Prometheus 6

I've long thought something is fundamentally wrong with Texas.

Ms. McKay said Mr. Thweatt had yet to explain why a town with such a low crime rate needed such measures. She is afraid, however, that her children might face repercussions if she takes up a petition against the idea.

“We are pretty much being told to deal with this or move,” Ms. McKay said.

Deal with what, you ask?

Texas gun laws ban the weapons on school property. But the Legislature carved out an exception allowing school boards to permit people with concealed handgun licenses to carry their weapons. No local district had taken advantage of the exception until the Harrold school board acted.

"Excuse me? Armed teachers?"

Yes. Armed teachers.

I think Is Obama the End of Black Politics? should be read with The Race Isn't About Race in mind. Unfortunately, The Race Isn't About Race was written last.

After showcasing their new ticket at their convention in Denver this week, Democrats may well see, at long last, the significant boost in the polls for which they have been waiting. But if Joe Biden’s selection does anything to help break the stalemate, it will be because he is a serious foreign-policy thinker and a voice of experience, not because he is somehow reassuring to narrow-minded white voters.

There are plenty of reasons to think Mr. Biden will make a strong running mate. Rampant racism, real or alleged, isn’t one of them.

I'm assuming, given the nature and intensity of the responses to Mr. Bai's previous article, there is an element of self-defense in that closing plaintive cry.

“It’s unprecedented access for bloggers, yes, but it’s certainly not equal access,” said Ms. Spaulding, who learned last week that Pam’s House Blend would receive two extra credentials. “What, pray tell, is the big secret?”

The annoyance felt by many bloggers is familiar to those who previously attended conventions as correspondents for smaller print publications. “This is very reminiscent of being at the low end of the totem pole,” said Micah Sifry, the co-founder of the group blog Techpresident.com, who formerly wrote for The Nation magazine and attended his first convention in 1984. “They can’t buy a sky box, they’re scrambling.”

The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived
By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS

WHEN Pam Spaulding heard from two contributors to her blog, Pam’s House Blend, that they couldn’t afford to attend the Democratic National Convention, she knew that historic times called for creative measures.

Getting convention credentials for her blog, a news site for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, was the easy part. As air fare, lodging and incidentals began piling up, paying for the trip to Denver became the bigger obstacle.

For Ms. Spaulding, 45, who works full time as an IT manager at Duke University Press in Durham, N.C., blogging is her passion, an unpaid hobby she pursues at nights and on weekends. So she called on her 5,500 daily readers to help raise funds: “Send the Blend to Denver” reads the ChipIn widget on her blog’s home page that tracks donations from readers; so far they have pledged more than $5,000 to transport Ms. Spaulding and three other bloggers to the convention.

...an outstanding idea.

Rich Lowry of The National Journal, however, outlines one scenario in which a Lieberman selection makes sense. Mr. Lowry correctly argues that John McCain would have to pledge to serve only one term in office, while Mr. Lieberman would have to promise not to seek the presidency in 2012. An increasing number of conservative Republicans have begun to argue that the party would benefit from four years on the outside in order to rethink a conservative agenda and sharpen its message. Knowing that the two would depart after one term would give them the opportunity to retool without risking a more extended period outside the gates of power. And those four years would be much easier with a Democrat-turned-independent serving as vice president than dealing with a President Obama in the Oval office.

"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?"

First, let's make sure you've seen the ad.

Republicans have panicked

"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?" asked McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. "Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people 'cling' to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?"

I would like to have a debate about who is in touch with reality. But they can only imply that, so they'll have to settle for the offered discussion.

“To social psychologists and academic political scientists, people’s answers are highly suspect,” wrote Timothy D. Wilson, in an editorial that accompanies the study. “Voters explain their reasons by relying on cultural and idiosyncratic causal theories that may bear little relation to the real reason for their preferences.”

Undecideds May Be More Decided Than They Know
By BENEDICT CAREY

Voters who insist that they are undecided about a contentious issue are sometimes fooling themselves, having already made a choice at a subconscious level, a new study suggests.

Scientists have long known that subtle biases can skew evaluations of an issue or candidate in ways people are not aware of. But the new study, appearing Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that professed neutrality — sitting on the fence — leaves people more vulnerable to their own inherent biases than choosing sides early.

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
Author: Thomas Frank
List price: $25.00 USD

The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank is about how Conservatives, by which I refer to Jack Abramhoff and his confrères Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, started a process that resulted in our government being turned into a cash cow for Conservatives.

All of the smoke-and-mirror marketing, prescient creativity and business acumen have the New York fashion industry generating $47 billion in sales annually. Imagine how much gloss fashion folks could apply to the Obama brand.

Fashion Designers Hope to Stitch Up an Obama Win
By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 16, 2008; A01

It used to be that political campaigns would be satisfied if they managed to settle on an eye-catching font for their T-shirts and trucker caps. The merchandise wasn't so much designed as it was stamped out like a pile of red, white and blue bunting. Political paraphernalia was mostly about the message -- not the aesthetics.

Threat Watch

I spend a fair amount of my free time out on the street doing voter registration, while wearing an Obama t-shirt. It's pretty clear who I am volunteering for. I notice that the hostility from some white guys is creeping up. Three dudes on South Street during the day on Monday were talking like they wanted to fight me - of course, they liked the odds. And last night outside the Radiohead show someone mentioned getting his shotgun while looking at my shirt. It was just in passing, but it's not something I can just blow off. I have to stay alert. But if someone does decide to take a shot at me for supporting Obama, there is not a whole lot I can do about it. Either they get me or they don't.

The WSJ report was supposed to show how focused Wal-Mart is or some other complementary stuff instead of giving human beings a heads-up that they are breaking the law.

In their complaint, the four groups cite an article in The Wall Street Journal, which said that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, was mobilizing its store managers and department heads around the country to warn that if the Democrats win, they are likely to enact a law that makes it easier for workers to unionize Wal-Mart and other companies.

Groups to File Complaint Against Wal-Mart
By Steven Greenhouse

The A.F.L.-C.I.O and three other pro-labor groups will urge the Federal Election Commission on Thursday to rule that Wal-Mart acted illegally by warning many store managers and department heads that a Democratic victory in November would hurt the company by helping workers unionize.

The pro-labor groups plan to file a complaint with the commission on Thursday asserting that Wal-Mart warned so vigorously that the Democrats would enact pro-union legislation that the company had engaged in illegal express advocacy.

I approached Charles Murray's Wall Street Journal op-ed last because I always have to get away from the keyboard for a while, wash my mind out with soap, after dealing with his rather calculated rhetoric. I still struggle to understand why he's still being published.

Today he starts with this straw man.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

His entire op-ed is based on the assumption that this is true. But Charles Murray has neither taught nor hired. His career has been dedicated to undermining the public good.

Saguaro Firearms is a small, crowded shop on East Fry Boulevard, a strip of fast-food restaurants and mini-malls. Across the street is Guns & Gear. Anyone with proper ID and a brief background check can leave with a firearm under his or her belt and reach Mexico in minutes.

The manager at Saguaro Firearms, who gave his name only as Greg, carries a "comfortable to shoot" silver Kahr P40 in a black holster on his right hip.

"I don't believe all the hype" about all the guns getting into Mexico, he said, knifing open new boxes of ammunition.

U.S. guns arm Mexican drug cartels
Licensed weapons dealers are abundant near the border. 'Straw buyers' assist the traffickers.
By Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 10, 2008

SIERRA VISTA, ARIZ. — High-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from border states into Mexico, fueling a war among drug traffickers, the army and police that has left thousands dead, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

The munitions are hidden under trucks and stashed in the trunks of cars, or concealed under the clothing of people who brazenly walk across the international bridges. They are showing up in seizures and in the aftermath of shootouts between the cartels and police in Mexico.

More than 90% of guns seized at the border or after raids and shootings in Mexico have been traced to the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Last year, 2,455 weapons traces requested by Mexico showed that guns had been purchased in the United States, according to the ATF. Texas, Arizona and California accounted for 1,805 of those traced weapons.

The Measure of America: American Human Development Report, 2008-2009 (A Columbia / SSRC Book)
Authora: Sarah Burd-Sharps, Kristen Lewis, Eduardo Borges Martins
List price: $24.95 USD

The Measure of America, American Human Development Report 2009-2009, is the first product of the American Human Development Project (AHDP). It applies a standard roughly equivalent to the United Nations' Human Development Index to the United States of America. It is actually pretty remarkable that this has never been done before since the standards by which United States justifies its foreign policy positions claim similar intent.

David Brooks is quite amusing today . Framing aside, he's right too.

Talking about Is Obama the End of Black Politics? This is what troubles me.

Black folks, historians and people working in Black and/or Confederate History have lost a great supporter. Except those who don't like truth...

Dear Friend,

It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of our Executive Council member, the historian and archivist  Dr. Walter B. Hill, Jr.  Walter was a tireless advocate for ASALH since joining in 1970. He served as Vice President from 1996-1998 and was a member of the Executive Council from 1995 until his passing. He carried out his work  with honor and integrity as he supported the mission and vision of the Association. He was beloved by all of the members of the Council, the Advisory Board, and the entire ASALH community. Walter developed partnerships between ASALH and similar organizations such as The HistoryMakers and The African American Civil War Museum.

Walter Bowers Hill, Jr., was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 22, 1949. After finishing high school, Hill enrolled in the College of Wooster, earning a B.A. degree in history in 1971. From there, he attended Northern Illinois University, studying American history. Earning an M.A. degree in 1973, he returned to school to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1988.

After completing his master's degree, Hill taught at St. Louis University from 1974 to 1977. He returned to school in the fall of 1977 to work towards the Ph.D. in U.S. History at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. He worked as a graduate teaching assistant and later as an instructor in the Afro-American Studies Program between 1982 and 1983. While working towards the Ph.D., he also worked at the National Archives and Records Administration as a Graduate Intermittent Research Student until 1983 in the Office of the Archivist and Office of Federal Records. From 1983 to 1984, he held a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at the Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Upon completing the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in 1984, he returned to the National Archives and Records Administration as an Archivist with the Office of the National Archives where he remained for seven years. In 1990, he left to work in the Office of Public Program, assuming the Director of the Modern Archives Institute and Subject Specialist for Afro-American History. He remained with the Office until 1995 when he departed for the new facility in College Park, Maryland and assumed the position of Senior Archivist and Subject Area Specialist for Afro-American History and Federal Records. In 1984, Hill became an Adjunct Professor of Afro-American History in the Afro-American Studies Department, Howard University, Washington, D.C. and taught courses in Afro-American history for the next two decades.

As a noted historian, Hill appeared in several documentaries, as well as on Good Morning America, Washington Journal and Fox TV. He served on the editorial board of the African American History Bulletin, the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of Afro-American History and on the advisory board of The HistoryMakers, among others. He has also written extensively, his work appearing in such journals as the Newsletter of the American Historical Association and the Journal of Minority Issues.

Hill passed away on July 29, 2008 at the age of 59.

Hill was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 11, 2003.

Kosher meats firm cited for child labor violations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:14 p.m. ET

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Iowa labor officials said Tuesday that they had uncovered dozens of child labor violations at the nation's biggest supplier of kosher meat.

Officials from the state's Labor Commissioner's Office said their investigation, which spanned several months, uncovered 57 cases of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, where nearly 400 workers were arrested this spring in the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

The types of violations included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.

I'm lifting the entire post from The American Conservative's blog.

Wave the Bloody Shirt
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Clark Stooksbury

So it has come to this:

Deranged Right-Wing Bush Supporter Derangement Syndrome sufferer, Serr8d excretes gushing approval of this desperate attempt to wave the bloody shirt and make voters forget the economy, gas prices, the Iraq War. Presumably, voters should also forget on whose watch 9/11 occurred, as well as the approximately twenty minutes the Bush administration spent on Osama and al Qaeda before turning to Iraq.

Pneumonia, a serious automobile accident...and you're talking about "a bad day for Barack Obama donors"?

Really?

Now, 2 Obama backers, Bernie Mac and Morgan Freeman,hospitalized

A bad day for Barack Obama donors.

Morgan Freeman, the iconic voice of God in several films and reliable good-guy co-conspirator of Christian Bale's Batman in "The Dark Knight," is in serious condition in a Memphis hospital after a late-night car accident near his home in Mississippi.

The popular Freeman, who is 71, gave the Obama presidential campaign $2,300 on March 8.

And comedian Bernie Mac, popular TV-film funnyman who got a little vocally naughty at a recent Obama fundraiser, is seriously ill with pneumonia in a Chicago hospital.

David Price, an anthropologist at St. Martin's University in Lacey, Wash., and the author of a book on anthropological intelligence in World War II, agreed that the military and policymakers should know more about world cultures. But, he said, the Pentagon effort is flawed.

"It sets up sort of a Soviet system, or top-down system," Price said. "If you look at the big picture, this will not make us smarter -- this will make us much more narrow. It will only look at problems Defense wants us to in a narrow way."

Military's Social Science Grants Raise Alarm
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008; A05

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is calling on "eggheads" to help the military unravel questions about the recruitment of terrorists, the resurgence of the Taliban and messages delivered in militant Muslim religious schools.

Many eggheads are wary.

The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July 25, and the first grants are expected to be awarded by year's end.

But the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which includes professors from American and George Mason universities, said dependence on Pentagon funding could make universities an "instrument rather than a critic of war-making."

As I said, after several months of race-based appeals you can't expect it to just stop. Plus, it was destined to come into play, but surreptiously. Pay particular attention to David Gergen.

It occurs to me that this may not be a matter of code words so much as language. I think Confederate English may be a different language than the consensus English we all think we speak.

Today the troubling inheritance of the Civil War has been turned into family entertainment. At The Point on Lookout Mountain above Chattanooga, I came across a small group of men who spend much of their spare time and disposable income re-enacting battles and reproducing camp life as it was in the 1860s. ("Civil Wargasms," one of the weekend Confederates at Lookout Point called them.) For many of the hobbyists the delight is in the details, right down to the paper cartridges in their muzzle-loading rifles and handmade buttons on their hot woolen uniforms. "We all know slavery was wrong," says Donald Davidson, whose day job is with the water department in Nashville. "War is not a nice thing. Hopefully we can show we can live together by reliving history like this."

But the subtext of old prejudices keeps creeping in even among the very young. Walking down to The Point one morning, a 12-year-old "private" in this particular Confederate unit told me what he'd heard tell in school about the elections. Next to nothing about McCain. But Obama? "There are too many chances we would take if he became president, you know what I mean?" I said I wasn't sure I did. "I don't know if it's a myth or it's true," said the boy, "but they say that they caught him trying to sneak Iraqi soldiers into the United States."

A journey through a troubled region.
Christopher Dickey
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:38 PM ET Aug 2, 2008

For as long as I've been alive the old Confederacy has been a land without closure, where history keeps coming at you day after day, year after year, decade after decade, as if the past were the present, too, and the future forever. Cities grew and populations changed in the South, but the Civil War lurked somehow in the shadow of mirror-sided skyscrapers; the holocaust of slavery and the sweet-bitter victories of the civil-rights movement lingered deep in the minds of people on both sides of the color line. Yes there was change, progress, prosperity, and a lot of it. Southerners put their faith in money and jobs and God Almighty to get them to a better place and better times—and for a lot of them, white and black, those times came. The South got to be a more complicated place, where rich and poor—which is pretty much all there was before World War II—gave way to a broad-spectrum bourgeoisie with big-time aspirations. But as air conditioning conquered the lethargy-inducing climate and Northerners by the millions abandoned the rust belt for the sun belt, the past wasn't forgotten or forgiven so much as put aside while people got on with their lives and their business.

Now this part of the country, where I have my deepest roots, feels raw again, its political emotions more exposed than they've been in decades. George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the South: the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language. Suddenly the palliative prosperity that salved old, deep wounds no longer seems adequate to the task.

Hovering Above Poverty, Grasping for Middle Class
By Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 3, 2008; A01

Low-wage workers in the United States are gripped by increasing financial insecurity as they inch along an economic tightrope made riskier by pervasive job losses and rising prices. Many struggle to pay for life's basics -- housing, food and health care -- and most report having virtually no financial cushion should they stumble.

Still, they remain inspired by the American dream, with most saying they are more apt to move up economically than slip backward even if they are frustrated now. Most also expect better for their children.

I do wonder if some folk's reactions are less helpful than they think.

Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

In 1990, as his fellow students rallied to protest the dearth of black professors at Harvard Law School, Barack Obama wrote a vigorous defense of affirmative action. The campus was in an uproar over questions of race, and Mr. Obama, then the first black president of The Harvard Law Review, decided to take a stand.

Mr. Obama said he had “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” in his own academic career, and he praised the intellectual heft and wide-ranging views of his diverse staff.

“The success of the program speaks for itself,” he said of the law review’s affirmative action policy in a letter published in the school’s student newspaper.