Prometheus 6

I thought it was Bush all this time. The suddenly, when I saw this picture

...I recognized him.

You think I'm joking? Who else would actually fund something like this? That's why I have to approve of Jane Harman's caution.

"I have had a firsthand experience with the trust-me theory of law from this administration," said Harman, citing the 2005 disclosure of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, which included warrantless eavesdropping on calls and e-mails between people in the United States and overseas. "I won't make the same mistake. . . . I want to see the legal underpinnings for the whole program."

Thompson called DHS's release Thursday of the office's procedures and a civil liberties impact assessment "a good start." But, he said, "We still don't know whether the NAO will pass constitutional muster since no legal framework has been provided."

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.
Congressional Critics Want More Assurances of Legality
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A03

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

“What happens the next time — and there will be a next time — we have a crack epidemic?” asked Senator Michael F. Nozzolio of Seneca Falls, who is chairman of a committee that oversees crime and prisons, according to The Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

What the fuck, you planning another one? Got C.I.A. connections? The meth epidemic isn't enough for you?

Let me tell you, Black folks did not invent crack. More, if the goddamn federal government hadn't supported the mass importation of cheap cocaine by allowing it on the Iran/Contra return flights there would have BEEN no crack epidemic. Crystal meth was made from cough syrup.

I hope you see the connections.

This week, the Legislature and the governor agreed to keep the four unneeded prisons open at a cost of $33.5 million next year. If they are kept open much beyond that, they will need $30 million in capital repairs to keep them in shape, according to the corrections department.

And who's paying for that shit? And how is this functionally different than welfare?

Less Crime: No Reason to Shut Prisons
By JIM DWYER

For nearly a decade, one of New York City’s major exports — criminals — has been in decline, a result of less crime. In the alternative universe of state government, this is the textbook definition of catastrophe. A steady supply of criminals is the foundation of the economy of large swaths of New York State, which has 70 prisons that employ about 20,000 people as correction officers.

The prisons are also a source of political power to upstate Republicans because the inmates are counted as permanent residents when legislative districts are drawn — even though they cannot vote and their actual homes may be hundreds of miles away.

So, why is it that incredibly talented people of color who achieve greatness in the physical arts, are deemed so either by ‘instinct’ or ‘power’ by their white peers and critics?   Intelligence, dedication, discipline, and luck; the true components, are rarely cited.

U.S. Army Set to Recruit Citizens
The Nation (Nairobi)
6 April 2008 |
By Angelo Izama
Kampala

Ugandans who want a career in the United States military, can sign up at the annual convention of the Uganda North American Association, organisers say.

American military recruiters will set up a booth at this year's UNAA convention in Orlando, Florida, and seek out professional Ugandans, said Lt. Frank Musisi, himself an officer in the US Army.

Lt. Musisi, who comes from Kalangala District on Lake Victoria, is the current president of UNAA. He said the US military would also advise Ugandans on the "proper channels" to follow in enlisting. The announcement, which is also on the UNAA website (www.unaa.net), is set to cause a rush to this year's convention that takes place from August 29 to September 1.

Reformers were dealing with “a constitutional limbo in which slavery as a legal concept was prohibited by the Constitution, but no statute made an act of enslavement explicitly illegal.”

What Emancipation Didn’t Stop After All
By JANET MASLIN

In “Slavery by Another Name” Douglas A. Blackmon eviscerates one of our schoolchildren’s most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War. Mr. Blackmon unearths shocking evidence that the practice persisted well into the 20th century. And he is not simply referring to the virtual bondage of black sharecroppers unable to extricate themselves economically from farming.

He describes free men and women forced into industrial servitude, bound by chains, faced with subhuman living conditions and subject to physical torture. That plight was horrific. But until 1951, it was not outside the law.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II author: Douglas A. Blackmon asin: 0385506252

In response to such points made in public comments, the administration shrank even further from an ethic of reciprocity. Caring for the vulnerable, it explained, "does not provide a direct benefit to the community."

That REALLY explains a lot.

A War on Community Service
By Noah Zatz
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A15

One of the latest victims of the Bush administration's continuing assault on ordinary language is the term "community service." You might have thought that community service was about serving others, but apparently what it's really about is serving oneself.

That's the message from the Department of Health and Human Services, delivered in new regulations governing work requirements in a program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. TANF provides cash and services to families that are temporarily unable to make ends meet.

The work requirements of the program were sold to the public as a "social contract" when President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress created TANF. The community supports people in their hour of need and people receiving assistance give back to the community. That's why Congress wrote "community service" into the law as one way to satisfy work requirements.

But that high-minded talk about "reciprocity" has gone out the window. According to the new regulations, community service is just another job-training program.

Belated Action
Relatives of neglected D.C. girls go to court -- months after their deaths.
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A14

THE FATHER of one of the slain daughters of Banita Jacks is seeking $25 million in damages from the District. Attorneys for other relatives of the four girls are exploring similar claims of negligence. There is no question that the city failed in its duty to protect these precious lives, but there is something unsettling in these demands. We can't help thinking: If only these family members had shown more interest in these girls when it might have made a difference.

Iran Top Threat To Iraq, U.S. Says
Focus on Al-Qaeda Now Diminishing
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A01

Last week's violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials.

Evidence of an increase in Iranian weapons, training and direction for the Shiite militias that battled U.S. and Iraqi security forces in those two cities has fixed new U.S. attention on what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday called Tehran's "malign" influence, the officials said.

The intensified focus on Iran coincides with diminished emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the leading justification for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq.

THE FACTS

As documented in previous posts, Hillary Clinton gave exaggerated, partly erroneous accounts of her Bosnia trip on at least three different occasions. She gave the most colorful version in a St. Patrick's Day speech when she described running across the tarmac at Tuzla airport with her head down to avoid sniper fire. It was not until March 24 that Clinton acknowledged that she "misspoke," saying that she had made "a minor blip."

Here are the principal factual errors that Bill Clinton made Thursday:

Ward Connerly's Anti-Affirmative Action campaign is defeated in Oklahoma!

In a significant blow to a national effort to curtail equal opportunity in America, backers of a proposed amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would end equal access and opportunity programs in the state have asked to withdraw the measure from consideration. The move comes after supporters of the so-called Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative – spearheaded by Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) as part of a national crusade against affirmative action – failed to collect the signatures needed to get the proposal on this November's ballot.

In conceding defeat, Connerly characterized the ACRI's efforts in Oklahoma as a "miscalculation." "The hope is that this is the beginning of the end of Mr. Connerly's flawed campaign," said John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). "The attempts by supporters of this initiative to manipulate the democratic process never garnered support from the people of Oklahoma, who have instead stood up to defend access to equal opportunity for all."

Not only does this story NEED to get out, they linked Black and Missing but not Forgotten, whose mission I totally support.

Cases of maternal homicide involving minority women are underreported and underpublicized.

According to the CDC, black women have a maternal homicide risk about seven times that of white women. Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.

Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide
April 11, 2008
(CBS) By CBSNews.com's Lindsay Goldwert

When Laci Peterson became the symbol of maternal homicide in the mass media and in the law books (the Violence Against Unborn Children Act is also known as the Laci and Connor's Law), it put a white face on the horrendous crime of maternal homicide. In reality, that face is actually young, and often, black.

Reality has been further complicated lately with two more high-profile cases of white pregnant women being killed by their boyfriends: Maria Lauterbach, a pregnant Marine whose body was found alongside her fetus' charred remains; and the guilty verdict against Bobby Cutts, a former Ohio police officer convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend and disposing of her body in the woods. Both stories dominated the airwaves earlier this year.

Lauterbach's accused killer, also a Marine, was captured Thursday in Mexico after a three-month manhunt.

Left behind in much of the media attention is a slew of similar cases involving black women.

The Asymmetry of Racism
Posted by Jessie on Apr 7th, 2008

Many whites, even white anti-racists, want to place themselves at the heroic center of any narrative about racism or equate their experiences with those of people of color, and thus misunderstand the asymmetry of racism.

Last year, the news carried a number of reports that genealogical researchers uncovered a connection between the families of Al Sharpton, African American civil rights leader, and Strom Thurmond, former U.S. Senator and ardent supporter of segregation. While Sharpton was open to and intrigued by this revelation, Thurmond’s descendants’ response has been denial and, then ultimately, silence. In the wake of his discovery that his family had once been owned by Strom Thurmond’s family, Al Sharpton said:

“I wrote my name and … had to come to terms with the fact that this was a name given to me by slaveholders.”

I had to replace my laptop. The old one died about a month ago.

This is the first computer I've ever bought that I DIDN'T start fooling around with it as soon as I got it home. I actually noticed the fact. I thought I was growing up.

Then when I booted the beast (Compaq, 2 gigs of memory, 160 gig hard drive, NVidia graphics, Athlon 64 bit processor) I remembered.

Vista.

Vista Home Premium, in fact. Gah. Just different enough from XP Professional to be annoying, DRM built in and all the excessive eye candy you could ever want. Or not want.

I think I'll install the minimum software I need for next week. When I get back from DC I think I'll see how Linux fits.

All the time, right? Heh.

I cycle through different blog sets and it's been a while since the Women of Color feminist blogs were in the loop. I keep going back to them because they bring perspectives I can't begin to approach.

And now I find brownfemipower is gone. She herself still walks the Earth but her site, her writing is gone. This brings me no joy. I rooted around a bit to find out why. Apparently it started here with a singularly foolish display of entitlement (when the proprietor tells you a term is offense, you really shouldn't use it again and make a point of pointing it out) and ended with BFP wiping her site.

Except it may not be over yet. And I'm still not sure why BFP bailed.

Slate has a 10 page slide show of which this is page one. The picture is linked to the slideshow.

In his recent speech on race, Barack Obama spoke about the legacy of racial hatred and resentment in America. One of the events he probably had in mind was the controversy over busing that erupted in Boston in the mid-1970s. A single photograph epitomized for Americans the meaning and horror of the crisis. On April 5, 1976, at an anti-busing rally at City Hall Plaza, Stanley Forman, a photographer for the Boston Herald-American, captured a teenager as he transformed the American flag into a weapon directed at the body of a black man. It is the ultimate act of desecration, performed in the year of the bicentennial and in the shadows of Boston's Old State House. Titled The Soiling of Old Glory, the photograph appeared in newspapers around the country and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977. The image shattered the illusion that racial segregation and hatred were strictly a Southern phenomenon. For many, Boston now seemed little different than Birmingham.

In 2006, when Deval Patrick became the first black governor of Massachusetts, the Boston Globe expressed hope that his inauguration would "finally wash away the shameful stain of that day in 1976." Last June, however, a Supreme Court ruling forbade school districts from assigning students based on their race, and Patrick's administration has been forced to find ways to avoid dismantling desegregation programs throughout Massachusetts. The issue, and the photograph, continue to haunt Boston, and the nation.

No Love For Tavis?

This morning Tom Joyner announced Tavis Smiley has quit the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Tavis has come under a lot of fire from Blacks for directly criticizing Obama and making statements that appear to Obama supporters, to be attacking Obama, even when Tavis didn't mention Obama's name.

Darkstar is not very kind to Tavis over this. Calls him a punk.

I didn't hear the announcement, don't have any background. I think, though, his brand has been damaged by his opposition to Obama. And I can't help but wonder how the loss of respect will impact his travelling Covenant show.

Larry Johnson Is A Douchebag
Published April 11, 2008

And Glenn Reynolds loves him for it (like a moth to a flame, brothers in arms). This is what a small yet vocal sector of the liberal blogosphere has turned into. Nice.

LATER: Oh my Ghod, it's an InstaLaunch! (old head will remember both the term and the tactic).

I grant Duh Perfesser has a sense of humor

ANOTHER UPDATE: "Anyone InstaPundit links to is servicing Republicans." And now I've linked to that, so . . . .

But only the initial, approving link counts. Anything else isn't a link, it's a snark.

Little did I suspect that You waited five years to arrest this guy? would draw a spirited (and, to me, as flawed by its logic and its existence) defense of Uncle Clarence Thomas which appears to be evolving into a discussion of Black Conservatives, conservative Black folk and such-like.

There's this ritual where folks feel they have to insult you to establish their opposition to your position. God only knows why I try to get past that nonsense all the time. Almost all the time. But there's the potential for a good conversation in this one.

New topic: 

I do think there's utility in the occasional wide-open discussion. And since I'm actually in programming mode more than analytical mode (which sucks because I have done any programming this week) I'm going to do something about that. So far, I've coded up restrictions on problematic comments and spam...automatically closing comments after 30 days, the devowelling filter, and a couple of tricks I will not describe. I think I need some functionality to open things up a bit.

First of all, apologies to Racism Review for lifting the whole post. I can't come up with a summary that will do it justice. Secondly, I found the first research paper mentioned (“‘I Am Not A Racist But’; Mapping White College Students’ Racial Ideology in the U.S.A.,”) sitting on the net, pretty as you please. I'm not linking it because you're supposed to subscribe to Discourse and Society to get it, but anyone who is interested can email me, or better, google the whole title and you'll find it yourself.

Naive Political Commentaries and White Racist Performances
Posted by Joe on Apr 9th, 2008

Numerous observers of the current political scene, liberal and conservative, seem to think that white racial views are much more liberal than they were a decade or two back and that a political candidate like Senator Barack Obama will not face serious racism if he is the Democratic party nominee. Indeed, many argue white racism is now dead or nearly dead.

However, much social science research suggests clearly this not correct.
Indeed, it is in my view rather naïve and far too influenced by the colorblind rhetoric now dominant across this society. Let us consider just two research studies. Research by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tyrone Forman (“‘I Am Not A Racist But’; Mapping White College Students’ Racial Ideology in the U.S.A.,” Discourse and Society, 2000; see also here) on white students at three major university campuses in the West, South, and Midwest indicates that racial attitudes expressed by whites on short-answer survey items are often quite different from those expressed to similar questions requiring more detailed commentary. For example, on a brief survey item 80 percent of 451 responding college students said that they approved of marriages between blacks and whites. However, when a smaller group of comparable students were interviewed in depth this figure dropped to about one-third. (Ninety percent of this smaller group had shown approval on the survey question.) When given more time to explain their views, the majority of white students expressed significant reservations about marriage across the color line. A similar pattern was found for a question about affirmative action. These whites frequently used a variety of hedging phrases (for example, “I agree and disagree”) to disguise or play down their negative views on various racial issue. Thus, the in-depth interviews strongly indicated that a majority of well-educated whites still hold significantly negative attitudes on issues like racial intermarriage.

I can't get impeachment, can't get a war crimes trial...

Fuck. 

I'm not endorsing the idea of prosecuting anyone; I'm not calling President Bush or anyone else a war criminal; I'm not even saying that prosecutions will go forward; I'm just describing a scenario that may intrude upon our politics in 2009 and beyond. 

War Crimes! An Elaboration
10 Apr 2008 10:40 am

Thanks to Memeorandum, this short post on an ABC News story has received much attention and much more misinterpretation.

It is a fact that many liberal Democrats believe President Bush and other senior administration officials to be guilty of war crimes.

It is my educated conjecture that, in a Democratic administration, there will be some DoJ political appointees and/or administration advisers who share that belief.

Ten bucks ought to do it.

Tell them

• CRA was enacted in 1977. The sub-prime lending at the heart of the current crisis exploded a full quarter century later.
• As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA....Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.
• The lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending. Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.

And if you're tired of talking to them, send them here, from whence I cribbed the data.

While many Americans might have thought the Soviet decline would be good news, it wasn’t welcomed by the U.S. right-wing or inside the military industry. They preferred that the American people still perceive an ascendant and implacable communist enemy, all the better to justify brush-fire wars and higher spending on weapons systems.

So, when Reagan captured the White House in 1980, his followers set their sights on purging the CIA’s analytical division of its historical commitment to objectivity, to be replaced by a submissive readiness to deliver politically desirable data.

Losing the War for Reality
By Robert Parry
April 8, 2008

When future historians look back at the sharp decline of the United States in the early 21st Century, they might identify the Achilles heel of this seemingly omnipotent nation as its lost ability to recognize reality and to fashion policies to face the real world.

Like the legendary Greek warrior – whose sea-nymph mother dipped him in protective waters except for his heel – the United States was blessed with institutional safeguards devised by wise Founders who translated lessons from the Age of Reason into a brilliant constitutional framework of checks and balances.

What the Founders did not anticipate, however, was how fragile truth could become in a modern age of excessive government secrecy, hired-gun public relations and big-money media. Sophisticated manipulation of information is what would do the Republic in.

Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA author: Melvin A. Goodman asin: 0742551105

[T]he IMF said more taxpayers' cash may still need to be spent to unblock the markets. "Given the serious risks coming from sustained financial market dislocations, the recent legislation to provide additional fiscal support for an economy under stress is fully justified, and room may need to be found for some additional support for housing and financial markets."

Simon Johnson, IMF research director, presenting the report in Washington, described such bailouts as an essential "third line of defence", after interest rate and tax cuts, for governments struggling to prevent a deep recession. 

We are in the worst financial crisis since Depression, says IMF
Governments will have to pay for more bailouts, says Fund as it slashes growth forecasts and warns of global recession
Heather Stewart
The Guardian,
Thursday April 10 2008

The US mortgage crisis has spiralled into "the largest financial shock since the Great Depression" and there is a one-in-four chance that it will cause a full-blown global recession, the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday.

As finance ministers and central bankers arrived in Washington to discuss ways of tackling the crisis, the IMF warned, in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook, that governments might be forced to step in with more public bailouts of troubled banks and cash-strapped homeowners before the crisis was over.

“It maybe too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain’s soul,” said Lawrence Eagleburger, a secretary of state under the first President George Bush, who is a member of the pragmatist camp. “But if it’s not a fight, I am convinced there is at least going to be an attempt. I can’t prove it, but I’m worried that it’s taking place.”

In addition, Mr. Eagleburger said, “there is no question that a lot of my far right friends have now decided that since you can’t beat him, let’s persuade him to slide over as best we can on these critical issues.” 

Sorry, Lawrence...

You already lost. 

2 Camps Trying to Influence McCain on Foreign Policy
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and LARRY ROHTER

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain has long made his decades of experience in foreign policy and national security the centerpiece of his political identity, and suggests he would bring to the White House a fully formed view of the world.

But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.