Uppity-Negro mentioned the State of the Black Union event was to be televised on CSPAN. And a bunch of Black Republicans are holding a press conference under the mantle of the Heritage Foundation, which CSPAN will also present.

Jesse Lee Paterson and the Innis clan...speaking so well together...

I'll record it and watch it tomorrow. Even the Conservative part.

via Cincinnati Black Blog

Legacy of funk
Bootsy Collins is dedicated to enlightening new generation of musicians

By C.E. Hanifin
Enquirer staff writer

Funk pioneer Bootsy Collins says his two mentors, James Brown and George Clinton, didn't just give him career advice. Each of the legendary recording artists also taught him about life.

Now Collins, 53, wants to pass on that knowledge to a new generation of musicians. The Cincinnati native is recognized worldwide for his innovative style of bass playing and his flamboyant fashion sense. Here in his hometown, he's also known for serving as a mentor to young artists.

I'm gonna enjoy writing this one.

There's Washington Post article on the impact of HIV infection on the Black community. Blacks hardest hit, etc.

U.S. Survey Indicates Blacks Hardest Hit by HIV Infection
In 2001, Rate for Those Ages 18 to 59 Is 13 Times That of Whites

This sort of article always disturbs me.

For some reason though, I decided to examine this article the same way I do articles on politics and economics.

They tested a proper-sized sample, I think.

In the 2001 survey, out of about 5,500 people examined, 32 were HIV-positive. Of that group, 23 were African American. The overall prevalence of HIV was 0.43 percent, up slightly from 0.33 percent a decade earlier.

On the one hand, that's a disturbingly high rate for a deadly illness, regardless of the selection criteria used to decide who to ask. On the other hand, 32 infections out of 5,500 people means it's not too late for you to be safe.

Quote of note:

The FDA screens panelists' consulting arrangements and stock holdings before deciding if they can participate in a committee meeting. Panelists who considered the pain drugs were reviewed "according to the same strict ethics guidelines FDA applies to all its advisory committees," said Sheila Dearybury Walcoff, FDA associate commissioner for external relations.

The analysis sparked more congressional concerns over the FDA and its policing of drug safety

Ten on Drug Panel Had Industry Ties, Group Says
Fri Feb 25, 2005 07:06 PM ET

By Lisa Richwine and Susan Heavey

Talon News Web Site Closes Amid Heavy Criticism
Fri Feb 25, 2005 08:42 PM ET

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas-based Web site whose conservative connections touched off a White House media controversy has shut down "to reevaluate operations," according to a message posted on the site.

A spokeswoman for Talon News said the site closed because its founder, Bobby Eberle of Pearland, Texas, "can only take so much beating" over the page's political slant, the Houston Chronicle reported on Friday.

Talon, which could not immediately be reached for comment, came under fire after its White House reporter, who identified himself as Jeff Gannon, asked a politically loaded question at a White House press conference and was accused by critics of being used by the Bush administration to spread conservative propaganda.

Quote of note:

This, of course, was all supposed to end when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2003 issued rules that required more clarity in corporate earnings results. The new rules were a response to reporting abuses in the 1990s, especially among technology and telecommunications companies that ignored normal business costs as a way of padding their bottom lines.

Lifting the Lid: U.S. Companies Hide Bad News Deep in Releases
Sat Feb 26, 2005 07:30 AM ET

By Michael Flaherty

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Burying bad news is back with a vengeance.

Investors may have thought the days when companies hid massive net losses, focused on some kind of weird adjusted measure of earnings and talked mumbo jumbo about their prospects died out with the dot-com bust. But a glance through some of the reports coming through in the past week shows that just isn't the case.

Associated Press joins Reuters in providing RSS feeds.

South Knox Bubba and his commenters give us the real nigger-show -- the genuine nigger-show, the extravagant nigger-show.

Shannon at Egotistical Whining runs a list of people of color blogs off the top of her head. Seven of them are new to me but I pretty much agree with her assessments of the other twelve.

Just a thought: is there anything important that I missed?

Date: Feb. 9, 2005
Contacts: Vanee Vines, Senior Media Relations Officer
Chris Dobbins, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

U.S. National Academies Select Partners For Initiative to Develop African Science Academies

WASHINGTON   The U.S. National Academies have selected the science academies of Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa as initial focal points for a program to strengthen African scientists' ability to inform government policy-making and public discourse with independent, evidence-based advice. The initiative, supported by a $20 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be carried out in Africa over the next decade, focusing on efforts to improve human health.

So I follow this link I got by email to Toledo Hip Hop.org. They're putting together a CD and have some tracks online. The list that I got the link from is such that I'm expecting hip hop rather than rap but beyond that I have no idea.

When the page loads I scan it as I normally do. Lotta tracks.

I get to the links section at the end of the page and I see

Move The Crowd - Mercury Rising & Imani Lateef's blog

...which struck me because I know Michael at Trader Mike has had a blog named Move The Crowd for as long as I've had Prometheus 6.

And when I check it out, I find Brotha's Gonna Work It Out at the top of the page. And suddenly I'm confronted with the need to do something intelligent to keep track of all the Black folks' sites I run into because I'm not prepared to let wither Move the Crowd slip.

This is something I've been annoyed at for one hell of a long time. I first realized what was going on over a decade ago while reading a "celebrate Kwanzaa" insert in the local newspaper. It featured articles on the history of Kwanzaa and recipes. The one that struck me was the "Brand name Authentic Kwanzaa Punch™," a trademarked entity that must be made with Dole® Pineapple Juice and Chiquita® Bananas.

Nowadays they skip the lessons and just print "Happy Kwanzaa" under a brown menorah.

But this isn't a complaint. This is a lesson.

Because this is how it's done. Rhetorically tie what you intend to what they want...a sutra I know of calls this "dip[ping] the dust of desire in a drop of the teaching." But keep your purpose in the shadow of your words. Let the message you send obstruct the view of your actions, let it be your defense against the impact of your deeds. Act as though your stated intent is more important than the events that follow.

Sticking it hard to foreign corporations that "abet the spread of weaponry through their subsidiaries" would indeed have a significant impact on the arms race. But the sanction laws these gentlemen complain about will not be touched. Yes they shield foreign corporations, but they shield our domestic engines of prosperity as well.

I mean, if we're holding corporations responsible for the actions of their subsidiaries we could indict Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Bechtel and ConocoPhillips based on the transactions mentioned in this article alone. And there is no way to exclude domestic companies from any change in the laws that wouldn't cast a dark shadow on American diplomatic efforts until human habitation of the planet comes to an end.

Anyway...

A Shell Game in the Arms Race
By MATTHEW GODSEY and GARY MILHOLLIN

Quote of note:

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.

For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas."

Kansas on My Mind
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Call it "What's the Matter With Kansas - The Cartoon Version."

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.

Quote of note:

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has announced plans to run for governor in 2006, argued that public officials "should not be allowed to avoid sanctions for misconduct simply by leaving state service."

Case of Former SUNY Official Points to Ethics Law Loophole
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

When Karen R. Hitchcock resigned last year as president of the State University of New York at Albany, she said she was leaving earlier than expected to deal with family concerns.

But at the time, Dr. Hitchcock faced a state ethics inquiry into accusations that she offered to steer a campus construction contract to a developer, who in exchange would pay to endow a university professorship that she could fill once she left her job as college president, according to state officials familiar with the ethics review.

Quote of note:

"The reporters at issue relied upon the promise of confidentiality to gather information concerning issues of paramount national importance," Judge Sweet wrote, referring to Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, both of The Times. "The government has failed to demonstrate that the balance of competing interests weighs in its favor."

Good. Because you can't just flatly state reporters are immune to being investigated but you damn sure can't just turn them over reflexively.

Judge Blocks Inspection of Times Reporters' Phone Records
By ADAM LIPTAK

A federal prosecutor may not inspect the phone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to learn their confidential sources, a federal judge in New York ruled yesterday.

Didn't the feds try this? And didn't it fail?

Typically, the request is couched in noble reasoning that is belied by the actual demand. If Kline's purpose is as stated he should be requesting the records only for abortion patients that haven't reached the age of majority in Kansas. You could actually build a case for that I could support.

But he wants adult patients' records. And no one is going to even have records of illegal abortions.

I repeat: no one that performs illegal late term abortions will have hospital records documenting the crime.

Fishing expeditions in our private records and medical histories should not be allowed. That simple.

PETER FERRARA:
CATO INSTITUTE WANTS TO GET RID OF THE ENTIRE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM.

Peter Ferrara, an outspoken proponent of Social Security privatization blurted out the truth to today's Washington Post, "Cato wants to get rid of the entire Social Security system, and I don't." Ferrara spent a decade as the Mont Pelerin Society-created Cato Institute's lead analyst and proselytizer for Social Security privatization, and another 15 years working with Cato, so he is well-positioned to know what he is saying about Cato. EIR has documented that Cato Institute took over and wrote most of the recommendations of the Dec 2001 final report of President Bush's official "Commission to Strengthen Social Security," which Bush adopted and presented, with minor changes, in his Feb. 2 State of the Union address. Therefore, Ferrara is admitting that Bush wants to get rid of Social Security.

Seems the "where da wimmin at?" permathread has reared its head once more. And as part of the manifestation, the forces of chaos have arranged for Prof. DeLong to link to me for no apparent reason.

Cool.

Friday noon is the second open thread, folks.

Check this out. Read the excerpts and let me know what you think.

GOP reps targeted on Bush plan
BY J. JIONI PALMER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

February 23, 2005

New York Republicans such as Reps. Peter King (Seaford) and Vito Fossella (Staten Island) find themselves in the crosshairs of local activists bent on forcing them into signing a pledge opposing the Bush administration's plan to partially privatize Social Security.

The push to get so-called Blue State Republicans - GOP lawmakers from states like New York that lean Democratic - to break with the president comes at a time of national debate over how to reshape the retirement benefits program.

"We're asking this of every member of the New York delegation," said Alex Navarro, communication director of the Working Families Party, which is helping coordinate the campaign.

Besides committing signatories to opposing privatizing Social Security in principle, the four-point pledge specifically forbids tinkering with the program in ways that would reduce retirement benefits, raise the retirement age or increase the federal deficit.

Florida official faces criticism over showing of Chris Rock video to NAACP leaders

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, AP

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) - Six black lawmakers called for the removal of the head of the state's juvenile justice department for showing a video by comedian Chris Rock at a meeting with civil rights activists.

One lawmaker called the black comedian's 4-minute skit - "How To Not Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police" - "absolutely racist." A member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who attended the viewing last July said no one complained.

If you have a problem you want to solve and you insist the solution must contain certain elements, there is a way to do it. Simply set forth your elements and refuse to allow them to change. The world won't end no matter how silly the position you set forth is...and if you have the power to prevent anyone from adjusting or removing what you've set forth then everyone else is simply forced to adjust their position accordingly.

This is the central technique of neocons and cultural reversionists. And it works, sort of. The reality is, the world adjusts to anything you do. But another reality is, you may well not like the adjustment it makes. Iraq stands as the best example of this whole process. To me, the net result of all this in a few years will be a U.S. military presence firmly and permanently based in Iraq with all the resources necessary to defend our national interests...which will need much more defence due to the way we established that presence.

Canada Says It Won't Join Missile Shield With the U.S.

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

TORONTO, Feb. 23 - The Canadian government has refused to take part in a planned North America missile defense system despite personal lobbying by President Bush here last November, United States diplomatic officials said Wednesday.

The long-awaited decision from Prime Minister Paul Martin was a symbolic setback for the Bush administration when it is trying to heal rifts with allies that emerged from the invasion of Iraq.

It was conveyed privately to senior United States officials this week in Ottawa and at the NATO summit meeting in Brussels, United States diplomats said. Asked about the issue on Wednesday in Parliament, Mr. Martin would not confirm that a decision had been made, but according to newspaper reports here quoting anonymous sources, an official announcement will be made this week.

Quote of note:

...it relies on the generosity of doctors and hospitals to provide specialty services free of charge.

Really.

In America. Profit driven America with its for-profit hospitals.

Don't make me laugh. We are obviously a long way away from any serious reform.

Model in Utah May Be Future for Medicaid

By KIRK JOHNSON and REED ABELSON

SALT LAKE CITY - Anyone looking for clues as to how the Bush administration might overhaul the Medicaid system should come to Utah and read the fine print of Tony Martinez's health insurance plan.

Mr. Martinez, 56, was homeless and without any health coverage a year ago. Now, under an experimental plan of partial insurance devised under Michael O. Leavitt when he was governor of Utah, Mr. Martinez can see a doctor or go to the emergency room for only a small fee.

There is no tomorrow

Bill Moyers

Published January 30, 2005

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Checking my morning mail, I had the thought that a filter that spell checks email titles could flag an incredible amount of spam.

Report Faults Bush Initiative on Education
By SAM DILLON

Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform initiative that had usurped state and local control of public schools.

The report, based on hearings in six cities, praised the law's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students. But most of the 77-page report, which the Education Department rebutted yesterday, was devoted to a detailed inventory and discussion of its flaws.

Iran Says Does Not Want U.S. to Join Nuclear Talks

February 24, 2005

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Thursday it did not want the United States to become more involved in negotiations Tehran is holding with the European Union over its nuclear program.

European leaders, including French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, urged President Bush this week to join the EU approach of offering incentives to Iran in return for scrapping some atomic work.

Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley, said on Wednesday Bush would consider the use of incentives such as the membership of the World Trade Organization and the sale of civilian aircraft to Iran, when he returns to Washington.

Much of the crap we deal with cyclically, most of the spin (like the Republican claim that they's been looking out for the nigras all along) wouldn't even be attempted if there was a better general knowledge of history. But we limp along, building arguments based on the propaganda that is K-12 history.

Anyway...

A History of Flawed Teaching
By Sam Wineburg
Sam Wineburg, author of "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts" (Temple University Press, 2001), is a professor in Stanford's School of Education.
February 24, 2005

Imagine this: Nearly a third of the students who apply to Stanford's master's in teaching program to become history teachers have never taken a single college course in history. Outrageous? Yes, but it's part of a well-established national pattern. Among high school history teachers across the country, only 18% have majored (or even minored) in the subject they now teach.

Let's Try 'No State Left Behind'
February 24, 2005

Why can't California get the same deal as Utah regarding the No Child Left Behind Act? As the new U.S. secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings is showing welcome flexibility —  but troubling inconsistency —  when it comes to enforcing the arcane and sometimes nonsensical regulations covering schools.

Utah wants permission to use its own accountability system rather than the federal one, and its House of Representatives recently passed a bill giving state education rules priority. Spellings has said she's willing to visit Utah and listen, and that's promising talk. Utah does a superior job of tracking achievement, by measuring year-to-year improvement of each student. That's the gold standard for leaving no child behind, not the federal law's convoluted statistical juggling that requires a certain number of students from all sorts of tiny demographic subgroups to meet an imaginary bar called "proficiency."

Beyond Putin's Soul
February 24, 2005

Hopefully President Bush has improved his soul-reading skills while in office. During his first year as president he famously proclaimed that he'd acquired a sense of Vladimir V. Putin's soul and found him to be trustworthy.

When Bush looks into Putin's eyes today during their meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, he should try to divine whether Putin is now capable of reversing course and putting Russia back on the path toward greater freedom and becoming a mature democracy. That's Bush's oft-proclaimed goal in countries great and small, but one growing more distant in Russia.

Technically this is a "subscriber only" article. If this link doesn't work got to TomPaine.com, whose link worked for me.

HOW LIBERALISM CAME TO THE U.S.
Structural Flaw
by John B. Judis

In the wake of almost every Democratic defeat since 1972, liberals can be found insisting that, if their candidate had adhered to the party's core economic beliefs and steered clear of social issues, he would have done much better, if not won. If Democrats were to return to "the liberalism this country once heard from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy," Princeton University sociologist Paul Starr declared in The New York Times last month, it would "give the Democratic party back its majority." But this electoral advice--whatever its merits--sidesteps a much more basic and disturbing question: Is it possible any longer to enact the kind of liberal program that Roosevelt and his successors did? In other words, even if a Democrat were elected in 2008 on a liberal platform, would he or she be able to put it into effect? 

If the concern "is simply ridiculous" then the option isn't "on the table."

If "all option are on the table" then the concern is legitimate.

Bush Tries To Allay E.U. Worry Over Iran
Notion of U.S. Attack 'Is Simply Ridiculous'
By Michael A. Fletcher and Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 23, 2005; Page A01

BRUSSELS, Feb. 22 -- President Bush said Tuesday that concern about possible U.S. military action against Iran "is simply ridiculous," but he added at a news conference that "all options are on the table" in dealing with suspected Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.

After meeting with NATO and European Union officials, Bush welcomed modest pledges from opponents of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to help train and equip security forces there. While U.S. and European officials said there was an improved tone in their discussions, serious divisions remained over U.S. policy toward Iran and the Bush administration's objection to European plans to lift an arms embargo against China.

Quote of note:

Call this journalistic malpractice. Recently both the Times and Post ran front-page stories reporting -- in tones of shock -- that the costs of the Medicare drug benefit were rising rapidly. The stories were misleading; all that had changed about the estimates is that two early years (with little spending) had been dropped and two later years (with lots of spending) had been added. If the media had reported accurately two years ago, there would be no shock today.

The malpractice continues. The disagreeable reality is that the baby boom's sheer weight will sooner or later force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. We ought to be debating them now and giving people warning. But almost everyone has a stake in denial, and the media are complicit. Personal accounts -- like them or not -- don't solve the real problem. If journalists were doing their jobs, everyone would know that.

CAMILLA BANNED FROM WHITE HOUSE
Feb 20 2005
Dubya bars Camilla from White House ..because she is a divorcee
By Paul Gilfeather Political Editor

GEORGE Bush has banned Camilla Parker Bowles from the White House - because she is a divorcee.

The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles's plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year.

The trip would have been the pair's first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President - a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic - told aides it was "inappropriate" for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

Some Inheritance
Published: February 23, 2005

...Under the president's proposal, when you retired you would not be able to start spending the money in your private account until after you bought an annuity, a financial contract in which you hand over a lump-sum payment and, in return, get a monthly stream of income for life. The upside of buying such an annuity would be that you'd be protected against outliving all of your money. The downside is that even if you died immediately after retirement, the most your heirs would inherit would be the amount that remained in your private account after you had paid for the mandatory annuity. (If you lived longer, of course, you might well need to spend the remainder to supplement the annuity's low monthly payout. )

But I'm afraid the Abu Ghraib torture "scandal" proves there is little that can move Americans from their complacency and indifference for more than a week or so.

The Secret Genocide Archive
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Photos don't normally appear on this page. But it's time for all of us to look squarely at the victims of our indifference.

These are just four photos in a secret archive of thousands of photos and reports that document the genocide under way in Darfur. The materials were gathered by African Union monitors, who are just about the only people able to travel widely in that part of Sudan.

This African Union archive is classified, but it was shared with me by someone who believes that Americans will be stirred if they can see the consequences of their complacency.

Real Estate Is Still Surging in Harlem, a Study Finds

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: February 23, 2005

...It is impossible for Willie Katherine Suggs, president of the Harlem brokerage firm that bears her name, to overlook the change. "There are blocks in Harlem that bear no resemblance to what they looked like 10 years ago," Ms. Suggs said. "Right outside my door, it was like somebody bombed it out - vacant lots, vacant buildings. Now there are two nine-story luxury buildings, and they are doing a third one on the north side of 145th Street."

Harvard President Vows to Temper His Style With Respect

By SARA RIMER and PATRICK D. HEALY

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 22 - With his faculty threatening open revolt, the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, promised Tuesday that he would temper his management style and begin treating people more respectfully.

Professors, gathered at an overflow faculty meeting to hear and discuss Dr. Summers, appeared so dissatisfied with the state of his leadership that they rejected a proposal to have three senior Harvard scholars mediate the furor between the faculty and its president.

After five weeks of mea culpas for his remarks about women in the sciences, Dr. Summers issued yet another apology. He promised professors that they would no longer experience the intimidation, anger and hurt feelings that many of them have reported in his three-and-a-half-year tenure.

Quote of note:

"Twenty-six nations sat around the table saying, 'You know, let's get the past behind us, and now let's focus on helping the world's newest democracy succeed,' " he said at a news conference here with the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

The past is behind us...but close enough that everyone can still hear its footsteps.

Asked if he was satisfied with the token contributions, Mr. Bush said, "Every contribution helps."

...especially when you know that's all you're going to get.

Anyway...

NATO Agrees on Modest Plan for Training Iraqi Forces

Quote of note:

"The issue is not only the names of the people," Mustafa Barghouti, a doctor and opposition activist who was a distant second to Mr. Abbas in the Palestinian election for president last month, said of the list. "It will depend on the program. What worries me most is that we haven't seen true progress on any reform. This is about a corrupt system where favoritism prevails. This kind of political nepotism is totally unacceptable," he said.

Palestinian Agrees to Reshape Cabinet With New Faces

By ALAN COWELL

JERUSALEM, Feb. 22 - Under pressure from legislators, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, pledged Tuesday to reshape his cabinet, bringing in some nonpolitical figures after lawmakers challenged his previous team of loyalists from the Yasir Arafat era.

Quote of note:

The kind of information disclosed in this case does not often become public, employment lawyers say, because most companies settle discrimination suits before they reach the class certification stage. One reason settlements are attractive, of course, is to keep potentially embarrassing information confidential.

Questions Arise of Possible Bias at Drug Maker

By JONATHAN D. GLATER

At Johnson & Johnson, the director of equal opportunity was worried. The company, she warned in a memo written in the late 1990's - the exact date is unclear - had "areas of vulnerability" to employment discrimination lawsuits.

Shiite Alliance in Iraq Wants Islamist as the Prime Minister
By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq's new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari's powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition.

Ayad Allawi, the current prime minister, and Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician and deputy prime minister, said in separate interviews on Tuesday that without guarantees renouncing sectarianism and embracing Western democratic ideals they were poised to block Dr. Jaafari's nomination and possibly peel off enough members from the Shiite's United Iraqi Alliance to form a government of their own.

About a week ago I got nervous about the F.E.C. getting involved in what blogs do. Well, it would seem this is at least part of the reason for such a thing.

Some of the real reporters in the White House pressroom were apparently annoyed at Gannon's presence and his softball, partisan questions, but considered him only a minor irritant. One told me he thought of Gannon as a balance for the opinionated liberal questions of Hearst's Helen Thomas. But what Gannon was up to was not just writing opinion columns or using a different technique to get information. He was a player in Republican campaigns and his work in the South Dakota Senate race illustrates the role he played. It is also a classic example of how political operatives are using the brave new world of the Internet and the blogosphere. Gannon and Talon News appear to be mini-Drudge reports; a "news" source which partisans use to put out negative information, get the attention of the bloggers, talk radio and then the MSM in a way that mere press releases are unable to achieve.

One of Gannon's first projects was an attempt to discredit the South Dakota Argus Leader, South Dakota's major paper, and its longtime political writer, David Kranz. According to the National Journal, which reported on this last November, Gannon wrote a series of articles in the summer of 2003 alleging that Kranz, who went to college with Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, was not only sympathetic to him but was an actual part of the Daschle campaign. These articles then got a huge amount of play on the blogs of John Lauck and Jason Van Beek, and were picked up by other conservative sites and talk radio. The paper was bombarded with messages about its bias and acknowledges that these had an impact on its coverage.

Daschle opponent John Thune's campaign manager was Dick Wadham, an old political crony of Karl Rove's; the kind of pal Rove could ask to hire his first cousin, John Wood, a few years back. Wadham put the bloggers on the campaign payroll and the symbiotic relationship between the campaign, the bloggers and "reporter" Gannon continued. On September 29, Gannon broke the story that Daschle had claimed a special tax exemption for a house in Washington and the bloggers jumped all over it. According to a November 17 posting on South Dakota Politics   a site that Van Beek, who has become a staffer for now-Sen. Thune, has bequeathed to Lauck   "Jeff Gannon, whose reportage had a dramatic impact on the Daschle v. Thune race (his story about Sen. Daschle signing a legal document claiming to be a D.C. resident was published nearly the same day Thune began to run an ad showing Daschle saying, "I'm a D.C. resident) has written an analysis of the debacle."

Daschle aides told Roll Call, "This guy (Gannon) became the dumping ground for opposition research." The connections are so strong that there is an FEC challenge which could be a test case on the limits of the use of the Internet in federal campaigns.

This is commentary on the article I posted last night.

They got off to a bad start.

AJC: How do you define being a conservative?

Cobb: I'm thinking more of behavioral type things like taking personal responsibility. Beliefs and behaviors that move you to the next level. That resonates with me more than anything.

Hullum: To me, conservatism goes back to family structure. And to me it goes back to accountability and morals.

I wonder if we'll ever have a discussion in The King's English instead of verbal cartoons. Terms of art like "personal responsibility" and "family structure" do not define anything anyone disagrees with. I would like Black Republicans to state plainly what they feel differentiates them from the rest of the community.

The Memory Hole, via Professor Kim

As of 7 January 2005, the website of the US Commission on Civil Rights has been purged of 20 reports that didn't meet the approval of the agency's Republican majority.

The site says that you may still order copies of these reports, but, tellingly, they require that you give them a physical mailing address. In other words, they'll send you a paper copy of a report, not an easily-postable electronic copy.

The Memory Hole was able to locate 17 19 of these deleted reports. They have been posted below. (If you can find any of the other three, please send them.)

via D.C Thornton

The Right's Right
By Ryan Sager

Welcome to the furthest right reaches of the right: the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC for short. Here, evolution is a wild hypothesis, "Log Cabin Republican" is a slur and young women know they have to wear short skirts to get ahead.

...The message in that regard was clear: We Christians can do this alone, y'all who ain't down with J.C. best be running along.

That was the message when Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute, who was on a panel to defend President Bush's proposed immigration reforms (supported by no less a conservative institution than The Wall Street Journal), was loudly booed by the anti-immigrant crowd. That was the message when a representative of the Log Cabin Republicans was booed and then asked by a student, "You people [homosexuals, that is] already have the right to live together, you got the sex, what else do you people want?" 

In fact, if there was anything particularly striking about this year's CPAC, it is to just what extent Republicans have given up being the party of small government and individual liberty. 

Make absolutely no mistake about it: This party, among its most hard-core supporters, is not about freedom anymore. It is about foisting its members' version of morality and economic intervention on the country. It is, in other words, the mirror image of its hated enemy.

There's a Black Conservatives Yahoo! group.

I know because someone in there linked to this post, and the title of the post (which, as a non-member, is all I can see) begins thus:

Black_Conservatives · I'm Black, and I'm Right! Are you tired of the same old song from the same old left-wing suspects? Do the "leaders" of today

I would deduce someone is complaining about the opening line:

It must be nice to be a Republican leader. You can just lie. In fact, it seems you must.

Quote of note:

"America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," [California Rep. Chris Cox] crowed. Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." Apparently, most of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped at this startling revelation.

I wonder what could possibly be mustered as a defense for that claim?

The title of the post that bothers the children so is How do you deal with such mass delusion?

The question stands.

Companies Fight to Ensure Coverage for Erectile Drugs
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - Drug companies are strenuously resisting bipartisan efforts in Congress to prohibit Medicare from paying for Viagra and other drugs for erectile dysfunction.

The issue of whether Medicare's new prescription drug benefit should cover such treatments is raising broader questions of ethics, economics, politics and health policy.

...The debate centers on whether a drug used to enhance sexual performance should even be eligible for Medicare coverage. Proponents of providing the coverage say that erectile dysfunction often has a physical cause and that treatment can significantly improve the quality of a man's life. Opponents say that Medicare, already growing at an unsustainable rate, cannot afford to pay for "lifestyle drugs."

Administration officials said recently that, under their reading of the new Medicare drug benefit, they had to pay for drugs like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis when they were prescribed.

I find it ridiculous to even have this discussion when insulin and syringes for diabetic are not covered. We're talking about something necessary to stay alive, not just to stay lively.

...though it seems Black Republicans are writing their lines.

Quote of note:

"Now the election of 2004 is over," said Christopher Barron, the Log Cabin Republicans' political director. "And we think there are opportunities to work with this president. The fact is the gay and lesbian community has to realize that the president won."

When will these idiots realize the Republican Party has absolutely no reason to accept them? That the Republican coalition will either fracture badly or punish those politicians that accept gays that do anything except lobby against gay rights?

Anyway...

Gay Conservatives to Work With GOP

Log Cabin Republicans Attend Conservative Conference With Hopes of Working With GOP

When a student is given vouchers for private school because their public school "failed," does the private school have to be better than the school they left? Is there any assurance the private school would not fail the same standard? Or are we simply assuming it must be better because it's private?

Bush: Issue more vouchers
Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to propose offering private-school vouchers to students who have failed the reading part of the FCAT for three consecutive years.
BY GARY FINEOUT

TALLAHASSEE- Six years after creating the nation's first statewide school voucher program, Gov. Jeb Bush will this week propose a massive expansion of the use of vouchers, offering them to any student in Florida who has failed the state reading test for three years in a row.

Quote of note:

...a president can always change the subject to national security if he wants to - and Mr. Bush has repeatedly shown himself willing to play the terrorism card when he is losing the debate on other issues. So it's important to point out that Mr. Bush, for all his posturing, has done a very bad job of protecting the nation - and to make that point now, rather than in the heat of the next foreign crisis.

Wag-the-Dog Protection

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.

Latin America Fails to Deliver on Basic Needs

By JUAN FORERO

EL ALTO, Bolivia - Piped water, like the runoff from the glaciers above this city, runs tantalizingly close to Remedios Cuyuña's home. But with no way to pay the $450 hookup fee charged by the French-run waterworks, she washes her clothes and bathes her three children in frigid well water beside a fetid creek.

So in January, when legions of angry residents rose up against the company, she eagerly joined in. The fragile government of President Carlos Mesa, hoping to avert the same kind of uprising that toppled his predecessor in 2003, then took a step that proved popular but shook foreign investors to their core. It canceled the contract of Aguas del Illimani, a subsidiary of the $53 billion French giant Suez, effectively tossing it out of the country and leaving the state responsible.

Power plays preoccupy Iraqi leaders

Officials hope to resolve a protracted battle over the prime ministership this week.

By Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy

BAGHDAD - As Shiites prepare to take ownership of Iraq's new government, power struggles over the post of prime minister are exposing the fragility of the winning United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) - as well as a fractious political landscape.

Islamist Dawa Party leader Ibrahim Jaafari had been heavily favored to take the post last week. But a challenge by the head of the secular Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, threw the process into extended negotiations, even as Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi first withdrew and then reappeared as a possible compromise candidate.

Quote of note:

Critics of the decision say the Connecticut high court confused "public use" with "public benefit." They say if the ruling is upheld by the US Supreme Court, any property in the country could be seized and turned over to a private company that promises to produce higher tax revenues from that property.

Public use, property rights and the courts

A Connecticut battle between property rights and government power comes before the Supreme Court.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Property rights in the United States are at a constitutional crossroads.

Increasingly, in towns and cities across the nation, local governments are seizing and demolishing private homes to assemble large tracts of land needed for economic development projects.

Time for Bush to define 'independent press'

By Dante Chinni

...The Guckert fiasco first surfaced because of a Jan. 26 press conference where President Bush called on Gannon/Guckert, who asked the president how he could work with Senate Democrats when they "seem to have divorced themselves from reality." Bush, like any good politician, stepped into that fat one and answered by giving a short outline of his many policy plans.

What was more interesting than that exchange, however, was the one that immediately preceded it at the same press conference - a back-and-forth with reporters about the administration's paying reporters for positive coverage, as the Education Department did with Armstrong Williams. "There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press," the president said.

via Minority Report

Jeff Gannon aka James Gukert has an interesting perspective on the impact of the controversy over his press credentials on his career:

Jeff Gannon is considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a "political assassination" that drove him from his job as a reporter for a conservative news outfit called Talon News, he told NEWSWEEK. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, singled out Media Matters -- a "well-funded" liberal group headed by longtime "attack dog" David Brock. ("Everything we wrote about him came from the public record," Brock replied.)

You conservative types should recognize that this would open you up to legal action by everyone whose scalp hanging on your belt. And since y'all started it you got more scalps...and hence more vulnerability.

States' Private Pensions Make a Weak Showing
The retirement accounts have had less appeal and spottier success than Bush plan's projections.
By Peter G. Gosselin
Times Staff Writer

February 22, 2005

WASHINGTON   President Bush believes Americans are so eager to join the "ownership society" that, given a chance, two-thirds of those eligible would divert funds from Social Security into the personal investment accounts he proposes.

But when public employees in seven states were offered the opportunity for similar accounts during the last decade, nowhere near two-thirds signed up for them. In many instances, the figure was closer to 5%.

Black Republicans talk about the GOP
Some say whites don't want a 'darker party'
Published on: 02/18/05

A roundtable discussion was held at the Northside bureau of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution with six African-American men and woman who describe themselves as politically conservative and who support the Republican Party. The group fielded a variety of questions about race and politics from Northside reporter Adrianne Murchison and Todd C. Duncan,the Northside editor.

Three Little Words Matter to N. Korea
Lately, U.S. Avoids 'No Hostile Intent'
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 22, 2005; Page A11

What's in a phrase? Everything, in the craft of diplomacy.

This is the story of three little words -- "no hostile intent" -- and the fierce tussle within the Bush administration over them as officials tried to develop a policy to confront North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

To a non-diplomat, the phrase might seem typical of the awkward and diffuse verbiage frequently uttered by men in pinstriped suits. But to the North Korean government, hearing those words from the United States looms large as the diplomatic equivalent of the Holy Grail.

Yet President Bush has never uttered them. Neither has Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell did, especially in the final months of his tenure -- and he frequently suggested Bush had said them, too.

But we're getting ahead of the story.

Quote of note:

Section 16 says in part that "all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion."

His House Joint Resolution 537 would have added that the "the people's right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions on public property, including public schools, shall not be infringed."

Religious Freedom Revisions Rejected
Va. Senate Panel Kills Amendment

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 22, 2005; Page B01

The American Experience on PBS is presenting Malcolm X: Make It Plain. Now. As I type, it is within 15 minutes of its end.

If you're in New York, if you have Time-Warner Cable, you can catch it again on 13World, channel 715, at 7:30 pm.

Many, many film clips, interviews...excellent piece. Get your video recording gear, people.

Army Having Difficulty Meeting Goals In Recruiting
Fewer Enlistees Are in Pipeline; Many Being Rushed Into Service
By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A01

The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers .

For the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in October with only 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000 active-duty recruits already in the pipeline. That amounts to less than half of last year's figure and falls well below the Army's goal of 25 percent.

Quote of note:

On Monday, the Audubon will be the site of a commemorative event on the 40th anniversary of Malcolm X's death. The official opening of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center at the Audubon is slated for May 19, on what would have been his 80th birthday.

History Center In N.Y. to Honor Malcolm X

By Madison J. Gray
Associated Press
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A06

NEW YORK -- He was one of the most charismatic figures in the civil rights movement and also one of its most feared, a former convict who abandoned his "slavemaster name," energized the Nation of Islam and met a violent end at 39.

Big Oil Steps Aside in Battle Over Arctic

By JEFF GERTH

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - George W. Bush first proposed drilling for oil in a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska in 2000, after oil industry experts helped his presidential campaign develop an energy plan. Five years later, he is pushing the proposal again, saying the nation urgently needs to increase domestic production.

But if Mr. Bush's drilling plan passes in Congress after what is expected to be a fierce fight, it may prove to be a triumph of politics over geology.

Once allied, the administration and the oil industry are now far apart on the issue. The major oil companies are largely uninterested in drilling in the refuge, skeptical about the potential there. Even the plan's most optimistic backers agree that any oil from the refuge would meet only a tiny fraction of America's needs.

U.S. Starts New Offensive Against Rebels
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 21, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 - Three months after American forces recaptured the insurgent stronghold of Falluja in the biggest operation of the war, the Marine division that led the assault said Sunday that it had started a new offensive against insurgents in Ramadi, Falluja's twin city, on the Euphrates about 75 miles west of Baghdad.

Bush Calls on Russia to Renew Commitment to Democracy
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: February 21, 2005

RUSSELS, Feb. 21 - President Bush called on Russia today to renew its commitment to democracy and the rule of law if it is to make progress as a European nation.

Mr. Bush, who is in Europe largely to repair relations with nations that opposed the invasion of Iraq, devoted much of his speech to calling on Europe to support his policies in Iraq and the Middle East.

A New Target for Advisers to Swift Vets
By GLEN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.

via The Panda's Thumb

Creationist Hate Mongering
Posted by Dr.GH on February 17, 2005 09:21 PM

An editorial in the  The News Record,  a student newspaper associated with the University of Cincinnati by Scout Foust was brought to my attention late in the afternoon on 15 Feb. I was both insulted, and saddened at the gross incompetence and ignorance it represents.  Mr. Foust, a fourth year student in German Literature, titled his editorial, Evolution perpetuates racist ideologies: Blacks shouldn t back evolution.

Scout Foust was allowed to publish a baseless slander of not evolution, which as a science will take no notice, but of the hundreds of thousands of scientists who work and teach in disciplines related to evolutionary theory.  Evolution is such a powerful truth that this encompasses nearly every science discipline.  The Editors of   The News Record  have failed their responsibility to their readers.  Further, such an incompetent article reflects very badly on their newspaper, the University of Cincinnati, and the Department that had the dubious task of educating Mr. Foust.  Nor have the Editors done Mr. Foust personally any favor, as he now is exposed as an incompetent on a national level. 

Trust me, the indictment of Mr. Foust is no exaggeration. The idea of "backing" evolution is kind of bizarre, as though the nature of reality was subject to a vote.

Keeping in mind that "progressives" and "Democrats" overlap but are not synonymous.

Now in Power, Conservatives Free to Differ
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 20, 2005; Page A07

With their Republican allies in control of the federal government, conservative intellectuals, activists and philanthropists battled this past week over popular culture, over President Bush's expansive foreign policies, and even over the legitimacy of God and faith in the formulation of social policy.

At a symposium last Wednesday sponsored by the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, 20 leading figures on the political right ranging from traditionalists to libertarians debated the successes and failures of the conservative movement and its future now that it has consolidated power.

This may not sound like good news, but consider the points under discussions.

Air Pollution Can Affect Fetal Development, Scientists Say

Exposure to urban air pollution can affect the chromosomes of a developing fetus, a new study suggests. Babies born to mothers exposed to high levels of urban air pollution appear to have a greater chance of chromosomal abnormalities than those whose mothers breathed cleaner air.

Frederica P. Perera of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health and her colleagues studied 60 infants born in New York City to nonsmoking mothers who were participating in an ongoing study that started in 1998. The team analyzed exposure rates to airborne pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)--which are present in vehicle exhaust, power plant emissions and tobacco smoke--in three low-income areas. "Although the study was conducted in Manhattan neighborhoods, exhaust pollutants are prevalent in all urban areas, and therefore the study results are relevant to populations in other urban areas," Perera notes.

People adjust their generosity to fit in

22 January 2005

ARE you selfish or generous? Or do you follow the herd, always giving whatever the majority of people deem appropriate?

Society is a mixture of these three types of character, but most of us are the last type, altering our generosity to fit the societal norm, new research has found. It suggests that governments could prompt huge swathes of the population to become more charitable simply by giving more itself or by providing other benevolent role models.

Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Daniel Houser of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, asked volunteers to trade tokens during a series of games. Players could split their tokens between private funds, which reaped fixed rewards, and a group fund, in which the rewards differed depending on the total invested.

Senses special: The art of seeing without sight

29 January 2005

Alison Motluk

IT IS an odd sight. A middle-aged man, fully reclined, drawing pictures of hammers and mugs and animal figurines on a special clipboard, which is balanced precariously on a pillow atop his ample stomach.

A half-dozen people buzz around him. One adjusts a towel under his neck to make him more comfortable, another wields a stopwatch and chants instructions to start doing this or stop doing that, and yet another translates everything into Turkish. A small group convenes in a corner to assess the proceedings. A few of us just stand around watching, and trying not to get in the way. The elaborate ritual is a practice run for an upcoming brain scan and the researchers want to get everything just right. Meanwhile, the man at the centre of all this attention, a blind painter, cracks jokes that keep everyone tittering.

But don't be fooled...Pfizer may have no position (ha!) but as a member of AWRS they still fund the organization's pursuit of changes that have no impact on the solvency of the program and hence put the lie to their Orwellian name (Alliance for Worker Retirement Security).

You can't trust an organization whose very name is a lie.

Anyway...

Pfizer Is Neutral on Bush Plan
The drug company has been part of an alliance backing the Social Security overhaul. Now it says it's not taking a position on the debate.
By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers

February 21, 2005

WASHINGTON   A major corporation that has been active in a business coalition campaigning for a proposed overhaul of Social Security said Sunday that it was neutral on the issue   the latest indication of the tenuous support for President Bush's initiative, even from groups considered natural allies.

You know what, Mr. Brownstein?

Arguments over judicial nominations trace back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and can never be entirely eliminated. But over the last decade, the rejection of the president's choices has become far too common. Unless both sides take a risk to break the cycle of conflict, Washington will be sentenced to unrelenting and unproductive warfare over the courts.

Democrats took that risk last term. And what it got them?

Date rape.

Quote of note:

Bush nominated 52 appellate court judges in his first term; Congress approved 35 of them. That's prompted the GOP charge that Democrats are abusing the right to advise and consent on presidential appointees.

But Republicans blocked almost exactly as many of President Clinton's nominees. Clinton, during his second term, nominated 51 appellate court judges —  and the Republican Senate confirmed 35.

To End Battle Over Judicial Picks, Each Side Must Lay Down Arms
Ronald Brownstein
February 21, 2005

The struggle over President Bush's judicial nominations is degenerating into the equivalent of a Civil War reenactment. Everyone knows his part. Everyone has rehearsed the hostilities. And everyone knows how the battle turns out.

Quote of note:

Schwarzenegger's critics say he is raising money with a zeal eclipsing that of the man he unseated, former Gov. Gray Davis. His supporters have organized "Evenings With Governor Schwarzenegger," with a seat at his dinner table costing $100,000 and the lowest-priced ticket going for $25,000.

"The fundraising activity of Arnold Schwarzenegger since taking office I think speaks volumes to his lack of commitment to political reform," said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C.

Governor Fails to Curb Big Money
While criticizing the system, Schwarzenegger continues to raise millions to help his political agenda and seeks to lift restrictions.
By Robert Salladay
Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2005

SACRAMENTO   Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ousted a sitting governor and entered elective politics by deploring a system in which "the money comes in and the favors go out."

It motivates.

Quote of note:

After the Inglewood trials, community leaders walked the streets to keep residents calm and dialogue flowing. Anger bubbled up, then receded. But each subsequent incident fuels a drop in community confidence in the court system and police. That sort of wholesale disengagement can presage violence.

Now the peacemakers are at it again. Ministers, gang workers, community activists and elected officials are trying to channel anger into activism, to push for better youth services, more cooperation among neighbors and a continuing dialogue with police. Their efforts should be encouraged, not feared or disparaged.

But for many in South Los Angeles — and many African Americans across the city —  his death is one more symbol of a law enforcement and justice system that seems to place less value on the lives of blacks. It is seen in the context of earlier incidents: juries' failure in two trials to convict an Inglewood policeman caught on videotape in 2002 slamming a black youth against a car. The officer was fired, but a civil court jury considered that too harsh and awarded him $1.6 million.

Turning Anger to Power
February 21, 2005

via Steve Gilliard

GOP dirty tricksters trying to sabotage AMERICAblog
by John in DC - 2/19/2005 02:38:00 PM

Well, isn't this interesting. Defenders of Gannon are now phoning people who post comments on AMERICAblog, they pretend to be me, and ask the person to stop posting on the forum. This happened to a good friend of mine who posts here (guys, get a clue, don't call a friend of mine and pretend to be me), and now it's happened to someone else.

First off, when you use a phone, there's an electronic paper trail. Second of all, when you pretend to be someone else, you're very likely bordering on a crime. If this story is so hot that Gannon's, and/or the White House's defenders, are feeling the need to try to sabotage this blog, well all I can say is thanks, and I'm posting this publicly so perhaps we can get another media story out of this.

In the meantime, folks, maybe you shouldn't post your full name to your comments, and be assured I'd never phone any of you.

One more point, this is pure Karl Rove. His MO is to contact people during a campaign and pretend he's representing the other candidate, then do something obnoxious. Good to know we're getting to them, and if any reporter wants the story, give me a holler.

Deroy Murdock has trouble distinguishing between the moon and the finger that points at the moon.

Grand Old Party
Blacks might be surprised to compare Republican history with the Democrats .

The only way we'd be surprised is if we confuse the names of the parties for the membership. Is Steinbrenner's Yankees the same team as Babe Ruth's Yankees? Is the L.A. Dodgers the same team as the Brooklyn Dodgers?

But let's make the entirely nonsensical assumption that the Republican Party of pre-Civil War days is the same group of people as the Republican Party of today. Deroy gives us two examplars of each party he felt the need to expand on:

Nate at Cincinnati Black Blog :

I normally discuss politics, government, public policy, and local issues on this blog, I don't talk about music. But this being Black History Month, I want to discuss the new single "I'm Black" by Styles P (whose real name is David Styles) and why you can't hear it on hip-hop/Black radio stations, including Radio One's WIZF ("The Wiz") and Clear Channel's WKFS ("Kiss FM"). (To be fair, Kiss FM isn't really a hip-hop station, it is a CHR/Pop station. That said, the distinction is almost meaningless as they have a ton of Black listeners and during some spans play just as much hip-hop music as The Wiz. Also, those stations across the country that are playing this single certainly aren't playing it in heavy rotation.)

But Liza and Nichelle don't care; they starting something.

Yes, I'm there.

On the one hand

Putin to Look for Reassurance from Bush at Summit
Sun Feb 20, 2005 05:30 AM ET
By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Vladimir Putin, chewing over some pointed criticism from George W. Bush's new team, will be looking for an unambiguous signal from the U.S. leader at this week's summit that their close partnership is still intact.

At their first face-to-face in 2001, Bush said he looked into the eyes of the ex-KGB spy and saw a person he could trust. That vote of confidence helped the then-inexperienced Russian president to find acceptance among Western leaders, some of whom were dubious about the course along which he would take Russia.

On the other hand

Global Warming Could Worsen U.S. Pollution: Report
Sat Feb 19, 2005 03:57 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming could stifle cleansing summer winds across parts of the northern United States over the next 50 years and worsen air pollution, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.

Further warming of the atmosphere, as is happening now, would block cold fronts bringing cooler, cleaner air from Canada and allow stagnant air and ozone pollution to build up over cities in the Northeast and Midwest, they predicted.

"The air just cooks," said Loretta Mickley of Harvard University's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "The pollution accumulates, accumulates, accumulates, until a cold front comes in and the winds sweep it away."

In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality.

In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former aide to Mr. Bush's father, disclosed the tapes' existence to a reporter and played about a dozen of them.

Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals. John McCain "will wear thin," he predicted. John Ashcroft, he confided, would be a "very good Supreme Court pick" or a "fabulous" vice president. And in exchanges about his handling of questions from the news media about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana.

Michael Kinsley waxes philosophical in the Washington Post:

The constitutional freedom of the press does not depend on giving journalists immunity. The case for journalists' privilege is that society in general benefits from a vigorous investigative press, and anonymous sources are essential to that. When individual rights come at a cost to society as a whole, it is a cost we are proud to pay -- within reason. But when both sides of the equation are the interests of society generally, it is only sensible to weigh them against each other.

Very often the social benefit of encouraging whistleblowers would win such a balancing contest. But journalists mistakenly see the privilege as their right and refuse to contemplate such a balance. Or they assert the authority to weigh the considerations themselves, which seems even more arrogant.

Is it in society's interest to encourage people to give information secretly to journalists? Yes, most of the time, it probably is. But how can leaks be considered desirable in the context of criminal investigations of those same leaks? If the leaks are bad, why should we encourage them? If they are good, why are we prosecuting them? And in a democratic society, shouldn't that good-or-bad decision be made by the people, through their government, rather than by a journalist taking the law into his or her own hands?

Let us not lose sight of the what is being investigated, and the way the investigation is proceeding.

Did the Washington Post just publish an editorial advocating the benefits of corruption?

Quote of note:

At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.

You know, everyone in the media should have my little red motto at the top of the page tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.

Remember what the issues were that shifted the election at the last minute. It was not national security. Democrats are so accustomed explaining that yes, they are willing to use military force (that's what "national security" means, you know) they may be tempted to have a knee-jerk reaction to this analysis. But "national security" was fully discounted months before the actual election.