Prometheus 6

US engages Africa in terror fight The US is rolling out a nine-country, $125 million military training program. By Abraham McLaughlin | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor …The training here in remote Chad is just one sign of how the US military is engaging Africa in the global terror war as never before. There are, for instance, joint US naval exercises with Nigeria this month. There are reported antiterror patrols along the Kenya-Somalia border. And there's the new expansion of the Chad program from a four-nation, $7 million project to a nine-country plan with an expected budget of up to $125 million. It aims to prevent terrorists from roaming in and around the Sahara desert. We're "looking at Africa as a place of growth for the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense," says Major Baker, standing in his command post under a giant shade tree. There's growing evidence of terrorist activities on the continent. And there's a need to protect Africa's rapidly expanding oil industry. So the US military is paying attention.

Navy Rejects Probe of Kerry's War Medals Fri Sep 17, 2004 07:45 PM ET By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy on Friday rejected a legal watchdog group's request to open an investigation into military awards given to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry during the Vietnam War, saying his medals were properly approved. "Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed," the Navy's inspector general, Vice Admiral Ronald Route, said in a memo written to Navy Secretary Gordon England. "In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards."

U.S. Plans Year-End Drive to Take Iraqi Rebel Areas By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 18 - Faced with a growing insurgency and a January deadline for national elections, American commanders in Iraq say they are preparing operations to open up rebel-held areas, especially Falluja, the restive city west of Baghdad now under control of insurgents and Islamist groups. A senior American commander said the military intended to take back Falluja and other rebel areas by year's end. The commander did not set a date for an offensive but said that much would depend on the availability of Iraqi military and police units, which would be sent to occupy the city once the Americans took it. The American commander suggested that operations in Falluja could begin as early as November or December, the deadline the Americans have given themselves for restoring Iraqi government control across the country. "We need to make a decision on when the cancer of Falluja is going to be cut out," the American commander said. "We would like to end December at local control across the country." "Falluja will be tough," he said.

Allies at IAEA Meeting Reject U.S. Stand on Iran Draft Asks for Suspension of Nuclear Work By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A22 VIENNA, Sept. 17 -- The Bush administration failed on Friday to persuade its closest allies and other members of the International Atomic Energy Agency to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran, settling instead on another request that Tehran voluntarily drop its nuclear program. A draft resolution, likely to be approved by the IAEA's 35-member board on Saturday, calls on Iran to suspend suspect nuclear work before the board meets again in late November. It also asks the Iranian government to provide U.N. inspectors with additional information about nuclear equipment and technology bought on the international black market. Iranian officials said they had addressed some of the issues raised by the IAEA and were prepared to meet other requests. For the past year, the U.S. government has been trying bring the Iranian nuclear issue to the agenda of the U.N. Security Council, arguing that Iran's government is hiding a nuclear weapons program. Bush administration officials had hoped the meeting this week would show progress on the issue before the November presidential election. But European and American diplomats said the negotiations produced more friction than consensus and said they were not sure the United States would have enough support from member countries to move the issue to the Security Council.

one of these days we're going to have a terminology summit.

fyi, here are my terms.

whitefolks - average american who knows he's white and knows what it means.

blackfolks - average american who knows he's black and knows what it means.

institutional racism: pretty much equals what you call 'systemic racism'. i prefer institutional because 'the system' is everything. institutions can be isolated. clearly institutional racism at dennys can't (and shouldn't) be cured the same way as institutional racism at nationwide insurance. but they can be cured. you want to talk about curing 'the system', where do you start? when do you finish?

individual racism: people believe in an idea or they don't. it's simple enough to investigate that despite the fact that nobody ever does. people generally don't bother to separate the idea from the act. so when somebody says 'prejudiced' i say that's just soft pedalling squishy language and excuse making. can you call somebody a nigger without believing black people are inferior? of course. can you think that black people are inferior without ever calling them a nigger? of course. can you believe blackfolks are inferior without ever doing anything racist? yes, yes, yes.

i say it's the idea that counts. it allows me to distinguish between intent and effect.

it's also possible to be a bigot because of institutional racism without ever asking yourself hardball questions about whether or not you are racist. i think this is the touchy area where a hell of a lot of whitefolks are. they have no idea what questions to ask, are afraid of the answers and won't dare ask anybody who's not white. so they either go ass-backwards into discussions saying 'i know i'm the ofay white racist but..' or start off with stupid shit like 'everybody is a little racist...'. understandable, dumb, probably not excuseable, especially since my answers have been on the net for as long as they have.

again that's a lot of nuance for people who are generally just interested in name-calling, or avoiding being name-called. but you and i know the net and name-calling is where most people are at.


the term you are missing is 'white supremacy'. black people can be white supremacists. that's exactly what an uncle tom is, a black person (fits into blackfolks) that believes whitefolks are superior. similarly, a 'banana' is an asian who wants to be white because she believes whites to be superior. yes virginia there are coconuts too.

here you can demonstrate that millions more americans believe in various forms of white supremacy than black supremacy (if that's the point you want to make). furthermore, you make racism something that's not 'owned' by blackfolks, which is an idea gets under everybody's skin, especially mine.

i'm not sure i get your idea of reversing the races, or putting a negro in whitefolks heads, so i won't say that i think it's not helpful until i get it.

but my prej

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my prejudice says it won't work. analogies don't work. role reversals don't work. just deal with the shit head on.

15% of the people who respond to my poll come out straight racist. not just bigoted, but answering 'true' questions like: 'races are naturally antagonistic' and 'each race has its unique message to the world'.

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As usual commenting on your comment could become a whole post.

I'm assuming when you say it won't work you see the intent of this pot as challenging racism or changing someone's mind. It's not. The intent is to communicate a specific subjective experience. I admit that's somewhat disingenuous…given the current state of discussion and the nature of humans there's a pretty specific set of probable reactions and responses a successful effort ould bring about. But my effort is seriously to bring a new piece of data into the discussion.

To do this I only needed to isolate a couple of specific ideas, The only difinitions in the repeated post that were mine were of nigger, racist, niggerism and racism. Stated raw because we react to them raw. All the elegant discussion is had a step back from the gut check we all make when we're hip-deep in it.

A terminology summit is an interesting idea—I came close enough to saying "amusing idea" that I needed to get this in here. For my part, I generally find it easiest and best to understand and assume the terminology of the folks I'm talking to. I'm pretty good at it and it hands me my best tools and weapons. Ed "Darkstar" Brown knows me from (what used to be) the Afroam-L mailing list and can confirm this.

Finally, for now, I note you find the subjective (idea) more important than the objective (action) and use objective measures to gauge things. I find the objective more important—more accurately, I don't give a damn about the subjective as long as the objective is correct. The most useful tool to give folks to keep their objective in check (most folks do want to) is a yardstick they can accurately use.

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Where do asians fit into all of this? Because there was a lot of talk about black and white. But Asians also play a pivotal role in many of the major "race" events in the last 25 years.

Look at the LA riots. Many white owned stores were passed by during the riots while the Korean owned stores were torn apart. (Site: "Blue Dreams" for more on relations between the africana, caucasian, and asian communities of LA)

A lot of class reductionists use the Asian American situation as an arguement for why we shouldn't talk about race but should only focus on class. I strongly disagree with this, but i'm curious how you work communities such as the Korean American community in LA into this system?

I understand how koreans can't be racist towards whites. But would you allow koreans to be racist towards african communities? And can Africans be racist towards Koreans or is that out of bounds?

Also, I worry about using analogies for racism that involve amounts of people. Because this lets people say "So once there is certain number of black people in the US, racism will disappear" - which is completely untrue. I think the most important points should be "Your bosses are Black. Your kid's teachers are Black."

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I had to add the following to the post:

LATER: I think I need to be clear. This is NOT a statement on race relations. There is NO statement on who hates or is capable of hating based on the rather ill-defined concept of race in any of this post, but in particular not in the text that follows.

What I'm doing is communicating the subjective experience of being Black, independant of economic class. Being an actual countable minority of the population is an integral part of that experience.

I can't speak to the subjective experience of being Korean or Asian in the USofA.

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ok i get you. yes and i think putting a negro in the head of whitefolks helps to convey the subjective experience.

i tend to think that white supremacy is 80% of the problem and the varying degrees by which all people buy into it determines the relationships between people of color.

it's the same brand of racial prejudices. for example. i don't think that koreans have come up with an entire new set of stereotypes to apply to blackfolks. white supremacy says 'niggers steal'. anti-semitism says 'kikes cheat'. koreans don't come up with new names for blackfolks or jews and attach different values.

but in addition to this there is a layer which is specific ethnicity by ethnicity. i would say that ethnic rivalries tend to be more specific beefs. they don't translate nationally. for example, the blacks vs jews conflict exemplified by the crown heights fights in new york city did not resonate in los angeles. blacks and jews here in los angeles simply don't have a negative history. but the issues between the lubavitchers and black muslims is legendary there.


btw. darkstar and i go waaay back. we need to get him into the blogosphere. actually, visioncircle.org is my multi-author blog. feel welcome to put your more interesting and authoritative stuff there. if things work out, it could be the subjective spot where negrophile is the reporting. a long time ago several of us dreamed of this, we called it 'higher ground'. it was lester kenyatta spence, ed brown, art mcgee, michael r. hicks and myself. hell, i still have the logos. lester is already posting regularly at visioncircle. i'm going to chase down the other bros. thanks for reminding me.

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Gah! Racism is prejudice or bias against anyone/any group by virtue of their race -- which may also be directly related to their ethnicity and country of origin.

I see it on ALL sides. Whites against peoples of ALL colors; peoples of all colors against whites and other peoples of color.

I've seen Koreans biased against anyone not Korean - pick another race/ethnic group/country of origin, I've seen it. I've worked with corporate-sponsored internal diversity groups as a consultant, watched these groups compete against each other because of racism. GAH!!!

NO ONE GROUP HAS EXCLUSIVE DOMAIN OVER RACISM!!! YOU -- ALL YOU HUMANS -- ARE CAPABLE OF IT!!!

What we need to do is remove race/ethnicity/country of origin as delimiters between people, see it for what it is -- physical responses to environment (genetics) and arbitrary social constructs (memetics), both of which are embedded in the smallest amount of human genetic and memetic material. The question becomes, which genes and which memes will rule this earth?

And then step back and take another look: the survival of all genetic and memetic material (human and otherwise) requires the complete co-operation of the entire human genome.

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Cobb:

You mentioned SCAA a while back, so I figured you knew Darkstar. Art is administering the remains of Afroam-L, whose death was caused by a pathogen I unwittingly unleashed years ago.

I believe I have Michael Hick's address around too. Last known as of February this year. I just sent him email with our blog addresses.

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Rayne:

Gah! Racism is prejudice or bias against anyone/any group by virtue of their race -- which may also be directly related to their ethnicity and country of origin.

I feel you, sis. And for purposes of constructive engagement, I'd work with you and your definition.

For purposes of this post, I'm taking that word, and the word "nigger," away from you and everyone else. Within this post, the thing you describe is known as "race hatred." And it's not under descussion.

There is NO statement on who hates or is capable of hating based on the rather ill-defined concept of race in any of this post.

Neither is there a description of the problem nor prescription for its solution. There is only the verbalization of a specific subjective experience, the essential experience of being Black independant of class, economic resources or any other quality.

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So...the "n-word" is a bad piece of memetic material, bad in that was deliberately constructed from other bad memetics (racism). There are other equally bad memetic material, like the negative words for Asian and Hispanic/Latin peoples or peoples of non-Anglo origin (chink, zipper-head, wetback, wop, and so on). Humans across the genome use them against each other - period.

We who are not black cannot know exactly what the qualia of being black is, any more than you can know the qualia of being Asian or female. The common denominator here is that none of us can know exactly of the qualia of other's lives, cannot share the same human experience with any degree of certainty. That is the unifying trait of humanity.

You cannot know what it is to be the only woman walking into a board room filled with male executives -- no matter the color of woman, no matter the color of the board members. You can hazard a guess to the relative qualia of discomfort. We all of us share that as humans.

We need to agree that we are all capable of sharing this discomfort, and agreeing that certain memetic material is inherently bad -- highly flawed, buggy social software -- that should belong to NO ONE. That one person's/group's negative label(bad meme) can easily be used against others.

As an example, let's use the MSBLaster virus; just because it only strikes MS WinOS users doesn't make it right for Mac users to use the label against them (say, "viral-loaded WinScum"), nor even for MS users to use it against others or themselves. The virus is bad -- we need to work to be rid of it. It could just as easily be turned against those not affected; kill the viral meme, regardless of who is affected.

Same with all other bad memetic material. It works against the entire genome.

The question is, how do we purge bad memes without affecting good memes? How do people kill memes, the "n-word" among them?

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Okay, Rayne. I'll work in memes with you.

The common denominator here is that none of us can know exactly of the qualia of other's lives, cannot share the same human experience with any degree of certainty. That is the unifying trait of humanity.

You're wrong. We all share a single human experience. What this post offers is a sharing of the Black experience, by using white experience. I haven't asked anyone to give up their viewpoint. I've asked them to insert their viewpoint into the situation Black people find themselves in.

For instance, I DO know what it is to be the only Black person in a board meeting full of white executives. It's a easy parallel to you woman's example.

There's a huge difference between saying you don't understand (which, due to lack of experience, is forgivable) and saying you CAN'T understand. When you say we can't share experiences, you actually declare there's a absolute difference between us. You can't build unity that way, understand?

The question is, how do we purge bad memes without affecting good memes? How do people kill memes, the "n-word" among them?

You don't...you're asking for light without shadow, sis. The best you can do is change the context in which they operate. Look at how the "liberal" meme was changed. How, in fact, the "conservative" and "libertarian" memes were changed.

In fact, initially there was only Black and White under consideration when dealing in race and racism. Your definition of racism represents a casting of the original meme into a wider context.

Those "bad memes" you mentioned are not the root memes, you see. They are values assigned to "identity memes" (to coin a phrase on the fly).

What is needed is either a context where the values are not invoked, one where the difference in identity memes are seen to have positive value sufficiently compelling as to be universally accepted or a framework that offsets the negative values sometimes attached to the identity memes.

We still have gills, fer chrissake. They operate in a prenatal environment and as our physical developmental context changes they change into lungs. But we don't get rid of them.

Tha arrow of time points in one direction only. The goal you want to accomplish can't be done by uncreating ideas. We must grow to the point that the ideas are insignificant parts of the whole.

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Earl, you wrote:
"I find the objective more important—more accurately, I don't give a damn about the subjective as long as the objective is correct. The most useful tool to give folks to keep their objective in check (most folks do want to) is a yardstick they can accurately use."

I find this really interesting and would like it if you expanded on it. What I hear you saying is that we can't control our gut responses to one another, but we can control how we behave to one another. Is that what you mean? Cause you know I am still working out my "liberal white guilt" [said with tongue in cheek, but we know there's more than a grain of truth in it] and I am wondering to what degree it is possible to purge myself of those knee jerk split-second bursts of emotion at the synapses.

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how do memetics and genetics and qualia translate into something that is tangible to the law and politics?

if these are tools to help us understand how the ideas flow and how to rid them from our minds, that's all good. but my point about the belief in ideas had everything to do with the fact that people will be suseptible to particular political arguments and will act on those ideas in what they percieve is their self-interest.

the racism inherent in jim crow was not a pervasive idea because of memetics. it was a pervasive idea because it was the law, and police, judges and elected officials enforced it. nobody bothered to map genetics anything onto negroes, people knew one when they saw one.

i want to know how understanding memetics helps us make a uniform hate crime standard across 50 states. if it cannot, then i have little use for it. i want to know how thinking about the qualia of whitefolks helps us turn around the politics of proposition 54 and why that way of thinking about the problem makes better sense than the kind of writing wood is doing.

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ibyx:

What I hear you saying is that we can't control our gut responses to one another, but we can control how we behave to one another. Is that what you mean?

Nope. I'm saying I can't control other people's gut reaction so I focus on their objective behavior. As Cobb said, a person can believe Black people are inferior without ever performing a racist act. My position is, as long as they don't perform a racist act I don't care what their gut reaction is because it has no impact on me.

I may go into white liberal guilt later.

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Cobb:

i want to know how understanding memetics helps us make a uniform hate crime standard across 50 states. if it cannot, then i have little use for it.

You're going to have little use for it, then.

You're looking to change the results within the current paradigm. Memetics is an attempt to change the paradigm, to swap it out. As it happens, I don't think it'll work for the majority of people…it's kind of like expecting a kid to learn jazz saxaphone by studying musical history. Which is not to say it's a useless field to study, but you gotta learn to play the instruments before studying the various stylings can help you expand your repetoire.

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memetically speaking (i think) there's one tool i have found useful.

the idea is to defeat essentialism by making the distinction between the look of race from the meaning of race. this is useful in the instruction of pro-colorblind people to get over the myth that 'mentioning race just reinforces racism.' they suffer the cognitive error of believing that one always means the same (putatively negative) things when one says 'black'.

the instructive device is to sing 'amazing grace' to the tune of the theme to gilligan's island.

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this doesnt' get body one out of the ghetto, but it's always fun to do.

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Hmm. I see for Cobb a need for definitions.

Meme = a transferrable, replicable piece of knowledge, information, concept or idea

Memetics = the aggregate of memes and the study of the same

Think of genes as hardware, memes as software. Genes can be modified to a degree, as can hardware, but there are design limitations. Memes change modified and suppressed to a larger degree than genes because they are intangibles.

A society's culture, its laws, its knowledge, even its religions are all memetic. We learn them, and pass them on once acquired. We can change memes, just as we've grown in knowledge over the centuries, changed our laws accordingly, changed our worldviews.

Prometheus believes that memes, like genes, can only be suppressed and not deleted. I'm not certain of that; I think of the ancient Egyptian rulers who struck out the history of others who pissed them off royally, literally removing them ("so let it be written, so let it be done"). They are no longer part of our conscious history; we struggle to know anything of them. Can we not do the same, refuse to own any part of racism including sub-memes/meme-lets like racial epithets and labels? Can we not excise them and leave our future heirs and assigns struggling to piece it into the historic meme?

Think of bad memes like racism as a type of virus that is infectious; it has certain limitations of infection, a fairly specific rate of contagion. We have a lot of examples of "cures" or "healing"; cannot we not get rid of this meme instead of just telling each other, "Hey, you don't know what it's like inside this particular meat suit."

[Promotheus: my guess is if you and I both walk into a board room filled with white male board members, none of them will expect YOU to get coffee for them. You still have the advantage of capital that comes with your gender. The single unifying theme is that every individual human experience is different; we have the opportunity to learn from each other to our mutual benefit if we learn to transcend and override the negative social software someone else transferred to us.]

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the instructive device is to sing 'amazing grace' to the tune of the theme to gilligan's island.

THAT is about the funniest thing I've read all month.

I think of the ancient Egyptian rulers who struck out the history of others who pissed them off royally, literally removing them ("so let it be written, so let it be done"). They are no longer part of our conscious history; we struggle to know anything of them. Can we not do the same, refuse to own any part of racism including sub-memes/meme-lets like racial epithets and labels?

If we were a command culture, like the Egyptians, a Deocracy, then the God we worshiped could issue such a command. But that's still done out of HIS self-interest, and still would take at least a generation to accomplish. It would still have holes in it. And as long as a social structure that implements the division existed…for instance some pharoahs tried to eliminate the worship of other dieties only to have them return after the pharoah's death…it will fail.

That's Cobb's point. Refusing to use the memes would have pretty much the same effect as Proposition 54...racism would continue, unspoken of, unreflected on because the social structure and mechanisms assume racial division. You are at a strategic loss by refusing to recognize those divisions are active.

my guess is if you and I both walk into a board room filled with white male board members, none of them will expect YOU to get coffee for them. You still have the advantage of capital that comes with your gender.

And your "get the coffee mechanism" applies to me when I'm in a department store. In what context do you find yourself rendered invisible as I have been as a consultant in board meetings? I'm sure you can find a parallel.

You say the only thing we share is that we can't share. You don't see a problem with that?

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And THAT response is a PERFECT example of the inability of humans to have a Vulcan Mind Meld.

When I talk about the ancient Egyptian culture as an example of writing out a meme, I'm talking about this specific act of writing out the meme -- not the expansion of the example to mean that we, a modern democratic (allegedly) society, should emulate Egyptian culture to a "T". It's the specific act of using agency, actively choosing the meme to use rather than allowing the meme to use us, actively choosing to suppress a meme to the point of extinction. It is this particular point of success which I look to, not the entire culture. (Christ, next you'll think I'm into embalming and cat worship...)

As for the example of humans' inability to share "qualia": I'll use Damali Ayo's exhibit flesh-tone series #1 as an example. A fairly random sampling of humans are used to interpret the color of human flesh, with widely varying results. If the interpretation of flesh-tones is this broad, what of anything else we humans experience that is not a singular point of reference, what of intangibles?

We have to agree to disagree -- and that in itself is a form of agreement, of contract, of sharing, communion.

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And THAT response is a PERFECT example of the inability of humans to have a Vulcan Mind Meld.

Be nice.

When I talk about the ancient Egyptian culture as an example of writing out a meme, I'm talking about this specific act of writing out the meme&helliplIt is this particular point of success which I look to, not the entire culture. (Christ, next you'll think I'm into embalming and cat worship...)


I haven't said you were suggesting we do it. You must receive if you wish to be received.

What I'm saying is the only way that will work is if we were a command culture along the lines of Egypt. That or universal agreement, which you will not get as long as a class of people benefit from the cultural structures that assume racial division. More, the written isn't the thought. Get rid of a specific word without getting rid of the thought and we'll just make another word.

The fact is, this entire discussion of memes has nothing to do with the original point of the post, which I stated. You fixate on memes, so (hoping we'd get to a point where you were receptive) I chose to work in your zone for a minute.

But let me ask you...how can you expect to deal in effective memes for a viewpoint you have no experience with? You want to tell folks how to get out of the house when you don't even want to examine the floorplan.

You CAN understand the subjective viewpoint of Black folks. I have given you the instructions on how to see it…at which point you will be no more able to describe it than I, which is why I didn't try to describe it.

When you have the means to understand, agreeing to disagree isn't a form of agreement, it's a form of avoidance.

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as soon as i checked ayo's site, i could smell the adrian piper in the air. i basically skimmed everything until i had proof. and there it was down near the bottom of the interview.

i think ayo's inspiration for 'postructuralist theorists' whomever they may be can be useful for artists, especially for performance artists. but i think such folks have painted themselves into the corner of hating spike lee for the rest of their lives.

i like the idea that there are anti-racist and gender-bending themes in the new forms of highbrow cultural production, and i appreciate the cleverness and subtlety of such artists. but i despair of such productions ever having the moral impact of an arthur miller play, and i look forward to the day when dramatic performances can set the world on fire as did lorraine hansberry in her day.

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R: And THAT response is a PERFECT example of the inability of humans to have a Vulcan Mind Meld.

P: Be nice.

I meant absolutely no disrepect in saying the above, Prometheus; that you were not able to deduce that is the limitation of this medium. The only way we can be absolutely certain of other's experience is through what would be a "Vulcan Mind Meld" -- but that is not possible. We can only approximate and agree that there will be gaps in our understanding of each other's experience. (You and I won't even agree on the same shades of green or red -- it's impossible.) Saying there is no gap, that we won't understand fully each other's experience, is denial of diversity. I expect you to be very different from me in a hundred+ ways or more; hell, yeah. That's important in as many ways.

p: What I'm saying is the only way that will work is if we were a command culture along the lines of Egypt. That or universal agreement, which you will not get as long as a class of people benefit from the cultural structures that assume racial division. More, the written isn't the thought. Get rid of a specific word without getting rid of the thought and we'll just make another word.

Getting rid of a word is only part of the meme, that is entirely true and that is my point. But we do have to start somewhere -- like the image of a burning cross. The burning cross in my mind has no other connotation than a threat of violence against people on the basis of their race. Remove that image long enough and the link to meaning may be broken.

Do you want to permanently imbue the burning cross with meaning by saying that YOU (black Americans) OWN IT? I don't think so if that comes at the risk of permanently embuing its associated meme of racism against black Americans.

Let me put it another way, perhaps in your own terms: if EVERYONE in the U.S. was a n*gger, could be called such by anybody, would the word continue to carry its original meaning? Is that one way of breaking not only the ownership but the underlying meme to which it is attached?

If NOONE in the U.S. were a n*gger, could we also break the link?

Pick another word-become-symbol, like the negative words chink, wetback, zipper-head, wop, so-on; what will it take to break any of them as well? Are these not as ugly to the people at which they are thrown? Should they want to OWN them at the risk of perpetuating them and the meme that gave rise to them? Really, can you know what it is to be a "gawddamned slanty-eyed yellow-skinned zipperhead"? Should an Asian seek to OWN that because of their history, regardless of whether you can get into that epithet? Or should the effort concentrate on breaking the entire meme -- words-made-symbols representing the notion of racism?

Much of this appears to be but an exercise in semantics and semiotics -- but human cult

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culture is built on semantics and semiotics. Our perceptions of reality, our consciousness, is reflected in semantics and semiotics. How do we change reality -- change the input and output of our perceptions and consciousness, to change the core of our culture? That is the question here.

Damn, I just lost another two paragraphs because of the weird way Haloscan is acting. I'll have to leave you with that much for now, Promotheus.

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Cobb, I frankly don't look beyond the artist's work or their own descriptions of what went into the work or what the work means to them. I don't give a rat's butt about anything more than that (including their source of inspiration), because the creative spirit of the artist and the interpretation of the beholder/participant requires extensive individual internalization. Art is too subjective for me to care much beyond a few degrees of contact (me and the artist; okay, maybe in case of Monet it's me, him and the gardens).

In the case of Ayo's Flesh-tone series #1 I know I made different observations than she shared about her creative experience. I wrote of it: Fascinating, really, that there were so many different reactions to her request and even more interpretations of the color of her flesh. It’s as if this were an experiment to document the range of differentiation in human experience of qualia – which in turn may even influence our reactions to other humans of all colors.

In what shade would you see me, I’m left to wonder? What shade of flesh do I see myself?

If there’s so many interpretations, why does it matter at all except as an expression of art?

Anybody's antipathy towards Spike Lee or Adrian Piper had nothing to do with my observation or experience. Maybe we don't need an Arthur Miller now either...

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Rayne:

Saying this:
And THAT response is a PERFECT example of the inability of humans to have a Vulcan Mind Meld.
followed by this:
(Christ, next you'll think I'm into embalming and cat worship...)
means that this:
I meant absolutely no disrepect in saying the above, Prometheus; that you were not able to deduce that is the limitation of this medium
at best reflects a limitation in the USE of the medium, not the medium itself. At worst, it's a game to make your point.

I state this directly so you know how to deal going forward.

We can only approximate and agree that there will be gaps in our understanding of each other's experience. (You and I won't even agree on the same shades of green or red -- it's impossible.)

The same would apply to me and any other Black person. You can approach it as closely as Cobb (who I only pick on because several others simply haven't posted in these comments).

You say you cannot understand the subjective experience of being Black. I say you are wrong, and have given youthe tools to do so.

In the sidebar is a link to the Racism discussion. The first article discusses how Black people are approaching this bottom-up, whereas the mainstream is approaching it top-down. Give it a read.

culture is built on semantics and semiotics. Our perceptions of reality, our consciousness, is reflected in semantics and semiotics. How do we change reality -- change the input and output of our perceptions and consciousness, to change the core of our culture? That is the question here.

That is NOT the question here. That is NOT what this post was about. Do you recognize that? If not, go back and re-read it.

In addition, you must recognize there is a HUGE difference between changing your perception of reality and changing reality. This was an exercise in changing your perception of reality.

I'll give your meme approach a try when you convince the rest of the world to do so.

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Art is too subjective for me to care much beyond a few degrees of contact (me and the artist; okay, maybe in case of Monet it's me, him and the gardens).

And yet racial experience is ALL subjective. It's ALL an interpretation of a human filtered through the memes one has absorbed.

This is why you conclude one can't understand another's experience. You have to get subjective to do so, and you won't.

There seems to be a dust-up over what should be THE article profiling George W. Bush on Wikipedia. They've suspended updates of the thing until it's all sorted out (which may be never). The differences between the disputed versions are a nice, concise listing of the differences in how Dubya is perceived…and they are stark.

Don't worry, this isn't creative at all. What are our goals in Iraq? No, no, not why did we invade the place. What are our goals now? People say we have to stay and fix it, or abandon it broken as though they were the only two options (as a side note, I think it's amazing that if you present two options that seem like opposites people are quite content to assume they represent the world of possibilities). From the administration's behavior it seems the goals are - Minimize loss of American lives - Minimize loss of American prestige - Minimize rejection of neocon policies - Minimize blame for damages The order of importance is open to interpretation. But it strikes me there's a straightforward way of dealing with these issues. Say "Oops." Tell them we fucked up, we have to fix it. There's this, this and this we're going to rebuild, then we'll get out of your way. Meanwhile, do your government the way you see fit. Three nations? What the hell do we care? (Especially since the Kurds will be sitting on a huge bucket of oil). It would be much less expensive in lives and treasure than continuing as we are now. The only cost would be to a couple of egos that really need deflating anyway.

I'm just not feeling creative today, so I'm going to do some structural stuff around the sites. After I watch a couple of DVDs.

Bush likability trumping record
By Dante Chinni …Deficits from surpluses? Botched life-and-death decisions? CEOs have been fired for much less. So seeing as we're all good, business-savvy board members of America Inc., why does the president enjoy a lead in the polls? Because, in the end, for all the chatter about how we want to run government like a business, many of us don't want it to. For many Americans it isn't really the Bush record or policies that matter, it's that great equalizer: the Bush persona. Even when people don't agree with the president, they often say they believe he's sincere. And in a world full of pseudo-events, pseudo-people, and even pseudo-places, that can be pretty compelling. Many voters have made the decision that, after looking at the options, they don't mind seeing Mr. Bush's face staring back at them from the front page of the newspaper every day through 2008. He may be wrong, sometimes on serious things, but he believes he's doing the right thing and he follows his heart. And in troubled times they find that refreshing. In other words, they simply like him - or at least the image of him as reflected in the media. It's hard to know someone you have never met. That's not exactly news. Bush's likability is well known. What's interesting is that, despite all the talk, if Bush gets reelected it won't really be the triumph of business culture at all. It will mean that early 21st-century American politics follows the rules of the country's other dominant culture: the culture of celebrity.

Actually, Republicans have stumbled onto something more important (because it's more fundamental) than likeability—predictability. We don't actually deal with the real planet, you see. We deal with the network of expectations in our head. Much of what we humans do on a systemic level is about coercing real world events to match the models in our heads. We really need things to behave in orderly fashion, we need to feel we understand what that order is , in order to decide what to do next. I think the Bushistas feel the "likeable guy" thing may be wearing thin. You can tell because they no longer present him as a guy you could have a beer at the backyard barbecue with. Now he's stable, consistent. But do you really want a President that consistently ignores the judgment of his intelligence reports? That attacks nations that are no threat to us? That turns world opinion against us? That transforms hostile but ineffective nations into terrorist generators? That give corporations a break every time they do something for YOU in the name of "balance"? That ignores impartial scientists because he doesn't like the objective results of their research? That supports constitutional amendments to reduce the rights of the citizenry? That budget the nation the way foolish consumers budget their household (it's not whether we can afford it, it's whether we can afford the payments this month)? Consistency is only good if you're not consistently wrong. If I were a Kerry guy (as opposed to an anti-Bush guy) I'd talk about how Kerry consistently hears all sides of an issue, consistently works to understand what it is he's making decisions about. I'd mention that he always reviews the outcome of his decisions and consistently adjusts them to fit the needs of the people, which Bush's adjustments have consistently favored corporations and the obscenely wealthy. Something like that.

New Charges Raise Questions on Abuse at Afghan Prisons By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 16 - Sgt. James P. Boland, a reserve military police soldier from Cincinnati, watched as a subordinate beat an Afghan prisoner, Mullah Habibullah, 30, the brother of a former Taliban commander, according to a military charge sheet released recently. The report also said that Sergeant Boland shackled an Afghan named Dilawar, chaining his hands above his shoulders, and denied medical care to the man, a 22-year-old taxi driver, whose family said he had never spent a night away from his mother and father before being taken to the American air base at Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul. The two detainees died there within a week of each other in December 2002. Now, 21 months later, the Army has charged Sergeant Boland with assault and other crimes and investigators are recommending that two dozen other American soldiers face criminal charges, including negligent homicide, or other punishments for abuses that occurred more than a year before the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Far from settling the cases, the charges raise new questions about who authorized the harsh interrogation methods used in Afghanistan and about the contradictory statements made by American military officials who, when questioned shortly after the men's deaths, said they had died of natural causes.

U.S. Says Iran Nuke Freeze Offer a Ploy Fri Sep 17, 2004 08:43 AM ET By Louis Charbonneau VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Friday it might extend its partial freeze of uranium enrichment in order to ease Western fears about its nuclear ambitions but a U.S. official dismissed this as a ploy to fend off tough U.N. action. "I don't reject the possibility ... of continuing the suspension for an additional one or two months, but this will be decided by the policymakers," Hossein Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters. Mousavian, who earlier this week said Tehran would soon begin enriching uranium, was reacting to news that the United States had compromised with France, Britain and Germany on a toughly-worded IAEA resolution that calls for an immediate halt to Iran's uranium enrichment program. U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton, who accuses Iran of developing atomic weapons, said it was an obvious attempt to fend off a possible report to the U.N. Security Council in November, which could lead to economic sanctions. "That is so transparent I do not believe anyone will fall for it," Bolton said in a statement.

Putin Accuses West, Chechen Rebel Vows More Attacks Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:38 AM ET By Jonathan Thatcher MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin accused the West of indulging terrorists on Friday, just hours after a Chechen warlord claimed responsibility for a wave of deadly attacks in Russia and threatened more. "A patronizing and indulgent attitude to the murderers amounts to complicity in terror," Putin said, widening a rift between Russia and the West over how to deal with Chechen rebel violence. Shortly before, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev said he had ordered the Beslan school siege in southern Russia in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, and threatened more attacks by any means he saw fit. "We have long warned about the threat of terrorist attacks, but our voice has not been heard," Putin told an international meeting of city mayors. "Moreover, we faced double standards in the attitude toward terrorism," he said, repeating charges the West has been two-faced by giving asylum to top Chechens and urging Moscow to negotiate with rebel leaders but rejecting the possibility of dialogue with Osama bin Laden. He said calls to deal with Chechen separatists recalled the failed appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II. "I urge you to remember the lessons of history, the amicable deal (with Adolf Hitler) in Munich in 1938 ... Of course, the scale of consequences is different ... But the situation is very similar."

Bush Unveils Intel Plan, Falls Short of 9/11 Panel Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:04 PM ET By Adam Entous WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush submitted a plan to the U.S. Congress on Thursday that gives a new national intelligence director authority over much of the intelligence community, but not the full powers sought by the Sept. 11 commission and key lawmakers, documents show. Bush, in a rare move, submitted his own legislation to key congressional committees, hoping to put his stamp on revamping U.S. spy agencies before the Nov. 2 presidential election. Under Bush's plan, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, the national intelligence director would have the authority to "develop and determine" the budget for the National Foreign Intelligence Program, which constitutes more than half of the $40 billion intelligence budget. But it said the intelligence director would do so based on the proposals of the individual intelligence agencies and after "obtaining the advice" of the defense secretary and other members of the cabinet. Critics said that fell short of Bush's promise to give a national intelligence director "full budgetary authority." The defense secretary could wield substantial influence over the budget process under the legislation. Funding would also continue to flow through the Defense Department so the White House can keep the overall intelligence budget classified, congressional aides briefed on Bush's plan said.

Quote of note:

The United Nations played down Annan's statement, which spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan felt was no different from what he has been saying for more than a year.

Powell Disputes Annan, Insists Iraq War Is Legal Fri Sep 17, 2004 01:20 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell disputed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's assertion that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was illegal and said in an interview published on Friday the comment was "not a very useful statement to make at this point." "What does it gain anyone? We should all be gathering around the idea of helping the Iraqis, not getting into these kinds of side issues," Powell said in an interview with The Washington Times.

AdWatch: Kerry responds on health care By The Associated Press | September 16, 2004 Details of new television ad from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to begin running this week: TITLE: "Not True." LENGTH: 30 seconds. PRODUCER: Shrum, Devine, Donilon and Squier, Knapp, Dunn. AIRING: National cable networks and in rotation in local media markets in 13 battleground states: Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, West Virginia, Ohio. SCRIPT: Kerry: "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message." Announcer: "George Bush's health care attack against John Kerry: Not true. The Kerry plan gives doctors and patients the power to make medical decisions, not insurance company bureaucrats. The Bush record: A $139 billion giveaway to the drug companies. A record 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums. 5 million more Americans without health insurance. George W. Bush. Wrong on health care. Wrong for America." KEY IMAGES: Kerry is shown approving the message. A computer screen from Bush's ad is shown with the phrase "Bush Attack Ad." Images of doctors with children and senior citizens are shown, then Kerry is shown on the campaign trail. The ad cuts to a picture of Bush frowning as he holds a microphone. ANALYSIS: The commercial is a direct response to Bush's claim in ads and campaign speeches that the Democrat has proposed "a government-run health care plan." The Democrat argues that Bush is mischaracterizing his health care proposal, and the campaign said it is seeking to set the record straight with the ad. The spot also is indicative of the campaign's latest attempt to question Bush's character. The Kerry campaign says polls and focus groups suggest that the Democrat can't win unless he undermines Bush's credibility. This ad suggests that Bush is lying about Kerry's proposal. Kerry's plan calls for expanding the existing health insurance system for federal lawmakers to private citizens through tax credits and subsidies. The government would help companies and insurers pay an employee's catastrophic medical costs if the firms would agree to hold down premiums. But that's only a part of his proposal and Kerry does not call for a government takeover of health care by any means. The ad is accurate in saying that while Bush has been in office the number of Americans without health insurance has risen to nearly 45 million in 2003 from nearly 40 million in 2000. And, while the president has attempted to improve the Medicare system, costs are soaring. However, Bush alone can't be blamed for the 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums. The premiums are updated annually by the Department of Health and Human Services under a formula that Congress must improve. The formula was laid out in the 1997 balanced budget bill Kerry voted for. Democrats and other critics argue that Bush's health care policies have favored drug and insurance companies rather than everyday Americans. To back up its claim of a "$139 billion giveaway" for drug companies, Kerry's campaign relies on a 2003 study from Boston University that estimated an increase in profits of 38 percent -- or $139 billion -- for drug makers over the eight-year life of the program. But another study in 2004 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, as commissioned by the Pacific Research Institute, found that drug industry revenues would rise 3.2 percent at most and could even drop by 1 percent.

That would be embarrassing to Kerry, but his answer was stupid. And no matter how they answer, it would be worse for Republicans.

---

Two GOP leaders attack Iraq policy Lugar and Hagel cite slow pace of reconstruction By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | September 16, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Two leading Republican legislators yesterday attacked the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, in one of the strongest indictments of the administration's Iraq policy from members of President Bush's party. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony from State Department officials seeking to divert almost 20 percent of the $18.4 billion in US reconstruction funds to security operations instead of public works projects and economic development. But the hearing quickly became a forum for attacking what the Republican committee chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, referred to as the ''dancing-in-the-street crowd" that wrongly predicted that Iraqis would be celebrating after the fall of Saddam Hussein a year and a half ago. He said the same White House officials have repeatedly failed to make necessary course changes. ''Now, the nonsense of all [the predictions] is apparent; the lack of planning is apparent," he said. Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, addressing two of the State Department's point men on Iraq, said the pace of reconstruction has been ''beyond pitiful. It's embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous." ''You don't win the hearts and minds of the people at the end of a barrel of a gun," Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, said. ''You do that through the process that we started here in the Congress appropriating $18.4 billion." As for the original architects of the Iraq war, he added: ''Maybe we ought to have a hearing with the inventors of this, have them come back up, all these smart guys that got us in there and said, 'Don't worry.' " The criticism signaled the growing worries in both parties that Iraq is slipping out of control, with large areas of country under guerrilla control and rising attacks on troops and Iraqi civilians. It also sent a clear signal to the White House that some Republican supporters of Bush's decision to invade Iraq last year are worried that the administration's Iraq policy is veering off-track.

Now, if the Bushistas hadn't stalled so long they'd have had a chance to bury the topic as they have most all the others. US ordered to turn over detainee data By Associated Press | September 16, 2004 NEW YORK -- Suggesting the government was acting as if it had something to hide, a federal judge yesterday gave Washington one month to release records related to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein chastised officials for moving at a ''glacial pace" in responding to nearly year-old Freedom of Information Act requests from the American Civil Liberties Union and four other watchdog organizations. ''If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals captured and held abroad," Hellerstein wrote. ''We are a nation that strives to value the dignity of all humanity." The groups brought a lawsuit in June, saying they wanted to expose the treatment of detainees. Hellerstein said though the government had raised ''important issues" of national security as a reason for the delays, ''merely raising national security concerns cannot justify unlimited delay." Megan L. Gaffney, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in New York, declined to comment. Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer, applauded the action. ''Increasingly, the administration's response to requests has been to stonewall or delay as long as possible until documents are forced out of them by a court," he said.

Kerry Mounts Fierce Attack on Bush's Economic Policies By ELISABETH BUMILLER DETROIT, Sept. 15 - Senator John Kerry lashed out at President Bush's economic record on Wednesday, saying that Mr. Bush had created more excuses than jobs and that in the closing months of his term he could no longer refuse to take responsibility for the failures on his watch. "His is the excuse presidency: never wrong, never responsible, never to blame," Mr. Kerry said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that amounted to his strongest attack yet on the Bush administration's economic policies. "President Bush's desk isn't where the buck stops, it's where the blame begins. He's blamed just about everybody but himself and his administration for America's economic problems."

The Return of Katherine Harris Every state has an obligation to run elections that are not only fair, but also appear fair to the average voter. After the debacle of 2000, Florida's officials should understand this better than anyone. But its top elections officer, Glenda Hood, is acting in ways that create a strong impression that she is manipulating the rules to help re-elect her boss's brother. After her maneuvers this week to try to put Ralph Nader on the ballot, she cannot be trusted to run an impartial election. In Florida's 2000 election mess, Katherine Harris served simultaneously as Florida's secretary of state and as co-chairwoman of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign committee. In her official capacity, she repeatedly took actions that favored the campaign. This year has turned out to be more of the same. When Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Ms. Hood as secretary of state, he chose someone with a history of partisanship, as a Republican officeholder and as a Bush-Cheney elector in 2000. Now Ms. Hood's politics appear to be influencing her election duties.

Reserve Chief Says Force Not Properly Prepared to Fight War on Terror By ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — The chief of the Army Reserve warned today that at the current pace of operations in the war against terrorism, the Army faced a serious risk of running out of crucial specialists in the reserves who can be involuntarily called up for active duty. The remarks by the officer, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, throw a spotlight on the military's existing mobilization authority, under which Reserve and National Guard personnel can be summoned to active duty for no more than a total of 24 months, unless they volunteer to extend their tours. As military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq continue with no end in sight, General Helmly said he was increasingly concerned that a growing number of Army Reserve soldiers in critical specialties that are contained mainly in the reservist ranks, like civil affairs and truck drivers, would exhaust their two-year stints and make it increasingly difficult to fill the yearlong tours of duty that have become standard.

Quote of note:

Dietz said he would issue an injunction ordering state funds for public education to cease within a year if the Legislature does not find an adequate solution.

Let me repeat the key phrase here:

an injunction ordering state funds for public education to cease

Leave no child behind indeed. Texas school funding is ruled unlawful Judge gives state year to fix inequity By Associated Press | September 16, 2004 AUSTIN, Texas -- A judge declared Texas's share-the-wealth system of school financing unconstitutional yesterday and gave the Legislature a year to find a new solution. The system is nicknamed ''Robin Hood" by some because it takes money from rich schools and gives it to poorer ones. The more than 300 school districts in the lawsuit contended that the system violates the state constitution by failing to provide enough money to give equal education to rich and poor students. State District Judge John Dietz agreed, saying that the gap between ''the haves and the have-nots" was too wide and that Texas faces dire consequences if it doesn't provide adequate funding to all its students. ''By 2040, we'll have a population that's larger, poorer, less educated, and more needy than today," Dietz said, acknowledging that correcting the educational inequities would require sacrifice. ''Who in Texas would choose this for our future?" Dietz said he would issue an injunction ordering state funds for public education to cease within a year if the Legislature does not find an adequate solution. The ruling is expected to be appealed.

Maggot Band-Aid First used centuries ago to treat battlefield wounds, maggots are proving to be a useful treatment to prevent post-operative infections. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) calls for maggot dressing to be applied to wounds twice a week for up to 72 hours each time. From the press release about a recent study on MDT in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases:

"Debridement, or the removal of contaminated tissue to expose healthy tissue, can be done surgically. However, maggots that have been disinfected during the egg stage so that they don’t carry bacteria into the wound have their advantages. The larvae preferentially consume dead tissue (steering clear of live), they excrete an antibacterial agent, and they stimulate wound healing--all factors that could be linked to the lower occurrence of infection in maggot-treated wounds."

Got new stuff at The Niggerati Network from S-Train and Professor Kim.

Afro-Netizen teams up with DCCC From now through the elections, Afro-Netizen will be featuring interviews with and guest blog entries from prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus. With the assistance of DCCC Executive Director, James Bonham, and staff, Afro-Netizen will be making the case for why and how African-American constituencies will benefit from a Democratic majority, and why it's imperative for us to understand and support this little known political entity often overshadowed by the Democratic National Committee tasked with, among other things, the weighty responsibility of supporting the candidacies and campaigns of potentiallly of the entire membership of the CBC, given that at present 100% of its membership is in the House.

There will be a big gap in posting times today. I have an appointment, but since I'm out I'll be hitting the bookstore. Probably McGraw-Hill in Manhattan, because it's huge and has all manner of wonkiness on its shelves. The topic I'll be getting references on can be called (depending on the level of sarcasm one prefers)

• Sorcery and the shaping of collective reality
• Manipulating and misleading both vast numbers of people and individuals
• Marketing

This is not so much for me directly as it's ground I've covered before (I participated in the occasional unusual publicly funded program as an adolescent). It's more that I'm looking for better ways to explain things. It takes but little consideration to see how useful such stuff is in the political long game once you chosen an outlook and goal. LATER: More here.

The Black Commentator notes the slimy radio ads certain Black(face) Republicans are targeting Black communities with are being challenged by real, issues-based ads.

The ads skillfully focus audience attention on the race-based character of Bush’s policies and popular base, in hard-edged, straightforward language. Some key phrases:

"Bush said he would leave no child behind. But he wasn't talking about your child." "Bush said prosperity was right around the corner, but he wasn't talking about the corners in your neighborhood." "Bush has a plan for America. But you're not part of it."

Democrats are going “toe to toe” against a Republican campaign to pollute Black-oriented media, principally radio, with negative and voter suppression ads in key “battleground” states, say officials at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The official Democratic counterattack has been hugely reinforced by multibillionaire George Soros’s independent “527” outfit, The Media Fund, which will spend $5 million on Black-oriented media between now and election day. The Media Fund has already spent $43 million on ads with themes ranging from “Ohio Outsourced” to “No Oil Company Left Behind,” “Bush and Halliburton” and “It’s About Jobs.” According to Clifford Franklin, president of St. Louis-based The Fuse, the agency that created the Black ads, the Soros-financed media campaign is “aimed particularly at those who have an extremely cynical view of the political process" – that is, African Americans between the ages of 18 and 35. The message: "Don't keep getting played"

LATER: Waveflux has more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Health Care Humbug …The Bush campaign responded with an ad that made the Kerry campaign look like a model of honest rhetoric. "John Kerry: He actually voted for higher Medicare premiums -- before he came out against them," the Bush ad said, managing to simultaneously blame Mr. Kerry and summon the Kerry-as-flip-flopper image. The ad seeks to score points off Mr. Kerry's statement that a 1997 law instituting the premium formula was a "day of vindication for Americans" -- as if Mr. Kerry had been celebrating socking it to seniors. In fact, the law, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, included a well-intentioned effort to rein in Medicare costs, but what Mr. Kerry was praising was its child tax credits for working-class families and expanded coverage for uninsured children. Does Mr. Bush disagree with that assessment? This week the Bush campaign unveiled an ad accusing Mr. Kerry of advocating "a government-run healthcare plan" that puts "Washington bureaucrats in control." This is not a caricature of Mr. Kerry's plan -- it's fiction. The cost of Mr. Kerry's plan is open to debate; the Kerry campaign puts it at $653 billion, while the Bush campaign, not surprisingly, cites the $1.5 trillion estimate of a conservative think tank. What's not open to debate is the falsity of the Bush campaign's description of the Kerry plan as "a hostile government takeover of our nation's health care system." In fact, what's striking about Mr. Kerry's approach is the degree to which it builds on the existing system. There are no employer mandates, no price controls, no premium caps; instead, Mr. Kerry seeks to lessen the financial pressure on employers through a voluntary program in which the government would shoulder some of the costs of catastrophic care. He also attempts to lower insurance costs for individuals and small businesses by letting them buy into a version of the plan offered to federal employees. And he would expand coverage for, among others, uninsured children -- in the very government program for which Mr. Bush pledged, in his nomination acceptance speech, to "lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up."

AUTHOR:	Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
QUOTATION:	A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
ATTRIBUTION:	Essays. First Series. Self-Reliance.

The Bush Admonistration is wasting time, money and homeland security when Novak's hypocritical ass could have resolved this long ago. Yes, hypocritical:

NOVAK: The -- Margaret, I believe -- I don't know of anybody who changed their opinion. "The Boston Globe" got a new expert who said the thing probably is authentic. In the same story, they went back to the expert that "The Washington Post" had used. He said it isn't authentic. I think it's going to be very interesting to find out if these are forged or phony documents. That's -- as a journalist, I think that's a very interesting story. I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got these documents from. They didn't get them from a CIA agent. I don't believe there was any laws involved. I don't think we'll have a special prosecutor, if they tell. I think they should say where they got these documents because I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS. Why did CBS not go to the -- to Killian's family and get -- and ask them about it, as ABC did, and got these quotes, and they said they think they're phony documents -- I thought -- I thought that the "60 Minutes" thing by Dan Rather was a -- was a campaign operation, rather than an attempt to get to the bottom of the truth. HUNT: Robert Novak, you're saying CBS should reveal its source? NOVAK: Yes. HUNT: You do? You think reports ought to reveal sources? NOVAK: No, no. Wait a minute. HUNT: I'm just asking. NOVAK: I'm just saying in that case. HUNT: Oh. NOVAK: I think -- I think it's very important. If this is a phony document, the American -- the people should know about it. HUNT: So in some cases, reporters ought to reveal sources. NOVAK: Yes. HUNT: But not in all cases. NOVAK: That's right.

Anyway… Post Source Reveals Identity to Leak Probers By Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A02 A Washington Post reporter's confidential source has revealed his or her identity to the special prosecutor conducting the CIA leak inquiry, a development that provides investigators with a fact they have been pursuing in the nearly year-long probe. Post reporter Walter Pincus, who had been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury in the case, instead gave a deposition yesterday in which he recounted his conversation with the source, whom he has previously identified as an "administration official." Pincus said he did not name the source and agreed to be questioned only with the source's approval. "I understand that my source has already spoken to the special prosecutor about our conversation on July 12 [2003], and that the special prosecutor has dropped his demand that I reveal my source. Even so, I will not testify about his or her identity," Pincus said in a prepared statement. "The source has not discharged us from the confidentiality pledge," said The Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr.

Fortunately, Digby don't give a damn. What The White Men Want Apparently most white guys are so egotistical that they think they could be president and so they want a president who is just as stupid as they are. People were offended by the title of Michael Moore's book, but the truth hurts.

George W. Bush has it down: the "bring 'em on" macho sensibility, the public swagger, even the quick-draw High Noon cowboy stride. Call it the testosterone factor. It's one reason Bush has maintained a strong appeal to white men throughout his presidency, especially in the South and Southwest. [...] "Part of it is a Republican thing," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, "but a good part of it is a Bush thing. For guys who drank and loafed their way through college, he's a familiar figure." And, it turns out, a popular one. In his early years, Bush was a likable party animal, seemingly committed to a lifestyle of making wisecracks, chasing women, and guzzling brew. He says he reformed two decades ago, giving up alcohol and becoming a born-again Christian. As president, he has come across in an equally comfortable way to white men--as a strong commander in chief and a conservative who seeks to return honor and responsibility to public life. What works for most white men (as opposed, for example, to African-American men, who evaluate the president in starkly different terms) is Bush's reputation as an "average guy," says a senior White House official--the opposite of what California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously calls "girlie men." Baker says Bush "has a down-to-earth quality that men find appealing. You know he won't slip off to a quiet place and strum a six-string guitar." And his support among white males has helped Bush open up a 52-to-43 percent lead over Kerry among likely voters, according to that Washington Post /ABC News poll.[bullshit ed.]

Love Masochism? Vote BushCo! Could four more brutal years of the Dubya nightmare actually be *good* for America? - By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, September 15, 2004 …Call it the fatalist maxim: The only way the national soul can really change is through serious crisis, through near-death apocalypse, through things getting so dire and tormented and swollen that something finally has to give, the psycho-spiritual levee at last has to break. And it won't be the slightest bit pretty. But it will be mandatory. And in the long (long, long) run, ultimately healthy. Sort of like finally purging a massive cancerous lump from your colon. Only not as much fun. History and the culture, it would seem, bear this view out: We don't shun pollutive monster SUVs until gas prices hit five bucks a gallon. We don't quit smoking until we have a lung removed after coughing up enough blood and phlegm to gag a horse. We don't take care of our bodies until after that second heart attack and we don't ease up on the toxic garbage foods until we get so fat they have to haul us to the lipo appointment with a forklift. We don't lift a finger to protect the environment until the hurricanes slam down and the heat waves crack the streets and vaporize your precious swimming pool and ruin the ski resorts. And even then we just sort of shrug and move somewhere else. We ignore the Social Security nightmare until 70 million boomers retire and the infrastructure collapses. We don't touch the truly dire water-supply issue until the reservoirs dry up and the pipelines crack and Earth recoils. We glut on the planet's natural resources until the land is choked and billions go hungry and even then we seem to think, well, why the hell don't they get themselves a nice Costco? We are, ultimately, a species of stasis and lethargy. We are rarely sympathetically proactive, always violently reactive -- and only when the threat is immediate and overwhelming. We have a fetish for shortsightedness and instant gratification and damn the costs and the impending toll on our stunned mal-educated children. We move, in short, only when we have to. So then. Maybe it has to happen. Maybe we need four more years of BushCo (though not, let us pray, 16 years of toxic Republicanism) just to see how bad it can get, to snap us out of this fearful lethargy, this ignorant numbness, this weird and tragic belief that it is only through sheer faux-macho posturing and pre-emptive bombings and through decimating foreign relationships and igniting holy wars and trying to prove that our angry acidic well-armed God is better than their angry acidic well-armed God, that we are actually safe and healthy and spiritually attuned.

Love Masochism? Vote BushCo! Could four more brutal years of the Dubya nightmare actually be *good* for America? - By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, September 15, 2004 I have a good friend who believes, gloomily, bitterly, resignedly, that not only are we in for four more years of painful and cheerless BushCo-branded tyranny and misprision and aww-shucks dumb-guy shtick, but also that we are actually at the beginning of a long, brutal, fear-based Republican juggernaut that will last a good 16 more years, at least. Because this is how long it will take for the current horrific conservative cycle to play itself out, and this would resemble a more typical and historically proven 20-year pendulum swing, in this case one toward neoconservative right-wing hate and homophobia and warmongering that will careen us toward heretofore unprecedented extremes of sadness and isolationism and far too many overweight white people with guns. But here's the catch. Here's the argument: This dark era, this wicked 20-year dystopia America could now be facing, it might be a very good and necessary thing indeed. Not, as you might dream, because four more years of BushCo and a dozen more of sneering Republican domination means there will likely be good times ahead. Not because we will enjoy an unprecedented era of peace and stability and generosity and environmental sustenance, humanitarian progress and U.N. cooperation and fiscal responsibility and a generally relaxed and open-minded attitude toward religion and multiculturalism and sex. I mean, don't be ridiculous. Besides, the Clinton era already happened. But, rather, it will be necessary because the moral and spiritual and physical hemispheres of our existence will quickly become so dire and toxic and the nation's socioeconomic situation will become so extreme and desperate that maybe, just maybe, we will finally learn something. This is the argument. It is bitter and defeatist and, maybe, if you let your inner devil's advocate speak, a little bit true.

via Slashdot Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine Posted byCowboyNealon Wednesday September 15, @06:54PM
Matt Clarewrites "Researchers at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) recently found that beer has the same positive qualities that wine has previously been found to have. The media release quotes professor John Trevithick, 'We were very surprised one drink of beer or stout contributed an equal amount of antioxidant benefit as wine, especially since red wine contains about 20 times the amount of polyphenols as beer.' For more info on how beer helps police harmful free radicals in blood, The London Free Press also has an article."

They're wasting time, wasting money and wasting lives by posturing instead of working on the issues that need resolving. Though I believe they've managed to focus long enough to give themselves a pay raise… And they won't stop ignoring your issues in favor of their personal (power) ones if you don't make them pay.

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To Congress, Passing Bills Not the Point In a highly charged election season, Republicans are bringing up measures designed to put Democrats on record. By Richard Simon Times Staff Writer September 16, 2004 WASHINGTON — You don't have to turn on the TV to see campaign ads these days. You can watch Congress. The Republican-controlled House and Senate have begun taking up bills, not with any expectation they will become law, but with the intention of stoking the presidential campaign and energizing the party's political base. Congressional Republican leaders are bringing up measures — such as constitutional amendments to ban flag burning and same-sex marriage — to highlight differences between the parties and between President Bush and the Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. Consider the proposed amendment, supported by Bush, to ban same-sex marriage. In the Senate, it fell far short of the votes needed to break a filibuster. No matter that it's already dead; the House plans to take up the measure before adjourning in early October. "If you can't make a law, you make a point," said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College. Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky added: "There's no doubt that Congress is trying to use votes on hot-button topics for political gain before the November election. There is perceived political gain in just having a vote."

stolen from Josh Marshall Soros lodges formal complaint against Hastert before the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Below is the text of the letter ...

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Dear Members of the Committee: I am writing to encourage the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to create an investigative subcommittee to examine the conduct of Representative Dennis Hastert under House Rule 43, clause 1: "A Member, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives shall conduct himself at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives." In an August 23rd radio interview and an August 29th nationally broadcast television interview, Representative Hastert deliberately and repeatedly issued an innuendo – which he cannot substantiate because it is false – that I may have received illegal drug money. The use of such dishonest smear tactics reflects discredit upon the House of Representatives and warrants the investigation of your Committee. The texts of Representative Hastert’s remarks are attached. Representative Hastert has attempted to pass off his comments as either a misunderstanding or a disagreement about policy. Both arguments are demonstrably false. Representative Hastert made innuendoes about alleged facts, namely that I might be receiving “drug money” from “drug groups.” That he made and then repeated this smear demonstrates that there is no misunderstanding about the implication of his statements – or their purpose. Representative Hastert now seeks to excuse his conduct by saying that this is a disagreement over groups to which I give money. The indisputable fact is that he alleged that I might be receiving “drug money” from “drug groups.” His comments were explicitly about the source of my income, not its use. This slander is invented out of whole cloth. Indeed, the only other examples of this bizarre assertion of which I am aware are the equally irresponsible accusations of the Lyndon LaRouche campaign and organizations, which bear a strong resemblance to Representative Hastert’s remarks. Excerpts of comments from the LaRouche campaign and organizations are attached. Representative Hastert has the right to feel strongly about his opinions. He has no right to fling assertions of possible criminal conduct at those with whom he disagrees. This kind of insinuation – that a private United States citizen was in league with drug cartels and may be receiving funds derived from criminal activity – has no place in public discourse. The fact that this profoundly disturbing innuendo was made in the context of criticizing an American citizen’s efforts to participate in the political debate about the future of our country strongly suggests a deliberate effort to use smear tactics, intimidation and falsehoods to silence criticism. Representative Hastert has had numerous opportunities to apologize for and retract his remarks. He was explicitly given the opportunity to clarify his remarks during the August 29th interview, and he chose instead to repeat the innuendo. Not only has he declined to apologize, he has made new, false accusations. Such conduct brings discredit on the House. It is inconsistent with basic notions of fair play and open debate that are the basis of our Constitutional system, and it is all too reminiscent of the McCarthyite tactics that were used to such scurrilous effect to stifle dissent during one of the darkest periods of recent United States history. Members of both political parties have recently decried “the politics of personal destruction.” It is time for the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to formally declare that smear tactics and innuendo are discrediting our political process and the House of Representatives as an institution by taking appropriate action to investigate and censure Representative Hastert for these outrageous remarks. Sincerely, George Soros

Paul Glastris posting at Political Animal pointed up this anti-Bush ad campaign site…that's a link to the site, and you should NOT skip the Flash intro. The ad they want to air is on the sidebar. They get a donation tomorrow morning.

Fair Shot almost gets it:

The central insights of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove (and, I suspect, most of the right wing machine) into the manipulation of the political process are twofold:

Act as if there are no facts. There are simply things that people say or believe, and other things that other people say or believe. Act as if there is no causation. There are simply things that people do and other things that happen. There is no connection.

These central insights can be combined in interesting ways. For example, there are things that we say people do, and things that we say people believe. (The "some people say" canard beloved of Fox and George Bush himself) Or, there are things that we do, and then things that we say happen (tax cuts for the rich generating jobs). But the essence is that there is no reality, no facts, no causation. Therefore, there's no shame in being caught in a lie nor any reluctance to persist in the same lie. To paraphrase Jack L. Chalker: "No break rule. No rule for Republicans break."

That is what it looks like, but even that's too much rationality. It's more like this:

One of those hierarchically significant people, I'll call him George (because that was his name) explained to me the purpose of rules. Prior to the conversation I thought rules were intended as a guide, or to insure a rational environment. This gentleman, being a maker of rules as opposed to a follower of them, had a different perspective. George explained to me that no one looks at what you do as long as nothing goes wrong, and even if they do check they still have no way of knowing what truly happened. All they know is what you recorded and if that's enough to explain the situation at hand, you don't have to say another word. No one can question your judgment…as long as you can document that you followed the rules…no matter how screwed the result. More, a set of rules or laws broad enough to govern a social situation as complex as a workplace will have a sufficient number of rules to insure you can find one to support any personnel decision you'd care to make. In other words, George said, rules are used, not necessarily followed, by people in decision making positions. This accorded with my observation that the main outward sign of power is that a person can decide a situation falls outside the rules and act independently of them. George explained it very concisely: "Fuck the rules. They're only there to cover our asses. If I want to do it, I will."

I recognized this years ago, and have long since stopped fighting it. If you REALLY want to understand, there's a book, The 48 Laws of Power, that you will likely find as disgusting as enlightening.

The Patriot Act has not gone away. And even when it does you can count on bits being snuck into unrelated legislation so it would be a good idea to get paranoid about the part of it that annoys you the most. The Campaign for Reader Privacy focuses on the ability to secretly subpoena your library and book purchasing activity.

AN INFORMAL POLL If you have not considered the issue of reader privacy, or are a fence sitter, we suggest you ask yourself, your friends, or a few random customers the following:

• Are you aware that the Federal Government has the right to make bookstores and libraries tell them what you read?
• If you believed the government would learn what you were buying, are you more likely or less likely, to buy books in the following subjects:
  • Firearms & Second Amendment rights
  • Depression, anxiety and personal medical issues
  • Addiction & recovery
  • Abortion, pro-choice or pro-life issues
  • Sexuality

And last:

• As credit card transactions can be traced, do you believe your privacy is "better protected" if you pay cash?

The answers will get you off the fence.

Actually, this shouldn't be a problem. This past July a vote to amend the act was taken and when the fifteen minutes allotted to vote was coming to a close the bill—which had 150 co-sponsors between the House and Senate—was passing. Typical of the House leadership, they decided they needed more time to browbeat a couple of guys and they changed the mind of ten Republican supporters of the bill. Final vote was a tie. Now look at that list and be honest. Do you really want Queen Hillary to know you bought twelve copies of The Turner Diaries? The Campaign for Reader Privacy has an online petition you should use to give your Congressman's conscience a little nudge.

While the right is feeling all triumphant about it's victory over CBS and Dan Rather I thought I'd mention a few more rational views of what the blogging community can be. Douglass Rushkoff does a little navel-gazing

What made the early Internet so very threatening to the mainstream media was not just the new opinions being expressed, but the fact that people were spending hours of their lives doing something that didn't involve production or consumption in the traditional market sense. Families with Internet connections were watching an average of nine hours less commercial programming each week. The threat of rave culture was that it was an alternative economy. The kids were no longer going to the mob-run nightclubs, the police weren't getting their cut, and the liquor distributors weren't making any money. Those of us involved in rave - or at least many of us - didn't realize that's why they were such a threat. Likewise, I believe the greatest power of the blog is not just its ability to distribute alternative information - a great power, indeed - but its power to demonstrate a mode of engagement that is not based on the profit principle.

But Dan Gillmore goes deep. Back in May David Neiwert at Orcinus started a discussion about a Media (actually, New Media) Manifesto. It was interesting and ambitious and I don't know what ever became of it. But it looks like Dan Gillmore fleshed out the concept and wrote a book about it; A book with a Creative Commons license. It's titled, "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People." It, too, sounds a bit triumphal, but it's because he's pointing out particular successes. The qualifications applied to the predictions show he's not actually getting carried away with himself. You should grab a chapter just to see if it gives you any ideas.

Lester Spence has an article up on Africana on the utility of Bushisms as well as a follow-up at Vision Circle which basically asks, why vote for the village idiot just because he's already President? Okay, but read it to find out what he's actually basically asking.

I can't emphasize how important it is to make sure everyone understands this final attempt to reestablish feudalism for what it is.

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Quote of note:

In the past nearly three years of economic recovery, the distribution of economic growth has become more skewed than at any other time in modern memory. Currently, 47 percent of growth is flowing to corporate profits, by far the largest share than that in any of the other eight post-World War II recoveries. Fifteen percent goes to wages and salaries, the smallest share of economic growth in more than 50 years. To make matters worse, the share of compensation that is devoted to health and pension benefits is far larger during this recovery than in any other, representing a further squeeze on the wages and salaries of ordinary Americans. In 2004, take-home pay as a share of the economy dropped to its lowest level since 1929, when the government started keeping records. [P6: emphasis added] All of this would make the drive for a wage tax laughable, if only it were a joke. And yet, when he says "ownership society," a wage tax is exactly what Mr. Bush is driving at.

Taxes for an Ownership Society When President Bush talks about an "ownership society," hold on to your wallet. The slogan, like "compassionate conservative" before it, is sufficiently vague to mean many things to many people, and the few details that Mr. Bush has provided - encouraging more home ownership and offering new tax-sheltered savings plans - seem innocuous enough. But in tax terms, "ownership society" means only one thing: the further reduction, if not the elimination, of taxes on savings and investments, including taxes on dividends and on capital gains on stocks, bonds and real estate. That, in turn, means, by definition, a shift in the tax burden onto wages and salaries - or, put more simply, a wage tax. The regressive results would be appalling. The richest 1 percent of Americans earn just about one-tenth of total wages and salaries, but almost half of all income from savings and investments - income that would be largely, perhaps entirely, untaxed in an "ownership society." In contrast, taxable wages and salaries make up almost all of the income of most Americans. The Bush camp has been floating the idea that what the president is getting at is a consumption tax. But the administration is not talking about a true consumption tax, which would apply to spending regardless of where the money comes from - from your paycheck, cashing in your stocks and bonds, selling your house, or borrowing. It is, in effect, talking about a tax on wages.

Sharon Says He Will Not Follow Road Map By KARIN LAUB Associated Press Writer 4:27 AM PDT, September 15, 2004 JERUSALEM — Israel will not follow the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan and could remain in much of the West Bank for a long time after it withdraws from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday. Sharon's comments were his most detailed yet on his long-term vision for the region. Palestinian officials said the remarks confirmed their fears that Israel plans to draw its own borders and keep a large chunk of the West Bank, rather than negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians as the road map envisions. In violence Wednesday, 11 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops in two West Bank towns. Among the dead were at least seven fugitives and an 11-year-old girl, Palestinian hospital officials said. [P6: What has this got to do with the story at hand?] Sharon's plan of "unilateral disengagement" from the Palestinians -- a withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements in 2005 -- has created deep divisions in Israel, with opponents using increasingly harsh rhetoric against him. Police said they are investigating death threats against the prime minister. On Tuesday, senior Cabinet ministers approved the payment of cash advances to settlers who leave their homes ahead of a September 2005 deadline -- the first practical step toward the Gaza pullout. Settler families could get more than $100,000 each as a down payment. The government hopes the money will entice large numbers of settlers to leave voluntarily, and make it easier for troops to evacuate those remaining. [P6: Cash vs. spiritual vision? Cash loses…except in the USofA, where cash IS the spiritual vision.] In an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper published Wednesday, Sharon said that once Israel withdraws from Gaza and the four West Bank settlements, "it is very possible ... there will be a long period when nothing else happens." He said that as long as there is no significant shift in the Palestinian leadership and policy, "Israel will continue its war on terrorism, and will stay in the territories (of the West Bank) that will remain after the implementation of disengagement."

It will take more than some superscript to do it, though.

The $50,000 Question By Brian Faler Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A11 Got proof that President Bush fulfilled his National Guard duties? It could be worth $50,000. Texans for Truth, a Democratic "527" organization that has attacked the president's service record, is offering a reward to anyone who can prove that Bush performed his duties in the Air National Guard between May 1972 and May 1973.

You "Fontgate" guys are hilarious. You really think you've taken down CBS (when you get a couple hundred grand for an ad I'll consider the possibility). You sit in your echo chamber thinking you've deconstructed the whole affair…amazingly and impressively, as fast as all the SBV lies were deconstructed. And to much the same effect. Only worse. Because one of the SBVs got his Bronze Star the same way Kerry got his Silver Star…and he's not denying the validity of his own. SBVs are on record praising Kerry, and nothing has changed to explain their turnaround. Meanwhile, we all know Bush is a child of privilege even more than Kerry is. And you can cast doubt all day long but you can't prove those memos are counterfeit. And frankly, I don't care if they're counterfeit. CBS is a corporation…if it's possible to be less concerned about its fate than I am, how is a mystery to me. All I know is, if you dispute every memo the conversation continues and people keep getting to say things like this:

Ex-Guard Typist Recalls Memos Criticizing Bush But the commander's secretary says she thinks the ones that surfaced last week are fakes. By James Rainey Times Staff Writer September 15, 2004 George W. Bush's commanding officer in the Texas Air National Guard wrote memos more than 30 years ago objecting to efforts to gloss over the young lieutenant's shortcomings and failure to take a flight physical, the officer's former secretary said Tuesday night. But Marian Carr Knox of Houston said she thought four memos unveiled by CBS News last week were forgeries — not copies of the ones she typed at the time. Knox, 86, worked for 23 years at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston and served as a typist for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, then Bush's squadron commander, and several other officers. In a brief interview Tuesday, she confirmed that Killian had concerns about Bush's failure to take his physical examination in 1972, which prevented him from flying, and about efforts by higher-ups to protect the future president from the fallout. Knox told several newspapers that Killian kept the personal files on Bush, and on other topics, in a desk drawer as a way of "covering his back" in anticipation of later questions about his actions. She retired in 1979, before Killian's death, and said she did not know what became of the files.

…which is somehow being spun as vindication of Bush. And if you don't dispute the memos, well… Hoist by your own petard. I love it.

A Response to Russia THE BOLDNESS of Vladimir Putin's assault on Russian democracy in the past few days ought to have been galvanizing to a U.S. president who has made the defense of freedom the rhetorical centerpiece of his foreign policy. Instead, the abrupt announcement by the Russian president that he intended to combat terrorism by abolishing elections for governors, and eliminating local elections for individual members of parliament, has been greeted with confused, contradictory and timid murmurings from the State Department and the White House. Distressed Russian politicians described Mr. Putin's act as "a constitutional coup d'itat" and "a step toward dictatorship." Yet not until yesterday did Secretary of State Colin L. Powell speak out, and then only to understate the obvious: Russia, he observed, "is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms."

Research Measures Emotional Toll of 9/11 Depression Among Major Residuals By Susan Levine Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 15, 2004; Page A23 Researchers studying the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon reported yesterday that depression and post-traumatic stress remained significant two years later in an office of military and civilian employees who lost two dozen of their colleagues. The degree of continuing psychological upheaval was greatest among those who were injured that horrific morning, when a commandeered American Airlines plane was crashed into the Pentagon's western flank, killing 184 people on the flight and on the ground. But even among those not physically harmed, more than one in six were still struggling to cope -- an indication that their distress had settled into a chronic pattern. The research illustrates the "enduring impact of terrorism" and will help doctors identify the types of individuals at greatest risk for mental health problems in the event of future strikes, the authors said. The findings also point to the need for ongoing mental health treatment, they added.

Voters in D.C. Say Yes to Barry -- Again Disgruntled voters ousted three veteran members of the D.C. Council yesterday, voting by overwhelming margins to replace the incumbents with two fresh new faces and a familiar old one. …In each race, the challengers gained ground by contending that entrenched incumbents had failed to ensure that average families got their share of the city's expanding economic pie. Barry, in particular, accused the council and Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) of focusing too much attention on rebuilding downtown and too little on helping the city's downtrodden. The victories of Barry, Brown and Gray could have enormous implications for the direction of economic development in the city. All three called for greater emphasis on affordable housing and new development for neighborhoods. And all three say they oppose raising taxes to build a Major League Baseball stadium, a priority for Williams and for baseball officials, who are on the verge of deciding whether to move the Montreal Expos to the Washington region.

Of course, since D.C.'s government is more ornamental than functional I can't get TOO excited…

Quote of note:

the campaign's official estimate of proposed new spending includes only a handful of specific priorities Bush mentioned in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention -- not such budget-busters as the revamping of Social Security, space exploration, and most of his health-care plan. The Social Security proposal alone would require vast new federal spending in the short term, since Bush has promised not to cut benefits for workers who are nearing retirement age. And none of the president's projections account for the costs of the continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Price tag called high for Bush's proposals By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | September 15, 2004 WASHINGTON -- President Bush's spending and tax-cutting proposals would cost the federal government $3 trillion or more in the coming decade, and would probably have a deeper impact on the federal budget deficit than the plans offered by his Democratic opponent, Senator John F. Kerry, according to independent analysts and figures produced by congressional panels and the Bush administration. …Bush hasn't offered enough details on most of his proposals to determine specific costs, analysts said. But estimates suggest the president's plans carry a staggering price tag that could grow further when his proposals are fleshed out. Even conservatives who back Republican candidates concede that Bush does not appear serious about cutting the deficit, a record $422 billion this year, despite his campaign rhetoric. ''Everything he's talked about is inconsistent with that objective," said William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a not-for-profit research group that advocates small government. ''He has made a commitment to cutting the deficit in half over five years, but he really doesn't have a plan -- at least, not one that he has announced."

Quote of note:

The problem of distrust of official instructions was particularly acute among African-Americans, who make up a large percentage of the population in major urban areas likely to be targeted or affected by a terrorist attack, the study found. About 68 percent of blacks expressed grave concerns about whether they would agree to receive a smallpox vaccine during an outbreak once they learned they would have to sign a waiver notifying them that the vaccine is considered ''investigative," or not fully tested. By comparison, 48 percent of the general population expressed concerns. David Bositis, a specialist in African-American politics who worked on the project, said emergency health officials should reach out to trusted black elected officials and church leaders ahead of time to enlist their support in order to save more lives should an emergency arise.

I assume by "trusted black elected officials and church leaders " he means the community trusts them…which, thinking about it, is a wise qualification. Terror response study spurs concern Many Americans would disobey By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | September 15, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Large numbers of Americans say they would probably ignore official instructions for how to respond to a terrorist attack involving a radiological dirty bomb or a smallpox attack, according to a new study. Most public health plans created in the three years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks assume that the public would obey instructions to, for example, stay inside whatever shelter they are in during an airborne contamination attack or report to a central place to receive a vaccination shot during a disease outbreak. But the first major survey of likely public behavior in the event of a terrorist attack calls into question that assumption, citing conflicting obligations such as responsibilities to family members and a distrust of official pronouncements. If planners do not adjust to that reality, there could be unnecessary deaths, the study said. The study, conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine and the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health, found that 60 percent of Americans would disregard instructions to go to a public vaccination site in a smallpox outbreak, and 40 percent would not stay inside an undamaged building other than their home after a dirty bomb went off. ''It's not that the rest of the people want to be uncooperative," said lead investigator Roz Lasker. ''The problem is that current plans unwittingly put them in extremely difficult decision-making predicaments. So even if first-responders work out all of the challenging logistics, far fewer people would be protected than planners want or the public deserves." For example, parents may disregard personal danger and go out in the open to find and protect their children, even if they are told to stay inside until a radioactive or toxic cloud dissipates, she said.

The biggest issue won't be resolved until he retires. Quote of note:

'The United States government has acknowledged that it violated the rights of the reporters and their employers by requiring the erasure of their tape recordings of Justice Scalia's speech," Van Slyke said. ''We feel this is certainly an appropriate concession. ''What remains before the court are constitutional issues, and the question of whether the United States will be enjoined from taking similar actions in the future," Van Slyke said.

What remains before the court is the actual substance of the issue. Anyway… Marshals faulted for asking reporters to erase Scalia speech By Ron Harrist, Associated Press | September 15, 2004 JACKSON, Miss. -- The government has conceded that the US Marshals Service violated federal law when a marshal ordered reporters with the Associated Press and the Hattiesburg American to erase their recordings of a speech by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The Justice Department also said the reporters and their employers are each entitled to $1,000 in damages and reasonable attorneys' fees, which had been sought by the media organizations. The government's concessions were contained in court papers filed Friday in response to a lawsuit by the news organizations. While agreeing the federal Privacy Protection Act forbids the seizure of the work product of a journalist, the government said the plaintiffs were not entitled to an injunction that would bar the Marshals Service from a repeat of the incident.

Oliver Willis:

On The Black Vote J.C. Watts, doing his duty for the GOP (Alan Keyes is otherwise engaged) issued these words about The Media Fund's new ad campaign focusing on turning out the black vote.

"John Kerry has no record with the black community"

Then again, neither does J.C. Watts.

If just linking it works you ought to be quite amused.

It's the only explanation:

Only those with big bladders need apply for the White House beat. For the past year, the 20 or so correspondents toiling in the basement of the press room in the West Wing have been fighting to keep their toilet. "We've been using that toilet since Jimmy Carter was president," said Associated Press Radio correspondent Mark Smith. But after some trouble with the commode last year, the General Services Administration announced it was flushing the troublesome fixture. Correspondents took their case to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, threatening: "We could also hold it -- but I think you'll agree we're cranky enough as it is." The GSA said it would cost $500,000 to fix the toilet -- earning it a place alongside the $400 hammer and the $600 toilet seat. McClellan would not dirty his hands in this plumbing dispute. The GSA then announced it had poured concrete into the "sewer ejectors," making the WC permanently unusable. As of yesterday, the toilet and sink were gone, replaced with a chair and a mirror.

Opposing DNA Reform YOU WOULDN'T think that what's left of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy's Innocence Protection Act could spark much controversy. A few years ago, when Mr. Leahy started pushing legislation to encourage post-conviction DNA testing at the state and federal level and improve the woeful quality of counsel in death penalty cases, the measure had real teeth. Now, however, compromise upon compromise has left the Innocence Protection Act, which has been merged with a bipartisan package with President Bush's initiative to reduce the backlog of physical evidence awaiting DNA testing, a shadow of its former self. The House passed the DNA legislation by a lopsided vote, 357 to 67, last year. Yet the Bush administration continues to oppose the Innocence Protection Act, and last week the Senate Judiciary Committee's conservative members, led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), managed to stall the larger bill of which it is a part, the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act. Though the committee is scheduled to continue marking up that bill today, and though it would clearly command majority support in the full Senate, it is far from clear that the bill will ultimately get to a vote.

Dementia and the Voter Research Raises Ethical, Constitutional Questions By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A01 Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth. "I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,' " Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House. As swing states with large elderly populations such as Florida gear up for another presidential election, a sleeper issue has been gaining attention on medical, legal and political radar screens: Many people with advanced dementia appear to be voting in elections -- including through absentee ballot.

Quote of note:

Perhaps this is an "elitist" question, or naive, or simple misguided. Maybe I need to read far more detailed statistical sociopolitical theory, which is about as much fun as having all your skin scraped off with a cheese grater. But I simply know of no one anywhere in my world, from family to friends to family friends to remote acquaintances to the guy who sells me my socks, who is undecided about this election.

Who The Hell Is "Undecided"? And why do so many election polls leave you angry and stupefied and drunk? - By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, September 10, 2004 Polls are the genital warts of election year. They are the swarming gnats in your Jell-O salad, the dead escalator in your shopping mall, the sour milk in your coffee. Because clearly, if you attempt to follow any of them, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls or the American Research Group polls or the Newsweek polls or the ABC News/Washington Post polls or the CBS News/New York Times polls or the Zogby polls, you can only conclude one thing: These polls are designed solely to mangle your head and confound your synapses and elate you and titillate you and then plunge you into instant despair and then yank you back out at the last second like some sort of "Fear Factor" death-plunge moronism. I know I am not alone in this sentiment. Take, for example, how nearly every single poll listed above indicated that, just after the Democratic convention, John Kerry could not lose. He had gained huge numbers on a miserable and baffled Bush and every poll had Kerry nailing Shrub by anywhere from two to six percentage points and he had momentum and a clear message and broad support and it all meant it was Kerry's election to lose and woo-hoo go team break out the champagne. But wait, not so fast. Because then BushCo had his big, tearful, gay-hatin', war-lovin' GOP convention and whored the 9/11 theme so shamelessly you could veritably feel the World Trade Center victims cringing in their graves. Now, of course, polls indicate that those pro-Kerry numbers are exactly reversed. Bush's numbers are suddenly up again and have barely broken through that magic 50-percent ceiling that held him in check this past year as the nation had seemed to be finally realizing what an unmitigated embarrassment he was, and suddenly Kerry is lagging behind by those same few points. Hey, it's the polls, baby. They're not supposed to make any goddamn sense. But they do force you to ask: What the hell just happened? What changed? Why do these polls flip so ridiculously?

I was in the U.S. Army. Joined when I was 17. Got an honorable discharge under general conditions. After six months. The official reason was "unfit for military duty."

What we learned about l'il Georgie from those controversial CBS memos.

I know you have RSS readers if you're interested, but I just posted New technology and old line organizations you-know-where.

Tom Toles wonders if Bush is still avoiding his physicals. Ben Sargent shows the new decorations created for the War on Terror. Doonesbury gives the definitive explanation of the color coded Terror Warning System. Jeff Danziger shows Bush working hard at reducing the unemployment rate. And finally, Tony Auth is SO on point I have to post this inexact replica because I want it here forever. LATER: I screwed the image link at first. the entry has been moved to the top.

via Blah3

Too bad this woman is in a Right-to-Work state. In any civilized state, she'd own the goddam company after she sued her scumbag boss - who fired her for having a Kerry sticker on her car.

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' " She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders. "Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for." Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here." "I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' " She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, " 'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,' " Gobbell said.

Hopefully, some good Democrat in Alabama will find a job for this woman. EnviroMate Insulation 13855 Court Street Moulton, Alabama 35650 Phone: 800.339.3531 Email: [email protected]

Space probes feel cosmic tug of bizarre forces Robin McKie, science editor Sunday September 12, 2004 The Observer Something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system. Some researchers say unseen 'dark matter' may permeate the universe and that this is affecting the Pioneers' passage. Others say flaws in our understanding of the laws of gravity best explain the crafts' wayward behaviour. As a result, scientists are to press a European Space Agency (Esa) meeting, called Cosmic Visions, in Paris this week for backing for a mission that would follow the Pioneers and pinpoint the cause of their erratic movements. …The reasons for the anomaly have caused a rift among physicists, however. Some believe the effect may simply be flaws with the probes. Gas from fuel tanks may be leaking from them, slowing their passages, say some astronomers. 'Unless there is really good evidence to the contrary, we should stick to simple ideas like these and not go around blaming strange new types of particle or flaws in general relativity,' said Professor Martin Barstow, of Leicester University. But this view has been rejected by Anderson. 'It's hard to imagine such a leak happening on both probes at the same time in such a way as to produce an identical acceleration,' he said. And most scientists back him. 'The effect is real,' said Bernard Haisch of the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.

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Hat tip to (the rather appropriately named) Fantastic Planet.

You have to back-track in the most embarrassing way. Quote of note:

The acknowledgement, made after the hearing, comes a year after the agency suppressed the conclusions of its own drug-safety analyst, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, who first found a link between the drugs and suicide in teenagers and children. Agency officials wrote in internal memorandums that Dr. Mosholder's analysis was unreliable, and they hired researchers at Columbia University to re-analyze the same data. That study recently reached conclusions nearly identical to Dr. Mosholder's.

And on global warming, Bush has had to reverse

White House cites human role in global warming
Policy reversal on climate change denied by Administration WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Warmer temperatures in North America since 1950 were probably caused in part by human activity, the Bush administration said in a report that appeared to contradict the White House position there was no clear scientific proof on the causes of global warming.

his reversal of his campaign promise

ENVIRONMENTAL REVERSAL
March 14, 2001 GWEN IFILL: We get more on the Bush reversal from Debbie Reed, director of legislative affairs for the National Environmental Trust -- they supported limits on carbon dioxide emissions; and Chris Horner, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes such limits. So, Debbie Reed, what is the significance of the president's decision to reverse himself on this? DEBBIE REED: Well, Gwen, I think it's very significant; the president campaigned on a commitment to bring integrity to the White House but what good is his word now? This was the most significant environmental commitment made under the campaign, and the president walked away from it in exactly 53 days. I think it's very unfortunate that he has brought into question not only his integrity on environmental issues but his lead on EPA -- Christie Todd Whitman on this. Christie Todd Whitman has been a forceful proponent of protecting the president on this, and leading up on his promise to support a four-key agenda and unfortunately, while she was out front on this, the president sawed off the limb from underneath her. I think it's very unfortunate.

You think they'll extend this lesson to recognizing the dangers of listening to Type 2 Economists over Type 1 Economists? Probably not… Anyway… F.D.A. Links Drugs to Being Suicidal By GARDINER HARRIS BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 13 - Top officials of the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged for the first time on Monday that antidepressants appeared to lead some children and teenagers to become suicidal. Dr. Robert Temple, director of the F.D.A.'s office of medical policy, said after an emotional public hearing here that analyses of 15 clinical trials, some of which were hidden for years from the public by the drug companies that sponsored them, showed a consistent link with suicidal behavior. "I think that we now all believe that there is an increase in suicidal thinking and action that is consistent across all the drugs,'' Dr. Temple said, summarizing the agency's presentation to a special advisory committee. "This looks like it's a true bill.''

An Outsider's Grim Prognosis for Pension Agency By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH It has been a struggle for some, but most big companies are coming up with enough cash to keep their pension funds legally sound, after three years of extraordinary losses. Not so their government backstop. Slowly but surely, the federal agency that insures pensions is running out of money. An independent analysis of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, made available to The New York Times, suggests that the agency will go broke in 2020 if current financial conditions persist. Even if things improve, so that fewer pension funds fail than in recent years, the agency is still expected to run out of money by 2023. "Any private insurance company under those circumstances would be shut down," said Douglas J. Elliott, the president of the Center on Federal Financial Institutions and the author of the new study. If the pension agency goes broke, one of two things would happen: the retirees who rely on it would stop getting their checks, or the taxpayers would have to bail the agency out. The agency currently pays benefits to more than a million people whose pension plans have collapsed. It also guarantees benefits promised to 43 million more people.

Quote of note:

While DNA has two strands - the famous double helix - RNA is usually single-stranded. If cells sense double-stranded RNA, they act to destroy it and any other RNA with the same sequence. Some researchers conjecture that this RNA interference mechanism might have evolved as a defense against viruses, which sometimes create double-stranded RNA. Scientists can harness this mechanism to prevent any gene in the body from being used to make a protein, effectively shutting off the gene. They synthesize a short string of double-stranded RNA that corresponds to part of the messenger RNA carrying the protein recipe. Rather than creating the protein, the cell destroys the messenger. The process is straightforward enough that drugs using this mechanism are being readied for clinical trials only three years after RNAi was reported to work in the cells of mammals. "It has had a remarkably fast transition to the clinic," said Andrew Z. Fire, a professor at Stanford who was a co-discoverer of an animal form of RNAi in a worm around 1998.

Method to Turn Off Bad Genes Is Set for Tests on Human Eyes By ANDREW POLLACK If all goes according to plan, about half a dozen elderly people at risk of blindness will visit Dr. Lawrence J. Singerman's retina clinic in the coming weeks to receive injections in the whites of their eyes. The experimental injections will contain a new type of drug based on a recently discovered genetic phenomenon, called RNA interference, that has excited scientists with its versatile and powerful ability to turn off genes. Having quickly become a standard tool for genetic studies in the laboratory, the technique is now set to be tested in people for the first time.

Then I saw the same ol' crap in the story, as is appropriate since it's part of a review of Bush's record. You know, the last four years that the RNC pretended never existed.

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Quote of note:

In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration's philosophy. "There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity," Mr. Leavitt said. "Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty."

What nonsense. This is the same excuse they made for actually forbidding the release of product safety information on cars

On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.

and antidepressants

FDA Urged Withholding Data on Antidepressants "We do not feel it would be useful to describe these negative trials in labeling," FDA officials wrote in a letter to the company, "since these may be misinterpreted as evidence that Zoloft does not work." FDA's Woodcock said agency officials had told Wyeth to scale back a label change that warned that the drug Effexor had been linked to suicidal thoughts, hostility and self-harm.

Anyway… Bush Record: New Priorities in Environment By FELICITY BARRINGER Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end their journey at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the flatlands of North Carolina. Both habitats could be transformed if current Bush administration initiatives come to pass. The birds would have oil rigs as neighbors in Alaska and be greeted by Navy jets simulating carrier takeoffs and landings in North Carolina. That such projects could bracket the birds' path is not surprising in light of the priorities of the administration. Over the last three and a half years, federal officials have accelerated resource development on public lands. They have also pushed to eliminate regulatory hurdles for military and industrial projects.

Bid to Decriminalize Prostitution in Berkeley By CAROLYN MARSHALL BERKELEY, Calif., Sept. 13 - San Pablo Avenue was once the thriving, racy final stretch of the nation's first highway between New York and San Francisco, a center for jazz halls, gambling houses and brothels. Today it is an unremarkable thoroughfare, littered along isolated stretches here with used drug needles and liquor bottles, a place where prostitutes entice customers from gritty curbsides. San Pablo is also at the heart of a bid to decriminalize sex for sale in California. That campaign, the brainchild of a former prostitute, Robyn Few, seeks to gain ground through an initiative on the November ballot in Berkeley to direct the city police to treat prostitution as their lowest priority. Known as the Angel Initiative, for Angel Lopez, a San Francisco prostitute murdered in 1993, it also instructs city officials to lobby the State Legislature to decriminalize prostitution.

I'd have gone to bed already but for this. And I'd post this at The Niggerati Network but I get more traffic here and would REALLY like as many folks as possible to see this mini-rant.

Black leaders with no regard for the facts vilify GOP Mon Sep 13, 9:28 AM ET By Alphonso Jackson While speaking before the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night, John Kerry made the baseless, inflammatory claim that the Republican Party would try to suppress black votes in the coming election. Kerry is white, and he was applauded for his words.

Kerry was probably technically incorrect. It won't be the Republican Party, it will be people who happen to be Republican, much like the SBVs weren't representing the Bush campaign they just happen to have positions with that campaign.

Addressing the mostly black National Baptist Convention in New Orleans last week, I was booed for about 30 seconds. And I'm black. Why the difference? Kerry is a Democrat, and I'm a Republican. And for far too long, the Democrats have had a monopoly on black votes in this country.

Only white people would believe that. First of all, the two groups Kerry and Jackson faced were entirely different crews with different goals and motivations. Maybe they all look alike to Jackson. Add to that the fact that Jackson works for a group that most Black people see for themselves opposes the programs and views most Black folks support while Kerry has the reverse dynamic and the applause and boos make sense. Whether it was rude or not is another discussion. And I'm really tired of Republicans saying we should vote for them because we don't vote for them. You think Democrats have had a monopoly on the Black vote for too long? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. And we ain't going for that nonsense you foist off on white folks: 1 - Problem is raised 2 - Suggest as a solution something you always wanted to do, whether it acyually addresses the issue or not Black Americans know what we need, and we know the Republican Party isn't offering it. YOU, Mr. Jackson, know what YOU need, and the Republican Party has given it to you.

For the past four decades, the Democratic Party has tried to convince us that being black and of modest means is a dead-end road.

Hell, being WHITE and of modest means is a dead end. Understand, this kid is suggesting "being of modest means" as a goal. TITALLY unacceptabl.

In that vein, America's "black political leaders" have built their careers on an ideology of black victimization.

As is this tired-ass line. Everyone who believes it (and a few who don't) are already Republicans so get creative.

They're wrong. America is a place where you can be born into a low-income household but still lift yourself up, and it doesn't matter what color you are. I'm living proof.

But what does it take? Not just that, it is impossible for everyone to be wealthy. The top 1% in income will never have more than 1% of the population in it. SO the need goes beyond simply setting up the hoops we jump through to prove we won't mug someone in the office bathroom. It means making life livable for all out citizens. Broke Americans are still Americans.

Yet critics on the left find it incomprehensible that any black American could succeed on his or her own through hard work and determination. They say that Education Secretary Rod Paige, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and myself were merely appointed to garner black votes. Such rhetoric does nothing to support the progress of black Americans, or recognize how far we have come.

So? We don't have to feed YOUR ego to recognize how far WE have come. Besides, if it's true it's not rhetoric. Oh. Republican. There's only rhetoric.

Bush received only 9% of the black vote in 2000, but his policies have done more for the black community than those of any other modern-era president.

Heh. Heheheh! BWAAAAAHHHAhahahahahhahHAHAHAhaha! I assume the "modern era" begins with Reagan.

His plan for an "ownership society," for example, has translated into record home ownership in America - and the highest level in history for blacks, too. For the first time, more than 50% of black Americans own a home.

Flat bullshit. Bush had nothing to do with it. While Black folks were saving and planning to bring this about, Bush was angling to become Commissioner of Baseball. NOW who isn't recognizing Black progress and how far we've come?

With an honest look at our party, perhaps the facts can drown out the boos.

You and the Republican Party will have to take an honest look at your policies first.

What I said.

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WHAT IF WE HAD NOT GONE INTO IRAQ? By Richard Reeves WASHINGTON -- I have thought for a long time that communism would have collapsed in the 1970s rather than at the end of the 1980s if the United States had not chosen to go to war in Vietnam. We squandered years of moral, political, financial and military capital in jungles and rice paddies we could not name, much less "conquer" or "liberate." Because of that, a couple of sentences in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly seem etched in stone more than slapped on paper. James Fallows, the magazine's national editor, in an article titled "Bush's Lost Year," writes of spending the past two years with military, intelligence and diplomatic personnel at the "working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts." Most are Republicans, he says; many supported the decision to invade Iraq (news - web sites) in March 2003. Next he writes: "I have sat through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American history -- or only the worst since Vietnam. Many say things in Iraq will eventually look much better than they do now. But about the conduct and effect of the war in Iraq one view prevails: It has increased the threats America faces, and has reduced the military, financial and diplomatic tools with which we can respond." Among the many people quoted in the Atlantic is Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Army War College, who summed up a good deal of the thinking in Washington now: "Are we better off in basic security than before we invaded Iraq? The answer is no. An unnecessary war has consumed American Army and other ground resources, to the point where we have nothing left in the cupboard for another contingency -- for instance, should the North Koreans decide that with the Americans completely absorbed in Iraq, now is the time to do something."

DOMESTIC DECEIT Sun Sep 12, 8:05 PM ET By Randy Cohen

Our longtime housekeeper (a foreign-born legal resident) has grown her business, hiring a Mexican woman (here illegally) to clean houses. Of the $80 I pay the housekeeper, between $10 and $15 goes to the woman who actually cleans. She speaks no English and probably couldn't have gotten the job on her own. If we offered her $60 directly, she'd be paid more fairly and we'd save $20, but our original housekeeper would lose. Should we do it? -- Steven Kane, Los Angeles

Randy Cohen "Grown her business" -- yes, much like Pharaoh grew his pyramid-building operation. By subcontracting her work at $2 to $3 an hour (assuming five hours to clean a house), your housekeeper has breached ethics, the minimum-wage law and ordinary human decency. For you to benefit from this exploitation is thoroughly discreditable. [P6: emphasis added—-as well as questions about what this position implies about Americans in general, who benefit from prison labor, under-paid agricultural workers, etc.] You must provide the actual worker a fair wage. Talk to her with the help of a translator and seek a way to pay her directly without imperiling her other jobs. You might also consider calling the cops to shut down the sweatshop your longtime housekeeper is running. There is nothing wrong with subcontracting if a boss provides a legitimate service, including finding work for employees and not simply skimming their paychecks, offers a living wage and decent benefits, and heeds relevant laws like those governing Social Security, insurance and licensing. But if you paid the Simon Legree housekeeper $80, why not pay the honest worker the same? [P6: Mr. Cohen obviously has less familiarity with the American Way than with the American Dream] The well-off should not try to save a buck at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable. You might also consult a lawyer about legalizing your employee's immigration status (or abandon all hope of running for the Senate).

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Quote of note

Mr. Sullivan wrote in his Tax Notes report that the sharp rise in profits taken in tax havens like Bermuda had no relationship to economic activity there. American companies took $25.2 billion in profits in Bermuda in 2002, yet total revenues there were only $34.3 billion, according to Commerce Department data. Many companies try to lower their taxes by setting up foreign subsidiaries and using internal lending so profits are taken primarily in tax havens and costs are incurred in high-tax countries. Fifty-eight percent of offshore profits are now taken in tax havens, and that is "a seismic shift in international taxation," Mr. Sullivan said, because "subsidiaries of U.S. corporations now generate profits mainly in tax havens rather than in locations in which they conduct most of their business."

Study Finds U.S. Companies Shifting Profits Overseas By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON From 1999 to 2002, American multinational corporations increased profits taken in countries with no taxes or low rates by 68 percent, while sharply reducing profits taken in countries where they engage in substantial business activity, a study to be published today in the journal Tax Notes shows. In 2002, American companies took $149 billion of profits in 18 tax-haven countries, up 68 percent from $88 billion in 1999, according to Tax Notes, which analyzed the most recently available Commerce Department data. This compares with a 23 percent increase in total offshore profits earned by American multinationals during the same period. According to Commerce Department data not cited in the study, American companies took 17 cents of each dollar of worldwide profits in tax havens in 2002, up from 10 cents in 1999.

Yahoo! has pictures of this…yahoo.

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'Batman' intruder protests on Buckingham Palace balcony LONDON (AFP) - A fathers' rights activist dressed up as Batman staged a protest from a balcony at the queen's residence, Buckingham Palace in central London. A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner dressed as the comic book and cinema hero breached palace security by protesting from a balcony at Buckingham Palace, an AFP photographer witnessed Monday. "The guy is called Jason Hatch," a spokeswoman for Fathers 4 Justice said. "He is dressed as Batman. He is on one of the balconies, which I believe is the gallery balcony," she told AFP. "He has been up there since 12 o'clock (1100 GMT). We don't know how long he plans on spending up there. He wants equal rights for parenting," she said. Another Fathers 4 Justice campaigner Darryl Westell, 22, said the protester managed to scale the outer fence while other protesters distracted the attention of armed police by climbing on the front gate.

Quote of note:

The fascinating thing about the Gidone Busch case is that having a black judge who's sensitive to such issues seems to have worked for a white victim. Which shows that diversity cuts both ways.

Diversity on the bench helps ensure justice Sheryl McCarthy September 13, 2004 He was a skinny Jewish man who was gunned down by five police officers outside his Brooklyn apartment. Gidone Busch was mentally disturbed and was wielding a hammer, and the police said they were merely defending themselves when they pumped 12 bullets into him in August 1999. But Busch's shooting shocked many New Yorkers, who saw no reason why the police couldn't have subdued him peacefully. Incidents of excessive police violence against blacks and Latinos are legion. But they're rare in white communities. And as often happens in lawsuits alleging police brutality, when Busch's family sued New York City and the five officers in federal court, the jury sided with the cops. That's why Judge Sterling Johnson's decision to overturn the jury verdict last week was so stunning. …What makes Johnson's decision even more interesting is that, while he's black, he's also known to all as a tough, pro-cop, law-and-order judge. He was a street cop before going to law school, and went on to become a federal prosecutor and the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City before becoming a federal judge. He's one of only three black judges who've ever been appointed to the federal bench in the Eastern District of New York. …In the days when the judiciary was lily white and all-male, government officials, police officers and private citizens often got away with all kinds of abuses and discrimination against both racial minorities and women because the judges sometimes put their common values above the law. But more racial and sexual diversity on the bench helped change that.

And don't bitch at me. Morgan Stanley, about as serious about making money as it's possible to be, pokes all holes in Greenspan and the Soft Patchers. Quote of note:

But the most fascinating insight of all into business attitudes may be the $38.7 billion spike in corporate stock buyback announcements that occurred in July -- the strongest such surge in 20 years and fully four times the average monthly pace of the past year. This, perhaps more than anything, puts Corporate America’s cards squarely on the table. Awash in newfound earnings and cash flow, companies would rather buy their own shares than embark on growth oriented strategies of hiring, boosting compensation, and adding to productive capacity.

Oops. Another quote of note, how silly of me to forget:

The income shortfall of this expansion hardly comes out of thin air. It is a by-product of America’s notorious jobless recovery and a concomitant compression of real wages. Again, the numbers speak for themselves

Global: Spinning Its Wheels Stephen Roach (from Paris) As the US economy now enters the 34th month of the current expansion, debate over sustainability remains as intense as ever. In a recent congressional appearance, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stated, “the expansion has regained some traction” after having gone through an energy-price-induced soft patch last spring. With all due respect to Mr. Greenspan, at this point in time, such a claim is largely an assertion based on a very creative interpretation of ever-volatile hard data. In my view, the case for traction in the US economy remains a weak one. The concept of “economic traction” is not well understood. As I see it, traction comes when a cyclical recovery can truly stand its own. It is, first and foremost, a matter for the consumer -- the heart and soul of any sustainable economic recovery. Traction reaches a critical mass only when the internal dynamics of the business cycle push the wage income portion of personal income generation above trend. Then, and only then, can autonomous growth in consumer demand be sustained on its own. Consumer traction is also the linchpin in providing ancillary support to the “derived demands” of business capital spending and inventory investment. Without consumer traction, the case for sustainability remains a real stretch. The income shortfall of this expansion hardly comes out of thin air. It is a by-product of America’s notorious jobless recovery and a concomitant compression of real wages. Again, the numbers speak for themselves: On the job front, private nonfarm payrolls are now up only 0.3% over the first 33 months of this expansion. By contrast, at similar junctures of the past six cycles, the increase averaged 7.8%. The gap between the hiring trajectory of this expansion and the composite profile of these earlier recoveries works out to an employment shortfall of 8.2 million workers in the private economy. A similar pattern shows up in real wages -- comparisons in the current cycle are running an astonishing 0.3% below year-earlier levels (as measured by CPI-deflated average hourly earnings). It is the interplay between job creation and the real wage cycle that shapes the internal dynamics of wage income generation. And in that context, the record over the broad scope of this expansion remains woefully deficient. Yet the soft-patch crowd argues that this is an old story -- that the numbers have turned for the better in recent months. Once again, Fed Chairman Greenspan has led the optimistic charge. And once again, I find myself on the other side of this positive spin. Yes, consumer demand rebounded in July, but that came after a terrible June; the average change in real consumption expenditures over the two months was only +0.2% -- actually a shade below an already subdued pace in the first five months of 2004. Moreover, major retailers reported disappointing back-to-school sales in August and there was renewed softness in motor vehicle sales as well. Meanwhile there are signs of mounting inventory backups -- a classic warning sign of production adjustments to come. Unfortunately, the inventory data lag other statistics, but it now looks as if total business stocks rose by at least 0.9% in July following a 1.0% increase in June -- marking the sharpest back-to-back monthly gains since before the last recession. The recent back-up in stocks has been especially noticeable in the motor vehicles sector -- both for domestically-located producers and for America’s new China-based supply chain. Detroit has already announced significant production cutbacks in 4Q04 that will probably knock at least 0.5 percentage point off annualized real GDP growth. This certainly doesn’t sound like consumer-inspired traction to me. Nor is Corporate America stepping up and delivering any autonomous traction of its own. Sure, hiring rebounded a bit in August after a couple of crummy months. But the three-month average increase of 104,000 for nonfarm payrolls remains decidedly subpar by any standards -- about one-third slower than the typical recovery pace and equally short of gains required to keep the unemployment rate stable. And, as noted above, US businesses remain equally frugal on the pay front. Recent trends on the wage income generation front have taken a modest turn for the better. However, in the 12 months ending this July, real wage and salary disbursements still rose just 2.8% -- better than the stagnation in the first 20 months of this recovery but far short of the solid income growth that would support renewed vigor in consumer demand. But the most fascinating insight of all into business attitudes may be the $38.7 billion spike in corporate stock buyback announcements that occurred in July -- the strongest such surge in 20 years and fully four times the average monthly pace of the past year. This, perhaps more than anything, puts Corporate America’s cards squarely on the table. Awash in newfound earnings and cash flow, companies would rather buy their own shares than embark on growth oriented strategies of hiring, boosting compensation, and adding to productive capacity. This is not as shocking as it may seem at first blush. I have long believed that capital investment and hiring are driven far more by future demand expectations than by the oft-volatile ups and downs of the profits cycle. Given the stresses and strains still bearing down on the American consumer, Corporate America has remained justifiably cautious in these uncertain times. With consumers lacking in traction, businesses are in no hurry to go out on the risk curve and fill the void. The spin-doctors see it very differently, of course. Hope is widespread that the recent soft patch was nothing more than a temporary detour for a US economy that finally displayed some vigor -- 5.1% real GDP growth over the four quarters ending 1Q04. But in the end, traction cannot be verified by a one-month data blip. Yes, July was better than June but the jury is still out on August -- to say nothing of the months ahead when the US economy is finally taken off the special life support measures that have been so critical to this recovery. For America, that will be the ultimate moment of truth -- when the economy then comes face-to-face with the lingering imbalances of subpar income generation, sharply reduced saving, an ever-widening current-account imbalances, and a record overhang of household indebtedness. Notwithstanding this looming reality check, financial markets have deep conviction that a reacceleration of economic growth is imminent. If that were not the case, why else would fixed income markets still be pricing in another 50 bp of Fed tightening by year end and another 100 bp of rate hikes over the four quarters of next year? Why would equity markets still be looking for sustained corporate earnings growth? Or why would the dollar continue to defy the gravity of a looming current-account adjustment? Make no mistake, the traction bet is on -- by policy makers, financial markets, and incumbent Republican politicians. Yet this could well be a losing bet. For an income-short American consumer, traction remains as elusive as ever. A structurally-impaired US economy might only be spinning its wheels

Yeah, probably… Quote of note:

Black soldiers are a particular target. 'To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation,' Abu Mujahed said, echoing the profound racism prevalent in much of the Middle East. 'Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.'

'Why I turned against America' …Early one morning this week, when the police have yet to set up too many checkpoints, Abu Mujahed will strap a mortar underneath a car, drive to a friend's in central Baghdad and bury the weapon in his garden. In the evening he will return with the rest of his group, sleep for a few hours and then take the weapon from its hiding place. He will calculate the range using the American military's own maps and satellite pictures -- bought in a bazaar -- and fire a few rounds at a military base or the US Embassy or at the Iraqi Prime Minister's office. Then Abu Mujahed will shower, change and, by 10am, be at his desk in one of the major ministries. …Intelligence experts in Iraq talk of three main types of insurgent. There is the Mehdi Army of Shia Muslims who follow the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and have led recent resistance to coalition forces in northern Baghdad, the central shrine city of Najaf, and Basra, the southern port under British control. There is also 'al-Qaeda' -- non-Iraqi militants who have come to Iraq to wage jihad. And finally the 'former regime loyalists', who are said to want the return of Saddam Hussein or, if that is impossible, his Baath party. Abu Mujahed, worryingly for the analysts, fits into none of these easy categories. For a start, he was pro-American before the invasion. 'The only way to breathe under the old regime was to watch American films and listen to their music,' he said. He had been a Bon Jovi fan. 'It gave me a glimpse of a better life. When I heard that the Americans were coming to liberate Iraq I was very happy. I felt that I would be able to live well, travel and have freedom. I wanted to do more sport, get new appliances and a new car and develop my life. I thought the US would come here and our lives would be changed through 180 degrees.' He spoke of how his faith in the US was shaken when, via a friend's illicitly imported satellite TV system, he saw 'barbaric, savage' pictures of civilian casualties of the fighting and bombing. The next blow came in the conflict's immediate aftermath, as looters ran unchecked through Baghdad. 'When I saw the American soldiers watching and doing nothing as people took everything, I began to suspect the US was not here to help us but to destroy us,' he said. Abu Mujahed, whose real name is not known by The Observer, said: 'I thought it might be just the chaos of war but it got worse, not better.' He was not alone and swiftly found that many in the Adhamiya neighbourhood of Baghdad shared his anger and disappointment. The time had come. 'We realised. We had to act.' Nothing had been planned in advance. There has been speculation, and especially among American officials, that Saddam's henchmen had planned a 'guerrilla war' if defeated. But Abu Mujahed, who described himself as 'a Muslim but not religious', and the others in his group were not working to any plan. Everything they did was improvised. And each of his seven-man group had a different motive: 'One man was fighting for his nation, another for a principle, another for his faith.' Significantly, his group contains several former soldiers, angry at the controversial demobilisation of the Iraqi military by the coalition last year. Others, like Abu Mujahed, have salaried government jobs. The cell is not part of any broader organisation and does not have a name, he said. 'We are just local people ... There is a sheikh who co-ordinates some of the various groups but I do not know who he is.'

Defeat Bush: The Guide by Robert Christgau & Ben Reiter September 10th, 2004 7:40 PM If George Bush is to be defeated this year, he'll be defeated on the ground. He'll be defeated because we want it more than they want it. He'll be defeated because we swallow our fantasies of a candidate who doesn't exist and recognize that John Kerry is a manifestly superior positive choice. And he'll be defeated not just because we vote for Kerry, but because we urge cynics and undecideds to vote for him too. This work will not be easy or neat—new campaign finance rules make figuring out where to help a job in itself. But no one is overqualified for it. Don't think blue-staters like us can't make the difference in swing states. And don't forget that even in New York, pluralities count—win or lose, every vote for Kerry makes us feel better and Bush look worse. There are still two or three weeks to register voters, and there's plenty of follow-up to do in October. Examine the options outlined below and decide how you might best donate your time. Then tell your friends to do the same.

Bush Tax Policy Revealed! What the Bushies really think about tax reform By Timothy Noah At the Republican Convention, President Bush pledgedthat, if elected to a second term, he would create a tax system that is "simpler, fairer," and "pro-growth." He wasn't very specific. It's widely presumed Dubya wants to substitute the current progressive tax system with a flat tax, but all the White House will say is that Bush will appoint a bipartisan panel to make revenue-neutral recommendations to the Treasury secretary. Either Bush is stonewalling or he really has no idea what, if anything, he wants to do to change the tax system. Asked last weekend by an Ohio voter whether he supports a flat tax, Bush assumed the stance that he was just too darned open-minded to say. …The problem with wanting the tax code to be "simpler, fairer," and "pro-growth" is that it's impossible to achieve all three at the same time. …Do not expect the Bush campaign to acknowledge these contradictions publicly anytime soon. But if you want to read a fairly candid assessment by the Bush administration of these and other problems inherent in a radical overhaul of the tax system, Ron Suskind has just posted a Nov. 2002 document summarizing the views of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Glenn Hubbard, and others who then served on Bush's economic team. The options they considered were a flat income tax; a flat consumption tax; an "add-on value-added tax" (i.e., a flat consumption tax supplemented by a tax on high incomes); an "income value added tax with Social Security tax integration" (too complicated to explain—see the document); and minor tax reform accompanied by a reduction in the tax on capital income. Although the document is the work of many different people advancing many different agendas, two points of consensus emerge:

1. There's very little real concern about fairness, although there is some concern about how a perception of unfairness might imperil passage of the legislation. The principal goal is unashamedly to lower taxes on higher incomes.
2. Despite the authors' professed concern that the tax system reward hard work, the Earned Income Tax Credit, whose expansion during the 1990s was Bill Clinton's most significant poverty-fighting policy, is offered as a prime example of the current system's burdensome "complexity." The Bushies don't even pretend to favor an alternative way to help the working poor. Ironically, the EITC was originally a conservative idea because it encouraged people to get off the dole.

This doesn't come as a huge surprise, but it's nice to have the evidence.

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Provocatively, the phrase 'fucking crazies' will be quoted on the jacket of the book, according to a source at the publisher. 'We were surprised to receive calls from the offices of Jack Straw and Colin Powell within 24 hours of each other,' the source said.

Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row Martin Bright Sunday September 12, 2004 The Observer A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq. Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Last week, the offices of Powell and Straw contacted Public Affairs, the US publishers of Naughtie's book, to say they would vigorously deny the claims if publication went ahead. But as no legal action was threatened, the US launch of the book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, will proceed as planned this week.

Seeking Method in the Madness of Abu Ghraib Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Sep 10 (IPS) - âÇ ”The American political system has never been as sick as it is today,” says Belgian philosopher Lieven De Cauter, in a wide-ranging interview where he discusses his theories about the ”state of exception” in the context of the Bush administration's ”war on terror”. De Cauter's ideas are especially timely in light of the continuing revelations of abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of ”military commissions” against accused members of al Qaeda and the Taliban at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which human rights groups have charged lack fair trial protections. Excerpts from the interview, by IPS Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe, follow: IPS: Two Abu Ghraib commissions have published their reports (one by a top U.S. Army general and the second by a bipartisan commission selected by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and led by former Defence Secretary James Schlesinger), so maybe it is a good moment to assess the whole affair from a more theoretical viewpoint. I wondered how you react to the whole scandal and the way it may relate to your ideas about ”the state of exception”? So first of all what is it, the state of exception? LDC: I must say I was not at all surprised when the Abu Ghraib scandal came out. That doesn't mean that I wasn't shocked. It was consistent with the spirit of the policies of the Bush administration. For months now, I have been calling it in newspaper articles and in more academic stuff a state of emergency or, in the more European continental phrasing, ”the state of exception”. The state of exception, or state of emergency, often also called martial law, is the right of the sovereign -- in this case the president -- to suspend the law, fully or in part, in a case where the state (and the law) is in danger. It mostly happens in response to internal uprising or civil war. But all wars are linked to the state of exception. And it is my contention that the 'war on terror' is more a state of exception than a regular war. According to the political theory of the German philosopher, Carl Schmitt, a state of exception lies at the core of sovereignty: it is not so power to make the law, but the power to suspend it. And that is exactly what the Bush administration has been doing.

Three Years On, War on Terrorism Looks Like a Loser Analysis by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Sep 10 (IPS) - Three years after al Qaeda-commandeered planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon, the leaked ruminations of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld seem more pertinent than ever. ”Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,” he wrote in a memo to his top staff 11 months ago. ”Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” If that is how success in the Bush administration's ”war on terrorism” is to be measured, then Rumsfeld would have to conclude that he is failing badly.

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Rhonda and Ruett Foster still have Evan's soccer trophy. Rhonda talks freely about her son, about a poem he wrote, the sports he liked. But last week, telling the story of his horrific murder yet again, there was anger in her voice. "For our president to follow the NRA instead of the majority of America," she said quietly, "shows that he doesn't care about the lives of our children. Letting this ban expire means more of these weapons will be available. It's outrageous."

Blood on the NRA's Hands September 13, 2004 Perhaps you remember Evan Foster. The 7-year-old was murdered in an Inglewood park in December 1997, just after he picked up his soccer trophy. Three of the 75 rounds fired from a gang member's assault rifle drilled into his head. The federal assault weapons ban was already in effect, and if you asked the National Rifle Assn. and its acolytes in Congress about Evan's murder, they would eagerly tell you that this law, which lawmakers have shamefully let expire today, would not have saved the child. They would be right — and utterly deceitful. …A large majority of Americans — and most gun owners — have steadfastly supported the assault gun ban. So why did Congress let it die, allowing dealers to once more peddle these weapons of mass destruction? Look to President Bush, who once said he supported the ban. His deliberate silence as the law's time ran out justified congressional leaders in arguing that if the president wasn't behind the prohibition, there was no point in voting to renew it. So today the expired ban is a trophy Bush can lay at the NRA's feet as the group readies its presidential endorsement.

Too Good to Disbelieve September 13, 2004 The renowned Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University did not issue a fascinating research report the other day showing that the individual IQs of married couples plummet dramatically as soon as they have a child. The nonexistent study of 400 couples purports to document that new parents always become dumber upon their little darling's arrival. So sure was the respected Kinsey Institute about not conducting this study that it placed a pretty clear disclaimer on its website: "The Kinsey Institute is NOT involved in a study about IQ; we have no reason to believe that IQ changes after childbirth." Never mind. Millions of people who received convincing multiple e-mails about this report and heard it read on radio stations have turned this false story into a "true" one by forwarding and discussing its fictitious results as if they were true.

I mentioned I was interviewed for two documentaries that I'll never see (because the folks producing them are from Australia and New Zealand) at the RNC protests. The interview at the UPJ march, for a documentary on the effects terrorism have had on everyday folks went approximately like this:

Interviewer: Do you think Bush has made America is safer?
Me: No. It can't be done the way he's trying to do it. We have SO much border to cover it's not even possible to seal it off. You can't prevent people from entering the country illegally, so what you have to do is not make them want to hurt you. That is where the Bush administration fails so badly. Interviewer: How did 9/11 make you feel?
Me: Honestly, I knew which of my people were in Manhattan. Once I found out they were all okay, I had no problems. See, the odds of getting caught in a terrorist attack is less that that of being struck by lightning. I can live with those odds. Unless you go planting lightning rods all over my house.

I am not the first to suggest the terrorism threat is overblown (as opposed to the terror threat, because Americans are definitely terrified—sadly, it's not the terrorists that terrified us. They made us sad, angry…it's Bush that terrified the nation). Neither am I the last, and I hope Mr. Kosko isn't the last either. Quote of note:

We do know that studies of our statistical competency show both that we systematically overestimate the probability of vivid, high-profile threats such as shark bites and terrorist bombings and that we poorly estimate the probability of less glamorous dangers like highway fatalities. The comparative absence of terrorism could just as easily (and I believe, more reasonably) support the very different conclusion that we have overestimated — grossly overestimated — the terrorist threat.

Terror Threat May Be Mostly a Big Bluff The facts point to overestimation by a frightened U.S. By Bart Kosko Bart Kosko teaches probability and statistics at USC, where he is a professor of electrical engineering. He is author of "Heaven in a Chip" (Random House, 2000). September 13, 2004 Just what is the evidence for this alleged terrorist threat that now dominates foreign affairs and the presidential election? The third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center has come and gone without any terrorist attacks in the U.S. No terrorists attacked the Olympics in Greece, as so many feared. Nor did they attack the Republican convention in New York. And the big statistical picture of terrorism has changed little in years. Deaths because of terrorism worldwide have increased a bit lately (especially after the school attack in Russia), but the number still remains on the order of about a thousand deaths a year, according to the State Department — a small fraction of the 15,000 or so murders each year in the United States, or the 40,000 who die in car accidents. The Bush administration and many others interpret these facts as proof that the government is winning its "war on terror" (even though Osama bin Laden still roams free and threatens from afar). And they may be right. It's conceivable that there would have been some attacks by now if not for the government's stepped-up security at home and its vigorous anti-terrorism efforts abroad. We don't know. We do know that studies of our statistical competency show both that we systematically overestimate the probability of vivid, high-profile threats such as shark bites and terrorist bombings and that we poorly estimate the probability of less glamorous dangers like highway fatalities. The comparative absence of terrorism could just as easily (and I believe, more reasonably) support the very different conclusion that we have overestimated — grossly overestimated — the terrorist threat. We may be "winning" a war against terrorism simply because there are few terrorists out there posing a serious threat to the U.S. We may have traded substantial civil liberties and international goodwill in the last three years for a lot more security than we need. Answering these questions involves a subtle type of formal reasoning called negative evidence: Sometimes a search that finds nothing is evidence that there is nothing. Suppose you shop in a store and then can't find your car keys. How much of the store must you search before you conclude the keys are not there? The negative evidence for this conclusion grows as the search widens and finds nothing. The strength of the negative evidence depends on the size and complexity of the search area. For instance, we have good negative evidence that there is no Loch Ness monster because no sonar sweep of the Scottish lake has found such a creature. We have less good negative evidence that there is no Bigfoot because we have not fully searched the larger and more complex area of pine forests in Northern California. And we have no good negative evidence at all that we are alone in the cosmos because we have just started to search the vast heavens for signs of structured energy. The war in Iraq gives a telling example of negative evidence. The coalition forces still cannot find the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons may be there, but the negative evidence that they are not grows stronger each day as a wider search finds nothing.

Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine If facts mattered in American politics, the Bush-Cheney ticket would not be basing its re-election campaign on the fear-mongering contention that the surest defense against future terrorist attacks lies in the badly discredited doctrine of preventive war. Vice President Dick Cheney took this argument to a disgraceful low last week when he implied that electing John Kerry and returning to traditional American foreign policy values would invite a devastating new strike. So far, the preventive war doctrine has had one real test: the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush terrified millions of Americans into believing that forcibly changing the regime in Baghdad was the only way to keep Iraq's supposed stockpiles of unconventional weapons out of the hands of Al Qaeda. Then it turned out that there were no stockpiles and no operational links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda's anti-American terrorism. Meanwhile, America's longstanding defensive alliances were weakened and the bulk of America's ground combat troops tied down in Iraq for what now appears to be many years to come. If that is making this country safer, it is hard to see how. The real lesson is that America dangerously erodes its military and diplomatic defenses when it charges off unwisely after hypothetical enemies.

Rumsfeld Mixes Up U.S. Foes Saddam and Bin Laden Fri Sep 10, 2004 03:44 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mixed up al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech on Friday about the war against terrorism. Critics accuse the Bush administration of having concentrated on going after Saddam at the expense of the hunt for bin Laden whose al Qaeda network carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Saddam is imprisoned after being captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, while bin Laden has not been found.

Genocide THE MORAL ORDER we inhabit fell into focus on Thursday, and it was an awful moment. In an act without precedent since the U.N. Genocide Convention was adopted in 1948, a government accused a sitting counterpart of genocide -- a genocide, moreover, that even now is continuing. And yet the accused government may not pay a price for committing this worst of all humanitarian crimes, because there is a limit to how much powerful nations care.

I was looking for an article I'd seen but wasn't sure if I'd blogged, so instead of searching the sit eor the Internet, I searched my RSS feeds. First time I used Feed Demon's search function. Tremendous. Given that I have feeds to like everything I'm interested in, this is as useful as Google. Feed Demon actually has several other functions I'm never bothered with. Maybe I should reconsider that.

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The statement added that several investigations so far "have determined that no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have authorized or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib." That is essentially the same reaction issued by the Pentagon when Mr. Hersh first reported, in May, that Mr. Rumsfeld, with White House approval, established a secret program under which commandos would capture and interrogate suspected terrorists with few if any constraints, and that eventually that program's reach extended into the Abu Ghraib prison.

You will note that even Rumsfeld has admitted he issued orders that could be construed as war crimes. He says they aren't because the terrorists have done so much worse.

Rumsfeld Says Terror Outweighs Jail Abuse Associated Press Saturday, September 11, 2004; Page A04 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to allegations that he fostered a climate that led to the prisoner-abuse scandal, said yesterday that the military's mistreatment of detainees was not as bad as what terrorists have done. "Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?" he asked. "It doesn't." Rumsfeld acknowledged once again that he had approved harsher interrogation methods for suspects captured in the global war on terrorism but said the rules were meant only for the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility for terrorist suspects and had nothing to do with Iraq, where the prison scandal emerged.

But you know that, right? Anyway… New Book Says Bush Officials Were Told of Detainee Abuse By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr. WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 - Senior military and national security officials in the Bush administration were repeatedly warned by subordinates in 2002 and 2003 that prisoners in military custody were being abused, according to a new book by a prominent journalist. Seymour M. Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker who earlier this year was among the first to disclose details of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, makes the charges in his book "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib" (HarperCollins), which is being released Monday. The book draws on the articles he wrote about the campaign against terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser. But when General Gordon called the matter to her attention and she discussed it with other senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, no significant change resulted. Mr. Hersh's account is based on anonymous sources, some secondhand, and could not be independently verified. Although a number of senior officials were briefed on the analyst's findings of abuse, the high-level White House meeting did not "dwell on" that question, but rather focused on whether some of the prisoners should not have been held at all, the book says. A White House official said Saturday that the meeting was held, but said that it was solely focused on whether people at Guantánamo were being improperly held. The official also said the C.I.A. analyst who visited the Guantánamo detention center filed a report that concerned only the question of improper detention, not abuses. Mr. Hersh also says that a military officer involved in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq learned of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in November and reported it to two of his superiors, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the regional commander, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith. "I said there are systematic abuses going on in the prisons," the unidentified officer is quoted as telling Mr. Hersh. "Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked at me - beyond me, as if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.' " But Capt. Hal Pittman, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement Saturday, "General Abizaid does not recall any officer discussing with him any specific cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to January 2004, nor do any of the officers of the Centcom staff who travel with him."

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AND what of the researchers' own objectivity? …Mr. Hassett was an adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, during his bid for the presidency in 2000, and a co-author of "Dow 36,000," a wildly bullish analysis of the stock market's prospects. Mr. Lott's research supporting gun ownership as a crime deterrent has also come under criticism. He acknowledged that he assumed a pseudonym - Mary Rosh- to write his own praise and defend his positions in online debate on that subject from 2000 through January 2003. …"To even base a story on Lott's work at this point in time is to demonstrate a pronounced bias toward right-wing hacks," said Brad DeLong, a liberal-leaning economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Do Newspapers Make Good News Look Bad? By EDUARDO PORTER CONSERVATIVE pundits routinely accuse the news media of injecting a liberal bias into coverage of issues from abortion to gun control to gay marriage. Now, two months before the presidential election, the economy has been invited to the culture wars. In a new paper, Kevin A. Hassett and John R. Lott Jr., economists at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization in Washington, say they have discovered that economic reporters commit the same archetypal sin: slanting the news unequivocally in favor of the Democrats. How can a nugget of news like the economy's addition of 308,000 new jobs in March - the biggest monthly gain in about four years - yield a report that The Associated Press labeled "Bond prices tumble on jobs data"? Bias, the researchers suspected. The two economists combed through 389 newspapers and A.P. reports contained in the LexisNexis database from January 1991 through May 2004, during the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They picked out headlines about gross domestic product growth, unemployment, retail sales and orders of durable goods and classified the headlines' depiction of the economy as either positive, negative, neutral or mixed. Then they crunched some numbers. They found that Mr. Clinton received better headlines than the two Republican presidents. Even after adjusting the data to compensate for differences in economic performance under the three presidents, the Republicans received 20 to 30 percent fewer positive headlines, on average, for the same type of news, they concluded.

There are no treaties forbidding nuclear research. And I don't think there's a line of research that will NOT lead to knowledge sufficient to make weapons grade fissionable material.

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Iran Says It Won't Halt Nuclear Technology Drive Sun Sep 12, 2004 09:08 AM ET By Amir Paivar TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran Sunday rejected European demands it abandon sensitive nuclear activities but reiterated its readiness to provide assurances that its atomic ambitions are entirely peaceful. Western diplomats say Britain, France and Germany have demanded Iran halt all parts of the atomic fuel cycle, particularly uranium enrichment, that can be used to make bombs. The European Union trio have proposed a draft resolution for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) starting in Vienna Monday which gives Iran until November to dispel doubts about its nuclear program. Asked about the EU trio's stance, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi reiterated that Iran had no intention of abandoning its efforts to master the nuclear fuel cycle. "If the Europeans and the international community want assurances that nuclear technology will be for peaceful purposes, we are ready to give assurances," Asefi told a weekly news conference. "But if the issue is that we cannot master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, that is out of the question because we have already reached that point," he said. The trio's draft does not order Tehran to be automatically reported to the U.N. Security Council if it does not meet the deadline, as Washington wishes.

Israel's Sharon Accuses Far-Right of Inciting War Sun Sep 12, 2004 09:07 AM ET By Matthew Tostevin JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused far-rightists Sunday of trying to incite civil war over his plan to withdraw from the occupied Gaza Strip and called for measures to curb such groups. Settler leaders themselves warned last week that quitting Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and a fragment of the West Bank could spark civil war, though polls show the plan is backed by most Israelis. Hard-liners have urged security forces to disobey orders to remove settlements from land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, under the plan designed for "disengagement" from years of conflict with the Palestinians. Sharon said at Sunday's cabinet meeting that the calls from far-rightists were: "in essence aimed at inciting civil war." "I call upon those of you in charge of security matters, to take all necessary steps," he said. One option was so-called "administrative detention" -- or detention without trial -- which has been used against hundreds of Palestinians arrested during a four-year-old uprising, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said. "I hope we will not have to use it against settlers or against religious leaders. But we are reserving our right to do so if necessary," Lapid told reporters.

How do you "promote democracy" without dealing in politics?

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U.S. Middle East Project to Leave Politics Alone Sun Sep 12, 2004 07:19 AM ET By Laith Abou-Ragheb DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official appointed to a controversial multi-million dollar project to promote democracy in Arab countries insists he will not meddle in the politics of the region. The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), conceived two years ago by President Bush in response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the rise of Islamic militancy, has been met with skepticism by Arab governments wary of U.S. interference. Along with Washington's broader plan for reform in the Middle East, still being fine-tuned after heavy Arab criticism, MEPI has been undermined by instability in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and Israeli-Palestinian violence. But support for political, economic, social and educational reforms in general is growing in the region. The U.S. government this month set up a MEPI office in Abu Dhabi to cover the Gulf region and Jordan and another in Tunis to cover Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. The director of the Abu Dhabi office says he hopes to allay the suspicions of some Arab governments toward the plan. "I'd like to dispel this fear that we're somehow here to clandestinely fuel opposition groups who want to cause problems for governments in the region. We're after purely structural changes and not political ones," Hans Wechsel told Reuters.