In the comments, Darryl said:

the debate about what to call ourselves in the black community usually closely presages or accompanies some wholesale shift or call for such a shift in the consciousness and status of people of African descent in the United States.

Good observation. There definitely is such a call going on. And for some reason it is attached to the following, in my mind at least. Clinging to Dream's Frayed Edges A new generation of blacks is leaving L.A., seeking to preserve a middle-class life in places like Riverside. By Geoffrey Mohan Times Staff Writer September 11, 2004 When Brinson and Rose Kelly headed west from Mississippi in the 1970s, Los Angeles offered a poor black man a decent wage making cars, airplanes and steel. The Kellys settled, like so many thousands before them, in the streets around Central Avenue. Some 15 years later, they bought a three-bedroom home on 112th Street in a quiet enclave between Imperial Highway and the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Brinson Kelly, who as a boy picked cotton for $2 a day, owned a demolition and hauling business that was taking off. And while he never learned much reading and writing in Mississippi, in Los Angeles he sent three of his four children to college. The Kellys were a confirmation of the American dream. Until they realized one day that the dream had packed up and gone elsewhere. The neighborhood got worse, not better. Frustrated at the discarded furniture, the potholes and the police searchlights, the Kellys last year moved a few miles east and south, across the Orange County line, to a ranch home on a cul-de-sac in Buena Park. "I never had a problem living in South-Central. It's just the city doesn't take care of the streets like they're supposed to," said Rose Kelly, 48. "If I call somebody out here [in Buena Park] about something, all I have to do is call them one time, and they're going to come out and see about it." Their eldest daughter, DeShawn Kelly-Smith, 31, went farther. After looking for an affordable home in all the places where the middle class used to move, she and her husband, Danny Smith, who together make about $80,000 a year, wound up in Riverside. California, which for decades was a top attractor of blacks from the South, is now one of the top sending states of a reverse migration — back to the South and to cities like Las Vegas.

Reign of Terror By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF In my last visit to the Darfur area in Sudan, in June, I found a man groaning under a tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. Seeking shelter under the very next tree were a pair of widows whose husbands had both been shot to death. Under the next tree I found a 4-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving 1-year-old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her 7- and 4-year-old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated. Those were the refugees sheltering under just four adjacent trees. Thousands of other victims with similar stories stretched as far as the eye could see. So I salute the Bush administration for formally declaring on Thursday that the slaughter is a genocide. But as we commemorate the anniversary of 9/11, let's remember that almost as many people are still dying in Darfur every week as died in the World Trade Center attack.

Keep rubbing salt in a national wound. Keep picking at the scab. Quote of note:

But all of the children of Sept. 11 are bound by at least one thing: the burden of mourning a private loss that is, at least for this country, historic in stature. Many of the children watched the attacks on television. Year after year, they are confronted with an ambush of reminders - at the movies, in classroom banter, on a poster at the supermarket. To the children, these are not the well-worn images of towers falling and planes crashing, but the deeply intimate, devastating scenes of a parent's death. "It was seeing my dad die over and over and over again," said Sarah Van Auken, 15, whose father, Kenneth Van Auken, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Growing Up Grieving, With Constant Reminders of 9/11 By ANDREA ELLIOTT The bone brought sad finality to everyone but Brendan Fitzpatrick. It was proof that his father had died on Sept. 11, 2001. But for Brendan, who is 5, the news that a piece of Thomas Fitzpatrick's humerus had been recovered was vexing, at best. "Can we get all the pieces and put them together?" he recently asked his mother at their home in Tuckahoe, N.Y. "So he could be alive." In Harlem, a different puzzle unfolded for Samuel Fields. He was 10 when the towers collapsed, and knew his father was gone. But he could not cry. He jumped off the steep rocks in Central Park, punched a classmate and, the following summer, wound up in jail for pelting cars with stones. It was only then, after his mother yelled, "Would your father want this?" that the first tears fell. Brendan Fitzpatrick and Samuel Fields belong to the vast tribe of young children who lost parents on Sept. 11 - an estimated 3,000 boys and girls who are all working through their own painful puzzles of bewilderment and sorrow. With four major studies under way, it is too soon to know the full effect of Sept. 11 on its legacy of bereaved children. Some of the children appear quite resilient, while others are visibly struggling. But patterns have surfaced, ranging from symptoms of anxiety and depression to violent outbursts and social withdrawal. Those in treatment are faring better, though many have avoided it. Teenagers, in the age-old effort to fit in, are most prone to keeping quiet about the horrific way their parents died. And in one of the most powerful and challenging experiences, hundreds of the youngest children - those who were toddlers three years ago - are only now grasping the meaning of death, the fact that their missing fathers and mothers will never return.

Send out the boys all baggin' and saggin', flossing mad bling.

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Blacks enlist groups to court new voters By Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press Writer | September 10, 2004 WASHINGTON --Motivated by unpleasant memories of the 2000 Florida recount, black leaders determined to boost voter turnout this fall are enlisting hip-hop artists and community organizations in campaigns to register millions of new voters. "The mobilization of young voters is the revolutionary concept this year," said Maya Rockeymoore, vice president of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Rockeymoore said the foundation is reaching out to younger voters through registration and educational initiatives at historically black colleges and inner city areas across the country.

Black farmers again sue USDA WICHITA -- Black farmers sued the US Department of Agriculture yesterday with recent claims that the agency discriminates against them in loans and farm programs -- allegations that also were at issue in a sweeping civil rights case settled five years ago. The new lawsuit seeks $20.5 billion and class-action status for up to 25,000 blacks who farmed or attempted to farm between 1997 and 2004. In 1999, the USDA settled a lawsuit by black farmers who said they had been systematically denied federal loans and subsidies for years. (AP)

Why can't we use this as a campaign ad?

I was going to go watch Hero, like I said earlier. Then I see at Oliver's that CBS will be addressing the accusations that their latest bunch of Bush documents are forgeries on the Evening News. I don't know if you've noticed, but I always wait like 48 hours before commenting on one of these news flashes. I don't know if there'll be much to say when this one is done. I remember CBS was the one that broke the Abu Ghraib (one day I must find out how to spell that) pictures and I can't believe they'd leave themselves vulnerable on something guaranteed to blow up as this has. Add to that definitive proof that IBM had typewriters with proportional spacing as far back as 1948, and there's great potential for mass blog extinctions due to their operators' heads exploding. Me, I agreed with Kristoff the other day. But my vote isn't up for grabs so it doesn't much matter, does it?

Quote of note

"While it's true that Kerry hasn't provided a detailed plan, neither has the president," said Heritage Foundation budget analyst Brian Riedl. William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, said Bush's warnings about Kerry's spending plans were "inconsistent" with his own proposals. "There's no way to accomplish (Bush's) major new measures, including tax reform, without substantial increases in spending," Niskanen said. Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth, a group that raises money for conservative political candidates, said Bush was not being "very forthright" about his plans. He called Bush's fiscal record "abysmal," adding that under both Bush and Kerry "fiscal responsibility takes the back seat." …Bush's most ambitious proposal -- adding personal retirement accounts to Social Security -- may be the most costly up front. The estimated cost of diverting some payroll taxes to these private accounts ranges from $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10 years, analysts say. Bush's own economic advisers say tapping the bond markets to pay for private accounts could dramatically increase the federal debt for decades. But the Bush campaign says Bush has yet to settle on a plan to reform the retirement system or on a means to finance it.

Fiscal Conservatives Challenge Bush Fri Sep 10, 2004 03:25 PM ET By Adam Entous WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, who accuses his Democratic rival of keeping his budget plans secret, has yet to offer plans of his own for funding his campaign promises and cutting the deficit in half, fiscal conservatives said on Friday. Bush is campaigning for a second term promising to overhaul the Social Security retirement system and the U.S. tax code. He is pushing for more spending on job training and for expanding health care tax credits. But Bush has yet to say how he will pay for it, even as he charges that his Democratic presidential rival, John Kerry, is hiding "details on how they would raise spending and lower the deficit" until after the Nov. 2 election.

Quote of note:

Cheney said in Des Moines on Tuesday that it was essential that Americans make the right choice in the Nov. 2 president election "because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again." "We'll get hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset if you will that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war."

Cheney Backs Off Linking Kerry and Terror Threat Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:16 PM ET By Caren Bohan GREEN BAY, Wis. (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday tempered comments he made earlier this week that warned of the risk of another terrorist attack if Democratic Sen. John Kerry were elected president. In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cheney said he wanted to clarify his remarks on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, which caused a stir among Republicans and Democrats alike for the bluntness of his assertion. "I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney told the newspaper during a campaign swing through the battleground states of Ohio and Wisconsin where he is working to bring swing voters to the Republican side.

This is from Cobb. Anybody around L.A. with extra stuff should take note.

Ocean Charter Needs Your Help
I forward this on to my readers from my sister Dutz. As many of you know, N will be starting a new school this fall. The school is opening its doors for the first time September 13th. Ocean Charter is a community of families and educators interested in using innovative teaching methods to educate and nurture children. The method espouses whole child learning which integrates arts and academics together through experiential learning. If you're interested, please check out their website. The school relies almost entirely on parents' support. Many of the parents have now taken the reigns from the original development team to reach out to the community and ask for help. The originial development team has been working hard the past 2 years to find a site, get the charter approved by the state, hire teachers, contractors, and raise funds. There are still tons of things that the school and specifically N's classroom needs......this is where you all come in (hopefully!) Following is a list of items we need: (no need to buy, just look through all those bags of goodies you were planning to thow out or give away!) small book shelves small sofa (loveseat) or futon floor pillows large area rug small file cabinet percussion instruments (drums, cymbals, rainsticks) clip boards plants children's books jump ropes power strips cooking utensils clock flower vases baskets (any size) Please forward this on to anyone you know who might be able to donate or have them contact me directly. THANKS SO MUCH in advance for your donations and time!

The Price Of Labor's Decline By David S. Broder Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A27 …But there is a larger story about workers and organized labor that has gone largely unnoticed this year. I was reminded of it by a conversation on the train coming back from New York. My seatmate, a fellow reporter, was asking questions about the changes I had seen in Congress since I started covering Capitol Hill almost 50 years ago. And when we got around to discussing lobbyists, he seemed genuinely surprised when I said that back then -- and for decades afterward -- the most influential lobbyists did not represent business or trade associations but labor unions. "Labor unions!" he said, reflecting the understandable surprise of a savvy reporter who knows only the congressional power alignments of the past decade. It made me realize how rarely observers like me make the link between the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor. The economic effects of that trend are well documented. In the just-published update of their annual volume, "The State of Working America," Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute chart the decline of union membership from roughly one-quarter of the workforce in the late 1970s to barely one-eighth today. "This falling rate of unionization has lowered wages, not only because some workers no longer receive the higher union wage, but also because there is less pressure on non-union employers to raise wages," they write. And the gap is large. In 2003 the average blue-collar union job paid $30.76 an hour in wages and benefits, compared with $18.11 for the nonunion job. A separate study, also released last week, by David Kamin and Isaac Shapiro of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, examined how the fruits of this current economic recovery have been allocated. In the 10 quarters since the recession officially ended in late 2001, 47 percent of the real national income growth has gone to corporate profits, and only 15 percent to wages and salaries. Even if you add in the cost of health insurance and other benefits, as you should, the workers got only 43 percent -- well below the 61 percent average in eight previous recoveries. This is the first post-World War II recovery in which corporate profits grabbed a bigger share of the growth than workers' pay and benefits. Both of these studies come from liberal think tanks, but the statistics are straight from the Labor and Commerce departments, and they suggest what the economic costs have been for the loss of labor's clout.

Quicktime required. The animation is outstanding…and you must watch the whole thing.

Isn't that interesting? The American Street has a categorization of media and progressive blogs by state that is both complete and proof Kevin Hayden is serious about providing useful networking information. I was going to say it's proof he is spending way too much time online, but who am I to talk? In fact, I think I'll go see Hero this evening… Anyway, he breaks down electoral votes and it's even useful for arranging drinking parties. Check it out.

Now this old dude at one of Bush's appearances. Republicans like beating women?

A question occurred to me as I was reading about the expiring assault weapons ban. If a state allows open carry of firearms, does the full faith and credit thing mean its residents can do so when they are in any other state?

Nobody means no harm, and I'm not linking. Just quoting and hoping folks understand where it's coming from.

What I'd really like to say right now: That sometimes this online blog world is way too big. That I wish some of ya'll would shut the fuck up for a minute so that some of us can process this without having to hear your "I didn't know Aaron but send some condolences" blather that you've posted. Do you honestly think that helps? I know you mean well and that there are good intentions and all that...but, really, I want to scream out, "Quit Staring!" and give you the stink eye. I'm sad and angry and frustrated and it's hot as holy hell here and I spent all day talking about this completely fucked up thing while trying to have a normal life and everyone I know that I want to hug and cry with do not live here and I got a flat tire on the way home from work and my friend is fucking dead and I dont understand. I may really regret this later and apologize for lashing out but everywhere I look there's a fucking trackback or comment from some stranger and I've had my largest stat day of the whole year all because someone died and I can not wrap my head around that. So, you know what, "Stop Fucking Staring!" Blogging is a damn addiction. I hate this shit so much right now and yet I don't know how else to get this out.

AdWatch: Bush Responds to Medicare Spot By The Associated Press 3:40 PM PDT, September 9, 2004 Details of new television ad from President Bush to begin airing Friday: TITLE: "Medicare Hypocrisy." LENGTH: 30 seconds. PRODUCER: Maverick Media. AIRING: National cable networks. SCRIPT: Bush: "I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message." Announcer: "John Kerry. Attacking the president on Medicare. But it was Senator Kerry who voted five times to raise Medicare premiums. Kerry voted to require premium increases, calling passage of the bill 'a day of vindication.' The same John Kerry who was absent for 36 of 38 Medicare votes last year, even one giving seniors prescription drug coverage. John Kerry, he actually voted for higher Medicare premiums before he came out against them." ANALYSIS: The ad responds to a Kerry ad running in several states accusing Bush of imposing "the biggest Medicare premium increase in history." It was a reference to the government's announcement last week that Medicare premiums would increase 17 percent next year, the largest hike in the program's history. Bush's ad seeks to portray Kerry as a hypocrite on the issue, arguing that the Massachusetts senator voted five times for the formula under which Medicare rates are set. The premiums are updated annually by the Department of Health and Human Services under that formula, which is set by law and based on health care costs. The formula was laid out in the 1997 balanced budget bill Kerry voted for. The ad suggests Kerry called higher premiums "a day of vindication," but his statement referred to the entire balanced budget bill, not just the Medicare formula. That bill also reduced Medicare funding by $115 billion. The Bush administration, seeking political advantage among older voters, has tried to depict a Medicare reform law that Congress passed last year, including its first requirement to pay for prescription drugs, as a boon to seniors.

S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium Acknowledgment of '82 Test Follows Disclosure on Uranium By Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01 SEOUL, Sept. 10 -- The South Korean government acknowledged Thursday that it extracted a small amount of plutonium during a 1982 research experiment, a declaration that came a week after the country acknowledged its scientists had secretly enriched uranium. Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said the agency had begun to suspect that South Korea was conducting nuclear experiments more than six years ago and said South Korean officials had worked hard to hide the experiments from inspectors. "They had a fairly elaborate plan involving denial and deception in order to evade detection by inspectors," said one diplomat who would discuss the agency's investigation only on condition of anonymity. South Korean Foreign Ministry officials called those accusations "groundless and unsubstantiated" and said they had fully cooperated with inspectors and would continue to do so. In Washington, U.S. officials said they gave a clear message to South Korea this week that they consider the charges to be serious and would apply the same standards to any country found to be violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This really does explain a lot.

For example, back in February the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities accused the Bush administration of, in effect, playing three-card monte with budget forecasts. It pointed out that the administration's deficit forecast was far above those of independent analysts, and suggested that this exaggeration was deliberate. "Overstating the 2004 deficit," the center wrote, "could allow the president to announce significant 'progress' on the deficit in late October - shortly before Election Day - when the Treasury Department announces the final figures." Was this a wild accusation from a liberal think tank? No, it's conventional wisdom among experts. Two months ago Stanley Collender, a respected nonpartisan analyst, warned: "At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling. Don't believe them." He went on to echo the center's analysis. The administration's standard procedure, he said, is to initially issue an unrealistically high deficit forecast, which is "politically motivated or just plain bad." Then, when the actual number comes in below the forecast, officials declare that the deficit is falling, even though it's higher than the previous year's deficit. Goldman Sachs says the same. Last month one of its analysts wrote that "the Office of Management and Budget has perfected the art of underpromising and overperforming in terms of its near-term budget deficit forecasts. This creates the impression that the deficit is narrowing when, in fact, it will be up sharply." In other words, many reputable analysts think that the Bush administration routinely fakes even its short-term budget forecasts for the purposes of political spin. And the fakery in its long-term forecasts is much worse.

No Accountability on Abu Ghraib After months of Senate hearings and eight Pentagon investigations, it is obvious that the administration does not intend to hold any high-ranking official accountable for the nightmare at Abu Ghraib. It was pretty clear yesterday that Senator John Warner's well-intentioned hearings of the Armed Services Committee are not going to do it either. James Schlesinger, who was picked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to head a civilian investigation of Abu Ghraib and seems determined to repay the favor, gave unhelpful testimony that included an incredible statement that there was no policy "that encourages abuse." He told that to the same senators who had heard earlier from a panel of generals that the Central Intelligence Agency was still refusing to account for its practice of hiding dozens of prisoners from the Red Cross. Mr. Rumsfeld personally approved that violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties on at least one occasion. At the hearing, Mr. Warner asked Mr. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, another former secretary of defense, to be specific about their report's talk of "institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels." Neither man had any intention of doing that. Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in the Vietnam era, asked Mr. Schlesinger with evident exasperation: "Isn't there some accountability? Isn't there some responsibility?" Mr. Schlesinger managed to come up with the colonel who read the first Red Cross report on the abuse of prisoners in late 2003 and decided that it was not credible. As for high-ranking officers and civilians, he intoned, "careers will be negatively affected."

Until then I will merely acknowledge.

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House Votes to Block Bush Overtime Regulations Thu Sep 9, 2004 06:56 PM ET By Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives defied President Bush on Thursday and voted to block his administration's controversial new overtime regulations for white-collar workers. The vote was 223-193. In a rare election-year victory for organized labor in the Republican-led Congress, the House approved a Democratic amendment that would deny funds to administer the regulations that foes say would cost an estimated 6 million white- and blue-collar workers overtime pay. Republican leaders rejected those claims, and aides said, would seek to kill the amendment once a $142.5 billion funding bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services reached a House-Senate conference committee. That is what Republican leaders did last year with an earlier bipartisan attempt by both chambers to stop the regulations, which took effect last month.

Boy, do I have a lot of catching up to do, This version has as much PHP as Perl under the hood. This version allow you to run the site in dynamic mode; that's likely what all that PHP is about. And I see support files for Smarty, a standard PHP templating system. Since PHP started as a templating system I'm not that thrilled with thick layers of code that don't really free you from the need to learn the programming language anyway. But there's a lot of people familiar with Smarty templating. Thinks can get really, really creative out here.

I just noticed Movable Type 3.11 has been released. That means

1. We're past the developer release stage
2. The first bug fixes have been made

This is good because I let my MTClient development blog die. See, I forgot I have MTBlacklist installed over there and I installed 3.0D on top of it, and things worked but were a little wonky. Now I get to restart it, and start working on MTClient version 2.0...which may have to be renamed. Since I'll need it to work with Drupal as well I may wind up making it a universal client. I guess I need to see how stalled Atom is… I'm really pleased with MTClient 1.60-full power of MT and a VERY clean UI. And I've learned a lot testing the various lightweight CMSes; I think I've come to understand almost all the issues that make it difficult to write a truly universal client for these systems. And I have ideas on resolving, like, all of them. Anyway, I still have functionality and configuration issues with P6 and the Niggerati Network and I'm still waiting for version 4.5 of Drupal so I'll still be working in PHP. But I've been missing Delphi recently, and I really prefer writing desktop software. Lots more options, control and responsiveness.

The View From on the Ground With American bloggers reporting on life in Iraq, the war is only a mouse click away September 5, 2004 Other wars produced poetry and novels and memoirs. But the war in Iraq has brought a new kind of literature. In real time, on the Internet, officers and enlisted men and women are chronicling the war on weblogs — better known as blogs. Two weeks ago, one of the most popular war bloggers, a soldier stationed near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul who identified himself only as CBFTW, was disciplined by the Army for violating "operational security." His gritty postings described both the terror and boredom of war. Last week, he removed them from his "My War" website. But the journals of many other military bloggers remain on the Web. Here are edited excerpts from the blogs of Americans serving with the U.S. military in Iraq.

Here's the thing. CBFTW is a Writer, by which I mean he writes well. I know this because the article, of course, gets me curious about the blog. I did not think of the easy way first. I read some background, and listened to an excerpt. Then I googled CBFTW and read the cache. I wouldn't have read the blog had I known of it before it ended. I'm glad I dug out the google cache because it has his write-up of how he found out his superiors knew of the blog; they didn't pull out his fingernails or anything. And the rest…like I said, he's a Writer. If you check the cache, search the page for "men in black".

And it's about damn time. Quote of note:

In Abuja, Nigeria, Najeeb El-Khair Abdel Wahab, speaking at talks there on the situation in Darfur, said, "We don't think this kind of attitude can help the situation in Darfur. We expect the international community to assist the process that is taking place in Abuja and not put oil on the fire."

Fuck you, pal. The "process that is taking place" is the genocide!! Anyway… Powell: Sudanese Strife is Genocide From Associated Press 9:53 AM PDT, September 9, 2004 WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Colin Powell said today that abuses by government-supported Arab militias in Sudan qualify as genocide against the black African population in the Darfur region -- a determination that should pressure the government to rein in the fighters. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the conclusion was based on interviews conducted with refugees from the Darfur violence as well as other evidence. "We concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed (Arab militias) bear responsibility -- and genocide may still be occurring," he said. He added that that as a contracting party to an international genocide convention, Sudan is obliged to prevent and punish acts of genocide. "To us, at this time, it appears that Sudan has failed to do so," he said.

Classification errors - part 1 was written because I got a mailing list message that embodied a subtle error I meant to eventually discuss. I took the post as a message from ghod.

Today there's a very early…and very short…post at The Niggerati Network. No, not that one. That's the first of an ongoing series of links specifically to articles written by member sof The Trotter Group. This is the one I'm talking about .

A Deepening Debate on Soldiers and Their Insurers By DIANA B. HENRIQUES Published: September 8, 2004 In May 2002, a young, unmarried soldier named Michael R. Deuel, serving with the 82nd Airborne division at Fort Bragg, N.C., signed up to pay nearly $120 a month for life insurance that supplemented the much less expensive coverage he had through the military. But before he shipped out for Iraq, Private Deuel called to cancel some of his coverage because an officer on base "told him he did not need it," according to an insurance agent who served the base. A year later, in June 2003, the 21-year-old soldier was shot and killed while guarding a propane distribution center in Baghdad. The case of Private Deuel is one of five incidents that some life insurers and their agents have offered as proof that improper meddling by senior officers is preventing young soldiers from getting supplemental insurance coverage before they head for dangerous duty abroad. By their account, thousands of other people in the military - one insurance marketing executive puts the number as high as 6,000 - have had similar experiences and are at risk of sharing Private Deuel's fate. …The insurance being sold to the soldiers included policies that provided little additional coverage at high prices. Four of the cases illustrate a little-noticed sales technique used by many insurance agents - selling military people an expensive policy in tandem with a low-cost policy. Agents who complain that soldiers have been wrongly advised to cancel policies do not distinguish between the two types of insurance. In fact, Private Deuel canceled only a policy that would have cost him $100 a month for a death benefit of $32,500, while keeping a $250,000 policy that cost him $18.75 a month.

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Emphasis added by yours truly, of course.

Quote of note:

Colonel Killian also wrote in a memo that his superiors were forcing him to give Lieutenant Bush a favorable review, but that he refused.

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Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as newfound documents emerged from his squadron commander's file that suggested favorable treatment. At the same time, a once powerful Texas Democrat came forward to say that he had "abused my position of power" by helping Mr. Bush and others join the Guard. Democrats also worked to stoke the issue with a new advertisement by a Texas group that featured a former lieutenant colonel, Bob Mintz, who said he never saw Mr. Bush in the period he transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Air National Guard. The documents, obtained by the "60 Minutes" program at CBS News from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Mr. Bush's squadron commander in Texas, suggest that Lieutenant Bush did not meet his performance standards and received favorable treatment. One document, a "memo to file" dated May 1972 , refers to a conversation between Colonel Killian and Lieutenant Bush when they "discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November," because the lieutenant "may not have time." The memo said the commander had worked to come up with options, "but I think he's also talking to someone upstairs." Colonel Killian wrote in another report, dated Aug. 1, 1972, that he ordered Lieutenant Bush "suspended from flight status" because he failed to perform to standards of the Air Force and Texas Air National Guard and "failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered." Colonel Killian also wrote in a memo that his superiors were forcing him to give Lieutenant Bush a favorable review, but that he refused. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote.

Effort to Renew Weapons Ban Falters on Hill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: September 9, 2004 WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - Despite widespread popular support, the federal law banning the sale of 19 kinds of semiautomatic assault weapons is almost certain to expire on Monday, the result of intense lobbying by the National Rifle Association and the complicated election-year politics of Washington. While President Bush has expressed support for legislation extending the ban and has said he would sign it into law, he has not pressured lawmakers to act, leading critics to accuse him of trying to have it both ways. Efforts to renew the ban, which polls show is supported by at least two-thirds of Americans, have faltered this year on Capitol Hill. Democrats are well aware that they lost control of the House of Representatives in 1994, the year President Bill Clinton signed the original legislation, and have shied away from the issue of gun control, while Republican leaders have opposed the ban. "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said on Wednesday.

The will of the American people must be something different from the opinion of the American people.

A poll released this week by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that 68 percent of Americans - and 32 percent of N.R.A. members - support renewing the ban. The findings, drawn from interviews with 4,959 adults, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus one percentage point. A separate national survey, conducted by Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, on behalf of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, found that 74 percent of voters support renewing the ban, but that support is highest - 79 percent - among independent voters who are being courted by President Bush and Mr. Kerry. That survey of 800 voters had a margin of error of three percentage points.

My position on gun control remains the same: if anyone has one, I want one too. But you know, when the opinion of the people is so strikingly clear and so forcefully ignored you have to recognize that, whoever the Republicans in the House of Representatives is representing, they are not representing America's citizens.

Smelly Robot Eats Flies to Generate Its Own Power Wed Sep 8, 2004 02:00 PM ET LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists are developing a robot that will generate its own power by eating flies. The idea is to produce electricity by catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells that will break down sugar in the insects' skeletons and release electrons that will drive an electric current. "Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make "release and forget" robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler dies at age of 86 - NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, September 8, 2004 (09-08) 15:28 PDT SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Richard G. Butler, the notorious white supremacist who founded the Aryan Nations and was once dubbed the "elder statesman of American hate," has died at the age of 86, authorities said Wednesday. …Butler's church held that whites are the true children of God, that Jews are the offspring of Satan and that blacks and other minorities are inferior. The compound drew skinheads, ex-convicts and others from the fringes of society. A "whites only" sign was placed at the gate, and Nazi symbols decorated the grounds. Over the years, Butler's disciples included some of the most notorious figures in the white supremacist movement, but authorities were largely unable to tie Butler to crimes by his supporters. In the 1980s, followers who called themselves The Order committed a series of armored car robberies and bombings, and murdered Denver talk radio host Alan Berg. In 1985, 10 Order members were convicted of racketeering and other charges. In a 1999 report, the FBI said the goal of Aryan Nations was to forcibly take five states -- Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington and Montana -- and form an Aryan homeland.

Lee Siegel in the LA Times: And so in the interest of setting twisted matters straight, I herewith offer to my fellow liberals "A Guide for the Complexed." Its premise is that real complexity is not a fig leaf for timidity, but a complement to conviction. • I love America. I hate Bush. • Michael Moore's politically effective film was devious, dishonest, distorting propaganda. I hope dozens of films just like it appear before election day. • I would like to see Bush removed from office. By legal means. • It is possible to fight fire with fire without losing your head. • It is possible to criticize bias without being driven by bias. • I want the U.S. to contain and, if necessary, to destroy its enemies. I do not want the U.S. to go to war for no good reason. • Left-wing passion in 1968 is entirely different from liberal passion in 2004. One epoch's extremism is another epoch's pragmatic response to extremism. • In matters of intellect, when you meet a contradiction, make a distinction. In politics, when you meet a contradiction, blame it on the other side. There is no intellectual beauty and little intellectual clarity in the practice of politics. • I hate George W. Bush. And I don't want to have dinner with him either.

In Defense of Dick Cheney September 9, 2004 We rise, unaccustomed, in defense of Vice President Dick Cheney. …Cheney might deserve credit for brutal clarity, if a spokeswoman hadn't rushed out almost immediately to muddy the waters with a few fictions about what he really meant. What he really meant, she said, was that the next president — whoever he is — will face the danger of another terrorist episode. This has the advantage of being undeniably true and the disadvantage of quite obviously not being what Cheney meant. Thanks to this kind of quick and forceful response by the Bush-Cheney campaign, the danger that innocent editorial writers will get hit again by the feeling that Dick Cheney has been unfairly attacked and needs to be defended has been dramatically reduced. And we can all sleep better.

My current reading material (other than comic books) is The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust. I'm not done with the book, but am enjoying it a lot. Genre-wise, it falls in the Magical Realism school. Content-wise I have never seen so much pop culture so densely packed in my life. The references work as far as advancing the characterizations too…you will be familiar enough with most of them to properly stereotype the characters and to realize the references you don't recognize are likely at the far edge of geekery. And if you recognize them all, you know for a FACT they place the characters at the far edge of geekery.

WASHINGTON, DC—George Washington Memorial Hospital is struggling to deal with an influx of Republicans with concussions, broken bones, and internal injuries suffered during the recent stampede to discredit Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, emergency-room personnel reported Monday. "Triage is in utter chaos," paramedic Gerald Polder said. "This guy in a suit came in with multiple contusions, a subdural hematoma, and a broken nose. I asked how badly it hurt to bend his knee, on a scale of 1 to 10, and he said, 'I'm hurt worse than Kerry was when he got his Purple Hearts.' That's not helpful." Polder said he has not seen so many right-wing injuries since the late '90s, when hundreds of Republicans were hurt climbing on and off the Newt Gingrich bandwagon. While squashed toes have been the most common injury, the more dramatic include the skull and spine fractures suffered by an elderly senator who was trampled in the mad dash to smear, bash, and cast aspersions on Kerry. Many of those bearing sound bites also have dislocated joints in those places where their fingers were pried from microphones. read the rest at The Onion

Professor Kim posted her first entry at The Niggerati Network. TOTALLY different from what I've been up to. Which is good because "Black folks" is the broadest topic you can imagine—everything that concerns and affects the mainstream concerns and affects us. Add to that our specific concerns and cultural gestures and you can see why I need the help. Now, if you'll excuse me I have to get back to the entry; there's links to a video or two that are part of the assignment.

This morning someone was searching for: "people that are fucked up like me" They found this. And Offshoring Digest found this one. That guarantees if the FRB or State Department ever hear of me they will not be happy.

U.S. Report Finds Sudan Promoted Killings Use of Term 'Genocide' Debated Ahead of Powell Testimony on Darfur Atrocities By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A17 A State Department report detailing atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan concludes that the Sudanese government has promoted systematic killings based on race and ethnic origin, but officials said Tuesday that there was strong debate over whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell should classify the violence as genocide. State Department lawyers reviewing the report, based on 1,136 interviews collected in 19 refugee camps in neighboring Chad last month, said the evidence of rape, killing of male babies, use of racial epithets, burning of villages and displacement could easily meet the legal definition of genocide. Powell visited Darfur in June and requested the investigation.

Kerry vs. Kerry
What does "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" mean?
by William Kristol
09/07/2004 12:20:00 PM JOHN KERRY said yesterday that Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Translation: We would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power.

Let's assume that's a real translation for a minute. Republicans talk about Saddam Hussein being in power like it had some…effect on Americans. They talk like he actually had power on the world stage. Piffle. Let me ask this question: How would Americans be worse off if Saddam Hussein were still in power? No, worse, let me be the devil's advocate. If Saddam Hussein was still in power, Iraqi oil would still be flowing and our prices would be both lower and more stable. And don't bitch at me about Iraqis subjugated under his cruel tyranny as long as you eat fruits and vegetables picked by underpaid migrant workers, as long as you're wearing clothes marketed by Nike. There'd be over a thousand Americans still alive, well over 10,000 uninjured, all at home with their loved ones. Al-Qaida and the Taliban (who I have not been happy with since they smashed those ancient Buddhist relics, which is when I became aware of them) could have been totally smashed, Afghanistan properly rebuilt with the assistance of the entire world, under the leadership of America. We would still hold the moral high ground in the world (little racist mud on our shoes, but). We would not be considered degenerate military rape monkeys by quite so many people. Vast amounts of money could have been directed at our social problems (if you're a progressive) or simply not spent (if you're a conservative) Would we be better off? Seriously.

The Medicare Challenge Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A22 …The cost containment of the 1990s provoked a backlash from doctors and other medical providers, who lobbied Congress successfully for higher payments, saying that they would stop looking after seniors otherwise; Congress caved, even though Medicare's expert advisory board found little evidence that seniors' access to service had genuinely been impaired. But the Bush administration has contributed to the exploding costs in the Medicare system, partly by pushing the prescription drug benefit through Congress, and also by promoting private managed care as an alternative to the government-run Medicare program. To encourage managed-care companies to serve retirees, the administration has paid the plans more to look after each retiree than it would have cost the Medicare program to do so. This may make sense as a way of introducing choice and competition into the system. But the purpose of competition is generally to contain costs, and the administration is not achieving that.

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Add to this the subsidies paid to corporations for providing health care coverage to retirees…even if they downgrade the coverage, they still get the subsidy and it sounds almost like class warfare&helip;difference being the wealth transfer isn't from poor folks to the wealthy but from government coffers to the corporate ones. Then again who owns those corporate coffers? And who is supposed to be served by the government ones?

Don't Duck the Debates Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A22 THIS IS, or so we are constantly told by partisans on both sides, the most important election of our lives -- at least. At the Republican convention last week, Vice President Cheney called it "one of the most important, not just in our lives, but in our history." You'd think, then, that both campaigns would be eager to see that voters get as much of a chance as possible to see the two candidates debate. The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which has sponsored such encounters since 1988, has proposed a schedule of three 90-minute presidential debates (one on foreign policy, one on domestic issues and one a town-hall-style session with undecided voters) along with a vice presidential debate. Democratic nominee John F. Kerry accepted the proposal in July. But even as the time for the first debate nears -- it's set for Sept. 30 in Miami -- the Bush campaign hasn't committed and may be trying to limit the number of presidential debates to two. "We look forward to these debates," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "We look forward to having a debate about debates. We will, in an appropriate time, which is shortly, talk about our intended participation." Rather than debating about debates, President Bush should just say yes. Surely voters are entitled to at least the 4 1/2 hours of presidential debates the commission has proposed.

Catholic Voters Given Leeway on Abortion Rights Issue By Alan Cooperman Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A06 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday. In keeping with Ratzinger's pronouncement, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis last week clarified the remarks he made earlier this summer, when he said any Catholic who votes for a politician who supports abortion rights is committing a grave sin and must confess before receiving communion. Burke now says that, in theory, there could be "proportionate reasons" that justify voting for someone who does not share the church's position against abortion -- though in practice, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "it is difficult to imagine" what such reasons would be.

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You know, Burke, it pretty much doesn't matter if you can imagine reasons or not. What matters is SOMEONE in the Vatican is intelligent enough top back away from the church-state boundary, even if our politicians…or our archbishops…aren't.

Quote of note:

The Fed chairman emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not for the Federal Reserve board.

He should stop doing that. All we should hear from him is the official position.

Greenspan Says Economy Regained Traction By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; 11:20 AM But, "on the whole, the expansion has regained some traction," he said in prepared remarks, citing rebounds in consumer spending and housing starts and the continued growth in business investments in plants and equipment.

huh? This is in the same article:

…August retail sales, for example, were disappointing for many chains, such as Wal-Mart, that market primarily to middle income households, while upscale stores such as Neiman Marcus thrived. Greenspan didn't mention auto sales, but General Motors and Ford Motor Co. have announced plans to cut production because their dealer lots are clogged with inventories. Intel Corp., the world's largest computer chip maker, and the drug store chain Rite Aid have lowered sales forecasts because of sluggish demand. Job growth revived in August after essentially stalling the previous two months. But the gains in payroll jobs last month "were smaller than those of last spring," Greenspan said.

Yeah, the news that the deficit will be a smaller record than expected? (Has there ever before been another president that considered a record deficit good news?). They left out part of the CBO announcement. That even if Bushista hallucinations about this smaller record means the economy is growing, because of the tax cuts and the optional war no amount of growth will be enough to address the exploding deficit.

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$2.3 Trillion in New Debt Expected by 2014
Economic Growth Will Not Ease Strain on U.S., Budget Office Director Warns
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A02 This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is now expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday. The expected deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, is $56 billion less than the CBO predicted in March, as a recovering economy added to tax receipts. But it is $46 billion more than last year's record shortfall, with even more red ink possible, the nonpartisan agency reported: The expected total 10-year deficit would climb from $2.3 trillion to $3.6 trillion if President Bush is able to extend the tax cuts he enacted. They are currently set to expire in 2011. "This is a fiscal situation in which we cannot rely on economic growth to cause deficits to disappear," warned CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economist for the Bush White House. "The budgetary outlook will be dictated by policy choices."

Quote of note:

I've steered clear until now of how Mr. Bush evaded service in Vietnam because I thought other issues were more important. But if Bush supporters attack John Kerry for his conduct after he volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, it's only fair to scrutinize Mr. Bush's behavior. It's not a pretty sight.

Oh, and my assessment of all this is pretty much the same as Mr. Kristof's (that's TWO pundits I agreed with today. I must be slipping.)

The sheer volume of missing documents, and missing recollections, strongly suggests to me that Mr. Bush blew off his Guard obligations. It's not fair to say Mr. Bush deserted. My sense is that he (like some others at the time) neglected his National Guard obligations, did the bare minimum to avoid serious trouble and was finally let off by commanders who considered him a headache but felt it wasn't worth the hassle to punish him.

Anyway… Missing in Action By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF President Bush claims that in the fall of 1972, he fulfilled his Air National Guard duties at a base in Alabama. But Bob Mintz was there - and he is sure Mr. Bush wasn't. Plenty of other officers have said they also don't recall that Mr. Bush ever showed up for drills at the base. What's different about Mr. Mintz is that he remembers actively looking for Mr. Bush and never finding him. …Mr. Bush signed up in May 1968 for a six-year commitment, justifying the $1 million investment in training him as a pilot. But after less than two years, Mr. Bush abruptly stopped flying, didn't show up for his physical and asked to transfer to Alabama. He never again flew a military plane. Mr. Bush insists that after moving to Alabama in 1972, he served out his obligation at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery (although he says he doesn't remember what he did there). The only officer there who recalls Mr. Bush was produced by the White House - he remembers Mr. Bush vividly, but at times when even Mr. Bush acknowledges he wasn't there. In contrast, Mr. Mintz is a compelling witness. Describing himself as "a very strong military man," he served in the military from 1959 to 1984. A commercial pilot, he is now a Democrat but was a Republican for most of his life, and he is not a Bush-hater. When I asked him whether the National Guard controversy raises questions about Mr. Bush's credibility, Mr. Mintz said only, "That's up to the American people to decide." Another particularly credible witness is Leonard Walls, a retired Air Force colonel who was then a full-time pilot instructor at the base. "I was there pretty much every day," he said, adding: "I never saw him, and I was there continually from July 1972 to July 1974." Mr. Walls, who describes himself as nonpolitical, added, "If he had been there more than once, I would have seen him."

Quote of note:

Congressional Republicans, though, have not announced any plans for such legislation. And an official of the drug industry's trade group, which yesterday announced a voluntary plan to disclose trial results, said his organization thought that legislation was not necessary.

This doesn't even cost thew drug industry anything. Except the ability to lie by omission in one specific fashion. I think they can give that up, don't you? Yes, I expect them to stop volunteering when our short attention span is inevitably distracted by the next shiny object. Expected Call for Advance Registration of Drug Tests By BARRY MEIER The debate over the disclosure of clinical drug trials could reach a turning point this week, with editors of influential medical journals expected to call for fundamental changes in the way such tests are reported. The journal editors, gatekeepers for the medical profession, are expected to begin requiring that drug trials be registered at the outset as a prerequisite for the subsequent publication of their results. Requiring such registration as a condition for reaching the journals' vast audience of doctors would make it difficult for drug companies to hide the results of unflattering tests - as some have been accused of doing. The journal editors declined yesterday to discuss the new policy before the announcement, but the group said several months ago that it was considering such a step. Details of the policy by the group - which includes prestigious publications like The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and The Annals of Internal Medicine - are to be presented Thursday at a House Commerce subcommittee hearing on disclosure of data from pediatric trials of antidepressants. Meanwhile, both House and Senate Democrats say they expect to introduce legislation as early as Thursday that would require drug trials involving human subjects to be registered in a public database before the tests were allowed to proceed.

Is this good for you? Do you think the USofA and Russia are going to agree on who is a terrorist all the time? Russia Ready to Strike Against 'Terror' Worldwide Wed Sep 8, 2004 06:27 AM ET By Elizabeth Piper BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Russia's top general said on Wednesday he was ready to attack "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world, as security services put a $10 million bounty on two Chechen rebels blamed for last week's school siege. At the scene of the siege in the southern town of Beslan, medical workers began the painstaking task of identifying more than 100 bodies burned beyond recognition in the explosions which ended the crisis. "As for launching pre-emptive strikes on terrorist bases, we will carry out all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of Russia's general staff, said, according to Russian news agencies.

Key Documents in U.S. Airman Spy Case Not Secret Tue Sep 7, 2004 03:07 PM ET By Adam Tanner SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A military translator accused of espionage at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked a military judge on Tuesday to drop some charges after the prosecution acknowledged detainee letters found in his possession were not classified. Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi is accused of carrying the letters, jail maps and other documents from the prison where terrorism suspects are held. The supply clerk worked there as an Arabic translator between November 2002 and July 2003. The defense said it received a document last week from the military prosecutors, who have already dropped 14 of 30 charges brought last year, saying the letters were not classified. "Since the very beginning of this case, Senior Airman al Halabi's defense counsel have maintained that it would be impossible for the letters and translations to be classified based upon the simple fact the letters were created by people with no security clearances or access to classified materials," attorney Donald Rehkopf said in a statement. In a filing received by the court on Tuesday, the defense asked for a dismissal of related charges. "Senior Airman al Halabi stands to be the first person to ever go to trial on allegations of attempted espionage when the government cannot identify a single person or entity on this planet who (he) was supposedly committing espionage for," the court document read.

Smarter to go with the situation that requires a preponderance of evidence instead of absolute proof, I suppose. And financial penalties affect corporate behavior more than jail time for one of the shills. Anyway… Calif. to Sue Diebold Over False Claims Tue Sep 7, 2004 06:59 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California. Lockyer's office issued a statement noting he has authority to intervene in and take over false claims cases involving vendors to state. "Lockyer determined sufficient evidence existed to go forward with a false claims lawsuit against Diebold," the statement said. The state's top lawyer earlier had dropped a criminal investigation of Diebold. Diebold Vice President Thomas Swidarski said in a statement that the company was pleased Lockyer dropped the probe. Despite Lockyer's decision to sue, the company is "confident that the state's decision to intervene will aid in a fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case," Swidarski said. California in April set tough new standards for electronic voting by ordering new security measures for e-voting machines, and California's Secretary of State called for a criminal probe into Diebold, the state's largest e-voting machine supplier.

Since Bush started dissing legitimate science? Okay. Just checking.

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Scientist: Extreme Weather Will Kill Millions Tue Sep 7, 2004 09:20 AM ET By Jeremy Lovell EXETER, England (Reuters) - Millions of people across the globe are set to die early due to extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves caused by climate change, a British scientist said Tuesday. Professor Mike Pilling cited the heatwave in Europe last year that killed thousands of people from a combination of heat exhaustion and an increase in atmospheric pollution. "We will experience an increase in extreme weather events," he told reporters at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "There are predictions of a 10-fold increase in heat waves. "The increasing frequency of these will inevitably result in a sharp increase in the premature deaths of people," he added. Pilling, professor of Physical Chemistry at Leeds University in northern England, said atmospheric pollution was like a plague stretching across the planet -- although far worse in the industrialized northern hemisphere than the southern -- as pollutants drifted from Asia to the United States to Europe and back to Asia.

You Log Cabin Republicans need to check into the Stonewall Democrats. Anyway… Gay Republican Group Won't Endorse Bush -NY Times Wed Sep 8, 2004 03:25 AM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Leaders of the largest group for gay men and lesbians in the Republican Party voted overwhelmingly against endorsing President Bush for re-election because he favors a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, The New York Times said on Wednesday. The board of the Log Cabin Republicans voted 22-2 on Tuesday night against endorsing Bush, the newspaper said, citing a spokesman for the group. Log Cabin in 2000 endorsed Bush against Democrat Al Gore, and in 1996 endorsed Republican Bob Dole [P6…who returned their $1000 donation!!] against incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. The group in February criticized Bush for supporting the amendment. "Writing discrimination into our Constitution violates conservative and Republican principles," Executive Director Patrick Guerriero said at the time. "This amendment would not strengthen marriage -- it would weaken our nation." A call to the group was not immediately returned.

You will be hearing a lot, especially from Black Conservatives, about what the Republican Party needs to do to attract Black votes. Don't mistake motion for progress. And don't mistake talk for motion. In fact, that so many people know what must be done and are not doing it kind of make people's priorities and intentions clear, doesn't it? Quote of note:

This is not about just throwing money around, although, Lord knows, Bush and congressional Republicans have shown they're equal to Democrats at doing that. It's about tackling root causes. And I will guarantee that sustained support for this kind of agenda would earn the GOP a healthy share of the black vote, rather than the pathetically tiny fraction it now receives. Besides, there are no downsides for Republicans in courting blacks, other than perhaps losing a few voters on the party's extreme right. If that's not a good trade-off, I don't know what is.

The GOP's problem with blacks By Don Campbell The abysmal shape that the Republican Party and George W. Bush find themselves in among blacks was vividly showcased at the GOP convention that just ended in New York. The White House was, of course, able to round up and put on stage enough African-Americans — and other minorities — to give the impression that the GOP is a diverse political party. But if you were watching when the cameras panned the convention floor, you may have noticed that the delegates looked like a bowl of rice pudding. (A New York Times survey found that 6% of the delegates were black.) …Such political grandstanding by both Bush and Sharpton doesn't shed much light on why the party of Lincoln is so distrusted by African-Americans that fewer than 10% are expected to vote for Bush in November. How can a party that enjoys rough parity nationally with the Democrats be so weak among a group that will cast more than 10 million votes?

He's actually written an editorial I might have, concept for concept if not word for word.

Why I'm Black, Not African American
By John McWhorter September 8, 2004 It's time we descendants of slaves brought to the United States let go of the term "African American" and go back to calling ourselves Black — with a capital B.

(I know, I know, nomemclature is easier to deal with than substance. And between underdelivery of promised funds to fight AIDS, ignoring the genocides and the need for oil, new markets and other raw materials, I suspect folks would rather not have 12% of the American population identifying with Africa and Africans. Still. I could have written that editorial.)

Profiling is worse than police will admit - Chip Johnson Monday, September 6, 2004 It's interesting to see the Oakland Police Department attempt to explain away the subtleties in the racial profiling of black motorists, especially when the statistics in a recent study confirm the practice. The report, which the Rand think tank prepared at the city's request, presents an unflattering picture: Black motorists tooling through Oakland, particularly black males, are nearly four times more likely to be stopped by a police officer than their white counterparts, whether it is morning, noon or night, and no matter what part of the city they're traveling in. And when black motorists are stopped, three times out of four, they will be detained longer than other motorists and are almost certain to be asked to submit to a body search. "I think there was a good effort to put an understanding twist on things, and the protocol they've put together is a pretty good way to assess the issue, but their report just confirms what many people have believed for years,'' said John Burris, a prominent Oakland defense attorney. "The objective of the stop is to search the car, and you need a pretext for the search.''

He's not even speaking well recently. Quote of note:

Keyes, who will be greatly outspent, relies on free media in his campaign against Obama, Kay reported. As a result, he frequently calls news conferences to respond to responses. First, he criticizes Obama. When Obama responds, Keyes calls a news conference to respond, which is what he did on Tuesday.

Keyes Says Christ Would Not Vote For Obama Republican Candidate Says 'Spanking' Comment Insulting CHICAGO -- Illinois Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes injected religion into his race against Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday. According to a list of quotes put out by the Democratic candidate, Keyes said in a radio interview at the Republican National Convention that Jesus would not vote for Obama. The quote was part of a list Obama sent reporters of Keyes' accusations and epithets about him since Keyes became a candidate, NBC5 political editor Dick Kay said. Kay also reported that Keyes called Obama a "socialist and a liar" on a cable access news show on Monday. Obama said he wants to win big to give Keyes a spanking because Keyes wages a scorched earth campaign. Keyes then went into a very long analysis of the word "spanking" and suggested it might be related to slavery and insulting to African- Americans. He would not answer when asked directly if he was insulted.

A little conversation on Barack Obama in Pre-Post-Racial Politics at The Niggerati Network. (There's actually another post and a technical/rules change announced too, but this one is The Post).

Violence May Force Iraq to Bypass Hotspots in Election Plan would allow voting to proceed in January but might undermine credibility of the results. By Patrick J. McDonnell Times Staff Writer September 6, 2004 BAGHDAD — Iraq remains on course to hold landmark elections in January, but violence could force authorities to exclude hotspots such as the western city of Fallouja from voting, a top U.S. general said here Sunday. Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operations chief of more than 150,000 mostly U.S. troops, said in an interview that the "cancer" of anti-American militancy in places such as Fallouja would not derail national elections. A "contingency" plan, Metz said, is to bypass Fallouja — and perhaps other violent enclaves — and concentrate on ensuring electoral security in Baghdad and other population centers where hostility is lower. "We'd have elections before we let one place like Fallouja stop [national] elections," said Metz, the No. 2 U.S. military official in Iraq. "The rest of the country can go on about a process that heads right for an election." Still, Metz cautioned that the participation of Iraq's three largest cities — Baghdad, Mosul in the north and Basra in the south — was essential to any election. Metz's statements are among the strongest to date by U.S. or Iraqi officials, conceding that the security situation is so perilous that some areas may not be pacified in time for elections. Although bypassing some cities could allow officials to stick to their planned January timetable, doing so could detract from the election's credibility, foment discontent in Iraq and leave other countries reluctant to acknowledge any government chosen in the vote.

Has anyone noticed that all Bushisms happen when l'il Georgie is trying to say something nice and supportive? Has anyone noticed he never slips up when issuing a threat?

I don't believe it. Quote of note:

Ironically, military and US government reports documenting the causes of the Abu Ghraib abuses assert that Miller urged tougher interrogation techniques be used in Iraq last year. The Pentagon sent Miller to inspect interrogation procedures last summer, and he recommended using the same techniques on prisoners in Iraq that were employed on Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo. Miller's intent was to boost the quality of intelligence needed to halt the growing anti-US insurgency. His recommendations were approved by former US land forces commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Investigators found that the November abuses documented in dozens of photos at Abu Ghraib may have been encouraged by the more coercive interrogations.

Anyway… Gentler interrogation is working, US says By Jim Krane, Associated Press | September 7, 2004 BAGHDAD -- The US military is reaping more high-quality intelligence tips from Iraqi prisoners than ever, since it jettisoned several coercive interrogation techniques after the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal in May, the American general in charge of Iraqi prisons said yesterday. The number of tips on insurgent operations or on the structure and financing of anti-US guerrilla bands has increased 50 percent since January, Army Major General Geoffrey Miller said in a briefing with reporters. It is unclear what effect the intelligence has had on the insurgency. Between July and August, when Miller cited an increase in actionable tips from 200 to 325, rebel ambushes on US forces grew 70 percent, from 1,600 to 2,700, according to US military figures. Those attacks do not include sustained battles, such as the three weeks of fighting in Najaf last month.

Quote of note:

The NIH proposal calls for researchers to submit their papers to the agency after they have been accepted for publication and edited by the accepting journal. By placing the responsibility on researchers, the policy avoids the prospect of NIH trying to tell the journals to share those papers. Articles would not be made public by the NIH for six months -- a compromise position, Zerhouni said, to give the journals time to profit from the work. After that, they would be available for free on the NIH Web-based database, PubMed Central.

NIH proposes free public access to scientific research Critics say plan may put journals out of business By Rick Weiss, Washington Post | September 7, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The National Institutes of Health has proposed a major policy change that would require all scientists who receive funding from the agency to make the results of their research available to the public for free. The proposal, posted on the agency's website late Friday and subject to a 60-day public comment period, would mark a significant departure from current practice, in which the scientific journals that publish those results retain control over that information. Subscriptions to those journals can run into the thousands of dollars. Nonsubscribers wishing to get individual articles typically must pay about $30 each -- fees that can quickly add up for someone trying to learn about a newly diagnosed disease. Although patient advocacy groups and other organizations have been lobbying hard for the proposed shift, the scientific publishing industry and related interests are crying foul. The move could drive some journals out of business, they say, and bankrupt some scientific societies that are dependent on journal profits to fulfill their research and education missions. Whatever the outcome, both sides agree change is inevitable, given society's rising expectations of easy access to information from the Internet and the enormous interest in health -- a topic that NIH officials say accounts for about 40 percent of all Internet queries. ''The status quo is not an option," NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni said last week at a meeting on the agency's Bethesda campus.

The reason it's key:

Houston's dropout problem has been in the national eye for two years after an investigation that found that the district miscounted nearly 3,000 dropouts in the 2000-01 school year, and that employees at a high school falsified records to show zero dropouts.

NCLB rhetoric is fine. It's just the implementation runs into the brick wall that is reality. We know Houston lied to get the results that made it the model. I wish them all success in actually addressing the exposed issues. I just want the corrections to the model program taken into account in the national one. The changes Houston is making track pretty closely to what progressives who focus on education say is needed but unfunded under NCLB. Houston downsizes to tackle dropout rate By Liz Austin, Associated Press | September 7, 2004 HOUSTON -- Officials at the largest Texas school district, which once miscounted nearly 3,000 dropouts, are taking a personal interest in at-risk students and dividing them into smaller classes. The hope is that the students will stay in school. With the school year underway, educators from the Houston Independent School District are knocking on the doors of students who did not return to class and encouraging them to reenroll. The district's 24 comprehensive high schools also have been divided into "learning communities" to enhance relationships among students and teachers. It's an effort to bring the 211,000-student school district -- a model for President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act -- in line with state dropout rates and to help the students who need help. "Most kids who drop out drop out because nobody knows them," said Steve Amstutz, principal of Lee High School. "Nobody knew they were gone. Nobody's given them the pat on the back, the kick in the pants, the encouragement, or the support." About 75 percent of the 16,638 students who started ninth grade in Houston in 1998 graduated four years later, according to the most recent available records. That is lower than the state average of nearly 83 percent. The district aims for an 85 percent graduation rate by 2007. Houston's dropout problem has been in the national eye for two years after an investigation that found that the district miscounted nearly 3,000 dropouts in the 2000-01 school year, and that employees at a high school falsified records to show zero dropouts.

Quote of note:

…while Allawi and his US backers have sought to paint the Najaf cease-fire as a watershed moment, the outcome has brought few clear answers. Opposition politicians and ordinary Iraqis say the country is no closer than it was a month ago to giving citizens more of a say or setting up functional security forces.

Truce fails to soothe Shi'ite fears
Sadr's followers still stir discord
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | September 6, 2004 BAGHDAD -- A week after reaching a truce with Moqtada al-Sadr's rebel militia, a move officials hailed as a breakthrough that would let them bolster security forces and restart reconstruction projects, the interim Iraqi government faces a deepening crisis of confidence among the country's Shi'ite Muslim majority. Those who fear Sadr, the militant cleric, say they worry that Iraq's police and armed forces cannot control him and new fighting will break out. And his supporters accuse the government of betraying the truce that ended three weeks of fighting between US forces and militiamen in Najaf, and threaten to relaunch their uprising. "We did what you asked us to do, to make peace. Don't make us go and fight again," Sheik Nasser al-Sa'adi thundered in his Friday sermon at Sadr's main mosque in the heart of Sadr City, the Baghdad district of more than 2 million impoverished Shi'ites where hundreds died in clashes with US forces in April and last month. Another Sadr spokesman went farther after police blocked worshipers from the mosque where Sadr usually preaches in Kufa, adjacent to Najaf. "We are in a state of war with the Iraqi police," Ahmed al-Shaibani declared.

Quote of note:

But we should consider the need for a Copernican revolution in the way we think about America and the world. As students of history recall, the 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus shattered conventional wisdom when he argued that Earth is not at the center of the solar system but is one of many planets revolving around the sun. This theory was a blow to the idea that God had set Earth at the center of his creation. The importance of Copernicus was not simply that he got it right but that the truth he revealed allowed scientists to make accurate calculations at last about the Earth's orbit and the movement of other planets. Realizing that the Earth wasn't at the center of the universe didn't make earthlings any less important; it just allowed them to do their sums right.

The importance of that last sentence can't be overstated. Understanding how others see you does NOT require you to change your goals (unless your goals exist to shore up your own insecurities about how others see you…). A Copernican Foreign Policy By David Ignatius Tuesday, September 7, 2004; Page A23 We Americans are sometimes like the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy. That is, we see the United States as the fixed center of the universe, with other nations and events revolving around us. I think it's one of our endearing qualities, this ebullient national self-centeredness -- except when it leads to errors in geopolitical navigation. President Bush gave a moving evocation of this American Ptolemaism in his acceptance speech last week. "Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom," he said. Like his mentor Ronald Reagan, Bush conveyed his conviction that God has bestowed great blessings on the United States -- made it a "shining city on a hill" -- with corresponding responsibilities to lead the world. The problem for the United States is the disconnect between this self-image and the way the rest of the world feels about us. Increasingly, people in other countries don't see America as that beacon of idealism but as something menacing. We can think they're wrong and we can choose to ignore them, but unfortunately, that won't change the way they feel. This disconnect is clear in recent poll findings. A study released in March by the Pew Research Center found "somewhat" or "very" unfavorable views about the United States among 63 percent of those surveyed in Turkey, 61 percent in Pakistan, 93 percent in Jordan and 68 percent in Morocco. And these are our allies in the Islamic world. The Pew study found that images of the United States were almost as negative among America's allies in "old Europe," with sharp deterioration from two years before -- 62 percent were unfavorable in France, compared with 34 percent in 2002, and 59 percent were unfavorable in Germany, compared with 35 percent before. The same bleak trend was evident in a 2003 study co-sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a group for which I serve as a trustee. Less than half the Europeans surveyed said they wanted to see a strong U.S. presence in the world, down from 64 percent the previous year.

Polygamous Sect Moves In, And Texas Town Asks 'Why?' Mormon Offshoot Accused of Abuses in Arizona and Utah By Sylvia Moreno Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 7, 2004; Page A03 ELDORADO, Tex. -- By anyone's account, 2003 was a banner news year in this tiny town on the western edge of Texas's rolling hill country. A man killed his father in the first homicide here in two decades, and an elderly man pushing brush with a bulldozer was stung to death by killer bees. A local businessman pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and was hauled off to federal prison, and nine residents, most of them members of the First Baptist Church, were killed in an accident in Louisiana on their way to visit historic sites in Pennsylvania. "I thought, we'll never have another year like that," said Randy Mankin, the part-time city administrator and full-time publisher and editor of the Eldorado Success, a weekly newspaper. "Then in mid-March this thing came along -- like a UFO landed north of town." The polygamists had arrived, and Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-ray-doh) -- population 1,951 -- hasn't been the same since. "Your first question is 'Why Eldorado?' " said Jeri Whitten, director of the Schleicher County Public Library, which nowadays has a waiting list for its small collection of books about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose members are Eldorado's newest neighbors. Local and state officials are trying to find out why the group chose this location, especially because of recent allegations against the sect -- which broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church when it banned polygamy in 1890 -- of child abuse, forced marriage and fraud. The sect, known as the FLDS, is led by self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs, 48, who, along with two of his brothers, was accused in a civil lawsuit filed in Salt Lake City this summer of sodomizing a nephew when the boy was 5 and of coercion for trying to keep the boy from discussing the abuse. Jeffs and his brothers have denied the allegations through a church spokesman. The FLDS practices plural marriage, a spiritual ritual that is arranged by the group's prophet through what the church teaches are revelations from God. Having multiple wives, members believe, gives them access to the highest level in heaven, the Celestial Kingdom. [P6: Rude, but I must say that if this is true they're raising some high-quality ass. And since women can't have multiple wives, they just don't get access to "the highest level in heaven."] Today, the fundamentalists claim a membership of 10,000 to 12,000, most of them living in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where they run their own schools, police departments and businesses and boast families that include dozens of wives and dozens of children.

Who is responsible for the existence of the "budget constraints?"

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Navy Plans to Buy Fewer Ships By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 7, 2004; Page E01 Squeezed by budget constraints, the Navy is proposing significant cuts in its shipbuilding program that could batter the already struggling industry. The proposal comes as top Pentagon officials consider shifting the military's focus from preparing for large-scale warfare to training more specialized forces for guerrilla warfare, long-term peacekeeping and counter-terrorism efforts. The changes could eventually mean a reallocation of resources from traditional weapons such as ships, tanks and planes in favor of more troops, elite Special Operations forces and intelligence gathering.

How to Watch the Watchers By RICHARD BEN-VENISTE and LANCE COLE Last week President Bush issued four executive orders addressing matters that were subjects of recommendations by the 9/11 commission. One of the four orders created a President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties. While it is laudable that a civil liberties board was included in the first set of presidential actions in response to the commission's recommendations, the new board falls short of addressing the concerns that led the commission to recommend the creation of a meaningful oversight board in the first place. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the government has acquired powerful new legal tools, including those provided by the Patriot Act, to collect intelligence on Americans. Government agencies are using "data mining" and other techniques to identify potential terrorists and cut off sources of terrorist financing. As the commission's report noted, the shift of power and authority to government must be tempered by an enhanced system of checks and balances to protect the personal liberties that define our way of life. One of the ways the commission sought to balance these competing objectives was to recommend the creation of a board within the executive branch to protect civil liberties and privacy rights. Unfortunately, the board created by the president has neither the right makeup nor the right powers to accomplish this objective.

Comment 1: No Republican should present their own reactions as that of African-Americans. They simply represent too small a segment of the community to make such a claim. This isn't to say they shouldn't present their positions; it means they shouldn't represent like they're representing. Comment 2: Michelle has competition. Maybe that fuck-up on Hardball cost her more than I thought… Anyway… What Bush Means to African-Americans By Star Parker September 6, 2004 Republican and Democratic Party national conventions are always a mix of content and choreography. The relative mix of both tells us the shape that a party is in. Quality content with fitting form is the sign of a healthy party. A party in bad shape will have mostly form (choreographers are easy to hire) to deflect attention from an absence of ideas and content. A few short weeks have passed since the conclusion of the Democratic convention. Can anyone recall what he or she heard from John Kerry and John Edwards? Does anyone have a clue what specifically they have in mind for our nation? I'm trying to avoid being partisan here, but I would like anyone to tell me one creative new idea he or she heard during the four days that the Dems met in Boston. This week's Republican convention was a refreshing contrast. Whether or not you agree with George W. Bush's take on the world, the week in New York left little doubt what this man is about. I walked away from a week in New York with a clear sense that Bush is about a strong and unapologetic U.S. stance around the world and a society at home emphasizing an increasing role of American citizen in controlling all aspects of their lives. The choreography of the Republican convention was also interesting to note. As unapologetic as the Republicans came off regarding what they believe, they were equally unflinching in having this message delivered uniformly by tough white men _ John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudolph Giuliani, Zell Miller. Gone was the usual attempt to showcase the big tent. Where was the usual high-profile trotting out of the blacks, the Latinos and the women? Recall that in 2000 Republicans were falling over themselves to show the nation that the Bush administration had given blacks lofty positions of unprecedented influence. It was almost as if the Bush administration was saying this time around: "We've got important business to do here and not a lot of time to get it done. The focus needs to be on getting our message across as clearly and forcefully as possible. There isn't time here for the usual political affirmative action games." As a black woman, am I offended by this? Absolutely not. On the contrary, when I am looking for someone to give me tax advice, guidance on how to invest my money or ideas on how to manage my organization, I'm looking for content, not form. The marketplace is too unforgiving, and the rewards too attractive, to look for anyone other than those who will provide the best information and advice. Why should the criteria be any different in choosing those who will run my government? Furthermore, I want blacks to be as in-your-face back to the Republican Party as Bush is to the nation and the world. Ownership and choice are far more critical for blacks than for rich white men. I am thrilled that Bush is showing the imagination and leadership to put Social Security in play and open the door for personal accounts. But, back to the choreography and content trade-off, blacks need a minimum of the former and a maximum of the latter. I cannot think of one reason why any African-American earning $30,000 a year should be forced to continue putting one dime of hard-earned income into a retirement regime that does not involve ownership and market returns. Social Security provides neither and we want out, as soon as possible. We want returns on our hard-earned money, and we want to own and control what we work for. No Child Left Behind and standards and testing sound great. But as long as our school system remains a government monopoly, where competition and alternatives cannot drive quality and excellence, there is only so much we can expect. And again, blacks have more at stake here than rich white folks who have the resources to buy alternatives. Even a miraculous revival of the black family in our nation's inner cities will not justify forcing the kids of these families to attend politically correct government schools. Modest-income blacks need a market-driven health-care market. Health Savings Accounts and similar innovative ideas are crucial for poor people. Let's get employers out of the health-care business for employees and open a real and dynamic market for personal health care that will force insurance companies to innovate and allow working men and woman of limited resources to buy health care that fits their needs and their pocketbooks. I congratulate the president for bold and creative leadership and for emphasizing content over form. I want to encourage him to be even bolder. It is not enough for government to allow African-Americans to put a toe into the pool of ownership and choice. We need government to get out of the way and let us dive in.

I just posted Black Community at The Niggerati Network.

Serena Surprised to Be Crowd Favorite Sun Sep 5, 2004 05:47 PM ET By Simon Cambers …She has enjoyed surprisingly strong support at Flushing Meadows this week but said she expected the crowd to side with Capriati if they meet in the quarter-finals. "I would think so, because usually the fans aren't for me," said Williams. "I've got great receptions here but usually when I'm playing a Lindsay Davenport, or even when I played Martina Hingis, they're like really for them. It's the same in every country. "This year (though) it's been amazing. They're really out there cheering for me. It's kind of weird but cool." A showdown with Capriati would hold few surprises for Serena as the pair have played 16 times, with Williams leading 10-6.

In Trying Time, Scaling Down Expectations of Job Growth By EDUARDO PORTER There was a time when adding just under 150,000 jobs a month, three years into an economic recovery, would have been considered a disaster. As recently as last December, President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers forecast that in 2004 employment would grow, on average, by about 216,000 jobs a month. Yet on Friday, when the Labor Department reported employment growth of 144,000 jobs in August and bumped up its earlier estimates for June and July, yielding a three-month average of 104,000 new jobs a month, many economists said it was good news. "The August jobs report fails to return us to visions of boom, but it nonetheless puts the U.S. back on a reasonable employment income trajectory," wrote Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG/Hoenig, in a note to investors. N. Gregory Mankiw, chief economic adviser to the president, said the report "confirms that the economy is going in the right direction." The reception of 144,000 jobs as adequate employment growth is evidence of economists' more modest view of what the economy can deliver, after an unexpected cooling of demand in the late spring and early summer.

Are there any Conservative sites that focus on domestic issues?

Bush, Kerry on the issues: College costs
By The Associated Press | September 5, 2004 Three times a week starting today, The Associated Press picks an issue and asks the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates a question about it. Today's question and responses: COLLEGE COSTS: Is there anything the federal government should do to ease the costs of post-secondary education?

They're the printed equivalent of sound bytes but good for a basic mendacity check.

Poll: Most find satisfaction in their jobs By Will Lester, Associated Press Writer | September 6, 2004 WASHINGTON --A majority of Americans say they find satisfaction in their jobs, according to an Associated Press poll, though many express concerns about job stress, health care and retirement benefits. Peggy Branan, a 44-year-old nurse in the New Orleans area, is among about half of the population who say they are "very satisfied" with their job. "I feel blessed to be able to get paid for what I enjoy doing," said Branan, a nurse for 21 years. "I'm very active in my church. My role as a nurse is a way to fulfill my role as a Catholic." Seven in 10 surveyed said they are paid fairly. Men were more likely than women to feel this way. For Branan, work is an important part of who she is. That same feeling was shared by six in 10 workers. As people celebrate Labor Day this weekend, about nine in 10 workers say they find their job at least somewhat satisfying, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.

Quote of note:

Already upset over the Bush administration's decision to eliminate overtime for some workers, unions became alarmed when the NLRB announced in June that it would hear a case challenging the use of "card check recognition." The organizing technique lets unions form bargaining units at workplaces after a majority of workers sign union cards. The employer must agree to recognize the cards and unit. Card check recognition has been around for some time, but unions have relied on it more in recent years because of increased employer hostility to organizing in the workplace, said Bronfenbrenner. Card checks have become a formidable organizing tool in the labor movement's arsenal, especially today when just 12.5 percent of the US workforce is unionized, down from 35 percent in 1945. In Las Vegas, for example, thousands of hotel and casino workers have been organized over the past five years using the tactic.

Las Vegas, by the way, is one of the few places left in the USofA where a person can work their way from poverty to the middle class by having a regular old job. Novel concept, huh? Anyway… Worries about NLRB fuel campaign by unions Leaders say panel favors employers, seek to oust Bush By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff | September 6, 2004 The AFL-CIO's $45 million effort to unseat President Bush is driven by an issue that unions care passionately about, but many voters have never heard of: the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board. Labor leaders say that in recent months the current board has made hard-hitting decisions that favor employers. And a Bush appointment last December increased to three the number of Republicans on the five-member NLRB, a change unions say could profoundly hurt organized workers for years. Since then, two major board decisions, on graduate students and nonunion workers' rights, have been the focus of criticism from labor organizers. "The question of presidential appointments to the National Labor Relations Board is as important to labor as abortion rights are to women and civil rights are to minorities," said sociologist Robert J. S. Ross, director of International Studies Stream at Clark University in Worcester.

I guess I understand why women might react the way the linked article suggests they are. I would like to make a couple of observations though: This was an unusual case; Bryant's celebrity alone guaranteed that. This was not an unusual case. Bryant's income alone guaranteed that. Nothing changes from this alone. Had I been accused I'd have been jailed before the DNA was even tested. Guilty or innocent, a bag of money is often the difference between verdicts. This is not the pivotal, camel-back breaking case unless your will to change things is what was broken. Victim fallout is feared from Bryant case By David Kelly, Los Angeles Times | September 6, 2004 EAGLE, Colo. -- The handling of the rape case against Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant has some sexual assault victims and those who work with them worried that it will make women more reluctant to report attacks in the future. ''I totally understand why [the accuser] didn't wish to go forward," said Susan, a rape victim from Denver who asked that her last name not be used. ''I was worn out by my case. I was worn out by the system, worn out by the process, and worn out by the big scary attorney on the other side. I wish for the opposite but I think this will absolutely have an effect on future cases." Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert dismissed the case Wednesday, three days after jury selection had begun. He said the 20-year-old accuser, whose name and sexual history had been publicized by some media outlets, did not wish to continue. A civil case against Bryant is pending. Throughout the 14-month courtroom drama, played out in the town of Eagle, victims' rights groups tried to shift the focus away from legal maneuvering and onto the plight of the accuser. Now they worry that rape, already believed to be significantly underreported, will be reported even less. ''We have been concerned all along that this case would have a negative impact on women coming forward but these were also extraordinary circumstances played out in the national spotlight," said Cynthia Stone, spokeswoman for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault. ''We hear anecdotally that people look to what happened to her and are more fearful of coming forward. But we don't have any reliable measure to know what kind of effect this will have."

Reports of deputy's capture called 'baseless' By T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times | September 6, 2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi officials thought they had the king of clubs. Yesterday morning, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman announced the capture of one of Iraq's most wanted men, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a confidant of Saddam Hussein and the highest-ranking regime official at large. In detail, the spokesman told a US-funded television station in Iraq how US and Iraqi forces had stormed a medical clinic in the northern city of Tikrit where the feeble Douri was receiving treatment for leukemia. Other government officials elaborated: Iraqi troops backed by US helicopters and tanks battled their way through more than 170 loyal bodyguards, killing 70 and capturing 80. A few others got away. By midafternoon, officials from no fewer than four Iraqi ministries -- including two ministers and a ranking officer from the Iraqi National Guard -- had all but confirmed Douri's capture. They were awaiting only the results of a DNA test that one said was ''60 percent" done. But by nightfall, it appeared they had come up empty-handed. ''We don't have any information regarding this issue. What has been said of a statement by the Defense Ministry is baseless," Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan told Lebanon's LBC television channel. He offered no explanation for the confusion. The daylong drama was proof that in Iraq, truth remains elusive even in the highest echelons of the US-backed government.

A Homeland ruling adds to the concerns of an African family By Darryl Fears, Washington Post | September 5, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The Johnston family prays together and stays together, inside a Washington-area house, too frightened to venture outside or to answer the door. ''If you don't tell us you are coming," Anita Kennedy Johnston said, ''we don't open." The Johnstons -- Anita, 48, husband James, 54, and daughter Alice, 27 -- have lived this way since May, when the Department of Homeland Security canceled temporary protected status for about 3,000 people from Sierra Leone. That status allows noncitizens to obtain work, drivers' licenses, and property. The West African nation was dubbed ''the worst place on Earth" by writers who described its 10-year civil war, in which combatants subjected civilians to variations of torture, including amputating by machete and forcing hands into boiling oil. The war ended in 2002, and the Homeland Security Departmentasked Sierra Leoneans who did not have US citizenship to leave by May 3 of this year. ''Those who do not comply with this requirement may be subject to removal," a statement said. The withdrawal of temporary protected status, often called ''special status," has sent the Johnstons and thousands of other Sierra Leoneans around the United States into hiding, and has opened a debate about the morality of deporting immigrants to a nation still reeling from war. Paul Barrow, a Sierra Leone journalist who exposed government corruption and torture in his country, was seized from his New Jersey home in May and was deported to Sierra Leone in June, according to a spokesman for the Newark office of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

One by One, Iraqi Cities Become No-Go Zones By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq — At a recent meeting with a group of tribal sheiks, an American general spoke with evident frustration about the latest Iraqi city to fall into the hands of insurgents. "Not one dime of American taxpayers' money will come into your city until you help us drive out the terrorists," Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in his base in Tikrit, tapping the table to make sure he was understood. The sheiks nodded, smiled and withdrew, back to the city that neither they, nor the American military, any longer control. The city under discussion was Samarra, a small metropolis north of Baghdad known for a dazzling ninth-century minaret that winds 164 feet into the air. In the heart of the area called the Sunni Triangle, Samarra is the most recent place where the American military has decided that pulling out and standing back may be the better part of valor, even if insurgents take over. In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein.

THIS "MAN" KICKS WOMEN
But only if 3 Secret Service Agents are holding her down.

Watch him do it.


He is still unidentified. Have you seen him?
If so, reply here. TalkLeft says this upstanding member of the Conservative movement has been named and said name has been passed on. We wouldn't want y'all out there profiling red-haired white guys in college. Unless you know for a fact they're Republican.

Invoking 9/11 May Temper Views on Iraq War By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 5, 2004; Page A05 At last week's Republican convention, President Bush and Vice President Cheney repeatedly linked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq, largely abandoning the rationale offered when the Bush administration invaded the Persian Gulf country. Announcing the invasion on March 19, 2003, Bush said in a nationwide televised address that the United States "will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." Two days earlier, Bush had asserted in another address to the nation, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." But no such weapons were found after the invasion, and the subject was only fleetingly mentioned from the podium in Madison Square Garden. Instead, the war on Iraq was presented as a part of a seamless thread that stemmed directly from the terrorism of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have fought the terrorists across the earth -- not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake," Bush said, before listing Iraq along with the struggle against terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Ever since the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration has searched for explanations for how to defend the war, such as the need to bring freedom to the Middle East and to end the brutal nature of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government. With Bush's convention speech, the administration laid out its most sweeping case to date -- and campaign officials are betting voters will buy this retooled version of the need to go to war.

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And if you buy yet another explanation, you… wouldn't understand what I was going to say.

"Social Security Privatization - Eleven Myths (pdf)" by The Century Foundation makes it about as clear as possible. I copied over the explanations of my favorite myths.

MYTH 1: UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING BOLD, SOON, SOCIAL SECURITY WILL GO BANKRUPT. It is true that the government projects that the Social Security trust funds, now growing by more than $150 billion a year, will be drawn down to zero in 2042. But those same estimates also show that, after 2042, Social Security payroll taxes will be sufficient to finance about 75 percent of the payments that will be owed to the programs beneficiaries. These projections are made using extremely conservative assumptions about economic growth. If our economy continues to perform well, there is likely to be no shortfall at all. Therefore, what we face is a possible shortfall almost four decades in the future, not an immediate crisis or impending collapse. Although the possible shortfall after 2042 is not good news, Social Security has run smoothly with minimal reserves throughout most of its history. In the past, payroll taxes from workers were just enough to cover contemporary payments to beneficiaries. Congress created today.s growing Social Security trust funds, financed by the excess of current payroll taxes over payments, in order to partially pre-fund the system in anticipation of the growing future population of retirees. MYTH 2: WE CAN DIVERT SOME SOCIAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTIONS TO PRIVATE ACCOUNTS WITHOUT JEOPARDIZING THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM. MYTH 3: THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM WASTES MONEY THAT WILL BE SAVED IF WE INTRODUCE INDIVIDUAL PRIVATE ACCOUNTS. Exactly the opposite is true. The Social Security system costs far less to operate than private investment funds. Public opinion polls by Roper show that the public guesses the administrative costs of Social Security as a percentage of benefits to be more than 50 percent. In fact, administrative costs for Social Security are less than 1 percent of benefits, compared with average administrative costs of 12 to14 percent for private insurers. Administering millions of small accounts would consume a large fraction of revenues, especially if investors are permitted actively to manage their accounts. To these costs must be added the marketing costs incurred by private funds as they compete for worker.s accounts. Net returns on private accounts are reduced by the costs of management fees, account administration, and marketing. Economist Peter Diamond has shown that the administrative costs in countries that have set up individual accounts (Britain, Chile, Argentina, Mexico) reduce benefits by 20 to 30 percent compared to what the U.S. Social Security system would pay given the same resources. MYTH 4: SMALL PRIVATE ACCOUNTS WILL GET A MUCH BETTER RATE OFF RETURN THAN THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUNDS. MYTH 5: WELL MANAGED PRIVATE ACCOUNTS NEED NOT BE RISKY. All private investing is risky. If a person had acquired a broad index of stocks over his working life, retired and sold these stocks on October 18, 1987, he would have realized 18 percent less income per year in retirement than the person who had behaved exactly the same in every respect, except that he exited the market one day earlier. MYTH 6: PRIVATIZATION WOULD MAKE ALMOST EVERYONE BETTER OFF AFTER SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS. It is true that .pre-funding..putting resources aside today to earn returns until we retire.could make almost everyone better off after 75 years. But between now and then, we would feel the squeeze from saving for future retirement. What is more, prefunding is not the same thing as privatization. We could pre-fund future retirement through the Social Security trust funds instead of through individual accounts. The result in either case would be higher saving today and more secure claims by future retirees on the future economic pie. MYTH 7: PRIVATE ACCOUNTS GIVE THE AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD A CHANCE T GET RICH. A system of private accounts would shift risk from the government to retirees. But it would not offer opportunities to get rich. There would not be many investment decisions left to workers in a privatized system. The investment options offered to individual investors would have to be strictly limited, for two reasons: First, in order to control administrative costs, the number of investment options for each account would have to be very few. Second, in order to prevent workers from losing their retirement funds, most high-risk and novel investments would have to be ruled out. Such paternalistic measures are necessary unless we are willing to let people who mismanage their retirement accounts die hungry and cold. MYTH 8: FOR MOST RETIREES, SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS ARE A WELCOME BUT NOT AN ESSENTIAL SOURCE OFF INCOME. Without Social Security, which in January 2004 provided households an average benefit of $863 a month (around $10,000 a year), about half the elderly in America would fall below the poverty line. MYTH 9: AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE ESPECIALLY MUCH TO GAIN FROM PRIVATIZATION. This argument is based on the fact that African Americans have shorter life expectancy than whites and therefore collect retirement benefits for fewer years, on average. But African Americans also have lower average earnings than whites. Because Social Security.s retirement benefits replace a larger share of past earnings for low-income versus high-income beneficiaries, African Americans receive a higher annual payoff in comparison to their past tax contributions than whites. African Americans also own fewer assets, and have less extensive pension coverage than whites, so they are more likely to be highly dependent on Social Security benefits. Moreover, the flip side of African Americans. shorter enjoyment of retirement benefits is their greater dependence on the life insurance and disability features of Social Security. African Americans constitute 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 25 percent of the children receiving deceased worker benefits in 1996, and 18 percent of the workers receiving disability benefits. The claim that African Americans have especially much to gain from privatization overlooks a further feature of privatization proposals: annuitization. Every serious proposal to replace part of Social Security with private accounts includes limits on the way individuals may dispose of their retirement nest egg. To prevent a retiree from mismanaging the nest egg, jeopardizing his or her family, every retiree must obtain an annuity upon retirement, converting the nest egg to an income stream over the rest of the expected life. This process would create a system that is very similar to the present system, from the worker.s point of view. The retiree would receive an income until death, at which time survivors would receive support. There would be no additional bequest from the privatized retirement account. MYTH 10: PRIVATIZATION IS EQUALLY GOOD FOR HIGH-INCOME AND LOW-INCOME WORKERS. MYTH 11: PRIVATIZATION IS EQUALLY GOOD FOR WOMEN AND FOR MEN. Privatization would penalize women because they earn less, live longer, and interrupt their working careers more frequently than men.

Just a few little reminders of how we got into our current situation. You should also check out MoveOn PAC's 10 weeks program, now down to nine weeks. The seem to have hit on a good slogan: "George Bush: he's not on our side." This week's entry is "a real west texan" by Richard Linklater.

Quote of note:

False promises. "Anyone who pretends that this problem can be solved without tax increases and benefit cuts is either ignorant or lying," says Peter A. Diamond, institute professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and coauthor of Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach . "That is something that the politicians, for understandable reasons, are all ducking, because the issue is how do you address voters who aren't paying that much attention."

Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach is a book published by The Brookings Institute. An PDF excerpt is available for download (NOT online viewing, by the way). It's a good read, and can significantly cool the panic being spread over the "bankruptcy" of Social Security:

Social Security’s Long-Term Deficit
Social Security faces a long-term deficit, requiring some type of reform to put the system on a sounder financial footing. According to the most recent projection done by the Office of the Chief Actuary of Social Security, from its current balance of roughly $1.5 trillion, the trust fund is projected to first rise and then fall, reaching zero in 2042. At that time revenue from payroll taxes and the income taxation of benefits would still be sufficient to cover about three-quarters of projected expenditure. That fraction then declines slowly to slightly less than 70 percent in 2080. Thus, although some observers refer to the “bankruptcy” of Social Security, in fact a substantial revenue flow would still be dedicated to Social Security even after the trust fund is exhausted – and concerns that there will be nothing from Social Security for future generations are misplaced. Even so, everyone agrees that a serious political problem arises when the trust fund reaches zero: at that point, the system cannot pay all promised benefits out of the existing revenue structure.

Another description of the financial picture comes from considering an “actuarial balance” figure. This measure reflects the degree to which the current trust fund and projected revenue over some period are sufficient to finance projected costs. The period conventionally chosen is seventy-five years. When the projection shows insufficient resources to pay scheduled benefits over that period, the Office of the Chief Actuary calculates what level of additional resources would be sufficient to close the gap and leave the trust fund with a projected balance (considered a “precautionary balance”) equal to projected expenditure for one additional year after the end of the period. This measure of the actuarial deficit, presented as a percentage of taxable payroll over the next seventy-five years, is the key traditional criterion for evaluating Social Security’s finances. In the 2004 trustees’ report, the actuarial imbalance was 1.89 percent of taxable payroll. One interpretation of this number is that it indicates what payroll tax increase would be sufficient to finance benefits over the seventy-five-year horizon (and leave a precautionary balance as defined above), provided the increase began immediately and remained in force for the full seventy-five years.

We have to have this discussion, but it would be nice if it were based on facts. And now, the U.S. News and World Reports article that inspired this mini-rant. Money & Business By Lou Dobbs Time to touch the third rail Federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has chosen to up the already considerable stakes in the 2004 presidential election. Greenspan's warning of Social Security's impending fiscal disaster has struck fear among a large number of baby boomer Americans on the verge of retirement. …No federal government program is more important to the quality of life of our nation's seniors. Without Social Security, half of all seniors would live in poverty. The actual poverty rate for seniors in this country, though, stands at 10.2 percent. And not only the health of our seniors but that of our economy and society depends on successfully resolving the Social Security issue. Bush has suggested privatizing Social Security, a major part of his vision for an "ownership society," where more Americans own their homes and healthcare, and especially their retirement. But most economists are curious as to where the government would raise the estimated $1 trillion in transition costs necessary to complete the switch. The likely result would still be either a tax hike or benefit reduction, Diamond says. "Individual accounts are put forth as a third option . . . you can have tax increases or benefit cuts or individual accounts--that's a falsehood," he says. "Every plan that's had individual accounts has to increase taxes and cut benefits also."

So Weirdly Wrong A few minutes ago, a police officer passed the bench where I was sitting outside the [edit: Nantucket] Athenaeum, enjoying the mild temperature and the wifi signal, and he said, “Sir, you can’t use the Internet outside the library.” I said, “What?” (I’m pretty clever under pressure.) The officer in question (whose conduct was entirely professional, firm, and calm behind those mirrored shades) solemnly assured me that in order to use the library’s open wireless signal, I had to be seated within the library.

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Read the rest to see how absurd things have become. By the way, this is the guy under suspicion.

The Washington Post is picking on both major presidential candidates.

In his speech to the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Mr. Bush articulated a broader, more ambitious -- and, we'd say, more compelling -- vision than has Mr. Kerry of the stakes of this conflict and the means needed to win it. Once again the president passionately committed himself "to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope." Mr. Kerry has been largely silent, and occasionally skeptical, about such an aim. Yet it is simply not true, as Mr. Bush, Vice President Cheney, and countless other Republican spokesmen have contended, that Mr. Kerry does not consider the United States to be at war, or is unwilling or unqualified to fight. Contrary to the malignant and mendacious convention speech of Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), Mr. Kerry has said repeatedly that he will not give other nations a veto over U.S. military action. He has said he will consider preemption if necessary and has called for a considerable expansion of the U.S. Army. The Republican effort to cast doubt on these positions by citing 30-year-old interviews with college newspapers, or decade-old votes stripped of their legislative and historical context, is scurrilous. [P6: emphasis added] …Last week Mr. Kerry laid out a strong and mostly convincing critique of all that Mr. Bush had done wrong in Iraq, from failing to deploy enough troops to refusing to internationalize the occupation. None of these failings were acknowledged in Mr. Bush's account. But Mr. Kerry's own plan boils down to enlisting allies who can "reduce the cost" to American taxpayers and soldiers -- an unlikely prospect. …Mr. Bush, unfortunately, is also keen to dodge the realities of the war. Other than a vague promise to see Iraq "on the path of stability and democracy," he has offered voters no hint of a plan for countering the violence that continues to cost one or two American lives a day. He says he will stand up to every threat, but he says nothing about Fallujah, the western Iraqi city where an extremist Islamic regime backed by foreign terrorists appears to be taking root, as U.S. Marines stand by and watch. The president could also challenge Mr. Kerry on Iran -- with which running mate John Edwards has proposed an improbable "great bargain" -- or North Korea, where Mr. Kerry similarly advocates bilateral negotiations that already once failed. But Mr. Bush has no coherent strategy of his own for these two near-nuclear states -- and so they went unmentioned in a convention speech that tackled health insurance for employees of small businesses and funding for community colleges.

via It's Still The Economy, Stupid comes word of a series I really hope runs to completion. Seems policy is a better basis for setting the numbers than vice versa.

A Primer on Government Economic Reports -- Things You've Probably Suspected But Were Perhaps Afraid to Ask!" "Employment and Unemployment Reporting" (Installment One in a Series) By Walter J. "John" Williams Series Introducion In 1996 -- the middle of the Clinton economic miracle -- the Kaiser Foundation conducted a survey of the American public that purported to show how out of touch the electorate was with economic reality. Most Americans thought inflation and unemployment were much higher, and economic growth was much weaker, than reported by the government. The Washington Post bemoaned the economic ignorance of the public. The same results would be found today. Neither the Kaiser Foundation nor the Post understood that there was and still is good reason for the gap between common perceptions and government reporting: government data are biased in politically correct directions and increasingly have diverged from common experience and reality since the mid-1980s. Inflation and unemployment reports are understated, while employment and other economic data are overstated, deliberately. For several years, I conducted surveys among business economists as to how they viewed the quality of government economic data. The following were actual comments: · The senior economist of a major retail company told me, "Quality varies. The retail sales numbers are terrible, but money supply data are great." · The senior economist at a major bank offered, "There's a problem with money supply, but I think retail sales are pretty good." The point is that when an economist knows a sector well, he also recognizes the limitations and distortions of related economic reporting. Gathering and reporting accurate information on a timely (one-month) basis for components of the U.S. economy is nearly impossible. Nonetheless, most career government statisticians in Washington work diligently to provide the best information possible within the limits of the existing reporting system. A number of reporting distortions, however, are not accidental.

Back in July I took note of the changes in Department of Labor regulations such that religious groups are now allowed to make adherence to a particular set of beliefs a condition of employment:

The second thing I want you to notice is the straw man on which this is all based:

Currently, faith-based institutions can be barred from competing for federal contracts if they hire staff in accordance with their religious beliefs. The Labor Department will revise the current regulation to conform with Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and make it clear that faith-based institutions that secure government contracts are not barred from hiring members of their own faith.

Federal regulations have never barred anyone or any organization from hiring members of their own faith. What they did was forbid excluding people for the sole reason that they are NOT members of their own faith. In other words, they forbade religious discrimination. Now, not having read the new regs directly I can only infer their content (and therefore impact) from the press release. My problem is seeing the agency responsible for enforcing the law willfully misrepresent it. As written, it doesn't authorize a direct requirement that one belong to a specific faith. It DOES, however, authorize requiring a specific set of beliefs; there's no other meaning possible for "hire staff in accordance with their religious beliefs." You may be hard-pressed to see the difference. I understand. Totally.

Well… Quote of note:

When a conservative Catholic group brought this to the attention of his employer, saying Kerry's positions were not in keeping with Catholic beliefs, Ekeh was fired, he said. The organization told him he was being let go for using a work computer to make political postings during work hours. The conference declined through a spokesman to comment.

And don't think "beliefs" can't be extended to include politics. In fact… An Evolution at Work Tiptoeing Around the Party Line By Amy Joyce Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 5, 2004; Page F01 David Fernandez tolerated the sounds of Rush Limbaugh emanating from his boss's radio. He even liked to defend the National Public Radio broadcasts playing on his own radio. But this back-and-forth -- what he once considered interesting conversation -- turned hostile this summer when, he said, his boss accused him of being "sad and unstable" when Fernandez argued his support for presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). And when the boss's mother began blanketing the office with e-mails arguing for the reelection of President Bush, Fernandez tried sending out some of his own -- but was ordered to stop. So it was then, in early July, that Fernandez decided he was getting out. "This place is crazy," he said. He packed up his desk at the graphic design firm in San Marcos, Tex., and moved to California, where he enrolled in the Art Institute of California at San Diego. His former employer declined to comment on the situation.

The NY Times has several letters responding to African Americans: divided over semantics (that links to The Seattle Times, which is where I picked up the syndicated version of the story). The noblest of the letters are, of course, ahistorical.

The correct term for a person born in or naturalized as a citizen of the United States of America is "American." The tendency over the past few decades to qualify one's citizenship is damaging to the cohesiveness that is essential to a nation's credibility, strength and security.

Contrary to this person's education, we've been qualifying citizenship in this country from the very beginning. And if we pretend we haven't we have no reason to change, true?

Why this mania for hyphenated identities? Far from bringing people together, it separates them into cultural ghettos instead of absorbing them into the mainstream. Anyone, whatever color, born in this country or naturalized is an American. No hyphen needed.

Would that it were merely a matter of punctuation.

While sweating the presidential stuff you should keep an eye on your local races too.

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Democrats Compete to Challenge Senator By JONATHAN P. HICKS For a quarter-century, State Senator Olga A. Mendez has held a seat that was considered among the safest in the Legislature. Election after election, she won handily, usually with very little in the way of campaign money or competition. But this year, a very different scene is playing out in Ms. Mendez's district, the 28th, which includes much of East Harlem and sections of the South Bronx. Two years ago, Ms. Mendez changed her registration from Democrat to Republican. And with that change has come intense competition from Democrats, who hope to capture that seat as part of their long-term strategy to control the Senate. The election, on Nov. 2, is shaping up to be one of the most hard-fought local races this year because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the Republicans are eager to hold on to the seat. But even now, there is intense competition leading up to the Democratic primary on Sept. 14 between the two main candidates seeking to run against Ms. Mendez: City Councilman José Marco Serrano and a former state assemblyman, Nelson Antonio Denis. A third candidate in the Democratic primary, Agustin Alamo Estrada, a retired teacher, has run unsuccessfully in a number of elections. Mr. Serrano, 32, is the son of United States Representative José E. Serrano, one of the best-known political names in the Bronx, who has won re-election with overwhelming margins. The younger Mr. Serrano was elected to the Council in 2001 and agreed to run in the primary after several Democratic officials told him they thought he had the best chance of defeating Ms. Mendez, he said. Mr. Denis, 49, a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, represented East Harlem in the Assembly from 1997 to 2001, leaving after he was defeated in the primary by Adam Clayton Powell IV. Since then he has spent much of his time working on an independent film, "Vote for Me!'' A political satire that includes a cameo appearance by Senator Mendez, it was shown last year at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Whatever Mr. Denis's feelings about Ms. Mendez, he is far less inclined to talk about them than about his irritation with Mr. Serrano's candidacy.

This morning I noticed an article in the NY Times that was a perfect follow-up to Friday's Why affirmative action failed post. It's about the lack of enforcement of Labor Dept regs. Check it out.

Quote of note:

From the beginning of 2001 to the end of 2003, the economy added $1.317 trillion in gross domestic product and $4.2 trillion in debt. That means that each new dollar of economic output was accompanied by $3.19 in new debt. So now, for the first time, the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio stands at more than two to one. Throw in financial credit - the debt that investment banks and others use to finance trading activities and the like - and total debt has more than doubled since 1994. …But the economy's apparent reliance on credit to fuel everything from home buying to the military budget is troublesome. If incomes and revenues fail to rise, stressed consumers may have a tough time keeping up with payments. "It's been much more a matter of households borrowing than businesses," said Benjamin M. Friedman, a Harvard economist. "You have to hope that people are going to be able to service the obligations they've taken on."

The Next Shock: Not Oil, but Debt By DANIEL GROSS Published: September 5, 2004 WITH oil prices hovering above $40 a barrel, experts have calmed frayed nerves by noting that today's services-driven American economy is much less addicted to the black stuff than yesterday's industrial economy. From 1973 to 2003, after all, the amount of oil and gas needed to create a dollar of gross domestic product fell by half. Structural changes in the economy have let the nation absorb the recent shock of rising crude. That's the good news. The bad news is that other recent structural changes in the economy - the federal government's shift from surpluses to huge deficits, the national predilection for consumption over saving and housing prices that climb faster than incomes - have increased the country's reliance on another kind of fuel: credit. As a result, the American economic ship, which has weathered the recent run-up in crude oil prices, may be more vulnerable to sudden surges in the price of money. If the rate on 30-year fixed mortgages were to rise from 5.4 percent today to 7.5 percent next February, homeowners could get walloped.