog, too angry and can't put it into words. I told that child, "YOU NEED TO FUCKING BLOG!" I got him into it in the first place since he's an aspiring writer. His wife even wants him to. Says it keeps him focused. I told him you need to let the muthas know they can't run you out. I told him he needs to really be his name... S-TRAIN! You know how he got that name? When 'Train was gang-bangin', he wasn't big on weapons. he liked straight up man-to-man combat. 'Train would get in the middle of any fight when the odds were against him and handle his. he would run 'em down like a runaway train. S-Train... He was and still his (legally now through Hapkido) a devastating close-quarters fighter because of his discipline and drive. shit, 'Train's a scary fella sometimes but has such a big heart. his wife loves him to death, just like me. we respect the hell out of him.
So I kept pushing and told him I would be his hands. All he got to do is talk. talk hard and fucking true! guess what?
S-Train's back. And I won't be his damn hands either!!!!! That's my man!
and to make thangs better, S-Train has the support of the entire Kaph Media ownership to fire back hard (you should see how pissed they still are... whoa boy). there will be changes to the site (my area of expertise).... 'Train wants it to accurately portray his new blogging direction: STRAIGHT THUGGIN'...
much love to P6, Michele, kelley, serenity, Steve Aquila from the US Hapkido Foundation, and Publicola. I know this sounds all sappy but the e-mail all of you sent help me get thru his thick cranium. my man's back though. now I can take my sorry ass back to web design and occasional co-blogging...
:)
Posted by Aysel at October 12, 2003 09:43 PM
Nathan Newman gives us an example worth plagiarizing:
Yet when employers gang up together against workers, you rarely hear that coordinated action denounced for its class warfare rhetoric
Out in California, the unions were planning to strike only Vons supermarkets, but Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons management decided to lock out all their employees as well:
Now there's the class spirit by the employers.
Corporations are the modern Leninists-- combining in central committees to bust unions, write our national energy policy, and stuff pro-corporate "free trade" deals down our throats.
But its worth paying attention when that class unity of corporations comes out into the open, since they spend so much time propagandizing about "competition" and the idea that companies could never combine at the expense of workers and consumers.
I guess reading and responding to comments is blogging too. But I wasn't feeling all that creative today.
I just thought I'd line up in no particular order what I've seen written because of the online part of the bullshit S-Train went through…as though the event he wrote about wasn't enough.
Elle's Garden
Veiled4Allah
Dean Esmay
Nitecrawler
Baldilocks
Hi. I'm Black!
Suburban Blight
All Facts and Opinions
Swirlspice
Cobb
Ilyka Damon
And comments to various posts laying around here.
S-Train's partner Aysel will be working the keyboard at his address.
Got a couple more comments to respond to, and a couple of things to blog now.
I believe I've made a key observation on all this comment spam. I think all the blogs that have been affected use record numbers for file names. It would explain why they keep hitting old messages…it's because low numbers have a greater chance of being used as a file name on any given blog.
[UPDATE: Bzzzzzt! Wrong. The record ID is in a hidden field of the form. It still explains why old posts get nailed, but renaming the file doesn't help. If the title AND the record ID were both submitted with the form and had to match the existing record it would work, but I'm not hacking Perl because I don't like Perl.]
Michael of Move The Crowd and Trader Mike told me how to set up MT to use the title of the post as a file name. It's a pretty common thing since most of us have PHP on our servers.
My only problem with doing this is, because I didn't really know MT when I converted from Blogger and I thought the default titles were ugly, I got overly clever and plugged the import file title fields with " ". So I have over 1000 posts with a blank in the title. And I'd break some permalinks. I'd have to think about how deep that gets.
A 'Cosmic Jerk' That Reversed the Universe
By DENNIS OVERBYE
CLEVELAND, Oct. 10 -- Astronomers said on Friday that they had determined the time in cosmic history when a mysterious force, "dark energy," began to wrench the universe apart.
Five billion years ago, said Dr. Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the universe experienced a "cosmic jerk." Before then, Dr. Riess said, the combined gravity of the galaxies and everything else in the cosmos was resisting the expansion, slowing it down. Since the jerk, though, the universe has been speeding up.
The results were based on observations by a multinational team of astronomers who used the Hubble Space Telescope to search exploding stars known as Type 1a supernovas, reaching back in time three-quarters of the way to the Big Bang, in which the universe was born. The results should help quell remaining doubts that the expansion of the universe is really accelerating, a strange-sounding notion that has become a pillar of a new and widely accepted model of the universe as being full of mysterious dark matter and even more mysterious dark energy.
A New Kind of Minority Is Challenging Louisiana's Racial Conventions
By ADAM COHEN
NEW ORLEANS
The election-night blowout at the Astor Crowne Plaza in the French Quarter last weekend was something rare in Republican politics: a truly biracial event. But even though 33 percent of Louisiana -- and 67 percent of New Orleans -- is black, there was scarcely a black reveler there. The mix of people celebrating Bobby Jindal's first-round win in this year's governor's race was an unusual one: whites and Indian-Americans.
California's new governor has been grabbing all the headlines, but Mr. Jindal's odyssey has been nearly as remarkable. At the age of 32, he has an almost freakishly impressive r�sum�: at 24, he was running Louisiana's hospital system. But perhaps more notable, in a state where an ex-Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, David Duke, made a real run for the governor's office, Mr. Jindal is the dark-skinned son of immigrants from India.
As Mr. Jindal moves on to a Nov. 15 runoff against Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, he has a chance to make history. He would be the nation's first Indian-American governor, and one of the few elected officials from an ethnic group that now numbers nearly two million. And he would be Louisiana's first nonwhite governor since P. B. S. Pinchback served for 35 days during Reconstruction. But if Mr. Jindal's success is a sign of racial progress, and it is, it also has elements that suggest how far we still have to go.
…In last weekend's crowded field, Democratic candidates won 57 percent of the vote. To win, Ms. Blanco needs only to hold on to that base. But Mr. Jindal has to hunt for new support. He has made modest efforts to woo blacks but is unlikely to get far. To win, he will need overwhelming white support. If even a small percentage of white conservatives hold his ethnicity against him, it could cost him the election.
A win by Mr. Jindal would raise a different set of racial questions. Blacks who have run for governor in recent years got less than 35 percent of the vote. It may be that they were too liberal, but it may also be that the state remains resistant to a black governor. If Mr. Jindal wins, it may mean not that race no longer matters in Louisiana, but simply that -- in a change from the days of Martha Lum -- Asian-Americans now fall on the white side of the racial divide.
If Mr. Jindal is Louisiana's next governor, he will be hailed by national Republicans as a symbol of inclusion, a new Colin Powell or J. C. Watts. But he will be a hollow symbol if he ends the white lock on the governor's mansion despite overwhelming opposition from the state's blacks. If the Republican Party really wants to be inclusive, in Louisiana and nationally, it needs to start finding nonwhite candidates that nonwhites want to vote for.
Solomon Mason (aka S-Train) will not be blogging anymore in the forseeable future. I just had a conversation with him around 10:03pm EST and he would like to express his gratitude for those who have been supportive of this blog and his current situation. The level of extremely hateful e-mail the Mr. Mason has received in the past 24 hours coupled with numerous phone calls from to our office from delinquents has made him feel "numb" and unable to write. He expressed to me that there is a slim to none chance that he will blog again.
Mr. Mason is a client and good friend and I'm upset at this turn of events. However, Mr. Mason's long time good friend Aysel Alves is taking over his blog. She will be keeping the s-train.kaphmedia.net domain for the time being until she changes the look to suit her tastes. I have agreed to keep this blog and her future one on this server.
For those of you who have links to entries in this blog, they will stil be active when Aysel Alves or just Aysel takes over. The comments section will remain open for this entry and the previous entry only.
Best regards,
Tyrone Steels II
Vice-President & Co-Founder
Kaph Media, Inc.
[email protected]
And as for you, Jim:
Posted by: jim long at October 11, 2003 11:39 PM
You will just have to live with your fear.
