U.S. Says Man Had Ties to Plot to Disrupt Vote
By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: August 8, 2004

This article was reported by David Johnston, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, and written by Mr. Johnston.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 - A Pakistani man whose arrest provided information about the reconnaissance of financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington was also communicating with Qaeda operatives who the authorities say are plotting to carry out an attack intended to disrupt the fall elections, a senior intelligence official said Saturday.

Diplomacy Fails to Slow Advance of Nuclear Arms
By DAVID E. SANGER

KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 7 - American intelligence officials and outside nuclear experts have concluded that the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts with European and Asian allies have barely slowed the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea over the past year, and that both have made significant progress.

In a tacit acknowledgment that the diplomatic initiatives with European and Asian allies have failed to curtail the programs, senior administration and intelligence officials say they are seeking ways to step up unspecified covert actions intended, in the words of one official, "to disrupt or delay as long as we can" Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.

But other experts, including former Clinton administration officials, caution that while covert efforts have been tried in the past, both the Iranian and North Korean programs are increasingly self-sufficient, largely thanks to the aid they received from the network built by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former leader of the Pakistani bomb program. "It's a much harder thing to accomplish today," said one senior American intelligence official, "than it would have been in the 90's."

I always said the major advantage Perl has over all the other scripting languages out there is CPAN. Once you're familiar with Perl there's pretty much nothing you can't do by assembling modules from CPAN. I know this. But the fact is, Perl ships with some pretty impressive libraries.

Today I bit the bullet, went thru the documentation and found I didn't even need CPAN to handle my Latin 1 to UTF-8 character set conversion. It was easier than setting up a blog to do it, that's for sure.

With this conversion script I should have no problem with international characters and such. I already have a PHP script to clean up the experimental embedded CSS in my old entries. Tomorrow I'll finish up the scripts that will rewrite the image tags. The internal links are problematic. I need to count them to see how big a problem it is.

I've also gone semi-mainstream in that, since Drupal is planning a new release soon, I decided not to go with the forked version. The next version has some fairly significant changes, one of which broke my full-text search module. I know what the problem is though. Fixing it will be a matter of reading some stuff and typing some stuff.

I got the cutting edge version and joined the developer mailing list, which is interesting because I've never watched a well-established open source project from the inside.

Anyway, it looks like the "how" part of my project will be fine. Time to flesh out the "what" part.

Those who remember Thunderbirds—the real one with marionettes this current movie is based on— ought to get a kick out of Team America- World Police.

From the creators of South Park, no less. There's a trailer on the other side of the link and it looks to be as good as any action film released in the last five years. And as ridiculous.

Forced to modify a Perl script. I'm still not happy because the code makes my eyes cross, but I need to convert the English characters in the P6 database to UTF-8 and I'm thinking the best time to do that is in mid-transfer. I don't want to do it in the MT database and by the time it hits the Drupal database all the MS-Word stuff I was too lazy to strip out by hand is already converted to those stupid question marks.

Although I could also set up a new MT installation and set PublishCharset in mt.cfg to utf-8, export all my stuff from the current setup, import it into the new one and convert that one.

Rick James Resources On The Soul-Patrol Website

Yesterday the Soul-Patrol Website got FOUR TIMES it's normal traffic. (seems that what it takes for people to seek out information is for someone to have to die...)

Anyhow...

Here are a list of resources on the site about Rick James.

In addition to what is listed below, stay tuned for a new broadcast on Soul-Patrol Radio which will focus on the musical/cultural legacy of Rick James...

RICK JAMES BIO

RICK JAMES 1999 ATLANTIC CITY CONCERT REVIEW

URBAN RAPSODY CHAT TRANSCRIPT

MARY JANE GIRLS

TEENA MARIE

FAQ - RICK & TEENA

STREET SONGS CD DELUXE REVIEW

60 MIN. LIVE CONCERT BROADCAST FROM 1981
(FEATURED ON STREET SONGS CD DELUXE) FEATURING: RICK JAMES, TEENA MARIE & THE STONE CITY BAND

In addition there are 495 listings in the Online SoulPower Search Database relative to Rick James
http://www.soul-patrol.com/search
Rick James: Online SoulPower Search Database

(pass it along....)

Bob Davis

SURF THE: SOUL-PATROL.COM WEBSITE
JOIN THE FREE BI-WEEKLY: SOUL-PATROL NEWSLETTER
LISTEN TO: SOUL-PATROL.NET RADIO
GET FREE: SOUL-PATROL NETWORK CONTENT FEEDS FOR YOUR SITE (UPDATED EVERY TWO WEEKS)

Congresswoman would make Georgia history if she wins runoff
DICK PETTYS
Associated Press

ATLANTA - The political newcomer who booted fiery Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney from office two years ago will try to make history again Tuesday in the Democratic runoff for the seat of retiring maverick Sen. Zell Miller.

A win would make Rep. Denise Majette the first black candidate to be a nominee for the U.S. Senate in Georgia.

Majette, 49, giving up her hard-won congressional seat after one term, led the state's July 20 Democratic Senate primary with 41 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates but she failed to get the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

In the rematch, she faces white businessman Cliff Oxford, recruited for the race by top Democrats including former President Jimmy Carter because of his ability to self-fund his campaign.

Heavy spending on TV ads helped Oxford finish second in the primary with nearly 21 percent of the vote.

The winner faces Republican Johnny Isakson, who took former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's seat in Congress five years ago and won his party's three-way Senate primary. He is a heavy favorite in November in a state with an increasing tilt toward the GOP. If Isakson wins, Republicans would gain a seat in the Senate since Miller is a Democrat.

---

People keep saying ol' Zell is a Democrat instead of the Celebrity Mole. Why is that?

I don't know a damn thing about Majette other than that she annoyed me by being the blade of the hatchet job done on McKinney.

At Abuse Hearing, No Testimony That G.I.'s Acted on Orders
By KATE ZERNIKE

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Aug. 6 - In the three months since photographs of detainees in sexually humiliating positions triggered the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the soldiers charged with mistreatment have defended themselves by saying they were simply following orders.

But as of the end of testimony here on Friday in a military court hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England - the last, the longest and the most closely watched of the proceedings to determine whether the seven soldiers should be court-martialed - there have been no witnesses and no evidence to back up that central assertion.
[P6: WTF, you really think a soldier that spent two months being trained to follow orders implicitly is going to testify? ]

Witnesses, more than 25 for Private England's hearing alone, have described a prison in chaos, where military police even ran a prostitution and liquor ring. Soldiers often did not know who was in charge or how they were supposed to treat detainees. Prisoners were left naked for long periods as punishment and were at least occasionally abused, in one case leading to a death from what investigators called trauma to the head.

Yet no one has said there were direct orders to carry out the treatment seen in photos, or even, as Private England has told investigators, that the military police soldiers were encouraged to "keep it up" as a way of encouraging better interrogations.

"To my knowledge, ma'am, they were never ordered to do anything," Specialist Joseph M. Darby, the soldier who first turned in the photos, replied to a question from a prosecutor here on Friday.[P6: Link added so you know what I think of that bit of testimony]

Witness after witness has said that the treatment in the pictures, including forcing prisoners to masturbate and piling naked detainees in a pyramid, would never be allowed under any stretch of the rules.
[P6: That's because according to the rules, there was no need to stretch.]

Professor Kim dropped this one, and I was checking out the organization that are looking into it.

Quote of note:

the Star-Ledger analysis found a number of predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey where homeowners are paying similar taxes as homeowners in white neighborhoods, even though there is a wide gap in home values.

In the dozen towns where the disparity is greatest, blacks are four times as likely to live in neighborhoods where home values are overassessed by at least 5 percent than they are to live in neighborhoods underassessed by 5 percent or more.

Whites, meanwhile, are nearly twice as likely to live in sections of town where assessments are too low.

In Montclair, where nearly three quarters of black homeowners -- but only 1 in 5 white homeowners -- live in overassessed neighborhoods, long-time residents such as George Ryder say anger and frustration is growing.

And there's more.

Racial disparity in property taxes stirs calls for action
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
BY ROBERT GEBELOFF
Star-Ledger Staff
At least two fair housing advocates said yesterday they will begin researching whether New Jersey's property tax system violates the civil rights of black homeowners in towns where taxes are levied based on outdated tax rolls.

The Star-Ledger reported Sunday that thousands of homeowners in diverse neighborhoods in Essex, Middlesex and Union counties are paying municipal property taxes at a higher rate than neighbors in predominantly white neighborhoods.

"We're deeply concerned by what's been reported," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the state American Civil Liberties Union.

The situation is most acute in towns where property tax rolls have not been updated in years, and home prices have appreciated the slowest in the sections of town with the greatest black population.

In the late 1990s, the ACLU successfully pressured Nassau County, N.Y., to update its tax roll for the first time in 60 years after a court challenge that eventually drew in the state attorney general and the U.S. Justice Department as allies.

Jacobs has directed her legal staff to research whether a similar case is warranted here.

Swim Club Owners that Barred Minorities to Pay $1 Million Settlement in ACLU-NJ Lawsuit
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 26, 2004

…Marci Shepard, was a teenager when her father died and she was invited to live with Michael & Catherine Russo, of Nutley, for whom she had previously worked as a mother's helper. After joining Le Terrace in May of 2001, Catherine Russo and her children brought Marci to the club as their guest. An employee would not let Marci in, claiming that no more guests were being permitted that day. While Catherine Russo went to discuss the matter with the owner, the employee permitted a member and that member's white guest to enter the facilities. After Mrs. Russo continued to protest the treatment of Marci, Nardone ordered the family off the premises.

The ACLU lawsuit charged Patrick and Rae Nardone, owners of the Le Terrace Swim Club, with violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which prohibits businesses from denying any individual the right to use their accommodations based on that person's race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, or nationality. Swimming pools are listed as a specific example of a "public accommodation" covered by the law.

"While I'm happy to receive financial compensation, what's more important is to send a positive message to others to come forward and stand up for their rights," said Marci Shepard, a plaintiff in the suit. "Mr. Nardone humiliated me when he wouldn't let me into the pool, and the children of the family who brought me as a guest couldn't understand why I wasn't being allowed in with them. By coming forward and speaking out, we were able to expose the discrimination at Le Terrace."

The ACLU-NJ also represented Philip and Annmarie Giordano of Bloomfield, who scheduled their daughter's June 2002 birthday party at Le Terrace Swim Club, where Annmarie Giordano and her daughter were members. Patrick Nardone demanded a list of guests and asked whether the guest list included any "brown-skinned" or "black" children. When told that her child did have Asian and African-American friends who were guests, Nardone informed her that those children were not welcome at the club. He thereafter rescinded the Giordanos' membership.

Separately from the ACLU-NJ lawsuit, the State of New Jersey had filed an administrative complaint against Le Terrace Swim Club. The Nardones settled that case in 2003 by paying $25,000 and agreeing to various conditions for their continued operation of the pool, such as disclosing the racial make-up of members to the Division on Civil Rights and adopting a written non-discrimination policy. However, the Nardones sold the pool soon thereafter, making such conditions moot.

Abiola at Foreign Dispatches

I find it amusing to ponder that conservatives, who are usually to be found at the fore of those condemning others for engaging in moral relativism, are also the primary defenders of that very practice when applied in the context of history. What else other than moral relativism is it, for instance, to excuse the misdeeds of slave-holding founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson by saying "they were men of their times?" Couldn't one say the same about any individuals who engage in practices we find unacceptable today, like suicide bombers and Sudanese slave raiders? Aren't they "men of their times", or is one's "time" defined according to some objective measure, of which prevailing opinion in the United States happens to be the infallible gauge?

…Talk of "men of their times" as a way to excuse the blatant hypocrisy of founding fathers who held slaves even as they condemned King George III for effectively reducing them to slavery is nothing more than apologist drivel. If we open the door to moral relativism based on the historical era under discussion, pretty soon we'll find that all basis for passing moral judgment on other societies is pulled away from under our feet. To the accusation that other ages may judge us by their own standards in turn and find us wanting, the proper answer isn't that we ought to prevail from judging those who came before us by our own standards, but that we should strive to raise our standards to such a level that those who come after us won't hold our thoughts and deeds against us. After all, men who lived as long ago as did Jesus and Rabbi Hillel managed to live lives as free of moral blemish as anyone can hope to do even today.

Fact is, this applies to me more than any Conservative I know. The practice developed as a device to keep me from bitch-slapping random white folks as I studied history…when you find out all you've been taught is wrong or at least heavily interpreted, and the truth is UGLY AS FUCK it takes a minute to regain your equilibrium.

So what do you think, folks? Since I don't have that slapping urge anymore, should I give up the moral relativism?

George forgot about our bet, but now that I've reminded him he's got another unpopular prediction.

He was, however, quite progressive. Lester's response to La Shawn and Michael King is on point, and goes back to the noun versus adjective problem…was Jesus liberal or was Jesus A Liberal™? The confusion is so strong, even so capable a person as Lester deals with "liberal" as a synonym for "Democratic Party Member

Oh. One more thing. When Jackson says:

The Suffragettes were liberals; those who opposed the vote for women were conservatives. Martin Luther King was a liberal; the segregationists were conservatives. He wanted to end racial discrimination; they wanted to conserve it.

...he's right. It is also true that many of the segregationists were Democrats...but don't get it twisted. Partisan preference (also known as party id) is very different from political ideology. One can be a Liberal Republican (though this is becoming a bit hard) just as one can be a Conservative Democrat (ask Zell Miller about this one).

Yeah, he's got nuance, but he called Zell Miller a Democrat.

Now, I'm sure Conservatives™ would like to claim Yeshua ben Joseph was a Conservative™. But one must look at the times and the context in which he lived.

The Pharisees didn't see him as conservative at all, did they?

Now, if I'm going to call Jesus a Conservative™…or, for that matter, a Liberal™…we're going to have to start judging everyone else outside their historical context as well. That makes all your founding fathers racist as hell rather than simply a product of their times. After all, they are one hell (oops, heck) of a lot closer to our timeframe than Yeshua is. And we'd have to update a few things, check a few political positions to see if they are in keeping with the teaching of Yeshua.

For instance, we have the famous saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life." Which of the two categories would you say this falls under?

The President's Fiscal Year 2004 Department of Labor budget calls for deep cuts to job training and employment service programs at a time of economic uncertainty, while the unemployment rate is at its highest level in eight years and millions of American families are suffering.

Unemployment insurance. The President's budget would transfer all the authority for administration of unemployment insurance from the federal government to the states, which would put unwanted fiscal pressure on the states, and threaten the unemployment benefits of American families by forcing states to choose between raising taxes, cutting benefits, or facing delays, overpayments and underpayments of benefit checks due to inadequate administrative funding.

Personal Re-employment Accounts. The Bush Administration has a new proposal to spend $3.6 billion over two years for states to create Personal Re-employment Accounts (PRA). According to the Administration, these accounts would provide up to $3,000 to unemployed workers to purchase intensive re-employment, training, and support services. It is clear that workers need greater investments in job training and in unemployed workers, but these accounts do not reach enough workers, limit flexibility for job training, and are no replacement for investments in proven job training and unemployment supports.

Many workers who need re-employment services would not receive them under the President's PRAs, including the one million workers who have run out of all of their state and federal unemployment benefits without finding a new job. Only workers eligible for unemployment insurance would have access to this program. That would mean that part-time workers, home-based workers, and many low-wage and low-skilled workers would be ineligible. If the same number of workers exhaust their state benefits over the next two years as in 2001 and 2002, then a two-year appropriation of $3.6 billion for PRAs would provide only $500 per worker. [P6: emphasis added]

The proposed PRAs would cap the amount of training and re-employment services available to dislocated workers (those using PRAs would be precluded from using other job training programs for one year after their PRAs are exhausted). There is no cap for job training under the current Workforce Investment Act (WIA). Furthermore, PRAs would purchase many services available for free under WIA.

Job training. The President's budget merges the Employment Service state grants and the Workforce Investment Act's adult training and dislocated worker program into one $3.1 billion grant. By consolidating existing programs into larger block grants and redesigning the way job training funds are allocated, the Administration threatens to reduce the amount of services available to American workers. Consolidating programs will cut job training spending by $144.4 million and serve 109,000 fewer youths.

Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Program. The President's budget proposes to eliminate the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers program for the second year in a row ($117 million in Fiscal Year 2002). The Senate provided $80 million for this initiative last year despite the President's proposal to eliminate the program, which provides assistance for America's most vulnerable workers - migrant and seasonal workers.

Youth Opportunity Grants Program. President Bush eliminates Youth Opportunity Grants in the Fiscal Year 2004 budget, just as he did in last year's budget ($229 million in Fiscal Year 2002). Despite the fact that Congress rejected his plan to eliminate this program last year and provided $225 million these grants, President Bush is once again trying to cut programs designed to help youth prepare for work and receive on-the-job skills.

To me, if looks like, "Give a man a fish head…"

Swear ta god, And we're invisible.

There's liberty and justice…for y'all.

---

One of the reasons I obsess a bit over health care and pharmaceuticals and such is the relationship your typical Black person has with the medical industry.

Another reason is, we're far more likely to need it. Racism keeps Black folks constantly under stress (I don't need your assessment of the reality of the situation, and to be honest you ought know by now my positions can't be lightly dismissed). The kind of stress you get from just waiting for shit to start. Every Black person knows that sinking feeling in their gut you get when some racist (actually innocently, sometimes) nails you after you've let your guard down. So you keep your guard up, and your body responds like a car that idles too fast.

---

Patients With H.I.V. Seen as Separated by a Racial Divide
By LINDA VILLAROSA

Last January in Manhattan, at the memorial service of a colleague who died of an AIDS-related illness, Joseph Bostic lost feeling in his legs and had trouble standing. A friend, Keith Cylar, hailed a cab, crumpled some bills into the driver's palm and sent Mr. Bostic home to Brooklyn. Two months later, Mr. Bostic died of heart and kidney failure related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Within three weeks, Mr. Cylar, too, was dead of heart disease related to the virus.

The loss of these two men - both of them AIDS activists who had lived with H.I.V. for years - shocked many who had nearly forgotten the days when attending funerals and memorial services was a constant, unsettling ritual. In the United States, death rates from H.I.V./AIDS have sharply dropped in the past eight years as new medications have made the disease manageable for many patients.

But among African-Americans like Mr. Bostic and Mr. Cylar, AIDS is still a killer.

In 2002, almost twice as many blacks with AIDS died compared with whites, a gap that has been increasing since 1998. Researchers say the reasons include late diagnoses and inferior care, along with complications because blacks are more likely than whites to suffer from other illnesses.

As a result, health experts say, many blacks in the United States have far more in common with their counterparts in Africa than they do with white patients.

"The area my clinic's in is essentially a suburb of the third world," said Dr. Joseph C. Gathe Jr., an infectious-disease physician in Houston and director of a nonprofit AIDS clinic. "It's a shame no one seems to know that the problem in Africa looks like the problem in inner-city Houston, Chicago and New York."

Though African-Americans make up just over 12 percent of the United States population, they accounted for 54 percent of the 40,000 new diagnoses of H.I.V./AIDS in 2002, the most recent year for which statistics were available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the estimated 385,000 people living with AIDS, 42 percent were African-American. For them, the disease leads disproportionately to death.

Among black men ages 25 to 44, the death rate from H.I.V./AIDS was more than six times greater than for whites. For black women in the same age group, the numbers are even more startling: the death rate is more than 13 times greater than for whites. The most common method of transmission has been from infected sexual partners, followed by transmission through injected drugs.

I'm sure the hysteria she's whipped up has done wonders for her career, and put her in the pundit queue…Michelle Malkin is looking to move into TheCoulterThing's position, which would let one or another black Conservative slide up in Malkin's spot, thereby leaving a slot at the bottom (where all good Black go).

Problem is, Malkin still ain't white…though as Honorary White and The Model Minority she makes a good lash, the spot seems to require a blonde—hence Laura Ingraham (CoulterThing-In-Training) and Chris Matthews. This blond requirement leaves one or another black Conservative still entering and leaving by the back door. Add to that the fact that TheCoulterThing is actually made from beef jerky and shoe leather, making it hearty as a cockroach and as likely to survive direct noo-klee-yer attack and I'm afraid Ms. Jacobsen has no shot.

What brought on the atypical rant?

The woman is still writing articles about the Islamic Threat she hallucinated.

No, I don't link to people I openly disrespect, remember? But Time Magazine links to her, in the process of delivering an exclusive interview with the air marshal that was on the plane that totally debunks her.

I'll be fair after these several quote.

The controversy began in mid-July, when WomensWallStreet.com posted an account of the incident written by Jacobsen, a passenger on Flight 327. She detailed what she said was odd behavior of the passengers (for instance, getting up several times during the flight, going to the bathroom often, congregating in the aisle) and described the increasing concern she and her husband felt. She said the flight attendants were also frightened, so much so that they seemed too scared to confront the men.

Upon arrival in Los Angeles, the 14 men were interviewed by FBI agents and Federal Air Marshals, who determined the men were a Syrian band heading to play a casino in San Diego. After being checked through government databases, they were not charged with any crime or detained beyond questioning.

Jacobson continues to say that something very suspicious was going on. She's written two follow-up articles, and bloggers and mainstream media outlets have picked up the story.

Continues to say…could be she's just one of the many people who can't admit they are wrong…especially after trumpeting their error all over hell and back?

About 25 minutes after takeoff, a flight attendant discreetly told the FAM that she thought the men were "acting suspiciously" and were congregating near one of the lavatories in the back of the plane. He alerted another marshal on the plane and also told the flight attendant to notify the captain. A short while later, the FAM asked the flight crew member to get physical descriptions of the men and their seat numbers.

He watched the men and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Okay, the stewardii were scared, she got that much right. But the air marshall's report indicates that was paranoia as well, since (I know I'm giving away the end of the story here) they never did anything to raise suspicion except be sorta brownish and ethnic.

In a long, single aisle plane like the Boeing 757 that was carrying Flight 327, there are often many people standing or moving around. That was the case on this flight, says the FAM, who has flown hundreds of missions in his two and half years on the job. The FAM never saw — nor was he told — of any example of the men interfering with the flight crew (which is a federal crime). He never saw any activity that caused him to ask the pilots to turn on the seat belt sign (which he can request) and keep people in their seats. "Nothing my main partner or I saw on Flight 327 brought us anywhere near a conclusion that we considered breaking our cover or deploying as we've been trained. And we never came close to drawing our weapons."

Paranoid white chicks milking other people fears for an article not withstanding…

There was, the marshal admits, one incident that did concern him: when one of the group came from the back of the plane forward to use the lavatory in First Class. The FAM timed the man, dressed in a green jumpsuit with Arabic writing on it; he stayed about ten minutes in the toilet. Immediately after the man returned to the back to the plane, the FAM searched the washroom and found nothing.

I guess it's an air marshall's job to be paranoid, but ten minutes in the can is not terribly unusual. They guy probably did drop a bomb in there, but not the kind security need be concerned about.

In contrast to Jacobsen's version, the FAM said at no time did any people congregate near the First Class bathroom.

Having made this part up is what convinced me the woman deserves nothing but disdain.

Unnatural Disaster
Record floods and drought are devastating South Asia, but man is as much to blame as nature
BY ALEX PERRY | PATNA

…Droughts and floods account for more than half of the world's total deaths from disasters, according to the United Nations. But unlike many other catastrophes, most water crises are man-made. Nature may bring the occasional monsoon downpour or dry spell, but environmentalists agree that global warming, dams, deforestation and slash-and-burn farming exponentially exacerbate these seasonal weather patterns. Inept and corrupt water management also contributes to the problem, allowing plentiful water to run off to the seas or leaving it to lie in floods on the land, while a few hours away, crops wither in parched fields. South Asia's water woes are hardly unique. China faces simultaneous floods and droughts every year, as devastating surges down the Yangtze River cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, while deforestation turns farmland north of Beijing into desert. In Uzbekistan, the Soviets created one of the world's worst environmental disasters by using the Amu Darya to irrigate massive cotton farms, shrinking the Aral Sea by half and, as pesticide run-off evaporated and poisoned the air, creating a cancer cluster the size of England. Meanwhile, China's plans to build a series of dams across the upper reaches of the Mekong are expected to halve water flow on the river that provides employment, transport and income to 65 million Southeast Asians. These kinds of water controversies could spark ugly international disputes. Security experts have warned of flash points along the Nile, the Jordan, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong. As long ago as 1995, the then World Bank vice president Ismael Serageldin predicted: "If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water."

---

The first water war will likely be between Northern and Southern California.

Chappelle renews for $50 million
Deal with Comedy Central includes other projects

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) -- Dave Chappelle has signed a massive deal with Comedy Central that will return the comedian's hit series to the network for two more seasons.

Sources familiar with the deal indicate it could be worth about $50 million, vaulting Chappelle, 30, into the rarefied realm of television's top earners. The new contract is believed to mark not only a steep increase for Chappelle as star, writer, co-executive producer and co-creator of "Chappelle's Show," but more significantly, reward him with a hefty chunk of the series' robust DVD sales.

Increasing the pressure on Comedy to close a megadeal with Chappelle was interest from other programmers eager to tap his talents, including NBC Universal Television Group, according to sources, which ultimately deemed Chappelle too expensive. FX is said to have made an eight-figure offer to lure Chappelle to the network, but to no avail.

The deal also has implications beyond Comedy for Chappelle within the network's parent company, Viacom, sources said. Another component sets up Chappelle with a multimillion-dollar deal at Paramount Pictures to star in an adaptation of the autobiography of Rick James, the funk veteran whom Chappelle has lampooned on "Chappelle's Show." He may also be tapped for a different film project.

In addition, the contract is said to establish a development deal for Chappelle's production company, Pilot Boy Prods., with managing principal Mustafa Abuelhija. The pair already has a project under consideration at Comedy featuring "Chappelle's Show" contributor Paul Mooney.

Also reaping the benefits of the deal was Chappelle's longtime partner, Neal Brennan, a director, executive producer, co-creator and writer of the series. While terms of the deal for Brennan were not disclosed, it is one of the richest deals in basic cable for a multihyphenate.

Plus I have a bet with George over this.

Biographer sees Thomas as chief justice
By Anne Gearan, Associated Press Writer | August 6, 2004

WASHINGTON --Clarence Thomas has been interviewed by White House lawyers as a possible choice to be the next chief justice of the United States, says the author of a new biography.

Thomas says he isn't interested but could find it hard to turn down an opportunity to be the first black man to lead the Supreme Court, said biographer Ken Foskett.

"Judging Thomas," out this week from William Morrow, traces Thomas' life from rough beginnings in rural Georgia, through Yale Law School to his life today.

Better late than after the election, I always say…

Quote of note:

A Prudential spokesman in Elizabeth, N.J., Robert DeFillipo, said Friday that company officials were confident that terrorists had taken no photographs of the headquarters since before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Yesterday, Prudential executives were at the FBI, where they looked at photographs from the computer, and were confident afterward that none of the photographs were more recent than 2001," DeFillipo said.

"One of the reasons they were confident was they noticed surveillance cameras that were installed after 9/11 were not in the photographs they examined. In addition, they noticed that some of the photographs that they looked at appeared to be taken out of a history of the company that was published four years ago."

The photos from the history book were of the building's interior and exterior, DeFillipo said.

Terror threat info may have been updated
By Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated Press Writer | August 6, 2004

WASHINGTON --Authorities have some evidence that suspected terror surveillance information on five financial buildings was looked at again and perhaps updated in January, a top homeland security official said Friday.

Separately, President Bush defended the decision to issue terrorism warnings last weekend based on the information.

James Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security and No. 2 official at the agency, initially told The Associated Press that new surveillance photographs were taken in January of Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, N.J., both interior and exterior, and were not simply old photographs that had been altered or otherwise updated.

"New pictures," Loy said after a ceremony in Elizabeth, N.J., to give badges to officers of the department's Customs and Border Protection Office. Pressed to provide specifics, he said: "Both inside and out."

But later Friday, Loy said that he had not personally been "poring over" the intelligence information. Loy said it was clear the surveillance files of the Prudential Building and four other sites held on a captured computer were accessed and perhaps updated in January, but he could not say with certainty that there were new photos taken then. He said he had been speaking hypothetically of what could constitute updating of information.

Loy said there also is some evidence of "freshening" of surveillance information from the other four buildings specifically named in the terror warnings last weekend, although he again said he could not say that "with total clarity."

Dem. Louisiana congressman switches to GOP
August 6, 2004

BATON ROUGE, La. --Rep. Rodney Alexander made a surprise switch of party affiliation on Friday and registered to run for re-election as a Republican.

Alexander, who ran as a Democrat to win his first congressional term but voted along conservative lines, acted in the closing minutes for candidates to qualify for the Nov. 2 election ballot -- too late for any strong Democrat to get in the race.[P6: This is what earned him the chickenshit appelation]

Sen. John Breaux, D-La., accused Alexander of an underhanded maneuver that "effectively prevented the people of his district from a having a choice."

"Rodney is a confused politician who has placed loyalty at the very bottom of his priorities," Breaux said.

Alexander's decision gives House Republicans 229 seats to 205 for the Democrats with one Democratic-leaning independent. With the switch, Democrats would have to gain 12 seats this fall to attain the majority.

Alexander had registered at the start of qualifying on Wednesday as a Democrat. At the time he said, "I'm not ashamed to be a Democrat, but I vote what I think the people of the 5th District want me to represent."

---

Chickenshit.

Check this boy's back account for recent deposits.

…is only semi-random. When the glories of my RSS reader are unveiled in the form of a links page, Sensory Overload will be in the Chicana/Latina section.

Fiesta Boricua en San Francisco ~ or, What's Your Clave?

I just bought my ticket and can't wait to see John Santos and the Machete Ensemble at the ODC Theater in San Francisco this Saturday, August 7 ! The show is called Fiesta Boricua ~ The Puerto Rican Element in Jazz and Salsa. John and his band are brilliant at blending traditional Yoruba and Cuban forms with innovative, modern, contemporary latin jazz arrangements ~ their shows are HOT and fun. Of course, they are from the Bay Area ~ we kick-ass here. Damn, between Saturday night with John Santos and Sunday afternoon with Dolores Huerta, this weekend is going to be amazing!

I first learned about John Santos maybe 10-11 years ago (um, when I was about 10 ~ yeah right) ~ anyway, my friends Kristina and Ian were taking this class that John was teaching in The Mission: What is This Thing Called Clave? If you don't know, clave is a rhythm that is played by striking one wooden stick against another, or on percussion ~~ although some songs might not include the actual clave instrument and instead there is an implied clave ~ i.e., feel the music and find the damn beat yourself! :) Anyway, clave is a five-note, two-bar rhythm pattern which generates rhythmic measurement and is the foundation and backbone of Salsa (and all Afro-Cuban based music). Salsa musicians always say that salsa music should obey the clave. In fact, clave is the primary rule and chief factor that defines all music called "Salsa" ~~ it's what you try to listen for when you're figuring out whether to shimmy forward quick-quick-slow, or backwards right-rock-back when you salsa dance. As you can imagine, the concept of clave goes far beyond Latino and African music, breathing rhythm into our friendships, relationships, emotions, enjoyment of life, and even endurance in hard times. Check out this excerpt from the inscription found on the inside cover of the first issue of New York's Clave magazine, published throughout the 1970s:

Clave...To us the word goes beyond explanations and definitions. It means life, salsa, the food of our leisure time, the motion of intense rhythm, the emotion of 20,000 people simultaneously grooving to the natural sounds of life. It's being in beat, on key, on clave....It means to be on top of things, to be playing it right...Clave is history, it's culture. African drums from far off places like Nigeria, Dahomey, and Ghana married the Spanish guitar to bring us clave. The seeds were planted in the Caribbean and now their grandchild is Salsa.

Funk Musician Rick James Dead in Los Angeles at 56
Fri Aug 6, 2004 04:15 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Funk music pioneer Rick James, famed for the energetic dance tunes "Super Freak (Part 1)" and "Mary Jane" and for his subsequent drug and legal problems, has been found dead in his Los Angeles home, police said on Friday.
"This morning Hollywood officers responded to a radio call of a natural death," a police spokeswoman said, and found the body of James. She said detectives were at the scene.

James, 56, who was born James Johnson in Buffalo, New York, saw his career falter in the past decade after a crack-cocaine addiction led to a spell in prison for assault and false imprisonment. He suffered a stroke in 1998 after bursting a blood vessel at a concert in Denver.

Check this shit:

In 2002, Mr. Graham enrolled in the state's anti-AIDS condom distribution program, picked up 30,000 free condoms and discarded them. He pleaded guilty to theft and is on probation.

Five of the women who sued Mr. Graham said in court affidavits that his tactics had forced them to carry their pregnancies to term, either because they had passed the legal time limit for abortions - generally at the end of the second trimester - or they could no longer afford an abortion, which tends to cost more later in a pregnancy.

One of the women already had a child with hemophilia who required constant care. Now she has two. "I also did not want to bring another severely ill child into this world or be in the position where I am unable to give my children the full care and attention they need," she wrote in an affidavit under the name Jane Doe No. 4.

Lawsuit Says Women Were Misled to Delay Abortions
By SHAILA K. DEWAN

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 4 - To the panicked women who called the number for the Causeway Center for Women, listed in the phone book under "abortion services," William A. Graham was a soothing voice on the other end of the line.

What he offered sounded much better than an abortion clinic: a Saturday appointment with a private physician, in a hospital, at a bargain price. Besides, he warned them, abortion clinics regularly botched procedures and left women sterile.

But the women found it difficult to pin Mr. Graham down to a day and time. Week after week, they say, he would cancel their appointments, always reassuring them with calm explanations.

In a federal lawsuit, seven women now charge that Mr. Graham never intended to refer them for an abortion at all, but was merely stalling until it was too late.

On Wednesday, Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of United States District Court ordered Mr. Graham to disconnect his phone because he had caused "irreparable harm" to the women and to Causeway Medical Clinic, an abortion provider that is also suing Mr. Graham. The lawsuit accuses Mr. Graham, who has operated the phone service since 1993, of false advertising, fraud and trademark infringement.

Unknown to the women, said officials of Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, Mr. Graham is a vigorous opponent of abortion who has picketed doctors' officers and videotaped people attending events for Planned Parenthood, which supports abortion rights.

The point today is brief and succinct.

Affirmative action programs were created to address White America's inability to deal fairly with non-White people. It has been resisted since day one, and every court case, every Conservative think-tank, is a collective cry saying "But I don't WANNA play nice! Waaaah!" It's an abandonment of responsibility.

I ain't mad atcha, either. It's all pretty typically human. And when you know what you're dealing with, it's much easier to deal.

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Judge Halts San Francisco Affirmative Action Contracting Program; City to Appeal Decision
By civilrights.org staff
civilrights.org
August 5, 2004

San Francisco city officials are vowing to appeal a court ruling issued last week that struck down the city's ordinance mandating affirmative action in city contracts.

Judge James Warren of the San Francisco Superior Court ruled the city's ordinance violated Proposition 209 by unconstitutionally granting preferences to minority- and women-owned businesses.

"The ruling is very distressing and does violate the spirit of inclusion the city has always pursued," said City Supervisor Tom Ammiano.

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for City Attorney Dennis Herrera confirmed that the city had instructed public officials to refrain from enforcing the affirmative action ordinance. However, Herrera's office plans to appeal the decision – a move supported by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Also, both Newsom and Ammiano are looking into introducing legislation that would help disadvantaged businesses in contracting.

"San Francisco is committed to ensuring full and equitable opportunities for minority- and women-owned business enterprises," Newsom said.

In the meantime, officials are still determining the impact on continuing negotiations for city contracts, given that agencies receiving federal funds are subject to federal requirements mandating that they assist disadvantaged businesses, including those owned by women and minorities.

Julius Civitatus at JuliusBlog:

Chart: Bush Ratings vs. Terror Alerts

I have put together a chart comparing Bush approval numbers to the timeline of terror alerts. (Thanks to Stuart Eugene Thiel for the amazing daily graphics that he prepares, comparing the approval ratings from different polls and media sources.) You can see it by clicking in the graphic below:

Right under it is a compilation that will remind you a lot of Billmon's list of Bush reversals, denials etc.

hat tip to Mr. Willis

Quote of note:

"Today's employment report shows our economy is moving forward and it also is a reminder that we're in a changing economy," McClellan said.

Poor Jobs Figure a Sharp Blow to Bush - Analysts
Fri Aug 6, 2004 02:00 PM ET

By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Disappointing job creation figures issued Friday were a sharp blow to President Bush, making it much more difficult for him to argue on the campaign trail that the economy has turned the corner, analysts and pollsters said.

The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added a meager 32,000 workers to payrolls last month, stunning Wall Street economists who had forecast a gain of 228,000. The department also revised job figures down by 61,000 for May and June.

"This is not good news for the president, especially since his approval ratings on the economy had begun to inch up a little to around 47 or 48 percent," said Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center.

"It also comes at a very bad time, just when voters have started to pay closer attention to the conditions they see around them when they consider whether Bush deserves another four years," he said.

Bush Defends Terror Alert as Public Service

Check this out and tell me what you think of the design. I'm concerned about legibility.

Unless someone tells me something horrible that's what The Next Big Thing will look like.

Maybe even if someone DOES tell me something horrible.

Democratic Party Should Live Up to Its Name
Nader deplores political skulduggery aimed at keeping him off the ballot.
By Ralph Nader

August 6, 2004

Though the Democrats have the right to robustly oppose my independent presidential campaign, they don't have the right to engage in dirty tricks designed to deny millions of voters the opportunity to choose who should be the next president.

But that's what is happening. Across the country, the Democratic Party, state Democratic partisans, corporate lobbyists and law firms are making an unprecedented effort to keep the Nader-Camejo ticket off the ballot. It's a sordid, undemocratic tactic, an affront to voters and a threat to electoral choice.

We are the only serious candidates calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. We're the only ones highlighting how corporate control of the federal government has prevented healthcare for all Americans and how it has stymied passage of a wage that full-time workers can live on, as well as focusing on a host of other crucial but ignored issues. The so-called pro-choice Democrats do not want voters to have a political choice; they want them stuck with only two candidates. Democrats and corporate lobbyists conducted training sessions during the Democratic convention to plan a national campaign to keep Nader-Camejo off the ballot in as many states as possible. Participants were told that the most effective way to discourage people from signing our ballot-access petitions was to spread the rumor that the GOP supports our campaign in hopes of diverting Democratic voters.

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You're not a serious candidate, Ralph. You've burned all your bridges.

Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of housing and urban development, is explaining in the NY Times why the Feds want to freeze Section 8 (rental assistance) funding.

In reading it I see two problem, requiring two different analyses.

Over three decades, Section 8 has grown into an overly prescriptive and unwieldy program. It has separate rules for more than a dozen different types of housing vouchers, along with 120 pages of regulations. Costs have spiraled out of control, without a corresponding gain in benefits.

Five years ago, Section 8 consumed 36 percent of HUD's budget; today, it absorbs more than half. In the past four years, the financing needed for the program has increased by 41 percent, to $20 billion a year. This growth rate is not sustainable, and it has already begun eating away at other essential HUD programs.

Okay, this works out to about ten pages of regulations per housing type which really isn't bad as federal regulations go. But I DO know costs are greater than they need be.

There's been a lot of rental development but very little for family-sized families. If you've got one boy and one girl, be prepared to pay out the nose anywhere in NYC. So low income families have a very hard time finding affordable housing. Section 8 has applied a typical economic solution: signing bonuses for landlords.

Now, had Section 8 focused on home ownership instead of rentals, at least five years worth of participants would be home owners.

In voting on the department's fiscal year 2005 budget last month, the House Appropriations Committee cut funds from almost every other department program in order to keep Section 8 going. Our HOME Investment Partnerships program, which gives states block grants to help people purchase, build and renovate homes, was cut by more than $85 million. President Bush's Samaritan Initiative, a vital part of the plan to end chronic homelessness by 2012, received no money at all. Neither did the Prisoner Re-entry Program, an effort with the Labor and Justice Departments to help the 600,000 people who leave prison each year make the transition to society.

In addition, HUD's supportive housing programs for the elderly and people with disabilities or AIDS were cut by a total of $56 million. And because that still wasn't enough to maintain Section 8, Congress even had to look beyond our budget and take money from the National Science Foundation.

The second problem I see is…mendacity.

To claim the Nation Science Foundation budget was cut to shore up Section 8 programs is pretty bizarre. I mean, how do you make that connection?

"Gee, we're short money for housing."

"Let's take if from the NSF."

A claim that any of these cuts were made for any reason other than as symbolic offset to a massive transfer of wealth to the upper classes strikes me as pure propaganda. Remember, this is the crew that thinks tax cuts are more important than children:

According to an analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, there are 11.9 million children nationwide -- or one of every six children under age 17 -- who would have benefited from the Senate provision that was cut in the compromise.

About 8 million of these children will receive no benefit from the child tax credit provisions of the new legislation. The rest will receive a smaller benefit.

Republicans said the cut, which saved $3.5 billion, was necessary to keep the bill under a 10-year cap of $350 billion.

However, critics said there were plenty of other areas that could have been cut instead.

For, example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said that room for the child care benefit could have been included if the capital gains/dividend provision had been scaled back slightly.

And as the right Reverend Mykeru said at the time:

When the Republicans got a $350 billion tax cut in which 60% of the population would only get 8.5% of the tax benefits, while the top earning 1% would get the remaining 40%, they cut out a provision to prove a child credit to those making just above minimum wage. They saved 3.5 billion doing so. They could have saved the same amount of money if they had reduced the top rate to 35.3% instead of 35% for the first three years. They, of course, didn't do that, deciding to screw over poor kids rather than reduce the windfall for the wealthiest people in the wealthiest country in the world by a minuscule amount.

No reasonable explanation for that sort of Republican behavior exists except when you factor in character, and a character that displays dark pathology at that. It is the behavior of people who derive sadistic pleasure from punishing the weak, the poor, the hungry, even at the expense of children. It is the behavior of people who derive an orgasmic thrill from their own power and unfairness.

As I said, as twisted as it may be, it takes real conviction to hurt children simply for the mean-spirited hell of it.

The other interesting thing is he said last month Congress decided the Prisoner Re-entry Program would get no money at all.

Last month l'il Georgie stood in front of the National Urban League and spoke thus:

But there's more than just fighting crime. We need to help the 600,000 men and women who are being released from prison each year. I went to the Congress in my State of the Union, I talked about a prison reentry program. I said, put some money up to help these souls come out. Let's make sure we're the country of the second chance. Let's make sure people have got a chance to get an education and a job. Let's make sure there's -- if need be, let's make sure there's church families available to welcome a person back in community. (Applause.) And so this prison reentry program is a vital part of making sure America is a safe country. (Applause.)

Did l'il Georgie know this vital part of making sure America is a safe country was totally unfunded when he touted it to the NUL? Most likely…praise from Bush seems to be the kiss of death for federally funded social programs.

Mendacity.

Here's the problem: under Section 8's current rules, Washington provides money to local public housing authorities around the country for a precise number of units each year, without regard to the number of families that could benefit from the same amount of money if it was used more effectively. This doesn't make sense.

The precise number of units each year is determined with regard to the precise number of people that apply and have income low enough to qualify. This, of course, make no sense to a member of the Bushista administration.

If a housing authority is limited to providing a specific number of vouchers no matter how efficient it is with the financing, what incentive does it have to control costs and serve more families? None. That's one reason the waiting lists are so long for Section 8 housing in many cities.

The waiting list wouldn't be long because there are more people who need help than there used to be, would it?

Moreover, under the current rules, the dollar amount of vouchers for rental payments in every housing market is prescribed by a system known as "fair market rent.'' Based on imprecise government data, these figures rarely reflect true market value. Over the past few years, most rental markets have softened and vacancy rates are the highest in decades.

Really? I didn't know Section 8 applied to commercial real estate.

Under our proposal, the authority could pay the actual market rent and would save enough money to aid 200 additional low-income families in that Washington neighborhood alone. Imagine what such a change would mean nationwide. And Washington is on the low end of the scale - in other cities, the disparity in rents is far more egregious.

THAT WHY YOU SHOULD BE FUNDING MOTGAGES.

You're paying just as much for just as long…

There is another major change we would like to see. In 1998 Congress enacted a quota system that gives Section 8 vouchers almost exclusively to families making less than 30 percent of a given area's median income. This has had the unintended consequence of shutting the door for voucher assistance on men and women who are working hard and raise their income above the quota level, but remain too poor to afford a home. This is precisely the wrong message to send. The flexible voucher program, while still serving low-income families, would remove the quota system. Housing agencies would no longer have to discriminate against those moving up the economic ladder.

This needs to be done right, which is to say you let people in the same way but don't throw them off until they hit, say 60% of the local median income. And continue to adjust their contribution.

Congress needs to realize that the failed policies of the past are becoming more expensive than our proposed solution would be, and it should bring our proposal to a vote when it returns from summer recess. Our program would be more effective, efficient and flexible than the current Section 8 - and, most important, it would better meet the needs of the low-income families who depend on it.

I doubt it (see mendacity, above)

A Rule to Avert Balloting Woes Adds to Them
By FORD FESSENDEN

CHICAGO - When poll workers could not find Kelly Pierce's name on the registration rolls during the primary here in March, they told him to take advantage of a new election rule that allowed him to cast his vote using a provisional ballot.

The rule is intended to prevent one of the major problems experienced in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, when scores of voters, especially minority voters, were turned away at the polls over registration questions that could not be resolved quickly.

So Mr. Pierce, who had voted regularly since 1989, filled out his paper ballot. Election administrators then proceeded to throw it out, determining that poll workers had Mr. Pierce file it in the wrong precinct.

He was hardly alone. Of the 5,914 provisional ballots cast in the Chicago primary, 5,498 were disqualified, mostly on technical grounds.

Provisional voting, the centerpiece of the Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in 2002, will be put into effect across the nation in the coming presidential election in an effort to ensure that more votes are counted.

But election officials say the experience of Mr. Pierce - and hundreds like him across the country during primary season - show how failures in carrying out the measure could end up disenfranchising voters instead.

Quote of note:

Analysts were expecting the economy to add anywhere from 215,000 to 247,000 jobs in July. They were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.6 percent.

U.S. Employment Growth Surprisingly Weak in July
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 6, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) --The nation's payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added-- a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June was no aberration.

The unemployment rate, however, dipped down a notch to 5.5 percent last month, from 5.6 percent in June, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001.

Anti-Kerry group seeks press exemption
By Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer | August 5, 2004

WASHINGTON --A conservative group that complained about television ads for Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" now wants an exemption from campaign finance laws so it can advertise a book on John Kerry.

Citizens United contends the Federal Election Commission should consider it part of the news media, and allow it to run election-time ads for a book called "The Many Faces of John Kerry: Why This Massachusetts Liberal is Wrong for America."

In a request released this week, the group argued it should be able to run ads for the book, written by its president David Bossie, and a documentary film on the Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate, John Edwards.

A new campaign finance law bans the use of corporate money for ads identifying presidential and congressional candidates within two months of the election. But an exemption to the law frees a wide range of media organizations from the ban.

In June, Citizens United asked the FEC to investigate whether ads for "Fahrenheit 9/11" violated the law's restrictions on ads close to presidential nominating conventions and the Nov. 2 election. The FEC voted late last month to throw out the complaint, while declining to decide whether the press exemption applied to the ads.

Citizens United argues it should qualify for the press exemption because it publishes and releases newsletters, position papers, documentaries and books. The group contends "Fahrenheit 9/11" is anti-Bush propaganda and doesn't qualify for the media exemption, however.

Veteran retracts criticism of Kerry
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | August 6, 2004

WASHINGTON -- A week after Senator John F. Kerry heralded his wartime experience by surrounding himself at the Democratic convention with his Vietnam ''Band of Brothers," a separate group of veterans has launched a television ad campaign and a book that questions the basis for some of Kerry's combat medals.

But yesterday, a key figure in the anti-Kerry campaign, Kerry's former commanding officer, backed off one of the key contentions. Lieutenant Commander George Elliott said in an interview that he had made a ''terrible mistake" in signing an affidavit that suggests Kerry did not deserve the Silver Star -- one of the main allegations in the book. The affidavit was given to The Boston Globe by the anti-Kerry group to justify assertions in their ad and book.

Elliott is quoted as saying that Kerry ''lied about what occurred in Vietnam . . . for example, in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back."

The statement refers to an episode in which Kerry killed a Viet Cong soldier who had been carrying a rocket launcher, part of a chain of events that formed the basis of his Silver Star. Over time, some Kerry critics have questioned whether the soldier posed a danger to Kerry's crew. Crew members have said Kerry's actions saved their lives.

Yesterday, reached at his home, Elliott said he regretted signing the affidavit and said he still thinks Kerry deserved the Silver Star.

''I still don't think he shot the guy in the back," Elliott said. ''It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here."

Elliott said he was no under personal or political pressure to sign the statement, but he did feel ''time pressure" from those involved in the book. ''That's no excuse," Elliott said. ''I knew it was wrong . . . In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake."

That racist nut-job in Tennesee I mentioned yesterday…

He won. 83% to 17%.

I'm sorry, but I think this beat Martin. Via Steve Gilliard.

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Reality show holds up green card as bait

Aug. 5, 2004 | Los Angeles -- A Spanish-language reality TV show is offering contestants an unusual prize: the services of immigration lawyers to guide them toward a green card for U.S. residency.

“Gana la Verde” -- “Win the Green” -- began airing daily last month on KRCA-TV Channel 62 in Los Angeles. Owner Liberman Broadcasting also airs the program on its San Diego, Houston and Dallas stations.

“People say that our show is like 'Fear Factor,' but it's different because the climax of the show involves working,” production manager Adrian Vallarino told the Los Angeles Times.

The show's winner receives a year's worth of help from attorneys to expedite the residency process, the Times reported Wednesday. There's no guarantee of a green card.

Contestants have performed stunts including gulping down live tequila worms, trapping a butter-drenched pig and jumping between two speeding 18-wheelers.

A U.S. immigration official warned against undue optimism for contestants.

“I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment on the premise of a television show except to say that they are holding out false hope to people,” said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, adding that it “sounds very much like exploitation.”

The show has consistently reached an average of 1 million Hispanic households and last week was No. 2 among 18-to-49-year-old Hispanic viewers.

It seems there's actually a reporter at the Wall Street Journal:

note: I still have no WSJ subscription. The text and link was lifted from Brad DeLong's site.

WSJ.com - Capital: President Bush offered this attack on... Kerry: "He said he's only going to raise the tax on the so-called rich.... But you know how the rich is: They've got accountants. That means you pay. That means your small business pays. It means the farmers and ranchers pay."... What did he mean?

"He's only going to raise the tax on the so-called rich."

True. The candidates differ sharply on how heavily to tax Americans with incomes above $200,000 a year. President Bush wants a top marginal tax rate of 35%. The Democratic Mr. Kerry would boost rates to 39.6%.... He'd use the money to expand access to health insurance....

"You know how the rich is: They've got accountants. That means you pay."...

Quips Jason Furman, a Kerry economist: "If the most fortunate weren't paying taxes in the first place, why did they need the Bush tax cut?"...

The latest academic work suggests that lifting the top tax rate to 39.6% from today's 35% (which works out to a 7% decrease in such taxpayers' take-home pay at the margin) would reduce taxable income in that bracket by about 4%. Overall, though, the government still is likely to come out ahead, as the gush of tax revenues after the 1993 tax increases suggests....

The president, Ms. Buchan explains, means that "the so-called wealthy" can afford to hire accountants but "small businesses, farmers and ranchers who are organized as Subchapter S... would nonetheless be subject to the tax increases."... But the bulk... don't make enough to fall into top brackets.... I've never understood the case for taxing a farmer, rancher or small-business owner who clears $500,000 differently than a corporate executive, lawyer or ballplayer who earns $500,000....

[The] conservative case... is hard for Mr. Bush to make. "If you want the efficiency of smaller government, you have to have smaller expenditures and smaller taxes at the same time," says... Eugene Steuerle, a Reagan tax official.... Mr. Bush is guaranteeing tax increases in the future, Mr. Steuerle argues....

Powell Denies Rift Over Iraq Invasion
Secretary Defends the War, Says U.S. Got Rid of 'a Horrible Dictator'

By Peter Slevin and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 6, 2004; Page A06

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a spirited defense of U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq, telling a convention of minority journalists in Washington yesterday that he was "solidly behind" the use of force against Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to Unity: Journalists of Color hours after Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry told the gathering that the Iraq war represented a failure of diplomacy, Powell replied: "We haven't had a failure in Iraq. We have gotten rid of a horrible dictator."

Asked about his experience being on the losing end of important foreign policy debates, Powell said "there was no split" over the invasion of Iraq once the Bush administration concluded Hussein had violated the final demands from the U.N. Security Council.

"I can assure you that I have in no way been constrained, contained or kept on the outside of our discussions," Powell said.

The Right Rev. George W. Bush
Among the worshippers at the president's traveling revival show.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004, at 5:08 PM PT

A preacher, a teacher, and a standup comedian

COLUMBUS, Ohio—"I feel like a talk-show host," President Bush says midway through Thursday's first campaign event. He's standing next to a stool and a lectern, and he paces in circles to address the audience seated on all sides around him. Even from a distance, I can see why Bush charmed the press corps during his 2000 campaign. He's likable, winning, and self-deprecating. He's also quick on his feet, not with an instant recall of statistics but with snappy retorts that break up the room. This event was billed as an "Ask President Bush" forum, and although there didn't turn out to be much time for questions, from the outset the intimate setting made it more interactive than a typical presidential visit.

The president didn't get it quite right when he called himself a talk-show host. He opens more in the vein of a revival-tent preacher, albeit a subdued one, and he concludes as a standup comic. "I think you have to ask for the vote," Bush says near the beginning, as he always does. "You got it!" yells someone, the first of many call-and-response moments. Then Bush segues into something that sounds more like a sermon than a stump speech.

"All of you are soldiers in the army of compassion," the clergyman-in-chief tells the crowd. "And one of the reasons I'm seeking the office for four more years is to call upon our citizens to love your neighbor just like you'd like to be loved yourself." After his usual endorsement of the Golden Rule, Bush speaks of souls, which also isn't unusual for him: "We can change America one soul at a time by encouraging people to spread something government cannot spread, which is love."

Predators who target children sexually have become the prey
BY M. DANIEL GIBBARD
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - (KRT) - A U.S. soldier who traveled from Italy to Naperville, Ill., allegedly to have sex with a 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet, found police waiting for him instead.

A school principal from Chicago was arrested after investigators linked his credit card to child pornography Web sites. Agents who seized his home computer say they found thousands of sexually explicit pictures of children.

And in Seattle, a 69-year-old man picked up in Cambodia for having sex with two boys became the first American convicted under a new law that allows U.S. citizens to be tried for child sex crimes committed abroad.

The three men were among more than 3,200 people nabbed in the first year of Operation Predator, a federal program launched last July by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to turn child sex predators into prey.

Educators, doctors, lawyers and at least one police officer and firefighter are among those who have been stung in Chicago and the suburbs.

"A pretty good cross section of society, unfortunately," said Customs agent Ron Wolflick, the group supervisor for cybercrime investigations in Chicago.

"A few years ago you'd get recluses, people who were cut off from society, but we're seeing a change. Now we're getting doctors, which is scary. I've seen a definite increase in (arrests of) professionals with access to children."

UN says Sudan agrees Darfur steps

The United Nations says Sudan has agreed to a plan to tackle the crisis in Darfur, where thousands have been killed by pro-government militias.

The measures include steps to disarm the militias and improve security.

UN special envoy Jan Pronk said if the proposals were implemented, he was hopeful Sudan could avoid UN sanctions.

The African Union says it hopes to send its first peacekeeping troops next week to Darfur, where more than one million people have fled their homes.

Progress needed

Sudan says it is willing to co-operate with the AU but there is no formal agreement on a peacekeeping force.

On Wednesday, thousands of government supporters protested in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, against foreign intervention in Darfur.

One in Six Americans Victim of Fraud, FTC Says
Thu Aug 5, 2004 08:29 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One in six U.S. adults was victimized by fraud over the course of a year, from long-distance phone service switched without their permission to magazine subscriptions that never arrive, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.

Some 25 million Americans paid for loans that never came through, signed up for illegal "credit repair" services that didn't improve their credit scores, or otherwise lost money in fraudulent scams, the FTC reported.

Another 14 million had their long-distance phone service switched without their permission, a practice known as "slamming," the FTC said in its first-ever survey of consumer fraud.

The survey of 2,500 consumers was taken late May and early June of 2003. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. An FTC statistician said the time since the survey was taken was spent analyzing the results and compiling the report.

Let me get this straight:

Congress Analysts See Record $422 Billion Deficit
Thu Aug 5, 2004 07:32 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional analysts on Thursday lowered their U.S budget-deficit forecast for this year but said the shortfall was still heading toward a new record of $422 billion.
In its August monthly budget report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office sliced $56 billion from its previous forecast for the shortfall for the 2004 fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

CBO's numbers followed last Friday's release of the White House's $445 billion forecast for this year and will likely add to election-year debate about President Bush's tax and spending policies.

Republicans say the lower forecasts are a sign of successful economic policies.

A smaller record deficit is a good sign…why?

To make it easier to break it again next year?

If they did, I'd be watching this primary like a hawk.

The whole article is available here. It was too juicy to let fall to the ravages of linkrot.

---

Eugenics Backer Causes Stir in Tenn. Race
Tue Aug 3, 1:59 PM ET
By AMBER McDOWELL, Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Republican congressional candidate James L. Hart acknowledges that he is an "intellectual outlaw."

He is an unapologetic supporter of eugenics, the phony science that resulted in thousands of sterilizations in an attempt to purify the white race. He believes the country will look "like one big Detroit" if it doesn't eliminate welfare and immigration. He believes that if blacks were integrated centuries ago, the automobile never would have been invented.

He shows up at voters' homes wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a gun, and tells them that "white children deserve the same rights as everyone else."

Despite his radical views, Hart may end up winning the Republican nomination because he is the only GOP candidate on the ballot in Thursday's primary. His presence in the campaign has embarrassed Republican leaders, who were blind-sided by Hart after they didn't bother fielding a candidate. Democratic Rep. John Tanner has held the seat for 15 years and is considered safe in November.

Republicans now desperately hope that a write-in candidate will stop Hart.

GOP courts Amish votes in Pa., Ohio
By Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer | August 5, 2004

BIRD-IN-HAND, Pa. --The Amish live without electricity, cars, telephones, and usually, without voting. But they are being sought out this year as Republicans try to sign up every possible supporter in presidential battleground states.

Amish almost always side with the Republican Party when they do vote -- making them an attractive, if unlikely, voting bloc in the neck-and-neck campaign between President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. A majority of the nation's Amish live in key swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

"Pennsylvania and Ohio are just absolute battleground states, and to think that the Amish could weigh in to the tune of thousands of votes that are clearly going to be Republican -- that could be very significant for Bush," said Chet Beiler, a former Amish who has been dropping off voter registration forms at Amish businesses and farms in hopes of signing up as many as 3,000 new voters.

Falwell offers political seminar to clergy
By Bob Lewis, Associated Press Writer | August 5, 2004

RICHMOND, Va. --The Rev. Jerry Falwell, beset by civil liberties groups questioning his ministry's tax-exempt status for backing President Bush, has set up a seminar to train conservative pastors "not to be intimidated by left-wing thugs."

Falwell said the September seminar will advise clergy that they can speak their minds on moral issues and weigh in on politics, as long as they don't spend tax-exempt money doing it.

Churches that go too far in advocating for or against a political party or candidate jeopardize their Internal Revenue Service religious tax exemption.

In complaints filed with federal agencies by the Campaign Legal Center and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Falwell himself was accused of improperly engaging in politics by endorsing Bush's re-election in a newsletter published on his Web site, falwell.com.

Falwell said that he wants more evangelical ministers to stand up to liberals and civil libertarians who threaten such actions against them.

"We're going to be careful not to break the law, but we are also going to be careful not to be intimidated by left-wing thugs, not to let them intimidate evangelical pastors into silence," Falwell said in a telephone interview from Decatur, Ala., where he was preaching Wednesday evening.

The thing is to actually address it.
Quote of note:

The researchers found that 22 percent of the doctors nationally accounted for 80 percent of the visits by black patients and only 22 percent of visits by white patients. These doctors, most of whom were white, provided more free care, treated more patients insured by the government's Medicaid insurance program for those with low incomes, and were more likely to practice in low-income neighborhoods, the study found. Seventy-seven percent of them had board certification in their primary care specialty, compared with 86 percent of doctors who mainly treated white patients.

Black patients seemed to seek out black doctors, seeing them 22 percent of the time, while whites saw black doctors less than 1 percent of the time. Nationwide, 5 percent of physicians are black.

Nearly 28 percent of physicians primarily treating blacks said they could not provide access to high-quality care for all their patients, compared with only 19 percent of doctors primarily treating whites.

Disparities found in health care for blacks
By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff | August 5, 2004

Many black people in the United States get their primary health care in a separate and apparently inferior system, according to a study published today -- a situation similar to the segregated neighborhood schools prevalent in some parts of the country.

The dual system for blacks and whites is not the result of doctors' bias but rather geographic segregation, the authors say, and may help explain the higher rates of disease and death that persist among blacks.

''When black patients go to the doctor, they're more likely to be treated by a doctor who can't harness the full capabilities of the health care system," said Dr. Peter B. Bach, an epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who was the lead author of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Examining patterns of office visits by black and white patients on Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly, the study found that most blacks were treated by a subset of doctors who had less training than doctors who treated whites, and who told interviewers that they were frequently unable to provide high-quality care.

These doctors, of all races, were less likely than doctors who mostly treated white patients to have passed exams showing mastery of a primary care specialty. They were more likely to report that they could not always help their patients get treatment from specialists, diagnostic imaging such as MRIs, or admission to the hospital when it wasn't an emergency. These differences remained even after the researchers took into account patients' insurance status.

The doctors' training and problems with referrals were similar to those of other doctors in their neighborhood, the researchers found, suggesting the problem was the result of geographic patterns rather than racial discrimination by doctors.

''It's not that the blacks couldn't go to other doctors," Bach said. ''These doctors practice in the neighborhoods where blacks live."

This article gave me enough information to track down something I'd heard previously, the Quote of Note:

When sociologist Dalton Conley analyzed educational outcomes, he found that family net worth, not race, was the best predictor of high school graduation and college enrollment. At a given level of assets, black students are actually slightly more likely to graduate from high school than white students. The drop-out rate for black students has declined 44% since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I'd heard this but lost track of where before I could get details. Being Black, Living in the Red - Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America by Dalton Conley is what I was looking for.

Anyway…

The Balance of Barack Obama and Bill Cosby
by Dedrick Muhammad
August 2, 2004

I’d like to invite Barack Obama and Bill Cosby over for dinner, and listen to them hash out their differences about the causes of black poverty. By the end of the evening, I think we’d come to an understanding.

In his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, the Senate candidate from Illinois had a healthy balance between public and individual responsibility – a balance that eluded Mr. Cosby in his tirades against African American parents and youth.

As Mr. Cosby referred to black schoolchildren as “dirty laundry” and belittled their names and their clothes as the cause of their limited economic success, he was not just disrespectful, he was factually wrong. He overlooked the signs of black progress, and he overlooked the structural causes for the racial income gap.

Barack Obama did call for holding up high expectations for our children, decrying “the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” But as he told his family story, he also affirmed the government role in creating the ladder of opportunity. His white grandfather went to college on the GI Bill and got an FHA mortgage, programs that weren’t open to his African-American father at the time.

Mr. Cosby reinforced stereotypes used ever since enslaved Africans were first brought to the shores of the United States, that white Americans were more prosperous because they worked harder and upheld better moral standards. He claimed that low-income African Americans are not taking advantage of the opportunities the Civil Rights movement brought them.

Yes, some people, in particular low-income teenagers and young adults, make harmful choices such as dropping out of school, crime and drug abuse. But these youth come in every color. Studies show that illegal drug use is slightly higher among white Americans.

When sociologist Dalton Conley analyzed educational outcomes, he found that family net worth, not race, was the best predictor of high school graduation and college enrollment. At a given level of assets, black students are actually slightly more likely to graduate from high school than white students. The drop-out rate for black students has declined 44% since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

African Americans with graduate degrees are two to three times more likely than whites to engage in the rough-and-tumble world of entrepreneurship with small business start-ups. Employed black workers work more hours per week and per year than white workers.

Yet African Americans have not been rewarded for all this effort. For every dollar of per capita white income, black families had 57 cents in 2001, up from 55 cents in 1968. The racial wealth divide is even worse: the typical black family has less than one-tenth of the median white net worth of $120,000.

In the decades when white income and wealth soared, it was not only due to hard work and talent. Those factors are present in every race and every era. It was because of public investment in a ladder of opportunity. The New Deal and the generous post-WWII veterans’ benefits largely excluded people of color.

If You Don't Like Paying Taxes . . .

We at BuzzFlash get so tired of people who tell us they "hate paying taxes" or they complain that the government does nothing but "waste" their tax dollars.

So, in an effort to help those who suffer from the delusion that they pay too much in taxes or that all of their taxes are wasted, we thought we'd create a list that BuzzFlash Readers can send to these whining babies, we mean, our Republican friends.

If you don't like paying taxes . . .

…which I present because one of their readers gave the ultimate response:

- Don't use currency printed by the US Treasury.

June 24, 2004
Contact: Bob Keener
(617) 423-2148 x26

It Takes a Village to Make a Millionaire
New Report Blasts Myth of the Self-Made Man
Download the report PDF 280 KB

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned."

—Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

A new report, "I Didn't Do It Alone: Society's Contribution to Individual Wealth and Success," spotlights successful entrepreneurs and concludes that the myth of self-made success is destructive to the social and economic infrastructure that fosters wealth creation.

• Martin Rothenberg, the son of a housepainter and sales clerk, grew up to become a multimillionaire software entrepreneur.
• Investor Warren Buffett is the world's second-wealthiest person.
• Ben Cohen co-founded Ben & Jerry's with no business background and walked away with $40 million when the company was sold years later.

While these three seem typical examples of self-made success, they're not. None of them believes they did it on their own. Like others profiled in the report, they attribute their success to many factors, among them public schools and colleges, government investment in research and small business assistance, contributions of employees, and strong legal and financial systems.

"How we think about wealth creation is important since policies such as large tax cuts for the wealthy often draw on the myth of the self-made man," says "I Didn't Do It Alone" co-author Chuck Collins. "Taxes are portrayed as onerous, unfair redistribution of privately created wealth — not as reinvestment or giving back to society. Yet, where would many wealthy entrepreneurs be today without taxpayer investment in the Internet, transportation, public education, legal system, the human genome and so on?"

Jim Sherblom, a venture capitalist and former chief financial officer of the biotech firm, Genzyme, says, "The opportunities to create wealth are all taking advantage of public goods — like roads, transportation, markets — and public investments. None of us can claim it was all personal initiative. A piece of it was built upon this infrastructure that we all have this inherent moral obligation to keep intact."

"I Didn't Do It Alone" shows not only that society's role in wealth creation is significant, but if that role withers from inadequate revenues and political will, then opportunities for wealth and innovation will shrink. Entrepreneurism, the economy and society will be undermined.

"I Didn't Do It Alone" was written by Chuck Collins, co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of "Wealth and Our Commonwealth" and associate director of United for a Fair Economy; Scott Klinger, co-director of Responsible Wealth and a Chartered Financial Analyst; and Mike Lapham, co-director of Responsible Wealth.

Let me be clear.

What follows is simple fact. Understand your own reaction to it before making a comment. Then feel free to comment.

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Climbing the white escalator

by Betsy Leondar-Wright

“America is a meritocracy,” my father always told me. The harder he worked, the more money he got: clear cause and effect. From individuals’ prosperity or poverty, he believed he could determine their effort and talent. Therefore, the poor Black people in a nearby city clearly hadn’t applied themselves.

My father had a legacy that he couldn’t see, a legacy he only got because he is white. His ancestor, John Prescott, came from England in 1638. The Massachusetts Bay Colony granted him land in central Massachusetts—something no people of color got—and he built the first sawmill there. As far as I can tell, none of his descendants have ever been poor. Some of my ancestors moved west to Ohio in the 1800s, where they may have received land under one of the Homestead Acts—government programs closed to people of color.

My father is a World War II-era veteran, and he went to graduate school on the GI Bill. Most veterans of color were unable to access these education benefits. The few Black colleges were swamped with applicants, and most other colleges accepted white students only. Job training programs in the South were segregated and under local white control. African-Americans were one-third of the WWII vets in the South but got one-twelfth of the job training slots.

My parents bought our first house with a Veterans Administration mortgage. The cheap subsidized mortgages of that era could not be used in mixed-race neighborhoods, or in inner-cities. Because most banks issued only government-subsidized mortgages, most WWII veterans of color had to remain renters.

My father’s parents got Social Security old-age benefits, which spared my father from supporting them. This enabled him to pay for our college educations. Social Security initially excluded domestic and agricultural workers, which meant that most people of color did not qualify in the first decades of the program. The minimum wage still excludes agricultural workers. The parents of today’s middle-aged people of color typically had to support their own parents, and so couldn’t save for college tuition as easily as my parents saved for mine.

Of course effort and talent make a difference in climbing the staircase to prosperity. But for most white men, the staircase has been an escalator powered by public assistance. I saw this in my own family. My father had a relative who was unambitious, sweet but slow-thinking. He got a middle management job and stayed in it for decades, and lived in the same small house until he retired with a pension. He was carried gently up the escalator, ending up lower than my dad, who put a lot of effort into climbing and so reached upper management. That was the range for college-educated WASP men of their generation: middle management and small homes, or high-level jobs and big homes. They started in the middle of the staircase and got help to rise. Working-class white men may have started at the bottom, but in that era they had opportunities and assistance to climb upward.

Chords for Change
By BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Published: August 5, 2004

…People have different notions of these values, and they live them out in different ways. I've tried to sing about some of them in my songs. But I have my own ideas about what they mean, too. That is why I plan to join with many fellow artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, in touring the country this October. We will be performing under the umbrella of a new group called Vote for Change. Our goal is to change the direction of the government and change the current administration come November.

Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of "one nation indivisible."

It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities - respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals - that we come to life in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.

Bruce Springsteen is a writer and performer.

Houston Crime Testing Labs Called Into Doubt: NYT
Thu Aug 5, 2004 06:07 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An independent panel of U.S. forensic scientists has called for a comprehensive audit of tests performed by Houston's police crime laboratory, potentially putting thousands of criminal convictions in doubt, the New York Times said Thursday.
The scientists, in a report to be filed Thursday in a Texas court in Houston, said crime lab officials might have offered "false and scientifically unsound" reports and testimony in various cases. The scientists are urging the re-examination of results from tests on blood, sperm and other bodily fluids spanning decades.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Texas has executed 323 people, more than three times as many as any other state.

The scientists' recommendations follows a state audit, completed in 2002, which found that DNA technicians at the crime lab misinterpreted data, were poorly trained, kept poor records, and often used up available evidence, making it impossible for defense experts to refute their results.

The DNA unit was later shut down, and the scandal led to retesting in 360 cases, involving many thousands of hours, in which DNA evidence was used to convict people, the newspaper said. Problems have arisen in at least 40 cases, it said.

But the scientists' recommendations, if adopted, could affect far more convicts.

"A conservative number would probably be 5,000 to 10,000 cases," Elizabeth Johnson, a former DNA lab director at the Harris County medical examiner's office in Houston, said. "If you add in hair, it's off the board."

Microsoft to Begin Shipping Major Update to Windows
Thu Aug 5, 2004 01:17 AM ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday that it soon will deliver to computer makers a long-awaited update to its flagship Windows XP operating system which promises to boost security for personal computer users.

The world's largest software maker said that Service Pack 2 (SP2), an update to Windows that it has been touting for months, will also be distributed online to PC users over the next few weeks, while packaged Windows CD-ROMs with the update will ship to store shelves in October.

Microsoft, which spent more than $300 million on SP2, said the update will be completed "imminently" after a two-month delay.

Service Packs are free major updates to Windows used to fix bugs and add features to the operating system.

Rich Kaplan, a Microsoft vice president, said that SP2 will make Windows more resilient against worm and hacker attacks and also improve the stability of the software.

Kaplan urged users to activate the Automatic Update feature in Windows by going to Microsoft' Web site at www.microsoft.com/protect.

"Our hope and goal is that a 100 million people will get Windows SP2 (through Automatic Update)," Kaplan said

9/11 panel dismayed by Bush's reaction
INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: Director needs real clout, members say
- Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, August 4, 2004

Washington -- Two members of the Sept. 11 commission criticized President Bush's proposal to create a national intelligence director, telling Congress on Tuesday that the White House plan fails to give the new spy chief the executive powers needed to revamp the nation's intelligence agencies.

Without the power to set budgets and hire and fire senior managers, the new intelligence czar will lack the clout to make major changes at the nation's 15 spy agencies, the commissioners told lawmakers at the first House hearing prompted by the panel's 567-page report on the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"The person that has the responsibility needs the authority," Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator, told the House Government Reform Committee. "Absent that, they're not going to be able to get the job done."

Republican commissioner John Lehman, a former Navy secretary who has been seen as a possible replacement for retiring CIA Director George Tenet, also urged the president to reconsider his proposal to base the director outside the White House. The commission recommended establishing the position within the White House to keep the director from being overshadowed by powerful Cabinet members, such as the defense secretary.

"Our recommendations are not a Chinese menu," Lehman said. "They are a whole system. If all of the important elements are not adopted, it makes it very difficult for the others to succeed."

A Steep Fall Into Gang Life
A standout youth full of promise gives in to the lure of the street. Getting shot, testifying despite peril, growing 'tired of running' all play a part.
By Jill Leovy
Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2004

At 16, he was a top student, star athlete and police Explorer.

At 21, he was a Crip bent on avenging a murder.

How one black teenager, nicknamed Gizmo, went from promise to catastrophe in a few years reveals the complicated relationship between African Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department in the city's most violent neighborhoods.

… Gizmo couldn't walk out his front door without seeing one of the gang, Beecher said.

"You live in that neighborhood, you are going to be associated with them," he said. "You've got to say, 'Hi,' to them or they're going to kick your ass."

Being an Explorer took courage. The toughs called him blue boy, police flunky.

But he seemed impervious. He was a college-bound baseball infielder at Manual Arts High School and took weekend Advanced Placement courses at USC. He was named the Southwest Division's outstanding Explorer recruit.

His grandmother treasured that trophy above the others, giving it a special place in front of the piano.

As Gizmo lay in his hospital bed, Beecher told him he was confronted with a choice: Testify, and demonstrate that he was not a gang member, or decline, as gang members nearly always do. The teenager understood.

He was a not a gang member, he told the officer. He would help the police.

Gizmo identified his attacker and was ordered to appear in court. In the hallway, he found himself facing his assailants' angry friends and relatives. He felt keenly aware of the difference between himself and the officers standing with him, he said. Police had the protection of their uniforms. He was just another black teenager.

His attacker was convicted. But Gizmo said he walked out feeling scared and alone. It dawned on him that cooperating with police involved far more danger than he realized. He had considered the police his friends. Now, members of his family said, he felt betrayed by police and endangered by a legal system that seemed indifferent to his safety.

Already he had been shot, and threats had always been part of life in his neighborhood. But after testifying, he said, "I felt I was targeted." Gang members would confront him and say, "We heard about you."

Gizmo became "like a different person," his grandmother said. He seemed withdrawn, gave up his dreams of college ball and was angry at the police.

Beecher had hired Gizmo as a youth football official the fall after the shooting, but lost touch when the season was over. He thought the youth had moved on, the way Explorers do when they graduate — as Gizmo did — from high school.What Beecher didn't know was that Gizmo was becoming involved with a different arm of the LAPD: The 77th Street Division's gang detail.

Gizmo had finally joined the local gang.

… A central question remains: Why did Gizmo slip?

A number of officers said they were sure that his gang involvement began before he testified in court and that he had lived a double life.

But Beecher, the officer who recruited Gizmo into the Explorers, said he believed that the truth was more complex. He recalled Gizmo often telling him that he had a plan to escape the neighborhood: a full-time job, college and an apartment far away. But as Gizmo got older, he confided to the officer that he didn't think he had the means.

Beecher said he couldn't know for sure but thought Gizmo put up a valiant fight. "In that environment," he said, "it's like he had no other choices."

Gizmo said no one had it quite right. Not the police. Not his grandparents.

He did join the gang after he testified, he said — partly for protection, partly to make money from selling drugs. But he was wavering long before. The gang members were his childhood friends. Whenever you want to come home, they told him often, you can come home.

Rival gang members, meanwhile, didn't seem to care whether or not he was in a gang. They shot at him anyway.

So, although he concentrated on school and Explorers, inwardly he toyed with joining. He would have done it long before, he said, but for Beecher.

"He cared," Gizmo said. "He was the one reason I even considered police work."

After testifying, he said, "it was all over."

He joined the gang at 17. He sold drugs, found the job boring, moved up, grew more ruthless. Beecher was no longer around.

"I thought, 'I'm tired of running,' " Gizmo said. "I might as well be a part of it."

After a while, he no longer felt fear when shot at.

Looking back, "gangbanging is a bad decision … the mistake of a lifetime," he said as he used a screwdriver to pry bullets from a door frame inside his grandparents' house.

"But I can't get out of it now. And I couldn't tell you if I want to anymore."

Quote of note:

Keyes, a former radio talk-show host who would have to move to Illinois before election day on Nov. 2, previously criticized Hillary Clinton when she moved to New York to run for the U.S. Senate.

That damn Hillary again!

Keyes has never won an election, having been defeated in campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 1996 and 2000.

REALLY unsuccessfully. I remember him whining about being left out of the debates in 1996.

Keyes has never won an election, having been defeated in campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 1996 and 2000.

Illinois Republicans Pick Keyes in Senate Race
Wed Aug 4, 2004 11:56 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Republican leaders on Wednesday chose failed presidential candidate Alan Keyes to wage an uphill campaign against popular Democrat Barack Obama in the race for a Republican-held U.S. Senate seat.
Keyes, a former State Department official and conservative talk-show host who lives in Maryland, said he would consider the "serious offer" and make his decision about whether to accept on Sunday.

A replacement was needed after the Republican nominee, stockbroker-turned-teacher Jack Ryan, withdrew June 25 because of a sex scandal.

After two days of interviews of more than a dozen prospective candidates and hours of debate, the Republican party's 19-member central committee settled on the 53-year-old Keyes over Andrea Barthwell, the former deputy director of the White House drug czar's office.

After being named a finalist on Tuesday and spending a day in Chicago being interviewed, Keyes appeared uncertain.

"I think that a serious offer of this kind ... requires that I sit down and deliberate on what I can do ... for Illinois and the people of Illinois but also do for this country, and that's what I'll be thinking about," he told reporters.

Judge Backs Same-Sex Marriage
A Washington state law that bars gay unions is unconstitutional, a lower court rules.
By Lynn Marshall and Elizabeth Mehren
Times Staff Writers

August 5, 2004

SEATTLE — Gay and lesbian couples can marry under Washington state law because denying them that right is unconstitutional, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying is "not rationally related to any legitimate or compelling state interest," said King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing, who issued his ruling in response to a challenge of a state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Downing stayed his decision to allow the state's Supreme Court to review the case. Until that court rules, no marriage licenses can be issued to same-sex couples in Washington.

If Downing's decision is upheld, Washington will become the second state — after Massachusetts — to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry. If sustained, the ruling would go beyond the law in Massachusetts because Washington has no residency requirements and would allow out-of-state couples to wed.

Komodo, my IDE for Open Source scripting languages, has a regular expression test bench built in. And I thought I had a legitimate reason to use .NET stuff. I should have known better…

Sudanese Protest UN; African Union Readies Troops
Wed Aug 4, 2004 03:35 PM ET

By Nima Elbagir and Evelyn Leopold

KHARTOUM/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched on the U.N. headquarters in Khartoum on Wednesday in protest of any possible Western military intervention to combat atrocities in Darfur.

But no Western intervention is on the horizon, despite calls in the United States and elsewhere for such a force. Instead the African Union plans to beef up its troops to some 3,000 soldiers and may help disarm marauding Darfur militia, AU officials and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

Protesters in Khartoum, many from organized pro-government groups but including many ordinary citizens, carried anti-American banners and chanted slogans attacking Annan for siding with U.S. policy on Darfur.

"Annan, Annan, shame, shame," they shouted. "Annan, Annan, you coward. We will not be ruled by the Americans."

FCC Says Net Phone Lines Can Be Tapped
Wed Aug 4, 2004 03:07 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet phone systems, seen as the wave of the future in telecommunications, must be set up in such a way that conversations can be monitored by police and intelligence agencies, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said in a tentative ruling on Wednesday.

By a vote of 5-0, the FCC said "Voice over Internet Protocol," or VoIP, providers should be subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which ensures that law enforcers will be able to keep up with changing communications technologies.

The law does not apply to Internet-based communications but VoIP providers such as Vonage must comply because they are likely to replace much traditional phone service, the commission said.

The Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have argued that they must be able to monitor suspicious calls no matter how they are made and have pushed the FCC to adopt rules so they will always have access.

Technology advocates have worried that the fast-growing service, which promises to slash costs by routing phone calls over the Internet, could be harmed by excessive regulation.

The ruling does not affect other pending regulatory questions surrounding VoIP service, such as how it should be taxed, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said.

NY Ferry Crash Pilot Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter
Wed Aug 4, 2004 04:18 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The man at the helm in the worst disaster in the history of New York's Staten Island ferry pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday in the deaths of 11 people last year when he fell asleep and the boat hit a concrete pier.

Assistant Capt. Richard Smith pleaded guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter in addition to lying about his medical condition and taking prescription drugs when he applied to the U.S. Coast Guard for renewal of his ferry pilot's license in Aug. 2000.

Prosecutors also announced grand jury indictments of several other people found responsible for the Oct. 15, 2003 crash that killed 11 passengers and injured dozens of others.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Smith admitted to U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman that medication he took for back pain on the day of the crash made him drowsy and that he acted recklessly by piloting the boat, named the Andrew J. Barberi.

"While operating the Barberi as it was headed toward Staten Island, I lost consciousness and was not in control of the ferry when it crashed into the dock at St George terminal," Smith said in court.

Smith was so distraught after the accident he fled the scene and tried to commit suicide, police said.

His plea agreement was expected to draw him a more lenient sentence than the recommended 10 years in prison for each manslaughter count. A sentencing date was not scheduled.

TiVo Wins Nod for Users to Share Digital Shows
Wed Aug 4, 2004 04:53 PM ET

By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - TiVo Inc. , maker of popular digital television recording devices, on Wednesday received approval for technology that would permit users to send copies of digital broadcast shows over the Internet to a limited number of friends.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to certify digital protections on TiVoToGo, which is not yet available but would enable a user to record and send a digital broadcast television show to up to nine others who have been registered on that person's service and has been given a key to see it.

The approval came despite concerns by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the National Football League about the risks of unfettered distribution of copyrighted shows and airing regional games outside of their market.

"Each of these technologies has been exhaustively reviewed to ensure contention protection systems prevent the mass indiscriminate redistribution of digital television programming," said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.

The FCC last year adopted rules to limit distribution of digital, over-the-air television programs over the Internet in an effort to prevent mass illegal copying and sharing, a problem plaguing the music industry.

Annual 'Dead Zone' Spreads Across Gulf of Mexico
Tue Aug 3, 2004 07:43 PM ET

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A huge "dead zone" of water so devoid of oxygen that sea life cannot live in it has spread across 5,800 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico this summer in what has become an annual occurrence caused by pollution.

The extensive area of uninhabitable water may be contributing indirectly to an unusual spate of shark bites along the Texas coast, experts said.

A scientist at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium said on Tuesday measurements showed the dead zone extended from the mouth of the Mississippi River in southeastern Louisiana 250 miles west to near the Texas border and was closer to shore than usual because winds and currents.

"Fish and swimming crabs escape (from the dead zone)," said Nancy Rabalais, the consortium's chief scientist for hypoxia, or low oxygen, research. "Anything else dies."

In the last 30 years, the dead zone has become an annual summer phenomenon, fed by rising use of nitrate-based fertilizers by farmers in the Mississippi watershed, Rabalais told Reuters.

The nitrates, carried into the gulf's warm summer waters by the river, feed algae blooms that use up oxygen and make the water uninhabitable.

The dead zone's size has varied each year depending on weather conditions, but averages about 5,000 square miles and remains in place until late September or early October.

Well, I didn't finish that PDF on racial resentment I mentioned yesterday. So y'all get a break from my analysis of white studies today.

I've been too distracted to think about that much anyway. I'm worried about the future of the Republican Party.

The Class of '94 rode into power on a wave of Angry White Male resentment of Black progress (they said it themselves, so I don't have to mince words). And now we're seeing racialism creeping back into the party's platform.

We've been seeing it for a while, actually. It started with Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court. I was amazed. I could have come up with hundreds of white men, top of their Ivy League class, that were more qualified than Judge Thomas. Almost a dozen off the top of my head. They had much Judge Thomas did not and does not; but the Judge was the same race as the Justice who retired.

Well, I decided it was something like a sacrifice in chess; give up ground because it establishes your control of the vectors along which you will attack. And I was confident my assessment was correct. Republicans continued their rock-ribbed resistance to any program or idea that addressed the specific issues of Black folks.

Recently though, beginning with the Party's caving in to Black indignation over Trent Lott's praise of the old Dixiecrat platform…no, you're right, a lot of white people objected too…yes, I agree, white people's opinions were far more influential in that decision than Black folks. Okay you're right, the Republicans didn't move Lott for the benefit of Black folks.

But they pulled out all the Black spokesmen, like white people aren't good enough to explain Lott's outburst away. Like no one would believe a white guy. I was offended. Deeply offended.

And now look. Aren't there any white guys in Illinois that can beat Obama while representing the Republican platform? And why are so many of the Party's stars endorsing a newcomer like Dylan Glenn instead of a qualified, proven candidate like Lynn Westmoreland?

Are we saying the Republican Party needs Black people? What will that mean for a party whose core came to them on a wave of Angry White Male resentment of Black progress? How can they claim to be against special treatment for minorities when they have these special programs to attract them? They HAVE to be making promises to Black people. Because if they're not it wouldn't make sense for Black people to join up! How will white people react when they realize what's going on?

Nate at the Cincinnati Black Blog spotted another instance of Republican affirmative action:

In Georgia runoff, GOP bickering over black candidate's support

The Associated Press - ATLANTA

A runoff election pitting a black Republican against a white one in the conservative suburbs south of Atlanta has exposed how anxious the national GOP is to have a black congressman in Washington again.

Dylan Glenn, descended from Georgia sharecroppers, is telegenic, conservative and polished. He's been endorsed by Republican royalty _ former Reps. Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr, plus former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp. If elected, he'd be the only black Republican in Congress, and the first sent to Washington from the Deep South since Reconstruction.

But Glenn's never held public office before. Some Georgia Republicans are grumbling that Glenn's getting unfair attention over his more-experienced, white opponent, longtime state Rep. Lynn Westmoreland.

And Reuters says Republicans have found themselves another Black candidate, Andrea Barthwell, to run against Mr. Obama in case their approach to Alan Keyes doesn't pan out.

How many of you would like to pretend that these good people's race has no significance in their selection. I'm willing to bet there wasn't a single non-Black person considered in Illinois (not least because no intelligent white politician will sign on to a guaranteed loss). And you got a snowball's chance in hell of convincing me Dylan Glenn is anything more than a constructed image.

Patriot 2 Patriot (P2P) File Sharing Enables Access to Fleeting Government Hearings

Washington, D.C. - August 3, 2004 - A diverse coalition of citizens, activist groups, academics, entrepreneurs and fledgling technology companies today announced their support for a project to share digital recordings of government hearings on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

John Parres, Founder and Executive Director of Click The Vote grassroots advocacy group spearheaded the launch of a new non-profit, non-partisan website called P2PCongress.org in support of the project.

“The U.S. Congress holds countless hearings but the webcasts often evaporate into the ether unless citizens take the initiative to make live recordings,” said Parres, “The P2P Congress website helps coordinate those efforts and enables visitors to find audio and video copies of hearings via P2P networks.”

“P2P Congress is a simple demonstration of how P2P networks can increase public participation in the political process and make our democracy work better,” said Holmes Wilson of online activism group Downhill Battle, “It is prohibitively expensive for individuals to host these videos on their own, but P2P technology makes it possible for regular people to solve that problem.”

Video files tend to be large and expensive to deliver over the internet but P2P technology dramatically reduces the costs. The more friends, neighbors and other citizens choose to share each hearing the faster shared delivery costs drop to almost nothing.

Currently a number of people and groups are supporting the project, including Singer-songwriter Tom Barger, Click The Vote, DeviantArt.com, Dmusic.com, DownhillBattle.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FreeCulture.org, Gnutella.com, Intent Media Works, Mashboxx, Morpheus, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, Limewire, New Yorkers For Fair Use, Off The Peer, Public Knowledge, Savethe.org, TopP2P, and TrustyFiles.

"The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) and each of our 21 Member companies fully support the objectives of P2PCongress.org. It is important for citizens to understand the quality and nature of legislative proposals and for elected officials to understand that tens of millions of voters care about their positions on P2P file-sharing measures."

“It is both ironic and tragic that P2P Congress launches with a video of the INDUCE Act hearing,” said Marc Freedman, CEO and founder of RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, “because this same Act would effectively outlaw P2P technology and deprive the public of a valuable resource that maintains our freedom."

“P2P truly means 'Power 2 the People,” said Parres. “P2P sharing of congressional hearings demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that neutral technology like P2P can promote democracy, the rights of assembly and free speech. Indeed, it is much more than that. In many cases it may be the only way for people to see and hear crucial deliberations of their representatives in Congress.”

Officials don't see attack as imminent
By Kevin Johnson and John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The U.S. financial institutions identified in a recently disclosed al-Qaeda surveillance operation are not believed to be at imminent risk of attack, two federal law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation said Tuesday.

Freedom and community can — and should — coexist
By Ben Brown

FRANKLIN, N.C. — What we all need is a big idea that works.
We're up to our ears in the other kind, whether it's an attempt to purchase with blood and money stable democracy in the Middle East, or to grow an economy that ensures profits and meaningful employment at the same time.

In my rural county in the mountains of North Carolina, we're embroiled in one of those struggles that's a miniature version of a national debate. It's about an apparent clash between two good ideas: the idea of freedom and the idea of community. And I think the way to a workable solution has crucial implications for our mountains and for the larger culture.

The dilemma stems from the appeal of our remote area to an increasing number of second-home buyers and retirees. Rapid, unmanaged growth threatens the very quality of life that makes the region so attractive. Planning advocates want to channel growth and preserve what newcomers and natives love about the mountains and valleys. They talk a lot about community.

But the mere hint of a process that could lead to restrictions on development riles advocates of private-property rights. Their position: Nobody should tell a person what to do with his or her own land. For them, it's all about individual freedom.

If we can't cobble together a coalition for planning, growth will continue pretty much the way it has, both in our region and in most places throughout the country. We'll get more sprawl, a pattern of disconnected subdivisions and strip malls that clogs roads and turns unique landscapes into annexes of Anywhere, USA. It's the unintended, but inevitable, consequence of unlimited individual freedom.

The workable idea that counters this unworkable one is New Urbanism. New Urbanism holds that there is an appropriate human habitat, just as there is an appropriate habitat for all other life forms. And sprawl is not it.

Sadr army owns city's streets
Our reporter follows the Mahdi Army as it patrols Sadr City, home to 1 in 10 Iraqi voters.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SADR CITY, IRAQ - Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army rarely engages US forces anymore. Hundreds of his men were killed in clashes with the US in April and by June, the militant Shiite cleric had declared an informal truce that prevails to this day.

Despite occasional clashes, including a firefight between marines and Sadr's bodyguards on Monday outside his home in the shrine city of Najaf, senior US commanders believe their April counteroffensive decisively crushed his insurgency.

But that doesn't mean Sadr and his militia have lost influence. In recent months, the Mahdi Army has consolidated its control over Sadr City - a poor sprawl of 2.5 million on Baghdad's northeastern edge - maintained control over large portions of Najaf, forced a US-backed government council in the southern city of Amara to resign, and rearmed in anticipation of further confrontation with the US.

"We're in charge here,'' says Sheikh Amar Saadi, a preacher in Sadr City and senior Mahdi Army commander. And he goes further:

"Our mission is to clear Iraq of evil, and that's not just about defeating the Americans."

Quote of note added later:

In fact, local political leaders here had fought over the timing of amendment. Some Republicans had pressed to hold the vote in November, during the general election. Democrats, who had more competitive primary races on Tuesday, pushed to hold it now.

"The political calculus that has been made by the Bush people is that more people will turn out from the far right conservative base with this issue on the ballot," Mr. Kilbourn said. "This is all about the politics of distraction. It distracts from the economy, the job losses, the issues people care about."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said the wave of amendments around the country had come because "the American people want to protect the institution of marriage. That's what's driving this whole thing."

Indeed, Mr. Perkins said, he believed the amendments would pass in every state where they are weighed this fall.

Louisiana plans a vote on a marriage amendment on Sept. 18. In November, people in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are expected to consider similar measures. Ballot initiatives are awaiting approval in Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio. Four states - Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Nevada - already passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage before the Massachusetts ruling.

Missourians Back Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
By MONICA DAVEY

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 3 - Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the State Constitution barring gay marriage, becoming the first state to answer what has become a growing question since same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

With 93 percent of precincts reporting, the amendment had garnered 70 percent of the vote.

Voters in at least 9 other states - and perhaps as many as 12 - are expected to consider similar amendments this fall, so advocates on both sides of the debate were intensely watching Missouri's results, anxious about what they might say about voters elsewhere in the weeks ahead.

"What happens in Missouri will be looked at by people across the country," said Seth Kilbourn, the national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington group that worked against the proposed amendment in Missouri with more than $100,000 for television advertisements, telephone banks and polling.

In Drug Research, the Guinea Pigs of Choice Are, Well, Human
By ANDREW POLLACK

Researchers at the University of Munich repeated the experiment 70 times: a healthy volunteer would receive a chemical injection, then be left alone to ride out an artificially induced panic attack.

From the next room, doctors watched the volunteer's restlessness via video camera, measured the quickening pulse and rise in blood pressure, and used an intercom to question the person about his or her feelings of impending doom. The attacks typically lasted 5 to 10 minutes.

Each volunteer was put through the same test a few days later, but this time most of them first received an experimental anti-anxiety drug. The drug quelled anxiety well enough in those experiments last year that its developer, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, gained the confidence to conduct large clinical trials.

The company's approach is part of a trend in the pharmaceutical industry. Drug researchers are conducting small, fast, relatively inexpensive tests on people to get a quick gauge of a drug's promise before committing to full-scale clinical trials that may involve hundreds of patients, millions of dollars and many years of study. Often called experimental medicine, the approach is meant to reduce the huge costs of drug development and speed the most promising treatments into the marketplace.

They advertise for guinea pigs, you know. The ads go something like:

Do you have this problem? This terrible, terrible problem that is embarrassing or painful or prevents you from having a normal life? We've seen it before and everyone knows you have the problem. So sad. So very sad.

But now there's hope. Researchers are testing an experimental medication for just your type of problems. If you ask us nicely we'll let you have some.

I figured this was the standard type of test vs. a placebo, so the implied promise of treatment was troubling. I assumed folks would be given the whole story before the trials actually begin, just as I assume those who volunteer for the "experimental drugs" are made to understand they are not being treated, just highly invasively monitored. It just wouldn't be smart (read legal and ethical) to proceed with a volunteer who wasn't absolutely crystal on the issue.

So there's no problem, really.

I'm actually a little irrational about health care issues. In an ideal world medical care and education would be pure public goods, things that are simply funded and provided. If you're the kind of person that takes that kind of thought seriously, it's frustrating to recognize there was simply no way that ideal world could have come into existence before now, and the players have no motivation to bring it about.

Iraq to Offer Amnesty, but No Killers Need Apply
By IAN FISHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 3 - A delayed plan to offer amnesty to Iraqi insurgents moved forward on Tuesday, but objections raised by American officials and Iraqi communal leaders have reduced the amnesty's scope, meaning that those who killed either Americans or Iraqis will not qualify.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih announced that the plan, floated a month ago by the new government, would be passed by the new cabinet in a few days. The final amnesty, he said, will extend only to people who indirectly assisted the insurgency "in the killing," and not, he suggested, to the killers themselves.

What that will mean in practice and whether the decision to forgive only one sliver of the insurgency will actually tamp down the violence are not yet clear.

The evolution of the law reflects the curious nature of ruling Iraq: there are domestic political considerations to weigh, but the Americans wield influence behind the scenes.

---

Behind the scenes?

It's obvious we're not going to get a direct description of the situation until Bush goes home for good.

Unless, of course, you read political cartoons:

New Qaeda Activity Is Said to Be Major Factor in Alert
By DOUGLAS JEHL and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: August 4, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - Senior government officials said Tuesday that new intelligence pointing to a current threat of a terrorist attack on financial targets in New York and possibly in Washington - not just information about surveillance on specific buildings over the years - was a major factor in the decision over the weekend to raise the terrorism alert level

I had to give up using The Regulator, that regular expression test bench. Being a .NET thing, its regexes are almost Perl-compatible, in almost the same way PHP's regex functions are almost Perl compatible. What I worked out with The Regulator was seriously close, and I got there much faster than I would have without such a learning environment.

I'm glad it was free though, because I don't need it anymore. My PHP (and Perl and Python, if I ever have to) IDE is Komodo, which has a nice debugger that I can use to test these beasties now that I have a grip on them. Best of all, I now have the same open source regex engine as in PHP 4 in the form of a Windows DLL, so what I learn here will be directly applicable to my Windows stuff.

The point of all this is data scrubbing. Older incarnations of P6 had all manner of embedded CSS, laid on top of the current CSS, renders major sections of the text illegible. And I have graphics scattered between three directories and some storage space at Earthlink.net. By the time I realized it, regenerating the whole site was simply not worth dealing with my web host's complaints about hogging the CPU. With the move to Drupal, which generates pages dynamically, I've decided it's an ideal time to fix stuff. So I'm replacing all the offending styled <div> tags with simple <blockquote> tags. I'm also scanning the whole site for image tags. I want to identify all that live in spaces that belong to me, move them someplace sensibly organized and rewrite the tags. Finally, I get to tune my .htaccess file.

Which leads me to a slightly contrarian position.

At first single post archives under Movable Type 2.x were named [message no.].html or some such. Someone figured out that dirify thing and suddenly we all have files named the_title_of_the_post.php or some such. I'm not sure that was an improvement.

Say after I post this message I decide the title should have been "These regular expressions are pretty cool." Before the dirify trick the original file is replaced. After the dirify trick a new file with a name constructed from the new title is created. The old file is still there though, just orphaned. So if you've ever edited a title in your blog posts you've got these ghost files laying about.

Plus setting up the redirects will be no joke.

Report: iMovie strips FairPlay DRM from iTunes songs
Tuesday, August 3, 2004 @ 7:40am

Apple's iMovie can be used to strip the FairPlay digital rights management protection (DRM) on iTunes songs, according to a report by German news site Macnews.de. The site reports that Apple's own video tool can be used to create unprotected song files that be played on any computer without recompression, circumventing iTunes' DRM protection. iMovie users can use the "Share" feature of iMovie to export any imported (protected) song from the iTunes Music Store. The exported songs can either be stored in the un-protected AAC file format (used by Apple at the iTMS) or in the raw WAV file format; both of these formats are supported by iTunes.

Borsellino: Weaning myself away from Fox News
Some people actually take this network seriously. They really believe Fox News is fair and balanced.
By ROB BORSELLINO
REGISTER COLUMNIST
July 21, 2004

I've got this Fox News problem. I'm hooked.

I've always thought it was kind of a personal thing, sort of like a victimless crime. I'd only watch it in my room with the door closed or when I was home alone. I never talked about it in public and - most important - I never took it seriously.

But then it got ugly.

The other night my wife and I came home unexpectedly and we caught our kids - two boys under the age of 18 - watching Sean Hannity.

Naturally my wife was pretty upset. She grabbed the remote, switched to Iowa Public Television and then got in my face and blamed me for the children's behavior.

"What next, Rob? Are they going to be quoting Cal Thomas? Or picketing Planned Parenthood?"

My first instinct was to get back in her face and tell her to shut up, call her a left-wing nut case who is weak on defense and refuses to acknowledge that the Bush tax cuts are fueling an economic recovery that will benefit all Americans, not just the wealthy.

Easin' on down the road...

A sad realization

I've mentioned before that my biological father was Afghanistanian but, for all intents and purposes, I'm white. I was raised white and I identify with white people in many ways. I grew up in the Southeast US, however, and I also sometimes identify with blacks, especially because most of the black population I've interacted with have treated me as multiracial.

So what does all this mean? Nothing really except that I'm as much a racial goulash as anyone else. So why am I posting on this topic? I went to an Iranian festival today and, even though my racial heritage is from a totally different country, I was among people who looked similar to me.

I've been remiss...
in that I've never mentioned my distress about the fact that most voters don't seem to realize that the President has the power to appoint many, many, many judges - including the Supremies. Slate, however, has corrected my omission with a great article that asks that very question. Why don't people seem to realize (or care) that even though we can boot out the President every four years, judicial appointments are FOR DECADES.

And the judges are who determine how laws are enforced. All that legislation passed by Congress? Guess what? It's interpreted by all those judges - including the Supremies. So we can get the good legislation produced by Congress and the Prez but if the judges interpret it differently, we're stuck with that interpretation - just as we were stuck with the Supremies' decision to appoint Bush in 2000.

I'm the first to admit that I have been pretty darn slack with regard to 'judge selection activism' but my new political resolution is to pay more attention to who's going where. Of course, this will probably require some rudimentary knowledge of the court system but that's too bad - I'll have to take the time to learn...

That last sentence was the one that impressed me, by the way.

Quote of note:

The first Obama heard of Keyes was when reporters asked him about the potential matchup at a stop in Downstate Bloomington.

"Does he live in Illinois?" Obama asked. "The Republicans need to just go ahead and make up their minds and when they do, we'll be happy to debate whoever they put in."

GOP wooing Keyes to take on Obama
August 3, 2004
BY SCOTT FORNEK Political Reporter

Barack Obama might get a race, after all.

Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes told Illinois Republicans Monday that he is ''open to the idea'' of taking on the Democrat in the U.S. Senate race -- a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.

''It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal,'' said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama. ''It would put this race on the map in this country -- just for excitement.''

Syverson spoke to Keyes several times Monday and said Keyes did not commit to making the run. The former State Department official and radio and television personality was unable to fly from his home in Maryland to Chicago for a meeting the Republican State Central Committee is holding today to interview potential candidates.

''But he certainly has an interest, and he said if the group is interested in meeting with him and speaking with him about his views that he would be happy to come out and meet [later]," said Syverson, a Rockford member of the committee.

---

Gotta give props to Barbara Peterson:

Not all members of the state central committee are sold on Keyes.

"He can talk -- that I know," said Barbara Peterson, a state central committeewoman from Will County. "I've been enthralled by his speeches, but I liked Obama's speech, too. So what does that say for me? Maybe I just like a good speech. I don't know at this point. Why would he want to do it?"

I much prefer her approach ("Why would he want to do it?") to Syverson's approach ("It would put this race on the map in this country -- just for excitement."). We got enough of the Circus Maximus vibe working already.

Deficit deception
August 3, 2004

PRESIDENT BUSH is using White House budget projections to disguise the reality of dismal fiscal news. This year's deficit will be the largest ever, and his tax cuts are responsible for much of the red ink.

In releasing the figures last week, the Office of Management and Budget said the $445 billion deficit expected for this year is $100 billion less than the projection in February. But many budget watchers at the time said the figure was too high. Even at $445 billion, the figure is $70 billion worse than last year's and represents 3.8 percent of the economy, a huge amount during a time of expansion.

Just 3 1/2 years ago, OMB was projecting a surplus of $387 billion for the 2004 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Perhaps that figure was artificially high, a product of tax revenues flowing from the bubble economy. Bush sold his initial tax cuts as a way to absorb the excess revenue, not as an economic stimulus. With deficits expected far into the future, those cuts need to be reconsidered.

Deep within its latest report, OMB offers a breakdown of the causes of the turnaround from surplus to deficits in 2004. It attributes $216 billion to the Iraq invasion, homeland security, and other unforeseen expenses; $333 billion to revenue losses that had nothing to do with tax cuts, and $290 billion to the tax cuts themselves. Some revenue stimulation was necessary following the 9/11 attacks and the end of the Internet boom, but there was no need for the cuts to remain, producing deficits on this scale.

The article "The Social Construction of Reverse Discrimination: The Impact of Affirmative Action on Whites" was published in the Journal of Intergroup Relations, Volume XXXVIII, No. 4 Winter 2001/2002, pages 33 - 44.

That link goes to www.adversity.net, a spiritual ancestor of Discriminations both in politics and in naming itself via word-play on progressive concerns. Something of an in-your-face gesture, in my opinion. Anyway, the link goes to adversity.net because it was mentioned in the article and the owner of it contacted Prof. Pincus for permission to present it unaltered on his site, which I grant shows the owner of the site has the courage of his convictions.

You have to read it, not me, because I already have.

Again, roughly two pages (20% of the text this time) below the fold. And the Quote of Note from further on in the document is:

Earlier I alluded to how half to two-thirds of whites and males believe that reverse discrimination is common. Some of the polls asked respondents whether they, personally, had lost a job, promotion, college seat, etc. because of affirmative action. When the question is phrased this way, the number of whites and males who respond 'yes' drops significantly to between 2% and 13% (Steeh & Krysan, 1996).

Racial Resentment and White Opposition to Race-Conscious Programs:Principles or Prejudice? (PDF) by Stanley Feldman and Leonie Huddy of Stony Brook University, was brought to my attention by Cobb a while back. He drew an interesting conclusion from the abstract that I find no support for, I stashed the 42 page report; circumstances lead me to dusting it off and giving it the full review.

There's some two-three pages of the report below the fold, enough to judge if you really want to go there. And not for nothin' nor namin' no names, a belated quote of note:

Racial Resentment
Racial Resentment Defined
There are a number of different measures of the new racism – including symbolic racism, modern racism, and racial resentment – but all share a common definition as support for the belief that blacks are demanding and undeserving, and do not require any form of special government assistance

You have no idea how tempting it is to write every news clip about Republicans as what "white leaders" are doing to their own people.

---

New Poll Confirms that 73% of Republicans Support A Woman's Right to Choose
Posted: 05/13/2004

NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin applauds defenders of privacy and reproductive health

A recent nationwide survey by American Viewpoint found that an overwhelming 73% of Republicans believe that the choice to terminate a pregnancy should belong to the woman. 61% of GOP respondents say that even if they might not choose abortion themselves, they would not prevent other women from doing so. These findings continue a trend of increasing support for choice in recent years, with the majority of Americans consistently identifying as pro-choice.

“This poll confirms the fact that most Americans believe that reproductive decisions are personal, private matters that should be decided by women in consultation with their families, doctors, and clergy,” said Kelda Helen Roys, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin. “Choice and privacy are not political issues – they are medical issues, which should not be legislated away by politicians eager to appease right-wing extremists. This poll should be a warning to those who play politics with women’s health.”

“Unfortunately, anti-choice forces control the Bush Administration and dictate the Republican Party platform. This vocal minority blocks every common-sense solution to reduce the need for abortion, from accurate information to emergency contraception,” said Roys.

Saudis Unfazed by U.S. Talk of Energy Independence
Tue Aug 3, 2004 07:19 AM ET

By Heba Kandil
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudis are not alarmed about Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's pledge to end U.S. dependence on Saudi oil and believe Washington will remain reliant on the kingdom, industry experts said Tuesday.

They dismissed Kerry's call for America to rely on "its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family" as rhetoric to win votes, arguing that Saudi oil would still be critical to any U.S. administration.

Regardless of where Washington imports its oil from, crude from the kingdom, a regional U.S. ally and the world's largest oil exporter, feeds a global market, affecting oil prices.

"It's one global market and it's oil prices that count, not who is selling. Saudi Arabia is a cornerstone of that market and there is no such thing as wanting to be independent of Saudi oil," said Sadad Husseini, a retired Saudi Aramco executive.

Iraq Jail Chief Says Prisoner Abuse Covered Up
Tue Aug 3, 2004 07:26 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. general formerly in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Tuesday abuse of Iraqi captives was hidden from her in a cover-up that may reach all the way to the Pentagon or White House.

Speaking on the same day a U.S. soldier at the center of the prisoner abuse scandal is due to face a military court, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski said she was deliberately kept in the dark about abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.

"A very reliable witness has made a statement indicating that, not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogation at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else," Karpinski told Britain's BBC radio.

Karpinski, responsible for the military police who ran prisons in Iraq when pictures were taken showing prisoners being abused, has been suspended from her post but not charged with any crime.

She said that those with "full knowledge" of what was going on in Abu Ghraib worked to keep her from discovering the truth.

Asked if a cover-up meant involvement of the White House or Pentagon, she said: "I have not seen the statement but the indication is it may have."

Damn good question of note:

CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks?

Reading the Script
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: August 3, 2004

A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV.

…Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military.

If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war.

…Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment.

Mr. Bush's Wrong Solution

At a time when Americans need strong leadership and bold action, President Bush offered tired nostrums and bureaucratic half-measures yesterday. He wanted to appear to be embracing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, but he actually rejected the panel's most significant ideas, and thus missed a chance to confront the twin burdens he faces at this late point in his term: the need to get intelligence reform moving whether he's re-elected or not, and the equally urgent need to repair the government's credibility on national security.

Mr. Bush spoke on a day when Americans were still digesting the terrifying warning of possible terrorist attacks against financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington. The authorities in those cities did the right thing by stepping up security. But it's unfortunate that it is necessary to fight suspicions of political timing, suspicions the administration has sown by misleading the public on security. The Times reports today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert is actually three or four years old and that authorities had found no concrete evidence that a terror plot was actually under way. This news does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the administration is not using intelligence for political gain.

Intelligence Chief Without Power? Support Leaves Questions
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 - President Bush on Monday cast his support for a new post of national intelligence director as an historic overhaul of the nation's major spy agencies. But White House officials left vague the authority that the new director would wield over personnel and spending, raising doubts among some experts about the real power of the new position.

Mr. Bush said the new director would "coordinate" the budgets for the nation's 15 major intelligence agencies, while Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, said the director would have a "coordinating role" in hiring. But neither the president nor Mr. Card said that the director should directly hire and fire or have authority over the estimated $40 billion that the government spends each year on intelligence. Right now, the Pentagon controls about 80 percent of the money.

"If the national intelligence director has no real budgetary authority, he or she will have no real power," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

We in software know what FUD stands for: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. A market positioning technique created by IBM and honed to a razor's edge by Microsoft, it would seem the Bushistas have they can be as open with it as Microsoft used to be.

Quote of note:

Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way. They said officials in New Jersey had been mistaken in saying on Sunday that some suspects had been found with blueprints and may have recently practiced "test runs'' aimed at the Prudential building in Newark.

Joseph Billy Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Newark office, said a diagram of the Prudential building had been found in Pakistan. "It appears to be from the period around 9/11,'' Mr. Billy said. "Now we're trying to see whether it goes forward from there.''

Another counterterrorism official in Washington said that it was not yet clear whether the information pointed to a current plot. "We know that Al Qaeda routinely cases targets and then puts the plans on a shelf without doing anything,'' the official said.

Anyway…

Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

Now maybe something can be done.

Saving Jungles May Aid Nearby Coffee Plantations
Mon Aug 2, 2004 06:47 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conserving tropical forests may benefit nearby coffee plantations, researchers reported on Monday.
Bees can cross over from the jungle to pollinate the coffee trees, resulting in greater yields and healthier coffee beans, the U.S. researchers found.

"Policies that allow landowners to capture the value of pollination and other services could provide powerful incentives for forest conservation in some of the most biodiverse and threatened regions on Earth," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers at the World Wildlife Fund, California's Stanford University and the University of Kansas said they focused on coffee because it is such an important crop.

"Coffee ... ranks among the five most valuable agricultural exports from developing nations, employs over 25 million people worldwide, and is cultivated in many of the world's most biodiverse regions," they wrote.

Pollination by wild bees increased coffee yields by 20 percent when tropical forest existed within about half a mile of the forest, they found.

And coffee trees visited by wild bees from the jungle were 27 percent less likely to produce "peaberries" -- small, misshapen seeds that result from inadequate pollination.

Quote of note (because it's so subtly wrong)

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, signed by President Bush in November, criminalizes a procedure that doctors call intact dilation and opponents call "partial-birth" abortion because it may involve partially removing a fetus from its mother's womb to terminate it.

Ashcroft Appeals Calif. Judge's Abortion Ruling
Mon Aug 2, 2004 07:50 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Monday will appeal a San Francisco federal judge's ruling that a 2003 law banning late-term abortions was unconstitutionally broad, court documents show.
Justice department attorneys filed a notice of appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal, challenging the June 1 ruling by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton.

Hamilton sided with plaintiff Planned Parenthood in barring U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft from enforcing the ban on late-term abortions at Planned Parenthood's 900 U.S. clinics.

Opponents said the law could have barred abortions as early as 12 to 15 weeks in pregnancy, when doctors say the procedure is safest for women.

Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt on Monday criticized Ashcroft for spending tax dollars "to fund his anti-choice crusade" and vowed to "go back to court to ensure that this dangerous abortion ban never harms American women."

Justice department attorneys did not detail their grounds for appeal,

James read the White Studies article I linked to yesterday.His comments are quite good. One may even go so far as to say correct.

Long comment, though. Several, in fact. If you're pressed for time, read the first paragraph of the first chapter, and the last paragraph of the last chapter of his comment. Last two paragraphs, actually.

So much to say…

Okay, his first paragraph:

All right, I tend to be dubious about the prospect of a group of perpetually guilt-wracked European Americans being logically or politically sustainable. The author wants students to accept a secular analogue of original sin, without any concomitant narrative of redemption. Having been there as a student (thankfully, with people who were a little more psychologically astute), I can say that Prof. Thompson is really not serving the interests of anyone by this attitude.

How dubious are we about the prospect of a perpetually guilt-wracked group of African Americans? When we have Bill Cosby (as an example) taking the underclass to task for shif'less when they are the ones driving Black college enrollment to new levels and vote at higher levels than the upper class…at the same time we rag folks like gangsta rappers for providing what the mainstream market demands…at the same time we demand of Black media moguls more relevant entertainment as though there's enough of a market for it that you can just throw stuff against the wall like Hollywood does.

A perpetually guilt-wracked group of African Americans is not merely logically and politically sustainable but is de rigeur. It's thinkable, desirable. And for the mainstream? Unthinkable, undesirable. Judgments based not on justice, ethics, morality or law but on power relationships.

So as for the last two paragraphs:

Excuse me? That's so absurd and impossible. I'm really glad I never wasted time taking a course with this instructor, because I'm rather gullible and it might have taken a lot of time to realize that she herself is the victim of the very malady she diagrams: a white, trapped in the narrative of original sin, insists on a paradox for a conclusion. I've noticed that a lot of mystics like paradoxes at the heart of their philosophies because they aren't falsifiable--they cannot be refuted, the way a legitimate statement of fact could be. But the narrative she's working with is not a seeming paradox--it's a real paradox, with no truth content. At the heart of this lengthy essay, with some excellent explosions of white defense mechanism, lies the same defense mechanism--gibberish.

The narrative of racism as original sin is harmful. It leads the author in circles--and she's a talented writer! IMO, we're already half-way there to abolishing the narrative when racism is construed as a function of community, not individual guilt. Racism should be externalized. Racism is an illusion created by imperialist institutions, not original sin.

…of course it ends in paradox.

Paradoxes are the intellectual equivalent of a naked singularity—conceptually fascinating, but not ever seen in the wild. I'm reaching for a metaphor about trying to reduce the irreducible…it works, but you need to read "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene to get a sufficient grip on string theory that it would make sense.

I understand the power of narrative. And I understand many narratives can be created from any given set of facts.

You got paradoxes in your narrative because you need it to say some things that aren't supported by history and to be silent on other things that are. Prof. Thompson's article merely brings them to the surface and I'm not sure that's the best thing to do without having a resolution handy (generally in the form of additional information). On the other hand, this early in the enterprise I'm not sure there's an alternative. Naked singularities are one thing "beelions and beelions of light years away." They're another thing entirely as a lynchpin of culture.

White folks need a new narrative. It needs to account for the facts as we know them because the memory of a people in CENTURIES long…a people will remember things no individual person is aware of. This narrative can not deny history or humanity as past narratives have done. And white folks need to be the ones that come up with it. I have NEVER understood why white folks ask me how they can avoid being racist. I have NEVER understood how the same folks who ask me that are so very confident about how I can avoid being racist.

Sorry for lapsing into rhetorical mode there, but I'm leaving it.

Twenty three pages of PDF…100% Quote Of Note. In ways, harsher than I'd phrase it myself. In ways.

Tiffany, friend of people of color: White investments in antiracism."
Qualitative Studies in Education,16(1), 7-29.

Books with “friend of the white man” in the title are no longer embraced with quite the same open enthusiasm as they once were. You can still find Squanto: Friend of the white men in school libraries, but it is gradually being replaced with Squanto: Friend of the pilgrims. At one time it seemed obvious to whites that anyone who was a friend of the white man was somebody who ought to go down in history, presumably because whites have had so few friends; now, however, we understand that it is arrogant to organize history around whites and people who have been friendly to them. Although the category of cross-race friendship seems to be embedded more firmly than ever in the white imagination, colorblind protocols require that whiteness be played down as the explicit reference point for friendship. Thus, Squanto becomes the “friend of the pilgrims” and Pocahontas the “friend of the colonists.” Sacagawea, Pocahontas, and Squanto – not to mention Tonto – still figure as significant insofar as they are friends to the white man, but the coded language makes the friendship sound more individual, more local, less a matter of race.

Yet even as whites have begun to back away from explicit assessments of people of color as “friends of white men,” we have embraced the idea that whites can be “friends of people of color.” It is not a new idea; Custer himself declared that the white man was “the Indian’s best friend.” But we mean it differently, not that way. We mean that we are supporters of people of color, that we understand about white racism and that we are against it. We are not that sort of white; we are good whites. Antiracist whites know not to talk about “good Negroes,” “friendly Indians,” or “good Mexicans,” but somehow it seems different to talk about “good whites” – about “Tiffany, friend of people of color.”

Israel to Expand Biggest West Bank Settlement
Mon Aug 2, 2004 03:55 PM ET

By Mark Heinrich
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has approved 600 new housing units for the West Bank's biggest Jewish settlement despite an understanding with Washington not to expand enclaves on occupied land, political sources said on Monday.

But no building tenders have been published since the decision two months ago and security sources said the United States, Israel's main ally and key mediator in its conflict with Palestinians, would be consulted before construction began.

The plan would add homes to Maale Adumim, a suburban-style settlement with 30,000 people. Located just east of Jerusalem, it straddles the mid-section of territory Palestinians seek for a viable independent state under a U.S.-led peace "road map."

Washington, which has Israel's pledge not to build beyond existing zones in West Bank settlements, voiced reservations.

"Israel has made a commitment," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said. "We look forward to Israel abiding by that commitment and sticking by the road map."

The Republican drive for the Black vote is moving into high gear. They're starting to repeat the things they've already said that didn't work last time.

I know I'm one of those guys who just never wanted to see Nader run, one of those guys whose reasons were strategic and visceral. I'm not going to lie like I did this analysis up front, but I would like you to consider for a moment how effective a President Nader would be. Not just what principles he espouses; if you're going to judge him strictly on what he says, you might as well judge Bush the same way (and I might as well start saving for that one-way ticket).

Does he really have the judgment you need to run something like the United States of America? Seriously consider the evidence of his current behavior (this is the same standard you should judge all the candidates by, in my opinion). That he needs support from the most regressive elements in politics may be worse than the fact that he accepts it. It shows he doesn't have the support his agenda does. He attacks and disrupts those who are most likely to consider his views, the moderate and progressives that have shown him such appreciation before now…and does so by saying they're the same as those who are funding him! He makes himself indebted to the most aggressively conservative among us, those least likely to help him, those most likely to demand outside that agenda of him.

How far forward do you he will be able to take your agenda with no real allies?

A man as intelligent as Nader knows the answer to this as well as you and I. I do not believe he is planning to fail. Therefore success must mean something other than winning the elections…I'm just describing behavior and inevitable consequences. Based on what I see, I can't force myself to believe he is actually running for President. But if he won, seriously, could he run the country? You shouldn't vote for Nader unless you can honestly say "yes."

from the American Progress Fund:

ECONOMY
Not Necessarily the News

This is what happens when you don't read the news. Data released over the last week revealed that economic growth has slowed dramatically, consumer spending has plummeted and the federal deficit is projected to reach an all-time high. President Bush's take on the economy: "we've turned the corner and we're not going back."

Drudge is worse than InstaPundit.

Ezra at Pandagon linked to it, though;

According to the magical website of Republican trial balloons, also knows as the Drudge Report, Hastert will, in a book to be released next week, call to eliminate the IRS and the income tax and replace it with a national sales or flat tax. That means ripping up progressive taxation and instituting extremely, extremely regressive taxation.

I'm linking to Ezra because because he's pretty clear about how absurd this is, and why.

More Thoughts on Black Conservatives

With all our arguing back and forth today, one point was missed. I have a lot of respect for Juliet of Baldilocks fame. It has to be tough to be a Black Conservative. Some of what she wrote in this post, really hit home for me, becuase in many ways, we have a lot in common, asside from the politics. I too was blessed to have supportive parents, but my siblings have always ostracized me. I was the one who went to college, who travelled internationaly and who chose to live my own life, instead of part of an extended, sometimes disfunctional clan.

I dont even pretend to understand how a person can be black and identify with the conservative movement. I dont understand how someone who has shared even a small part of my journey, can identify with the Rush Limbaugs and Ann Coulters of this world. I have people who I like who are conservatives... The Commissar, Kevin, Paul and Jay from Wizbang, I have also come to respect many others, even while fiercly dissagreeing with them.

From an Arab-American

I was going to quote from it, but you should read the whole thing.

Category XI - The
Quidnunc

Though you don't fit in, and your social graces are sometimes lacking, people like you because you have all the information. Now, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952?


What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

via AF&O

Black Workers Sue Kodak
Sun Aug 1, 2004 08:42 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Black workers are suing Eastman Kodak Co., charging that the world's top maker of photographic film paid blacks less and promoted them less often, lawyers for the plaintiffs said on Sunday.

The suit follows a high-profile race discrimination suit against copier maker Xerox Corp., and comes several years after large settlements of discrimination cases by corporate giants Coca-Cola Co. and Texaco Inc., now part of ChevronTexaco Corp.

The suit, which is seeking unspecified damages, was filed in the Federal District Court in the Western District of New York, the lawyers said.

Rochester, New York-based Kodak did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The suit, representing 10 current and former Kodak workers, claims Kodak intentionally paid blacks less, promoted them less regularly and maintained a pattern of harassment against black employees by whites.

"Kodak says it's been taking steps to address discrimination," said attorney Clayborne Chavers, whose law firm is representing the plaintiffs, in a statement. "But the steps they've been taking amount to a cover-up, window dressing."

Convictions Intact, Nader Soldiers On
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Aug. 1 - To Ralph Nader, the Democratic convention in Boston was a hollow charade that made Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, seem more like President Bush than ever. He said it gave him no reason to drop out of the race, even if he costs Mr. Kerry the election in November, as many believe he cost Al Gore in 2000.

---

I haven't done a lot of the "so-called partisan media" thing. But if the NY Times really was "Liberal" or even unbiased they'd never run such a headline.

Nader's convictions are NOT intact, unless it's the conviction that he simply can't fall out of the public eye.

Quote of note:

Unfortunately, we've become a society addicted to the fantasy of a quick fix. We want our solutions encompassed in a sound bite. We want our leaders to manipulate reality to our liking.

So there was President Bush in a hard-hit industrial region of Ohio over the weekend telling voters, "The economy is strong and it's getting stronger." And the Kerry-Edwards team is assuring one and all that "help is on the way."

The voters may deserve better, but there's a real question about whether they want better. It may well be that candidates can't tell voters the truth and still win. If that's so, then democracy American-style may be a lot more dysfunctional than even the last four years has indicated.

All the Pretty Words
By BOB HERBERT

They were able to sustain the eloquence for most of the week, which had to be a surprise. Bill Clinton told us that "strength and wisdom are not opposing values." Barack Obama called America "a magical place." John Kerry said, "The high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place."

There was no shortage of pretty words and promises at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last week. But there's a big difference between the rigidly crafted reality at the heart of a political campaign and the reality of the rest of the world.

"Practical politics," said Henry Adams, "consists in ignoring facts."

The facts facing the United States as George W. Bush and John Kerry joust for the presidency are too grim to be honestly discussed on the stump. No one wants to tell cheering potential voters that the nation has sunk so deep into a hole that it will take decades to extricate it. So the candidates are trying to outdo one another in expressions of sunny optimism.

President Bush and Dick Cheney deride "the same old pessimism" of the Democrats. Mr. Kerry counters by saying to the president, "Let's be optimists, not just opponents."

The voters deserve better in an era of overwhelming problems.

Mutiny in the House

After a stretch of bad news for the millions of Americans trying to find decent affordable housing, there are finally signs of progress. First, lawmakers rejected the Bush administration's attempt to shortchange Section 8, the housing subsidy program for the poor. Now, there is a procedural mutiny against Republican leaders in the House who have kept a bill that addresses the housing crisis bottled up in committee - even though it has more than 200 co-sponsors. That could conceivably force the measure to the floor for a debate and vote. [P6: Yesssss!]

The bill as originally introduced would create a national housing trust fund by redirecting a small portion of the profits earned every year by the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage insurance fund. At the moment, those profits can be spent on anything. But given the housing shortage, it makes perfect sense to plow money earned on housing back into the same area. [P6: Yesssss!]

Modeled on similar trust funds that have been successful at the state and local levels, the national fund would be used to build, rehabilitate and preserve 1.5 million affordable apartments. Tired of waiting for a vote, House supporters have filed a discharge petition that, if signed by a majority, could move the bill to the floor. [P6: Yesssss!]

This is the second housing backlash in Congress in recent days. The first incident came last month, when appropriators added more money to Section 8 than the White House wanted. Given the extent of the crisis and the growing complaints from governors and local officials, this issue deserves attention in the fall campaign. The House leadership can expect more resistance as time goes on. [P6: Yesssss!]

---

Now if we could switch Section 8 from a plan to perpetually pay rent to a plan to foster home ownership…even if it's a condo or co-op…

It's that you need the truth if you're going to vote to support your interests, whatever those interests may be.

Quote of note:

While job displacement has gradually increased during the 23 years covered by the surveys, the unemployment rate has trended down. For some labor economists - Mr. Farber and Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute, for example - that makes the rising layoff rate even more striking.

"If you plot the displacement rate in relation to the unemployment rate, it is a staircase going up," Mr. Bernstein said. "You are more likely to be laid off now than in similar levels of unemployment in the past."

Related link of note:

Kerry's `Quality of Jobs' Argument Gains Wall Street Support

July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's assertion that the U.S. has been creating mainly low- paying, "second-rate'' jobs during the past year's expansion is starting to resonate on Wall Street.

"The vast majority of net new jobs created have been in the low-wage sectors of the economy, and income growth has been disappointing,'' David A. Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co., wrote July 9. Lagging incomes may cause "consumer spending to slow in coming quarters.''

Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, reached a similar conclusion: "While there has been some improvement on the hiring front in recent months, the quality of such job-creation has been decidedly sub-par,'' Roach wrote the same day. "Unless that changes, the risks to a sustainable economic recovery will only intensify.''

Recent Layoff Rate Was Highest Since Early 1980's
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Layoffs occurred at the second-fastest rate on record during the first three years of the Bush administration, a government report has found.

In the government's latest survey of how frequently workers are permanently dismissed from their jobs, the layoff rate reached 8.7 percent of all adult jobholders, or 11.4 million men and women age 20 or older. That is nearly equal to the 9 percent rate for the 1981-1983 period, which included the steepest contraction in the American economy since the Great Depression.

Recession and weak economic growth characterized most of the period from 2001 to 2003, and millions of jobs disappeared. But while layoffs normally rise in hard times and fall in prosperous years, the new survey published Friday by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the statistical evidence that layoffs are more frequent now, in both good times and bad, than they were in similar cycles a decade ago.

The anecdotal evidence is abundant on this point, but the statistical evidence is only beginning to tell the same story. "It appears there is more displacement now; this latest number is quite high," said Henry S. Farber, a Princeton University labor economist who has challenged the anecdotal evidence, wondering whether it overstated the case.

The layoff rate over the last three years, for example, was greater than in the 1990-1991 recession, the displacement survey found. The rate was also higher in the late 1990's boom years than in the late 1980's, a parallel period of strong economic growth.

"No one should be surprised by the increasing frequency of layoffs," said James Glassman, senior United States economist for J. P. Morgan Chase. "It is the echo of globalization. Companies are shifting production around more frequently to take advantage of low-cost centers."

A Bush administration spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, asked for comment, responded with a statement that focused on the surge in job creation in recent months and made no mention of the worker displacement report. A Kerry campaign economist, Jason Furman, said the survey showed that jobs in America were increasingly insecure.

Young Japanese-Americans Honor Ethnic Roots
By MIREYA NAVARRO

LOS ANGELES - In her rhinestone crown, Nicole Miyako Cherry had an air of royalty as she grabbed a heavy mallet and took a swing at a wooden barrel full of sake during the opening ceremonies of the Nisei Week Japanese festival in mid-July.

Not too long ago, the traditional ''breaking of the sake barrel'' to celebrate a notable event would not have been on Ms. Cherry's to-do list. As a Southern California teenager growing up in the suburban comfort of South Pasadena, Ms. Cherry was into skating on the beach, playing intramural soccer and Boyz II Men.

The daughter of a Japanese-American mother and a white American father, Ms. Cherry, 24, said her integrated lifestyle allowed for few conspicuous ethnic markers other than perhaps wearing a kimono for Halloween or attending an obon festival.

But last year, she competed for, and won, the title queen of Nisei Week, the oldest Japanese-American cultural event in the region.

"If people in my generation don't get involved, who's going to take over?'' she asked.

Ms. Cherry's transformation from typical American teenager to ethnic ambassador is a statement about how young Japanese-Americans have struggled to hold onto an identity of their own. Shrinking population numbers, high intermarriage rates and the legacy of the rush to assimilate after the World War II internment experience created an uncertain cultural path for the sansei (third generation) yonsei (fourth) and gosei (fifth).

Ms. Cherry is among a minority awakening to an unsettling realization - it is up to them to fight the forces of cultural extinction, even if most of them may not speak Japanese, or have visited Japan or, increasingly, even look Japanese.

Bill Would Raise Franchise Value of Sports Teams
By DUFF WILSON

Owners of professional sports teams stand to gain tens of millions of dollars in the values of their franchises because of a single sentence buried deep in a sprawling piece of export-tax legislation now before Congress.

The benefit to sports franchises is contained in a small part of an enormous bill introduced originally to settle a trade dispute with the European Union. But the legislation has since become laden with add-ons for interests ranging from tobacco farmers to Oldsmobile dealers.

The bill, which has been approved by both houses, is expected to go before a conference committee to resolve the differences. The final version is expected to be put before both houses in September, when Congress returns from vacation.

The proposed change affecting sports team owners, which has been passed without hearings or debate, would allow the owners to write off the full value of their franchises over 15 years. Existing law generally limits teams to writing off only the value of player contracts over three to five years. The biggest items subject to the expanded write-offs would be television and radio contracts.

The benefits would apply to newly acquired assets, so current owners would not actually pocket more money, but they could command higher prices when they sell.

Two directors at Lehman Brothers, the investment bank, who specialize in sports banking and tax policy said the change could add 5 percent to sports franchise values. If so, it would represent a $2 billion windfall to franchise values, which totaled $41 billion in 2002, according to Forbes magazine.

"They're doing very well in this," said Robert Willens, a managing director at Lehman Brothers.

Stranded on the Egypt-Gaza Border
Israel's Closure of Crossing Prevents Thousands From Returning Home

By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A12

RAFAH, Egypt, Aug. 1 -- Like thousands of other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who do not have access to advanced medical care, Hani Hindi traveled across the border to Cairo for specialized treatment. Three months ago, Hindi said, he had been shot by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis while installing a rooftop satellite dish.

But when he tried to return home two weeks ago, Hindi said, he was stunned to find that Israel, which controls all access to Gaza with fences and military patrols, had closed the gates on July 17 and was letting no one in or out.

Hindi, 22, and his wife, Malina, who is eight months pregnant, have been stranded since then at the Rafah border crossing with about 2,500 other Palestinians who are unable to cross into Gaza but lack the money or travel papers necessary to return to Egypt.

Quote of note:

State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said. "As a career employee she may take an active part" in her brother's campaign, he said. But she can't do so during work hours, and she can't solicit contributions at work.

Kerry's Sister Angers Abortion Foes
By Al Kamen

Monday, August 2, 2004; Page A15

A Catholic antiabortion group sharply questioned the propriety of John F. Kerry's sister, Peggy Kerry, giving a speech to "a campaign crowd of feminists" in Boston and telling them that, if elected, her brother would overturn various Bush policies -- such as barring funds for U.N. population control efforts.

Not surprising that she'd be campaigning for her brother, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute noted, but she "works for George W. Bush" as part of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

The institute, a nonprofit that works with the United Nations, acknowledged that Kerry, a career civil servant, broke no law in giving the speech, but it questioned how she can represent Bush's policies if she's bashing them.

"At one time, career civil servants, like Kerry, were forbidden to make campaign appearances," the group said, "though that has now changed. What is not yet clear is whether Kerry violated any internal State Department guidelines."

The answer appears to be no.

"In February, Ms. Kerry sought advice from the department on engaging in political activities and received guidance," State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said. "As a career employee she may take an active part" in her brother's campaign, he said. But she can't do so during work hours, and she can't solicit contributions at work.

---

I would just like to add that, in my opinion of course, Republicans would be a lot more credible if the ratio of (actual responses to issue) to (efforts to silence the opposition) was greater than .333.

Chicks and Giggles... All Female Comedy : Bush For Kerry Edition Tuesday, August 3, 2004 8:30 PM
Laugh Lounge
151 Essex Street
New York City, New York 10027 To recognize the influx of the GOP, we are planning our own grand comedy party on Essex Street! The funniest females in NYC will make you laugh and giggle.

I was going to say "they better be funny" again, but with a two drink minimum I'm sure I'll find them hysterical.

Court Rejects Seattle's Race-Based Assignment Policy
By Caroline Hendrie

Advancing the legal debate over what school districts can do to promote demographic diversity in public schools, a federal appeals panel has struck down for the second time Seattle's policy of assigning students to high schools based partly on their ethnicity and race.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held in a 2-1 decision on July 27 that the school district's policy amounted to "an unadulterated pursuit of racial proportionality that cannot possibly be squared" with constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the laws.

Accompanied by a spirited dissent, the federal appeals court ruling is among the first to address how last year's decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court on the use of race in university admissions should be applied in the K-12 context. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the high court upheld the admissions policy at the University of Michigan's law school, while in Gratz v. Bollinger it invalidated the university's undergraduate admissions system.

The legal battle in Seattle began four years ago, when a local group called Parents Involved in Community Schools challenged the 46,000-student district's policy of using a "racial tiebreaker" to help apportion seats in high schools that had more applicants than space. In 1998, the district had begun allowing students citywide to choose among any of its 10 comprehensive high schools, and instituted a series of tiebreakers, including race and ethnicity, that determined who got slots in schools that were "oversubscribed."

In a sharply worded opinion written by Circuit Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, the 9th circuit court majority accepted that the district had a "compelling" reason for wanting to consider race: obtaining the educational benefits of diversity. Thus, the policy met one part of the legal standard that must be met to justify distinctions by government on the basis of race, the 67-page opinion states.

But based on his reading of the University of Michigan cases, Judge O'Scannlain concludes that the policy utterly fails to withstand another key requirement of the court's highest level of scrutiny: to "narrowly tailor" the use of race to achieve compel-ling objectives.

Among many objections to Seattle's policy, Judge O'Scannlain argues that its effect was "merely to shuffle a few handfuls of different minority students between a few schools," and thus was ineffective in achieving the district's purported goals of avoiding racial isolation of students and fostering student interactions among white and nonwhite students.

"The district has not met its burden of proving these marginal changes substantially further its interests, much less that they outweigh the cost of subjecting hundreds of students to disparate treatment based solely upon the color of their skin," the opinion says.

The Big Issue That Democrats Didn't Talk About: Ann Woolner

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Night after night, I tuned into the Democratic National Convention and waited to hear about one of my favorite issues.

Bill Clinton said nothing about it, and neither did Barack Obama. I thought surely Ted Kennedy or John Edwards would mention it, but no. Finally, last night, it was John Kerry's turn. He passed, too.

"It's the judicial nominations, stupid,'' I wanted to tell them all.

Even so, I know it's not. The federal judiciary isn't exactly a burning issue for most voters, even less so for the undecided voters Kerry is trying to reach.

This year's campaign advisers no doubt said the keys to victory are fighting terrorism and improving the economy. The federal bench barely rates a mention.

Of course this nation's reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks trumps all else, and it should. Crisis though it is, the partisan war over federal judgeships will not be a make-or-break issue.

"I've never had any reason to think it mattered at all, other than in terms of revving up their own troops,'' says Adam Clymer, political director for the National Annenberg Election Survey at the University of Pennsylvania. He's a former Washington correspondent for the New York Times.

And yet, it is due serious attention. The makeup of the federal judiciary reverberates through almost every area of American life, its judges given jobs until they die, the precedent their rulings set lasting beyond that.

I find stuff like NET POLITIK, your basic progressive site. And I make note because I found links to two related articles. This one was linked at NET POLITIK:

The Market as God
Living in the new dispensation
by Harvey Cox

A FEW years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar.

Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies.

Capitalism as religion is one of my BIG peeves.

The article has this related link:

The Death of Real Religion
-- Dr. Joseph Chuman
Joseph Chuman is the Leader of the Bergen Ethical Society.

The Decline of Belief and the Rise of the Therapeutic Model
The Problems of Religious Surfing
Religion's Mimicking of the Market

This is the "Religion's Mimicking of the Market" section:

Religion's most important role is to stand outside society and criticize its evils and excesses from a plateau of higher moral values. It points a finger at government and the wielders of secular authority and speaks "truth to power." Religion's social role needs to uphold those ideals which money cannot buy and which lie outside the realm of financial exchange justice, charity, human dignity, compassion, righteousness and peace among them.

Most ominous of religion's current tendencies is its aggressive appropriation of the values of the marketplace. The free market is all the rage, and religion lamentably has fallen prey to its seductions. Large churches are modeled on shopping malls. Ministers have become entrepreneurs increasingly preoccupied with body counts and keeping the collection plates brimming. With self-fulfillment a motivating impetus behind religious seeking, the religious leader is being transformed into an entertainer in order to fill the pews and retain the interests of parishioners in an era of diminishing attention spans. Today religion is a consumer item, and people shop around for a church or spiritual regimen as they would a new refrigerator.

But what happens when religions sells out to the marketplace? What effect does it have on religion's traditional prophetic function when it envies, mimics and jumps on the bandwagon of the unfettered market? Clearly, it yields its vitally necessary role as a standard bearer and protector of those values which civilize society and give meaning to individual lives. Throughout American history, religion's authority to criticize the abuses of power has been its greatest gift to a society much in need of reform. This proud legacy has all but disappeared in an era awash in "spiritual" seeking, when religion's rewards begin to look too much like the blandishments of the world.

The abolition movement, the movement for women's suffrage in the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 20th exemplified religion in its prophetic role; religion at its best. Masses of Americans were liberated from conditions of oppression, and the American character was transformed and uplifted. Today, American religion has greatly ceded its grandeur and high moral purpose. In many quarters it has abandoned its distinctive calling. In this era of religious triumphalism, American religion is in danger of losing its soul.

Quote of note:

McPeak, a former fighter pilot who campaigned for Bob Dole in 1996 as well as Bush in 2000, said Bush's inability to craft a true allied coalition was a serious deficiency.

"The report of the 9/11 commission makes this clear: Fighting terrorists alone just doesn't work," he said. "If our enemy hatches a terror plot in Rome, we will need help from the Italians. If German intelligence knows the whereabouts of a senior al Qaeda member, America must have that information."

Instead, he said, Bush has "alienated our friends, damaged our credibility around the world, reduced our influence to an all-time low in my lifetime, given hope to our enemies."

McPeak said he backed Bush in 2000 because he "had hoped this president could provide" the leadership needed to face modern threats. But disillusionment, he said, has led him to change his voter registration from Republican to independent and shift his support to Kerry.

"The real deal for me is not whether a strategy or a plan or an idea is Republican or Democrat, but whether it makes us safer," he said. "And it means an awful lot to me that John Kerry fought for his country as a young man."

Retired general: Bush foreign policy a 'national disaster'

(CNN) -- A former Air Force chief of staff and one-time "Veteran for Bush" said Saturday that America's foreign relations for the first three years of President Bush's term have been "a national disaster" but that the president's Democratic rival was "up to the task" of rebuilding.

Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War, delivered the Democratic radio address supporting implementation of the 9/11 commission's recommendations for national security.

"As president, John Kerry will not waste a minute in bringing action on the reforms urged by the 9/11 commission," McPeak said of the Massachusetts senator nominated by the Democrats this week. "And he will not rest until America's defenses are strong."

The president, on the other hand, "fought against the very formation of the commission and continues to the present moment to give it only grudging cooperation, no matter what he says," the general said. "Why should we believe he will do anything to institute the needed change?"

I should have finished this one. But then I wouldn't have anything to stall you guys with as I go out for a while, right?

---

"Another round?"

Malcolm drained the last of the beer and said, "Yeah, last one." The bartender leaned forward and said, "What?" Marpessa, nearly shouting to be heard over the music, said, "He said yes. But make mine just plain orange juice this time." As the bartender headed for the tap she said to Malcolm, "You should chill a bit too."

"Chill, hell. The only reason this is my last round here is because I got some git-hi at home."

"Honestly, man, if it pisses you off that much, why are you still in it?"

"Because. That's why." Then, leaning back, "Sorry, babe."

"Hey, I understand. But you know you're not hurting those assholes by getting fucked up, right?'

"Yeah. I know." The bartender came back, set a pint of Samuel Adams Honey Brewed Ale and a small glass of orange juice on the bar and said, "This one's mine." Malcolm thanked her as he passed her his Visa card, and then turned back to Marpessa. "I know. It's just that I'm tired of their bullshit. Especially Frank's. If I hear him say "irrespective of merit" one more time, I might smack him."

"I think you're handling him well enough."

"But why should I have to handle him at all? l bet the idiot got his degree from a correspondence course. His secretary says he writes like a cretin. So of course he's the one that rides the "reverse discrimination" bullshit. Like any kind of discrimination would make him qualified for that job. Hell, if I could make it through all the forward discrimination, he shouldn't complain about a little of the reverse kind that's all in his mind anyway."

Marpessa sipped her juice. Malcolm looks so tense…She said, "I don't think he really believes all that."

"He might not. I think he does. Either way it's definitely a tactic on his part to make all this noise right now." Malcolm quietly stared at the foam sliding down the side of his pint glass for a moment. "I'd ignore him is he wasn't throwing that shit around in front of the young brothers. They got enough to deal with." He lifted the glass and took a long drink. "As much fun as it is to beat him down, it's getting me a rep as an activist. And you know how white folks feel about Black activists. It's like, he doesn't have to be better than me if he can make the bosses feel uncomfortable with me. I know he does that to all his competition, but if he makes them uncomfortable with me because I'm Black, then that's it. The glass ceiling." He took another deep draught from the glass in front of him.

"You can always handle it the way Gordon does," said Marpessa with an evil grin.

"Oh, right. Let's see, would he hand them some grease and bend over or go straight for the blow job?

Marpessa giggled. "Blow job, definitely."

Malcolm smiled. "Thought so." The bartender was back with the check. He signed the credit card slip and put the card back in his wallet. He stood up, emptied the glass of ale and said, "Let's go." Marpessa was already standing, so he grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door. He was pretty toasted and the cool night air outside the bar felt good. Marpessa asked, "You gonna get home okay? You don't normally drink that much."

"I'm taking a cab to the ferry."

"Good. You gonna be okay when you get there?"

Malcolm sighed. "I guess so. Thanks for hanging with me tonight, babe. I can't talk to anyone else about this stuff."

"Sure you can. There's a lot of us out here that understand."

"Yeah, but you're the one that's always here. I don't know why I haven't swept you off your feet and made you fall madly in love with me."

"You tried. But I wouldn't put up with the shit I saw you put other women through, remember."

"Oh. Yeah."

They continued chatting while the first three empty cabs sped by. The fourth cabbie was Black so he stopped for them. Marpessa kissed Malcolm lightly on the cheek and watched him get into the cab. Malcolm look back as the cabbie pulled off, watching as distance and darkness swallowed her.

The trip to the ferry was uneventful, mostly because the cabbie wasn't having any conversation. Malcolm had developed the practice of talking to Black folks he encountered at random. His parents were involved with the Black Panther Party during CoIntelPro days and they had seen the results of not talking-the ease with which the Panthers and the US were set at each other's throats, his father taught him, was the direct result of trusting their white "allies" more than other Blacks that shared their purpose but not their organization. "Talk to brothers and sisters that you meet so you have a source of information other than what the white man feeds you. Because he won't you anything that won't help his cause." Malcolm learned that was, indeed, the gospel truth. But he also learned it was no less true of Blacks, Latinos, Chinese, Jews and everyone else.

Israel tries to stop U.S.-Jordan arms deal
By Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press Writer | August 1, 2004

JERUSALEM --Israel is trying to prevent an arms deal that would put high-tech U.S.-made air-to-air missiles on Jordanian aircraft, Israeli government and security officials said Sunday.

Israel has asked Congress to delay approval of the deal, which is already in advanced stages, while Jewish-American lobbyists and Israeli officials press their case with the Bush administration, an Israeli government official said on condition of anonymity.

A security official, who declined to be named, said Israel would settle for a compromise that would make it technologically impossible to aim AMRAAM missiles at Israel or a pledge that the weapons would not be sold to Egypt.

This is the first time Israel has tried to prevent Jordan from buying U.S.-manufactured arms since the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1996.

A Jordanian official said Israel should be unconcerned about the purchase since the two countries are at peace. Neither was there a need for technology ensuring the weapon cannot be used against Israeli aircraft.

"Jordan is doing what is required for its interests and for its security," said the official on condition of anonymity.

Quote of note:

But Mara T. Patermaster, the director of the charity program, said last week that the program required diligent efforts from participants. "We expect the charities will take affirmative action to make sure they are not supporting terrorist activities," Ms. Patermaster said.

"Take affirmative action?"

That means they don't expect the charities to do a single damn thing, I guess.

Anyway…

A.C.L.U. to Withdraw From Charity Drive
By ADAM LIPTAK

The American Civil Liberties Union withdrew from a federal charity drive yesterday, rejecting the $500,000 it expected to receive through it this year.

The move was prompted, the civil liberties group said, by an article in The New York Times yesterday. The article reported that the group had signed a certification saying it would not knowingly employ people whose names appeared on several government terrorism watch lists.

Since October, all of the thousands of charities that participate in the drive, called the Combined Federal Campaign, have been required to sign such a certification. The program collects and distributes $250 million in contributions from federal employees and military personnel.

The A.C.L.U. has criticized similar watch lists, saying they are often inaccurate and violate the constitutional rights of some of those named on them. In April, the group sued the government to block the use of similar "no fly" lists.

The group signed the charity drive's certification in January. In recent interviews, the group's executive director, Anthony D. Romero, said it had not inspected the watch lists or compared them to its employment records. Mr. Romero said his lawyers had advised him that he could sign the certification in good faith because it prohibited only knowing employment of those listed.

"The A.C.L.U. would not have signed the C.F.C. funding agreement if we thought we had to check our employment records against a government blacklist," Mr. Romero said in an interview yesterday.

Henry Gates is doing a week at the NY Times.

At first I felt a vague annoyance at today's editorial, and I figured out why. You see, I'm in substantial agreement with most of it.

"Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House," Mr. Obama went on. "Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual." Too many of our children have come to believe that it's easier to become a black professional athlete than a doctor or lawyer. Reality check: according to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players. "We talk about leaving no child behind," says Dena Wallerson, a sociologist at Connecticut College. "The reality is that we are allowing our own children to be left behind." Nearly a third of black children are born into poverty. The question is: why?

Scholars such as my Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson say that the causes of black poverty are both structural and behavioral. Think of structural causes as "the devil made me do it," and behavioral causes as "the devil is in me." Structural causes are faceless systemic forces, like the disappearance of jobs. Behavioral causes are self-destructive life choices and personal habits. To break the conspiracy of silence, we have to address both of these factors.

Then it hit me:

"Go into any inner-city neighborhood," Barack Obama said in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, "and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In a speech filled with rousing applause lines, it was a line that many black Democratic delegates found especially galvanizing. Not just because they agreed, but because it was a home truth they'd seldom heard a politician say out loud.

Why has it been so difficult for black leaders to say such things in public, without being pilloried for "blaming the victim"? Why the huge flap over Bill Cosby's insistence that black teenagers do their homework, stay in school, master standard English and stop having babies? Any black person who frequents a barbershop or beauty parlor in the inner city knows that Mr. Cosby was only echoing sentiments widely shared in the black community.

He opens with the same nonsense as everyone else. And he continues talking as though the responsibility for this mess is still basically Black folks' issue to address.

We have three race problems, people. Institutional, Black personal and white personal.

Sorry, Meatloaf, but two out of three IS bad.

I'm not sure a bunch of guys who aren't allowed to touch women are even capable of a proper understanding of feminism.

Quote of note:

"It takes extreme positions that may have been historically held by five people and casts them as if they were held by every woman," Kissling said. "The feminism I know is all for partnerships and is all for empowering both men and women. The feminism I know does not ignore the fact that there are sexual differences."

Vatican Letter Denounces 'Lethal Effects' of Feminism
Document Outlines Formula for Man-Woman Relationships
By Daniel Williams and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page A16

ROME, July 31 -- The Vatican issued a letter Saturday attacking the "distortions" and "lethal effects" of feminism, which it defined as an effort to erase differences between men and women -- a goal, the statement said, that undermines the "natural two-parent structure" of the family and makes "homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent."

The sharp critique was contained in a document issued by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a chief adviser to Pope John Paul II and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of defining Roman Catholic orthodoxy. The 37-page document also outlined the Vatican's formula for relationships between men and women, calling for "active collaboration between the sexes" and rejecting subjugation of women.

The statement was the latest Vatican salvo against trends it regards as undermining its teachings on sexuality and the family. Vatican officials have assailed abortion and contraception; politicians who support abortion through legislation; and legalized same-sex unions. The pope approved the document, titled "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World."

Catholic feminists in the United States said the letter presented a caricature of feminism as antagonistic toward men and trying to deny any difference between the sexes. They said feminism seeks equal rights and respect for both genders.

'Realism' and Darfur

THERE HAVE always been beggars outside palaces, and comfortable people have always preserved their capacity for happiness by screening out other people's pain. But this self-protective instinct seems particularly powerful at the moment, as genocide unfolds slowly in Sudan's western province of Darfur. The world knows, and on Friday the United Nations Security Council acknowledged, that Sudan's government is responsible for burnings of villagers, systematic rapes and murder by starvation. It knows that these atrocities continue. And yet outsiders are content with measures that won't stop the appalling suffering. They issue statements but refuse to send adequate relief supplies. They condemn violence but refuse to send peacekeepers to protect civilians.

The Washingtom Post has an overview which identifies the battleground states and issus of concern both Kerry and _Bush will have to deal with in their respective campaigns.

They put it together by talking to the campaigns' staffs so I take it with that grain of salt, but apropos of nothing I found a couple of things I want to highlight.

In Ohio, which has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, Bush defended his record and said with another four years, he would make the economy stronger. Acknowledging that workers in Ohio remain nervous about jobs going overseas, he said, "We must have a president who understands that in order to keep jobs at home."

You have to do more than understand it, you have to give a damn about it. And I judge by results, not talk. Bush wants us to vote based on what he say rather than what his administration has done.

Bush advisers see August as a critical period in the presidential race and have adopted a strategy designed to suppress Kerry's post-convention bounce, shore up Bush's standing in the battlegrounds and come out of their convention at the beginning of September with the race even. They worry that if Kerry begins the final two months of the campaign with a clear lead, the president's prospects for winning a second term will be in danger.

In danger? Try GONE.

After all this time we know EXACTLY what you are to us. Too late to change it. And it is fitting that his fate should turn on the repercussion of things his administration chose to do.

The Newsweek poll showed Kerry and running mate John Edwards leading Bush and Vice President Cheney by 52 to 44 percent, a net gain of 2 percentage points from the magazine's poll in early July.

When independent Ralph Nader was included, Kerry led Bush by 49 to 42 percent, with Nader at 3 percent, a 4-point gain since early July.

No campaign bounce for Kerry, no high value target bounce for Bush. C'est la vie.

from the comments:

The consequences of throwing away mainstream semantics and ascribing new meanings to existing words to fit your personal worldview or branch of ethics is that it makes discussion with or even understanding the viewpoint of an opponent impossible.

In other words, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

A concise summary of the problem progressives have in dealing with Republicans and Conservatives in general. Thank you. And you'd have a valid complaint if that's what I was doing. But let me be precise. That was in response to this exchange:

He: Wealth distribution in the usual sense is measured by comparing how much money you have before government intervention with how much money after government intervention. Those that end up with less are said to be taxed, and those that end up with more are said to be subsidized.