Prometheus 6

This is local to me.

According to sources familiar with their records, Danese has not particularly distinguished himself, but Elliassen had made almost 60 arrests and was even set to be named Cop of the Year -- until this incident.

"They ruined their careers. It's a shame," one source said. "The cops worked so hard to make it safe for everyone. They ruined the whole night."

I do not think this was racially motivated. But I don't think they'd have done it to a white kid. 

COPS CHARGED IN HALLOWEEN ABDUCTION
Parents of teen claim incident was racially motivated; officers each face up to a year in jail
Saturday, November 03, 2007
By PETER N. SPENCER
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Two police officers from Great Kills contend they dumped an egg-tossing teen in a deserted marsh in Travis to teach him a lesson.

But the parents and attorney of the 14-year-old Graniteville boy said their son was beaten, stripped of his clothes and his dignity in what they claim is a racially motivated act of vigilante justice.

Now, Officers Thomas Elliassen and Michael Danese of the North Shore's 120th Precinct find themselves on the wrong side of the law, charged yesterday with unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors.

They are accused of abducting Reyshawn Moreno from a Mariners Harbor street, taking off his clothes, then leaving him in a swampy area near the Consolidated Edison plant off the West Shore Expressway in Travis.

The additional evidence raises questions not only about the precision of Mr. Giuliani’s recollection, but also about how a man who proclaims his ability to pick leaders came to overlook a jumble of disturbing information about Mr. Kerik, even as he pushed him for two crucial government positions.

Loyal to Kerik, Giuliani Missed Warning Signs
By MICHAEL POWELL

If the rise of Bernard B. Kerik under the mentorship of Rudolph W. Giuliani was meteoric, the speed of his fall was breathtaking.

In December 2004, President Bush nominated Mr. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner, to head the federal Department of Homeland Security. Seven days later, Mr. Kerik withdrew as a nominee.

A cascade of questions followed about his judgment as a public official, not least that he had inappropriately lobbied city officials on behalf of Interstate Industrial, a construction firm suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani defended Mr. Kerik, a friend and business partner, whom he had recommended to the Bush administration. But he also tried to shield himself from accusations that he had ignored Mr. Kerik’s failings.

Stephen L. Carter reviews Rhett Butler's People, and I'm not goiing to buy it (look Ma, no Amazon link!). But the review starts with an interesting discussion of Gone With The Wind, its sequels and reconceptualizations. Took a while for him to mention the actual book he's reviewiing. That's not a complaint.

“Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936, and despite heroic efforts over the last seven decades to transform it into something else, the novel stands as an apologia for the Old South — the South of gallant white plantation owners and darkies too foolish for anything but slavery, a civilization ruined by a vengeful North that subsequently flooded that idyllic world with rapacious Union soldiers, greedy carpetbaggers and the despotic power of the Freedmen’s Bureau. That Mitchell was able to defend this vision in a novel of such power, beauty and depth is a tribute to her literary genius. But the vision is no less terrifying for having been brilliantly presented.

In July, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida'ie, complained bitterly about the delays, saying, "Americans are fully protected with the latest equipment and we are just cannon fodder."

Iraq says US behind in arms deliveries
Only a fraction of $2b order has been filled
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff  |  November 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - More than a year after the government of Iraq paid more than $2 billion to the US government to purchase weapons and equipment for their military and police force, most of the equipment has yet to be delivered, slowing the ability of Iraqi units to take greater responsibility for their country's security, according to Iraqi officials.

Yes, computer death. Apparently this is the desktop's third birthday.

Yes, I have a laptop. No, it is not fully up to date. I don't have an email client set up though...

I'm not looking forward to more debt but I need a nice stationary machine. Only...Vista? And will my video capture card work? 

Yeah, this is going to really suck for a whille. 

Those senators who truly want to bring the nation back from the disgrace of Mr. Bush's interrogation policies should do two things. They should confirm Mr. Mukasey, who is far more independent and qualified than either of Mr. Bush's previous two nominees. And they should do something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do: ban torture, by passing the National Security with Justice Act sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.). The act would limit all United States personnel -- military and civilian -- to using only interrogation techniques authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, which expressly prohibits waterboarding and which military leaders have said gives them the tools they need to get reliable information from difficult subjects.

Mr. Mukasey and Torture
The Senate should confirm the former and ban the latter.
Friday, November 2, 2007; A20

IT IS EXTRAORDINARY that a man who rightly would have been confirmed with overwhelming support had he been President Bush's first nominee for attorney general may now be denied that post in the waning months of the administration. Just as extraordinary is Mr. Bush's campaign to salvage the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey. Yesterday, in a rare Oval OfficeHeritage Foundation, Mr. Bush bemoaned the imperiled state of Mr. Mukasey's nomination without one iota of self-awareness that the nomination is in trouble because of the president's own warped policies on torture. meeting with reporters and later in a speech before the

Mr. Mukasey is being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for Mr. Bush. Yet critics of the nomination, while understandably disturbed by Mr. Mukasey's unwillingness to label waterboarding illegal, may be working against the last, best hope to see the rule of law reemerge in this administration.

You can't blame libruls for this one...

"Calling them 'dropout factories' is just wrong. It's offensive to the many great men and women who give their lives to teaching children every day," he said.

Maria Cuca Robledo, director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, said the term is "accurate" and noted that about 70 percent of the 2.7 million Texas students who left school during her group's study period were Hispanic or black.

Are we yet ready to admit the whole plan was supposed to dismantle public education?

Report points to 'dropout factories'
Study highlights 185 Texas schools losing students quickly, including 42 in Houston area
By GARY SCHARRER
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Texas has 185 high schools, including 42 in the eight-county Houston area, that are hemorrhaging students fast enough to be called "dropout factories" in a new national report.

I'm redoing something with the TV running in the background. The Science Channel. And the guy is talking about solar eclipses. He says if you stand in your back yard and wait for an eclipse to come to you, you'd probably wait an average of 350 to 400 years..but nowadays, you can watch it on television or the Internet.

And this little voice screamed out from the base of my skull, "THAT NOT THE SAME!"

It's not.  

This is a Color of Change joint.

This is the supporting email.

For years we've had a problem: Black politicians who claim to represent us but undermine our interests. Today, we're taking a step towards fixing it.

Congressman Al Wynn from Maryland's 4th district is a perfect example of the lack of accountability that's hurting our community. He has consistently voted against the interests of his Black constituents, siding with the big business and other special interests that foot the bill for his campaigns.

His opponent in the primary, Donna Edwards, is exactly what we need in Washington. She has an excellent record of activism and has been a powerful advocate for policies that will help the Black community, especially low-income Black folks.

If elections were won on candidates' records, Edwards would destroy Wynn, but Wynn has the Democratic establishment and business interests on his side. For Edwards and other candidates like her to win, everyday people have to stand up and give their direct support.

LAUSD stalls its 'transformation'

Supt. David L. Brewer has not done much to inspire confidence in his year at the top of the Los Angeles Unified School District, but one initiative that seemed to convey an appreciation for the district's urgent need to think differently was his plan to declare 44 secondary schools a "transformation district" and lavish them with resources. Appropriately, he chose the city's lowest-performing schools and touted his proposal as part of a larger vision for desperately needed improvement districtwide.

The man is brilliant, has (if I recall correctly) a far finer wife than he deserves, has one of the biggest media megaphones on the planet and uses it to just...say what's true.

Leave aside the fact that Mr. Giuliani is simply lying about what the Democrats are proposing; after all, Mitt Romney is doing the same thing.

My GHOD, I am jealous.

But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?

For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill.

I am also grateful.

Prostates and Prejudices
By PAUL KRUGMAN

“My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? Eighty-two percent,” says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. “My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine.”

It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn’t. And thereby hangs a tale — one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I’m sorry to say, about what’s wrong with political news coverage.

Sad. Truly sad.

Tyrone is right...time for sister to use at least a couple of the brain cells God gave her.

This belief that ensoulment happens at the moment of conception is more than challenged, it is denied by in-vitro fertilization technology. This thought first occurred to me when I found out fertilized eggs are examined for defects by removing a cell at a very early stage of development.

Fertility doctors have known for years that early embryos seem unfazed by the removal of any one of their eight virtually identical cells, called blastomeres. In fact, it is common today to remove a single, representative blastomere from a laboratory-conceived embryo and test that cell for disease genes before deciding whether to transfer that embryo into a woman's womb.

My immediate, rather cynical, reaction was, "Wow, how do you get into heaven with one eighth of your soul gone?"

Militants Draw New Front Line Inside Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 1 — For much of the last century, the mountainous region of Swat was ruled as a princely kingdom where a benign autocrat, the wali, bestowed schools for girls, health care for everyone and the chance to get a degree abroad for the talented.

Now the region is the newest front line in the battle between Islamic militants, who are sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and Pakistan’s nervous security forces. For the first time, heavy fighting has moved beyond Pakistan’s tribal fringe and into more settled areas of the country.

On Thursday, government forces backed by helicopters attacked about 500 militants in the area, killing about 60 men, said Badshah Gul Wazir, the home secretary for the North-West Frontier Province. The militants said they had captured 44 members of the Frontier Corps and were holding them hostage.

He said his views were shaped by his foreign policy advisers, including Richard Danzig, who was Navy secretary under President Bill Clinton; Anthony Lake, a national security adviser in the Clinton administration; Susan E. Rice, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Mr. Clinton; Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general; and Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, now retired, a former chief of staff of the Air Force.

Obama Envisions New Iran Approach
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JEFF ZELENY

CHICAGO, Oct. 31 — Senator Barack Obama says he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.

Giuliani didn't really care whether the figures made any sense or not. He invokes the specter of "Hillarycare" -- shorthand for any health-care reform that Hillary Clinton might propose -- almost as often as he reminds audiences of Sept. 11. Here was another weapon to use against his nemesis.

Giuliani's Bogus Diagnosis
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 2, 2007; A21

Even Rudy Giuliani would acknowledge that he can be prickly. Now, it seems, the tough-talking former mayor is growing estranged from empirical fact.

I'm referring to his presidential campaign's recent radio ad in New Hampshire, in which Giuliani speaks of his personal experience with prostate cancer and then cites an ear-grabbing statistic: "My chances of surviving prostate cancer -- and thank God I was cured of it -- in the United States: 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44 percent under socialized medicine."

The article reads a little different if you make that substitution. 

Canadian Exporters Hurt by a Soaring Currency
By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA, Nov. 1 — The morning after the Canadian dollar climbed above its postwar high against the United States dollar, Robert Hattin, the president of a company that makes custom machinery to pack products as diverse as toilet paper, cough syrup and CDs, was not celebrating.

For Mr. Hattin and other export-dependent manufacturers, the rise of the loonie, as the Canadian dollar is known, beyond its previous record of $1.0614 set in 1957 has become a major concern. It is also a worry that is likely to linger and worsen. While the Canadian dollar eventually dropped back to $1.0516 at the end of North American trading on Thursday, few, if any, economists say that its record-breaking streak is over.

And look what they stuck way down at the bottom of the article.

Court Cuts Exxon Damages

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama Supreme Court threw out on Thursday nearly all of a record $3.6 billion verdict that the state had won against Exxon Mobil in a dispute over natural gas royalties.

In an 8-1 decision, the state’s highest court awarded Alabama $51.9 million in compensatory damages. The court threw out all punitive damages, which made up most of the $3.6 billion verdict.

The state conservation department had accused Exxon of deliberately underpaying the state for royalties from natural gas wells in state-owned coastal waters. Exxon had argued that the case was a routine contract dispute.

This thing (the Kerr-McGee thing, never mind the Exxon Mobil thing...for now) was worth $60 billion before the price jumped up over $90.

NOW let's bring Exxon Mobil into it. And Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. This is an obscene amount of money we're giving up, and I don't believe anything has been done about it since the issue came up at the beginning of last year. I KNOW nothing was done since 2003...the last time the oil companies used the exact same law to weasel their way out of similar sums.

Government Cannot Halt Oil Incentives, Judge Rules
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — A federal judge in Louisiana handed the oil industry a major legal victory this week, saying the government had no authority to suspend billions of dollars’ worth of drilling incentives when energy prices were high.

Remember, Ron's supporters are Libertarians, with precious little respect for any law that restricts them. 

Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton says the campaign has no knowledge of the scam. Warner himself says that he has no reason to believe that the Paul campaign had anything to do with these messages....

Some participants in the online political world have long suspected Paul's technically sophisticated fan base of manipulating online tools and polls to boost the appearance of a wide base of support. But the UAB analysis is the first to document any internet shenanigans.

'Criminal' Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege
By Sarah Lai Stirland

If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who've analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate.

The proper headline would have had a reference to Letter From A Birmingham Jail. 

White Pastors Failing to Speak Against Racism
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Harvard University divinity professor, the Rev. Harvey G. Cox Jr., recalls marching for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even being arrested for the cause.
“There were an enormous number of White pastoral participants.

There were nuns. There were priests. There were rabbis. There were a lot of people involved at that time,” recalls Cox, among the nation’s preeminent theologians.

But, more than 40 years later, amidst daily reports of racial violence, threatening nooses, torture, and other hate crimes across the U. S., Cox now marvels at the near deafening silence of his fellow White clergy.

This is like, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs As Class Relationships or some such.

It is said class isn't strictly a matter of wealth. I'm pretty sure it was first said in the United States of America because historically that really hasn't been the case. In fact, it's not the case here for the most part. That people believe it made me consider how they judge their own social class.

Abraham Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs that motivate humans. It has two groupings: deficiency needs and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level. Once each of these needs has been satisfied, if at some future time a deficiency is detected, the individual will act to remove the deficiency.

The deficiency needs are:

1. Physiological

2. Safety/security

3. Belongingness and Love

4. Esteem

I don't need to consider the growth needs at this point because there aren't enough humans working in them to consider them collective issues at this point.

Google changed their Page Rank calculations, and I only lost a small enough fraction that P6's page rank is still 6 of 10.

Still lost some traffic, but the site ain't feeding me so what the hell. 

And tell them to stay away from porn sites anyway (though
target="_blank">the Internet is for porn...)

Since many Mac users don't use anti-virus software out of the fairly realistic belief that Macs are safer than Windows machines, they should avoid installing software from unknown sources. While this is largely true, Mac users aren't immune from malware (including one to-remain-anonymous scribe here at Wired who got infected this week).

Mac Users Get A Credit Card Stealing Trojan for Halloween, Security Company Reports
By Ryan Singel

Hackers are reportedly sticking virtual razor blades into Apple computers this Halloween, as a Mac security vendor reports Wednesday that a Mac-focussed Trojan is reportedly loose on the internet costumed as an innocent video decoding file.

Mac OS X users visiting malicious porn sites are told to download a special codec that will let Apple's Quicktime player to play the porn flicks, but instead of adult treats, users get a malicious trick, according to anti-virus vendor Intego.