And as for you, Jim:

You will just have to live with your fear.

Why are U-People so violent?

As compared to what? Where is there a non-violent people?

S-Train's situation came to the attention of Instapundit. And from there, I guess, to the (to put it politely) skeptics.

Skeptics who feel the need to track him down to debunk the story. Why? There are several reasons I can think of, however with nothing to go by except rants in his comments I will not list them. None of them are good, though, I'll say that much.

And I'll say this much too.

One of the commenters said he doubted the racial aspect of the report because

Well, I checked his URL, and it's some…well, I'll let Mr. Elder speak for himself.

Mr. Elder does his job well, although you should note that his own figures mean you're four times more likely to be assaulted by someone of your own race so you need to quit sweating Black folks.

But I happen to know the real situation, and will let the FBI's statistics speak via its 2001 Hate Crime Report, a 142 page PDF. This table is taken from page 13. Check it yourselves.

The VAST MAJORITY of hate crimes target Black people.

Now that I've dealt with that bullshit, let me deal with Larry Elder's bullshit.

The FBI started keeping Uniform Crime Reports in 1995. Figures prior to that have been assembled by The Disaster Center. It seems Mr. Elder has vastly…VASTLY…overstated the amount of violent crime in 1991. Check the link for yourself.

Ol' trifling-ass Larry Elder is either so ignorant he's dangerous, or a sell-out (definition of sell-out as used on P6: A person that knowingly denies the truth for personal gain).

White folks in general need to get real. The problem is mostly in YOUR communities, not mine. Black separatists talk about getting land and seceding. White separatists talk about race wars and the extermination of lesser races.

And those of you who ain't down with that need to be clear about it.

Ease up a bit and check out j-note's interview with Jeremy Pelt.

Israel Adds Subs to Its Atomic Ability
Officials confirm that the nation can now launch nuclear weapons from land, sea and air. The issue complicates efforts to rein in Iran.
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer

October 12, 2003

TEL AVIV -- Israel has modified American-supplied cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads on submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to launch atomic weapons from land, air and beneath the sea, according to senior Bush administration and Israeli officials.

The previously undisclosed submarine capability bolsters Israel's deterrence in the event that Iran -- an avowed enemy -- develops nuclear weapons. It also complicates efforts by the United States and the United Nations to persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Two Bush administration officials described the missile modification and an Israeli official confirmed it. All three spoke on condition their names not be used.

The Americans said they were disclosing the information to caution Israel's enemies at a time of heightened tensions in the region and concern over Iran's alleged ambitions.

Iran denies developing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is solely for generating electricity. Iranian leaders are resisting more intrusive inspections by the United Nations, setting the stage for a showdown in coming weeks. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has given Tehran an Oct. 31 deadline to accept full inspections and prove it has no nuclear arms program.

Arab diplomats and U.N. officials said Israel's steady enhancement of its secret nuclear arsenal, and U.S. silence about it, has increased the desire of Arab states for similar weapons.

The High Cost of Voting No

Students of the partisan divide in Congress find it heating up to the level of kickboxing this year. In the annual spending bills now passing below the public's radar, House Republican leaders are coolly threatening to deny Democrats hundreds of millions of dollars in local projects in retaliation for their block-vote protest against the flawed majority bill on spending for health and education. Republicans note that cross-aisle vendettas are nothing new in the Capitol. But the G.O.P. would be elevating strong-arming to a whole new level by taking meat-and-potato projects from dissenting Democrats and serving this election-year bacon to Republicans.

This is a prohibitive price for the Democrats to pay for maintaining party unity in daring to protest that the Republican spending bill retreats from President Bush's promised commitments to school financing. The partisan reprisal would trash the standing 60-40 formula for sharing projects and, even more, punish taxpayers in Democratic districts for the votes of their representatives.

House leaders should have second thoughts as rival spending bills undergo final haggling in the joint conference with the Senate. Democrats are more than ready to use this as a campaign issue by contrasting shortchanged domestic needs with the administration's costly Iraq reconstruction budget. Beyond that, the public could suffer from another bad precedent, if the Democrats remember to retaliate whenever the G.O.P. loses majority power.

Hesiod is ranting about a Republican Team Leader-type scam

I've checked. He's right.

Read the last sentance of this extract.

How do you convince the world you're not writing them off when you're prepared to authorize the harvesting of their endangered species? How can you think that won't ultimately affect you?

John Constantine's Alien Colonists theory is looking more reasonable every damn day.

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2003; Page A01

The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.

Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat.

This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory. No U.S. endangered species would be affected.

Or is it to late? Avoiding disaster may well be like steering a supertanker.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 -- Shiite Muslim anger against Americans spilled into Friday Prayers in Sadr City, the poor Baghdad district where two Iraqis and two American soldiers were killed Thursday night.

The violence and subsequent public outrage raised fears of new dangers to United States troops from the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a young anti-American Shiite cleric. Up to now, the main threat to American forces has come from loyalists to Saddam Hussein.

A seething throng of perhaps 10,000 people gathered on Friday to pay respects to the two men they believe were killed by American forces the night before.

"No, no, to America!" they chanted as wooden coffins holding the remains of the men were paraded along a main street in this impoverished neighborhood of some two million people, once called Saddam City and now renamed Sadr City in part for Mr. Sadr's father, a popular cleric who was assassinated in 1999 on what many believe were Mr. Hussein's orders.

Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, an aide to the younger Mr. Sadr, delivered the sermon at Friday Prayers and issued a defiant demand: no American soldiers should be allowed inside Sadr City.

"America, which calls itself the supporter of democracy, is nothing but a big terrorist organization that is leading the world with its terrorism and arrogance," Mr. Daraji said.

I just read an explanation of Unicode at Joel On Software. It turns out there's a Uncode encoding (UTF-16) that's exactly what I thought Unicode was, but there's a stupid number of encodings and hey're ALL Unicode.

I'm just going to pick one.

So I'm reading Eschaton, where Atrios is whipping on somebody named Jonah something for misrepresenting a Dean debate answer and this thing jumps out at me:

I would like Mr. Dean and every Democratic candidate running for every office in the nation to please, please include white people when you run down the list of ethnicities you want to help out. If you don't say it the wingnuts assume you're excluding them. Or will claim you're excluding them, favoring minorities at the expense of the NASCAR dads (alias Angry White Men, who are, by the way, still angry for some reason). And the hordes without number that react rather than think end up opposing you because you didn't say their name.

I feel weird as hell saying this out, but on reflection I realized lose nothing if you guys say this out loud because you ain't going to leave them out anyway.

LATER: Mithras adds a reason for mentioning white folks:

I hang my head in shame. Well, not really…but I do hate missing the obvious stuff.

S-Train:

I looked at the man I shot. He was alive but in bad shape. He looked at me and said that I was lucky that I shot him since he was going to kill all of us niggers. I almost pointed my shotgun at his head and pulled the trigger. Thank God for my wife who lightly grabbed my wrist and said, "It's over baby, I called the police." All this time, my 5 and 4 year-old were watching from the balcony. They saw everything.

I'm done for the day.

The worst thing Progressives can do to Arnold is to let him have his way.

But I've just about had it with the Pope. Or whoever it is making shit up.

Report: Cell phone explodes in trousers

By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Story last modified October 8, 2003, 12:38 PM PDT

Nokia said Tuesday that it's investigating two recent reports of its cell phones "exploding" and causing injuries.

Last Thursday, a supermarket employee in the Netherlands burned his legs when a Nokia handheld exploded in his pants pocket, according to Juliette Oolders of the Dutch consumer group Consumentenbond. Oolders said she believes the phone was one of Nokia's newer models, but could not be more specific. In August, a 33-year-old Dutch woman was injured when her Nokia phone exploded in her hands.

A Nokia representative said the company is investigating both incidents but would not comment further.

Cheney Calls Iraq Invasion Critical to War on Terror

By Scott Lindlaw
Associated Press Writer
Friday, October 10, 2003; 11:20 AM

Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States still faces enemies that could inflict hundreds of thousands of American deaths in a single day, and he defended the Iraq invasion as a critical strike against such terror.

"We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies," Cheney told the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday.

Cheney struck back at criticism of the Iraq war that has built over the months since Bush declared major combat over on May 1. His speech picked up where President Bush left off a day earlier, when the president told listeners in Portsmouth, N.H., "The challenges we face today cannot be met with timid actions or bitter words." [P6: True. So we must be bold in action and forthright in presenting the case against this administration.]

Yet Cheney offered no new evidence that Saddam posed an imminent threat as the administration claimed before the war. The vice president's 25-minute speech also largely dismissed the continuing violence in Iraq, the lack of broad international collaboration, and the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction, mentioning only in passing the "difficulties we knew would occur." [P6: See the title of this post]

The vice president said, "The ultimate nightmare could bring devastation to our country on as scale we have never experienced." [P6: True. So we must be bold in action and forthright in presenting the case against this administration.]

"Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in a single day of war," Cheney said. [P6: See the title of this post]

"Remember what we saw on the morning of 9-11. And knowing the nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as could ever fall to government," Cheney said. "We must do everything in our power to keep terrorists from ever acquiring weapons of mass destruction."[P6: But we're not saying Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, oh, no…]

Cheney did not offer new evidence that there was any link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks. But he cast the Iraq invasion as part of the war on terror. He contrasted the Bush administration's efforts to combat terrorism with what he called previous presidents' "ad hoc" attempts.

"President Bush declined the course of inaction, and the results are there to see," Cheney said. [P6: True. So we must be bold in action and forthright in presenting the case against this administration.]

Simple. Direct. And anyone who is offended by the truth simply isn't on the side of the truth-tellers.

…Some say that the right, having engaged in name-calling and smear tactics when Bill Clinton was president, now wants to change the rules so such behavior is no longer allowed. In fact, the right is still calling names and smearing; it wants to prohibit rude behavior only by liberals.

But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.

New Safety Rules Fail to Stop Tainted Meat

…Government audits, interviews with current and former inspectors and a close look at some of 113 meat recalls last year -- a record number -- show that the inspection service has been slow to establish guidelines for dealing with repeat offenders and has done a poor job of training its inspectors, leaving many uncertain when to take action.

As a result, the government has too often waited until meat became contaminated -- and people have become sick -- before forcing plants to make safety changes.

In years past, government inspectors patrolled the slaughterhouses, looking to reject, or condemn, carcasses with tumors and other obvious defects. In overhauling the system, the department expanded its focus to include a new and growing threat from invisible pathogens, and it placed the burden on companies to design their own rigorous safety plans.

…According to government inspection reports, on more than 50 days from early 2001 until July, inspectors at the Shapiro Packing plant found feces on carcasses moving down the processing line. Its meat ends up in schools, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants across the country.

On 11 days the inspectors at the plant even found the manure on numerous carcasses that had already been through special cleansing washes of hot water and acid.

Yet the Agriculture Department did not react more forcefully to the inspectors' reports until last July, when it threatened to stop the plant from operating. Even then, regulators allowed Shapiro to keep shipping, based on its pledges to correct procedures identified as the cause of the problems.

Shapiro says it removes any contamination and has never shipped unsafe meat. Dane Bernard, vice president for food safety at Keystone Foods, the private company that manages Shapiro Packing, said that the plant has fixed "95 percent" of the problems identified by department officials.

"We have not been putting the public at risk and that's the bottom line," Mr. Bernard said.

Just pretend yesterday was Friday.

What is it with some sites where if you try to mark something to copy to the clipboard the entire damn page is elected? Case in point.

And it's only IE. Maybe IE6.

Look,when the Google toolbar comes in a Mozilla flavor and I can get the get the same HTML editing capability that I have with IE, I'll switch to Mozilla, full time permanent, okay?

UPDATE: Thanks to trackbacks, Jay has suggested in the comments that I wait for the MT-Blacklist plugin to be completed instead of fooling around with macros. I can take orders when it's to my benefit.

Today Michael at Move The Crowd linked to a plugin to stop comment spam that displays a graphic with a confirmation code that must be entered. I was thinking about whether or not to install it.

Nope.

Dana Blankenhorn at Moore's Lore just posted a pointer to Jay Allen's plug-in:

The required plugins are Brad Choate's MT-Macros, MT-Regex and PerlScript. I don't have the Perlscript plugin yet, but I will.

It requires you maintain a list of offenders, but gives you a starting point if, like me, you'll be taking prophylactic measures.

Nurse Ratched points to an FCC Memorandum Opinion and Order that officially removes "fuck" from the "ten Words You Can't Say on TV" list.

Apparently it's okay as an adjective, adverb or exclaimation—if you're not talking sex or excretion(???), it's okay.

Mark Kleiman presents the following:

…and effectively counters dissenting oppinions.

The worst thing that can be done to Arnold is to track his promises and let him have his way.

E-GAD, but this cartoon is harsh!

"Bush will campaign in a California in which the Republican governor will be illustrating the axiom that today only a Republican governor can substantially raise taxes."

Oooh. That hadda hurt.

By George F. Will

Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A37

California's recall -- a riot of millionaires masquerading as a "revolt of the people" -- began with a rich conservative Republican congressman, who could think of no other way he might become governor, financing the gathering of the necessary signatures. Now this exercise in "direct democracy" -- precisely what America's Founders devised institutions to prevent -- has ended with voters full of self-pity and indignation removing an obviously incompetent governor. They have removed him from the office to which they reelected him after he had made his incompetence obvious by making most of the decisions that brought the voters to a boil.

The odor of what some so-called conservatives were indispensable to producing will eventually arouse them from their swoons over Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they can inventory the damage they have done by seizing an office that just 11 months ago they proved incapable of winning in a proper election under ideal conditions.

In a NY Times op-ed titled "It's Even Worse Than You Think", Howell E. Jackson writes:

Okay, I can take that as a given. Wha I want to know about is this part:

Iraq Aid Figure Gives Donors New Confidence
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 -- A team of World Bank economists has concluded that, as a practical matter, Iraq can absorb only about $6 billion in aid next year for its infrastructure needs. That conclusion sets a target that Bush administration officials said Wednesday could be met from American and international assistance.

The $6 billion figure for Iraq has been circulating among policy makers at the World Bank, the United Nations and the Bush administration as they struggle to plan for an international donors' conference this month that they fear could be judged a failure for lack of pledges.

Underscoring those fears, an administration official said Spain, the conference host, had suddenly become worried about the growing possibility that the United States might delay plans to obtain a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq's future government until after the conference takes place Oct. 23 and 24 -- or even abandon the resolution altogether.

A concern in the administration was that without a resolution, Spain might wish to postpone the conference, as other European countries had suggested earlier in the year.

But other American officials said there was new confidence that the conference could be portrayed as a success, or at least not a failure, in part because the figure for what Iraq could actually spend had been lowered to a more realistic level that reflects the time it takes to solicit bids, award contracts and get the work under way.

…In developers' jargon, the $6 billion figure rests on calculations of Iraq's "absorptive capacity," meaning that it takes months or years to plan for projects.

"The aid figures that have been published for Iraq are reasonable as a measure of what Iraq needs," said an official involved in planning the Madrid conference. "Where the numbers are not so reasonable is the time frame for how much can be spent. This money cannot be spent overnight." [P6: HAH! You obviously have never seen a Halliburton contract]

feministe has an excellent new look. I had to wait untill Mozilla was as happy as IE6 with it before I told you…y'all know I be looking out for minorities all the time.

I saw a link to P6 to Riba Rambles during one of my periodic checks of Technorati and as is my wont I checked out the blog to see what inspired such foolishness on her part. As it turns out it's just her pre BloggerCon which she will be editing (will I make the cut?). But in searching for the link I found this quote from Cup O' Joe:

Bush Plans Appearance With Schwarzenegger
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 -- President Bush will appear at the side of California's governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, during a fund-raising trip to the state next week, a Republican close to the White House said on Wednesday, even as some religious conservative supporters of Mr. Bush said they were troubled by accusations that Mr. Schwarzenegger had engaged in sexual misconduct.

But the conservatives said their concerns would not spill over to Mr. Bush. It was unthinkable, they added, that a Republican president would not stand with a newly elected Republican governor on a trip to the state, particularly one the White House hopes to win in 2004.

(Anyone else remember that Dr. Seuss story? Please?)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 -- The White House and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld moved quickly on Wednesday to contain an unusual public breach over Iraq policy, a day after he testily told European reporters that he was not consulted before a reorganization intended to give the White House more control over the occupation of Iraq.

Appearing at a NATO conference in Colorado Springs on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Rumsfeld tried to dismiss any talk of his diminished role in Iraq policy, suggesting at one point that reporters should concentrate on "something more important," like the World Series prospects of his hometown Chicago Cubs.

That tone contrasted with his harsh language on Tuesday, when he said President Bush and had never discussed with him the creation of the Iraq Stabilization Group, set up by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. He said that the first he heard of it was in a memorandum from Ms. Rice last week. In a seeming criticism of the White House he suggested that the National Security Council was finally focusing on doing what it should have been doing all along -- coordinating the work of the many government agencies dealing with Iraq.

He told reporters on Tuesday, "It's not quite clear to me why" Ms. Rice sent him a memorandum on the subject. When he was pressed on the question by a German broadcast reporter, he retorted: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"

Schwarzenegger Lays Foundation for a Transition to Power

By DEAN E. MURPHY

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 -- Arnold Schwarzenegger moved quickly Wednesday to prepare for governing, naming a prominent Republican congressman to run his transition and strongly suggesting that he would call on President Bush to provide federal aid to California, now in Republican hands.

…He largely avoided specifics about his plans for dealing with the state's biggest problems, including its chronic budget deficit.

But he repeated promises made during the campaign not to raise taxes, to repeal the recent tripling of vehicle registration fees and to rescind a law signed last month by Gov. Gray Davis that allows undocumented workers to apply for driver's licenses.

Representative David Dreier, who along with former Gov. Pete Wilson was a chairman of the Schwarzenegger campaign, was named transition chief, with the task of assembling a staff of nearly 200 political appointees [P6: ]who would need to be in place before the end of next month.

…Mr. Schwarzenegger's election in a state long controlled by Democrats gave the president an important beachhead for 2004. And Mr. Schwarzenegger made clear Wednesday that he expected his state to benefit from his relationship with Mr. Bush. He noted that California did not get its fair share of federal aid, and of the president, he said, "He promised me that he will do everything possible to help California, so I'm looking forward to working with him and asking him for a lot, a lot of favors."

A deep one, via Slashdot

By Paul Festa
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Story last modified October 8, 2003, 11:29 AM PDT

Eolas Technologies on Monday filed a motion to permanently enjoin Microsoft's distribution of its Internet Explorer browser amid a flurry of court filings by both sides in the pivotal patent infringement case.

Eolas, the sole licensee and sublicensor of a browser plug-in patent owned by the University of California, asked the U.S. District Court in Chicago for an injunction against distributing copies of IE capable of running plug-in applications in a way the Eolas patent covers.

There's still a disturbing amount of slavery going on around the world. And yes, I shut off the comments and pings on this one.

Daily Champion (Lagos)
EDITORIAL
October 8, 2003
Posted to the web October 8, 2003

THE recent discovery of seven slave colonies in Nigeria provokes serious questions on national security.

The colonies, located in Ogun, Oyo and Osun states, had over 400 child slaves from Benin Republic working in inhuman conditions at granite quarries.

I don't know where Kos got these figures, but if they're accurate there's some seriously stupid people in California,

2.7% voted to oust Davis while saying they "approve" or "strongly approve" of his performance as Governor.

whut?

I understand all the others he mentioned. Even the 3% that voted for recall but said they wouldn't vote if the menu offered "Arnold or Cruz." But how do you vote against someone you approve of?

I saw another spam comment.

I haven't gotten many of them. But I don't like them. And this time I remembered to check the owner of the logged IP address.

See, I figure this ain't no script kiddie spamming us. It's a business, with a fixed IP range.

Search results for: 64.161.246.100

Pac Bell Internet Services PBI-NET-8 (NET-64-160-0-0-1)
64.160.0.0 - 64.175.255.255
Exoto SBC064161246096030115 (NET-64-161-246-96-1)
64.161.246.96 - 64.161.246.111

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2003-10-07 19:15
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.


And you know what?

That have nothing to do with each other, except that I'm sure both were largely incited by yesterday's recall.

Plus: Since Mark Kleiman has moved to Movable Type, I have another RSS feed to read.

Minus: Since Mark Kleiman has moved to Movable Type, I have another RSS feed to read.

Just go see it

IBM Emancipates 8,000 Wage Slaves

ARMONK, NY?In a move hailed by corporation owners as a forward-thinking humanitarian gesture, IBM emancipated more than 8,000 wage slaves from its factories and offices Monday.

"You are all free, free to go!" said IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano to the 600 men and women freed from the corporation's Essex Junction, VT, location. "No more must you live a bleak, hand-to-mouth existence, chained to your desks in a never-ending Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 cycle. Your future is wide-open. Now, go!"

The 600 newly freed workers cleared out their desks and were escorted from the building within an hour. In spite of Palmisano's jubilance, the emancipated wage slaves were strangely quiet as they filed into the parking lot, carrying their work possessions in cardboard boxes.

Bill Gray to Retire from UNCF
After a 12-year career with the minority higher education assistance organization, the former congressman will focus on his church roots
By Alexis McCombs

William H. Gray, former congressman and the first African American chairman of the House Budget Committee, has announced his resignation as president and CEO of the UNCF (United Negro College Fund, Inc.). Effective March 31, 2004, Gray's 12 year-old leadership torch will be passed to an unknown replacement.

Since folks seems to have more time than I have today for deep political thought, I may be doing some extensive quoting.

This is Hesiod, from Counterspin Central:

FINAL UPDATE: A huge reason why Gray Davis lost: Democratic voters didn't show up to the polls.

That's a 7 point advantage for Republicans. The recall was supported by about 55% of the voters. Do the math.

The Democrats better damn well get the message from this.

That's two elections in a row in which the Democrats lost because they couldn't motivate their voters to show up.

One reason why Howard Dean might actually be a better candidate against Bush than people think.

FINAL, FINAL UPDATE: Guess what...despite all the hype, voter turnout was actually LOWER than the 2002 California Gubernatorial election.

Once again, Democrats lose when they can't get their voters motivated to go to the polls.

The Democrats have to find a way to motivate the base next year, or this will happen again and again.

I need to write up some refections on the political landscape. But I could probably just let what Digby says stand:

"The lesson isn't that we aren't liberal enough. And, it's not that we are too liberal. It's that we are naive about the modern political landscape. That's what we need to change."

The "real quick" refers both to the nature of this post and the speed at which this advice must be heeded.

From SFGate.com, the online presence of The San Francisco Chronicle

2nd Arrest Linked to Killing of Tennis Stars' Older Sister
By Chuck Philips
Times Staff Writer

October 8, 2003

Authorities have arrested a second Compton gang member they suspect might be tied to the shooting of the half-sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

Michael Williams, 38, a reputed member of the Southside Crips, has not been charged in connection with the killing of Yetunde Price, 31. He is being held on suspicion of violating his parole from previous convictions for robbery and drug offenses.

Investigators are interested in Williams because his car was found parked in front of a reputed Compton drug house where Price and a male companion are believed to have argued with gang members moments before Price was fatally shot Sept. 14.

Williams was arrested Sept. 26 after police allegedly found crack cocaine and firearms in his 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan. Sources say Williams lived at the house before the shooting. Investigators also found a green 1978 Cadillac sedan registered to Williams' wife parked in the driveway of the house.

Repairing California Government

By David S. Broder

Wednesday, October 8, 2003; Page A29

Now that the miserable recall experience is over, California can finally get serious about repairing the damaged structure of its government.

The misguided effort to convert the broadly shared public discontent with economic stagnation and political gridlock into a recall effort against Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was made possible only because Republican Rep. Darrell Issa pumped almost $2 million of his own fortune into a commercial signature-collection campaign. The recall ended with voters facing a rotten choice among two Democrats, Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, both widely viewed as corrupted by campaign cash, and one Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been repeatedly accused of being a sexual predator.

One would hope that Californians would draw the right conclusion and be less willing to sign the next recall petition. But the reality is that the Progressive-era trio of populist experiments in direct democracy -- initiative, referendum and recall -- remains wildly popular with millions in the state.

That being the case, the next two California elections are likely to feature initiatives proposing serious structural changes in the way the state government operates and the way people gain office in Sacramento.

My second question: If "initiative, referendum and recall [remain] wildly popular with millions in the state," who exactly will be pushing the structural change initiatives? And why didn't they push those chages before?

As It Tries to Cut Costs, Wall Street Looks to India
By SARITHA RAI

BANGALORE, India, Oct. 7 - Global companies have long taken advantage of India's large college-educated, low-cost work force. Now Wall Street firms, including J. P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, are joining the chase for more highly skilled Indian labor.

J. P. Morgan, the investment banking arm of J. P. Morgan Chase, plans to hire a few dozen researchers in Bombay by the end of the year. Morgan Stanley, which already has investment banking and mutual fund operations in India, will employ a similar number of researchers this year, also in Bombay. Both teams will consist of junior-level analysts collecting data, analyzing balance sheets and working on basic financial models.

This shifting of more sophisticated work to India comes on the heels of a rush of call center and other back-office nonmanufacturing jobs here, and is seen by many experts as yet another phase in the latest drift of jobs to low-cost countries that began in the early 1990's with Silicon Valley companies.

Conservative Anglicans Rally to Reorganize Church Power
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

DALLAS, Oct. 7 -- In a further sign of fracture in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of an openly gay bishop, thousands of conservative American Anglicans rallied here on Tuesday at a conference that advocated radically reorganizing church authority.

The meeting, called by the orthodox American Anglican Council a week before an emergency meeting of Anglican leaders in London to avert a worldwide schism, circulated a draft "call to action" urging the parent church to "create a new alignment for Anglicanism in North America."

Denouncing the House of Bishops for backing the ordination in June of a gay man, the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire, the Rev. David H. Roseberry, rector of Christ Church in nearby Plano, said, "The Episcopal Church has begun a wayward drift that will distort the Anglican community."

"I will take your signatures and 8-by-10 glossies to a group of primates next week in London," Father Roseberry said to cheers from many of the 2,674 listed attendees, including 46 current and retired bishops, 799 priests and 103 seminarians.

Other speakers accused church leaders of betraying the Gospels and succumbing to the sexual revolution.

Specifically, the draft statement, which is widely expected to be voted on before the close of the session on Thursday, called on the primates, or 38 leaders, of the Anglican communion under the Archbishop of Canterbury to erase traditional church boundaries and "encourage faithful bishops to extend episcopal care, oversight and mission to across current diocesan boundaries."

That could allow bishops opposed to ordaining gay priests and the blessing of same sex unions, another divisive issue in the church, to try to extend their reach to like-minded congregations across the nation.

Although dissidents were essentially barred from attending the conference, some checked into the Wyndham Anatole hotel, home of the conference, and offered comments. The call to erase diocesan boundaries, said Jim Naughton, a spokesman for the Washington Diocese, which backed Bishop Robinson's ordination, "sounds like a good way to destroy the church entirely."

It would allow "empire-building" bishops to "pluck good-looking parishes from other dioceses," Mr. Naughton said.

"The only metaphor I can think of," he added, "is the Civil War."

U.S. Can't Locate Missiles Once Held in Iraq Arsenal
By RAYMOND BONNER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 7 -- The United States military has been unable to locate a large number of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that were part of the arsenal of Saddam Hussein, officials say, compounding the security risks for airports and airlines in Iraq and around the world.

The lack of accounting for the missiles -- officials say there could be hundreds -- is the primary reason the occupation authorities have not yet reopened the Baghdad International Airport to commercial traffic, officials said. The terminal has been rebuilt and the runways repaired, and Australian soldiers are running the air traffic control system.

But portable missiles were fired at incoming planes several times in recent weeks, one senior official said. Most of those incidents have not been reported to the public. The missiles missed their targets widely, suggesting that the people who fired them had not been extensively trained.

United States military officers do not know exactly how many of the missiles are unaccounted for, because they do not have precise estimates of how many Iraq once possessed.

"We just don't know," said an allied official, turning up his palms for emphasis.

Lost in Translation
Democrats think the recall revolution was about incumbents and the economy. Their reaction last night suggests they're in for a surprise in 2004.
by Hugh Hewitt
10/08/2003 8:07:00 AM

WITHIN MINUTES of the release of exit polls from California last night, Democrats had wheeled as one and began the hopeless attempt to spin the disastrous verdict. Senator Dianne Feinstein led the charge, but the refrain echoed throughout the party: This was a verdict on Davis's handling of the budget, a handling very similar to the fiscal mismanagement on the national level.

…AMERICANS are taxed too much, and lied to too often. The party of Clinton and McAuliffe remains addicted to trash politics, deceitful tactics, and lawyers' tricks--whether in the courtrooms of Florida or the Ninth Circuit. Disgust with the Democratic party's entire approach to politics is palpable, but Democrats have set their faces against it and now cling to a vision of higher taxes wrapped around incessant America-bashing.

Arnold surfed the wave of voter anger into office, and needs only do what he promised to do: Repeal the car tax via executive order. Speak plainly and often about special interest domination of Sacramento. Revoke the drivers' license bill, and push through genuine workers' comp reform.

He does need to keep conservatives close. They protected his right flank in the election, and need only to be recognized as a significant part of the governing coalition. For example, when Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court is confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit, Arnold should nominate a principled and credential conservative like my colleague John Eastman. With a few high profile appointments, Arnold will solidify the GOP behind him. The first time he leaves the state to campaign and raise money on behalf of a GOP candidate for a U.S. Senate seat, even McClintock die-hards will recognize the wisdom of supporting Arnold.

California Insurrection Puts Other Politicians on Notice
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

…more than a measure of the strength of each political party, the unseating of a sitting governor 11 months after he was re-elected was the latest sign of the power of the anti-establishment wave that has been roiling American politics since at least the emergence of Ross Perot in 1992.

What happened on Tuesday, if unique to the peculiar politics and culture of this state, was in many ways a manifestation of the force that has powered Howard Dean to the front of the Democratic presidential contest. From that perspective, the message may prove to be less a warning to Democrats or Republicans, and more one to incumbents, or candidates perceived as too closely tied to the political system, members of both parties said.

"If I were a governor from a different state with a huge deficit and bad poll ratings, I'd be scared senseless," said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who frequently offers advice to the nation's Republican governors. "If you're a governor in a recall state, this will send chills down your spine."

I've been saying for a long time that what is necessary to get things headed in the proper direction, the average guy needs to understand that neocon policy is not working to his benefit as he thinks it is.

Michael Moore agrees with me.

I'm sure that makes my more conservative readers even happier that I exist.

The Pessimist at To The Barricades! pointed to excerpts from Michael Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country?" Sadly, they are in The Guardian rather than the WaPo or NY Times as they should be. It is really unfortunate that the most honest and best documented discussion of United States politics tends to take place where reletively few citizens of the United States can see it.

George at Negrophile linked to Black Like I Thought I Was, which you must read because I can't find a piece of the article I want to leave out of the extract.

The punch line comes in the middle:

…"My son was flabbergasted by the results," says Joseph. "He said, 'Dad, you mean for 50 years you've been passing for black?'" Joseph admits that, strictly speaking, he has. But he's not sure if he can or wants to do anything about that at this point. For all the lingering effects of institutional racism, he's been perfectly content being a black man; it has shaped his worldview and the course of his life in ways that cannot, and probably should not, be altered. Yet Joseph struggles to balance the intellectual dishonesty of saying he's black with the unimpeachable honesty of a lifelong experience of being black.

Even though I heard rumors that peopleFreepers were forgetting to vote FOR the recall in their haste to vote for Arnold, I am assuming Arnold's ascension to the post of Governor.

Remember what promises he made. Hold him to them.

Remember what he promised to do "with a stroke of [his] pen." Make him try, remember his failures, note the lack of understanding of the powers of the office.

And do you want to know what the evilest thing the Democratic Party could do is?

DON'T PRESS FOR A RECALL. PASS THE BUDGET HE PRESENTS.

The next recall would actually be a populist movement.

from The Black Hand Side

Do We Need "Racial Healing" or "Racial Truth"?

Next week in my city of Atlanta, former president Jimmy Carter and current governor Sonny Perdue will host a forum on "racial reconciliation" and "racial healing" at the Carter Center. The forum "will center on Georgia's role in the Civil War and in the civil rights era, as well as on how the state [of Georgia] became a model for the New South". From Jimmy Carter, I believe that it is an honest, albeit somewhat superficial, attempt to address some of the issues that continue to divide the races in this country (and the world). The jury remains out on Perdue though. Nevertheless, what strikes me as being very interesting is the fact that these events never address what needs to be the center of any racial debate. We need more forums on racial "truth", not racial "healing". That is, what exactly is racism, how did it come about, what has it done, who has it impacted (and how), who constructed it, to what end, how does it impact domestic and foreign policy, and how do we deconstruct something so pervasive in society and in the world. I see honest, informed dialogue about these questions as being fundamental to any sincere discourse about the racial problems in this country.

Don't read this and say the brother is denying the need for racial healing. He's saying racial truth is necessary to achieve that healing, and that it's not forthcoming.

High-tech targets bad bar customers
All patrons face personal history check at the door

Lori Culbert and Amy O'Brian
Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Vancouver bar patrons will soon have to produce identification and have their photograph taken every time they enter clubs or bars connected to an electronic network designed to red-flag troublemakers.

Within the next six months, about 35 bars and clubs in Vancouver are expected to be hooked into the Barwatch system.

Barwatch, a coalition of Vancouver bar and nightclub owners, still has to vote today on whether to make an ID security system mandatory at all its member establishments, but John Teti, chairman of the coalition, said the vote is merely a formality.

"We have full backing from our members," Teti said Monday.

"It should take about six months to implement the full system."

Once the system is in place, patrons will be asked to stand in front of a camera to have their picture taken and will then swipe their drivers' licence, or possibly show some other form of identification, that will automatically give the establishment the patron's name and age and show if he or she has caused trouble at any other bar on the network.

The establishment will not be able to access the person's address or criminal record by swiping the licence.

Sony Shows 'Crossover' Video-Game Machine
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:49 a.m. ET

CHIBA, Japan (AP) -- Sony Corp. offered a preview Tuesday of its next-generation PlayStation, a hybrid gaming machine with digital media hub features: a TV tuner, DVD and hard-drive recording and photo album and music player functions.

The muscled-up, network-ready console, called the PSX, testifies to the intensifying competition among consumer electronics companies to make the living room the locus of home digital entertainment.

About the size of the PlayStation2, the PSX is to go on sale in Japan late this year, beginning at $720 for a 160-gigabyte hard disk version that can record 200 hours of digital video.

Sony said the PSX will reach U.S. and European markets next year but did not provide prices.

It's the only way to find out the truth behind the Plame Affair.

Why the Bushistas expected the UN to approve their proposed resolution on Iraq is now clear; there are just enough countries on the Security Council that may be bribable to get it passed—and even they're not happy at the moment. I am…amused that the other six are planning to abstain rather than vote no.

What this means as far as actual support is beyond me. Troops and money have to come from actual nations, not the U.N., I suspect.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Despite divisions in the 15-member U.N. Security Council, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte on Tuesday ruled out making any substantial changes to the Bush administration's draft resolution on Iraq.

Consequently, council diplomats said the United States had to decide soon whether to drop the effort entirely or push for a split vote in the council that might limit its impact.

Easy passage of the resolution, aimed a broadening military and financial support, was assured until Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week turned down U.N. political participation unless Iraqi sovereignty was accelerated.

At a Security Council session on Monday, most members wanted the resolution to deal with some of Annan's suggestions but Negroponte virtually excluded this.

"What I told the council members was that if in the coming days we put forward a resolution with an idea to putting it to an early vote, that they shouldn't expect any significant or radical departures from the resolution they have before them," Negroponte told a news conference.

"It's certainly our intent at this moment to press ahead with the resolution," he added.

Among the 15 council members, France, Russia, Germany, China and Syria were expected to abstain while only Britain, Spain and Bulgaria were sure votes, diplomats said.

The other six council members, Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, expressed misgivings but might support the resolution under U.S. cajoling, the envoys said.

A minimum of nine positive votes are needed to adopt a resolution but a divided council could minimize its impact.

I've said before that providing a free blog service is like ASKING for a DoS attack.

When you look at your traffic figures and ratings at TLB, don't panic. Sitemeter had some difficulties today. And I'm not complaining because their free service is pretty damn good.

Over there in the sidebar is a link to Drylongso, a blog with an ezine attached. Both blog and ezine look long and hard are race and gender issues. The ezine part is ready when it's ready…and it's ready right now.

This time around the ezine topic is "PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER: Gender Issues in Sepia Space"…sounds like a fusion of everything it looks at, but it actually is a distinct topic.

I'm not on AaronAnastasia Beaverhousen's blogroll either. And I don't even know who Rumiko Takahashi is.

This wouldn't bother me except that he's currently "A Happy Rhodes Fansite". And "Warpaint" is one of my theme songs.

I just hope he changes to another kind of fansite soon.

Click the picture.

(NOTE: This image is hereby officially submitted to the public domain)

White House defends its role in rebuilding
(By Wayne Washington and Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff)

The White House insisted yesterday that its decision to play a greater role in the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan was not an acknowledgment of problems with US-led efforts in those countries.

HOO-ha.

You know what? I think that's enough news for now.

I can't improve on the editorial's title.

October 6, 2003

President Bush credited his tax cuts Friday for creating 57,000 new jobs in September and mocked congressional provisions for allowing his tax cuts to expire in a few years, declaring "the government giveth, and the government taketh away." He demanded again that Congress make all of the cuts permanent. This year's projected deficit of a half-trillion dollars could look puny if Bush succeeds, especially in light of yet another round of tax-slashing.

The administration's tax cuts are the economic equivalent of steroids; they may quickly pump up the economy, but the long-term effect on fiscal health will be dire.[P6: And, like steroids, too much won't even pump you up; it'll kill you]

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting a possible deficit over the next decade of $4.4 trillion. At the same time, the baby boom generation will be retiring. That alone, warns Comptroller General David M. Walker, is a financial challenge "unprecedented in the history of our nation." Congress' response? New tax cuts for business.

The Senate Finance Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would provide a windfall to U.S. companies that have avoided taxes on foreign profits by keeping them abroad. The legislation would give companies a one-time amnesty to repatriate about $400 billion at a tax rate of 5.25%. Companies that parked profits overseas would be rewarded, whereas those that created jobs in the United States would get stuck with a much higher rate on profits. Initially, it would look as though the budget deficit were being reduced because of the speedy return of the money, but the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the Treasury Department would lose $3.7 billion in taxes over 10 years. Farmers, movie producers and gas and oil companies would also get new tax breaks.

In what amounts to a "leave no corporation behind" bill, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) is pushing legislation that is similar to the Senate plan and contains a variety of other tax breaks for corporations and manufacturers. Thomas will claim with a straight face that many of these tax cuts, like the ones that came before, are merely temporary, so their projected effect on the deficit will be minimized. It is still a choking amount: Thomas' proposal, coupled with recently approved pension-related tax cuts, would cost $176 billion through 2013, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ultimately it's real hard to just roll over when someone walks into house and declares it to be theirs. Especially when you're seeing them sell all your furniture.

If this is added to the Israeli raid on Syria, no one will be able to deny that shit has officially started. All those folks waiting for The Rapture must be thrilled.

October 7, 2003

FALLOUJA, Iraq -- "Commander A," a hawk-nosed, stubble-bearded former Iraqi intelligence officer who says he leads anti-American guerrillas in this area, sat in a car on a deserted country road screened by seven-foot reeds Monday and laid out his vision for driving U.S. forces out of Iraq.

Slowly, he said, the "resistance" has been building its strength, accumulating stores of weapons and collecting money from residents. Former supporters of Saddam Hussein and observant Muslims alike are rallying to the cause, he asserted. Thousands are willing to die to evict U.S. forces from the country, and attacks are now being centrally coordinated, he said.

It's not like the rules have prevented the telcos from excluding the competition…

By Christopher Stern and Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 7, 2003; Page A01

Cable companies would be required to open their networks to rival high-speed Internet service providers under a federal appeals court ruling yesterday that could lead to more choices for consumers and subject the industry to the same competitive pressures roiling the telephone market.

The ruling by the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit bars the Federal Communications Commission from following through with plans to allow cable companies to exclude rivals from selling competing brands of Internet service over their lines.

The FCC adopted its deregulatory approach last year, betting that it would give the cable industry an incentive to continue investing in sophisticated fiber-optic networks. But the court said the agency must continue to classify cable's Internet offerings as a telecommunications service, subjecting it to the same regulations governing high-speed Internet service provided by telephone companies.

The last sentence of the article sums up the problem neatly. Multinational corporations, with their ability to shift from one national economy to another, become independent of all of them. They become a force that nations must respond to rather than the citizen of any nation. They outgrow even the nation of their birth, the head of empire, the USofA.

SYRACUSE, Oct. 6 -- The name of a cooling company has been inseparable from this frost-belt city since the Depression, when city leaders scraped together $250,000 and tax incentives to lure the inventor of the air-conditioner, Willis H. Carrier, and his business from Newark. The deal worked, and the Carrier Corporation became a mainstay of a community whose best-known landmark is the Carrier Dome, the home arena for the Syracuse University Orangemen.

On Monday, the company confirmed rumors that those ties would loosen, announcing that it would close the two manufacturing plants at its East Syracuse site, laying off 1,200 workers and moving those operations to Asia and the South. The company will keep 1,600 jobs here, mainly in research and development, but the decision means that Carrier will no longer make any products in Syracuse, where manufacturing has long been a key part of its identity.

Today's thoughts

1. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won?t bother you for weeks.

2. Some people are like Slinkies…not really good for anything, but you still can?t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

10. Have you noticed that a slight tax increase costs you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?

11.In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

…along with a Douglas Adams classic that was sufficient reason for me to read the Hitchhiker series.

Black people just crack me up sometimes.

On reflecting upon the previously link-to Deflating The Blog Bubble, one Mr. Willis states:

Political will wanes on drug coverage

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff, 10/6/2003

WASHINGTON -- Prescription drug coverage for the elderly, a Medicare benefit long sought by retirees facing escalating prescription costs, once looked like that rare piece of major legislation that members of both parties could embrace in this politically polarized climate.

But now, just four months after deals were reached amid fanfare in the House and Senate, plans for drug coverage are nearly doomed. And while lawmakers say they still hope to reach a compromise, they acknowledge that the grand plans of last spring ran into trouble in a classic Washington fashion -- a combination of overreaching, clashing priorities, diminishing political will, and intervention by an array of interest groups.

A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

Published: October 7, 2003

With the help of some fat yellow mice, scientists have discovered exactly how a mother's diet can permanently alter the functioning of genes in her offspring without changing the genes themselves.

The unusual strain of mouse carries a kind of trigger near the gene that determines not only the color of its coat but also its predisposition to obesity, diabetes and cancer. When pregnant mice were fed extra vitamins and supplements, the supplements interacted with the trigger in the fetal mice and shut down the gene. As a result, obese yellow mothers gave birth to standard brown baby mice that grew up lean and healthy.

Scientists have long known that what pregnant mothers eat -- whether they are mice, fruit flies or humans -- can profoundly affect the susceptibility of their offspring to disease. But until now they have not understood why, said Dr. Randy Jirtle, a professor of radiation oncology at Duke and senior investigator of the study, which was reported in the Aug. 1 issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

The research is a milestone in the relatively new science of epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors like diet, stress and maternal nutrition can change gene function without altering the DNA sequence in any way.

from Iraq's Founding Moments

The Iraqis are only laying the groundwork for a constitutional convention, but there is already broad agreement on what the constitution should do. It should establish a democratic government, protect minority rights, guarantee the equality of all people (including women) and establish a government that is consistent with Islamic values without being subservient to theocratic law.

Things are also going well because while Americans are making most of the decisions about how Iraq is run now, they are not dominating the constitution-writing process. "It has to be an Iraqi product," a senior Bush administration official insists. And the key Iraqis, especially among the Kurds and Shiites, are sophisticated players, willing to compromise and careful not to abuse one another as they jockey for power. As Noah Feldman, a law professor who served as an independent consultant on the process, observes, people in the Middle East don't always act rationally[P6: That says soooooo much. Much disrespect in there]. But in this case they are, and all sides understand that if the talks fail, the result is mutual assured destruction.…

[P6: Here comes the whole reason for the editorial]There's no way the Iraqis can resolve these issues within six months, the deadline Colin Powell once set. But this process is the ballgame. Washington will continue to get distracted by microscandals about leaks and such…

When I started speculating about what would happen if all the needed production and services could be done by 25% of the available work force, that leaned strongly toward the "lump of labor" fallacy. But I wasn't trying to shape policy thereby.

Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever the economy is sluggish.

…The latest lump-of-labor revival came to my attention when I realized how eagerly certain commentators were picking up on a new study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In it, Erica Groshen and Simon Potter argue that the pattern of laying off workers during recessions and rehiring them during recoveries has changed: since 1990 employers have become much less likely to rehire former workers. It's an interesting study, and it might -- repeat, might -- shed some light on why businesses have added so few jobs during our so-called recovery.

But I was puzzled at first by the enthusiasm with which a relatively academic paper was seized upon by usually bullish, supposedly hardheaded business commentators. The puzzle vanished, however, when I read these remarks more carefully: they were mainly trying to make excuses for the administration's dismal job record. You see, they say, it's not that an economic policy consisting largely of tax cuts for the rich has failed to deliver. No, it's a structural problem with the economy, which just happens to have arisen now, and nobody could have done better.

I wa going to say something about the military worrying that their translators at Gitmo are part of an Al Qaeda network. But that's just too bizarre.

GHOD, this California recall is a mess. And any Californians out there should tell all their friends this is as much about Enron getting off the hook as Arnold being a mere figurehead (with no experience, he can't be anything else). If Arnold is elected, that whole energy crisis--which I lived through, being in San Francisco at the time--will be swept under the rug.

Published: October 7, 2003

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6 -- About 3.2 million Californians registered for Tuesday's recall election are voting by absentee ballot, and election officials are growing worried that counting that number of absentee votes could drag out the results of an already unwieldy election.

About 1.2 million absentee and other ballots will not be counted until well after the election, and officials said on Monday that those votes could decide a potentially close race, raising the specter of an election with no clear winner for weeks.

More than two million absentee ballots had been returned to election officials by Monday, state officials said. But 800,000 additional absentee ballots and an expected 400,000 ballots that will not be counted until after election night because of anticipated snags will not be included in preliminary results from the counties, said Stephen Weir, the clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County in Northern California and the treasurer of a statewide association of county clerks and registrars.

"If it's close, it's bloody," said Mr. Weir, who estimated that 10 percent to 12 percent of the votes statewide would be counted after election night. "The next day we're dead, and people want to know what's left to be counted, and the bottom line is we're talking about 1.2 million votes that are not counted election night."

In NRO, one Jennifer Graham wrote a guest editorial that made my head hurt. It opens like this:

TBogg noted the condescension and Jesse at Pandagon gives the editorial a fisking in detail, but Steve Gillard's response is dead on, in a way that is so clearly understandable I'd bet even Ms. Graham would understand it. Because he has no permalinks (a condition that I REALLY WISH HE WOULD CORRECT, to the point where I will do it for him if he'd like) I'm including his whole response.

via Kitty Power

Similar Minds has a bunch of personality tests that appear to be serious, unlike the "How evil is your web page" thing I went through yesterday. They have a Myers-Briggs test, one of the few of that sort that I take serious in theory. I say "appear[s] to be serious" because they give you those little results things you can stick on your web page which is just too Quizilla for me.

Seven Things To Keep In Mind About Longhorn
By Mary Jo Foley

As the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) countdown clock ticks down -- at this writing, we're 19 days, 14 hours and 36 minutes away from the Longhorn stampede, according to one enthusiast's Web site -- it's a good time to start separating Longhorn fact from fiction.

…Rather than take the easy way out, why not help folks get a better handle on exactly what Longhorn is/isn't, especially as the PDC hype-o-meter really gets in gear? In that spirit, here is a list of the key subsystems around which Microsoft is allegedly organizing Longhorn. (This is based on a document that we hear Microsoft's own Windows team is circulating internally.) The alleged 1,000-plus-page "Book of Longhorn" is divided into seven sections:

1. Aero, the 3D-rendering user interface;

2. Avalon, the core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling graphics/presentation chores;

3. Indigo, the next release of Microsoft's Web-services infrastructure that will underlie the OS; think .NET Remoting + MSMQ + ASMX + .NET Enterprise Services (a k a COM+);

4. WinFS, the Windows File System data-store that Longhorn will borrow from Microsoft's SQL Server "Yukon" database; will be able to store XML and metadata in a single place;

5. Real-time communications and speech, meaning the instant-messaging, P2P technology and the core speech API that will be built into the platform;

6. Trustworthy Computing/security, which, in Longhorn's case, will consist largely of the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, or "Palladium," code;

7. And last but not least, the catch-all category of Fundamentals. My guess as to what falls into this group? Integrated workflow capabilities; rights-management; perhaps even the good old .Net Framework.

There's still a lot TBD (to be determined) regarding Longhorn. We hear the client version of the operating system will come in consumer and business flavors. Exactly how many of each is far from final.

The Outsourcing Sports post below has extracts from a USA Today article. In that article is a reference to ColorLines Magazine. Being me, I go find the thing.

Interesting.

The first day of 4700, the year of the Ram, came and went without great fanfare for most Americans. But if you happen to be one of the 175,000 readers of AsianWeek newspaper you may have stumbled upon the tastefully designed half-page ad wishing you "Happy Chinese New Year" from your friends at the Central Intelligence Agency.

…In the age of Homeland Security, many federal agencies are looking to "diversify" their workforce. You may have heard the Border Patrol appeal on your Clear Channel hip-hop station or the U.S. Navy plug on your Spanish-language banda station. Colin Powell is mugging for the State Department in Hispanic Business magazine. The National Security Agency (NSA) is stumping at the NAACP National Convention. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the Coast Guard are amassing electronic real estate at HireDiversity.com. And the FBI is hunting down recruits in publications like Turkish Times, Korean Times, Gujarat Times, Al Atrana International, Sher-e-Punjab, and Sing Tao.

Anyone with a rudimentary background in American history might wonder at the motives behind this targeted government outreach. The NSA?s College Relations Manager Ken Acosta explains his agency?s "diversity" and foreign language needs like this: "Our workforce must anticipate and respond to the actions of our extremely diverse targets. Therefore, we rely on the diversity of our workforce to envision all the possibilities, to conceive of a world very different from the one we live in–diversity is critical to the success of our missions." In other words, the color-recruiting effort is more than a magnanimous salute to affirmative action. What?s implied in Acosta?s "diversity" pitch is that U.S. intelligence and security agencies are also hoping to people the ranks with some cross-cultural emissaries who might serve as a buffer between the gray-suited old guard and the unknown "other."

In George W. Bush?s America, cultural buffering is no small task. This is the administration that has screened thousands of Iraqi Americans in places like Dearborn, Michigan, in hopes of uncovering high-level military secrets. It?s the administration that offers "snitch visas" in exchange for information about the terrorist next door. It?s the administration that plans–through "special registration"–to regulate the comings and goings of Americans from 25 enemy countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Twenty months into the "war on terror," the "with us or against us" message has seeped into the fabric of America. Appeals for patriots to step forward, like the Chinese New Year ad, are brilliantly cloaked in the language of civil rights, equal opportunity, and cultural uplift.

A goodly chunk of ColorLines Magazine is online. It's a Good Thing (if you're into that sort of thing).

via Negrophile

Global trend remakes face of pro sports
By Tim Wendel

…According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, the percentage of players from outside the U.S. continues to grow in professional baseball, football, soccer and basketball. What we're witnessing is the beginning of the global sports age. This trend could create a harsh new reality for U.S.-born players -- especially for the African-American athletes who dominate some of those sports.

International prospects can cost pro teams less and often are thought to play a more fundamentally sound game than their U.S. counterparts, says Harry Edwards, a University of California sociology professor and San Francisco 49ers consultant. He predicts that basketball will go the way of baseball as foreign-born players increasingly take over its rosters, now filled mainly with black U.S. players.

"In 10 or 15 years, the question won't be, 'What happened to the black athlete in baseball?' " Edwards says. "The question will be, 'Who needs the black athlete?' "

…From the Bronx to Watts, the personal promise of professional sports has held many neighborhoods together. Even though the dream becomes reality for a tiny percentage of those who play, it provides a structure and a discipline that will be hard to replace if teams fill more of their rosters with international stars.

…The year Hoop Dreams came out, the first 10 picks in the NBA draft were from the U.S., and all had attended college. In 2002, however, Yao Ming from the Shanghai Sharks was the top pick, an Italian forward was drafted at No. 5, and a Brazilian center was No. 7. This year, a high school kid, LeBron James, went No. 1, a center from Serbia-Montenegro was next, and a French forward was No. 11.

Boom trials
The current high-profile courtroom dramas beg the question: Will prosecutions of white-collar crimes change the system?

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

… for many observers, the key question is whether the legal actions signal a change in attitudes and laws governing white-collar crime or whether the defendants are simply sacrificial lambs, being dispatched to assuage public indignation so business can carry on as usual. In many ways, it's too soon to tell. Yes, the cases represent a new wave of increased vigilance, but legal experts are divided about whether they represent a sustainable change or are just window dressing.

"I don't think a lot has changed, to tell the truth," said Gary Reback, an attorney with Carr & Ferrell in Palo Alto who currently represents PeopleSoft in its attempt to fend off Oracle's hostile takeover attempt. "There are certainly interests; large, important, powerful interests who are just as happy to let this blow over after a few people are indicted without really fundamental changes that might make a difference in terms of corporate governance."

Another extensive extract.

Look, it's obvious the current Israeli government actively opposes Palestinian independance. And it's obvious they know there will be no repercussions forthcoming from the American government for that stance, and note I didn't limit that to the Bush crew (though their handling of the situation has been particularly inept). And it's obvious a fully democratic one-state solution would eventually dilute the Jewish population until Israel was no longer a Jewish state and it's obvious THAT won't be acceptable at all.

Given this, if nothing else changes, Israel becoming an aparthied state with the Palestinians being the underclass will be the final solution.

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 6, 2003; Page A01

President Bush put it starkly when he met with Jordan's King Abdullah at Camp David two weeks ago.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "is a loser," Bush told the king, according to three sources familiar with the conversation. "I'm not going to spend my political capital on losers, only winners. I'm still in a war mode, and the war is terrorism. If people don't fight terrorism, I am not going to deal with them."

Yet now, four months after Bush formally launched the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map" with a pair of summits near the Red Sea, the plan is in tatters. A Palestinian prime minister intended to sideline Arafat resigned, leaving Arafat back in control. A cease-fire has been broken by suicide bombings, such as the attack Saturday in Haifa, and Israeli reprisals, such as yesterday's bombing inside Syria. And Bush's promise that a stream of U.S. officials would "ride herd" on the parties to pursue peace has been all but forgotten.

Report Fuels Fear That City Won't Get All of Promised 9/11 Aid
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

New York officials have long worried that the city will get billions of dollars less in federal aid to rebuild Lower Manhattan than the $21.4 billion President Bush promised after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Although the White House, Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have dismissed those concerns, a new report by the General Accounting Office is helping to increase them.

The report, which will be released this week, says no information is being collected to determine whether many of the tax benefits that account for a quarter of the entire federal aid package are being used. In essence, the report says, the city may never know how much of the $5 billion in so-called Liberty Zone tax benefits are ever used.

For the most part, the report says, the Internal Revenue Service does not collect or report information about the use of six of the seven tax benefits.

There is a growing consensus among state and city officials that the tax benefits are worth far less than the $5 billion federal officials originally estimated.

"It's disturbing," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of Manhattan. "They're not going to have any records of how much was spent, or the value of what we've gotten. New York deserves to get the full $21.4 billion it was promised."

Enron Seeks Millions for Power Never Delivered to Sierra Pacific
By KURT EICHENWALD

Published: October 6, 2003

The Enron Corporation collapsed into bankruptcy proceedings after revealing that it had reported earnings that never really existed. Now, a major Nevada utility stands on the brink of a bankruptcy filing because Enron is demanding hundreds of millions of dollars of payments for electricity that it never really delivered.

And so far, the courts say Enron is right.

The dispute between two electric utility units of Sierra Pacific Resources has been bubbling along for several months, as Sierra and Enron battled in bankruptcy court about whether the amount of money owed by Sierra was nothing -- or what is now more than $330 million. After having lost there, Sierra is expected today to file an emergency request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking it to take charge of the controversy and invalidate the payment requirement.

…The dispute has already attracted the attention of members of Congress. On Sept. 9, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, submitted a statement on the dispute to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

In it, the senators criticized the federal regulator's decision in June not to modify contested contracts with wholesale electricity suppliers that were struck during the electricity crisis -- a period F.E.R.C. has found the suppliers were engaged in market manipulation.

"Regardless of what standard is used, the only just result, the only result that doesn't reward criminal behavior, the only result that protects rather than punishes the victim is a result that frees Nevada ratepayers from the unjust and unreasonable consequences of its contracts with Enron," the senators wrote in their statement.

The Looming Shrimp War

The nasty catfish war with Vietnam has tempted American shrimpers to engage in some trade mischief of their own. Using spurious allegations of unfair trade practices, American catfish farmers have been able to hoodwink the federal government into slapping tariffs of up to 64 percent on Vietnamese catfish. A group of shrimpers from eight Southern states is now preparing to file a claim requesting a similar tax on imported shrimp.

Americans believe in the free trade game until they start losing at it. Then we accuse the other side of cheating. That is the message these baseless dumping cases send to the rest of the world. It is understandable for people to seek protection when their livelihoods are adversely affected by trade. But as a nation that benefits from freer trade, the United States cannot afford to continue encouraging these cases. They antagonize poor farmers and laborers around the world who discover that the world's superpower does not really believe in what it preaches.

You'd better stock up on towels in case the Cubs win the World Series, boyee…

Putin Says U.S. Faces Big Risks in Iraqi Mission
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: October 6, 2003

MOSCOW, Oct. 5 -- President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says the United States now faces in Iraq the possibility of a prolonged, violent and ultimately futile war like the one that mired the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

In an expansive interview on Saturday evening, Mr. Putin warned that Iraq could "become a new center, a new magnet for all destructive elements." He added, without naming them, that "a great number of members of different terrorist organizations" have been drawn into the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein. [Excerpts]

To respond to this emerging threat, he said, the Bush administration must move quickly to restore sovereignty to Iraqis and to secure a new United Nations resolution that would clearly define how long international forces remain there.

"How would the local population treat forces whose official name is the occupying forces?" he asked, suggesting that further hostility to the United States was inevitable unless its occupation received the international legitimacy it now lacks.

It's obvious something needs to change, but...

Published: October 6, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 -- The White House has ordered a major reorganization of American efforts to quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the reconstruction of both countries, according to senior administration officials.

The new effort includes the creation of an "Iraq Stabilization Group," which will be run by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The decision to create the new group, five months after Mr. Bush declared the end of active combat in Iraq, appears part of an effort to assert more direct White House control over how Washington coordinates its efforts to fight terrorism, develop political structures and encourage economic development in the two countries.

What are they going to do, lie the terrorists into submission? No, they tried that…

I know…they'll expose the names of the terrorists' operatives! No, if they could do that the mess wouldn't be so messy, would it?

Wait, Condi's in charge. All they have to do is spin the situation untill everyone gets dizzy and falls down, right?

Oliver Willis is back from BloggerCon with the following cogent observation

Blogs are great. They're wonderful, and they will Change Things. But we need to step back outside of the blog-to-blog echo chamber and look at how important this movement really is.

What seems to have happened is that the fundraising success of the Howard Dean campaign has become the blog equivalent of the Netscape IPO. That public offering opened the floodgates to thousands of unprofitable companies and created the stock market bubble that was great for some, but probably set the web industry back a few years after people realized it was not The Answer to all their problems. That cycle appears to be happening with blogs now. During the BloggerCon conference it would be easy to go home thinking that any problem of note in the world could be remedied by a simple addition of "blog" to it.

I'm not ready to drink the Kool-Aid just yet.

About once per calendar quarter I'll be inspired to read something on Instapundit, and it's always because someone comments on something he said that's so outrageous that I have to see it for myself.

After declaring the whole Plame affair to be too confusing for him to understand, he's apparently giving advice to the Bush administration on how to deflect the investigation from itself.

You can read it if you want to by checking out Mark Kleiman's responseto it, which post links to the sorry statement.

The L.A. Times has an interesting Op-Ed titled NASCAR Dads Fuel Strategies for Bush in '04 about the return of Angry White Men politics (did it ever go away?). I think this one deserves a fairly substantial extract. It shows identity politics isn't limited to minorities and Democrats.

Though it talks about "Bush's brand of emotional politics," it's important to note that it's the Republican party as a whole that is executing the strategy. Assuming Bush never gets elected, the game is no more over than when Trent Lott was demoted of Newt Gingrich was outed. The game will not be over until Democrats make it clear that Republican actions are not as NASCAR Dad friendly as their rhetoric.

Latino Unity Fails to Live Up to Hype
By Gregory Rodriguez
Gregory Rodriguez, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He's writing a book on how Mexican immigration will change America's view of race.

October 5, 2003

It may not have been the act that sealed his fate, but there is little doubt that Gov. Gray Davis' signing of a bill that allows illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses didn't do much to save his political skin. He must have known that his signature on legislation that he had twice vetoed would incur the wrath of many Anglo, black and Asian voters. But the governor evidently calculated that a windfall of Latino support would offset his Anglo losses. He was wrong.

According to the most recent Times poll, Latinos are much more likely to support the new driver's license law than are their non-Latino counterparts. But when asked if they would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who supported the legislation, the results were pretty much a wash. Though 32% of likely Latino voters said they would be more likely, 27% said they'd be less likely and 37% said it made no difference. I'm sure that is not what Davis had expected: alienating large numbers of white, black and Asian voters just to split the Latino vote.

Davis repeated a mistake many analysts have made during the recall campaign: He distilled the burgeoning and diversifying Latino electorate of 2.3 million into a lump of uniformity.

Toss This Stinker in the Sea

Ted Stevens thinks the Alaskan fishermen and processors he represents shouldn't have to comply with federal rules they don't like. So the powerful Republican, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, attached a rider to the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill to give Alaskan industry a pass.

Stevens insists that Alaskans have done a better job husbanding their fish-teeming waters than have other states. Regardless of whether he is right about the health of the Alaskan crab, salmon and pollock populations, he's wrong to use the appropriations process to grant favors that rewrite federal resource law behind closed doors.

One provision of his rider would freeze all funds to enforce federal laws imposing new limits on crabbing and fishing in sensitive ocean habitat. Another legal barnacle guarantees certain processing companies 90% of the lucrative Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab catch. This unprecedented deal not only would favor some processors and unfairly exclude others, it would hobble fishermen from offering their prized catches to the highest bidders.

Though it's not something I'm really trying to hear

October 5, 2003

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. Army general who heads coalition forces in Iraq says it will be years before the United States is able to "draw down" its forces here, and he warned Americans to brace for more casualties, including a "significant engagement where tens of American soldiers or coalition soldiers" are killed.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez gave a frank assessment of the military situation in Iraq. He said the coalition forces are winning the war here despite the daily drumbeat of news reports that suggest the military is encountering more trouble than its commanders had anticipated.

He said he is "very comfortable" with the current force structure and size, which consists of 140,000 soldiers, all but a few thousand of whom are American, and he said for the first time publicly that the coalition force level won't be reduced anytime soon.

Later: Okay, instead of having the whole site (with all the newspaper quotes) checked for evilness, I just checked the post wherin I describe the reason for my weirdness and it came up 41% evil. That takes into account the posts, comments, navigation links, everything.

The post alone, from the title to the closing sentance, gets a 22% evil rating. Removing the title from the text being analyzed raises my evil rating to 49%.

This is interesting.

I just checked Richard B. Cheney and it came up 1% evil. And http://www.georgewbush.com/ came up 12% evil. Eschaton is 30% (as of now) and Calpundit is 43% evil.

This is obviously a Republican scam.

I have to pay more attention…