First of all, I got six of them damn Gmail things I can't get rid of. Anyone who wants, gets…ideally, at least one person who it will confuse the hell out of Google to see associated with me will ask. So that's the first question: who wants Google all up in their business?

The other questions are related. As you know, P6 lets you register but at this point the only benefit of that is you don't have to identify yourself when you comment…not that there's very much of that going on recently…and symbolic support for my stuff, but shockingly that was reason enough for about 25 people.And since most of you registered folk haven't commented, that means it's pure support.

What I'd like to know it, what can I do to return the appreciation, site-wise (sorry, I'm broke&hellip). You see there's one more technical upheaval on the horizon: version 4.5 of Drupal. I've been reading the development mailing list and staying out of their way—it's a pretty tight team and I don't know the code well enough to be useful yet. But I think their pretty close to a release candidate, and I will test it and eventually convert both P6 and The Niggerati Network.

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results.

'nuff said.

---

Demise of Iraqi Units Symbolic of U.S. Errors
Rebuilding Hindered by Past Mistakes
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 25, 2004; Page A01

SAQLAWIYA, Iraq -- The police outpost here is supposed to house 90 armed members of Iraq's National Guard. Their job is to keep watch over a stretch of six-lane highway, deterring insurgents from laying roadside bombs and trying to blow up a bridge over the nearby Tharthar Canal.

But when the U.S. Marine commander responsible for the area visited the outpost this month, he found six bedraggled guardsmen on duty. None of them was patrolling. The Iraqi officer in charge was missing. And their weapons had been locked up by the Marines after a guardsman detonated a grenade inside the compound.

A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States
By FORD FESSENDEN

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

An Un-American Way to Campaign

President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election campaign into dangerous territory. Mr. Bush is running as the man best equipped to keep America safe from terrorists - that was to be expected. We did not, however, anticipate that those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda. Yet that is the message they are delivering - with a repetition that makes it clear this is an organized effort to paint the Democratic candidate as a friend to terrorists.

When Vice President Dick Cheney declared that electing Mr. Kerry would create a danger "that we'll get hit again," his supporters attributed that appalling language to a rhetorical slip. But Mr. Cheney is still delivering that message. Meanwhile, as Dana Milbank detailed so chillingly in The Washington Post yesterday, the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, said recently on television that Al Qaeda would do better under a Kerry presidency, and Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has announced that the terrorists are going to do everything they can between now and November "to try and elect Kerry."

Nate at Cincinnati Black Blog shows that. no matter how big a fan of baseball he is, George Bush missed an important lesson: the followthru is as important as the swing.

GOP No Show AT Urban League Debate

Raise your hand if you remember the Prez speaking before the National Urban League saying this:

...I'm here for another reason. I'm here to ask for your vote.... No, I know, I know, I know. The Republican party has got a lot of work to do. I understand that.... I believe you've got to earn the vote and seek it. I think you've got to go to people and say, this is my heart, this is what I believe, and I'd like your help....

I think they're going for the burning bush look, though. Ah, to bask in the Presidential Radiance.

This is the most posed picture I've seen passed off as a news photo in 37 years. Between the backlighting (the whole sky), the wide angle lens distortion (only Bush himself is upright)…I mean, the photographer must lie on the ground to get this perspective.

Look at the expression on Bush's face here. Even he has trouble not laughing. Frankly, if he knew as much as I about what the Bible says, he'd worry:

Isa 14:12-20

12 "How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations!

Bush Promises to Step Up Iraq Rebuilding Spending
Sat Sep 25, 2004 01:26 PM ET
By Adam Entous

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush, under election-year pressure from Democrats and some fellow Republicans over Iraq, promised on Saturday to step up the pace of spending on reconstruction contracts in that country despite the violence.

Bush, in his weekly radio address, cited what he called "steady progress" in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Kerry, that the situation in reality was deteriorating.

The Republican president said more than $9 billion would be spent on contracts in the next several months to rebuild Iraqi schools, refurbish hospitals, repair bridges and upgrade the electrical grid and communication system. But congressional aides and some administration officials said spending would increase more slowly.

I'm complaining about IE because I'm working the site structures again.

I just finished converting The Black Experience in America by Norman Coombs from static text to Drupal book format. This is one of my favorite references to pass around because it's on roughly a 4th to 6th grade level; frankly, that's right around the average.

It's also a favorite because of what it covers. Given the current discussions going on in the Black communities, I think CHAPTER 8 The Crisis of Leadership, with sections onBooker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph is appropriate for general review.

For the rest of the weekend (with sanity breaks, of course) I'll be adding text rather than converting existing stuff.

Yeah, it's no news that CSS is kind of broken in IE. I never complained about the damn thing before because I could always fake a design that, if it wasn't identical in IE and Netscape/Mozilla, would force you to search for the differences. That is good enough for government work, know what I'm saying?

I can't wait for Firefox to go gold so Microsoft can go ahead and steal the code (it's open source, so you KNOW they will. It will live right next to the BSD code in the NT/XP's core).

ZETA-JONES TOP BEAUTY OF THE CENTURY

Catherine Zeta-Jones is considered the embodiment of beauty in the 21st century according to plastic surgeons.

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery chose the Oscar winner as the epitome of modern day aestheticism with 31 percent of the votes -- beating Charlize Theron and Lucy Liu, who received 23 percent and one percent respectively.

Doctor Pearlman says, "Zeta-Jones has a short delicate jaw with small chin and nose, all of which are desirable for an attractive female face."

Catherine Zeta-Jones is considered the embodiment of beauty in the 21st century according to plastic surgeons.

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery chose the Oscar winner as the epitome of modern day aestheticism with 31 percent of the votes -- beating Charlize Theron and Lucy Liu, who received 23 percent and one percent respectively.

Quote of note:

Mississippians have heard little from Killen since 1967, when witnesses at a federal trial testified that he had recruited men to kill Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. The jury deadlocked on conspiracy charges against Killen by a vote of 11 to 1; the lone holdout later said she could not convict a preacher.

It's assholes like this "lone holdout" that give people of faith the reuptation of BLIND FUCKING STUPIDITY. You let a man get away with murder because of his job. He is obviously NOT a man of God.

People like her are reason to fear theocracy.

Gov. Haley Barbour on Thursday dismissed Barrett's organization as "certainly not representative of today's Mississippi,"

There is not a single Republican in the House of Representatives that is serious about anything but power and politics. This is the similar to the tactic Dixiecrats used to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964: load it down with so much controversy that (they hope) responsible politicians will vote it down. It didn't work with the Civil Rights Act. But the intent is more subtle here because they are trying to use Democratic fear of bad names to shoehorn in a few more dictatorial institutions.

Some of these measures were included in a Justice Department memo leaked last year and dubbed "Patriot Act II" by critics who said they would further erode civil liberties that were weakened by the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

More on that below the quote.

GOP Bill Adds Police Powers to Intelligence Reforms

Latino Vote Still Lags Its Potential
The Southwest influx leans Democratic but is not registering fast enough to help Kerry.
By Ronald Brownstein and Kathleen Hennessey
Times Staff Writers

September 25, 2004

LAS VEGAS — Block by block, house by house, Cesar Auyb and Irene Rodriguez are literally changing the complexion of politics in Nevada. But the change is coming slowly.

Since May, the two have been on leave from their jobs in Las Vegas casinos to work as organizers for a union-sponsored, nonprofit organization trying to increase voter registration among the state's exploding Latino population. On a bright and breezy morning last weekend, each was diligent and cheerful as they pursued potential voters in a heavily Latino neighborhood west of the downtown strip.

The King of Zembla

It's taken us a while, but we have slowly come to the conclusion that Kerry can win the debate, lose the "flip-flop" label, end the cojones war, galvanize the electorate, dominate media coverage, and reframe the issues by the judicious application of a single word:

Bullshit.

Said out loud, on national television, in front of the children, to Bush's face.

The key, of course, is not to back down when the manufactured outrage inevitably erupts. "How could you stand there on national television and say that the president's policies are, um, b.s.?"

"I didn't say they were b.s. I said they were bullshit."

"How could you say that?"

"Because it's true. The president's policies ARE bullshit." Followed by a laundry list of Bushian bullshit which any good Democrat could recite in his sleep.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has posted a copy of an RNC mailing that says Democrats will ban Bibles if they win.

Renee at The Village Gate says:

No one has taken away their Bibles yet--so they should have heard of this:
Exodus 20:16-18 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

So, another nutty, desperate, fear-mongering plea from radical
Republicans. How will we respond? There is plenty of discussion on this
matter already, so I will offer one humble suggestion...

Can we please, as liberals, progressives,

Remember the ABC News clip that caught George Bush in a bald-faced lie about John Kerry?

via Media Matters

Washington Times columnist John McCaslin falsely claimed in his September 24 "Inside the Beltway" column that, while appearing on a 1997 edition of CNN's Crossfire, Senator John Kerry advocated a unilateral and preemptive attack on Iraq. McCaslin claimed that Kerry said: "We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians. ... We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."

The Drudge Report posted a link to McCaslin's false Washington Times report: "Kerry Argued Case For Unilateral Preemptive Action In Iraq On CNN's CROSSFIRE In 1997..."

Ridge Reports Investments in Homeland Security Contractors
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge had investments last year in a number of companies with contracts with his department and others who want to profit from homeland security, a new list of his assets shows.

This wouldn't bother me as much as it does…it's a kind of new position, I don't know how long he's held the assets, the Bushistas have been SO screwed it's very likely they haven't written up the ethical guidelines for the position ("No break rule...no rule to break!") if it weren't for this:

In response to a late afternoon telephone inquiry, DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse first said the department did not have enough time to answer questions about the disclosure form. Pressed further, he shouted an expletive to a reporter and hung up.

You know The Nation has several weblogs running right?

Today's The Daily Outrage talks about the additional tax burbed that falls on the middle class as a direct result of George Bush's tax deferments (I refuse outright to call them cuts). In and of itself a wonderful topic, made better by being supported by a link to P6.

I felt the need to yell at Boston over their handling of busing and school zoning, so I did.

Busy writing up something for the N-Net, I take a break and catch a bit of John Kerry's policy speech on "The War on Terra."

He noted that the right was talking about how we have to go it alone, how "they" won't work with us no matter what and said to Bush, "Just because you can't do it doesn't mean it can't be done."

VERY good.

Also, something along the lines of the reason our allies aren't helping us isn't George Bush's style, it's George Bush's judgment. And they know he won't change.

Also very good. Delivery was better too. He left the filibuster vocabulary at home.

Okay, back to the other thing.

Quote of note:

The truth is that political reform and civil society do not come about by invading countries and toppling regimes.

Democracy in Retrograde
The Iraq war has slowed calls for reform in Iran.
By Hadi Semati
Hadi Semati, a professor of political science at Tehran University, is currently a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

September 24, 2004

The Bush administration hoped that regime change in Iraq would stimulate democratic change throughout the Middle East but, in fact, the opposite is taking place.

Reform movements, despite the promises of the Bush administration, are in retreat across the region, at least for now. Given the enormous antipathy currently felt toward the United States, even to be associated with the U.S. agenda of democratic transformation in the Middle East means the end of legitimacy for many of these groups.

I really don't like writing about Haiti.

Don't much like reading about it either, apparently. I see this in the dread RSS reader:

Flood's toll dire for Haitian city

GONAIVES, Haiti -- Around the corner from a road on which bloated corpses of cows and pigs floated in rivers of mud, James Louis sat on a mound of dirt, selling plastic sandals scavenged from the dead.

and below it a story about how dogs can smell cancer.

Of course, I read the dog story. Still haven't read the Haiti piece.

Over a thousand dead, over a thousand missing. After all they've gone through.

And this will happen again and again, every hurricane season, because Haiti has basically been deforested and all the atmospheric models are projecting stronger storms in the area due to global warming.

Contingency plans started, officials say
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | September 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- US military commanders are quietly drawing up contingency plans to deploy thousands more active-duty American troops to Iraq before January's planned elections amid growing concerns that sufficient Iraqi forces may not be ready in time to protect voters and retake parts of the country under insurgent control, senior military officials said yesterday.

With US efforts to convince United Nations members to provide for election security falling flat, senior Pentagon officials said they are banking on tens of thousands more newly trained Iraqi security forces to fill the gap in the next few months.

House votes to prevent court review of Pledge
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | September 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The House yesterday voted to strip federal courts of the authority to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, a dramatic move meant to thwart what the bill's sponsors call "activist" judges on the federal bench.

The measure, approved 247 to 173, is part of an effort by Republicans to restrict the courts' actions on several hot-button issues. In July, the House approved a measure that would limit the courts' ability to review cases involving the legal definition of marriage. Another bill pending in Congress would restrict the courts' authority to rule on cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments.

In prime minister, presidential race gets a touchstone
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | September 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Apart from the heavy Iraqi accent, he sounded almost like a Republican official introducing President Bush at a campaign stop. [P6: Almost? Allawi IS a Republican official.] But as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq toured the diplomatic circuit in Washington yesterday, praising Bush for ''standing firm" in the war on terror and admonishing Senator John F. Kerry as a ''doubter," he took on a far more significant role in the presidential campaign than any American partisan ever could.

Feed-Tube Law Is Struck Down in Florida Case
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Sept. 23 - Gov. Jeb Bush's efforts to keep a brain-damaged woman alive against her husband's wishes all but collapsed on Thursday, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the law letting the governor order her feeding tube reinserted violated the separation of powers guaranteed by the state's Constitution.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, Jill Bratina, said his lawyers were exploring options like requesting a rehearing or appealing to the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Bratina said Mr. Bush had 10 days to seek a rehearing, during which the woman, Theresa Schiavo, 40, had to continue receiving nourishment.

Cozying up to Syria
Despite Bush Administration rhetoric, the U.S. sits down with Syria's leadership
By ADAM ZAGORIN AND MASSIMO CALABRESI
Sunday, Sep. 19, 2004

President Bush has always made it clear where he stands on the matter of terrorism: "You're either with us or against us." But the Administration is showing a surprisingly nuanced attitude toward one country long designated a state sponsor of terrorism: Syria. Desperate to stop the terrorists, money and weapons that the U.S. says are crossing Syria's border into Iraq and fueling the insurgency there, the U.S. has initiated talks with Syria to join in controlling the frontier. A senior U.S. official tells Time the talks are aimed at creating a "military-to-military" relationship and that "joint border patrols" involving U.S. and Syrian troops "cannot be ruled out."

I don't know what else to say.

U.S. Economic Gauge Signals Weakness
Thu Sep 23, 2004 01:08 PM ET
By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key gauge of future economic activity weakened for a third straight month in August as costlier oil spread worry among consumers and businesses, a report from a business research group showed on Thursday .

The Index of Leading Indicators, issued by the Conference Board, fell 0.3 percent in Aug to 115.7 after a matching 0.3 percent decline in July and a 0.1 percent drop in June, raising questions about the durability of the economy's expansion.

The index measures a basket of 10 indicators of performance from consumer confidence to applications for new building permits, and is intended to signal the economy's direction three to six months down the road.

Blue Chips Drop, Oil Reaches $49 a Barrel
Thu Sep 23, 2004 03:29 PM ET

By Mark McSherry
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. blue-chip stocks fell on Thursday and crude oil prices touched $49 a barrel as traders saw a possible oil loan from U.S. government reserves as too small to make up for supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Ivan.

Investors worry about higher energy prices because they can curb consumer spending and corporate profits.

Exxon Mobil Corp. pulled the Dow lower as it fell almost 2 percent to $47.95 after Deutsche Bank cut its ratings on the company and the global oil sector. Rival ChevronTexaco Corp. slid 1.1 percent to $52.56.

Investors sold cyclical stocks -- those particularly sensitive to rises and falls in the economy -- such as manufacturer 3M Co. and heavy equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. .

Bush Suggests Kerry Cannot Lead War on Terror
Wed Sep 22, 2004 06:54 PM ET
By David Morgan

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (Reuters) - President Bush suggested on Wednesday that Democrat John Kerry's aggressive new attacks on the White House's Iraq policy show that the Massachusetts senator may not be up to the task of leading the broader war on terrorism.

In a sharp verbal counterpunch at a campaign stop in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Bush accused Kerry of wavering from his early backing of military intervention in Iraq as the Nov. 2 election approaches.

"He has had many different positions on Iraq. Incredibly, this week he said he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today," Bush said.

Molotov at Booker Rising has issues a challenge:

email a list of what Sen. Kerry has done to promote black progress, and we'll put up the list next Monday. Don't send us an anti-Bush list, as that doesn't tell us why we should vote for Sen. Kerry and why he's the better guy. Don't tell us what Sen. Kerry is gonna do, but what he has done to promote black progress.

She has the following list of things she says Bush has done for Black Americans, and if reasons to vote for Kerry are held to the same loose standard, we can just list his every progressive vote.

1. Black child poverty hit all-time low (30%), and remains near the low
Not attributable to Bush because the groundwork came prior to his term in office, unless you want to claim Black people made this staggering advance while the rest of the country suffered through "The Clinton Recession," and the general replacement of outsourced jobs with lower paying service industry jobs.

This would be an interesting trend. One I'm all in favor of.

Quote of note:

His order will remain in effect unless a future governor revokes it. Richard J. Codey, the Senate president, who will serve out the last 14 months of Mr. McGreevey's term, pledged to keep the order in place "as long as the sun continues to rise in the East and set in the West while I am acting governor."

New Jersey Bars Contracts for Political Donors
By LAURA MANSNERUS

TRENTON, Sept. 22 - With only weeks until he steps down, Gov. James E. McGreevey issued a broad order on Wednesday that attempts to break the link between political contributions and government contracts in a state rattled by one corruption scandal after another.

After reading Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, which documents the run up to the invasion from the inside of the administration, Mike at TopDog04.com has done a very interesting thing.

He's made something of a time line from Woodward's book and news reports circa year end 2001 and come up with a pretty compelling picture of how planning the Iraq invasion was given priority over the actual mission at hand—Afghanistan and the pursuit of Bin Laden.

Quote of note:

…in the fall of 2002, several months before the air strikes on Baghdad began, Bush himself insisted the vote was not the same as a declaration of war but instead gave him the hand he needed to negotiate the peace.

"If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force,'' Bush said in September 2002. "It's a chance for Congress to say, 'we support the administration's ability to keep the peace.' That's what this is all about.''

Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts
Kerry always pushed global cooperation, war as last resort
- Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Thursday, September 23, 2004

The San Francisco Chronicle has this loooong (like I should talk) op-ed titled Why Bush is teetering by Martin Nolan which says there are four historical reasons to conclude Bush is a one-term appointment. There's a nice, concise summary at the end of the thing, though:

FOUR REASONS BUSH IS AN UNDERDOG (1) A self-described "war president" needs to be winning the war at re- election time. U.S. troops are bogged down in Iraq, and the death toll is growing. (2) Bush and his party represent a declining demographic. The Republican Party is a white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant party, as photos from its convention show. (3) Re-election is not the presidential norm. Only 11 presidents have served eight consecutive years. President Reagan was the last Republican president to be re-elected. (4) Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. The three presidents who failed the first time around to win the popular vote did not return to the White House.

Quote of note:

It's being called a "backdoor draft." Bush doesn't have the political courage to call for a regular draft before the Nov. 2 elections, so he's taking advantage of our reservists and National Guardsmen until then. Here's an example, as reported by Dick Foster in the Rocky Mountain News last Thursday:

"Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum -- re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.

"Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity."

The Bush people tell us that patriotic young Americans are flocking to enlistment stations to sign up, yet they can't seem to field enough troops without screwing the reservists.

Time to curb rise in racial profiling
-
Wednesday, September 22, 2004

A YEARLONG STUDY of racial profiling by Amnesty International USA shows why Congress needs to approve a federal law banning the practice. The problem has grown disproportionately since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and too many states afford little, if any, protections for groups routinely targeted by law enforcement officials.

The study, released in five cities studied by the human rights watchdog group last week including San Francisco and Oakland, found that 32 million Americans report that they have been victims of racial profiling. That figure includes more than 4 million California residents and nearly 353,000 people living in San Francisco and Alameda counties.

When Really Bad Pop Stars Go Really Bad
The Cat Stevens threat looms.
By Andy Borowitz
Andy Borowitz is author of "The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers," to be published in October by Simon & Schuster.

September 23, 2004

Hours after being refused entry into the U.S., 1970s recording star Cat Stevens lashed out at the government Wednesday, vowing to resume his recording career "immediately" as the ultimate act of revenge.

Appearing on the Arabic-language satellite TV channel Al Jazeera, a visibly angry Stevens — now known by the name Yusuf Islam — threatened to attack the United States with the full force of his insipid folk-rock music.

Still listening?

You can steal the whole "hard earned dollars" meme.

In fact, you can steal the tax cuts meme.

Why is Bush cutting taxes on unearned income? Middle class Americans work hard for their money and have little enough as it is. Tell Bush to leave your hard earned dollars alone. Tell Bush to tax the unearned income of his billionaire friends for a change.

Tax cuts should target earned income as long as earned income is taxed at all.

Anyway&hellip

Edwards Outlines the Kerry-Edwards Plan for Ohio's Economic Recovery; Delivers Strong Critique of Bush's Dangerous Tax Agenda

9/21/2004 10:25:00 AM

…Edwards also criticized the President's new tax agenda as corrupting American values.

From a purely economic perspective, I'd have to agree with Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture:

Where are all the Political Cheerleaders today?

The market got creamed today. Dow off triple digits, Nasdaq down almost 2%, S&P500 rocked.

So where are all the Political Cheerleaders? Where are all the people claiming the rally from August 13th to Septmber 14th made the incumbent a lock?

Today is a perfect example why I find the connection between polling data and the markets so utterly tenuous: For those who mistakenly insist that the market is a political polling device -- and not an economic discounting mechanism -- pray tell: What does today's market action mean for your candidate or his opponent? Obviously, it means doom for (insert your least favorite candidate here).

What Is Bush Hiding?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A21

…Oh, I can hear the groaning: "But why are we still talking about Vietnam?" A fair question that has several compelling answers.

First, except for John McCain, Republicans were conspicuously happy to have a front group spread untruths about John Kerry's Vietnam service in August and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because the media were supposed to question Kerry's character but not Bush's.

It is, however pinned to the top of his site…

What is it? A Quicktime (Mp4, actually) of George W. Bush outted as a liar by ABC News.

I got one piece of comment spam today. No use looking for it, it's gone.

But the record of its creation is not. Drupal records all that stuff, and the IP from which it is posted is among the items saved. This one came from 213.8.72.242, and rather than drag you through the whole discovery process I'll just tell you it belongs to

person: Ira Abramov
address: Scalable Solutions
address: P.O.Box 3600
address: Jerusalem 91035 Israel
phone: +972-2-6426822
fax-no: +972-2-6430471
nic-hdl: IA58

The news media also need to think through this issue, for we're being manipulated. I remember rumors about Mr. Bush in the 2000 campaign that were well known among journalists, but they never saw the light of print because we could not substantiate them. Every major candidate draws scurrilous charges, but responsible journalists - quite rightly - refuse to report unsubstantiated accusations of things like love children, drug dealing or mistresses. As CBS has found, to its chagrin, extraordinary charges require extraordinary proof.

Even though the Swift Boat Veterans' accusations are unsubstantiated, wealthy Bush supporters have turned them into campaign ads - and the press has often covered the result like a sporting event, rather than trying to find the truth.

That's a choice, pal. No one was manipulated. My appreciation of the precise metaphor (covered like a sporting event) isn't great enough to let that particular evasion slip.

Oh, this is where that came from:

Washing Away the Mud

And I just wanted to use that headline because I don't like Kissenger. But it's probably a good idea to hold off on this restructuring. It's not like it will make a difference in the next 40 days or so.

---

Kissinger Leads Group Urging Delay in Intelligence Overhaul
By PHILIP SHENON

Published: September 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - With Congress moving hurriedly to respond to the Sept. 11 commission and shake up the nation's intelligence agencies, a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state and defense led by Henry A. Kissinger urged Congress on Tuesday to slow down and put off any legislation until after the November election.

Quote of note:

None of this excuses Putin's power grab or lessens the need for U.S. measures to deflect it. The real lesson is that the American actions cast a long shadow. If, as many would argue, 9/11 has encouraged some of the bleaker elements in U.S. policymaking, it is unsurprising that similarly uncompromising patterns will emerge elsewhere, as in Russia.

An Ominous U.S. Model
Our post-9/11 policies invite Russia and others to rely on warfare.
By Jonathan Clarke
Jonathan Clarke, a scholar at the Cato Institute, is co-author of "America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order" (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Welcome to being the nation's largest minority.

---

Blocking the Latino Ballot?
By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A31

To an immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger told delegates at the Republican convention last month, there is no country "more welcoming than the United States of America." And most of the time, that's true.

But it wasn't true last week in Miami Beach, where the Department of Homeland Security attempted to ban a nonpartisan voter registration operation from setting up tables on the sidewalk outside a massive naturalization ceremony at that city's convention center. The DHS complained that Mi Familia Vota would be blocking the doors at the swearing-in. But last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled that the right to register voters was protected by the First Amendment, though he did stipulate how much space the group's tables could take up.

The Politics of Social Security
Kerry to Use Study to Call Bush Plan a Wall Street Windfall
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A02

President Bush's push to create individual investment accounts in the Social Security system would hand financial services firms a windfall totaling $940 billion over 75 years, according to a University of Chicago study to be released today.

…Bush has expressed strong support for allowing workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes to accounts that could be invested in stocks and bonds. But he has never embraced a specific proposal to revamp Social Security, even after his own Social Security Commission presented him with three reform options. Goolsbee, an informal Kerry economic adviser, examined the option that is often cited as the most realistic.

GOP Leaders on Hill Agree to Extend Middle-Class Tax Cuts
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A05

Republican leaders agreed yesterday to extend three middle-class tax cuts for five years, clearing the way for Senate and House votes as early as this week on the fourth tax-cut package in as many years.

The agreement, which would cost the Treasury as much as $150 billion through 2009, was a victory for President Bush, who had scuttled a deal in July to extend the tax cuts for only two years, arguing that he could get a longer extension in the heat of the campaign season.

In securing a five-year deal, the White House had to overcome the objections of some GOP moderates, who wanted the cost offset with spending cuts or other tax increases, and conservatives, who argued for a four-year extension. That way, the popular middle-class tax cuts would have to be extended again when more politically contentious tax cuts, such as last year's deep cuts in capital gains and dividends taxation, would be up for renewal.

Anti-Prostitution Rule Drafted for U.S. Forces
By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A13

U.S. service members stationed overseas could face a court-martial for patronizing prostitutes under a new regulation drafted by the Pentagon.

The move is part of a Defense Department effort to reduce the possibility that service members will contribute to human trafficking in areas near their overseas bases by seeking the services of women forced into prostitution.

In recent years, "women and girls are being forced into prostitution for a clientele consisting largely of military services members, government contractors and international peacekeepers" in such places as South Korea and the Balkans, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said yesterday at a Capitol Hill forum on Pentagon anti-trafficking efforts.

I must be feeling bitter today. My real reaction right now is, it's inevitable so get the testing over with.

---

U.S. Wants All Air Traveler Files for Security Test
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that it planned to require all airlines to turn over records on every passenger carried domestically in June, so the agency could test a new system to match passenger names against lists of known or suspected terrorists.

The data will vary by airline. It will include each passenger's name, address and telephone number and the flight number. It may also include such information as the names of traveling companions, meal preference, whether the reservation was changed at any point, the method of ticket payment and any comment by airline employees, like whether a passenger was drunk or belligerent in encounters with airline personnel.

Quote of note:

In an interview last night, two top HUD officials - Michael Liu, assistant secretary for public and Indian housing; and Cathy M. MacFarlane, assistant secretary for public affairs - attributed the new national numbers to fresh data from the 2000 census and a new system that averages a city's rents with those of its surrounding suburbs.

Last month, however, the housing secretary, Alphonso Jackson, suggested a somewhat different rationale for the need to change the Section 8 program, which he said was growing too fast and eating away at other programs. In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, he wrote that the housing voucher system was broken and wedded to a fair-market-rent formula that did not reflect current conditions.

U.S. Seeks Cuts in Housing Aid to Urban Poor

Growing Signs of a Slowing on Wall Street
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Published: September 22, 2004

Wall Street's earnings growth, fueled by two years of robust trading gains, is showing signs that it may taper off in coming quarters as a sluggish stock market and a less-favorable trading environment take a toll on profits.

Having taken full advantage of the bull market in bonds, investment firms had entered the summer with the expectation that the nascent economic recovery would unleash a flood of high-margin banking deals and public offerings.

But, as the third-quarter results of Goldman Sachs showed yesterday, investment banking deals and initial public offerings have been in short supply, forcing the firm to continue to rely on its trading operations, which saw growth shrink by 26 percent compared with the previous quarter.

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster -Study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Glaciers once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica are now sliding off into the sea -- and they are going fast, scientists said on Tuesday.

Coming Soon -- Gene-Engineered Insects

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Coming soon to a jungle near you -- mosquitoes genetically engineered so they cannot give people malaria. But this time scientists want to do it right.

Gene-Modified Grass Spreads Far, U.S. Study Finds

Senate Committee Passes DNA Crime Bill
Tue Sep 21, 2004 07:58 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DNA testing would be expanded to help clear the innocent and snare the guilty, particularly in death-penalty cases, under a long-stalled bill passed on Tuesday by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

On an 11-7 vote, the panel sent the bipartisan measure to the full Senate where proponents are hopeful it can be approved before Congress draws to a close this year.

The bill, similar to legislation passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives last year, seeks to address growing debate over the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty system.

The measure would require post-conviction DNA testing be made available to anyone facing a federal death sentence who proclaims innocence. It does not require the states to offer those tests, but it does give grants to encourage them.

Nations lobby to expand Security Council
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer | September 21, 2004

UNITED NATIONS --Brazil's president called Tuesday for a U.N. Security Council that reflects "today's reality," ahead of a meeting with Japan, India and Germany to press for permanent seats on the powerful body.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appealed for expanding the 15-nation council in his address to the General Assembly, saying: "The Security Council is the only source of legitimate action in the field of international peace and security."

"But its composition must reflect today's reality -- not perpetuate the post-World War II era."

Bush confuses terrorists' names again
By Associated Press | September 21, 2004

WASHINGTON -- President Bush might say it was a slip of the tongue when he confused the names of two terrorists in a campaign speech yesterday in New Hampshire. Still, he's made the same misstatement at least 10 times before.

Quote of the Day
"At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed and we’ll have enough of the Iraqi security forces that they can take over responsibility for governing that country and we’ll be able to pare down the coalition security forces in the country."

-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras
By STEPHEN KINZER

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 - A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it will also make them much safer.

"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mr. Daley said when he unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Quote of note:

Against this background, how should we think about the huge Bush tax cuts? They greatly increase the already huge redistribution of wealth from younger to older generations, because the younger generations will have to pay off the bonds that are being floated to finance the current federal spending, as well as the Social Security and Medicare expenses of older generations. On top of this, the Bush tax cuts are likely over time to increase, not reduce, government's effect on the economy.

The growing federal debt is virtually certain to lead to offsetting tax increases down the road. Does anyone really believe that in 10 years, when Social Security and Medicare benefits are imminently threatened, Congress will not try to increase revenues to keep the benefits flowing a bit longer?

I think this says it all:

Bush's remarks drew applause only once -- at the end of his speech.

No, it doesn't.

He said the fund would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by instituting the rule of law, independent courts, a free press, political parties and trade unions. "Money from the fund would also help set up voter precincts and polling places and support the work of election monitors,'' he said.

Why is he in favor of trade unions overseas but not here?

Anyway…
Bush Appeals to U.N. for Help on Iraq and Humanitarian Issues
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 21, 2004

Eyeing Iran Reactors, Israel Seeks U.S. Bunker Bombs
Tue Sep 21, 2004 10:42 AM ET
By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 "bunker busters" that could be effective against Iran's underground nuclear facilities, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon said in June it was considering the sale to Israel of 500 BLU-109 warheads, which can penetrate 15 feet of fortifications, in a package meant to "contribute significantly to U.S. strategic and tactical objectives." U.S. and Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

Israeli security sources said the procurement would go through. "This is not the sort of ordnance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran, or possibly Syria," an Israeli source said.

Quote of note:

After "This Week" arranged with Allawi's office for Sunday's interview, the State Department called ABC to say that the office of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte in Baghdad had decided that the interview would not happen until this coming Sunday, after Allawi's U.S. visit. This attempt by the U.S. Embassy to exercise sovereignty over the prime minister raised interesting questions about just what was actually transferred on June 28 when sovereignty was supposedly given to the Iraqi government. The White House recognized the inconvenience of such questions. The interview occurred.

We actually know the answer to those "interesting questions." But I'm really glad Mr. Will tossed this bit into the editorial.

The national press has allowed this administration to beat them all about the head and shoulder with threats of reduced access, stonewalling and what not…when the administration could not have screwed up so badly without a passive or compliant press.

Quote of note:

The fact remains that this war, regardless of its origins in fear and myth, has been incompetently managed by the Bush administration, which is to say George Walker Bush. It is he -- not any critic of the war -- who has wasted lives in Iraq.

Coming Clean About This War
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A21

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" a young John Kerry asked back in 1971 about the war in Vietnam. Now it is all these years later and a different war is starting to look more and more like the one Kerry came to question.

Maybe it's time someone asked Kerry's question about the war in Iraq. I say "someone," because if John Kerry did so it would be tantamount to conceding the election. He would instantly undergo the sort of slimy attack on his patriotism that John Thune (rhymes with goon) visited on Tom Daschle, saying the Senate minority leader's criticism of President Bush on the eve of the Iraq war emboldened the enemy. How Thune, Daschle's opponent in the Senate race, restrained himself from saying Daschle had besmirched the memory of the fallen by saying they had died in vain is beyond me. That is the low blow that has yet to land.

The goal, you see, is the rule of the United States of America.

I thought you knew that.

---

Annan Faults Both Sides of Terror War for Eroding Rule of Law
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A02

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 20 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will tell the 191-member U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world has been eroded both by the United States and by other nations as they battle terrorism, and by Islamic extremists and their horrific acts of violence, according to senior U.N. officials.

The U.N. chief's remarks will be delivered less than an hour before President Bush addresses the international body, and will come just days after Annan said publicly he considers the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq illegal. But Annan's top aides insisted that he is not seeking to rehash the dispute over the war's legitimacy. "Stirring things up is not his stock in trade," said a senior U.N. official who briefed reporters on Annan's speech. "He is much more concerned about the future of Iraq."

Quote of note:

"Kerry lays out nice suggestions but I have no reason to assume they'd work any better, in the sense that there's no sign that the international community is willing to contribute to stabilizing Iraq or helping with security even if there is a leadership change in Washington," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq expert now at the National Defense University.

Kerry's Ideas on Iraq Praised, Questioned
Experts Say Solutions May Be Unrealistic
[P6: after four years of ham-handed foreign policy, NOW we're listening to experts??]
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A04

John F. Kerry's four-point plan for Iraq proposes ambitious solutions to accelerate the military transition, refocus reconstruction and ensure that democracy takes root, all while lessening the burden on the United States by bringing in greater foreign aid and support.

Another Bad Tax Bill
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A20

CONGRESS IS POISED to pass a tax bill -- yes, another one -- that is as predictable as it is irresponsible. With the election 42 days away, legislators probably cannot be deterred, but it might be possible to keep the bill from becoming even worse than it is in its current form. The legislation would extend the three "middle-class tax provisions" set to expire next year: the $1,000 child tax credit, the marriage penalty fix and the 10 percent tax bracket. These provisions are expiring because lawmakers, in a gimmick-ridden feint at fiscal responsibility, insisted that the 2003 tax cuts couldn't cost more than $350 billion over 10 years. To keep the ostensible price tag down, lawmakers structured the most popular provisions to run out at the end of this year, knowing they would extend them later.

Broken Promises
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A20

IT'S NOT SURPRISING that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, intends to break his commitment to retire as army chief of staff by the end of this year and thereby restore civilian rule to Pakistan five years after he led a coup against an elected government. After all, Mr. Musharraf has betrayed nearly every promise he has made about democracy and social reform in Pakistan. What's interesting is his timing: The general chose to reveal his intentions just days before his planned meeting in New York tomorrow with President Bush.

Mr. Bush has cast himself as a champion of democracy in the Muslim world, repudiating the past U.S. practice of backing authoritarian rulers when expedient. Yet Mr. Musharraf obviously believes he has nothing to fear. In fact, he was probably encouraged in his latest reversal by signals from Washington. Despite his continual repression of political opponents, Mr. Musharraf is toasted by senior administration officials, who describe his government as a "major non-NATO ally." His latest announcement prompted a State Department statement that the administration "fully share[s]" Mr. Musharraf's "vision for Pakistan's future."

Since this is the anti-527 case one would expect me to be unhappy. But I believe the possibility of such behavior was written into the FEC regs intentionally. The Bushistas thought THEY were the ones who would take advantage of it. TOTAL surprise that plain ol' humans could get together and actually counter the big Republican money machine. Nyah-nyah.

After the election the 527s will need to find something else to do anyway…hopefully something structural, something long-term educational to teach folks how to think about the political and economic rhetoric being shoveled at us all.

Quote of note:

Kollar-Kotelly largely agreed with the congressmen's complaint. She struck 15 regulations and upheld four.

She described one FEC regulation as creating "an immense loophole that would facilitate the circumvention of the Act's contribution limits" and "the potential for gross abuse." The judge concluded that another FEC regulation, which would allow a campaign to coordinate a message with friendly political organizations, would "on its face create[s] an enormous loophole which runs contrary to the entire rationale" of Congress's wish to limit coordination.

Iraq, Afghan Leaders Hailed in U.S., Threatened at Home
Mon Sep 20, 2004 03:38 PM ET
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Bush meets Iraq and Afghanistan's leaders this week, his re-election campaign will tout their countries as foreign policy successes but analysts point to the political fragility of these men.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi depend heavily on the United States for their physical survival but their political leadership is also tenuous ahead of planned elections in their countries.

Both men, who are set to meet Bush on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, have faced recent attempts on their lives.

Quote of note:

Many studies have shown clear disparities in health care in the United States.

For instance, black men are far more likely to die of heart disease and prostate cancer than are white men, while black women are more likely to die of breast cancer than white women -- even though they have lower overall rates of the disease.

Too Few Minorities in Health Care, U.S. Study Finds
Mon Sep 20, 2004 05:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States needs more black, Hispanic and American Indian doctors and nurses if minorities have any hope of catching up to whites in terms of the quality and accessibility of health care, a special commission said on Monday.

Terror Attacks Spur Israel Road Deaths Spike-Study
Mon Sep 20, 2004 05:11 PM ET

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fatal attacks in Israel cause a direct increase in the number of deadly traffic accidents -- but not until three days later, researchers said on Monday.

The team at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Princeton University in New Jersey found a 35 percent increase in the number of fatal traffic accidents after attacks by militants.

Four days after an attack, the fatal traffic accident rate returns to normal.

"Analyzing an 18-month period that included a large number of terrorist attacks, we find a lull in the light accident rate the day after an attack followed by a spike in traffic accident fatalities three days after an attack," Guy Stecklov and Joshua Goldstein wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Angry Gays Seek Key Role in Presidential Vote
Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:52 PM ET

By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - President Bush's support for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage delighted many conservatives but alienated a smaller but potentially important voting bloc in a tight election.

"The final breaking point was when the president announced his support for that amendment," said John Farina, a longtime Ohio Republican activist who left the party in February. "That was enough to finally say, 'OK, the Republican Party is moving in the wrong direction."'

In a time of war in Iraq and economic uncertainty at home, will resentment from gay voters such as Farina affect the November election, especially in states such as Florida, where only a few hundred votes decided the 2000 election?

…who I henceforth dub The Big Lie.

Eric Muller of IsThatLegal? (the first blog I ever commented on, btw) after having laid waste to The Malkin's race rant, notes the shit won't die if they won't let it.

Today John Leo, another columnist, takes the baton from Michelle Malkin's outstretched hand.

…Only one thing in Leo's piece is new. After calling Japanese schools of the 1930s the "madrasahs" of their day, Leo wraps up his piece with a look at today's world:

Malkin's point is that if the threat to the survival of America is severe enough, some civil liberties must yield. She is right that the internment issue is currently being wielded as a club to prevent reasonable extra scrutiny of suspect Arabs and Muslims. But the twin towers were not brought down by militant Swedish nuns. It is always reasonable to look in the direction from which the gravest danger is coming. It's also reasonable and important to open an honest discussion of internment, past and present.

Well, I snuck is SOME creativity at The Niggerati Network. There are two posts on McWhorter's editorial about dumping "African American" for "Black" and one on approximately class based differences in Black folks' views of racism.

I redid some of the sidebar. Everything in the box named "The Best of P6" now points to the converted version, and the static HTML files it used to point to…the one Google knows…now redirect to the current versions. I still need to point all the internal links in the "Identity Blogging" entry to the converted versions, or maybe just do the redirects and leave it at that. The unconverted stuff is in the box labels "The Public Library." I worked out a kind of rhythm to the conversions of those guys and they'll be installed at The Niggerati Network, probably by the weekend, definitely by the middle of next week. Then I can start the slower work of converting the other stuff I have from raw text to Drupal books.

Amnesty International's Racial Profiling Report

Download publication (PDF) 903KB

Amnesty International USA
September 14, 2004

Amnesty International USA has released its first report on the widespread problem of racial profiling by law enforcement in the United States, Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the Unites States. Highlights of the report include examples of how racial profiling undermines domestic security, first-hand stories from a wide range of victims, analysis of current federal efforts to end the problem, and a state-by-state survey of existing legislation. On Tuesday, September 21, Amnesty will host an all-day online chat featuring Benjamin Todd Jealous, Director of Amnesty International USA’s Domestic Human Rights Program. To submit questions, please click here.

Annan for President, Part II
September 17, 2004

Yesterday I reported on Kofi Annan’s forthright (and refreshingly candid) comment that the war in Iraq was illegal. Here’s a question for Mr. Bush’s lawyers, who crafted the legal defense of the illegal war: You say that the United States went to war in Iraq to enforce UN resolutions that Saddam Hussein had supposedly defied. What if Iran had made the same decision, in 2003, and invaded Iraq to enforce those resolutions? Would that be okay?

Or, what if, let’s say, Russia decides to enforce Resolutions 242 and 338, calling for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, and invades. Would that be okay?

Via Ambra I find this white guy who misses having Black women in his life.

where the black women at?
alright, so here it is: i don’t have any black women friends anymore.

now, different people may think this is a problem to differing degrees, and surely making the statement at all sounds racist (and it is–but i’ll explain that in a minute). but it’s like this: i miss black women.

No, that's not what I'm talking about when I say he gets it. He comes with respect, and even THAT'S not what I'm talking about.

This is the START of what I'm talking about:

but here’s why i miss them (and by extension, why i miss being around black women in general): they would tell you what was what. now, i’m not, by any means, saying that white women are incapable of doing this. and i’m not saying that all black women are outspoken. in fact, i am making a terribly over generalized generalization, and i’m sorry for that, if anyone was offended. but the spirit of my interactions with my friends was different than my interactions with just about anyone else, and there is no way that i can logically say that our cultural and ethnic differences didn’t play a role in that.

AngryDesi linked to a right interesting editorial. About the author thereof:

Fred Korematsu was awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medial of Freedom, in 1998.

Do we really need to relearn the lessons of Japanese American internment?

- Fred Korematsu
Thursday, September 16, 2004

In 1942, I was arrested and convicted for being a Japanese American trying to live here in the Bay Area. The day after my arrest a newspaper headline declared, "Jap Spy Arrested in San Leandro."

Of course, I was no spy. The government never charged me with being a spy. I was a U.S. citizen born and raised in Oakland. I even tried to enlist in the Coast Guard (they didn't take me because of my race). But my citizenship and my loyalty did not matter to the federal government. On Feb. 19, 1942, anyone of Japanese heritage was ordered excluded from the West Coast. I was charged and convicted of being a Japanese American living in an area in which all people of my ancestry had been ordered to be interned.

Portrait of George Bush in '72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time
By SARA RIMER

Published: September 20, 2004

This article was reported by Sara Rimer, Ralph Blumenthal and Raymond Bonner and written by Ms. Rimer.

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sept. 17 - Nineteen seventy-two was the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen.

He abandoned his once-prized status as a National Guard pilot by failing to appear for a required physical. He sought temporary reassignment from the Texas Air National Guard to an Alabama unit but for six months did not show up for training. He signed on as an official in the losing campaign of a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, and even there he left few impressions other than as an amiable bachelor with a good tennis game and a famous father.

When I saw this NY Times headline in my RSS reader:

In Any Language, Two Candidates Are a World Apart
While President Bush is derided as inarticulate, Senator John Kerry might be called overarticulate, or fond of adding 12 words when one might do.

the first entry that popped in my mind was CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANT SHIT? PLEASE?

On reading the article though, I found a couple of presentation faux pas worthy of note. Because (sadly) presentation seems to have attained "important shit" status.

On Thursday, Mr. Kerry's campaign released advance excerpts of a speech the senator was to deliver at a National Guard conference in Las Vegas. The language, part of a new effort to focus Mr. Kerry's message, was a clear, sharp attack on Mr. Bush.

Historians need to be really clear that correlation and causation are two different things.

The failure during Reconstruction to provide emancipated slaves with the '40 acres and a mule' then seen as the minimum requirement for self-sufficiency, Roosevelt's inability to advance beyond the dramatic but limited achievements of the New Deal and the lack of a national health care system in our own time testify to Americans' durable wariness about state-sponsored social and economic rights.

This bit of nonsense in the linked book review stands as proof.

Anyway…

'The Second Bill of Rights': A New New Deal
By DAVID M. KENNEDY

Not if you don't at least try…

The House's Fear of Tom DeLay

The House ethics committee, ever the Capitol's hibernating watchdog, has been dithering for months about allegations that the majority leader, Tom DeLay, abused his office when he engineered the gerrymander of Texas House seats to cushion his Republican edge in Congress. The committee should have at least approved a formal inquiry by now, but the latest reports indicate that the issue will soon be deep-sixed as the Republican Congress shows no appetite for investigating Mr. DeLay, one of Washington's most feared and bare-knuckled partisans.

Committee leaders claim to be still fact-gathering, but it has becoming clear that their mission is to dismiss this hot potato yet not seem cowardly about it. One gambit is called the "option of last resort" under ethics rules: punting the issue to the evenly divided panel. Unless there's a profile in courage in the wings, this would mean a 5-to-5 deadlock on party lines and no inquiry. The "option of last resort" is really a political magic wand to make the duties of office vaporize.

British Envoy to Italy Stirs Waters with Bush Barb
September 20, 2004

ROME (Reuters) - Britain's ambassador to Italy has called President Bush "the best recruiting sergeant" for al Qaeda, Italian media reported Monday.

The comment, made at a closed-door conference at the weekend, was denounced by one leading Italian newspaper editor, who issued an open letter snubbing the veteran ambassador, Sir Ivor Roberts.

Roberts was quoted as telling an annual Anglo-Italian gathering in Tuscany: "If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it's al Qaeda."

Corriere della Sera newspaper said Roberts also told the meeting of British and Italian policy-makers: "Bush is al Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant."

Racketeering case against tobacco industry to begin
Suit alleges public was misled on risks
By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post | September 20, 2004

WASHINGTON -- It has taken five years of pretrial skirmishing, but testimony will finally begin tomorrow in the government's massive racketeering case alleging that the tobacco industry defrauded and misled the American public for almost 50 years about the health risks of cigarette smoking.

Because of the size and breadth of the lawsuit, it has the potential to significantly transform the tobacco industry, forcing it to increase cigarette prices sharply, to change how it markets and promotes its product, and to spend billions in programs to help people stop smoking.

US eyes limits on AIDS education
Agencies worry efforts will suffer
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | September 20, 2004

As HIV infections start to climb again among gay men and young adults, the federal government is moving to impose restrictions on AIDS education that would require campaigns to discuss the "lack of effectiveness" of condoms and subject explicit materials to high-level scrutiny from state public health authorities -- measures that critics argue would impede efforts to prevent the disease.

Executives and physicians from AIDS agencies, which rely heavily on federal money to subsidize their education campaigns, contend that the new rules would sow confusion and reduce the impact of HIV prevention materials.

Sudanese Decry U.N. Threat of Sanctions
'Resentful' Reaction Predicted in Capital
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A15

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Sept. 19 -- Sudan said Sunday that the U.N. Security Council's resolution threatening oil sanctions if it failed to end violence in the country's western region of Darfur was unfair and would make it harder to resolve the crisis.

The council's decision would only make the country "resentful" of the United Nations, said Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, head of the ruling National Congress party. He said the international community had not recognized the government's efforts to ease the situation in Darfur, where more than 1.2 million civilians from African tribes have been driven from their homes by a government-backed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Thousands of people have died in the crisis, aid workers say.

Fringe Parties at Both Extremes Gain in Germany's East
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A15

POTSDAM, Germany, Sept. 19 -- Former communists and parties espousing distrust of foreigners posted strong electoral gains in two states of eastern Germany on Sunday as voters expressed anger over high unemployment and unkept promises to bring prosperity to their half of the country.

The National Democratic Party, a radical group that the federal government has tried to ban for its close ties to neo-Nazis, won more than 9 percent of the vote in the state of Saxony, giving it seats in a state parliament for the first time in 36 years. The result was a major embarrassment for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, which received about the same percentage, according to early returns.

Quote of note:

the War Resisters League, a decades-old pacifist group, was readying a peaceful march from Ground Zero to Madison Square Garden, where it intended to conduct a civil disobedience "die in."

A video provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union shows police commanders laying out the ground rules: As long as protesters did not block traffic, they would not get arrested during the walk north. (No permit is required for a march on a sidewalk as long as protesters leave space for other pedestrians to pass.) Within a block or two, however, the video shows marchers lined up on the sidewalk, far from an intersection, as a police officer announces on a bullhorn: "You're under arrest."

"They came with batons, bicycles, they came with netting," said the Rev. G. Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest. "The kind of forces you expect to be turned on terrorists was unleashed on us."

Question Time

PRESIDENT BUSH hasn't taken questions from White House reporters in nearly a month. He's had just 15 solo news conferences during his presidency, the last a 13-minute session at his Texas ranch. When he does answer questions at town hall-type campaign rallies, they're from pre-screened supporters. As Towson University professor Martha Joynt Kumar notes in a forthcoming article in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Mr. Bush opened a news conference with Afghan president Hamid Karzai by saying, "We'll answer questions in the tradition of democratic societies." Under the Bush presidency, that tradition hasn't flourished.

One piece of good news, as reported by The Post's Mike Allen and Dan Balz today, is that the Bush campaign has tentatively agreed to a series of three debates with Democratic opponent John F. Kerry along the lines of the proposal by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The deal is for three 90-minute debates, the first on foreign policy, the second a town hall forum with undecided voters and the third on domestic issues. If this agreement holds, Mr. Bush will have done the right thing -- but it doesn't reflect well on him that the campaign's original demand was to limit the encounters to two debates and eliminate the session with voters.

As Income Gap Widens, Uncertainty Spreads
More U.S. Families Struggle to Stay on Track
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page A01

…Clark is nearly two hours into a workday that won't end for another 13, delivering interoffice mail around the state for four companies -- none of which offers him health care, vacation, a pension or even a promise that today's job will be there tomorrow. His meticulously laid plans to retire by his mid-fifties are dead. At 51, he's left with only a vague hope of getting off the road sometime in the next 20 years.

Until three years ago, Clark lived a fairly typical American life -- high school, marriage, house in the suburbs, three kids and steady work at the local circuit-board factory for a quarter-century. Then in 2001 the plant closed, taking his $17-an-hour job with it, and Clark found himself among a segment of workers who have learned the middle of the road is more dangerous than it used to be. If they want to keep their piece of the American dream, they're going to have to improvise.

President looking to reassure in UN address
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff | September 19, 2004

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- With violence spiking in Iraq, President Bush heads into his annual appearance at the United Nations this week with a dual mission: reassuring wary foreign governments that he is aware of the ongoing challenges, while continuing the optimistic theme of his presidential campaign.

Bush offered an early glimpse of his speech in his weekly radio address yesterday, saying he would promote his belief in "the great possibilities of our time" when he speaks to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. The tenor of his remarks -- at least as he previewed them yesterday -- will contrast with his past comments to the organization. Last year, for example, Bush spoke to the UN six months after he launched the war in Iraq, and he devoted almost all of his address to terrorism and that nation.

…the music is hot…you can Latin your ass off.

Quote of note:

Fifty years have passed since the court considered whether the "public use" clause allows condemnation for private development. The 1954 case from Southwest Washington, D.C., concerned "urban renewal," as such social engineering was confidently called before it became accurately known as "Negro removal." To empower government to condemn slum property -- most dwellings had no baths, indoor toilets or central heating; the neighborhood's tuberculosis and syphilis rates were high -- the court held that "public use" can mean "public purpose" when the aim is to cure blight harmful to the larger community.

Despotism in New London
By George F. Will
Sunday, September 19, 2004; Page B07

Bang Bang, You're Elected

The nation's capital city will soon suffer a brazen insult at the hands of the House of Representatives as a legislative majority prepares to vote for the decontrol of guns in the city - that's right, a majority of lawmakers, sworn to "insure domestic tranquillity" for the nation, would make D.C. stand for Dodge City. As far as election year pandering goes, the impending vote to legalize handguns and semiautomatic weapons on the streets - striking down the home-rule wishes of Washington's citizens - may answer the question of how low Congressional politicians will go in bowing to the gun lobby.

Privately, lawmakers wink and note this is most likely a one-house bill, with narrow Senate majorities still expected to protect the city's right to defend itself. But it's no less sickening that House Republican leaders have scheduled this cheap shootout before Election Day in order to secure votes back home, out beyond the lethal urban reality of Washington. The most shameful aspect is that the bill has attracted 228 co-sponsors willing to end gun bans and even cancel criminal penalties for possessing unregistered weapons. In fact, the bill would deny the elected District of Columbia government all authority to enact laws that "discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms."

Patriot Law Found Guilty of Misuse and Repealed
Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 18 (IPS) - After snaring thousands of teenagers, politicians, journalists, members of minority communities but few terrorists, India, this week, repealed its 'patriot' law introduced in response to the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

A government statement said the cabinet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had at a meeting Friday decided to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) with a new law.

''It is important to note the intention of the government is to protect the rights of people vis-a-vis the misuse of POTA,'' the statement said.

The unpopularity of POTA contributed to the electoral debacle of the right-wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in May by the communist-backed, Congress-led, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Department of Agriculture said South Dakota needed $6 billion in drought relief. Tom Daschle got a bill for such passed in the Senate, with much bipartisan support.

Bush said he wouldn't allow such a payment.

Ultimately South Dakota got one dollar for every six the Department of Agriculture said it needed, and Daschle's opponent says that's fine. Daschle's opponent says says you should find out what Bush is willing to give you, then work to figure out how to get it.

What a suck-up. And it seems to be the central position the boy holds. Suck up. He said Bush has a plan for Iraq and when asked for details he lists goals…we have to do this, that and the other, but nothing about how. Just "President Bush says this is what we have to do."

Allawi is SO in denial.He claims the insurgency in Iraq is "a foreign war taking place of Iraqi territory." He says the insurgents are "terrorists."

He just claimed "if the war doesn't happen in Iraq, New York will be hit, Washington will be hit, London will be hit.."

There is no civil war in Iraq. There are terrorists that work for Saddam and teh foreign fighters.

Things are much better now than they used to be, the tensions are less. He says we are only looking at the negative side, a lot of positive things are happening, it's all the media's fault. (If there's enough good news to turn the overall assessment positive, Basra must be Heaven).

Saddam goes on trial around October (why does this not surprise me?)

I have a theory that I'm not really interested enough in to test. It was brought to mind by Ben Wasserman's pretty decent analysis of Conservative blog celebrations of the death of "old media."

First, it's worth remembering how many other news stories — basically, er, all of them — have not been broken by the blogosphere. The obvious analogue to the suspicious memos about Bush's National Guard service was last month's spurious attacks on Kerry's military service in Vietnam. Though decried by leftie bloggers, the charges were not adequately debunked until newspapers like the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune reaped the reward from Freedom of Information Act searches of decades-old military records and published eyewitness testimonials. Old-fashioned reporting won that round.

Quote of note:

"Our party has been tapering off for about 100 years, and Earl wasn't doing anything to keep it going," Hedges said. "He still can't get used to the idea that he's been replaced."

Dodge ignored the coup, held a party convention at a Baptist church and was again nominated for president. Hedges said the convention was simply a gathering of seven or eight family members and friends. Dodge insists there were as many as 25.

I can imagine the civil rights movement resembling the Prohibition Party in another 60 years.And for everyone to see race pretty much the way we see alcohol wouldn't be the worst outcome possible. Not the best either, but certainly not the worst.

The Worst Year for Prohibition Since 1933?

I can truly, truly relate to the concern many Russian…or should I call them Soviets again…are feeling.

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Whispered in Russia: Democracy Is Finished
Some fear that Putin's response to attacks has little to do with terror and everything to do with expanding the government's power.
By Kim Murphy
Times Staff Writer

September 19, 2004

MOSCOW — In a sunny garden outside the Kremlin, not far from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, workers quietly hammered into place 10 squat black letters to commemorate one of the bloodiest battles of World War II: Stalingrad.

Until Friday, the memorial bore the name the city has had since 1961 — Volgograd — reflecting modern Russia's reluctance to honor a Soviet dictator famed and feared for a legacy of repression. President Vladimir V. Putin had long resisted pleas by war veterans to correct the historical record, saying it "could trigger suspicion that we are returning to the times of Stalinism."

Quote of note:

Even many Republicans are skeptical that Bush can — or will try particularly hard — to stick to his deficit reduction promise, because it probably would require a level of spending restraint with no precedent in modern times.

Another quote of note:

The group's analysts say that even bigger domestic cuts will be required if the plan is adjusted to reflect additional tax and spending initiatives Bush has endorsed but did not fold into his budget. These include spending on defense and anti-terrorism efforts and cuts in the alternative minimum tax — a tax intended to keep the wealthy from sheltering all their income. It increasingly is applying to — and raising taxes on — middle-income individuals.

"We'd be talking about a 25% to 30% cut" in domestic programs, said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow and budget expert at the center. "There's no precedent for that in the postwar period. It's just not realistic to think anything like that is going to happen."

Iraqis Want the U.S. to Leave -- but Not Just Yet
They say the Americans should first 'fix what they broke here' by restoring security.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

September 19, 2004

BAGHDAD — Retired police officer Abaas Ramah is scornful of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

"Where is the freedom they promised?" he asks. "All the bloodshed, the sabotage, the killings. Who is paying the price? We, the Iraqi civilians."

But asked whether U.S. forces should pull out immediately, he responds: Absolutely not.

"There will be genocide here if they leave right now," Ramah answers. "They destroyed this country, and it is their responsibility to make it stand again…. Iraq is like a sick old woman who needs America to treat her right now."