Prometheus 6

You can't tear down the master's house by adding a new wing

So he says, anyway...

(watch out, that's a Windows Media Format file over there)

Error of note:

"...the family is in it for the long haul," the lawyer, Eric Grant, said in a telephone interview. "We still have the facts on our side, and we still have the law on our side, and we expect to prevail."

It is an error because

The school was founded 118 years ago at the direction of the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop and is financed by her estate's $6.2 billion trust, whose mission is to educate and "improve the capability and well-being of people of Hawaiian ancestry." The school receives no federal funds.

Private school. Privately funded. And as we know from the school vouchers debacle debate, private schools are under to accept anyone.

Court to Reconsider Hawaii Schools Case
By JANIS L. MAGIN

Nation destruction is a whole heap 's fun, though.

The outlines of a future Iraq are emerging: a nation where power is scattered among clerics turned warlords; control over schools, hospitals, railroads and roads is divided along sectarian lines; graft and corruption subvert good governance; and foreign powers exert influence only over a weak central government.

..."This is something that's been leaning in this direction for some time, and the mosque incident has accelerated the process," said Edward S. Walker, a former assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs. "What we're talking about is people looking out for their own. I don't think it can be turned around."

NEWS ANALYSIS
Analysts See Lebanon-ization of Iraq in Crystal Ball
By Borzou Daragahi and Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writers
February 26, 2006

My first Octavia Butler novel was Patternmaster...I started reading in in te library while waiting for someone. I remember hiding the book in the stacks when that someone showed up. and going back to finish it that same day. Parable of the Sower is one of the two most plausible dystopias ever written

Due added, "It is a cliche to say that she was too good a soul, but it's true. What she really conveyed in her writing was the deep pain she felt about the injustices around her. All of it was a metaphor for war, poverty, power struggles and discrimination. All of that hurt her very deeply, but her gift was that she could use words for the pain and make the world better."

Quote of note:

While he believes Schwarzenegger remains interested in prison reform, Hickman said "the special interests we're up against are just too powerful to get much done in the current environment."

He said he had grown increasingly frustrated by legislators who attacked the department — often during public hearings — for "small mistakes" that were portrayed as a "massive failure of leadership."

State Chief of Prisons Says He's Resigning
By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2006

SACRAMENTO — Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman, who embodied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vow to turn around California's violent and scandal-plagued prison system, said Saturday night that he was resigning the post he has held for more than two years.

I am with the principles that made Colbert King focus on this case, though.

Let's get something straight: The treatment received by that beaten and robbed man on Gramercy Street was not because he was a highly respected and apparently well-connected journalist. He was handled that way because he was a John Doe thought to be drunk.

The Death of David Rosenbaum
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, February 25, 2006; A17

Now that tributes have been paid, mourners are back in their homes and offices, and the spotlight has shifted to other matters, let's return to that Friday night of Jan. 6 in Northwest Washington, when New York Times reporter David E. Rosenbaum was beaten, robbed and dispatched to his death.

Bruce Judson's Go It Alone! Named One Of The Year's Best Business Books
The Best Business Books of the Year

Success/Entrepreneurship

"Using case studies of successful small businesses, Judson (Yale Sch. of Management) lucidly illustrates three key points: a business can be started with minimal capital; does not need employees, especially in the start-up phase; and has unlimited revenue potential. Since the Web offers many services at a reasonable cost, he encourages outsourcing."

Library Journal, March 2005 (Naming Best Business Books of 2004)

Read The Book For Free

Okay, we got Intrapolitics.org's Black Blog Aggregator running. There's like 880 feeds in there, but I suspect there's more than enough dead blogs in there.

The feeds update once a day because I'm not stressing the system. I get 10 feeds updated every five minutes until I run out of feeds to update.

880 feeds is a lot to page through, so at the top of the page you get links that look like this:

http://www.intrapolitics.org/syndicator/P

...which gets you a list of all the feeds with titles that start with "P." What isn't obvious is you can load a url that looks like this:

http://www.intrapolitics.org/syndicator/Prom

Watching ThisWeek, Senator McCain just said we can't make the military keep the opposing sides apart in an Iraqi civil war, we have to train up the police and government so they can keep them apart.

I just...and I mean just...read of the most blatant example of...I want to call it theft, but technically I can't. It's just taking advantage of tax law...and your Congressional connections. It's the synfuel industry. Once you get a beautiful scam like this working, you know it's going to blow up. Though it does require a significant significant investment of resources

Since 2002, the Council for Energy Independence has spent $2 million lobbying Congress to preserve the tax credit, according to reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. Overall, Time estimates, the synfuel lobby has spent more than $5 million during that same period. The effort has got results. In recent years, the lobby has successfully turned aside efforts to revoke the IRS rulings on which the tax credits are calculated. It beat back an effort in the House Ways and Means Committee last year to send a bill to the House floor that would have virtually eliminated the tax credit. The bill's sponsor, Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, called the tax credit "one of the worst tax loopholes on the books" and described the synfuel industry as "basically a sham." Nevertheless, because of industry lobbying, Doggett's bill has never made it out of committee.

The profit is not only significant, it is guaranteed.

From 2003 through 2005, TIME estimates, the synfuel industry raked in $9 billion in tax credits. That means the lucky few collectively cut their tax bills by that amount, which would be enough to cover a year's worth of federal taxes for 20 million Americans who make less than $20,000 a year and pay income taxes. How important is the tax credit to synfuel producers? In its latest annual report, Headwaters Inc., a Utah-based purveyor of synfuel processes and substances, says flatly, "Headwaters does not believe that production of synthetic fuel will be profitable absent the tax credits."

These clowns aren't even creating synthetic fuel, though.

Quote of note:

"The impression is that just poor people were displaced, but Katrina has had a devastating effect on the black middle class, too," said Willard Dumas, a dentist who serves as the Bunch Club's recording secretary and now lives in Baton Rouge. "You spend 45 years building a life and then it's gone. Your home was flooded; your business was flooded. And this happened not only to you but to practically everyone you know, so your patients or clients are gone, your friends are scattered, and your relatives are somewhere else."

And too many of those who are rebuilding are setting themselves up for the next disaster.

The NSA has surveillance rules already. His bill actually loosens restrictions and would likely be used as retroactive justification for Bush's decision to ignore the law.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil rights group, said the bill's language is alarmingly broad. "It's not limited to al-Qaeda or even terrorism," she said. Those who communicate with "foreign powers" could include a vast array of innocent people, Martin said.

We're gonna sneak that shit in one way or another, aren't we?

Specter Proposes NSA Surveillance Rules
Measure Would Make Administration Seek FISA Court's Permission to Eavesdrop
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 26, 2006; A11

It occurs to me that concern about a national ID card is strange given that we're all walking around with a GPS chip and may be using the GPS bearing device as a credit card soon.

Just a thought...

No one really expected TIA to go away, did they? I know I didn't...not after EWeek gave the heads-up in May 2003. And yes, I do remember such crap.

TIA Lives On
By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

Justice Scalia gave a talk this past Tuesday about using foreign law as precedent in Constitutional cases at the American Enterprise Institute. He's a kinda boring speaker, entirely apart from the subject matter. The audience is full of students trying to catch Scalia on current political issues.

This was not a good idea, people. Not like I like Scalia-the-judicial-philosophy at all But good lord, you can't bridge the gap between topics as widely sepearted as "foreign law as precedent in Constitutional cases" and "what do you think of Bush's reason to invade Iraq?" Frankly, even questions about the unitary executive excuse, though a Constitutional topic, is off topic enough for you to look silly as hell as he blows you off.

You're not goin

I'm messing with my mega-aggregator at Intrapolitics.org to make the part you'll actually use, well, useable. In the background (and recording) is Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union joint.

Meanwhile, you might want to check on Craig's Interpersonal Communion with the Poor, White, and Pissed - Part II. Keep ya busy.

User names from P6 and the Niggerati Network are not carried over to Intrapolitics.org. That is intentional. I know folks hate to register to sites...in fact, the number of registrations here has surprised me...but frankly it would be a serious pain in the butt to copy them over, and they won't stay synchronized because it's a wholly seperate code base.

The mega aggregator makes it's return this weekend...over 850 feeds collected by George at Negrophile.

It will be at Intrapolitics.org, though.

Quote of note:

Wal-Mart's health care plan has become a hot-button issue across the country in recent months. In January, Maryland passed legislation, often referred to as the "Wal-Mart bill," requiring companies that employ more than 10,000 people to spend 8 percent of their revenue on health care or make a contribution to the state's insurance program for the poor. Wal-Mart, which employs 17,000 Marylanders, is the only company in the state that does not meet that requirement.

Two dozen states are considering similar legislation, according to the AFL-CIO.

Wal-Mart Says It Will Improve Health Benefits
By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 24, 2006; D01