I heard warnings about what could happen to New Orleans back when they thought Katerina might hit Florida instead. The knew it would be bad, but

SPENCER MICHELS: Many residents didn't evacuate because they didn't have cars, money for gas or anywhere to go. A quarter of New Orleans residents live below the poverty level.

And through all the coverage I kept wondering why they didn't bus those folks out of there before the storm?

People are losing it and it may get ugly. I wish there was more I could say.

Quote of note:

"I don't hate men. I love men. I have not got revenge in mind. All I am doing is giving women their power back," Ehlers said in an interview. "I don't even hate rapists. But I hate the deed with a passion."

A New Strategy to Fight Rapists
A South African inventor's device snares the attacker with hooks. Some activists call it regressive and say it will result in more killings.
By Robyn Dixon
Times Staff Writer
September 1, 2005

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A medieval device built on hatred of men? Or a cheap, easy-to-use invention that could free millions of South African women from fear of rape, in a country with the worst sexual assault record on Earth?

Dubbed the "rape trap," trademarked Rapex, the condom-like device bristling with internal hooks designed to snare rapists has reignited controversy over the nation's alarming rape rate.

I would like someone to email me a copy of this post

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Black_Conservatives/message/14302

Just curious... 

Nope. What there is, is appreciation for Prometheus: The Science Policy Weblog.

Quote of note:

"I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overuled," she wrote

FDA Official Resigns in Protest of 'Morning-After Pill' Decision
By Marc KaufmanWashington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; 12:30 PM

The top Food and Drug Administration official in charge of women's health issues resigned today in protest against the agency's decision last week to further delay a final ruling on the whether the emergency contraceptive "morning-after pill" should be made more easily accessible.

Quote of note:

The draft rules...contradict the position taken by federal lawyers who have prosecuted polluting facilities in the past, and parallel the industry's line of defense against those suits. 

...In court filings, the EPA estimated in 2002 that an hourly standard would allow eight plants in five states -- including Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia -- to generate legally as much as 100,000 tons a year of pollutants that would be illegal under the existing New Source Review rule. That equals about a third of their total emissions.

New Rules Could Allow Power Plants to Pollute More
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A01

War on the Mississippi
Can America marshal the resources to fight battles in Iraq and rebuild the Gulf Coast? A political storm is brewing.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Updated: 12:12 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2005

Aug. 31, 2005 - For years the Pentagon’s standing readiness plans required the country to be able to fight two major wars simultaneously. But no one anticipated what we face now: a war in Mesopotamia and another along the Mississippi.[P6: ahem...and it ain't like the Bush Administration cares either]

We have journalist Malcolm Gladwell to thank for the idea that every social phenomenon has a dramatic “tipping point.” It doesn’t always work that way. And yet Hurricane Katrina is just such a moment. We are a big, strong country—and New Orleans will, somehow, survive—but you do get the sense, as President Bush finally arrived here after a monthlong vacation, that a political hurricane is gathering force, and it’s going to hit the capital any day.

The fact that I made it is beside the point...

But if you're speaking to white people who had nothing to do with Jim Crow, your suggestion that they should somehow take responsibility for something they didn't do has no more chance of communication than white people proposing forceful solutions to black educational problems.

I am not suggesting a thing. I am saying outright that white people's inability to accept responsibility for what they are doing right now is what keeps us arguing about what was done in the past. I'm saying Black people's major problem is the mainstream society balancing its problems on our backs.

And I put the same meaning across to Black and white folks.

White folks in general just don't get it...you have a race problem because you are our race problem...not because we are yours...people are still bitching about Felipe Alou, aren't they?

Quote of note:

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise. 

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
August 17, 2005

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

...but of course, it is...

I don't normally just steal shit (I call it linking instead) this...via DKos commenter Aexia

And don't forget (4.00 / 15)

It's not looting if you're white.

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

--- My opinions are my own and not my employer's.

by Aexia on Tue Aug 30th, 2005 at 17:31:51 PDT
[ Parent ]

AP is not AFP (none / 0) I noticed this as well, but AP (Associated Press) is not the same as AFP (Agence France-Presse), the agency that is responsible for the photo of the white folks.  It's possible that the two agencies have different policies regarding what is written for captions in these situations. by NYCO on Tue Aug 30th, 2005 at 17:33:34 PDT [ Parent ] AFP photo (4.00 / 11) Looters hit a drug store in the French Quarter district of New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. Fresh floods, fires and looting rode in the destructive wake of Hurricane Katrina, deepening a humanitarian crisis that left hundreds feared dead and sections of New Orleans submerged to the rooftops.(AFP/James Nielsen) Meanwhile at AP... Note the race of the guy just "looking through their shopping bag". As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps through a broken window, while leaving a convenience store on the I-10 service road south, in Metairie, La., Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This photo was taken during a helicopter tour of the area that included the governor of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Bill Feig, Pool) --- My opinions are my own and not my employer's. by Aexia on Tue Aug 30th, 2005 at 18:10:23 PDT [ Parent ] Much stronger (none / 0) Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night - Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996) by mdhatter on Tue Aug 30th, 2005 at 18:20:12 PDT [ Parent ]

via Vision Circle 

Quote of note:

Nothing has changed in the South. Poor people of are still being herded and treated as criminals because of the color of their skin. The Sheriff and Louisiana National Guard knows the profile of likely drug users:  black people and anyone associating with them; they were searched just as if they were entering a state penitentiary visiting a death-row prisoner. Maybe the refugees would have fared better if they had had season tickets in their hands.

Think about it. They can allow in 30,000 screaming fans with fifty-dollar bills and costly NFL tickets in their hands in a few minutes, but poor black people fleeing for their lives, four hours. Four HOURS!

Superdome of Shame
by Jack Duggan

Watching news coverage of the refugees trying to enter the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans for safety from the approaching force-five Hurricane Katrina, I was incredulous how the people attempting to enter the stadium were being treated by the National Guard troops and local police. The people were made to stand for hours outside in the awful Louisiana climate while they were admitted one or two adults at a time so they could be searched "for firearms and alcohol."

...is that histoy can disappear before your very eyes. Check out TBogg's report of the pro-war contingent attacking itself. The story on the other side of the link is totally gone...replaced by something more politically innocuous. Fortunately, the collective memory knows all.

we take you to Crawford, Texas where the inevitable happens when two groups (the paste-eaters vs the droolers) meet up and can't seem to figure out they're on the same side.

Across town in Crawford, other parents of soldiers who are serving or have died in Iraq countered Sheehan with their own raucous rally that started with a prayer.

The pro-Bush caravan was coordinated by Move America Forward, a group led by former California Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian and Republican strategist Sal Russo.

Organizer Howard Kaloogian accused Sheehan of "giving hope and encouragement to our enemies."

The crowd, which organizers said topped 3,000 but appeared closer to 1,500, chanted "Cindy, Go Home" and compared her to Jane Fonda, whose visit to a North Vietnamese gun site in 1972 earned her the nickname "Hanoi Jane."

"Cindy-Hanoi Jane," read one of the signs at the rally.

In one heated moment, members of the pro-Bush crowd turned on what they mistakenly thought were a group of anti-war protesters, cursing them, threatening them and tearing down their signs. A police officer rushed the group to safety.

Andrew Sullivan lauds The Bell Curve. Again.

Mathew Yglesias says Sullivan's a fool rather than a bigot...but really should have ignored the discussion...

For all I know, the uncontroversial parts of the book (which I understand to have been the clear majority of the text) hold up just find, but the controversial stuff about race and IQ doesn't hold up at all.

...for reasons explained by Brad DeLong and a priceless comment there on the value of I.Q:

Quote of note:

The indictment of the individuals occurred as a federal judge yesterday approved a deal to defer prosecution of KPMG itself. 

9 Charged Over Tax Shelters In KPMG Case
Accounting Firm Agrees to Pay As More Indictments Expected
By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Page A01

Federal prosecutors yesterday unsealed conspiracy charges against eight former KPMG LLP officials and a lawyer accused of helping wealthy clients evade billions of dollars in taxes in what authorities called the largest criminal tax fraud case in history.

The charges are expected to be the first in a wave of actions against professionals who profited from aiding high-net-worth customers shield income from the Internal Revenue Service during the economic boom, prosecutors said. The tax evasion deals, which required the participation of accountants, lawyers, investment bankers and their wealthy clients, cost the government at least $2.5 billion.

This is hot. Editorially speaking, I mean. It's all audio and Flash so if you're at work turn the speaker down but you have to hear it.

It's probably not work-safe in Crawford... 

They're going to send me a reviewer copy of When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. Brace yourselves, folks.

Now, to find someplace to put it when it gets here... 

I must say this

Iran hitherto used acid to turn uranium ore mined in its central desert region into yellowcake. Using biotechnology, the television report said, would be better for the environment.

...just strikes me as the most bizarre non-sequitur.

Iran says has made new atomic breakthrough
Tue Aug 30, 2005 06:43 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has made a new breakthrough in its controversial nuclear program, successfully using biotechnology to extract larger and cheaper quantities of uranium concentrate from its mines, state television reported.

Trafficking of women, children on rise worldwide-UN
Tue Aug 30, 2005 04:59 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Human trafficking is on the rise worldwide, with millions of women and children ending up as sex slaves, beggars and mine laborers each year, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, speaking at an Asia-Pacific human rights conference in Beijing, called trafficking in humans horrendous.

"By its very nature, it constitutes an acute violation of human rights and reports today suggest that more people are being trafficked than ever before," she said.

Measuring the Economy May Not Be as Simple as 1, 2, 3
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 29, 2005; A02

The Census Bureau tomorrow will release the latest statistics on poverty in the United States, the income level of an average household and the number of Americans still lacking health insurance.

Don't believe the numbers.

A growing chorus of experts and politicians is raising questions about the data that frame Americans' understanding of their nation's well-being. From poverty levels to health insurance, inflation to personal savings, widely accepted statistics are overstating some problems and understating others, miscounting people, and sending policymakers down blind alleys.

Halliburton Contract Critic Loses Her Job
Performance Review Cited in Removal
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 29, 2005; Page A11 

A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine H. Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a "sufficient record" was available to address her allegations.

Quote of note:

Private insurers take, on average, 13% of premium dollars for overhead and profit. Overhead/profits are even higher, about 30%, in big managed care plans like U.S. Healthcare. In contrast, overhead consumes less than 2% of funds in the fee-for-service Medicare program, and less than 1% in Canada’s program.

...According to U.S. Congress’ General Accounting Office, administrative savings from a single payer reform would total about 10% of overall health spending. These administrative savings, about $100 billion annually, are enough to cover all of the uninsured, and virtually eliminate co-payments, deductibles and exclusions for those who now have inadequate plans - without any increase in total health spending.

Why the US Needs a Single Payer Health System
June 29, 1995
by David U. Himmelstein, MD & Steffie Woolhandler, MD
Our pluralistic health care system is giving way to a system run by corporate oligopolies. A single payer reform provides the only realistic alternative.

In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has an excellent article about our health care system that's been online about a week. It's about equal parts data and drama...part of the delay in bringing it up was deciding which to deal with.

At the center of the Bush Administration’s plan to address the health-insurance mess are Health Savings Accounts, and Health Savings Accounts are exactly what you would come up with if you were concerned, above all else, with minimizing moral hazard. The logic behind them was laid out in the 2004 Economic Report of the President. Americans, the report argues, have too much health insurance: typical plans cover things that they shouldn’t, creating the problem of overconsumption. Several paragraphs are then devoted to explaining the theory of moral hazard.

A School of One's Own
By GEORGIA KA'APUNI MCMILLEN

Maui, Hawaii

THE last of the great Hawaiian warrior kings was Kamehameha the Great, who conquered all the islands in the archipelago and established a unified Kingdom of Hawaii in 1810. Although Kamehameha and his rivals used firearms acquired from foreigners, for the most part warfare in those days involved direct hand-to-hand combat, to the death. During his campaign to take the island of Maui, Kamehameha is said to have rallied his troops by declaring: "Forward, little brothers, and drink bitter waters. There is no turning back."

I graduated from a school named for this warrior king. Founded in 1887 thanks to a bequest by the great-granddaughter of Kamehameha, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the Kamehameha Schools have limited admission to Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian children, subsidizing most of their education, for more than 100 years. In her will, the princess directed that the trustees "devote a portion of each year's income to the support and education of orphans, and others in indigent circumstances, giving the preference to Hawaiians of pure or part aboriginal blood." My grandmother attended the schools in 1920, my father in the late 1930's and 1940's, myself and a host of cousins in the 1960's and 1970's.

...and the next guy will be to Greenspan as Scott McClellan is to Ari Fleischer.

Greenspan and the Bubble
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Most of what Alan Greenspan said at last week's conference in his honor made very good sense. But his words of wisdom come too late. He's like a man who suggests leaving the barn door ajar, and then - after the horse is gone - delivers a lecture on the importance of keeping your animals properly locked up.

Regular readers know that I have never forgiven the Federal Reserve chairman for his role in creating today's budget deficit. In 2001 Mr. Greenspan, a stern fiscal taskmaster during the Clinton years, gave decisive support to the Bush administration's irresponsible tax cuts, urging Congress to reduce the federal government's revenue so that it wouldn't pay off its debt too quickly. [P6: In fact, I always wondered what what kind of horse's head the Republicans left on Greenspan's pillow because he was retiring after the Clinton years were over. It took several days to convince him to stay on.]

U.S. Banks on Technology in Revised Military Plan for a Possible North Korea Conflict
By THOM SHANKER

CAMP CASEY, South Korea - American commanders are making significant changes in their plans in the event of a military conflict with North Korea, to rely in large measure on a new generation of sensors, smart bombs and high-speed transport ships to deter and, if necessary, counter that unpredictable dictatorship, the seniorUnited States commander in South Korea says.

The shift in strategy is being undertaken even as the United States cuts the number of troops here by one-third and begins moving the remaining soldiers farther from the demilitarized zone, to improve their chances of surviving any North Korean offensive.

Drug Maker Named in Lawsuits Over OxyContin

About 1,000 people filed separate lawsuits on Staten Island against the manufacturer of the painkiller OxyContin yesterday, claiming they were victims of accidental addiction.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages from the maker, Purdue Pharma, which is based in Stamford, Conn., claiming the company dishonestly marketed the pain pill by failing to tell doctors, pharmacists and patients about the drug's addictive qualities, according to an attorney in the case, Tor Hoerman.

A state judge on Staten Island recently declined to certify a class-action suit, saying the cases involved different issues and injury claims. Instead, a coordinating judge in New York State Supreme Court was assigned to preside over each case.

A Haitian Slum's Anger Imperils Election Hopes

Bringing order to Cité Soleil, Haiti's biggest slum, and giving its residents a chance to vote in national elections is seen as vital to establishing a new, credible government.

Giving its residents a chance to eat would go much further.

For President, Smaller Goals in Iraq and a Focus on the Process

In the fallout over the proposed Iraqi constitution, White House officials said their task was to keep the political process alive.

How Photos Became Icon of Civil Rights Movement
By SHAILA DEWAN

Mutilated is the word most often used to describe the face of Emmett Till after his body was hauled out of the Tallahatchie River inMississippi . Inhuman is more like it: melted, bloated, missing an eye, swollen so large that its patch of wiry hair looks like that of a balding old man, not a handsome, brazen 14-year-old boy.

But if the lynching of Emmett Till was, as the historian David Halberstam called it, the first great media event of the civil rights movement, it became so largely because of the photographs of that monstrous face.

The best summary of why the FDA was wrong to delay their decision on the "morning after" pill, and why its proof Republicans simply see no reason to honor their word came from Cokie Roberts on This Week.

In an attempt to avoid typing up all that AND getting sued for snatching up thry stuff, I present an audio extract of the relevant discussion...you can just ignore Fareed Zakaria, he obviously just said shit because he felt left out.

Quote of note:

Appearing at a $50-a-plate dinner last spring, Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue compared the independence campaign to leading "the Israelites out of Egypt," the Journal-Constitution reported.

In a June 21 referendum, about 94% of voters were in favor of incorporation.

Nascent City Trying to Keep Its Money Close to Home
The affluent suburb north of Atlanta wants its new government to be as small as possible, and is planning to privatize most services.
By Ellen Barry, Times Staff Writer

ATLANTA — For decades, the suburbanites of Sandy Springs complained about the bureaucracy of Atlanta's Fulton County, to which they were miserably attached. They described it with words like "bloated" and "decaying."

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Bot
In the booming world of online poker, anyone can win. Especially with an autoplaying robot ace in the hole. Are you in, human?

...Ever since the aptly named accountant Chris Moneymaker parlayed a $40 Internet tournament buy-in into a $2.5 million championship at the World Series of Poker in 2003, card shark wannabes have been chasing their fantasies onto the Net. Some even quit their day jobs and try to make a living at online poker. And why not? This shadowy world is driven by no less a force than the great American dream. As the tournament's motto goes, "Anyone can win." There's one problem, though, as CptPokr is about to demonstrate: The rules of the game are different online.

CptPokr is a robot. Unlike the other icons at the table, there is no human placing his bets and playing his cards. He is controlled by WinHoldEm, the first commercially available autoplaying poker software. Seat him at the table and he will apply strategy gleaned from decades of research. While carbon-based players munch Ding Dongs, yawn, guzzle beer, reply to email, take phone calls, and chat on IM, CptPokr (a pseudonym) is running the numbers so it will know, statistically, when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Smart, skilled players are rewarded in the long run, especially online, where there are plenty of beginners who would never have the nerve to sit down at a real table. But WinHoldEm isn't just smart, it's a machine. Set it to run on autopilot and it wins real money while you sleep. Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table.

Strategizing a Christian Coup d'Etat
A group of believers wants to establish Scriptures-based government one city and county at a time.
By Jenny Jarvie
Times Staff Writer
August 28, 2005

GREENVILLE, S.C. — It began, as many road trips do, with a stop at Wal-Mart to buy a portable DVD player.

But Mario DiMartino was planning more than a weekend getaway. He, his wife and three children were embarking on a pilgrimage to South Carolina.

"I want to migrate and claim the gold of the Lord," said the 38-year-old oil company executive from Pennsylvania. "I want to replicate the statutes and the mores and the scriptures that the God of the Old Testament espoused to the world."

Quote of note:

"When you talk to people from my class, they'll say high school was one of the worst times of their lives," said Norm Drexel, class of 1975. "What's stayed with me, with many of us, is anger, that I didn't enjoy high school."

Drexel is a product of old Inglewood, which for generations was proudly, and stubbornly, white. His father grew up in Inglewood, and his grandparents worked for the family of the city's founder, Daniel Freeman.

In 1960, the census counted only 29 "Negroes" among Inglewood's 63,390 residents. Not a single black child attended the city's schools. Real estate agents refused to show homes to blacks. A rumored curfew kept blacks off the streets at night.

The Watts riots in 1965 spurred white residents to flee and opened the city's doors to minorities. By 1970, Inglewood had more than 10,000 blacks among its 90,000 citizens.

Virtually overnight, Drexel recalled, his neighborhood became "an area where nobody wanted to be out front anymore. And when we did, there were always fights."

INGLEWOOD HIGH CLASS OF 1975
A Painful Lesson in Division
Court-ordered desegregation opened a virtually all-white school to blacks. Fear, anger and resentment followed. Thirty years later, alumni look back on a tumultuous time.
By Sandy Banks, Times Staff Writer

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century Ameri asin: 0393052133 binding: Hardcover list price: $25.95 USD amazon price: $17.13 USD

Uncivil Rights
By NICK KOTZ

After years of battling racial discrimination and braving state-sanctioned violence -- with hundreds of Southern black churches set fire to and scores of citizens beaten or murdered for daring to challenge American apartheid -- the civil rights movement achieved a climactic victory when President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. It was the outcome of ''a shining moment in the conscience of man,'' declared the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In less than two years, the nation did more to advance equal rights for minorities than at any time since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Quote of note: 

"This is the only good thing we've acquired from the American occupation," Majid al-Samarraie, the writer of "Materials and Labor," said as he watched the reconstruction of Ms. Ismail's home.

In War's Chaos, Iraq Finds Inspiration for Reality TV started as expected, with a brief description of a happy winner, then jumped to the meat.

...So went a recent taping in mid-August of "Materials and Labor," a homegrown Iraqi show inspired by "This Old House" and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," but with a twist of "Apocalypse Now."

I noticed Newsweek has a link to a Technorati watch list on the sidebar of its articles (I assume that's the reason the site is only useful one random hour of one random day per week for me). Unfortunately, I'm not the only one that noticed.

Considering this loving missive, I'd like to make a minor clarification.

The standard for intellectual content is actually considerably lower than you'd guess based on the comments actually made around here (I haven't posted about Yu-gi-oh! in quite a while...but new episodes are due a a week or two). 

The standard on which I am absolutely inflexible is civility.