Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
You've probably seen this at Atrios' place. You should link it and post it anyway. And blogroll The Voice Unheard, because it's it's Sgt. Ferriol's blog.
The Item - Liberal views force soldier out of military
I am writing this in response to a series of letters published by The Item, beginning with my own letter on March 14, 2003 titled "Bush Shows Arrogance Not Leadership." In it, I discussed the relevance of United Nations approval prior to the War in Iraq, as well as the consequences of "going at it alone." Following the printing of my letter, a pair of readers retaliated by attacking my loyalty and ability to "cover their son's back."
The more striking of the two had this to say:
"If Sgt. E-5 Ferriol is who he says he is and is in the job he claims he is in, I think about now he will be in front of his commander answering a lot of questions concerning his loyalty, the enlistment oath and above all the oath he took to get the security clearance to be in the job he claims to be in. I would not want a person with his views in a foxhole next to me nor could I rely on intelligence analysis he performed that might get me killed. I took what I think is the correct action, cut the article out of the paper, wrote a cover letter and sent it to the DoD for action."
I would like to take this opportunity to let Mr. Simpson know that I am who I say I am and I was in the job I said I was in. I honorably served my country for eight years in the United States Marine Corps; providing honest intelligence analysis and collecting countless awards and promotions throughout my career. I was also a leader and mentor to scores of young men and women. In those eight years, I sacrificed more of myself for this country than most men and women ever will in their lifetime. But, thanks to the zeal and quick judgment of this individual, I am no longer serving our beloved country. His forecast was correct. Following his letter to DoD, I was brought up on charges of "Disloyal Statements" under Article 134 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Not because anything I wrote was disloyal, but because of my political views and how they differ from Mr. Simpson and others like him. The unfortunate aspect of this is not my demise, but their inability to understand or accept the opinions of others as different from their own. Nonetheless, I was forced to retain an attorney and undergo weeks of scrutiny before being cleared of the charges. I was, however, never allowed to work in Intelligence again; forced to separate the Marine Corps over threats that I would not be allowed to reenlist. Never mind the fact that there is not one single negative mark on my entire eight years of service (the letter incident was considered "hush-hush" so not even that made it on my record), or the fact that every one of my superiors stood up for me during this time, praising my abilities and loyalty to this country. None of that mattered; only my "liberal beliefs."
Also unfortunate is that I am not alone in this situation. We now live in a climate of political correctness and false patriotism where anyone who goes against our president is immediately labeled as disloyal; unpatriotic; a traitor; a liberal. Consider the recent scandal involving the White House CIA leak. Because Mr. Wilson disagreed with our President and publicly acknowledged this, his wife's cover was conveniently blown so she could never work as an intelligence operative again. Also consider the smear campaign that ensues after every major political figure speaks out against President Bush; how all of their dirty laundry is quickly hung out to dry. Maybe you should also consider the Dixie Chicks, who received death threats and were boycotted because of their differing "liberal" views. And yet another unknown story is of a struggling solo artist by the name of Julia Rose who tours the northeast playing her guitar and singing in bookstores. She made a lone comment regarding President Bush and is now banned from playing in every Borders bookstore in the northeast. And what was her terrible comment that led to her banishment? Nothing more than the President has "chicken legs."
So, I am not alone. There are countless other upstanding citizens whose views correlate with mine. And if I had it to do all over again, nothing would change. I would still write that letter and I would still complete my service standing tall and proud. I don't have a disloyal bone in my body and most likely never will. Having said that, it's a shame that because of my political views this country lost one more honest service member protecting its borders. In closing I would also like to make one more point. In my letter I said, "� what you failed to state was that with a new war in Iraq, terrorism will not only 'exist' but flourish. The terrorists are winning, and with a unilateral step into war, they will have the biggest recruiting boom in the history of al-Qaeda." As sad as it is, not one of my assumptions have been proven incorrect. So maybe it's not my "liberal views" that will get people killed, but a zealous leader quick to judge.
Adolf Hitler put it best when he said, "What good fortune for those in power that people do not think."
SGT. ROBERT FERRIOL
Former Marine Corps Intelligence Analyst
Sumter
Every so often Candicissima at Kitty Power finds something that just cracks me up.
WARNING: It's a Liquid Generation site. For Ghodsake, don't look at this at work. It's not really bad, but someone's gonna get pissed, I guarantee you.
Last one for a while. You've heard Prince Charles was alledged to be involved in something so scandalous that it was denied without even being specified. Neil Gaiman was kind enough to give more details on what didn't happen:
a) the goat was not, in fact, Spanish, but Portuguese, and is currently living safely in a wildlife preserve in East Molesey.
b) The Tango is a dance made famous in Argentina. "Erotic licking" plays no part in the Tango. Neither, of course, do balloons.
c) only a lunatic would apply shoe-polish to a weasel.
d) if the alleged incidents had in fact occurred in broad daylight during a car-boot sale in Harrow then there would be photographs, and quite possibly a plaster cast.
e) by now the "Use by" stamps on the yoghurt would have expired, indicating it as unfit for human consumption.
Hat tip to Brad DeLong
Rosemary at Dean's World talks about the difference between tolerance and acceptance. I ain't got a lot to add.
Daniel Drezner discusses an article by Robert Reich that shows how manufacturing jobs are disappearing worldwide, not just in the USofA…and the culprit isn't China. It's a change in manufacturing itself.
So when you hear the reason the promised job creation hasn't materialized is China's currency manipulation, you'll know it's bullshit. And Matt Yglesias' satire aside, it's something that will be increasingly disruptive.
Negrophile points to an article on the results of those Republican poll watchers placed in predominantly Black districts in Kentucky.
Voter turnout in predominantly black precincts was nearly identical to last year's election, while voting in white-majority precincts fell 7 percent.
The only precincts that saw higher voter turnout this year were 21 precincts that were among the 59 targeted by Republicans for poll watchers.
Phil Laemmle, a political science professor at the University of Louisville, said he was certain backlash against the Republican challengers fueled the increase.
"What else could it be?" he said. "Did it do the reverse of what it was supposed to do? Probably."
…REPUBLICANS fielded challengers in only 18 precincts on Election Day, after some challengers were reassigned as polling officers or failed to attend mandatory training sessions.
Raoul Cunningham, former head of the voter empowerment project for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the controversy concerning the poll watchers energized black voters � to a point. But Cunningham said none of the candidates on yesterday's ballots sparked sufficient interest to get black voters out in droves.
And George also points to a discussion of the unequal treatment of Pvts Lynch and Johnson. Between the orginal story, all its subsequent mutations, the recent rape story that I'd consider if it were HER spreading it, and Pvt Lynch's own protestations of feeling used over the whole issue, I'd just wish the whole damn thing away. I'm DAMN sure not watching the movie, anymore than I'm watching The Elizabeth Smart Story.
LATER: Catching up IVb: Bell Rings Out, about one of my intellectual heroes Derrick Bell, links to a serialization of Soul of a Citizen at WorkingForChange. It will be published weekly, and they've gotten to the introduction in two parts, and chapter one in two parts.
These links are as much to remind me as to tell everyone else about it.
Cobb again, but it's Ghetto Games. He just mentions Open Chest, but goes into detail on Suicide, Slap Boxing and Stomps.
Ah, memories…
Start with Cobb, like I often do. He said something in commenting about Dr. Dean that is just too true:
As frustrated as I get with my boy Phelps, I got him in this category. It's why I don't mind getting frustrated with him.
Cobb also says something that's almost true:
I say "almost" because he USED TO want it himself. You don't get some of the insights he's shown otherwise. And there's some shitheads in search of power with bulletproof souls and a willingness to be a provocateur that look like race men until you really look (you should not volunteer to identify any for me, because not everyone in search of power is a shithead and because I've noticed anyone who WANTS to identify them usually is one themselves).
Funny thing is, I am a Race Man, but since I've called myself The Race Guy a couple of times recently, folks tell me they don't think of me as such. I think the definition of Race Man in the general view includes "bearer of bad news," or "he who brings the conflict to the fore," and I'm really not that
I had no idea what this movie is about. Not very cosmopolitan of me, I know. But I believe I'll see it at some point because of some serindipitous stuff I found during a web search on SAT scores by socioeconomic class.
I wond up on a web site listing books by NYU professors, and since I'm being The Race Guy this week one leaped out at me:
Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are
Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still "pass": black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative terms--as deceitful, cowardly, a betrayal of one's self. But this compassionate book reveals that many passers today are people of good heart and purpose whose decision to pass is an attempt to bypass injustice, and to be more truly themselves.
Passing tells the poignant, complicated life stories of a black man who passed as a white Jew; a white woman who passed for black; a working class Puerto Rican who passes as privileged; a gay, Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight; and a respected poet who radically shifts persona to write about rock 'n roll.
The stories, interwoven with others from history, literature, and contemporary life, explore the many forms passing still takes in our culture; the social realities which make it an option; and its logistical, emotional, and moral consequences. We learn that there are still too many institutions, environments, and social situations that force honorable people to twist their lives into painful, deceit-ridden contortions for reasons that do not hold.
From there I went to the professor's NYU website (which looks suspiciously like an unbranded MT weblog, but I digress), where I found this entry:
From Anne Thompson in the Arts section of THE NEW YORK TIMES of November 4, 2003, writing from Los Angeles about the arthouse repositioning of the film, THE HUMAN STAIN, under the headline, "Assessing a Film that Lost Momentum:"
Movies about race that have succeeded have been largely inspirational," one studio marketing executive said Monday [November 3, 2003], speaking on the condition of anonymity…
Adds the director Robert Benton: "Pictures like this are incredibly difficult to make and complex to market in a world that demands happy endings."
So now The Human Stain is on my radar.
…unless you, you know, leave them behind.
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 8, 2003; Page A01
HOUSTON -- When the state of Texas bestowed "exemplary" status on Austin High School in August 2002, ecstatic administrators compared the honor to winning the Super Bowl. There was more cheering and pompom-waving a few weeks later when a private foundation honored Houston for having the nation's best urban school district.
Just a year later, the high school has been downgraded to "low-performing," the lowest possible rating. And the Houston Independent School District -- showcase of the "Texas educational miracle" that President Bush has touted as a model for the rest of the nation -- is fending off accusations that it inflated its achievements through fuzzy math.
Austin is one of more than a dozen Houston high schools caught up in a burgeoning scandal about the reliability of their dropout statistics. During a decade in which, routinely, as many as half of Austin students failed to graduate, the school's reported dropout rate fell from 14.4 percent to 0.3 percent. Even a Houston school board member calls the statistic "baloney."
If this were any other school district in the nation, few people would pay much attention. But Houston is the political springboard for U.S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige. He was school superintendent here before moving to Washington, and what originally began as an argument over dropout data has expanded into a debate about the administration's entire approach to educational reform.
Love, Internet Style
By DAVID BROOKS
The Internet slows things down.
If you're dating in the Age of the Hook-Up, sex is this looming possibility from the first moment you meet a prospective partner. But couples who meet through online dating services tend to exchange e-mail for weeks or months. Then they'll progress to phone conversations for a few more weeks. Only then will there be a face-to-face meeting, almost always at some public place early in the evening, and the first date will often be tentative and Dutch.
Online dating puts structure back into courtship. For generations Americans had certain courtship rituals. The boy would call the girl and ask her to the movies. He might come in and meet the father. After a few dates he might ask her to go steady. Sex would progress gradually from kissing to petting and beyond.
But over the past few decades that structure dissolved. And human beings, who are really good at adapting, found that the Internet, of all places, imposes the restraints they need to let relationships develop gradually. So now 40 million Americans look at online dating sites each month, and we are seeing a revolution in the way people meet and court one another.
Thirteen months before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track.
9/11 Panel Issues Subpoena to Pentagon
By PHILIP SHENON
The federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks stepped up pressure on the administration to cooperate in handing over documents it received prior to the attacks
You Linux types know that Caldera, an ex-Linux vendor, bought the rights to the Unix source code from SCO, changed its name to SCO and started demanding licensing fees from Linux users (not vendors) with deep pockets.
Microsoft was the first to pay up. 
They've "suspended" SGI and IBM's Unix licenses (both companies, as well as Novell—who owned the source code at the time and sold said licences—say that's not possible). There's legal action between them, IBM and Red Hat. And in the middle of this, they got $50 mil is private equity funding, showed heir first profit (due to the Microsoft license) and …remember this…told the SEC their business model would be to profit from licensing their intellectual property.
I read this morning on Slashdot that SCO will be giving people financial incentives to move from Linux to a proprietary OS with a "stronger IP basis."
Most likely Windows. 
Check the article at Computer Business News Online
Of course, it's not insane. Windows STILL isn't the mission critical OS for major corporations, it's the cost efficient on for small to mid-sized ones. I don't know the details of the licensing agreement SCO has with MS, but no matter what it's more than they made from Linux…now it's more than they ever will make from Linux. And if folks are driven back to Unix they win that way too.
Only the evidence is they have no case. And they can't offer incentives for Windows large enough to compete with free.
I'm an unrepentant carnivore, and I'm not supposed to find this amusing, but I do.
Now if we can get something similar going about Frankenfoods, I'm in.
via NathanNewman.org
It might be time for all eight of you to leave. This way we can just build a fence around the place.
Alternatively, the local authorities might, like, HANDLE this shit. That would be good.
Judi Villa and Michael Clancy
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 7, 2003 12:01 AM
"That's the one. Let's get him."
With those words, two skinheads punched a Black man to the pavement in a grocery store parking lot, then pummeled and kicked him some more, solely because of his race, Phoenix police say.
"The only good people in this world are White purebred people," Nathan Greeson told police when he was arrested after the June attack on Leroy Willis. "We do things to keep this world pure and poison free."
Both attackers pleaded guilty.
White supremacists are increasingly moving into Arizona, particularly from the Pacific Northwest, and with them has come a rise in activities, from meetings to beatings to murders. Police and those who monitor hate groups warn if something isn't done now, the problem will surge out of control.
Just checked http://localfeeds.com out of curiousity and wound up at the site I stole this from.
I am pro HDTV. I think cool science fiction shows with big explosions and such are great on HDTV. I am anti broadcast flag because it's pointless and will just make my TV more expensive.
I didn't know there was a way to rebel and get increased communication functionality at the same time.
Arnold Kline is calling for this exercise in "civil disobedience. " I have to learn about this tech before I buy in, but Mr. Kline links to what looks like a good place to start learning.
Are we all done with Dr. Dean? Apparently not.
The Calpundit crew had a lot of fun with it. And Walter at idols of the marketplace gives his opinion of the prospects of Dean's success at getting disaffected Southerners to come over (seems he sees a difference between NASCAR dads and Battleflag Bearers). Whole bags of newspaper articles are being written.
And you know what? Most Black folks seem to know where he was coming from, whether or not they feel it was an effective gesture.
I am, however, totally loving the conversation. I just hope it doesn't get pulled up short.
Because this is going on largely in the white communities where, to be brutally frank, it needs to take place. The article below, fully presented because I got it by email rather than off the web, has the key statement from my personal perspective…one that, from the comments, I suspect my boy S-Train will cop to as well.
CONCERNING THE CONTINUING AMERICAN DIALOGUE ON
RACE AND OTHER IMPERTINENT AFFAIRS
By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
[Reprinted from the November 7, 2003
UnderCurrents column of the Berkeley Daily Planet]
A small sandy-haired boy was throwing stones at the master's recently invented (and highly successful) plow. Benignly Jefferson watched the boy—who was now periously climbing a tree.
"Your grandson is going to hurt himself," [says Mr. Burr in the novel of his name by Mr. Gore Vidal.]
Jefferson flushed deeply. "That is a child of the place. A Hemings, I think."
Two hundred years pass. And once again—ignorantly, clumsily—we find the nation stumbling into its recurring barroom-brawl argument on the issue of race, and afterwards, like the average drunk, we will teeter out into the rainy streets, battered, bloody, ought-to-be-embarassed, but not, blearily confident that we have satisfied some nagging responsibility that we wish would simply go away of its own accord. Race? Didn't we fight that guy last year?
The latest entry in the Continuing American Dialogue On Race And Other Impertinent Affairs comes in the form of the 2003-04 Presidential campaign. As does all candidates, Mr. Howard Dean, formerly the Governor of the state of Vermont, would like for everybody all over to vote for him, and that would be that. But if he were to simply stand up and say, "Hey, everybody, vote for me," someone, somewhere, would feel left out and offended and look elsewhere for leadership, and so Mr. Dean, like all candidates, must ask for particular votes, each and every one.
This is not as simple as you might think. One can ask for all the African-American votes, or all the Latino votes, or all the votes of women or the great working people of this nation. But one never asks for all the white votes these days. There seems to be something tawdry and improper about this particular subject, an uncomfortable reminder of a besotted past that makes folks shuffle and look uneasily over their shoulders as if in anticipation of the appearance of some pale and bony hand. And, so, American candidates must be creative. Richard Nixon had his Moral Majority. George Bush the Lesser has his Heartland. Now comes Mr. Dean. In trying to expand his voter base from the progressive-liberal to include more conservative, working-class, National Rifle Association Member Southern white men, Mr. Dean has said in a couple of recent speeches that he wanted to also be"the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." Code word, sort of, for regular Southern white guys.
You'd have thought he'd urinated in public.
"It is simply unconscionable for Howard Dean to embrace the most racially divisive symbol in America," says Senator John Kerry of Massachussetts, a rival of Mr. Dean's for the Democratic nomination. Presumably Mr. Kerry meant the Confederate flag and not Southern white men. Mr. Kerry went on to say that he, Mr. Kerry, "would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA."
"He just has the wrong idea about how you should communicate with Southerners," says a spokesperson for General Wesley Clark, another rival.
A spokesperson for Senator Joseph Lieberman, a third rival, calls Deans remarks "irresponsible and reckless."
"I regret the pain that I may have caused either to African American or Southern white voters," Mr. Dean is forced to admit. He adds that he had been trying to provoke a dialogue on race in America, but admitted that he had "started this discussion in a clumsy way."
Admit all you want, Mr. Dean, but that clumsiness long ago got claimed by a larger circle.
In the recent trial of the Oakland Riders, a group of police who stand accused by the District Attorney of running rampant and roughshod and out-of-control on an African-American community, it was widely reported that there were no African-Americans on the jury. A majority of the jurors wanted to convict, but three jurors held out. Shortly after the verdict one of the majority faction telephone Tribune columnist Brenda Payton and, apparently embarassed at the actions of his own kind, said he'd wished there had been African-Americans on the jury, since all of the alleged victims of the cops were black.
"Without them [meaning African-Americans], people like me [meaning white people] were speaking for them [meaning African-Americans]," Ms. Payton reports the juror as saying. "I believe them [meaning African-Americans] and I know people it's happened to [meaning police misconduct]. But when I was talking to those three jurors, as far as they were concerned, how would I know?"
The African-American alternate, Ms. Payton reports the anonymous juror saying, would have made a difference, adding, in the juor's words, "To some, she might have added credibility through personal experience and to those others, she might have shamed them."
As if, like Mr. Jefferson's grandson, it is the job of African-Americans to hang around in a tree long enough to shame (other) folks into admitting the actuality of our existence.
One wonders why my white friends, who, after all, have done many wonderful things down through the ages and contributed many valuable inventions towards the progress of the world, cannot gather among themselves and speak of this as adults might do? Why all the tittering and fumbling about as if someone has passed gas in a middle school classroom?
"It's always the darkies, always about the darkies," laments the Confederate Legislator-General to the British attache in Gettysburg, the movie, when the attache inquires about slavery and what the Legislator-General really wants to talk about is matters of more serious merit.
But the nation and all its inhabitants continues to find it difficult to move on to any other conversation until we have properly finished the first. Still, we wait to see, now, if Mr. Dean's admittedly clumsy beginnings produces anything more than a polite clucking of his fellow politicians' tongues.
My RSS reader is damn near choked. I wrote two articles for Open Source Politics, which is nice because that's what I've promised them and I haven't quite been up to it recently. And there's this whole bag of interesting stuff I want to respond to (among which is NOT Kim duToit's rant about American men, which I have tangentally encountered).
And I DO have a couple of posts in mind that will take a bit of shaping, and I DIDN'T get to the kid's place to finish configuring her new system so I can reclaim by latop (complete with lion cub wallpaper and a new assortment of software I have no idea why she'd want, but I told her she could do as she saw fit).
And couple of friends suggested I rejoin the mailing list I had been on for…geez, I don't even remember how long, but dropped as pointless a couple of months back. I still don't kknow if it has a point, but the arguments are amusing as hell, so I'll probably stay in deep lurk for a while. But I've seen some 20 messages already.
But the BIG delay is will be due to George having dipped into the wish list and pulled out a two-fer. I had finally gotten Cryptonomicon (which I've gotten to because I need to know what the hell is the big deal) and Cyteen by CJ Cherryh (which is one of the kinds of science fiction I enjoy, and is an easy read).
Both get bumped for Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
But even that waits, because he also sent Cowboy Bebop-The Movie. Yeeaaaas! I'll be repossessing the first five disks in the six disk set from the Kid (she never got her hands on disk six) and running through all seven-the complete Japanese TV series and the movie. Thsis weekend, after watching Matrix III (and I don't care what the critics say. I'm all about the explosions and shit).
You do not want to specifically target getting "the Bubbas and the Blacks" together. You want to talk self-interest to each group without reference to the other, and the getting together will handle itself.
By Wesley Clark, 11/6/2003
MY 34 YEARS in the Army taught me to steel my spine, but not my heart, whenever I hear news of American casualties. On Tuesday I read about Sergeant Ernest Bucklew, who was headed home to attend his mother's funeral when his Chinook helicopter was shot out of the sky en route to Baghdad. Fifteen American soldiers died alongside him.
For the sake of every member of our armed forces, we need a plan to end the conflict in Iraq. Retreat is not an option. Withdrawal would be a disaster for America, a tragedy for Iraq, and a crisis for the world. It would destroy our credibility, give terrorists a new haven, and throw the Middle East into greater turmoil. No matter how difficult it will be, we need a "success strategy."
Success won't be easy, but only success can honor the sacrifice of our soldiers and allow the troops to come home. Success means that Iraq is strong enough to sustain itself without outside forces. Success means that representative government has taken root. Success means that Iraq's economy and civil society are healthy again.
Congress just gave the administration an $87 billion check to continue down the path that we're on. But President Bush still has no strategy to succeed. I do.
Schwarzenegger Woos the Special Interests
November 7, 2003
When I read "1st Benefit Is Set for New Gov." (Nov. 4) I was appalled by the spin and outright lies put forward by Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger and his spokesman, Rob Stutzman. First the candidate lied by stating he would take no special-interest money, then he did exactly that. Now Stutzman tells us that "voters know they have sent a man to Sacramento who cannot be bought" while that man is busy selling access for dollars to repay the $4.5 million in low-interest loans he used to bombard us with television advertising.
If the independently wealthy, well-funded and famous Schwarzenegger has to borrow millions to run for governor, what chance does an ordinary, idealistic candidate have? Some call it fund-raising, but I call it bribery on layaway. We need public financing of elections, as in Maine and Arizona, which has increased voter participation and candidate diversity in state elections. Clean-money candidates don't owe anyone except voters and the thousands of people who gave $5 to get their candidate qualified for public financing. Do you think Schwarzenegger feels he owes favors to those who give him $21,200 a pop? You bet!
Nick Gleiter
Sherman Oaks
November 7, 2003
"We've seen a real turnaround this year," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said this week, "and the recovery is clearly solidifying." Not so fast, please.
Just as the administration was embarrassed in Iraq by prematurely stating "mission accomplished," so it may regret declaring economic triumph. Yes, consumers are still buying pretty vigorously and productivity is zooming. Low interest rates play a big role, and some credit may well be due to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts directed mainly to the wealthy. The nation enjoyed a modest rise of 57,000 new jobs in September.
But there's still a "but" in the good news. Almost 2.6 million jobs have disappeared since President Bush entered office. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the unemployment rate will remain above 6% next year, not including the 2.1 million long-term jobless who've given up looking for work. The normal, historical rate for creation of new jobs in an expansion is 250,000 to 300,000 a month � a number out of reach in this "recovery."
Dr. Dean may have catalyzed something.
I still haven't endorsed anyone, but I've unendorsed Gephardt because by blowing off the people Dean identified he made himself unelectable.
And again, I don't want to hear a damn thing about race when talking down there. People's self interest should be raised to a level that overshadows all that noise.
Howard Dean's remarks about the need to appeal to white Southerners could certainly have been better phrased. But his rivals for the Democratic nomination should be ashamed of their reaction. They know what he was trying to say � and it wasn't that his party should go soft on racism. By playing gotcha, by seizing on the chance to take the front-runner down a peg, they damaged the cause they claim to serve � and missed a chance to confront the real issue he raised.
A three-sentence description of the arc of American politics over the past 70 years would run like this: First, Democrats and moderate Republicans created institutions � above all, Social Security and Medicare � that provided a measure of financial security to ordinary working Americans. The biggest beneficiaries of these institutions were African-Americans and working-class Southern whites, and both were part of the moderate-to-liberal coalition that dominated American politics until the 1960's.
But the right opened an increasingly effective counterattack, with a strategy that included using racially charged symbolism to get Southern whites to vote against their own economic interests. All Mr. Dean was saying was that Democrats need to understand and counter this strategy.
I know these are fighting words. But the reliance of modern Republican political strategy on coded appeals to racism is no secret. Controversies over efforts to remove the Stars and Bars from the top of the South Carolina Statehouse, and to reduce its size on the Georgia flag, played a significant role in Republican victories in 2002. And the evidence that race is still a crucial factor is as fresh as Tuesday's election.
By Debra McCorkle, AlterNet
November 6, 2003
Howard Dean was obviously born north of the Mason-Dixon Line. He proved it with the well-meaning but badly-stated desire to "want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." Howard, if you were a southerner, you would never call your future constituents rednecks! You would win them over by descriptions of your grandma's fried apple turnovers, or recalling a moment in which you begged Jesus Christ to help you, or by confessing your love for a Johnny Cash song. See, that's how I haven't gotten run out of my southern town yet for my liberal views. I bury that horse pill of Democratic leanings in a sweet potato souffl� of my genuine southern life. I refuse to believe that the South really belongs to the Republicans. I just tend to think that the conservatives mix the stuff that concerns the citizenry with a heaping spoonful of Dixie Crystal sugar. They sweeten that iced tea while a candidate from Vermont sticks a glass of Lipton Instant in our faces with two cubes of ice and a packet of Sweet and Low and tells us to drink it. It's just not the same, Howard.
Of course you want to be the candidate of the trailer park as well as of Hilton Head's Sun City. However, it's pretty obvious to me that you haven't read your Molly Ivins or even your Jeff Foxworthy. No matter how I feel about you, Mr. Dean, I have doubts that we're gonna be able to work this out. Wesley Clark did not tickle my innards when he announced his intention to court me and the others; still, the man has lived in Arkansas enough to be technically southern, even if he spent most of those years in the army. What's more, military life has a similarity to southern life � you can't always say exactly what you think without a little obfuscation in order not to get folks all upset. My spiritual teacher Jill Conner Browne, head of the Sweet Potato Queens of Jackson, MS, said that if you really think that so-and-so is a complete psychobitch, you just say "that so-and-so, bless her little heart," since we southerners can't actually say what we think in polite society. All the women will know what we really mean, and all the men will still think we're nice proper ladies.
I have a great friend from Cairo, GA who often winces at the plainspoken and often harsh words of his girlfriend toward others. One time he just smiled at me sadly and said, "She's from Michigan, you know." We both knew what he meant. I might agree with her eight times out of ten, but she needs some tutoring. The south might be a hotbed of Baptist fundamentalism, but we strive to be silver-tongued devils.
Bill Clinton, love him or hate him or have those conflicted feelings like I do, knew how to talk to people. It's partly due to his manipulative politician scoundrel ways, but he was a southern boy, through and through. Whenever I hear Jimmy Carter speak on the radio I drop everything I'm doing, partly because he's trying to be a latter-day Gandhi-type and partly because I just love to hear his soft southwest Georgia accent.
One problem with George W. Bush is that he was raised by Yankees in Texas. No wonder he doesn't talk right. We have to feel a little sorry for a man who mixes up his metaphors, makes incomplete confusing sentences and, when he does get it right, must be looking at Bob Hope-sized cue cards and taking cleansing breaths in between each line. Still, he's our president. Bless his little heart.
Candidate Dean, you said what you did about those rebel flag pickups because you said that those people "ought to be voting with us because their kids don't have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too." Now, no one's arguing that we need health insurance and good schools. While Bush is sending our grandchildren's future tax dollars to Vietnam, uh, I mean Iraq, teachers are teaching for free some days in order to keep schools running. None of my friends have health insurance except for those who work for corporations or the government, and the benefits of most have been cut during the Bush administration.
Howard, I suggest that you hush up about rebel flags this week and tell us some stories. When I have a waitress friend who begs her doctor for amoxicillin instead of the stronger zithromax because it costs one tenth the price even though she needs to get well fast, my trucking buddies are going to understand that as quickly as my great aunt. When I see a decades-old factory close, leaving hundreds of workers unemployed, because they can move the thing to China and employ slave labor so that Wal-Mart's profits are assured, the common man and woman can understand that something is wrong. When the richest of the rich prosper through tax cuts in a period of recession while the poorest parents skip meals, people will question the direction our country is heading. Tell anecdotes; don't preach about constituencies, Howard. The truth is, politics in itself is pretty boring, a bean counter's concern. Breathe a little life into it with some storytelling. Go Faulkner on us, and don't forget a little Flannery, because weirdness is what America is all about.
Otherwise, I'm going to be looking for a new dance partner at this political ball. I need a man who can not only lead me across the dance floor, but charm me at the same time.
…tell 'em to ask Cryptome.
Cryptome received a visit today from FBI Special Agents TR and CK from the FBI Counterterrorism Office in New York, 26 Federal Plaza, telephone (212) 384-1000. Both agents presented official ID and business cards. SA Renner said that a person had reported Cryptome as a source of information that could be used to harm the United States. He said Cryptome website had been examined and nothing on the site was illegal but information there might be used for harmful purposes. He noted that information in the Cryptome CDs might wind up in the wrong hands.
SA Renner said there is no investigation of Cryptome, that the purpose of the visit was to ask Cryptome to report to the FBI any information which Cryptome "had a gut feeling" could be a threat to the nation.
There was a discussion of the purpose of Cryptome, freedom of information, the need for more public information on threats to the nation and what citizens can do to protect themselves, the need for more public information about how the FBI functions in the field and the intention of visits like the one today.
SA CK said such visits are increasingly common as the FBI works to improve the reporting of information about threats to the US. Asked what will happen as a result of the visit. SA Renner said he will write a report of the visit.
Cryptome said it will publish a report of the visit, including naming the agents. Both agents expressed concern about their names being published for that might lead to a threat against them and/or their families -- one saying that due to copious personal databases any name can be traced.
Cryptome said the reason for publishing names of agents is so that anyone can verify that a contact has been made, and that more public information is needed on how FBI agents function and who they are. Cryptome noted that on a previous occasion FBI agents had protested publication of their names by Cryptome.
Cryptome did not agree to report anything to the FBI that is not available on the website.
I have no idea why anyone would add oil of bergamot to perfectly good black pekoe.
No idea at all.
Jay Allen has set up a new home for MT-Blacklist. There's an RSS feed for plugin change announcements as well as the general weblog discussions. And version 1.61beta is up with some pretty significant changes.
LATER: I added the latest blacklist changes RSS feed to the ol' aggregator and was horrified to see titles like sex-lover.org. Turns out I need the weblog feed instead. For some reason I thought blacklist changes was for updates to the plugin rather than the blacklist itself.
via Kelley at Suburban Blight
Atlanta hip-hop group sues FOX
Atlanta-based hip-hop group Arrested Development has filed a trademark infringement suit against FOX Broadcasting Co., Imagine Films Entertainment Inc. and New World Communications of Atlanta Inc. for their use of the band's name as the title for FOX-TV's new series -- "Arrested Development" -- which premiered this month.
The law suit was filed on Oct. 16 in DeKalb County Superior Court and is on an expedited schedule. The band's legal counsel is Atlanta-based Kilpatrick Stockton LLP
"Over the past 14 years, the two-time-Grammy-Award-winning band has built a solid reputation in the entertainment industry," said Todd Thomas of Arrested Development. "The use of our name by FOX is not only confusing to the public, but also has the potential to significantly dilute what the 'Arrested Development' name means to our fans. FOX has no more right to use 'Arrested Development' for its show than a band would have to name itself after one of FOX's sit-coms."
Natasha at Pacific Views
Living in fear. In terror. Someone has told them that their sole means of protection will be pried out of their hands. Their children corrupted and ruined. They're afraid that when all is said and done there won't be enough left over for them, and that no matter how hard they try, they will never get anywhere in life. They may even live in fear that they might be exposed for their petty sins, having listened for too long to people who pretend that it's possible not to have any.
They're as afraid as anyone that their livelihoods may be taken away, but they aren't always looking at the same culprits.
That poverty is what's holding us back as a country from achieving our full potential. That poverty is what holds us back from lifting people out of dire economic straits. That poverty condemns us to dishonest debates founded on unworkable ideology, stymied by people talking past each other.
Is there a way to heal this rift in our dialogue? To make our 'we' bigger right here at home, so that it includes people we might like to forget about? Or maybe most importantly, a way to start talking about common needs in language that reaches everyone.
'We' had better think pretty hard about this.
Since this is "found money" they really ought to treat it as an endowment, never touching the principle. And if a couple of other stupidly wealthy folks kicked in, this could be the beginning of a truly independant media outlet. Which ought to scare the pants (or flight suit) off of quite a number of people.
By Paul Farhi and Reilly Capps
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page A01
National Public Radio will announce today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc of about $200 million.
The bequest from the widow of the founder of the McDonald's fast-food chain both shocked and delighted people at NPR's headquarters in Washington yesterday. It amounts to almost twice NPR's annual operating budget. "No one saw this coming," said one person.
The nonprofit organization, which will disclose details of the bequest at a news conference this afternoon, called the donation the "largest monetary gift ever received by an American cultural institution" in a brief announcement to its staff yesterday.
The gift was such a surprise to NPR officials that they were uncertain what the money would be used for. The organization's board is expected to meet in the next few weeks to decide what to do with the windfall. An NPR spokesperson declined to comment yesterday.
NPR, best known for its daily news programs "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," cut back on some of its music and cultural programs earlier this year, and there was speculation yesterday that Kroc's money could be used to restore those offerings. It could also be used to expand NPR's news programs, which are heard by about 22 million people weekly.
Chris at Interesting Times, a Dean supporter, has the text of an addition to a speech Dean just gave where he takes a better shot a this. In fact, he has a whole lot about the Dean/Confederate flag dustup.
Meanwhile, Digby's extended discussion is on point.
Tristero thinks this is an absolutely brilliant ploy designed to turn the Confederate flag into a wedge issue to split the Reasonable Republicans from the Racist Right.
Now, my advice.
Mr. Dean, you must remember Mr. Kucinich. He's catching flak from your colleagues because he represented a notoriously race-conscious district years ago. If they won't let him off the hook for that, they're not going to forget your Confederate flag statement, and anything you say that can be spun as racist will be used against you. And Black folks will be watching as they may not have had you said NASCAR Dads.
When I suggested you say their name, this wasn't quite what I had in mind, but it's a start, and the attention CAN work to your advantage.
You need to have a catalog in your own mind of those issues that benefit the people in the South that truly should see voting Democratic as the self-interested move. You need to do the same as regards Black folks' concerns and note the significant overlap. And you need to lead with the overlap issues when speaking to these groups. You can do this because that overlap is HUGE.
You should say "to benefit people like you" to each group. Let them assemble the people like them in their own mind. And using the same terminology ("people like you") to push the same agenda to people who see themselves on opposite sides, showing both will objectively benefit from said agenda, is a true "uniter, not a divider" move. If pushed to identify exactly who "people like you" are, the correct answer is "Americans."
Good thing I posted that opinion about Den yesterday. I wouldn't want to seem like a copycat. Now that I've started, though…
Incidentally, this is why I haven't endorsed anyone yet. It's important to see their positions, the inevitable problems and challenges, and how they respond. Handling this would be better than letting it blow over, but the handling must be subtle.
…At the same time he said his comments had been misconstrued and he did not back away from his conviction that the party had to make inroads with white Southerners noting that the Republicans "have played the race card" since 1968 and the Democrats had to find a way to win them back with issues like health insurance. He insisted "the African-American community gets this."
…He said that his main mistake had been not immediately condemning the flag during the debate, and that he had decided to change course as he came to understand that his comments had been personally offensive to two of his rivals, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is black, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.
Nope. His main mistake was using the flag as a reference at all. As I said yesterday, it accurately indicates a particular demographic, so condemning the flag will be taken as an insult by them. It would have been much better to find another way of indicating them.
Dean needs someone to bounce the phrasing of his main ideas off, as a sanity check. When Dean says:
"I tend to be reflective rather later than sooner," he added. "Now, unfortunately, we all know that nobody's personality is perfect. So the things that make me a strong candidate are also my Achille's heel."
…it makes Hesiod's decision sound quite credible.
But....and here is where my qualms originated, and finally overcame my hopes:
Dean has a big mouth.
That seems like a small thing, but it isn't. It's the whole ball of wax. I guarantee you that Howard Dean will say between half a dozen and a dozen really, really stupid things during the general election that may cripple his candidacy.
It's not because he's stupid. It's because he's arrogant. He thinks he knows everything, and can just wing it.
As a result, he puts his foot in his mouth far too often.
More:
"He's probably stopped the hemorrhaging," said Kweisi Mfume, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., adding that Dr. Dean reached out to him on Sunday to put his flag comments into context. "It was important for him to get in front of this issue, lay his soul to bare, explain his context."
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said he would not vote against Dr. Dean because of the misstep, adding, "I think what Dean said was a slip from the lip more than a dart from the heart."
But Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is a leading black cultural critic, said Dr. Dean came off as defensive and snide during the debate, "exacerbated the situation by waiting until today" to retreat, and still seems "racially insensitive."
"If you say, `I'm interested in bringing back poor white people, and Southern whites who are disaffected with the Democratic party,' that's fine," Professor Dyson said. "But to make your appeal at the expense of black folks only reinforces the perception that Democrats use black people when it's necessary, but at the same time exploit us when it's convenient."
I got much respect for Dyson, I agree that waiting to correct the gaffe was damaging, and his basic agreement with my request that white guys be invited back to the Democratic party is heartening. But since he used the code words for white guys but not the code words for Black guys, I don't think it was an attempt to exploit anti-Black racism.
Finally,from Dean:
Yup.
via Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes "The BitKeeper to CVS gateway was apparently hacked in an attempt to add a root exploit back door to the Linux kernel, according to the linux-kernel archive. The change was in the file kernel/exit.c and changed the user ID of a process to root under the guise of checking the validity of some flags. The core Linux BitKeeper kernel repository was not at risk, and in fact it was the BitKeeper CVS export scripts that detected the unauthorized modifications to CVS. The changes were falsely attributed in CVS to long-time Linux developer davem (David Miller). Users of the BKCVS repository should resync their trees to remove the offending code if they had replicated it since yesterday."
do you KNOW what the repercussions would be if this had gotten through? A built-in back door to every Linux box that ran the new kernel. The mind boggles.
Naked Twister. Not work safe, and I don't remember how I stumbled onto it.
I have been asked my opinion of Howard Dean's 'guys with Confederate Flags in pickup trucks' comment. I haven't blogged about it, but I do have several not necessarily connected opinions.
I don't think it goes over too well with those guys because it sounded a bit pejorative to me.
I don't think it goes over well in the Black communities because it sounds like support for declared enemies.
I think it clearly and precisely identified a specific population that Democrats need to address. I think "disaffected Southerners" identifies them almost as well and is far less open to reproach.
What I personally think of Dean going forward will be greatly influenced by how he sets about attracting this demographic. I think they recognize themselves as a demographic and so SHOULD be specifically addressed. But if he excuses racism in any way, even implied, he goes into the same bucket with Nixon. There's a great number of issues of concern to disaffected Southerners that can be addressed constructively, that will benefit people across the board.
Black folks must always promote their agenda such that all people are included in the pool of beneficiaries. A similar approach should be taken with all appeals to disaffected Southerners.
A couple of things have been pulling me away from the keyboard.
My daughter got a new computer, which means I had to go over yesterday, pull the hard drive off the old one and slot it into the new one. Thing is, she's got one of the 160gig drives that actually doesn't use the IDE interface (you do NOT want to know the detailed configuration of this box). And, I don't know why, but the groove they used to put on the IDE socket to make sure the cable ain't backward wasn't there. This made a difference because we weren't sure exactly WHY the old beast died. We only know she had more data (artwork, fiction, a couple of preliminary gamer web site designs, mpegs) than she wanted to lose.
And after sorting out the cabling, during the long process of copying some 60 gigs of stuff, I get to move the TV and reconnect the digital cable box, the TiVo, the DVD player and the gaming console (I honestly don't remember if it was an XBox or Playstation II, which shows you how little I play games).
Today has been "blow shit off" day. I haven't sought out posting topics at all. There's a couple of posts out there on the BlogNet that caught my attention. Maybe I'll do one of those linkage posts tomorrow. Maybe not…you'll note that, in general, when I link to something it's because I have something to say about it.
Tomorrow I go back to the kid's place to move all the stuff off the laptop I lent her. And sometime in the near future I get to install a new motherboard in the old box and put all the other stuff back in. Her mom gets all her hand-me-down computers.
And all the while I'm planning and piecing together my desktop client for MT. Plus I owe a couple of people a couple of posts…even though my concern about the mystery ActiveX component is unresolved (I have no problems admitting a manageable paranoia). And I'm VERY distracted by concerns about the shape of the two years—a totally apolitical concern, btw.
Yeah, yeah, been there, done that, had the discussion. I just thought you might be interested in how our Presidential candidates are mapped, though.
Seems someone has been following the most recent Political Compass outburst and plotted the scores of great numbers of bloggers (hat tip to Nathaniel Newman).
Arthur Silber at The Light of Reason
But the question I have been wrestling with is this: why exactly are certain libertarians and liberals focused on certain issues -- while many other libertarians and most conservatives are seemingly oblivious to them? What is the mechanism involved? What is the process or method that explains it?
…These issues are very complex, so I will state the main point very briefly to begin with: there are two basic methods of thinking that we can often see in the way people approach any given issue. One is what we might call a contextual approach: people who use this method look at any particular issue in the overall context in which it arises, or the system in which it is embedded. Liberals are often associated with this approach. They will analyze racism or the "power differential" between women and men in terms of the entire system in which those issues arise. And in a similar manner, their proposed solutions will often be systemic solutions, aimed at eradicating what they consider to be the ultimate causes of the particular problem that concerns them.
The other fundamental approach is to focus on the basic principles involved, but with scant (or no) attention paid to the overall context in which the principles are being analyzed. In this manner, this approach treats principles like Plato's Forms, as will become clearer shortly. I will use an example from a discussion here to illustrate the point, a discussion about certain cultural aspects related to homosexuality. I should note that, as a libertarian, I do not advocate any "special" rights for gays and lesbians; I want only those rights which everyone should have -- and foremost among those is the right to be left alone by the government. For that reason, I am opposed across the board to any laws which criminalize consenting behavior between adults.
But, in addition to that issue, I also have spent a considerable amount of time discussing the cultural aspects of common views about gays.
…these comments reveal as clearly as anything I have seen a complete disregard, even a disdain, for the importance of culture. For this writer, it appears that all of us grow up in a vacuum, or that at least it is our responsibility to act as if we could. And if we fail, it's our own damned fault. End of story.
Nothing that I have written can possibly be reasonably construed as a denial of individual responsibility. But it is not a denial of that responsibility to acknowledge the simple, uncontestable reality that culture matters. It matters a lot. But for many libertarians, none of this is to be discussed.
And libertarians wonder why they aren't more successful. With the opportunity for this fuller explanation, I will say something I have only mentioned to a few friends until now. If my choice were only between a fully free society -- but a society populated solely by "atomist libertarians" with sensibilities of the kind exhibited in the comments above about Marilyn Monroe -- and the world we live in today, I'll take this world any day. It's not even close. On the most fundamental level imaginable, these "atomist libertarians" are not my kind of people at all. Fortunately, that is not the choice. I can live in this world, and continue to fight for the kind of world I would like to see.
To return to the more general point: many libertarians espouse this "atomist" view of society. For them, it is as if the society in which one lives is completely irrelevant to an analysis of any problem at all. For them, all one must understand are the fundamental political principles involved. For them, that is the entirety of the discussion.
Joah Marshall at Talking Points Memo
"We," said the president, "see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people."
The statement and its rather odd implication were reported around the world. But then a few days later I got an email from a reader who had followed the link I'd provided to the White House's transcript of the speech and asked if maybe I'd gotten it wrong.
Well, I'm not sure I'd know how to go about getting the cached version either. But luckily that's not necessary, since I made a PDF version of the original White House transcript as it appeared on the day in question. (Call me suspicious.) You can see it right here. If you scroll down to the big, clumsily-drawn red circle you'll see that the word was 'see' not 'seek'. Then compare it to the current version now at the White House website.
Atrios links to an Australian site that has the transcript and a RealAudio file of the speech itself…which I have not listened to…
Remember when I said I didn't understand bloggers because I somehow found myself categorized as a large mammal? Well, I'm still such, but now I'm a bit more comfortable with the rating.
As soon as I found out how the TTLB Ecosystem worked I figured N.Z. Bear should be counting unique links rather than all the links in a page. I even suggested it on the Bear's page.
It has happened. Now maybe I'll pay attention to the thing.
As work shifts, internship in India the new rite of passage
By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff, 11/4/2003
What a global role reversal.
An increasing number of US students are going to India to intern at top information technology services firms or to participate in tours that allow them to network with the country's corporate elite.
The shift reflects a sea change: For years, students from India and elsewhere in Asia have been nabbing internships at US companies, thinking that was where the action was.
Michael Anders, 24, of Cambridge, spent last July, August, and the first week of September in Bangalore for a stint at the corporate headquarters of Infosys Technologies Ltd. The company, which reported revenue of $754 million in its latest fiscal year, is India's second largest exporter of software and technical services, with more than 19,000 employees worldwide.
Court Won't Hear Alabama Justice's Appeal Over Ten Commandments
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2003
WASHINGTON � Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on Monday lost his bid to enlist the Supreme Court in support of his campaign to keep the Ten Commandments on display in the state courthouse.
Without comment, the justices refused to hear Moore's final appeal of rulings that required him to remove the 5,300-pound monument from the rotunda of the state Judicial Building in Montgomery.
This Can't Go On
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Academic economists often cite Stein's Law, a principle enunciated by the late Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Nixon administration. The law comes with various wordings; my favorite is: "Things that can't go on forever, don't." Believe it or not, that's a useful reminder.
For we're now led by men who think that macho posturing makes Stein's Law go away. On issues ranging from budgets to foreign policy, they insist that we can sustain the unsustainable. And when challenged to explain how, they engage in magical thinking.
The prime example I have hammered on in this column is, of course, the federal budget. Realistic budget projections say that current policies aren't remotely sustainable. For example, a month ago a joint report of the Committee for Economic Development (a business group), the bipartisan Concord Coalition and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that under current policies, federal debt would rise by $5 trillion over the next decade. And then baby boomers will start collecting benefits, and our debt will really explode.
Such explosive growth in debt can't go on forever, and it won't. Yet our current leaders and their apologists insist that the problem will magically solve itself. Last year's deficit came in slightly below forecasts, and we've had one quarter of good economic growth � see, we'll grow out of the deficit!
But we won't, and there will eventually be a day of reckoning. As Bill Gross of Pimco, the giant bond manager, says, "Sooner, perhaps later, our Asian creditors will wake up and smell the coffee." (Yes, the federal budget and the value of the dollar now depend on huge purchases of Treasury bills by the governments of Japan and China.) When they do, he predicts "higher import costs, a cutback in spending on cheap foreign goods, rising inflation, perhaps chaotic financial markets, a lower standard of living." Something to look forward to.
But the day of reckoning seems closer on a different front.
Some Americans may share the views of the Republican congressman who said that progress in Iraq was "a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day." (Support the troops!)
But whether or not you think troop losses are important, there's growing evidence that our Iraq strategy is unsustainable. The immediate issue is manpower. Some politicians are calling for a bigger force in Iraq � but even our current force levels can't be maintained.
In September the Congressional Budget Office analyzed how many U.S. soldiers could be kept in Iraq without extending tours beyond one year. The conclusion was that force levels would have to start dropping rapidly about five months from now, and that the forces in Iraq and Kuwait would eventually have to shrink by almost two-thirds. As the report explains, the Pentagon can use various expedients to maintain a larger force in Iraq, but all of these expedients would threaten to undermine our military readiness.
At a broader level, the accelerating pace at which Americans are being killed and wounded and the strains of occupation duties clearly pose difficulties for recruitment in a volunteer military. And at a still broader level, public support for this war � whose original rationale has turned out to be a mirage, if not a deliberate deception � will wilt if losses go on at this rate, no matter how tough the president talks.
For sure, good things are happening in Iraq. But are we making the kind of progress that would allow us to withdraw large numbers of soldiers, and greatly reduce casualties, in the fairly near future? That's a hard case to make.
Yet we keep expecting a magic solution. We'll get European, Indian and Pakistani forces to help us! But since we went to war without international support, they're not interested. We'll bring in the Turks! But the Iraqi Governing Council itself is bitterly opposed. We'll engage in "Iraqification," creating local forces that take the place of American troops! Let's hope that works � but hope is not a plan.
Just as the federal government is in no immediate danger of running out of money, our forces in Iraq are in no danger of outright defeat. But in both cases, current policies appear to be unsustainable: we can't go on like this indefinitely. And things that can't go on forever, don't.
Somewhere buried in the archives of the Staten Island Museum is a reel-to-reel Betamax format video tape of a documentary on Sandy Ground. Me and the boys shot it as part of a joint project between the Museum and the NY Public Library some 30 years ago.
There is a certain defiance in the new coat of white paint along the bottom half of the A.M.E. Zion Church in Rossville on Staten Island. All around it, development waits impatiently.
Just past the woods and weeds in the backyard of the church lies a fresh batch of town houses. Opposite the 19th-century church's front door is a row of tightly packed two-year-old homes.
The Rev. Janet Jones, pastor of the church, is undeterred. "We intend to be around for a while," she says.
The church sits in the center of Sandy Ground, a community built by free blacks who came to the southern end of Staten Island in the decades before the Civil War. It is the oldest continuously held settlement established by free blacks in North America, according to local historians.
"Few people know about Sandy Ground, even including some of those who actually live here," said Sylvia Moody D'Alessandro, one of the founders of the Sandy Ground Historical Society, a demure five-room museum down the block from the church.
Indeed, Doreen Cruz, 41 and white, lives across the street from the church but did not know its origins. "I had no idea about the history," said Ms. Cruz, who moved into the neighborhood from Brooklyn two years ago. "I did wonder what was the story with the church, since it sort of stands out in the neighborhood."
Though the church is historically black, less than 1 percent of the neighborhood's population today is black. The oldest Sandy Ground homes, some of them dating back 150 years, stand as remnants of a history tracing to the early 19th century. "There is a sense of responsibility, to keep � as best we can � the heritage alive," said Olivia Moody, 56, a descendant of one of the community's original black families. "There aren't many of us left around here anymore."
It is now time to give thought to what country I can move to quickly and safely.
Under pressure from Republican and conservative groups, CBS is expected to announce as early as today that it is canceling its plans to run a two-part mini-series in November deconstructing the Ronald Reagan presidency, two people close to the decision said last night.
They said the film would most likely instead be handed over to CBS's pay-cable sibling, Showtime.
The announcement would perhaps the first time a major broadcast network has ever removed a completed project from its schedule because of political pressure and under the threat of an advertising boycott.
(An earlier article about the possibility that CBS would scrap the four-hour mini-series appears in the Arts section, which went to press before the latest development.)
CBS executives have been reworking the film over the last week, trying to fix what many critics - none of whom had seen the film and were relying mostly on a report in The New York Times about its contents - called inaccurate and unfair portrayals of the former president.
Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford Law Clinic Sue Electronic Voting Company
Student Publishers and ISP Aim to Stop Diebold's Abusive Copyright Claims
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
San Francisco - A nonprofit Internet Service Provider (ISP) and two Swarthmore College students are seeking a court order on Election Day tomorrow to stop electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Systems, Inc., from issuing specious legal threats. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford Law School are providing legal representation in this important case to prevent abusive copyright claims from silencing public debate about voting, the very foundation of our democratic process.
Diebold has delivered dozens of cease-and-desist notices to website publishers and ISPs demanding that they take down corporate documents revealing flaws in the company's electronic voting systems as well as difficulties with certifying the systems for actual elections.
Swarthmore students Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith have published an email archive of the Diebold documents, which contain descriptions of these flaws written by the company's own employees.
"Diebold's blanket cease-and-desist notices are a blatant abuse of copyright law," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Publication of the Diebold documents is clear fair use because of their importance to the public debate over the accuracy of electronic voting machines."
Not like I could have gotten a ticket if I knew in advance…
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff, 11/3/2003
NEW YORK -- For more than a century, the Cannon, a pristine violin insured for millions and the crown jewel of the Italian city of Genoa, had been kept in a guarded vault, taken out and played by a select few on rare occasions. Once the possession of 19th-century virtuoso Niccolo Paganini and crafted by one of the great violin makers of all time, it had never been touched by anyone who wasn't classically trained.
Tonight, the instrument -- nicknamed for its deep, loud sound -- will be in the hands of Regina Carter, a Detroit-born jazz violinist, who will perform with it in a jazz and classical concert at Lincoln Center. The violin traveled 4,000 miles Friday from Italy to Manhattan under the protective gaze of a caretaker, driven from Kennedy Airport by police escort as though it were a head of state.
How Carter became the first jazz musician and first African-American to play one of the world's most famous violins is a story with many chapters. First, it is a story of a female musician who yearned to explore the perfect acoustic instrument and of a European city that wanted to keep and protect what many believed to be the quintessence of beauty. It is a tale that crosses race, musical styles, and several centuries.
"Everybody thinks this is all glamorous, but it's not when you know what happens behind the scenes," Carter said, "and I know what went on behind the scenes."
Report: Medical Competition Won't Cut Costs
By Vicki Kemper
Times Staff Writer
1:44 PM PST, November 3, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Competition between Medicare and private managed-care health plans will do little to control medical spending or ensure more consistent, coordinated care for the nation's elderly and disabled, an independent panel reported today.
The conclusions of an expert panel of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank, strike at the heart of Republican arguments for more private-market competition in Medicare. But the report also undercuts the position of some liberal Democrats that Congress should add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare but otherwise leave the program much as it is.
A "hybrid model" of fee-for-service Medicare and private health plans is "far superior to much of the present debate," said Mark Schlesinger, a professor at Yale and Rutgers universities who chaired the panel.
"There is no evidence � repeat, no evidence � that private plans would reduce long-term (spending) growth rates," Schlesinger said. "For Medicare to remain a vital program, it needs to rely in equal measure" on traditional fee-for-service and managed-care plans.
And given the tendency of some private plans to "cherry pick" the healthiest patients, "there is no way to say [head-to-head competition between Medicare and private plans] will not produce a death spiral" for traditional Medicare in some parts of the country, he added.
Bush Uses Good Economic News for Tax Cut Message
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 � President Bush campaigned on the economy and other domestic issues today in Alabama, where he called for permanent tax relief and said the entrepreneurial spirit is "what America's all about."
Mr. Bush used an appearance at a family-owned crane company in Birmingham to deliver his message, in a speech that touched only briefly on the campaign in Iraq and did not specifically mention the loss of 16 American soldiers on Sunday in a downed helicopter.
"It is essential for those politicians in Washington to know that individual income tax relief is incredibly important for job creation, not only because it stimulates demand but because it provides a vital boost in the arm for the small-business sector," the president said to applause.
"We've got a consistent and effective strategy, and we're making progress," Mr. Bush said. "Our third-quarter economic growth was vibrant, and that's good. Inflation is down, and that's good. After-tax incomes are up. People are keeping more of their own money [P6: that far fewer of them have any money to keep need not be mentioned here], and that's really important for economic growth."
I had reason to run past the National Libertarian Party's web site today. After reading their platform, I wound up with a few questions.
Is this limited to physical force? Would psychological or economic coercion count? Would this include not forcing anyone to accept the fundamental principle? If so, how can one enforce this without initiating force?
What about involuntary trade? To participate in society, one must have hot water, electricity…food. Anyone who calls the acquisition of these things voluntary is simply too silly to talk to. So, are these things outside the purview of government?
Taxes supported the building of energy generation facilities, oil pipelines, etc. Pollution is created by inefficient combustion of fuel and careless dumping of garbage (which government authorities haul away from your house) and inductrial wastes (which corporations uniformly deny until confronted with evidence beyond the ability of individuals to procure). Health care for the masses are delivered through government owned hospitals. Decaying cities actually were largely caused by government intervention in the for of GI loans. And poverty just is. The great increase in poverty we're seeing now is the result of people being laid off.
In other words, I'm not seeing the causation.
This could have gone under "Politics," I guess.
MB at Wampum discusses Jane Galt's accusation that Democrats are playing the race card…and discovers it's Jane that's doing the dealing.
LATER: It's Dwight Meredith, not MB. I forgot Dwight, ex of P.L.A., is blogging at Wampum nowadays.
She even suggests that the Democrats would be guilty of violating discrimination laws if their conduct had occurred in the private sector.
The results of the inquiry?
Not confirmed, Hispanic: Miguel Estrada (DC Circuit)
Confirmed, African-American(*): Beggie B. Walton (DC), Julie A. Robinson (KS), Legrome D. Davis Pennsylvania (PA), Percy Anderson (CA), Lavenski R. Smith (8th Circuit), Henry Edward Autry (MO), Morrison C. England, Jr. (CA)
Not confirmed, African-American: Janice Rogers Brown (DC Circuit) (at least not yet)
(*) Does not include two nominees which were originally nominated by Pres. Clinton. Also omitted are two African-American nominees who are expected to be confirmed shortly.
By my count, that is 19 minority nominees confirmed, two more likely to be confirmed, one defeated, and one pending. In fairness, though, Jane�s charge was limited to nominees to the Circuit (appellate) Court bench while Alkali�s list includes nominees to the trial (District) courts.
Assuming Alkali�s list to be accurate, when only Circuit Court nominations are considered, Edward Prado (5th Circuit), Consuelo Callahan (9th Circuit) and Lavenski R. Smith (8th Circuit) have been confirmed while Estrada and Brown have not.
MB then discusses the reasons for opposing Brown's nomination. Reasons no one would be surprised about, if it were a white candidate.
By insisting on making the discussion of Brown (and Estrada) a racial issue, Republicans are looking for a racial preference, differential treatment for these candidates because of their race. Which doesn't surprise me.
Coob rudely quotes me without issuing a trackback.
essentially, that once you have agreed that government is a job for the full-time expert and that ''rule by the people'' is literally impossible, you need some way in which the ordinary man can stop the elite from walking off with the store.I say: What is it that the common man knows that is so important that he should control government? Nothing. It is not so important as the fact that the common man outnumbers the uncommon man.
Where is there anything in the quote about the common man controlling the government?
What it says is, the elite must be prevented from walking off with the store. Isn't that what it says?
Let me check again…
Yup. That's what it says.
The rest of the post has nothing to do with the quoted material. But some of it deserves comment:
The masses are all ants without a queen. They experiment and try every which way to get over. Once they succeed in finding a way, they will discipline themselves to that way and their achievement depends upon their ability to successfully negoitiate the factors that change the conditions under which their original success flourished. The better they are at this, the more they become an elite power. An elite is created by success. Achievement requires focus and discipline, such are the very things that differentiate one from the masses.
Success in this society is indicated by possession of wealth. Since that wealth can be inherited, not all the "elite" became so due to their own discipline and skills. Many of them simply must maintain rather than create…and because they have inherited wealth their education is directed toward keeping it, toward learning the various ways to game the system.
You know what I would like? I would like my friends to stop pretending everyone starts with a clean slate. Stop pretending we have a 100% market economy. And stop pretending we can get to a 100% market economy from here. That way you can stop pretending market forces are the only things that shape the society and culture.
XML-RPC question.
If someone could point me to instructions on how to tell if a post returned by metaWeblog.getRecentPosts has been published I'd really appreciate it.
A Slave to His Time and Place
In protecting slavery, Jefferson shielded a system that nurtured him economically and politically.
By Garry Wills
Garry Wills' latest book, "Negro President: Thomas Jefferson and Slave Power," will be published this month by Houghton Mifflin.
November 3, 2003
Americans are blessed, but ambiguously blessed, by the extraordinary generation of men (yes, all men) who shaped our republic in the 18th century. They formed such a brilliant galaxy of talents that they hover far above us. At times, it seems that the only way to remedy their Olympic remove is by rocket assault, which brings them crashing down to Earth. Usually the fuel is humanizing (but trivializing) scandal, which leads to an overemphasis on such matters as Thomas Jefferson's sexual liaison with Sally Hemings.
In this famous tale, too much has been made of sex and too little of slavery. The real point of the story is that Hemings was available to Jefferson because he owned her � he never had to acknowledge her, educate her, bring her within the circle of his family or free her. The issue is not his sexual continence but the fact that he used his property at his will.
And that raises the larger question � not what he did for or to her or her family, but what he did about the institution of slavery.
The answer is simple: He did everything he could to protect and extend the slave system.
This was not because he approved of slavery, or would have defended it in principle � as did John Calhoun of South Carolina in the Senate and John Taylor of Caroline County, Va., in his writings. Jefferson defended slavery because it was inextricable from the economy that sustained him and the politics that supported him. Publicly questioning slavery would have been fatal to a man with political ambitions in the South. He actively worked to keep his own personal condemnations of slavery away from the voters. So did his great compeers, George Washington, James Madison and James Monroe.
The importance of slavery to Jefferson's political career can be summed up in one astonishing and often overlooked fact. But for slavery, he would have lost the 1800 presidential race. He received fewer votes than his adversary, John Adams. What put him in office was a bonus of 12 votes in the Electoral College that came from counting the slave population at three-fifths of its number. As his Federalist opponents put it, he "rode into the temple of liberty on the shoulders of his slaves." As he added new plantation territory to the nation through the Louisiana Purchase and efforts to acquire the Floridas, Federalists protested at the number of slaves who would be added to the Southern vote count.
We often forget the rationale for the three-fifths clause in the Constitution, which affected the balance of power between North and South, slave and free, in all congressional votes, as well as those in the Electoral College.
The South had feared that it would be underrepresented in the first Congress because there were fewer whites in the South than in the North. To even things out, it demanded that blacks be counted in the representable population.
Northerners said this would be non-representation, given that blacks were disenfranchised and would have no say in how "their" representatives voted.
The Deep South said it would not ratify the Constitution unless slaves were counted. The North tried to whittle the representation down, offering to count a black as one-half a person. The South responded with a bid for three-quarters. Three-fifths was the resulting compromise.
But slaveholders continued to feel politically vulnerable because of their treatment of human beings as property. Jefferson defended the "agrarian virtue" of the plantation system, vilifying Northern banks and commerce and cities, in part as a means to excuse slavery, the literal backbone of the Southern economy. When states were opening up in the West � Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas � Jefferson argued that they should be slave states in order to maintain that "agrarian virtue."
The protection of the slave system made Jefferson scheme with George Washington to make sure the permanent national capital would be in slave territory, because their slaves had been hard to hold on to when they took them to the seat of government in Philadelphia. The proof of the Virginians' intent is that Washington carried the survey for the District of Columbia lower than Congress had authorized, to include the slave city of Alexandria (which was not deeded back to Virginia until 1846).
Such facts cannot be ignored or glossed over. The protection of slavery by even our noblest founders left a horrendous legacy, one only partially cleansed by a horrendous war. Deep patterns of bias may be defended by the use of Jefferson's example. Uprooting ancient attitudes is hard enough without the availability of great names to dignify low prejudice.
Still, those truths should not make us blind to the other bequests of Jefferson. He is our greatest champion of religious freedom, of freedom of the mind, of a national vision. Lincoln's greatest weapon against slavery was supplied him by the ideals expressed in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson knew what his real achievements were � the three listed on his tombstone: author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. Those works will stand as long as our country stands.
He is still a founder to be revered.
Overall, Race No Factor for Low-Scoring UC Applicants
By Rebecca Trounson, Stuart Silverstein and Doug Smith
Times Staff Writers
November 3, 2003
Latinos with low SAT scores are admitted to the University of California at rates only slightly higher than whites and Asians, while blacks who score poorly are significantly less likely to get in, according to a Times analysis.
All told, the groups underrepresented on UC campuses � African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans � are admitted with below-average SAT scores at the same rates as whites and Asians.
The analysis of freshman applicants to UC over the last two years offers a complex portrait of admissions at the public university, the state's most prestigious system of higher education.
The university's admissions practices have come under scrutiny in recent weeks amid a growing debate over the disclosure that hundreds of students were admitted to UC Berkeley last year with scores of 1000 or below on the SAT.
It's not like I pay that much attention to William Safire, but it strike me that in today's editorial he shows a distinct lack of imagination.
Although such a retreat under fire would be euphemized as an "accelerated exit strategy," consider the consequences to U.S. security of premature departure:
Set aside the loss of U.S. prestige or America's credibility in dealing with other rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq itself would likely split apart. Shiites in the south would resist a return of repression by Saddam's Sunnis and set up a nation under the protection of Iran. Kurds in the north, fearing the return of Saddamism, would break away into an independent Kurdistan; that would induce Turkey, worried about separatism among its own Kurds, to seize the Iraqi oil fields of Kirkuk.
One result could well be a re-Saddamed Sunni triangle. Baghdad would then become the arsenal of terrorism, importer and exporter of nukes, bioweapons and missiles. There is no way we can let that happen. Either we stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world � or we pull out too soon, thereby allowing terrorism to establish its main world sanctuary and its agents to come and get us.
Our dovish left will say, with Oliver Hardy, "a fine mess you've got us into" � as if we created Saddam's threat, or made our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune, or would have been better off with our head in the sand. Most Americans, I think, will move past these unending recriminations, reject defeatism and support leaders determined to win the final Iraq war.
Safire STILL tries to maintain the illusion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat to the USofA. WIth no nuclear program and a "biologicals program" that consists of some botox precursor in a guy's refrigerator, he STILL presents paranoid absurdities like this:
Another thing. Yes, you DID make our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune. A square dance, and the caller was an oily imperialist from Texas. They DID cherry-pick the intelligence, emphasizing what they wanted to hear and ignoring what they didn't want to hear.
So yes, this IS a fine mess you've goten us into.
Anyway, Safire presents the options of "stay the course" or "cut and run" as though they were the only two possibilities. I admit the analysis given here is close to correct, but the root of the problem isn't premature departure but premature arrival. We broke the damn country during an elective war so now we need to fix it. But there are more options than Safire presents. He just can't see them because they'd require getting rid of the people who made and perpetuate the initial errors.
Get rid of these guys and U.S. prestige will no longer be tied to the lipstick-smeared pig that is our current failed foreign policy.
Conservative Anglicans Won't Recognize Gay Bishop
By REUTERS 8:00 AM ET
Conservative Anglicans on Monday said the consecration of an openly gay bishop in the U.S. had split the church in two.
Still assembling that program.
Having now announced it twice, I better produce something, huh?
I have felt this way. Frequently.
A Manifesto for the Thoughtful Asshole
Imagine you are engaged in heated debate with a nitwit. Perhaps he insists that the tiny amount of electromagnetic radiation produced by small appliances is life-threatening. Maybe he claims that science - science! - proves that ancient, unprincipled medical practices are still relevant today. Possibly he asserts that telepathy and ESP are firmly grounded in modern physics. You've probably been taught to suffer such brainlessness, to be "open-minded" lest you endure the scorn of a society that ham-handedly stuffs tolerance down your throat. Maybe you've even managed to convince yourself that there is benefit in listening patiently to views that conflict violently with common sense. After all, how can you accurately judge a person's ideas unless you hear their entire line of reasoning? Didn't everyone call Einstein crazy? Don't you risk missing out on a superior and revolutionary way of thinking? It's best, it might seem, to simply hear them out before passing judgment.
My friends, do not fall into this trap. These people are not latter-day Einsteins. They are the slobbering, gibbering cretins you believe them to be. Do not be tricked into equating unbiased thinking with uncritical thinking. Do not be ashamed of dismissing them out of hand. No! Break free of the chains of open-mindedness! Throw down the shackles of undiscriminating tolerance! Refuse to endure another instant of sanity-eroding idiocy!
This all assumes, of course, that you are not a moron. If you are a moron, you should listen to your betters. You should also go far, far away - this very instant, mind you - and never trouble us again.
How, one might ask, did close-mindedness get such a bad rap? It's the tyranny of the majority, dear reader. You see, idiots vastly outnumber clear-thinking souls like ourselves. A moment's reflection will make this clear. Think, for example, of intelligent design theory, evolutionary psychology, and Star Wars missile defense. We are awash in a flood of filtered, purified drivel that erodes our ability to think critically and leaves us gasping for rational exposition. The loonies are everywhere, demanding our attention in a compulsive need to spread their viral stupidity. They don't want you questioning the rationality of their ravings. They don't want you pointing out obvious logical flaws. No! When we rightfully blow them off they decry our haughtiness and froth over our unreasoning hatred of different points of view. In this manner they have fought to make discretion unfashionable and dragoon otherwise reasonable individuals into hearing them out.
What can we do to combat this evil movement against closed-mindedness? The solution is to aggressively, assiduously ignore the slack-jawed hordes. This requires developing rules of thumb for identifying those who are likely to be wastes of time - psychiatrists, goateed self-described philosophers, Bush voters, and so on. Some people have a hard time accepting this. They point out that such generalizations may fail when applied to a specific individual, thereby revealing their need to bone up on the definition of "generalization". "How can you say that all sociologists are fatuous blowhards?" they say. "That's a sweeping generalization - surely there's some sociologist who conducts useful research". This is not the point. While it turns out that in this particular example the general rule is never violated - all sociologists truly are fatuous blowhards - the idea is that even if this were sometimes false, probabilistically speaking one would still come out ahead by tuning out whenever a sociologist opens his or her mouth.
"Good day, sir. I have recently completed research wherein I demonstrate that a complex set of human behaviors can be divided into an ad hoc set of complementary categories. The ingenious twist is that particular behaviors - in fact, all behaviors that anyone has ever specifically mentioned to me - are allowed to posses properties of multiple or even all categories, thereby ensuring that my hypothesis is safely unfalsifiable."
[fingers in ears] "Oh say can you see/By the dawn's early light..."
"Hm. I would characterize your actions as being a mixture of both the Aggressive and Passive prototypes. Well, I would enlighten you further, but I see you are otherwise engaged. Good day."
While you may on rare occasion fail to give a fair shake to one who deserves it, you free up years of your life that would otherwise be wasted on imbeciles. Moreover, in the unlikely event that they have inadvertently said something worth hearing, it will eventually leak out. On the other hand, think of what you suffer through wanton tolerance! You miss out on time with your family and friends. You lose the opportunity to enrich yourself with quality art and culture. You throw away time which could be spent producing great things and contributing to the world at large. Blowing off a fool is nothing to be ashamed of. It is to be praised. As a contributing member of society, you are to be commended for avoiding the poisonous influence of the yammering fatheads that crowd you, that suffocate you, that stifle you.
So, my brothers and sisters, unburden your conscience! Revel in your dismissiveness! Roll your eyes, sigh loudly, and shake your head with exaggerated sadness! It is not your responsibility to extract reason from another's drivel.
Thank you.
I deleted your trackback because I got a 404 page on the other side of the link. Send one that works and I'll leave it there.
As to whether you hit a nerve or not, see this and this. Fact is, I'd never read your defense of Limberger. Fact is, I called you a crakka-ass crakka in mid-August. Follow the links to find out why.
And no, your weak-ass page gets no link. Figure out the trackback thing.
No one knows what it is.
…One difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that here, in general, commanders in the field talk to reporters openly, candidly and on the record � a product, presumably, of the practice of embedding reporters with the troops early on.
But today in Baghdad, where the Coalition Provisional Authority can better control access to information, the atmosphere has become very different. It is almost impossible for a journalist to talk to any official from the authority without getting the approval of a public information officer.
Recently, when an army major and the head of operations of an American agency here sought to take a reporter for coffee at the Rashid Hotel, where senior American personnel live and eat, a sentry told them that no reporter could enter the hotel without an escort from the press office.
The American officials were more astonished than the reporter.
I grant that he raises issues that need some thought
…What I'm getting at here is that when you find yourself in an argument with Europeans over Iraq, they try to present it as if we both want the same thing, but we just have different approaches. And had the Bush team not been so dishonest and unilateral, we could have worked together. I wish the Bush team had behaved differently, but that would not have been a cure-all � because if you look under the European position you see we have two different visions, not just tactical differences. Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny.
The more I hear this, the more I wonder whether we are witnessing something much larger than a passing storm over Iraq. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of "the West" as we have known it � a coalition of U.S.-led, like-minded allies, bound by core shared values and strategic threats?
The problem, old boy, isn't the "dominant" part. It's the "dishonest and unilateral" part combined with the "dominant" part. One part or the other can be dealt with. The combination is threatening as hell.
What do Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, George Bush and possibly Elizabeth Smart have in common? Ask Maureen Dowd (who I think for the brief but entirely appropriate reference to Ms. Smart).
This is an annual thing at the NY Times, but the first paragraph is troubling and worthy of reporting in and of itself.
As New York City teems once more with a boom-time population of eight million, its signature Dickensian dichotomy brims before our eyes: poverty and homelessness are on the rise even as the streets hum with ambitious newcomers and the average price of a Manhattan apartment rockets toward the million-dollar mark. The city's clashing mix of opulence and opportunity, hard labor and raw daily indigence has rarely been so palpable. Neither has the need for some down-home charity. For all its resilience after the Sept. 11 disaster, the city finds 18 of 100 residents impoverished.
The time could not be riper for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, the annual plea to concerned readers to extend some basic charity to the many New Yorkers caught in harsh straits. For 91 years, the fund has channeled millions of dollars to time-proven institutions facing the problems that hammer upon the poor.
Homelessness has become an endemic problem lately for city children; the statistical drop in welfare rolls is illusory for working mothers on minimum wages. Charities working with the Neediest Cases Fund find grandparents becoming primary caretakers in the most troubled families, where poor nutrition generates school failure and dangerous child obesity.
Every penny donated � The Times pays all administration costs � helps seven local charities bolster the neediest. These are the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service; the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York; the Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens; the Children's Aid Society; the Community Service Society of New York; the UJA-Federation of New York; and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
Please send your checks to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11245. You also may contribute using a credit card online at www.nytimes.com/neediest, or by telephone at (212) 556-5851, extension 7.
At Least 14 Killed in Separate Attacks Against U.S. Troops
By REUTERS 5:45 AM ET
At least 13 soldiers were killed when a U.S. helicopter was shot down west of Baghdad on Sunday. Meanwhile, a bomb planted on a road in Baghdad killed one G.I.
The category should be "NOT Seen online."
NBC runs The Chris Matthews Show on Sundays around these parts. And they…in general…post transcripts on the web.
In general.
I've been waiting for the October 18-19 transcript to be posted. You see, at the very end of the show Matthews asks his guests to tell him something he doesn't know. One of his guests that week, and unfortunately I don't remember her name because I wasn't really watching the whole show, said she had beetold by her contacts in the White House that they hoped the press doesn't simply accept whatever the Bush regime comes up with as a result of the Valarie Plame outing scandal. I've been checking for that transcript every day ever since.
Today I see they posted the transcript for October 25-26. They skipped the transcript I'm interested in altogether.
It's things like this that make me interested in TiVo and the like.
I've been writing…more like assembling…software this weekend. With bith the news and my life being pretty quiet I figured it was a good time to start work on a personal make-my-life-easier project.
This one is for Mark. 