Prometheus 6

Framing

Dear fellow progressives,

Please, please stop using the term “identity politics” as a negative. “Identity politics” is a term adopted by conservatives (and moderate-to-right-leaning lefties) in an effort to insult the political action of women, people of color, the LGBT community, and other traditionally marginalized groups. It assumes that advocating for gender, racial or sexual orientation equality is about promoting particular “identities” as opposed to doing what white men have always done — engaging in the political system, often in a self-interested way. If you’re going to use the term “identity politics,” go for it — but own it as a good thing. We are all influenced by our identities; but since white, straight, Christian male is the default, it’s only commented on when the rest of us voice our opinions.

George W. Bush dressing up as a cowboy and appealing to “authentic” American men? “America’s Toughest Sheriff” swaggering around Arizona and making inmates wear pink underwear to emasculate them? John Kerry donning a hunting vest to prove his toughness? Not “identity politics.”

Thank god...I have no choice but to attend to his economics, regardless of who he supports in the primaries.

In particular, now would be a good time to think about the possibility of going beyond tax cuts and rebate checks, and stimulating the economy with some much-needed public investment — say, in repairing the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

A Long Story
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The economic news has been fairly dire this week. The credit crunch is getting worse, and a widely watched indicator of trends in the service sector — which is most of the economy — has fallen off a cliff. It’s still not a certainty that we’re headed into recession, but the odds are growing greater.

And if past experience is any guide, the troubles will persist for a long time — say, into the middle of 2010.

The problems now facing the U.S. economy look a lot like the problems that caused the last two recessions — but this time in combination.

Survival of the fattest?
Unhealthy habits can mean lower medical care costs -- mostly because you're likely to die sooner.
February 9, 2008

Go ahead and laugh -- all the way to the gym. We guffawed before we winced at the Dutch study published this week that found that slim and fit people actually cost the healthcare system more than obese people and smokers. That's because puffers and the pudgy tend to die young, while health nuts live longer and so rack up higher total medical bills.

I have no doubt that racial identity plays its part for some white Republicans. But I must say I neither meet, nor hear from, very many of them.

Come down from your ivory tower, Goldberg. Or jusr read VDARE...

A great many conservatives — including many immigration restrictionists like VDH — have very kind and flattering things to say about Mexican-Americans, particularly those who've lived in America for many generations.

You know where to find it. Or how about Little Green Footballs?

You don't even have to interpret this stuff, Jonah.

Imagine...all the YouTube videos videos I've posted still available without the annoying comments from the hoi polloi.

Seriously, this bears investigation. 

Yahoo wipes out small business hosted storage limits
Monthly service offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth to business customers
By Brian Fonseca

February 7, 2008 (Computerworld) Yahoo Inc. this week introduced a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses, which provides unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth.

Subscribers to the new service, priced at $11.95 a month, are free to take up as much disk space on Yahoo's servers as they need to transfer data, store information or secure e-mail without fear of shrinking capacity restrictions, the company said. The service is only available in the U.S. from Yahoo's Small Business division and costs $11.95 per month.

You can't get a widget in this blog.

Don't mind me, I'm very close to being in a bad mood. 

Barack Obama will be speaking this morning at the Key Arena in the Seattle Center. (The Key Arena, which is the home court of the dismal Supersonics basketball team, is in the same complex as the Seattle Space Needle.) The doors of the Arena are scheduled to open at 11:00 a.m. When I left my home this morning at 8:00 a.m. to take my daily walk, folks were already beginning to que up at the Arena doors. I was surprised because it is 41 degrees outside and quite windy, which makes it feel colder. An hour later, as I was returning to home, I decided to walk directly past Key Arena. There were now several hundred people, including young black children, lined up and more and more folks were streaming in from all directions to join the line. If I wait until 11:00 a.m. I may not get in but that is okay.

Report: DoJ Served Major Labels over 'Total Music' Initiative
By Eliot Van Buskirk
February 07, 2008 | 9:43:12 AM

The major labels, eager to wrest control over digital music pricing and distribution from Apple, are considering a project called Total Music that would allow them to charge device manufacturers, cellphone service providers, and other businesses $5 per month for the right to let their customers listen to free music. At this point, Total Music is being championed by Universal Music Group and Sony/BMG, but the other two majors could be interested too.

But there's at least one problem with the plan. When an entire industry colludes to set terms and pricing, the Department of Justice tends to get interested for antitrust reasons.

I googled my name yesterday, the real one not Prometheus 6, out of curiousity. I ran across a "classic post" from rec.music.hiphop in defense of gangsta rap. It was written in 1998 and is interesting to me because of the subtle liberties taken in transcribing "The People We Are." Still gave proper credit, though.

For the record, here's the official text.

The reason for a search is not always made clear. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said it has tracked complaints from several members, including Udy, whose laptops have been seized and their contents copied before usually being returned days later, said Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE....Gurley said none of the travelers were charged with a crime....

Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches
U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2008; Page A01

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

How many online social networks do you belong to?

I joined Orkut, just to see what the hell it was...which was boring and pointless. No fundamental difference between Orkut and Usenet, except Orkut was in Portuguese. 

I joined LinkedIn because it seemed more like a tool, and I'm just figuring out what it is good for. 

I get the sense that most folks just join up on any network they get an invitation to, just in case. Which brought about a need to manage all those accounts because you know damn well you're only checking one or two of the six organizations you've joined. You may not even remember which ones you've joined. I think I have an account on Multiply...

I don't join them things willy-nilly because I don't know, and therefore don't trust the operators thereof . The relationship data they gather is way too valuable...hell I could think of uses for it.

I got scheduled maintenance by the web host coming up tonight.

YOU are not having issues accessing the site but I am. I am, in fact, having issues accessing a LOT of places. It creeps me out to be unable to connect to P6 until the third reload, then the whole page pops up in the browser at once, no render time at all.

In fact, I'm not able to connect to my email servers at all...the problem seems to beon my ISP saide, not the web host.

I made comment previews mandatory so some dick that registered for the second time from averfame.org specifically to spam the joint has at least a few issues.

Mark This Day
02.07.08 -- 1:24PM
By David Kurtz

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is back on the Hill today, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. Paul Kiel is covering it at TPMmuckraker.

So far, he's dropped two big bombshells. DOJ will not be investigating:

(1) whether the waterboarding, now admitted to by the White House, was a crime; or

(2) whether the Administration's warrantless wiretapping was illegal.

His rationale? Both programs had been signed off on in advance as legal by the Justice Department.

Cynics may argue that those aren't bombshells at all, that the Bush Administration would never investigate itself in these matters. Perhaps so. But this is a case where cynicism is itself dangerous.

We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not.

It is as brazen a defense of the unitary executive as anything put forward by the Administration in the last seven years, and it comes from an attorney general who was supposed to be not just a more professional, but a more moderate, version of Alberto Gonzales (Thanks to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer for caving on the Mukasey nomination.).

President Bush has now laid down his most aggressive challenge to the very constitutional authority of Congress. It is a naked assertion of executive power. The founders would have called it tyrannical. His cards are now all on the table. This is no bluff.

Late Update: TPM Reader RF:

David Kurtz's "Mark This Day" blurb misses the most important point -- it's not just that the Attorney General's position is that a DOJ Order makes the subject activity legal but that, as Nadler brought out, there is now no recourse to a judicial test, either criminal (through refusal to prosecute) or civil (through the state secrets privilege based solely on a DOJ affidavit). The DOJ is entitled to take whatever position it wants, however self-serving and unitary, but now there is no avenue for judicial review and so that is the end of the story. That is the important point here.

N. Korea hasn't received promised oil, U.S. official says
Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 06, 2008 08:05:01 PM

WASHINGTON — North Korea has slowed the dismantling of its nuclear reactor because it hasn't received the amount of fuel oil it was promised, State Department envoy Christopher Hill said Wednesday.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hill confirmed that North Korea's delay in dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear plant was in response to what it perceives as slow delivery of the oil. North Korea has gone from three shifts day at the reactor site to a single shift.

"There is a perception among the North Koreans that they have moved faster on disablement than we have on fuel oil," said Hill, the assistant secretary of state who's leading six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea.

Report: College access gap looms in Fla.
Minority students' access to colleges in Florida could take a major hit in the next few years if the state doesn't improve funding, a new report said.
BY OSCAR CORRAL

Budget cuts and chronic underfunding have left Florida's university system on the brink of a crisis that could leave tens of thousands of students without access to a college education, according to a report by a group that monitors state universities.

The report by ENLACE Florida says the recent decision by the state Board of Governors to freeze growth in freshman enrollment for three years, followed by the possibility of enrollment cuts, ''will create a significant college access gap.'' ENLACE Florida is a network of state university faculty members that researches and promotes college access for minorities.

ENLACE Executive Director Paul Dosal said the consequences of the state's tightfistedness with higher education are now becoming evident.

See if you can comment on what he says instead of who he is.

"White America is maturing," Jackson said. "To see Barack win in Idaho and the Northwest states, we see white America overcoming what I call color and gender shock."

Jackson continued: "Blacks often vote for whites. But seldom do whites vote for blacks across the line. But they're doing so now and that is a good sign. They're moving from racial battlegrounds to economic common ground and on to moral higher ground."

(though he don't always make it easy, I know...)

"I have an appreciation for and communicate with both candidates," Jackson said. "There needs to be someone to steer both camps into a safety zone."

Here's the official job listing so nobody has to blow up Pam's mailbox.

Let's not get carried away with ourselves, okay? 

White males look like swing vote in Democratic nomination
By JONATHAN TILOVE
Newhouse
Published on: 02/07/08

WASHINGTON — This year, for the first time, the Democratic Party will nominate a candidate for president who is not a white male. But the results from Super Tuesday contests coast to coast suggest that white males, like a sovereign who gets to name his successor, may be the decisive swing vote in this historic battle between a black man and a white woman.

Mitt quit.

More unemployment in prison towns, too. Can't have that...

Crack-Sentencing Reductions Decried
Mukasey: Gang Members Would Be Let Go
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2008; A02

The Bush administration wants Congress to thwart a plan to give thousands of federal crack cocaine offenders a chance to marginally reduce prison sentences that are a hundred times more severe than those meted out for powder cocaine offenses.

In a statement prepared for his scheduled appearance before the House Judiciary CommitteeAttorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that unless Congress acts, "1,600 convicted crack dealers, many of them violent gang members, will be eligible for immediate release into communities nationwide" under a decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. today,

Dr. John Buse, the vice-chairman of the study’s steering committee and the president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, described what was required to get blood sugar levels low, as measured by a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which was supposed to be at 6 percent or less.

“Many were taking four or five shots of insulin a day,” he said. “Some were using insulin pumps. Some were monitoring their blood sugar seven or eight times a day.”

They also took pills to lower their blood sugar, in addition to the pills they took for other medical conditions and to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. They also came to a medical clinic every two months and had frequent telephone conversations with clinic staff.

Those assigned to the less stringent blood sugar control, an A1C level of 7.0 to 7.9 percent, had an easier time of it. They measured their blood sugar once or twice a day, went to the clinic every four months and took fewer drugs or lower doses.

So it was quite a surprise when the patients who had worked so hard to get their blood sugar low had a significantly higher death rate, the study investigators said.

Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths
By GINA KOLATA

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.

The researchers announced that they were abruptly halting that part of the study, whose surprising results call into question how the disease, which affects 21 million Americans, should be managed.

Swear to declassify every illegally classified document the Bushstas decided to hide.

Oh, and don't be Billary. 

The Cult of Secrecy at the White House

There’s no end to President Bush’s slyness in subverting new Congressional law and clinging to the secrecy that has been the administration’s executive cloak. When a vital measure to strengthen the tattered freedom-of-information law won unanimous approval by both houses of Congress, the president was forced to soften his stand and quietly sign it into law on New Year’s Eve.

But, of course, even as open-government groups celebrated, the White House had another trick up its sleeve.

A bit of fine print inserted in the president’s new budget proposal would gut a major provision of the law — the empowerment of a new ombudsman to mediate disclosure disputes and prod agencies to end disgraceful runarounds in which legitimate citizen requests have been deep-sixed without a trace for a decade and more.

Professor Kim posted a couple of YouTubisms containing an interview with Rep. Maxine Waters, by one of the BlogHer crew. I have not watched it yet, but in time-honored blogging tradition I'm gonna say something about the interview anyway.

I really feel personal loyalty...we worked together, we kept our word to each other...is a valid reason to stick with folks. I'm a lot more likely to hate on the CBC for their legislative record than their endorsements. And going forward I'll be judging them by how much of this reality they process and take into account.

But the fact remains that the purported surplus on which Mr. Bush based his tax-cutting agenda was always something of a mirage, and the president has never been willing to adjust his agenda to the grim new fiscal reality. Yesterday's promise of a small surplus by 2012 is once again premised on omitting likely costs (zero is budgeted for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) and by assuming cuts to domestic spending that are unachievable politically and, in large part, unwise as a matter of policy.