Prometheus 6

I couldn't stay for the student activism session. But it was a very worthwhile seminar to me. I think I see a couple of places my skills can be useful. I have a very interesting narrative composed of a fusion of the sessions I attended. You will see that or summaries of each session…the latter is most likely. I made some very interesting contacts as well, and missed one…Frederick J. Streets, Yale's chaplain. He was speaking with two other gentlemen I had specific "now" things to address with and Chaplain Streets slipped out on me before I could mention a "later" thing to him. Fortunately, it's real easy to find the address of officials, professors and such at Ivy League schools. And I kicked in 25 bucks to the Black student alumni thing by way of a t-shirt. Says "BLACK IVY ALUMNI LEAGUE" on the back…I'ma be frontin' like a mug, yo.

Bush Relatives for Kerry Because blood is thinner than oil "Bush Relatives for Kerry" grew out of a series of conversations that took place between a group of people that have two things in common: they are all related to George Walker Bush, and they are all voting for John Kerry. As the election approaches, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out about why we are voting for John Kerry, and to do our small part to help America heal from the sickness it has suffered since George Bush was appointed President in 2000. We invite you to read our stories, and please, don't vote for our cousin!

Want an example? Too bad, you get one anyway.

Jeanny House (Wisconsin): I'm voting for John Kerry because I'm a Christian. I know that my second cousin, George Bush, claims that he is the anointed leader of the American people and that God told him to run for office. I believe he may even believe that. I don't. My Christian faith leads me to a concern for the poor and the marginalized, yet Bush's actions in office have repeatedly cut funding for health care, aid to failing schools, jobs programs, after school programs, Head Start, and many more services that provide real help and hope to those living in poverty. Under the Bush administration, over a million additional people have dropped below the poverty line. 1.2 million more have gone into "deep poverty," which is one-half the $18,810 for a family of four that defines "poverty." My Christian faith leads me to a concern for the health and welfare of all of God's people, yet 45 million people in this country have no health insurance. The Bush administration, working hard to protect the interests of large, rich insurance companies, has done nothing to address the real health care crisis. My Christian faith tells me the peacemakers are the blessed ones, yet George Bush wants to resurrect the Crusades, one of the most shameful experiences in Christian history. I fail to understand how lying to the people of the United States about any of the many justifications they have used for going to war in Iraq can be considered in any way, shape, or form a remotely Christian activity. Yes, Jesus once said, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword." He was talking about liberating his OWN people from within, not invading an oil-rich country out of purely selfish motives, then claiming it was for the liberation of others. The only true liberation comes when the oppressed claim it for themselves. This is something George Bush and his Imperialist cabal will never understand. My Christian faith moves toward greater inclusiveness and acceptance, George Bush moves toward punishment, division, and exclusion. My Christian faith seeks to bring people into the circle of decision-making, George Bush seeks to keep them out. My Christian faith seeks to afford equal rights and responsibilities to all, George Bush seeks to reserve more rights for the privileged few. My Christian faith is not looking for a new Messiah named George Bush. I am, however, looking for a leader. I believe that leader's name is John Kerry.

Mary Frances Berry was there. Seems one unnamed person on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights…one of the Republican members…wrote to a whole bag full or major research institutions (those are the guys that give out graduate degrees) requesting chapter and verse on how they run their affirmative action programs since the Michigan decisions. Wrote using official Commission stationary. This Commissioner's intent was to turn it all over to one of the organizations currently suing the hell out of anyone thinking "affirmative action" too loudly. This Commissioner was acting under color of authority. If that's not illegal outright, there ought to be a civil suit in it.

Voting and Counting By PAUL KRUGMAN If the election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome. …A broad view of the polls, then, suggests that Mr. Bush is in trouble. But he is likely to benefit from a distorted vote count. Florida is the prime, but not the only, example. Recent Florida polls suggest a tight race, which could be tipped by a failure to count all the votes. And votes for Mr. Kerry will be systematically undercounted. Last week I described Greg Palast's work on the 2000 election, reported recently in Harper's, which conclusively shows that Florida was thrown to Mr. Bush by a combination of factors that disenfranchised black voters. These included a defective felon list, which wrongly struck thousands of people from the voter rolls, and defective voting machines, which disproportionately failed to record votes in poor, black districts. One might have expected Florida's government to fix these problems during the intervening four years. But most of those wrongly denied voting rights in 2000 still haven't had those rights restored - and the replacement of punch-card machines has created new problems.

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The main reason the recent American slowdown has gone undiscussed is that neither candidate wants to bring up the subject. To President Bush, such a question concedes that the recovery that seemed so impressive early this year has faded. For Senator John Kerry, such a question admits there was a recovery. But the fact is that starting in May, the economic data began to provide unhappy surprises. American growth now is adequate, but it does not match what the administration or most private forecasters expected.

So these unhappy surprised started around the time any "economic growth" began, eh? Is It Time to Stem Asia Deficits With a Weak Dollar? By FLOYD NORRIS WHAT has gone wrong in the American economy in the last six months? That is not something being discussed on the campaign trail, but the answers provide an indication of the major policy problems the victor will have to address next year. There is likely to be strong American pressure on much of Asia, not just China, to allow a major depreciation of the dollar. The details may be different depending on who wins the election, but the pressure will be there. Such a ''weak dollar'' policy would raise the cost of imported goods, and thus hurt consumers. But the alternative is to see more and more American economic stimulus drain overseas as the trade deficit grows ever greater, making the eventual resolution that much more painful.

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Underlying all of the political maneuvering is a rich debate over whether and how much candidates' philosophies and records influence what kind of judge they will be.

If that's the subject of the "rich debate" then someone was really successful in changing the topic. Of course candidate's philosophy has impact on what kind of judge they'll be. And one's record is evidence of one's philosophy Mixed Results for Bush in Battles Over Judges By NEIL A. LEWIS …Now, after more than three years of battles over judicial appointments, Mr. Bush's ambitions for the courts are clear, but his record is mixed. He has succeeded in placing staunch conservatives on the bench in many cases but has been foiled in others by Senate Democrats like Charles E. Schumer of New York who charge him with trying to "create the most ideological bench in history." The conflict between the White House and the Democrats has been particularly sharp, in part because Democrats reasoned that Mr. Bush could not claim any mandate to remake the courts, given his contested victory over Al Gore. With the nation now preparing to elect a president who will almost certainly have an opportunity to name at least one Supreme Court justice, Democrats and Republicans remain deeply entrenched in their positions over who belongs on the bench. Mr. Bush has said that the Democrats have been "playing shameful politics" with judicial confirmations and that his choices deserve a straight up-or-down vote, which the nominees would presumably win. Of the 45 or so appeals courts candidates who have gone to the Senate floor, the Democrats have blocked 10, going so far as to use a filibuster, or threat of an extended debate, to stop consideration on all 10.The Republicans hold a slim majority with 51 votes, but overcoming a filibuster requires 60 votes. Democrats argued that they were justified in going to such extraordinary lengths, in part because the Republicans had not given many of President Bill Clinton's judicial choices a hearing, effectively keeping seats vacant until a Republican was in the White House. And at their 2001 retreat, the Democrats were persuaded by Prof. Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard; Prof. Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago; and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women's Law Center, that the federal courts were at a critical juncture. Underlying all of the political maneuvering is a rich debate over whether and how much candidates' philosophies and records influence what kind of judge they will be.

http://filmstripinternational.com/

Remember this? Be sure to read the couple few comments. No "request" ever came forth. It seems someone was just looking for an email server to annoy me with, probably be propagating bad MX records via DNS. And since I contacted someone via the same account whose disablement caused me no difficulties (which should be unsurprising since I said I was on my guard) there was no point in continuing. Three strikes. I am no longer interested in rapproachment with Black Conservatives.

I have some techie stuff to do today, and a two day thing on the Black presence in the Ivy League tomorrow and Saturday so posting may be thin.

Driver pays record $360,000 for city taxi October 20, 2004 NEW YORK -- If the price of riding in a New York taxi seems high, try buying one. A Bangladeshi immigrant put himself in the driver's seat by paying a record $360,000 at a city auction Monday for a New York taxi medallion, which is required by the city to own a taxicab. Most cabdrivers in the city work for taxi fleets or lease time from a medallion owner. Mohammed Shah, 44, mortgaged his house in Queens to help finance the purchase of one of 116 new taxi medallions sold to the highest bidders. Shah, a father of three, has been driving a cab since 1996. The previous top price for an individual medallion was $311,770 paid at auction in April. (Reuters)

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This amounts to a tax paid to the banking industry because no one that can afford to pay for a medallion will ever be driving a cab. As dangerous as hacking is in NYC, it would still be a powerful way for low skilled folks to move up the economic ladder and prepare the way for their kids. As it stands this guy will have the added expense of a $300K mortgage. The whole arrangement is usurous.

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Christopher Wolfe, a political science professor at Marquette University and a critic of Marshall's ruling on same-sex marriage, said Marshall's comments were calculated to influence the political debate, and that she was "intellectually dishonest" to invoke John Adams because the author of the Massachusetts constitution never envisioned the legalization of gay marriage.

Whereas I feel Christopher Wolfe is "intellectually dishonest" because John Adams died long before anyone had a chance to ask him the question. It is entirely possible that John Adams himself was gay or bisexual. There's no way to call it one way or the other. SJC chief justice counters 'judicial activism' charge By Raphael Lewis and Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | October 20, 2004 The chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court defended the judiciary yesterday against the charge of "judicial activism" that has been leveled by President Bush and Governor Mitt Romney since the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Margaret H. Marshall, the author of the landmark ruling, also told a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast that she opposes a trend around the country toward elected judges, and she dismissed what she called "attack politics" that sometimes ensnares judges. "I don't think they are activist judges," Marshall said. "I think they are judges doing their constitutional duty." …Romney, interviewed yesterday, said he agreed with Marshall that the judiciary should be as independent as possible. However, he reiterated his opposition to Marshall's same-gender marriage ruling as a dangerous overreaching of judicial authority. "I don't think we should elect judges," Romney said. "I do think we should have an independent judiciary. I think those of us who appoint judges should look for individuals who will interpret the constitution and the laws of the land strictly and will not branch off on their own social agenda for something that they may choose to promulgate. That's the job of the Legislature, to decide what the social direction of our country will be. The Legislature makes laws, the courts should interpret them, and I think our Supreme Judicial Court went beyond that boundary." In her prepared remarks, Marshall said: "Judges do become the focus of attack politics. It has been so since our country's founding and is certainly evident in the heated political climate today." But, she added, "It would be foolish, in my judgment, to heed the voices of those who would curtail a judge's independence. . . . It would be foolish to tinker with the [John] Adams model of constitutional government that has served us so well for more than two centuries."

Kerry's words sometimes someone else's By Mary Dalrymple, Associated Press Writer | October 20, 2004 WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- Democrat John Kerry shows a fondness for quoting ordinary and famous people to voters who come to hear his ideas and outlook for the country.

Peres: Sharon Risks Assassination for Gaza Plan Tue Oct 19, 2004 08:30 PM ET By Matt Spetalnick JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Opposition leader Shimon Peres said on Tuesday he feared Israeli extremists might try to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the target of growing far-right fury over a planned withdrawal from Gaza next year. Peres, head of the center-left Labour party, said the divisive atmosphere recalled the climate when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist Jew opposed to his peace deals with the Palestinians. "I am very fearful of the incitement, of the harsh things that are being said," Peres, Israel's leading dove and a key supporter of Sharon's pullout plan, told the daily Maariv. "I fear that someone will try to assassinate the prime minister," he was quoted as saying. Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said he was confident Israel's Shin Bet state security service, which provides bodyguards for Israeli leaders, had learned the lessons of the Rabin assassination. "I think it's much harder to get to the prime minister than it used to be, and therefore I am less concerned than I used to be," said Ezra, a former deputy chief of the Shin Bet.

Microsoft Sets Licensing Policy for New Chips Tue Oct 19, 2004 12:13 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday agreed to require only a single license for server software that runs on computers powered by a new generation of chips that squeeze multiple processors into a single package. Chipmakers Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) both hailed the move, which they said could speed the adoption of multiple-core processors that they plan to introduce next year. The move to multiple cores has thrown a wrench into the licensing policies of server software makers, which generally charge per processor. Packing multiple processors into a single package -- a technology adopted by all the major processor vendors -- raised the issue of whether computer users would be charged per processor or per core. Microsoft said its server software that currently licenses on a per-processor basis will continue to be licenses that way.

Recognizing Iran's right to peaceful nuclear development (it still strikes me as curious to talk of "rights" in this regard) does not require giving up the right to defend oneself (i.e. bomb the shit out of them) if they get out of pocket (like they'd be stupid enough to drop nukes where the fallout would get them as well). Especially since we now know for a documented fact Muhammad el-Baradai and his boys at the IAEA set up monitoring programs that work. So how about we drop this "Axis of Evil" nonsense and get back to the work that keeps us all from glowing in the dark and breeding children with three arms? Or did you reall like the X-Men movies that much?

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Iran Says It's Ready to Prove Not Pursuing Nuke Weapons Wed Oct 20, 2004 07:09 AM ET By Parisa Hafezi and Amir Paivar TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is ready to prove to the world it is not producing atomic weapons provided the West recognizes the Islamic Republic's right to peaceful nuclear technology, President Mohammad Khatami said Wednesday. Iranian officials are due to meet senior diplomats from Britain, Germany and France in Vienna Thursday to receive a proposal giving Tehran a final chance to halt or indefinitely freeze uranium enrichment plans or face possible U.N. sanctions. "We are ready to assure the world that we are not pursuing nuclear weapons and I believe the only way is through talks and reaching an understanding," Khatami told reporters. Iranian officials say they are open to talks but will never give up uranium enrichment -- a process which can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors or material for atom bombs. "If our rights are recognized and they admit that Iran can have peaceful nuclear technology we will present everything necessary to prove that Iran will not produce an atomic bomb. But we will not give up our rights," Khatami said. Should Iran reject the EU trio's offer, most European states are expected to back Washington's demand that Iran be reported to the U.N. Security Council when the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors meet in late November. Two years after an Iranian exile group revealed Iran had hidden the full extent of its nuclear program from the world, U.N. inspectors have yet to find any clear evidence that the program has military links, as Washington insists. Iran says it only wants to use nuclear power to generate electricity but it has carried out a number of activities which could also be used to make nuclear weapons.

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Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, a heart surgeon, sent letters urging his 99 colleagues to get the shots because they mingle and shake hands with so many people, said spokeswoman Amy Call.

Then again, they could stay their asses away from people and actually do their jobs. In my opinion there's a backlog of work on necessary legislation caused by political posturing in the House of Representatives. No shortage on Capitol Hill By Washington Post | October 20, 2004 WASHINGTON -- While many Americans search in vain for flu shots, members and employees of Congress are able to obtain them quickly and at no charge from the Capitol's attending physician, who has urged all 535 lawmakers to get the vaccines even if they are young and healthy. The physician's office has dispensed nearly 2,000 flu shots this fall, and doses remained available yesterday. That's a steep drop from last year's 9,000 shots, said a spokesman for attending physician John Eisold, because many congressional employees have voluntarily abided by federal guidelines that call for this season's limited supply to go mainly to the elderly, the very young, pregnant women, long-term care patients, and people with chronic illnesses. But people of all ages who are credentialed to work in the Capitol can get a shot by saying they meet the guidelines, with no further questions asked, said the spokesman, who cited office policy in demanding anonymity.

This championship series is one for the record books. Since the masses in the streets of New York don't know me by face I can safely say I wish the Boston Red Sox luck…the first time I've ever extended that sentiment to any team from Boston. It'll pass, so they better suck up the positive karma while I'm in the mood to dispense it.

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On to a Game 7 showdown Schilling leads Sox to third win in row over N.Y. By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Staff | October 20, 2004 NEW YORK -- Sunday night the Red Sox were three outs from being swept from the playoffs by the hated Yankees. They had lost a playoff game at Fenway Park by the humiliating score of 19-8 Saturday night and some members of their loyal Nation felt betrayed and abandoned. That was just a few long days, sleepless nights, and extra innings ago. But now the 2004 Boston Red Sox -- the wildest of wild-card entries -- are just one victory from hardball heaven and the greatest baseball comeback story ever told. Led by Curt Schilling's seven innings of four-hit pitching and Mark Bellhorn's three-run homer, the Red Sox beat the Yankees again last night, 4-2, to square their American League Championship Series at 3-3. Tonight at Yankee Stadium they will attempt to conquer the Evil Empire on enemy soil. They will try to become the first team in big league annals to recover from a 3-0 deficit, busting ghosts that have haunted them in this venerable baseball theater for more than three-quarters of a century.

I'm not a Yankees or Red Sox fan. Not really even a baseball fan. But these last two games got me. So I'm done for the night.

Cheney: Terrorists Could Attack With Nuclear Bombs Vice President Questions Sen. Kerry's Ability to Combat Threat By Andrew Welsh-Huggins The Associated Press Tuesday, October 19, 2004; 12:24 PM CARROLL, Ohio -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept "you've got to get your mind around." "The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us -- biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans," Cheney said.

U.S. Finishes A 'Strong Second' In Iraq War BAGHDAD—After 19 months of struggle in Iraq, U.S. military officials conceded a loss to Iraqi insurgents Monday, but said America can be proud of finishing "a very strong second." "We went out there, gave it our all, and fought a really good fight," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "America's got nothing to be ashamed of. We outperformed Great Britain, Poland, and a lot of the other top-notch nations, but Iraq just wouldn't stay down for the count. It may have come down to them simply wanting it more." American tanks and infantry surged out to an impressive early lead in March 2003, scoring major points by capturing Baghdad early in the faceoff. The stage seemed set for a second American victory in as many clashes with Iraq, with commentators and generals alike declaring the contest all but decided with the fall of Tikrit in April 2003. "In spite of jumping out to an early lead and having the better-trained, better-equipped team, I'm afraid we still came up short in the end," Casey said. "Sometimes, the underdog just pulls one out on you. But there's no reason for the guys who were out in the field to feel any shame over this one. They played through pain and injury and never questioned the strategy, even when we started losing ground." "The troops were great out there," Casey continued. "It's not their fault the guys with the clipboards just couldn't put this one away." Casey said that, although the U.S. military did not win, it did set records for kills, yardage gained, palaces overrun, defensive stops, and military bases stolen.

In tomorrow's Village Voice Rick's article, "Sucking Democracy Dry: The End of Democracy" jacks the Democratic Party

It's a telling formulation: Highly placed D.C. Democrats accept Bush's public image as a fait accompli—a kind of semiotic unilateral disarmament. So they don't even bother to case the weapons in their arsenal. I remind Shesol of the NBC report last spring—never effectively rebutted by the White House—that revealed the most Orwellian face of the administration imaginable: that "before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out" the terrorist operations of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but didn't because it "feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." "Wow," Shesol responds, with a breath of surprise. George Bush sold out our security in order to pull off a sales job; that, certainly, is not an "elite" message. That's not a "process" story. So why don't we hear it? "I—don't—know," Jeff Shesol answers. He sounds defeated, as if Republican traducing of democratic deliberation was something like the weather, beyond anyone's power to change. "How is it that a month's worth of airtime is sucked up by the Swift Boat Veterans?" he asks, bewilderment in his voice. "How is it that a month of our national attention is consumed by this, and not some of these other questions, is a very difficult thing to explain. And until we can really understand how that happens, I don't know that we can effectively respond to it."

the media

Ever since the days of Joe McCarthy, the claim that a made-up charge by one side is no longer an outrage if the wronged party gets a chance to refute it has been an easy refuge for journalistic scoundrels. When Republicans accused someone of being a Communist, newspapers reported it, true or not; then they reported the victim's outraged denials, the day's work done—no matter that the person's life might now be ruined by the merely invented accusation. With a setup like that, the side willing to say anything to win will win every time. Greenfield disagrees. "McCarthy won for about two years, and then the tide turned," he says. Nowadays, it would happen even faster, what with blogs and all. "When somebody starts really playing with the facts, there are so many people on every side of the issue ready to jump on you," he says. "Call me an optimist." I call him an idiot. This is a country where 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9-11 attacks, where telling lies before the truth has time to put on its shoes—lies that won't have time to get exposed before the votes, whether the electorate's or the Supreme Court's, get counted—has been Karl Rove's modus operandi since he stole the election for chairman of the College Republicans National Federation in 1973. Punks like Greenfield are Rove's best friend: He's already decided in advance that both sides are equally bad.

and evangelicals.

"Whenever you think that there are eternal, apocalyptic stakes, and that you can make a difference, you can rationalize a whole lot of stuff to yourself," he says. "I think evangelicals really don't like democracy much at all, especially when it's not going their way."

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Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street investment firm holding 6,100 shares of Sinclair stock, is taking action against Sinclair on behalf of its clients holding shares in Sinclair. General partner Jim Glickenhaus mounted the action based on Sinclair's CEO and directors having a financial obligation to shareholders. "We are not partisan. We are investors," Glickenhaus explained today. "Sinclair's decision has caused harm to the value of our investment in Sinclair. We believe Sinclair must give equal time to an opposing point of view. Otherwise the company is placing its future and the value of our investment in jeopardy, by putting the renewal of its FCC licenses at risk, alienating local advertisers, and opening itself up to libel suits against the company." Since Sinclair's decision to air Stolen Honor became public on October 9, the company's stock has fallen nearly 13 percent, as of the close of the market yesterday, October 18, wiping out nearly $90 million in shareholder value.

Media Matters for America Underwrites Sinclair Broadcast Group Shareholder Demand First Step Toward Legal Action Against Sinclair Calling for Immediate Access to Equal Airtime To Balance Partisan Attack Film Stolen Honor (WASHINGTON, DC, October 19, 2004) - Media Matters for America (MMFA) announced today that it is underwriting the costs of a shareholder action, demanding that Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., provide equal time to those "with views opposed to the allegations" in the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor, which Sinclair plans to air between October 21-24, in prime time, on all 62 of its stations reaching up to 25 percent of U.S. TV households. At 10 a.m. today, a letter from Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm with clients who hold stock in Sinclair, was delivered to the CEO of Sinclair, David D. Smith, and the company's board of directors, demanding that they immediately "provide those with views opposed to the allegations in the film an equal opportunity to respond." If an answer to Glickenhaus' demand is not received by close of business today, Tuesday October 19, additional remedies, including an injunction in a court of law prior to the first scheduled airing of Stolen Honor October 21, may be sought. "Our mission is to thwart conservative misinformation in the media and ensure that the media offer the American public fair and balanced access to news and information," explained MMFA President and CEO David Brock. "We determined a stockholder effort is the strongest remaining course of action to force Sinclair to reconsider its decision to air Stolen Honor."

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"Short of a significant fall in overall household income or in home prices, debt servicing is unlikely to become destabilizing," Greenspan said. Greenspan said that it would take "a large, and historically most unusual" decline in home prices to wipe out the equity that Americans have in their homes. He said about three-fourths of all mortgages are taken out by buyers who put up a 20 percent downpayment, which would be enough to cover even a very significant drop in home prices.

The problem is there are so many people who've already taken out second mortgages, who have (in the words of the commercials) "cashed out their equity," which sounds ever so much like you'll never have to pay it back. Then there's all the reverse mortgages that allow you to borrow 115 or so percent of your equity, which actually puts you in the hole. These are the very transactions Greenspan lauded as the buffer that allowed folks to get through the nation's economic miasma in comfort. Greenspan: High Household Debt Not Serious Threat By Martin Crutsinger AP Economics Writer Tuesday, October 19, 2004; 10:43 AM The record level of debt being carried by American households and soaring home prices do not appear to represent serious threats to the U.S. economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday. Greenspan said that high levels of personal bankruptcies were a concern because they indicated "pockets of distress" among American households. But he said the vast majority of U.S. consumers "appear able to calibrate their borrowing and spending to minimize financial difficulties."

Please read the whole article. We've been getting away with economic murder for a long. long time because we issue the world's "currency of record." But if oil starts trading in euros it would be a change that's tectonic is scope. And it could happen. Bearish on Uncle Sam? As Foreign Investment Shows Decline, Economists Keep Watch By Jonathan Weisman and Ben White Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page E01 NEW YORK -- On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of long-term Treasury bonds would be "huge." But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million. "It's amazing," he gasped, after the Treasury Department announced that Wall Street traders, not foreigners, had been left to buy virtually the entire auction. "I don't think I've ever seen this before." The most recent auction of 10-year Treasury notes may have been a fluke, a momentary downturn in one aspect of the massive world market for U.S. government and private-sector bonds, stocks and other securities -- a market so large and diverse that it has long been the world's safe haven. But a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released yesterday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors -- private individuals, institutions and government central banks -- are growing dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy. It is a portentous issue. Foreign governments and individuals hold about half of the $3.7 trillion in outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds, for example, and the government has been heavily dependent on continued overseas bond purchases to finance the roughly $1 billion a day it has to borrow to pay its bills. Foreign lending and investment are also needed to finance the country's roughly $50 billion monthly trade deficit, while foreign capital has been a key prop to U.S. stock prices.

Is Every Memory Worth Keeping? Controversy Over Pills to Reduce Mental Trauma By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page A01 Kathleen Logue was waiting at a traffic light when two men smashed her car's side window, pointed a gun at her head and ordered her to drive. For hours, Logue fought off her attackers' attempts to rape her, and finally she escaped. But for years afterward, she was tormented by memories of that terrifying day. So years later, after a speeding bicycle messenger knocked the Boston paralegal onto the pavement in front of oncoming traffic, Logue jumped at a chance to try something that might prevent her from being haunted by her latest ordeal. "I didn't want to suffer years and years of cold sweats and nightmares and not being able to function again," Logue said. "I was prone to it because I had suffered post-traumatic stress from being carjacked. I didn't want to go through that again." Logue volunteered for an experiment designed to test whether taking a pill immediately after a terrorizing experience might reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study is part of a promising but controversial field of research seeking to alter, or possibly erase, the impact of painful memories -- a concept dubbed "therapeutic forgetting" by some and taken to science fiction extremes in films such as this summer's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Brother asks "Though I don't believe we need to pass a global test when national security interests are involved, we must keep in mind we are not an island. We live in a global village. What do we do to correct that, to regain the leadership and respect we once had?" Blitzer turns to the panel and says "I'm going to rephrase that question, is it more important for the US to be loved or to be respected?" Which was SOOOOO not the question.

I'm watching American Agenda on CNN. Two points: This is the show Crossfire should be I fall deeper in love with Susan Rice every time she speaks.

A.C.L.U. Rejects Foundation Grants Over Terror Language By STEPHANIE STROM The American Civil Liberties Union has rejected $1.15 million from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying their effort to ensure that none of their money inadvertently underwrites terrorism or other unacceptable activities is a threat to civil liberties. The organization has also returned to Ford $68,000 that it accepted in April and that was governed by the same restrictions as those on the two grants the board decided to decline at a contentious meeting on Sunday. Anthony D. Romero, the A.C.L.U.'s executive director, said the language of the contracts governing the Ford and Rockefeller grants was broad and ambiguous, leaving them open to interpretation that could impede free speech and limit advocacy work not only at his organization but also at other nonprofits. Over the last year or so, many foundations, including Ford and Rockefeller, have added language to their grant agreements that requires recipients to ensure against the use of the money for nefarious purposes. Ford's grant agreement, which governs the use of the money it gives to more than 4,000 organizations it supports, says, "By signing this grant letter, you agree that your organization will not promote or engage in violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state, nor will it make subgrants to any entity that engages in these activities." In an interview yesterday, Mr. Romero said: "What do they mean by terrorism? What constitutes support for terrorism? We need to know precisely what those words mean. It is certainly appropriate for Ford and Rockefeller to require grantees to comply with existing federal law, but in a climate of fear and intimidation, vague language that goes beyond the legal requirements is regrettable and ill advised." Ford had offered to give the civil liberties union a letter stating that it had no intention of interfering with the group's mission and activities. But Nadine Strossen, president of the A.C.L.U., said the organization had never been concerned that its own activities might be limited by accepting the terms Ford and Rockefeller laid down. "We have to be the leader here,'' Ms. Strossen said, "and just because we weren't going to be intimidated or our speech wasn't going to be chilled doesn't mean we can overlook the potentially negative impact the language will have on other entities.''

I'm glad this woman lives in a community that pulled together for her. We got about 1,100 more fundraisers to do. So far. Anyway… Slain hostage knew risks, loved work Widow shares grief, thanks for supporters By DON PLUMMER The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 10/18/04 Jack and Pati Hensley knew the risks, but decided it was a chance they had to take. Jack Hensley took a high-paying job in war-torn Iraq to repair his family's crumbling finances and build college savings for his 13-year-old daughter. "For two years we both worked at any and everything just to maintain," Pati Hensley said Monday in her first newspaper interview since her husband was beheaded by Arab terrorists Sept. 20. "We both struggled at part-time jobs for a couple of years before Jack and I both made the decision for him to go to Iraq," she said. Hensley spoke of that tragic decision as she greeted well-wishers attending a fund-raiser for her daughter's education near their Marietta home. Organizers at the Great Harvest Bread Co. on Due West Road said more than $5,000 was raised.

Hip-hop's influence expected at polls BY EVELYN McDONNELL [email protected] Lucianne Florveus turned 18 -- voting age -- earlier this year. On Saturday, the only thing perhaps more precious to the Miami native than her newfound suffrage was her cellphone and its photo of her with Russell Simmons. Florveus ran into the founder of Def Jam Records, Phat Farm clothing and the nonpartisan Hip-Hop Summit Action Network at the USA Flea Market in Miami. Simmons and his brother, the Rev. Run of the seminal rap group Run-DMC, and members of the HSAN and America Coming Together were cruising the air-brush and jewelry stalls, encouraging marketgoers to vote. "What he's doing is very great,'' said Florveus, who says she is a registered voter. "He inspires us to vote.'' Simmons was in town for the launch of wife Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat line at the Funkshion fashion show in Miami's Design District. But during the day, he was wearing the political hat that has become an increasingly integral part of the mogul's being. Simmons founded the HSAN to pressure politicians on issues such as education, drug-sentencing laws and poverty. On Oct. 1, the HSAN sponsored two bus tours through 10 Southern and Midwestern states to encourage 18- to 35-year-olds to vote. Miami was the second city in which Simmons climbed on board (the first was Cleveland). "We want to go places where the candidates are not going,'' Simmons said as he and Run sat down to plates of Cuban food from the market's cafe. "These freedom rides do make a difference. "It's a cultural shift, a shift of consciousness. People are more sophisticated today than they were yesterday, they're more interested. There's a change in enthusiasm; we'll see at the polls.'' In 1992, MTV's Rock the Vote campaign was widely credited with helping Bill Clinton win the presidency by tapping the power of Generation X. The HSAN, along with the ongoing Rock the Vote drive and P. Diddy's Citizen Change, say they will have a similar effect this year by tapping the growing social consciousness of the hip-hop generation.

New Jersey Lawsuit Challenges Electronic Voting By TOM ZELLER Jr. With just two weeks remaining before the Nov. 2 presidential election, a coalition of private citizens and local elected officials in New Jersey plan to file a lawsuit today to block the state's use of electronic voting machines. At its heart, the complaint - a draft of which was provided to The New York Times - will ask the State Superior Court in Trenton to block the use of nearly 8,000 electronic voting machines, because they "cannot be relied upon to protect the fundamental right to vote." More than three million registered voters in 15 of New Jersey's 21 counties are scheduled to use the electronic voting machines, which have been dogged nationwide by concerns over their reliability and fairness. Five New Jersey counties use the old mechanical lever machines, like the ones in use in New York and Connecticut. One New Jersey county uses optically scanned ballots. Most counties also have optical scan machines in place for handling absentee ballots, and the draft lawsuit suggests the expanded use of these in lieu of the electronic machines. "The right to vote is simply too important to not try to get some sort of court intervention to protect it," said Penny M. Venetis, a law professor with the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers University and the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit. Her complaint holds that the electronic voting machines used in New Jersey provide no means for verifying that they are recording votes properly, and that they are too easy for rogue programmers to manipulate.

When Soldiers Say No From the safe vantage point of America, it is scarcely possible to imagine the fears and concerns that spurred 18 Army reservists in a platoon in Iraq to disobey orders to deliver a fuel shipment to a distant airbase in the heart of an insurgent zone last week. Soldiers in combat cannot pick and choose their missions, no matter how grave the risks they are asked to face. Legal direct orders must be obeyed. But those giving the orders and the civilian Pentagon officials running this war also have unshirkable responsibilities. These include seeing to it that all units sent on hazardous missions have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their assignments and return safely. The particulars of last week's incident, including claims that the platoon had been ordered out in unsafe trucks and without a proper armed escort, are still being investigated. Relatives testify to the patriotism and bravery of the men and women involved, and they report that the soldiers had told them about earlier, unsuccessful attempts to bring the chronic equipment problems to the attention of commanding officers. Whatever the facts turn out to be concerning this unit of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in South Carolina, it is painfully clear that from the very start of the Iraq war, Pentagon planners have failed to provide enough troops, armor and training to the young men and women who are bravely risking their lives for their country. It is these soldiers and marines, in both active-duty and Reserve units, who have paid the price for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's flawed vision of warfare on the cheap, which disastrously misjudged the hard realities of occupying Iraq. By stubbornly overriding the Army leadership's correct professional judgment of how many troops would be needed to secure the country, the Pentagon allowed chaos and resistance to get off to a crucial head start. The catastrophic effects remain with us today.

Feeling the Draft By PAUL KRUGMAN Those who are worrying about a revived draft are in the same position as those who worried about a return to budget deficits four years ago, when President Bush began pushing through his program of tax cuts. Back then he insisted that he wouldn't drive the budget into deficit - but those who looked at the facts strongly suspected otherwise. Now he insists that he won't revive the draft. But the facts suggest that he will. …Mr. Bush's assurances that this won't happen are based on a denial of reality. Last week, the Republican National Committee sent an angry, threatening letter to Rock the Vote, an organization that has been using the draft issue to mobilize young voters. "This urban myth regarding a draft has been thoroughly debunked," the letter declared, and quoted Mr. Bush: "We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer Army is working." In fact, the all-volunteer Army is under severe stress. A study commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld arrived at the same conclusion as every independent study: the U.S. has "inadequate total numbers" of troops to sustain operations at the current pace. In Iraq, the lack of sufficient soldiers to protect supply convoys, let alone pacify the country, is the root cause of incidents like the case of the reservists who refused to go on what they described as a "suicide mission." Commanders in Iraq have asked for more troops (ignore the administration's denials) - but there are no more troops to send. The manpower shortage is so severe that training units like the famous Black Horse Regiment, which specializes in teaching other units the ways of battle, are being sent into combat. As the military expert Phillip Carter says, "This is like eating your seed corn." Anyway, do we even have an all-volunteer Army at this point? Thousands of reservists and National Guard members are no longer serving voluntarily: they have been kept in the military past their agreed terms of enlistment by "stop loss" orders. The administration's strategy of denial in the face of these realities was illustrated by a revealing moment during the second presidential debate. After Senator John Kerry described the stop-loss policy as a "backdoor draft," Charles Gibson, the moderator, tried to get a follow-up response from President Bush: "And with reservists being held on duty --" At that point Mr. Bush cut Mr. Gibson off and changed the subject from the plight of the reservists to the honor of our Polish allies, ending what he obviously viewed as a dangerous line of questioning. [P6: I noticed that while live blogging the debate. And after but little thought, I realized that was George Bush's best move of the whole debate. Though were I Charles Gibson that would have been my next question to George Bush, no matter what my previous plans] And during the third debate, Mr. Bush tried to minimize the issue, saying that the reservists being sent to Iraq "didn't view their service as a backdoor draft. They viewed their service as an opportunity to serve their country." In that case, why are they being forced, rather than asked, to continue that service?

Army Is Told to Plan for Shorter Tours in Iraq By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The acting secretary of the Army has told the service to begin drawing up plans to shorten the 12-month tour lengths of soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. The memo dated Oct. 8 from Les Brownlee, the acting Army secretary, makes clear that those reductions would not be taken until the insurgency in Iraq diminishes and the capabilities of Iraqi security forces improves. But the memo clearly emphasizes the urgency of having plans ready. It comes as the Army wrestles with two powerful, competing needs: finding enough soldiers to fulfill commitments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and finding ways to make those tours less onerous for the soldiers and their families. "As we continue to develop Iraqi security forces in both size and capabilities, the opportunity presents itself to address both the size of our committed forces and the tour lengths of those soldiers assigned," Mr. Brownlee wrote in the memo to Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. "Please develop a plan that would enable us on fairly short notice to curtail tour lengths for our deployed and deploying soldiers," he wrote. A copy of Mr. Brownlee's memo, which states that "it is important that these plans be available for implementation when the security conditions and the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces might enable us to do so," was provided by a senior Army official who closely tracks these issues. Army personnel officers, as well as those representing the Army Reserve and National Guard, say their ability to recruit and retain soldiers will erode unless combat tours are shortened, perhaps to six or nine months. At the same time, Army war planners have significant concerns that the Army, at its current size and configuration, cannot meet projected requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan unless active duty and reserve troops spend 12 months on the ground there.

Insurance Investigation Widens to Include Costs By JOSEPH B. TREASTER An investigation into the insurance business is expanding, investigators said yesterday, as Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, increasingly turns his attention to whether American corporations and their employees are paying more for life, disability and accident insurance than they should be. In California, John Garamendi, the state insurance commissioner, said last night that he, too, was concerned about extra costs to individuals for life, disability and accident insurance and that he was considering legal action against at least one broker and several insurance companies that sell what are known as employee benefits. While the current focus of the New York investigation is on bid-rigging and price-fixing among commercial insurance brokers and insurance companies, investigators say Mr. Spitzer is also pursuing reports of payoffs that may increase coverage costs for tens of millions of individuals. "Eliot Spitzer's interest is in the retail stuff, the effect on regular people,'' said David D. Brown IV, the chief of the state attorney's investment protection bureau. "Our investigation is broadening and deepening,'' Mr. Brown said. "We are going to look across product lines, across insurers and across brokers, the big and the little."

Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway has a grip on the flu vaccine thing too, though not as specific as mine. But I need to bitch about one line:

The Media Misses the Point (yet again, v.10.6)
Let me try to pull together a few threads and try to explain why the flu vaccine flap is actually one honking big serious deal, and why Kerry should be pounding, pounding, pounding on it. First of all, our vaccine manufacturing system has been in trouble for years and our public health infrastructure has been undergoing systematic dismantling since the Reagan administration. Clinton didn't do much about it, other than beefing up the system for AIDS (now fallen into complete disrepair, by the way, and we are on the verge of having another raging AIDS epidemic in this country. In women, who get it from men, this has got serious racial overtones. If you don't know about the "down low" in black culture, educate yourself.)

"On the down low" is not a Black gay cultural thing. Stop repeating it, stop pushing it. If the men being referred to were white, you'd be saying "in the closet." Check blogActive to see how many mainstream folks are on the down low…politically as well as personally. I'm assuming it's unintentional, but that one sentence;

In women, who get it from men, this has got serious racial overtones. If you don't know about the "down low" in black culture, educate yourself.)

drops the whole increase in AIDS in women on gay Black men's heads. I'd really like a clarification. And I'd really like y'all to just stop with the "down low" thing. I'm really, really tired of Black folks being visualized as the radiant source of all harm.

via AllAboutGeorge I find Michael Bérubé says it all

Juliette says her email has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Fine. I've been wrong before. I'll be wrong again. I like my work. And fact is it's a case where I'd rather be wrong.

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I am being tested. I wrote Foolish, foolish mortals yesterday in response to a post at Baldilocks that celebrates an absurd one at BlackConservative.net. I left a brief comment:

Cmon, Juliette. Being WHITE and of modest means is a dead end street in the USofA. I got ta go.

To which Juliette, an LGFer, replied:

Always happy to get a comment from you, my dear P6. An opposing view from you (and sometimes, an agreeing one) is always instructive. More tomorrow. I have a request for you which I will ask via email.

And, of course this morning my email server is inaccessible. I take that to be the form of the message. My response, though, has already been written:

The fucking middle finger to the Republican Party until the current party leadership dies of old age. AT LEAST that long.

I should note I don't do my primary emailing via my web hosting domains.

A disturbing comment requires a very public response.

I look at the coming election, and all I can think is that if George steals this one, many of us will remember our oaths and "do what ever is necessary" to restore the Republic.

I understand your passion. Now understand my dispassion. If you are willing to "do what ever is necessary," let me tell you the first thing that is necessary a realistic assessment of humans and the current situation. The reality is that violence can compel individuals but it doesn't work against systems unless it's severe enough to disrupt the system entirely. If you consider all the system makes possible…like, say, aspirin or social assistance recovering from national disasters or my personal favorite, insulin…I don't think you really want that level of disruption. Did the Civil War change the mind of the South? No. Did Bull Conner change the minds of Black people nationwide? No. Did France and the USofA change the minds of the Vietnamese? No. Did Hitler change the minds of the Zionists in Europe? No. Has Israel changed the minds of the Palestinians? No. Did the USofA change the minds of the Iraqis? No. Understand humans and history and you'll see this simply doesn't work. Assuming my assumptions about your quoted comment is correct, you'd do well to remember Little Rock, Arkansas. It wouldn't even take the National Guard. Police today are as capable as the National Guard in 1957 and you won't even have the support of the majority. The best possible result would be justified marshal law. The worst, Armageddon…and I understand the Religious Right is looking forward to that. Plus I'm sorry but my Black partisan perspective is that the difference between the two political parties is more one of degree than kind. Such difference become large enough, they becomedifferences in kind, of course. My honest view of how we got into this mess is that the Confederate States of America was deadly serious about the South rising again so when they hit the limits of physical brutality that society could openly admit supporting and got brushed back by Eisenhower they stopped being reflexive and started playing the long game. What we've seen here, in my opinion, is a slow-motion coup d'etat. And coups work subsuming the existing levers of power. Depending on how you look at it, this has been in the works since the end of the 19th century, the end of the 1950s, the middle of the 1960s or the beginning of the 1990s. Pick one…either way it represents the social momentum of supertanker. You can't turn them suckers on a dime. It takes forethought and planning. Especially if you don't want to fuck everything up.

<set mode="Chaos Lord" state="on" /> I'm watching the Yankees vs the Red Sox and as it goes into extra innings the color guy says the Red Sox have never lost an extra innings home game during the play-offs. He says their record under those conditions is 6-0-1, and the 1 happened in 1912. 1912? Not a single active player in the whole Major Leagues was even born then. And how many people on any team, in any sport, was playing for that team even ten years ago? Enough to claim it's the same team?

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General Motors introduced a new car named Impala, what, two-three years ago. The first ad had this guy walking around the car talking about how his father had an Impala, how he's glad they brought the Impala back. This car has an inline six, electronic fuel injection and a visual style that would have been laughed off the street the last year his fathers car (which was also called Impala) was produced.

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During the 1700s the various Protestant churches and religious leaders came up with justifications for slavery and catechisms designed to train the slave to be passive. Rules that allowed some who worked slaves to death (because it was cheaper to replace them than to keep them healthy) access to hebbin. Declared them good people. And actively participated in designing the laws and customs of southern slave society. Today they would not openly do any such thing. Are these churches responsible for that past brutality? Are they even the same institutions?

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If you order enough top quality lumber to make a traditional oak bedroom set and I deliver acorns, have I fulfilled my contract? If you order salad and I bring you lettuce seeds will you pay for them?

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If a political party changes its direction entirely and as a result of that change every member of that party that supported the old platform quit, is it still the same organization? <set mode="Chaos Lord" state="off" />

Quote of note:

Officers who have shot at suspects three or more times represent less than 1% of the force. But they were involved in 20% of all LAPD shootings since 1985. Little is known about why they pull the trigger so often. Few researchers have paid attention to the phenomenon. The LAPD does not track frequent shooters. It does not even know who they are. The Times discovered the cadre of repeat shooters through a computer analysis of 1,437 officer-involved shootings from 1985 through mid-2004. Of an estimated 16,000 officers who worked field assignments during that time, only 103 fired at suspects on three or more occasions, the analysis revealed. Among 9,100 active officers, just 69 have three or more shootings. Some of these officers serve in SWAT teams, narcotics squads or other high-risk units. But that does not explain their propensity to fire. In their use of deadly force, they stand out even when compared with officers in identical assignments in the same parts of the city. Moreover, many continued to fire frequently even as the overall number of officer-involved shootings declined over the last decade.

Frequent Fire The LAPD knows little about why a tiny number of officers have used deadly force much more often than their colleagues By Scott Glover, Matt Lait and Doug Smith Times Staff Writers October 18, 2004 Most Los Angeles police officers go through their entire careers without ever firing a shot in the line of duty. Not Bill Rhetts. He shot and killed a gang member who was firing a handgun at him. He shot and paralyzed a man wielding a pistol. He wounded a teenager brandishing what turned out to be a BB gun. After leaving the LAPD for the Riverside Police Department, he shot an unarmed suspect hiding in a doghouse. After the last incident, a psychiatrist declared him unfit for duty. Rhetts said he was angry — until he reflected on how his years in uniform had changed him. "I became very desensitized. You know, callous, angry, hateful," said Rhetts, 45, now a police chaplain. "I didn't see it then, but I see it now. I became more aggressive in defending my life." Officers such as Rhetts represent a mystery and a challenge for police administrators. In the Los Angeles Police Department, they make up a tiny fraternity who have used deadly force much more often than their colleagues, a Times investigation found.

He's the first president to fund stem cell research only because he happened to have been assigned his seat as the research reached the point where it couldn't be denied. But every scientist actually involved in the work says we need more lines of stem cells to work with. And anyone who says using the excess frozen blastocysts that result from in vitro fertilization is murder should be insisting those women that pay for the procedure carry every one of them to term. Anyway… Stem Cells Secrete Healing Chemicals Many stem-cell researchers hope to treat diseases by recruiting these adaptable cells to replace others that have been damaged. A report published today in Science demonstrates a different approach, which rescued mice that otherwise would have died from a genetic heart defect before birth. Instead of replacing the defective cells, embryonic stem (ES) cells released chemical signals that caused the defective heart tissue to grow properly. Complex structures like the heart or blood vessels arise from intricate chemical choreography that tells growing cells what to become and when. Tumors hijack this system to build blood vessels for themselves. Senior author Robert Benezra of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has been studying a group of proteins called Id, which help control development by turning genes on and off. To find out more about how these proteins affect blood vessel growth, Benezra's team used “knock-out” mice, in which genes for Id proteins were deactivated. Mouse embryos that lack multiple Id proteins die before birth because the wall of the heart is too thin. To buy themselves more time to study the blood vessels, the researchers injected 15 normal ES cells into early mouse embryos. About half of the embryos actually survived past birth, and exhibited normal-looking hearts. “It came as a complete shock to us that they were born. We were just hoping to extend their lives by a day or two,” Benezra says. Descendants of the injected ES cells accounted for just one in five cells in the rescued hearts, so the injected cells had not simply taken over. Instead, the researchers determined, exposure to two chemicals secreted by the ES cells prompted the defective cells to start producing different set of proteins and develop properly. One of these chemicals even reached the embryo across the placenta from ES cells injected earlier into the mother. Exploiting the signaling molecules secreted by ES cells, rather than the cells themselves, may someday form the basis for new treatment. For example, molecules might be used directly, or the ES cells might be employed to deliver these healing chemicals to where they are needed. Still, “the first challenge is to see how general this is,” Benezra cautions. In a commentary accompanying the Science report, Kenneth Chien, Alessandra Moretti and Karl-Ludwig Laugwitz suggest that other stem-cell researchers should make certain to check whether their results arise from the cells themselves, or from chemicals the cells may be secreting. This new finding, Chien remarks, is “one of the most exciting discoveries in the field of cardiac stem cells to date.” --Don Monroe

Washington insiders expose own agencies From EPA to Park Service, whistleblowers raise policy questions in a tense election year. By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor As the election approaches, insiders and former insiders at government agencies are raising issues, revealing data, and making charges that are creating pointed disputes about the Bush administration at a crucial time in the election campaign. Some observers believe the closeness of the presidential race may be a factor prompting the disgruntled to speak out on a wide variety of issues from environmental regulations to homeland security to civil rights. Whether the critiques come from principled whistleblowers or from people with partisan axes to grind, they are coming in unprecedented numbers, indicating that bureaucrats and other insiders have become more willing to go out on a limb to criticize the White House and agencies headed by political appointees than they may have been in the past. The watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reported last week that the number of official whistleblower reports has gone up significantly since 2001, from 380 cases that year to 535 cases in 2003. Meanwhile, the backlog of pending whistleblower reports to the Office of Special Counsel, the federal the agency charged with investigating such complaints, has more than doubled to 690.

Quote of note:

But critics, some in the Labor Party, questioned why Washington thought the redeployment of a small number of British troops was so vital at this time. "I and many others ... do not take kindly to the idea that we are being engaged with President Bush and the Pentagon in order to bail them out," said Labor parliamentarian Dennis Skinner.

Britain Considers U.S. Request for Iraq Troop Help Mon Oct 18, 2004 01:18 PM ET By Katherine Baldwin LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said Monday it will respond soon to a U.S. request to send troops to more dangerous areas of Iraq, a politically charged issue that has revived anger over Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for the war. "The U.S. request is for a limited number of UK ground forces to be made available to relieve U.S. forces, to allow them in turn to participate in further operations elsewhere in Iraq to maintain the continuing pressure on terrorists," Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told parliament. Hoon said British troops would not be required in the flashpoint areas of Baghdad or Falluja. Government sources said officials were expected to make a final assessment on the U.S. request in days. Asked by a parliamentarian about the consequences of turning Washington down, Hoon said: "There will be no penalty but we will have failed in our duty as an ally." The prospect of British troops becoming more embroiled in what many in Britain see as an increasingly chaotic situation in Iraq has sparked a political row and fears of a sharp rise in British military casualties.

UN Urged to Ignore Bush Plea for Human Cloning Ban Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:08 PM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's national academy of science urged the United Nations on Monday to ignore a call by President Bush to ban all forms of human cloning. The Royal Society said the United States should be allowed to decide whether therapeutic cloning, creating embryos as a source of stem cells to cure diseases, is prohibited within its own borders. "But other countries, including the UK, have now passed legislation to allow carefully regulated therapeutic cloning while introducing a ban on reproductive cloning," Lord May of Oxford, the president of the society said in a statement. Last month in a speech to the United Nations Bush called for all countries to support a ban on therapeutic and human reproductive cloning proposed by Costa Rica. May believes nations should back a Belgian proposal when the U.N. General Assembly votes on the issue later this month. The Belgian plan would outlaw human reproductive cloning but allow countries to make their own decision on therapeutic cloning.

Quote of note:

In 1997, when Coburn was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, he earned the wrath of his own Republican party by attacking NBC for its broadcast of the Oscar-winning Holocaust movie "Schindler's List." Coburn said the broadcast was an outrage to "decent-minded individuals." He cited "the violence of multiple-gunshot head wounds, vile language, full frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity." In July, the Daily Oklahoman newspaper criticized Coburn in an editorial for saying abortion doctors should receive the death penalty. Recent gaffes include calling lawmakers in Oklahoma City "crapheads," saying lesbianism was rampant in some of the state's schools and making comments that insulted Cherokee Indians in the state, which has a large American Indian population in the country. The next shoe dropped when Angela Plummer, 34, told a news conference in Tulsa last month that when Coburn treated her for an ectopic pregnancy in 1990, he sterilized her without informing her. "I wanted to have more children, and he took it away from me," Plummer, a mother of two at the time of the operation, told reporters.

Okla. Republican Battles Himself in Senate Race Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:11 AM ET By Ben Fenwick OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - In the solidly Republican state of Oklahoma, the party's Senate nominee, Dr. Tom Coburn, has lost his lead in the polls largely due to self-inflicted wounds. Coburn, a medical doctor, had been ahead until about a month ago, when verbal gaffes and allegations that he sterilized a young woman without her consent helped put his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Brad Carson, in the lead in surveys of likely voters. The Nov. 2 election will choose a successor to Sen. Don Nickles, a long-serving Republican who is retiring. It is one of the key races in the fight for control of the Senate, which the Republicans hold by one seat. Analysts said Coburn may have frittered away the party's advantage in Oklahoma by appearing as an ideologue rather than an astute conservative politician. "Coburn is having trouble securing the Republican base. What is interesting is that he is building more of an ideological base than a party base," said Chris Wilson, president of Wilson Research Strategies, which has been conducting regular polls on the Oklahoma battle.

Supreme Court Orders Texas Redistricting Review Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:54 AM ET By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered on Monday further consideration of a challenge by Democrats and minority groups to a controversial Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan in Texas. The justices in a brief order granted an appeal by those challenging the plan and set aside a ruling by a federal three-judge panel in January that upheld the bitterly contested map. The justices ordered further consideration by the federal panel in view of their ruling in April that upheld a Pennsylvania redistricting case. They did not elaborate further. Those challenging the redistricting plan, which had been strongly supported by House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, argued it was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and that it diluted the voting strength of minorities. They challenged whether redistricting plans can be redrawn in the middle of the decade to maximize partisan advantage. Congressional districts usually are drawn once, early in the decade, right after the release of new U.S. Census data.

Here I am, getting ready for my post election shift and I see shit like this:

GOP in Philly: Block the Vote "It's predominantly, 100 percent black. I'm just not going in there to get a knife in my back." -- Matt Robb, Republican ward leader in South Philadelphia, on his last-minute request to move five Philly polling places in African-American neighborhoods. Pennsylvania and its 21 electoral votes are the second-biggest "battleground" prize after Florida. John Kerry can't win here without a huge turnout in Philadelphia, especially in black neighborhoods that vote 90 percent Democratic. As a result, it's the first place you'd expect a GOP voter suppression effort. And now it's here. Chris Brennan (with a big assist from Dave Davies) has the scoop in today's Philadelphia Daily News. They learned that high-ranking state GOP and Bush operatives asked local Republicans to try to move 63 polling places at the last minute. Some 53 of the 63 polling places are in districts less than 10 percent white. The complaints against the polling places vary -- the bulk are for alleged handicapped accessibility problems, but 17 charge that the polling places are in homes or businesses where voters might feel intimidated. Deborah Williams, a Republican candidate for Congress, who is black, said the Republican state committee asked to use her name on 28 of the complaints. Nevertheless, she defended the move, saying that "this is not about creating some stir in the election or denying anyone the right to vote."

If it's so innocent, why did they ask to use a Black woman's name? That they asked means it wasn't her idea. And she's supporting her party loyally, but as the post says:

If the polling places were moved at the last minute, it could lead to massive confusion on Election Day -- and thwart some people in mostly black, heavily Democratic neighborhoods from voting.

Hat tip to Oliver WIllis. The fucking middle finger to the Republican Party until the current party leadership dies of old age. AT LEAST that long.

I know I'm just crying out in the wilderness. But damn… This excerpt ought to drive you to the read the entire article. The Vaccine Conflict UPI Investigates by Mark Benjamin, UPI Investigations Editor The following article is the result of a four-month investigation by the authoritative United Press International (UPI) news service. The article contains disturbing information about our public health system, information that millions of Americans would be very concerned about. But, as far as we can ascertain from web and library searches, this article was not printed by a single daily newspaper or any mainstream news source. While daily newspapers and TV news have recently hyped flu vaccines (without exploring their ineffectiveness and harmful side-effects), they have also largely ignored one of the greatest potential public health disasters of modern history: the for-profit vaccination system. Because the mission of the WA Free Press is to report the under-reported, we have taken this unprecedented step of obtaining and printing a UPI article. The topic of this specific article nicely complements and corroborates our own vaccination reports over the past year. --Ed. WASHINGTON, 20 July '03 (UPI) The screaming started four hours after 8-month-old Chaise Irons received a vaccination against rotavirus, recommended in June 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for every infant to prevent serious diarrhea. Within a day he was vomiting and eliminating blood. Doctors performed emergency surgery, saving him by repairing his intestines, which were folding in on one another. A doctor later figured out the vaccine caused Chaise's problem. In October 1999, after 15 reports of such incidents, the CDC withdrew its recommendation for the vaccination--not because of the problem, the agency claims, but because bad publicity might give vaccines in general a bad name. But a four-month investigation by United Press International found a pattern of serious problems linked to vaccines recommended by the CDC--and a web of close ties between the agency and the companies that make vaccines. Critics say those ties are an unholy alliance in a war against disease where vaccine side effects have damaged, hurt or killed people, mostly children. "The CDC is a disgrace. It is a corrupt organization," said Stephen A. Sheller, a Philadelphia attorney who has sued vaccine makers for what he says were bad vaccines. "The drug companies have them on their payroll." The CDC, based in Atlanta, said it is committed to fighting disease and balancing vaccine side effects. "Our goal is to protect the public health from both disease and from serious adverse events," said Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC's National Immunization Program. The agency sets the U.S. childhood immunization schedule, or the list of shots pediatricians give children. Some states say kids can't go to public school unless they have had CDC-endorsed vaccines. Since the mid-1980s the agency has doubled the number of vaccines children get, up to nearly 40 doses before age 2. The CDC also tracks possible side effects, along with the Food and Drug Administration. This puts the agency in the awkward position of evaluating the safety of its own recommendations. An advisory committee of outside experts helps the CDC make vaccine recommendations. UPI found:

• In two cases in the past four years, vaccines endorsed by the CDC were pulled off the market after a number of infants and adults appear to have suffered devastating side effects, and some died. Critics now worry about a possible link between vaccines and autism, diabetes, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome, among other ailments.
• Members of the CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee get money from vaccine manufacturers. Relationships have included: sharing a vaccine patent; owning stock in a vaccine company; payments for research; getting money to monitor manufacturer vaccine tests; and funding academic departments.
• The CDC is in the vaccine business. Under a 1980 law, the CDC currently has 28 licensing agreements with companies and one university for vaccines or vaccine-related products. It has eight ongoing projects to collaborate on new vaccines.

The situation, while legal, gives critics plenty of reason to worry that vaccine side effects are worse than CDC officials say. "When you take a look at the ever-increasing numbers of doses of vaccines babies have gotten over the past two decades and you see this corresponding rise in chronic disease and disability in our children, it is out of control," said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, which does not accept money from vaccine manufacturers.

Lifted from

Risks of FluMist Vaccine An Investigation By Dr. Sherri Tenpenny

…which you may want to read in its entirety.

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…In the section of the FluMist package insert labeled "PRECAUTIONS," the manufacturer states the following warning: "FluMist® recipients should avoid close contact with immunocompromised individuals for at least 21 days." The warning is specifically directed toward those living in the same household with an immunocompromised person, but the on-going release of live viruses throughout the community may be a significant risk to everyone who has a weak, or weakened, immune system. The number of immunocompromised people in the United States is enormous:

• It is estimated that at least 10%, or more than 28 million people have eczema.
• More than 8.5 million people have cancer.
• There are reported to be 850,000 individuals with diagnosed and undiagnosed HIV infection or AIDS and
• Based on 2001 data, there were 184,000 organ recipients

An even more extensive list of at-risk people includes the untold millions on drugs called corticosteroids. Prednisone®, Medrol®, and a variety of similar medications are given to both adults and children. These drugs are prescribed for dozens of conditions including asthma; allergies; eczema; emphysema; Crohn’s disease; multiple sclerosis; herniated spinal discs; acute muscular pain syndromes; and all types of rheumatoid and autoimmune diseases. As much as 60% of the entire population could be considered to be "chemically immunosuppressed." It is important to realize that FluMist is CONTRAINDICATED for people who are immunocompromised. People who receive FluMist and are living with an immunocompromised person put their loved ones at risk.

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Product pricing was viewed as the major element of last winter's flu season debacle. Regular flu shots cost about $10, but FluMist carried a wholesale price of $46, which initially led major health care insurers to decline to cover it, leaving patients to foot the bill. Some insurers relented last year when flu shot supplies ran out, but the major carriers have said that they will not cover FluMist again this year even though MedImmune cut the price to $23.50. Nearly as problematic as price was the partnership's failure to win approval for its use on the two largest groups typically targeted for flu vaccines, those younger than age 5 or older than age 50. FluMist is still approved only for healthy patients ages 5 to 49.

Vaccine scarcity might aid Md. producer of FluMist Opportunity: A sudden disruption in the supply of flu shots could raise sales of MedImmune's nasal-spray vaccine. By William Patalon III Sun Staff October 6, 2004 The sudden disruption of the nation's flu-shot supply that materialized yesterday should help MedImmune Inc. win broader near-term acceptance of its troubled Flu- Mist nasal spray vaccine, while solidifying the company's long-term push to make the product profitable, analysts said yesterday. The surprise opportunity for FluMist developed after British authorities stopped production at a Liverpool manufacturing plant of Chiron Inc., the world's No. 2 maker of influenza vaccines. As a result, Chiron will not deliver the 46 million to 48 million flu shots it had planned for the United States, nearly half of the total doses expected. Shares of Gaithersburg-based MedImmune gained nearly 6 percent, or $1.41, to close at $25.78. Frank DiLorenzo, a biotechnology analyst with Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services in New York, said Chiron's travails will almost certainly boost sales of FluMist during the looming 2004-2005 flu season. That will probably lead to some longer-term benefits for MedImmune, he said. "We think there's the potential scenario for next year's [2005-2006] flu season where you'll see more support for FluMist" out in the marketplace, DiLorenzo said.

Bill Hemmer just said on CNN's American Morning that Barack Obama and Alan Keyes will be on the show tomorrow.

Damage Control THE SUPREME COURT kicked off its term with an unusual afternoon argument concerning how to contain the damage it has wrought on criminal sentencing in America. Nominally, the question before the court was whether to apply last term's reckless decision in Blakely v. Washington to the federal sentencing guidelines. In Blakely, an ideologically diverse, five-member majority insisted that facts that jack up a defendant's sentence beyond the presumptive legal range must be proven to a jury, not to a judge. Since federal sentencing under the guidelines depends in many cases on facts proven to a judge, the new cases have the potential to invalidate the entire system under which criminals are sentenced under federal law. …Any system that could realistically replace the guidelines is likely to be far worse from a civil liberties point of view. The decision's defenders pretend that Congress might replace the guidelines with a system that allows judges to dispense mercy more easily. More likely, Congress -- which has acted so consistently to force judges to sentence more harshly -- would simply replace the relatively nuanced guidelines with the crude mandatory minimums. In the short term, current defendants may benefit from the guidelines' collapse, but in the not-so-long run, the system is likely to be less fair. The justices appear to have already whistled past this particular graveyard. It is critical, however, that they proceed more responsibly than they did last term. Most important, they need to give crystal-clear guidance to the Justice Department, the lower courts and Congress as to what their new reading of the Constitution requires. The justices dropped the Blakely bomb and then, apparently oblivious to the turmoil they had created, promptly went on vacation. Outside of the ivory tower, however, lower courts need to know how to handle the thousands of cases the justices have cast into doubt. Prosecutors need to know how to render indictments. And Congress needs to know whether it should tinker with the guidelines or whether it has to rewrite the rules from scratch.

Entrepreneurs Need More Than Just Ideas School Plans to Teach Business Basics By Neil Irwin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 18, 2004; Page E01 Pamela Glover wants to start a business. The 31-year-old resident of Southeast Washington imagines buying apartment buildings in her neighborhood and opening day care centers in them. It's the kind of service, she said, that would create jobs in the neighborhood and provide a much-needed service for residents entering the workforce: housing and child care in close proximity. What Glover lacks is detailed knowledge of how to do it. She knows how she would set up the business's Web site and computer systems; she works now as a systems analyst with a Navy contractor. But Glover has no background in preparing a business plan, arranging financing or marketing. She intends to fill those gaps in her knowledge by taking classes in entrepreneurship at Southeastern University, part of a new initiative at the school that aims to help fix the interlocking problems of poverty and unemployment in some of the District's most troubled neighborhoods. "There are people who have entrepreneurship in their DNA but may not have the information they need to act on it," said Charlene Drew Jarvis, the president of Southeastern. "We see this as a way of lifting all boats. We see entrepreneurship as a way to strengthen entire communities."

Painful Withdrawal for Makers of Vioxx Pulling of Arthritis Drug Raises Questions on Marketing, Safety Risks By Brooke A. Masters and Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A01 The two Merck & Co. executives were somber as the company plane pitched and rolled through the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne on the night of Sept. 28. The turbulence outside the aircraft was an echo of the corporate tempest leading up to their trip. For five days Merck had been struggling with what to do with frightening new data that showed that long-term use of their $2.5 billion arthritis drug Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes, confirming concerns raised by earlier studies. Now research lab director Peter S. Kim and general counsel Kenneth Frazier were flying to Boston to tell one of the men most responsible for Vioxx's success that Merck would be pulling the drug in two days.

At least it would be in a sane society. Anyway… How U.S. Got Down to Two Makers Of Flu Vaccine By David Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 17, 2004; Page A01 …Even under the best circumstances, vaccines have never been very attractive investments. The global market for them is about $6 billion a year, compared with $340 billion for drugs. Thirty years ago, more than a dozen companies made flu shots. Five years ago, the number was down to four. This year, there were two -- until Oct. 5, when one of them, Chiron Corp., announced that it would not be able to deliver 48 million doses bound for the U.S. market. The British government's drug-regulatory agency had impounded all doses made at Chiron's plant in Liverpool, England, because of bacterial contamination of some lots. Now there is one left: Aventis Pasteur. Every flu shot that goes into an American arm this season will come from the French company's plant in the northeast Pennsylvania town of Swiftwater. Wyeth has no second thoughts about being out of the market, even now, when the homely flu shot is the most sought-after medical commodity in the country. "It was the right decision for us," Peter Paradiso, vice president for scientific affairs, said Friday. The company is concentrating on vaccines -- such as its ones for meningitis and pneumonia -- that have fewer competitors and don't need to be remade every year, he said.

Quote of note:

McLellan added that the secret sources behind this information were, of course, far too secret to reveal, but that if he did reveal them, they would most likely include one or more of the following secret sources: the KGB; the CIA; the Mossad; Tony Blair; Matt Drudge; a guy from Sicily code-named Guido; some weirdo in a cave claiming to be Dick Cheney; imprisoned Imclone Founder (and Martha Stewart’s close friend) Sam Waksal; far right-wing columnist and author Ann "Slander" Coulter; recently-fired right-wing homophobic shock jock Michael Savage; and right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson who is known to have large mining interests in Africa.

After a thorough investigation, the White House announces Martha Stewart sold the “Yellow Cake” uranium to Iraq. By Lowell Feld Capping weeks of frenzy over the Bush State of the Union Address claim that Iraq had secretly tried to acquire concentrated “yellowcake” uranium from Africa, White House Spokesman Scott McLellan said today that “secret sources” -- which he could not name, but were believed by the British government to be “highly credible” -- said that Martha Stewart “now awaiting trial for charges in the ImClone insider stock trading scandal” actually sold the yellow cake to Iraq. Revealing further details of this astonishing revelation, McLellan added that British intelligence now believes the yellowcake uranium to have been a “tender yellow butter cake,” most likely baked from the Caterpillar Cake recipe first printed in the Baby 2000 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, and normally recommended for use in baby showers.

Quote of note:

"Wealth is a measure of cumulative advantage or disadvantage," said Roderick Harrison, a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington research organization that focuses on black issues. "The fact that black and Hispanic wealth is a fraction of white wealth also reflects a history of discrimination."

Study Says White Families' Wealth Advantage Has Grown By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (AP) - The enormous wealth gap between white families and black and Hispanic families grew larger after the most recent recession, a private analysis of government data has found. White households had a median net worth of greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times that of Hispanic households and more than 14 times that of black households, the Pew Hispanic Center said in the study, being released Monday. Blacks were slowest to emerge from the economic downturn that started in 2000 and ended early in 2001, the report found. Net worth accounts for the value of items like a home and a car, checking and savings accounts, and stocks, minus debts like mortgage, car loans and credit card bills. Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the accumulation of wealth allows low-income families to rise into the middle class and "have some kind of assets beyond next week's paychecks." "Having more assets enabled whites to ride out the jobless recovery better," Mr. Suro said.

Remember that yellow cake stuff?

During the State the Union Address on January 28, 2003, President Bush said: Bush: The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Now it seems a single word is troubling the Bushistas: Privatization.

Campaigning Furiously, With Social Security in Tow
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER PEMBROKE PINES, Fla., Oct. 17 - Accusing President Bush of plotting a "January surprise" to cut Social Security benefits, Senator John Kerry told voters here and in Ohio on Sunday that Mr. Bush's plans for privatizing the entitlement program could cost them as much as 45 percent of their monthly checks. …In taking on Mr. Bush over Social Security, Mr. Kerry cited a report in Sunday's New York Times Magazine that quoted Mr. Bush, in a private meeting with top Republican donors last month, describing his second-term agenda. "I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in," Mr. Bush told the so-called Regents, The Times Magazine reported, "with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security." Mr. Bush added that re-election would give him two years, until the next midterm elections, to act: "We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck." …In a conference call with reporters late Sunday, Bob Shrum, a top Kerry consultant, noted sharply that when he raised the quotation with Ken Mehlman, the Bush campaign manager, on the NBC program "Meet the Press" in the morning, Mr. Mehlman did not dispute its accuracy. But at 12:40 p.m., a Bush spokesman, Steve Schmidt, denied in an e-mail message that the president ever used the word privatization; called the article's author, Ron Suskind, an "avowed Bush antagonist"; and accused the Kerry campaign of using "third-hand, made-up quotes" to "scare seniors."

Steve Schmidt doesn't dispute the accuracy of the meaning, simple the word choice. Isn't that interesting?

Look, people. The only way you can calling a lesbian a lesbian…especially an out lesbian…the "lowest blow" is if you think being a lesbian is the biggest problem.

The Lowest Blow
By WILLIAM SAFIRE The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as "soft on same-sex" as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency's eagerness to go to the polls. The pro-Kerry columnist Margaret Carlson put her finger on it, finding that Kerry and Edwards "realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently aren't trying to convert or cure." (Italics mine.) [sic—online at least, there are no italics]

Let's focus folks. First of all, the Democratic tactic is to increase voter turnout. Vote suppression is a Republican tactic, so of course it's the only possibility Safire can think of. Secondly, by saying "Margaret Carlson put her finger on it" Safire

• confirms Bush supporters feel being gay is something that must be "cured"
• confirms his own homophobia by his tacit agreement with the Bush platform

Finally…and I mean finally, via The Republic of T I bring you this from AMERICAblog

Mary may have set the whole thing up
by John in DC - 10/16/2004 06:20:34 PM The lastest story is that Mary Cheney have set Marygate up herself- i.e., permitted her parents to go public with their feigned outrage in order to stop the evil Democrats from making her an ongoing issue (though, of course, Alan Keyes also made her an issue at the GOP convention and nobody in the Cheney family said boo about that).

Here's the thing. I created DearMary.com. I and a few friends are the people pretty much responsible for Mary being an issue at all this year. And if Mary Cheney thinks that taking down John Kerry is going to stop her from being an issue, she's crazier than she is a sell out.

Mary Cheney and her entire family has sold out millions of gay Americans. If she thinks she can work at the highest levels of the enemy with impunity, she's in for a big surprise. All Mary did with her little trick this week is make sites like DearMary.com, and efforts like Mike Rogers' blogACTIVE.com, all the more necessary and all the more important.

She can hide in her GOP-tailored closet all she wants. The rest of us aren't going back in simply because Mary's sell out parents faked a little outrage to gain political points. If the anti-gay ticket of Bush-Cheney wins again, Mary better fasten her seat belt, because she's in for a hell of a bumpy ride.

What concerns us is the effect of his foreign policy. If someone is trying to throw you off a roof are you really concerned about why? Not me. Anyway… What Bush Believes By PAUL KENGOR Grove City, Pa. — The influence of President Bush's faith on his foreign policy has been greatly exaggerated by both friends and foes. Enthusiasts proudly call the president's foreign policy "faith based." Detractors angrily assert that the president invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein because he felt God called on him to do so. But while Mr. Bush has given a number of reasons for invading Iraq - from its past and potential use of weapons of mass destruction to its suspected stockpiles of such weapons to its sponsorship and harboring of terrorists - a belief that the Almighty told him to send in the marines was not among them. "I'm surely not going to justify the war based on God,'' he told Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack.''

Two comment spams, posted far enough apart in time to make me feel they were entered manually. Both from IP address 220.93.120.39, which I could trace back as far as South Korea's NIC. I don't play. I get your IP and block your ass out via the .htaccess file. If I find you own a range of IP's I'm blocking the whole range. Frankly, I was inclined the block the whole nation. See, when I talk here about Black folks having just as much ownership of America and American as white folks I am not joking in the slightest. And my target audience is in the USofA…no beef with non-Americans I'm just focusing rather selfishly on issues of concern to Americans from the particular perspective of Black Americans. I have no issue blocking whole nations because comment spam I've tracked so far originates overseas.

I've had an impressive traffic surge this week. I've always considered Prometheus 6 to be more Emerge than Ebony, so I've always been satisfied with a steady increase in traffic with no links from Atrios or whoever. But this last week my stats literally doubled…in the last seven days I've had five 1000+ visitor days and a five day moving average up over 1000 also. And I wasn't sure at all why. Well, it turns out that, as of 9:50pe EST, P6 shows up second behind USA Today if you google "hypocrisy republicans". And second behind MSNBC if you google "allen keyes dick cheney" (I even come up fifth if you spell Keyes' name correctly. Those are going to be pretty popular searches for progressives. It's almost like the surge I got when Nick Berg was beheaded because his business had "prometheus" in its name. Thanks to Right Wing News I am getting a few more conservative types the last few days. I'm not trying to rub folks' nose in any conceptual shit (unless you're a politician). But I am, irreversibly, a progressive. Or a Liberal, if you prefer…I'm not bound by terms other folks choose to apply to me. You can hang, but you will on occasion get annoyed.

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Echelon is a global surveillance network set up in Cold War days to provide the US goverment with intelligence data about Russia. One of the main contractors is Raytheon. Lockheed Martin has been involved in writing software for it. Since then it has expanded into a general listening facility, an electronic vacuum cleaner, sucking up the world's telephone conversations. Information about it's existence has been reluctantly revealed, prompted by scandals such as the recordings of Princess Diana's telephone calls by the NSA.

Want to know the hardware behind Echelon? Uncle Sam using Texas' SAM. By Chris Mellor, Techworld You've probably heard about Echelon, the vast listening system run by the US, UK, Canada and Australia that scans the world's voice traffic looking for key words and phrases. Aside from using the system for industrial espionage and bypassing international and national laws to listen in on people, it is also used to listen out for people like Osama bin Laden and assorted terrorists in the hope of preventing attacks. All this is out in the relative open thanks to investigative journalists and a European Commission report into the system, concerned and annoyed that the Brits and Yanks has got there first. It works like this: The calls are recorded by geo-stationary spy satellites and listening stations, such as the UK's Menworth Hill, which combine satellite-intercepted calls and trunk landline intercepts and forward them on to centres, such as the US' Fort Meade, where supercomputers work on the recordings in real time. But what, you ask, can deal with that overwhelming mass of data that helps our government spy on the world? And how does it work?

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"It's almost a test of how extreme the state is willing to go to elect a Republican," said Robert Botsch, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina in Aiken. "A lot of the things he said, to me, just flunk the middle-class etiquette test."

S. Carolina Campaign Takes a Hard Right Republican Jim DeMint was expected to cruise to the Senate. But his extreme views and tough Democratic ads make the race close. By Ellen Barry Times Staff Writer October 17, 2004 CLINTON, S.C. — Kathy Harding was well on the way to voting for the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, an anti-abortion, pro-gun businessman named Jim DeMint, when a couple of things began to nag at her. One was DeMint's support for a bill that would have replaced the federal income tax with a 23% sales tax. Harding is the one who pays the grocery bill each week, and she has one word for the plan: "Expensive." Then DeMint said he believed no homosexual should be allowed to teach in the public schools. Questioned on his comments two days later, DeMint said he would also bar unwed mothers from teaching. Later, DeMint backed off both positions, explaining in an apology that he "answered that question as a dad, with my heart." But he had already lost Harding, a good Republican who watches Fox News every morning. "That bothered me," Harding said. "I'm not saying I condone the lifestyle, but I think they have to take the candidate for the teaching position and look at their credentials." To the surprise of many who expected DeMint to cruise to victory in this deeply conservative state, the race for Democrat Ernest "Fritz" Hollings' seat has become a competitive one. The most recent independent polling, in late September, showed DeMint ahead by 12 percentage points, but since then, his own staffers acknowledged, a wave of criticisms has cut into his lead.

Effects of Oil Surge Confound Forecasts Tom Petruno October 17, 2004 Imagine that an impeccable source had assured you on Jan. 1 of this year that crude oil would be near $55 a barrel by mid- October. Your investment assumptions most likely would have been dour. The stock market? It would be trashed for sure. The bond market? Long-term interest rates would have to be dramatically higher on inflation concerns. The economy? Probably careening toward recession. But oil is indeed near $55 a barrel — up from $32.50 at the start of the year — and neither the financial markets nor the economy seems too distressed. The Dow Jones industrial average, at 9,933.38, is down 5% for the year, which is annoying but no disaster. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index is off a mere 0.3%. Long-term bond yields are down, not up. The 10-year Treasury note was at 4.06% Friday, compared with 4.25% on Jan. 1. And if a recession is on the way, nobody told consumers in September: Retail sales jumped 1.5% last month, the biggest gain in six months, the government said Friday. The reaction, or lack of reaction, to record oil prices is partly a testament to the human spirit. People learn to cope with adversity; otherwise, a lot less than $55 oil would have ended civilization long ago. But there is another reason oil's ascent has failed to generate certain logical responses: No one has a good answer for why, exactly, the price is where it is. And without a good answer, each additional gain in crude's price is greeted with as much disbelief as fear. Hope is involved too — the hope that the faster oil rises, the faster it will come down. In free markets, price spikes usually end with a crash rather than with a gradual descent or a plateauing. (Think Nasdaq in 2000.)

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Bad comparison. Corporations and securities are agreements, not substances.

Army Trainers to Become Fighters in Iraq The elite Black Horse Regiment, a California fixture for 10 years, will hand over its duties at Ft. Irwin to National Guard troops. By Louis Sahagun Times Staff Writer October 17, 2004 FT. IRWIN, Calif. — The Army calls it "The Box," a vast battleground in the heart of the inhospitable desert dotted with dusty villages marked up in Arabic graffiti declaring, "Saddam Hussein, the Great Arab." But this desert is the Mojave, not the Iraqi. And it is where Army ground troops come to get a glimpse of future assignments in the Middle East. For years, The Box has been a stage for the Army's elite "opposition force" — soldiers expert at assuming the roles of enemy fighters, be they the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. Their mission is to toughen new soldiers with elaborate simulations — staging sniper fire, riots, suicide car bombings and potentially dangerous culture clashes. Staging such scenes has long been the work of the fabled 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, or Black Horse Regiment. But starting next month, the 3,500-member unit will begin shipping out to Iraq from the Ft. Irwin National Training Center, near Barstow. Deployments are nothing new in the Army, of course, but there is a special sense of urgency about dispatching the Black Horse to tackle situations that it has trained roughly 500,000 soldiers to handle since 1994. Now the bombs and bullets they encounter will be all too real. "No one ever thought the Black Horse would be taken out of the National Training Center; they are just too valuable here," said Maj. John Clearwater. "But the Army is stretched too thin, and Iraq is a big mission."

First of two articles on LAPD shootings Investigating Their Own The LAPD has often led its civilian overseers astray about key facts on officers' use of deadly force By Matt Lait and Scott Glover Times Staff Writers October 17, 2004 Officer Jeff Nolte was leading a drug raid on a motel in Gardena when a suspected cocaine dealer pointed a shotgun at him. Nolte fired two shots "in immediate defense of his life," hitting the suspect, Leonard Robinson, in the hands and disarming him. At least that was the story told by the Los Angeles Police Department. Seeing no reason to doubt it, the Police Commission ruled the shooting "in policy." Nolte was officially in the clear. Four years later, Robinson's civil rights lawsuit went to trial, and a very different picture emerged. Evidence not seen by the commission showed that Robinson had his hands in the air when Nolte opened fire. Robinson wasn't aiming a weapon at the officer, the jury found. He was trying to surrender. Robinson collected $2 million in damages this year. "I do not believe that any officer could reasonably have believed that this shooting was justified," said U.S. District Court Judge Nora Manella, who presided at the trial. It was not the first time the Police Commission had been led astray by the department it supervises. Time and again, the LAPD has given its civilian overseers an incomplete, often distorted picture of police shootings, a Times investigation found.

November 2nd, coinciding with the presidential election, APC will be releasing a collection of songs about WAR, PEACE, LOVE AND GREED, entitled "eMOTIVe." Featuring new material and songs like "imagine" by John Lennon, "What's goin on" by Marvin Gaye, "Let's have a war" by FEAR. This week we will release one of these new songs entitled, "Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums," with an animated video poking fun at our fearless leader. Hopefully, you'll find it as entertaining as we do.

REMEMBER... EVERY SINGLE VOTE COUNTS.

Don't let yourself be tricked into thinking it does not. It is important for us all to engage this political system and to be conscious of who is being chosen to speak for us. If you choose not to be involved with decisions that affect your life on a daily basis, in our opinion, you forfeit your right to complain about it later. THINK FOR YOURSELF. QUESTION AUTHORITY. Hopefully you will choose to vote on November 2nd.

Peace,
Maynard.

I really miss the days when the ninth amendment was taken seriously.

Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Oh, wait, that's NEXT lifetime. Anyway… Eighty-Five Nations Back Population Agenda Wed Oct 13, 8:04 PM ET U.S. National - AP By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - The United States has refused to join 85 other heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman's right to education, health care, and choice about having children. President Bush's administration withheld its signature because the statement included a reference to "sexual rights." U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kelly Ryan wrote to organizers of the statement that that the United States was committed to the Cairo plan of 1994 and "to the empowerment of women and the need to promote women's fullest enjoyment of universal human rights." "The United States is unable, however, to endorse the world leaders' statement," Ryan said, because it "includes the concept of `sexual rights,' a term that has no agreed definition in the international community." [P6: We interrupt this blog entry to bring you this special bulletin: Lis from Riba Rambles has dropped knowledge significant enough to force an update to this post. The Bush Administration either lied or is to ignorant of international relationships to be allowed control of them. Okay, no surprise. But by way of proof I present the definition of sexual rights that the international community agrees on:

Sexual rights Sexual rights embrace human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These include the right of all persons, free of coercion, discrimination and violence, to:

• the highest attainable standard of health in relation to sexuality, including access to sexual and reproductive health care services;
• seek, receive and impart information in relation to sexuality;
• sexuality education;
• respect for bodily integrity;
• choice of partner;
• decide to be sexually active or not;
• consensual sexual relations;
• consensual marriage;
• decide whether or not, and when to have children; and
• pursue a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life.

The responsible exercise of human rights requires that all persons respect the rights of others.

Lis has more stuff too, including a short quote from a NY Times article that seems to imply the Bush Administration's method of discouraging abortions ain't working. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.] Ryan did not elaborate on the Bush administration's objections to the phrase "sexual rights," but at past U.N. meetings U.S. representatives have spoken out against abortion, gay rights and what they see as the promotion of promiscuity by giving condoms to young people to prevent AIDS.

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today

Librarians and book store owners in general have fought those privacy-threatening aspects of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act that would require them to allow searches and tracking of people's reading and book buying habits. Just as with the lawsuit the ACLU filed against the Act they are compelled to silence if it happens. But they are NOT compelled to silence if it DOESN'T happen. Enter Jessamyn of Librarian.net:

Click the picture, check the rest. Hat tip to Liza at Culture Kitchen

Quote of note:

The national sales tax might have the upper hand in one area, however. As part of its drive to create an "ownership society," the White House is chipping away at taxes on financial income and wealth. The estate tax is scheduled to vanish, taxes on dividends and capital gains have fallen, corporate income tax loopholes have grown, and proposals for enormous tax-free saving accounts would allow the sheltering of most portfolios. All of these efforts point to a system that taxes only labor income like wages and salaries. Under this system, high-earning people might be able to shift their income into primarily nontaxed sources - for example, by taking their pay only in stocks, bonds and derivatives like options. With a national sales tax, at least, the top earners in the nation would have a much harder time avoiding taxes altogether.

Read the whole article. A national sales tax to replace the IRS function damages everyone

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What if a Sales Tax Were the Only Tax? By DANIEL ALTMAN …Begin by assuming that the government needs just as much tax revenue, regardless of the system in place. Last year, the Internal Revenue Service collected about $1.7 trillion worth of individual income and payroll taxes. Some of that money was returned as refunds. So, say that the government depended on those taxes to raise $1.5 trillion. If every bit of spending in the economy were taxed - in other words, every one of the 12.2 trillion dollars paid by American consumers, businesses and the government for domestically produced goods and services - the rate would have to be about 12 percent. But hold on a second. Would the government really want to tax everything? Probably not. For starters, having the government pay the tax on its own purchases wouldn't actually raise any money. Take out the government's spending, and the rate would have to rise to 15 percent. In most states with sales taxes, food and clothing are exempt. The reason is to protect the poor. If a national sales tax lacked that exemption, poor people who pay no income tax (many actually receive a credit) would see their tax burdens grow substantially. In addition, the tax would be regressive. Because low-earning people spend a bigger share of their income than high-earning people, the low earners' taxes would be relatively higher. So, say Congress made food and clothing exempt. That would carve an additional $1.4 trillion out of the tax base, and the rate would have to rise to 18 percent. Remember that food and clothing just became exempt for everyone, poor or not. To take some of that money back, the government could try to give the exemption only to low-earners. But how would they be identified? Would they have to file - gasp! - a tax return reporting the previous year's income? Would the government distribute "I'm a low-earner" identity cards, to be shown sheepishly to cashiers? And how would the government prevent card holders from buying things for other people? Putting those little problems aside, there are two other issues from the current tax system: housing and medical care. At the moment, homeowners can deduct interest they pay on their mortgages from their income taxes. Without an income tax, this subsidy, long seen as part of what made the American dream come true, would disappear. Bringing it back, perhaps through direct grants, would require raising the national sales tax rate to 21 percent. In addition, the current tax system subsidizes medical spending by allowing businesses to buy insurance for their employees out of pretax dollars. Many medical expenses paid out of pocket are also deductible from personal income tax. Would we want to eliminate these subsidies? Quite a few health economists would say yes, because it would discourage people from demanding care they didn't need. To keep the subsidies, the sales tax rate might have to climb to 25 percent. THERE'S still one thing to account for, though: How would the new tax system affect behavior? Slapping a 25 percent tax on all the remaining purchases in the economy, by consumers and companies alike, might well affect spending. When the sales tax burden rises, prices at the checkout counter climb, but typically not by the complete amount of the tax; buyers and sellers share the burden. For example, a 25 percent tax might lead to prices that are about 15 percent higher. That means a product that sold for $100 would sell for $115, including the tax. The flip side, of course, is that businesses would receive less revenue. Instead of getting $100 for that sale, a business would collect $115 minus 25 percent, or $86. Yet its costs would be the same, and it would still be paying the same corporate income tax. That business might react by recognizing that its employees had just received a big increase in their take-home pay, from the abolition of the income tax. The business could actually cut salaries and still leave its employees with part of that raise from Uncle Sam. In fact, doing so might be the only way to make ends meet. High-wage workers might find that any increase in the take-home price of goods and services would still be offset by their bigger take-home pay. But low-earners, who paid no income tax to start with, would find their budgets squeezed. So spending might actually fall, necessitating an even higher tax rate to support the federal government. The national sales tax might have the upper hand in one area, however. As part of its drive to create an "ownership society," the White House is chipping away at taxes on financial income and wealth. The estate tax is scheduled to vanish, taxes on dividends and capital gains have fallen, corporate income tax loopholes have grown, and proposals for enormous tax-free saving accounts would allow the sheltering of most portfolios. All of these efforts point to a system that taxes only labor income like wages and salaries. Under this system, high-earning people might be able to shift their income into primarily nontaxed sources - for example, by taking their pay only in stocks, bonds and derivatives like options. With a national sales tax, at least, the top earners in the nation would have a much harder time avoiding taxes altogether.

Out of Money, Harlem Ballet School Closes By ALAN FEUER he little girls came, the little girls went. All morning, in their tights and leotards, they were turned away at the door. The news was bad: The Dance Theater of Harlem's ballet school was closed. The reactions were, too. Mothers shook their heads. Daughters blankly stared. "We're suspending classes," Laveen Naidu, the school's director told a dozen, then two dozen, then a dozen dozen young girls and their parents who had turned up for class yesterday morning. "We have no money to move forward." The famous dance school was founded in 1969, and has been wobbling financially for months. In September the group announced that that it was laying off 44 dancers because it was $2.3 million in debt. On Friday, the troupe announced that it had lost its insurance and would have to close the school - indefinitely, Mr. Naidu said. It was the first time classes were canceled. "It's one of those terrible things," Mr. Naidu said in a lobby thronged with pigtailed girls in toe shoes. "A kid comes up to you and asks, 'Are we coming back next week?' And you don't know the answer. How do you explain?" When Arthur Mitchell, the school's founder and artistic director, learned last week about the loss in liability insurance, he reluctantly decided to shut the school.

I don't even remember when I started watching this show. I didn't even like the guys John McLaughlin generally invited. But I've developed a lot of respect for Lawrence O'Donald and John McLaughlin. Over the last few months O'Donald has calmly set forth a bag of reasonable, intelligent political analyses…all of which that I remember have come to pass. McLaughlin, I came to respect from his PBS show. But Tony Blankley is still full of shit. O'Donald Ca-RUSHED the whole Mary Cheney mess. This is an excellent segment that I'd really, really like a transcript of.

I need to come back to this, but the McLaughlin Report is on. Quote of note:

It would be easy to overlook events in northern Quebec -- a region separated from the nearest big city by more than 100 miles of thickly wooded mountains seemingly planted with more moose crossing signs than houses, in a province known for its idiosyncratic labor laws -- as purely local. But it's not. There has been angry name-calling by workers riven into pro-union and anti-union factions and accusations of intimidation by managers and threats of a lawsuit by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. And on Wednesday, Wal-Mart, referring to the strife, said the store was losing money and might have to close. "If we are not able to reach a collective agreement that is reasonable and that allows the store to function efficiently and ultimately profitable, it is possible that the store will close," Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman at Wal-Mart Canada, said in an interview. The buzz at the Jonquiere store is no accident. It is just the current focus in a larger chess game, waged by labor organizers in stores scattered across Canada -- including two other Wal-Marts in Quebec, where union spokesman Michael Forman said employees have also applied to the provincial labor board for union certification.

Regional Interest: Wal-Mart store in Quebec Province could be first to unionize By Adam Geller, AP Business Writer | October 17, 2004 JONQUIERE, Quebec --The signs topping sales racks wear the same yellow smiley face, but promise "Chute de Prix," instead of price rollbacks. The boxes of Tide lining the shelves in housewares come packed with a bonus CD, just for Canadian stores, inviting shoppers to experience "la passion du Hockey." But except for a few tweaks, the low-slung gray and blue Wal-Mart store off highway 70 could be almost any one of the retail Goliath's nearly 5,000 discount emporiums in the United States and eight other countries. And that's what worries executives at the Arkansas headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. While still not a certainty, the 165 retirees, single moms, students and other hourly workers at this store 2 1/2 hours north of Quebec City could soon become the first anywhere to extract what the world's largest private employer insists its 1.5 million "associates" around the world neither want nor need -- a union contract. A government agency has certified the workers as a union and told the two sides to negotiate. "One person against Wal-Mart cannot change anything," said Gaetan Plourde, a fiery 49-year-old sales clerk in the store's home electronics department, explaining simmering frustration over the store's pay, scheduling and other practices. "Wal-Mart wants to be rich, but it won't share."

Tim Russert should handle all his guest the way he's handling these South Carolina Senate candidates. My pop just commented the Republican candidate hasn't answered a single question. I really hope a lot of South Carolina. Not. One. Every tough question is passed to the state level. Asked if he still stands by a primary statement that gay people should not be allowed to teach, he said that should be decided on the state level. Asked if he still stands by a primary statement that single mothers should not be allowed to teach he said that should be decided on the state level. He wants to outlaw ALL abortions, no exceptions for rape or to protect the mother's life…and when asked who should be punished if the law was broken, just guess what he said? It makes me wonder what he intends to do in the Senate if the states are to make all the decisions.

Honestly, between Inez Tannebaum (S.C.) and Barack Obama, the Democratic Party really should take control of the Senate.

Scowcroft calls war 'failing venture' By Associated Press | October 17, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The national security adviser under the first President Bush said the current president acted contemptuously toward NATO and Europe after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and is trying to cooperate now out of desperation to "rescue a failing venture" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brent Scowcroft, a mentor to the current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, also said in an interview published in Britain that Bush is inordinately influenced by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told London's Financial Times. "I think the president is mesmerized." Scowcroft said the Bush administration's "unilateralist" position was partly responsible for the decline of the trans-Atlantic relationship after Sept. 11. "It's in general bad," he said. "It's not really hostile, but there's an edge to it." Early on, he said, "we had gotten contemptuous of Europeans and their weaknesses. We had really turned unilateral."

Obviously no one on Crossfire or Meet the Press watched John Steward eviscerate the media.

Report: Blair Agrees to Put U.S. Missiles in Britain Sun Oct 17, 2004 08:55 AM ET LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair has secretly agreed to allow Washington to station U.S. missiles on British soil as part of President Bush's missile defense program, the Independent Sunday newspaper reported. The paper said Blair's Downing Street office had given an "agreement in principle" to the Defense Department that the weapons -- so-called interceptor missiles -- could be sited at a Royal Air Force base in Fylingdales in northern Britain. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense denied the reports, saying no approach had been made by the U.S. government over the deployment of interceptors in Britain, and there was no deal. "No agreement has been reached," he said. Although the British government has said it will allow Washington to use early warning radar at the Fylingdales base for the missile defense program, it has said nothing publicly about whether missiles would be sited there. The Independent Sunday report angered some left-wing members of Blair's Labor party, many of whom want their government to play no part in the U.S. defense system.

Trainer Says Bonds Took Undetectable Drug: Report Sat Oct 16, 2004 05:23 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Baseball star Barry Bonds took an undetectable performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 season, his weight trainer said on a secretly recorded tape, The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Saturday. Greg Anderson, a longtime friend of the San Francisco Giants player, also said he expected to be tipped off before Bonds would have to take a drug test aimed at catching athletes who use steroids, the Chronicle reported. Anderson is a central figure in a professional sports steroids case that has focused on the San Francisco-area BALCO nutritional laboratory. The accused have pleaded not guilty. "The whole thing is, everything that I've been doing at this point, it's all undetectable," Anderson said on the tape, the newspaper reported. "It's going to be in either the end of May or beginning of June," the paper quoted Anderson as saying in reference to Bonds' drug test. "So after the All-Star break ... we're like (expletive) clear."

Only partly because I like the way he opened the article. See the Quote of Note:

"With unfunded entitlement liabilities at $74 trillion in today's dollars - an amount far exceeding the net worth of our entire national economy - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare, how can any serious person not call entitlement reform the transcendent domestic policy issue of our era?" asks former Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson

Let's just make sure we gauge success by the appropriate measures. But that would be kinda revolutionary. 'Oops. I Told the Truth.' By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Sometimes it's useful to stand back and ask yourself: If I could vote for anyone for president other than George W. Bush or John Kerry, whom would I choose? I'd choose Bill Cosby - on the condition that he would talk as bluntly to white parents and kids about what they need to do if they want to succeed as he did to black kids and parents a few months ago. The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public and even criticize their own constituencies. The columnist Michael Kinsley once observed that in American politics "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." We could use a few really big gaffes right now. Because we have not one, but three baby booms bearing down at us, and without a massive injection of truth-telling they could all explode on the next president's watch.

A.M.A. Says Government Should Negotiate on Drugs By ROBERT PEAR Published: October 17, 2004 WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 - The American Medical Association says the government should negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to secure lower prices on prescription medicines for the nation's elderly. Under the new Medicare law, signed by President Bush last December, 41 million elderly and disabled people will have access to drug benefits in 2006. Medicare will rely on private health plans to deliver the benefits. The law says the government "may not interfere" in negotiations with drug companies. Authors of the law included that provision out of fear that government involvement could overwhelm the free market [P6more accurately it could overwhelm your delusions that a free market exists], leading to federal regulation of drug prices - "price-fixing'' by federal bureaucrats, in the words of Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. The American Medical Association lobbied last year for the Medicare law, which makes hundreds of changes in the giant health insurance program. The association now says Congress should pass legislation giving the secretary of health and human services authority to negotiate contracts with manufacturers of drugs that will be covered by Medicare.

Cosmology and physics is what the title of the article put me in mind of. And like most newspaper headlines it has little to do with the substance of the article. But that's okay; I wouldn't have read it if they said up front what it was about. The Theory of Everything, R.I.P. By EMILY EAKIN WITH the death on Oct. 8 of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the era of big theory came quietly to a close. He had been among the last of a generation of thinkers, mostly male and invariably French, whose sweeping claims about the nature of language, existence and reality transfixed scholars on both sides of the Atlantic and, for several decades, beginning in the 1960's, turned humanities departments into hotbeds of productivity and debate. Mr. Derrida outlived fellow theorists Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, but signs of theory's waning influence had been accumulating around him for years. Since the early 1990's, the grand intellectual paradigms with which these men were prominently associated - Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism - had steadily lost adherents and prestige. The world had changed but not necessarily in the ways some of big theory's fervent champions had hoped. Ideas once greeted as potential catalysts for revolution began to seem banal, irrelevant or simply inadequate to the task of achieving social change. Deconstruction, Mr. Derrida's primary legacy, was no exception. Originally a method of rigorous textual analysis intended to show that no piece of writing is exactly what it seems, but rather laden with ambiguities and contradictions, deconstruction found ready acolytes across the humanities and beyond - including many determined to deconstruct not just text but the political system and society at large. Today, the term has become a more or less meaningless artifact of popular culture, more likely to turn up in a description of an untailored suit in the pages of Vogue than in a graduate seminar on James Joyce. But even as theory, or at least its distinctive vocabulary, was seeping into everyday life, some scholars were renouncing it, as Frank Lentricchia, an English professor at Duke University, did in a 1996 essay in Lingua Franca magazine. Theory, he argued, had all but supplanted literature in English departments, reducing the literary canon to a litany of political and social wrongs, "a cesspool," as he put it, "of racism, poverty, sexism, homophobia and imperialism." Other scholars quietly abandoned big theory - writing at its most general and abstract - for more personal projects, producing memoirs and even novels.

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Lentricchia's comment is telling. Because the fact is racism, poverty, sexism, homophobia and imperialism is, as the old commercial said, is "in there." We have seen any number of times how strongly and reflexively people identify with their in-group, and literature professors consider the authors they study and/or admire to be part of their in-group. So when Derrida's Deconstructionism evolved as all things do, when folks started rooting around in literature for evidence of this or that yet failed to separate the disciple of that search from the study of great literature as art, people take it personally. It seems Deconstructionism fell out of favor because of political repercussions of an analysis once removed from Deconstructionism itself. Derrida's work doesn't go away though because that once removed analysis continues. Deconstructionism will no longer be deconstructionism , it will simply be the first step in an extended analysis, kind of like that thing in your ceiling isn't Thomas Edison's great invention anymore but is merely a light bulb.

Do you know WHY I fukkin hate Perl? Because I am not a geek. I do geeky things, but I am NOT AMUSED byan error message talking about an "unblessed reference." That shit better refer to something that doesn't apply to any other programming language at all. And I don't mind weakly or untyped languages (much), and can tolerate languages where variable are global by default. The combination is annoying, and like "unblessed" that "my" keyword is too cute by half. **deeeep breath** Context: I've started work on the next version of MTClient. I'm trying to work out the code to post to Movable Type 3.11 via the Atom API. Actually to post to Typepad; Typepad (in theory_ will let you add to your book list, photo album and such using the Atom API. I've been hesitant to take this on because Atom is still unfinished (don't let all those newsfeeds fool you…producing and consuming feeds in general is a piece of cake, though to my knowledge there's no feed in existence that uses the full obscene complexity Atom makes possible). Before one can post a damn thing, one must get past the authentication. What you have to do is take a (random) string of characters, the date and time formatted in a specific way and your password and jam them together into a single string of characters. Then you create a hash, which is a specific mangling of the string such that

• the output is unique, and
• there's no possible way to figure out what the original string was by examining the output string

Then you transform the output string in a reversible way such that only printable characters are in it. You send the final results along with the random string and your user name. When you try to work with an Atom server it reverses that transformation and splits the de-transformed string into its three parts. It gets your password and after making sure your creation date is reasonably recent (like two minutes old) repeats your construction of the hash and compares it to what you sent. And I fail this test. The error message being a rather useless "X-WSSE PasswordDigest is incorrect," I opened up MT's AtomServer.pm and changed the error message to output both MT hash and my own. The problems I have are

• I took a known set of parameters, did the hash and got the output expected. This means my encryption library is correct.
• Because a hash is irreversible there's no way to tell what the SERVER used to create it.
• I'm not the encryption guy that could fix a REAL problem anyway (far fewer folks ARE those encryption guys than believe they are those encryption guys).

I figure the next step it to output the parameters used to build the string of characters that is hashed. But when I go for the password I get that stupid unblessed statement. And as much as I have going on in my head I will be damned if I will pick up some stupid made in the 1960s geek-ass terminology. And I such plans. I'm not trying this very much longer. I can do the XML-RPC thing easily enough and I can modify things so that it works more rationally with Drupal, Wordpress and other dynamic systems that use the MetaWeblog API. But if I can't get this sucker working I'll be giving up some very useful and very distinguishing features for Typepad users.