Prometheus 6

Rhetoric: High; Anxiety: Low
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — The warnings from President Bush and his senior aides have grown more urgent over the last few weeks, now that Congress has let a temporary wiretapping law expire. But there is little sign of anxiety among many intelligence and phone industry officials.

At the Pentagon and the military’s Central Command, senior officials gave no indication of any heightened concern about the lapsing of the law. In Congress, staff members with access to updated briefings said they had not been given any specific information about lost intelligence that might endanger national security. And in the telecommunications industry, executives said it was largely business as usual.

Is a Lean Economy Turning Mean?
By PETER S. GOODMAN

OAKLAND, Calif. — NICOLE FLENNAUGH has a college degree, office experience and the modest expectation that, somewhere in this city on the eastern lip of San Francisco Bay, someone will want to hire her.

But Ms. Flennaugh, 36, a widow, cannot secure steady, decent-paying work to support herself and her two daughters. Nearly two years after she was laid off as a customer service representative at the Educational Testing Service, and even after applying for dozens of full-time jobs, she has been getting by with occasional stints as an office temp.

“You’re used to making $17 an hour with benefits, and now you have to take any job for $8 an hour,” Ms. Flennaugh says. On a recent afternoon, she sat in front of a computer terminal at an employment center in a gritty part of town, scrolling dejectedly through online job listings while sending another batch of applications into the ether.

“I’ve literally sat and cried, but my friends with double degrees are doing worse,” she says. “It’s the economy. It’s really bad.”

Now, it’s getting tougher — particularly for those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder, and especially for African-Americans like Ms. Flennaugh. As the economy slows and perhaps slides deeper into a recession that may already be under way, communities like this — cities that have long struggled with a shortage of jobs — see work becoming scarcer still.

Winning the trust of Jewish Democratic voters is all the more difficult for Mr. Obama because of the tenuous relations between blacks and Jews. He addressed that very issue at the Cleveland debate when he used the answer to the Farrakhan question to call for a renewal of the ties between blacks and Jews.

Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters
By NEELA BANERJEE

As he battles for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama is trying to strengthen his support among Jewish voters and in doing so, is navigating one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics.

The challenge of meeting the concerns of the Jewish electorate, a cornerstone of the Democratic base, was evident Tuesday when Mr. Obama was asked at the Democratic debate in Cleveland about Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has endorsed him.

Planned Parenthood’s Two-Faced Racism Exposed
Posted by Joe on Mar 1st, 2008

Recently, a Planned Parenthood executive in Idaho was caught on tape by an anti-abortion group agreeing to a contribution from someone posing as an avowed racist who wanted to increase abortions for African American women so as to increase the chances for college of the caller’s supposed white children. The PP executive accepted the offer of a contribution with eagerness. It is hard to know which is the worst aspect of this story to comment on. On the one hand, we have a white executive not criticizing an aggressively racist philosophy presented on the phone apparently in order to secure a nice contribution. On the other hand, we have an anti-abortion group intentionally and hypocritically making use of a racist-framed call in order to generate bad publicity for an organization that has played a key role in working for the rights of women in the United States. In neither case do we see real white concern for the problems of everyday racism faced by black women in the United States. The insensitivity of both sides is nearly incomprehensible. Planned Parenthood’s state and national offices issued apologies for the racist incident relatively quickly. The fact is, this kind of “sting” could probably have been conducted at any white liberal non-profit and gotten the same result. The point is the pervasive two-faced racism, especially in “backstage” settings where only whites are present, not the racially selective reproductive policies of Planned Parenthood.

Me, I focus on the anti-abortion group. See, I read the transcript of the call...you know that bad habit I have of judging folks as humans...

I'm feeling vaguely repelled by all things electronic this morning.

The War On Paultards: Go Outside

The freaks are running scared. This is a good thing.

---
In the ongoing War On Paultards, this is the first major video salvo aimed directly at the heart of Paultard country - their true homes in Second Life. In the dark and mysterious tradition of PsyOps, it aims to convince the Paultard that s/he ought not spend all of his/her time fomenting 're[love]utions' in his 'Second Life', rather go out into 'Real Life' for a change. Go. Outside. Experience. 'Real Life'.

Added: February 28, 2008

The phrasing, if I remember correctly, was, 'I publicly call on [all] [responsible] black leaders to repudiate the vicious whatever spread by the Black Enemy of the Month." It was all the rage for a while there. Black folks stopped responding when Abe Foxman started scheduling weekly "public call" press conferences.

The concept was refreshed this week in the Ohio Democratic debate. Marjorie Valbrun decided to nip it in the bud.

We could let it go at that (really...it's one of those "we yield the floor" joints) except I want to add that it's really silly in this case. It may be they felt compelled to give it one more shot because the Brother Minister is dying and the N.O.I. will go with him.

U.S. Embrace of Musharraf Irks Pakistanis
By DAVID ROHDE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Bush administration’s continued backing of President Pervez Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters this month, is fueling a new level of frustration in Pakistan with the United States.

That support has rankled the public, politicians and journalists here, inciting deep anger at what is perceived as American meddling and the refusal of Washington to embrace the new, democratically elected government. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, said Thursday during a Senate panel hearing that the United States would maintain its close ties to Mr. Musharraf.

There are ideas we shouldn't even pretend have substance. This bill doesn't help. Assuming Congress has nothing better to do, I guess it couldn't hurt, though.

If it’s not the first rule of Republican politics, it should be: never, ever, ever underestimate anybody whose last name is Clinton. Not Bill, not Hillary. Not Chelsea, not even George. They’re very good at what they do, and when they’re about to be written off for dead, that’s when they’re at their very best.

Okay, props for the George Clinton reference. 

For their part, the Obama wonks tend to be inductive--working piecemeal from a series of real-world observations. One typical Goolsbee brainchild is something called an automatic tax return. The idea is that, if you had no tax deductions or freelance income the previous year, the IRS would send you a tax return that was already filled out. As long as you accepted the government's accounting, you could just sign it and mail it back. Goolsbee estimates this small innovation could save hundreds of millions of man-hours spent filling out tax forms, and billions of dollars in tax-preparation fees.

Think of the contrast here as the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers. Reich and Galston are the kinds of people who'd sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955.

Amusing. The (really, really) short form of the article is here.

There are no perfect accounting rules, and forcing banks to consolidate everything might be unreasonable. But banks should have done more to let investors know the nature of the risks that were being taken. If the accountants had forced better disclosures, it is at least possible that managements would have spent more time evaluating the risks they were taking, and then made wiser business decisions.

...they'd be unemployed. 

The rules require that companies make some disclosures about off-balance-sheet vehicles even if they do not put them on their financial statements. They should discuss factors like the nature of the risk they face and the maximum loss that is possible. But those disclosures have often not been made, or have been made in such a general way as to be meaningless.

Why Surprises Still Lurk After Enron
By FLOYD NORRIS

Should we blame the accountants?

Surprises multiplied as the subprime problem of 2007 grew into the credit disruption of 2008. It is one thing to have a bank report losses because some of the loans on its balance sheet went bad. That is part of the business of banking. It is something else, however, for a bank to report a multibillion-dollar loss from taking some risk that had never been mentioned in its financial statements.

Haven’t we seen this movie before, involving a company called Enron? Didn’t Congress pass a law requiring that the problem of off-balance-sheet mysteries be solved? 

“After Enron, with Sarbanes-Oxley, we tried legislatively to make it clear that there has to be some transparency with regard to off-balance-sheet entities,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate securities subcommittee, said this week. “We thought that was already corrected and the rules were clear and we would not be discovering new things every day.”

It's still damn near always a Black man on the wrong end of a fussilade of bullets. And in this specific case, Undercover Mike still emptied his weapon, reloaded and emptied it again, all without being sure he fired at all.

Yes, There’s the Trial, but There Are Also Broader Statistics
By CLYDE HABERMAN

Inevitably, emotions ran high this week with the start of the trial in the 50-shot police killing of Sean Bell. That much was obvious in protests outside the courthouse in Queens. It was obvious in angry comments posted on blogs.

For some New Yorkers, the entire Police Department stands in the dock with the three indicted detectives, branded as out of control.

Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to step back from the Bell case for a dispassionate look at some numbers. They show that notwithstanding disasters like the shooting of unarmed men like Mr. Bell or Amadou Diallo, New York City police officers as a group are more restrained than ever in drawing their guns.

Judith Jamison to Retire in 2011
By JENNIFER DUNNING

Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, announced on Thursday that she would retire in 2011. She plans to maintain her connection to the company, which she joined as a dancer in 1965, as artistic director emerita.

Appointed just weeks after the death of Alvin Ailey, the troupe’s founder, in December 1989, Ms. Jamison (pronounced JAM-ih-son) continued building the organization into what is arguably the world’s most successful modern-dance troupe. Under her leadership, the company built a gleaming new $56 million headquarters at Ninth Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan.

She informed the Ailey dancers and stage crew late Thursday afternoon in a backstage studio at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where the troupe is performing as part of a 26-city American tour. In New York, the announcement was made simultaneously by Sharon Gersten Luckman, the company’s executive director, to staff members gathered in a fifth-floor studio at the Ailey building.

if Mr. Obama becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, he is sure to face an onslaught from Republicans and their allies that will be very different in tone and intensity from what he has faced so far.

In the last few days alone, Senator John McCain has mocked a statement Mr. Obama made about Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Tennessee Republican Party, identifying him with his middle name as Barack Hussein Obama, suggested that his foreign policy would be shaped by people who are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.

The Republican National Committee issued a statement on Wednesday invoking a questionnaire Mr. Obama filled out when running for Senate in 2004 to show that he once opposed cracking down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

So what?

I refer you to the cops' first attempt to explain this disaster.

Lieutenant Napoli’s account makes clear that he believed the men in Mr. Bell’s car knew he was a police officer because he had made eye contact with one of them. The report says Lieutenant Napoli could not articulate why he believed that.

That's bizarre enough, but...

The sergeant, Michael Wheeler, later told investigators that both men appeared seriously injured and likely to die, according to the records. A plainclothes officer stood close by, his pistol still trained on the two men in the car. A third man lay on the street nearby.

Minutes later, the shooting scene on Liverpool Street in Jamaica, Queens, was choked with patrol cars and the scrum of officials that follows a police shooting. A captain ordered another uniformed sergeant, Donald Kipp, to locate and inspect the weapons of the men involved in the shooting. In all, five plainclothes officers had fired a total of 50 bullets.

But one after another, in conversations with Sergeant Kipp or Sergeant Wheeler, the men said they could not say how many shots they had fired. Two said they were unsure whether they had even fired at all, including a detective who investigators later learned had fired 31 shots, emptying his 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol, reloading and emptying it again during the frenzied barrage.

31 SHOTS AND A RELOAD, AND HE WASN"T SURE HE FIRED AT ALL. That's Detective "Undercover" Oliver.

I want to see how much of this makes it into the trial. The Times doesn't say they mentioned Lt. Napoli's telepathic powers at all.

Top Officer at Queens Club Testifies in Sean Bell Case
By MICHAEL WILSON

The group of police officers and detectives involved in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell outside a strip club in Queens had first planned to work elsewhere that night, but changed their plan when they could not find the drug dealer they wanted to arrest, the group’s commanding officer testified on Thursday.

The commanding officer, Lt. Gary Napoli, said the officers knew of a dealer, in the nearby 105th Precinct, whom they had been unable to arrest earlier. “My first thought was to try to pick up a lost subject,” he said in testimony in State Supreme Court in Queens. But the arrest was scuttled: “That individual we wanted to meet with was not available,” Lieutenant Napoli said.

The lieutenant’s testimony is of great interest in the trial of three detectives accused in the killing of Mr. Bell on Nov. 25, 2006, outside the Club Kalua, a topless bar in the 103rd Precinct, in Jamaica.

Report Details Limitations Faced By Federal Inspectors General
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008; A17

Inspectors general appointed to uncover waste, fraud and misconduct in federal agencies often lead underfunded and poorly staffed units and are not as independent as the public has been led to believe, according to a study released yesterday by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

The study noted that more than half the 64 inspectors general are not appointed by the president or subject to Senate confirmation hearings. They are appointed by agency heads who in many cases control the watchdogs' budgets and have on occasion retaliated against them over unfavorable reports by cutting funding or denying promotions to staff members, the report said.

I'm sorry but this is insane.

Another bill would scrap the state's ban on carrying concealed weapons in bars and in restaurants that serve liquor. The measure would make it a misdemeanor for the carrier of a hidden gun to drink while in a restaurant or bar, but in the real world, who would know?

The Shot-and-a-Beer Crowd
Virginia lawmakers want to have guns everywhere.
Friday, February 29, 2008; A18

ALTHOUGH they paid lip service to honoring the victims of last spring's massacre at Virginia Tech, state lawmakers in Richmond have been busy dishonoring their memory. The General Assembly, long in thrall to the gun lobby, has forged ahead with bills to make it easier to carry concealed weapons in cars, bars and restaurants. Never mind that police and relatives of the Virginia Tech victims oppose such legislation. In its wisdom, the legislature has decided that citizens will benefit from a proliferation of hidden weapons -- here, there and everywhere.

Shorter Krauthammer: Since money is speech, bribery is protected by the First Amendment.

In Defense of Lobbying
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 29, 2008; A19

Everyone knows the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. How many remember that, in addition, the First Amendment protects a fifth freedom -- to lobby?

Of course it doesn't use the word lobby. It calls it the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.

To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you'd think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding, a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants.

Changing customer views will be a huge challenge. Sheri Coulter, a 42-year-old secretary in Flower Mound, Texas, worked at a Victoria's Secret store three years ago. "It was like pulling teeth to get the women our age to come in there," she says. "In our 40s and up, we are sexy -- just not the same sexy a college gal is."

For a time, she says, the store where she worked stopped carrying sizes 38 or larger, embarrassing some older customers who were turned away. 

Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy
By AMY MERRICK
February 29, 2008; Page B1

Victoria's Secret likes to ask in its marketing, "What is sexy?" Now the lingerie chain is trying to figure out, "What's too sexy?"

The chief executive of the brand known for its provocative televised fashion shows and alluring stores made an admission yesterday. In her mind, the brand has become "too sexy" -- or at least the wrong kind of sexy.

"We have so much gotten off our heritage," CEO Sharen Jester Turney said in a conference call with analysts. Responding to the past year's weak sales and focus-group feedback, she said, "We will return to an ultra-feminine lingerie brand to meet [customer] needs and expectations."...

In case you need it.

The source, who asked not to identified by name because he did not have authorization to speak about the matter, said Clinton 's political director, Guy Cecil, had forcefully raised the possibility of a courtroom battle.

But Adrienne Elrod, Clinton's top Texas spokeswoman, said campaign and party officials had merely discussed election night procedures and that the campaign was merely seeking a written agreement in advance. She could not elaborate on the details of the agreement the Clinton campaign is seeking. 

Clinton aides threatened lawsuit over Texas caucuses, officials say
Jay Root | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 28, 2008 11:53:56 PM

AUSTIN — The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for next Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Clinton threatened to sue over the party's complicated delegate selection process.

Moreover, insurers say, co-payments and deductibles are generally lower in private plans than in traditional Medicare. In data submitted to the government, insurers estimated that their beneficiaries paid, on average, $49 a month in such costs, or 42 percent of what they would have paid in traditional Medicare.

But the Government Accountability Office said the experience of particular beneficiaries might not match the average, so their out-of-pocket costs could substantially exceed those in traditional Medicare. 

...among Medicare plans with out-of-pocket limits, 29 percent exclude the cost of some cancer drugs, 23 percent exclude the cost of some mental health services and 21 percent exclude home health care expenses.

Private Medicare Plans’ Cost Questioned
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — Private Medicare plans often cost beneficiaries more than the traditional government-run Medicare program, Congressional investigators say.

Many private plans advertise extra benefits and low costs. But in a report to be issued Thursday, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, says that many people in private plans face higher costs for home health care, nursing homes and some hospital stays.

Survey Finds Teenagers Ignorant on Basic History and Literature Questions
By SAM DILLON

Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492.

The survey results, released on Tuesday, demonstrate that a significant proportion of teenagers live in “stunning ignorance” of history and literature, said the group that commissioned it, Common Core.

The organization describes itself as a new research and advocacy organization that will press for more teaching of the liberal arts in public schools.

The group says President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind, has impoverished public school curriculums by holding schools accountable for student scores on annual tests in reading and mathematics, but in no other subjects.

You should be in the military, a prison guard or in jail.

That's YOU, country boy...us urban types are going to be programming and such. 

1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 is behind bars, but that one in 100 black women is.

If they make this rule change, I'll never feel safe in a national park south of the Mason-Dixon line again. Black people in national parks will find themselves shot "accidentally" in ever greater numbers.

Yes, neoconfederates and racists are that crazy.

"There is no need to walk around a national park with a loaded weapon," said Bryan Faehner, a former park ranger now with the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. "It's a political maneuver by the NRA. They are using this as a political tool to build up support heading into the elections."

He added that "it's impossible for park rangers to know the difference between someone walking on a trail with a gun, and someone walking on a trail with a gun who is a poacher. This is a management nightmare for the Park Service." 

Gun Rules May Be Eased in U.S. Parks
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2008; A15

Visitors to some national parks would be able to start packing heat along with their tents and picnic baskets under a proposal being considered by the Interior Department that would ease restrictions on loaded firearms in the parks.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said last week that officials would review long-standing regulations that require firearms in most national parks to be unloaded and inoperable -- through the use of trigger locks, for example, or storage in a car trunk or a special case. The department intends to propose new rules by April 30.

The review pits the National Rifle Association and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers against park rangers and advocates who decry the move as election-year posturing that could make the parks more dangerous.