Prometheus 6

I decided to see how far I can push my investigation of IP 170.150.100.150. The ARIN WHOIS server allows wildcard searches. The results are returned in typographical IP order (IP considered as a string rather than a number or structure). This is the relevant part of a search on 170.*:

The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. CHASE2 (NET-170-148-0-0-1)	170.148.0.0 - 170.148.255.255
The New York Times NYTCO (NET-170-149-0-0-1)	170.149.0.0 - 170.149.255.255
Deposit Guaranty National Bank DGNB (NET-170-15-0-0-1)	170.15.0.0 - 170.15.255.255
NordicTrack NORDICTRACK (NET-170-151-0-0-1)	170.151.0.0 - 170.151.255.255
Public Service Company of Colorado PSCO (NET-170-152-0-0-1)	170.152.0.0 - 170.152.255.255

Notice it skips right over IP number 170.150.100.150… has all the surrounding IPs though. And the number is definitely assigned otherwise the machine could not use the Internet. Finally, I ran a tracert on the IP. First hop was to a machine in the range for internal addresses that should never be accessible from the net, so I assume it's internal to my ISP. The second was a machine on the Time-Warner (Roadrunner) network. The next 28 attempts timed out.

You folks who will be protesting probably know this, but you folsk who intend to watch the protests may not. This via email:

I wouldn't count on anything being safe, considering that the reports of the arrests last night (I've heard variously 250, 250+, and 264) were mostly in the East Village. I haven't heard too many details yet (I live in the West Village) except that all you had to do was be there whether you had a bike and were part of the demonstration or not -- at least one legal observer was arrested, and who knows how many pedestrians who were there because it was a nice evening and that's where you go. Damn! If the Republicans want arrests to make the Democrats look bad, they're gonna get arrests, regardless. "Critical Mass" has been doing these bike rides for months with no problems. They're about environmental friendly transportation, not anti-Bush demonstrations.

I got tied up in stuff and didn't get to the Critical mass demonstration yesterday. I figured it would be no big deal, since these guys do this in San Francisco like every week. Pisses people off, but… I was wrong;

100 Cyclists Are Arrested as Thousands Ride in Protest
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Thousands of cyclists rode through the streets of Manhattan last night in an anti-Republican, pro-environment display of bike power that ended in more than 100 arrests by the police after the ride blocked some streets. Despite tension over police warnings to obey traffic laws against blocking traffic and running red lights, the cyclists - numbering 5,000, the police say - did just that in a meandering course that started at Union Square and wound its way to the West Side, Central Park, Midtown and the East Village. As of 11 p.m., Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said that officers were still processing people who were detained, but that he expected more than 100 people to face charges, mainly for disorderly conduct. The arrests, two days before the convention starts, seemed to herald a busy period for the police, who must patrol a stream of demonstrations large and small, several each day. The police on Thursday made 22-convention related arrests, more than three times the number during the entire Democratic National Convention in Boston. The police apprehended riders in several spots, including more than 50 on Seventh Avenue at 36th Street near Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention will be next week. Riders had chanted "No more Bush" as they passed, and participants in the ride, a monthly fixture for several years, said that many more people than usual took part, out of animosity toward the convention.

Probably be little posting today and I don't know if I'll see anything worth writing about, but I AM doing the events today I said I would.

I mentioned posting the IP information of trolls the other day so I thought I'd share this story that did not turn out as I thought it would. Looking at the stats for The Niggerati Network I saw a HUGE page load number for yesterday. It turns out one "user" was responsible for most of it. I figure spider or spammer, right? Being made curious by the types of URLs tried (they weren't in general links that could be found on the front page) I decided to find out which it was. My tools in such cases are the WHOIS servers for the four Regional Internet Registries: the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), the Latin American and Carribean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) and the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC). I grabbed the IP of the offending party (170.150.100.150) and, proceeding in most-likely-offender order, started with ARIN. The results?

No match found for 170.150.100.150.

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-08-27 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS
database.

Okay, not unusual so far. It just means one of the other RIRs controls the block of addresses. I went to RIPE next and got a fascinating bit of information:

inetnum: 0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255
netname: IANA-BLK
descr: The whole IPv4 address space
country: EU # Country is really world wide
org: ORG-IANA1-RIPE
admin-c: IANA1-RIPE
tech-c: IANA1-RIPE
status: ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED
remarks: The country is really worldwide.
remarks: This address space is assigned at various other places in
remarks: the world and might therefore not be in the RIPE database.
mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT
mnt-lower: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT
mnt-routes: RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT changed: [email protected] 20010529
changed: [email protected] 20020625
changed: [email protected] 20031014
changed: [email protected] 20040422
changed: [email protected] 20040504
source: RIPE

APNIC was even more informative:

inetnum: 170.0.0.0 - 170.255.255.255
netname: ERX-NETBLOCK
descr: Early registration addresses
remarks:
------------------------------------------------------
remarks: Important:
remarks:
remarks: Networks in this range were allocated by InterNIC
remarks: prior to the formation of Regional Internet
remarks: Registries (RIRs): APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE.
remarks:
remarks: Address ranges from this historical space have now
remarks: been transferred to the appropriate RIR database.
remarks:
remarks: If your search has returned this record, it means the
remarks: address range is not administered by APNIC. remarks:
remarks: Instead, please search one of the following databases:
remarks:
remarks: - ARIN (Northern Americas and southern Africa)
remarks: website: http://www.arin.net/
remarks: command line: whois.arin.net
remarks: remarks: - LACNIC (Latin America and the Carribean)
remarks: website: http://www.lacnic.net/
remarks: command line: whois.lacnic.net
remarks:
remarks: - RIPE NCC (Europe and northern Africa)
remarks: website: http://www.ripe.net/
remarks: command line: whois.ripe.net
remarks:
remarks: For information on the Early Registration
Transfer
remarks: (ERX) project, see:
remarks:
remarks: http://www.apnic.net/db/erx

At this point the only RIR I haven't checked is LACNIC:

% Copyright LACNIC lacnic.net
% The data below is provided for information purposes
% and to assist persons in obtaining information about or
% related to AS and IP numbers registrations
% By submitting a whois query, you agree to use this data
% only for lawful purposes.
% 2004-08-28 09:43:29 (BRT -03:00)

% Not assigned to LACNIC 170.150.100.150
% Please use the whois server at whois.arin.net

% whois.lacnic.net accepts only direct match queries.
% Types of queries are: POCs, ownerid, CIDR blocks, IP
% and AS numbers.

In case you missed the point, I've just demonstrated that there is at least one IP address that is

1. on the Internet as opposed to in the private network address spaces
2. no one lays claim to
3. is the origin point of a spammer or spider that targets weblogs

The APNIC response had a link to an explanation of the Early Registration process, and being old as dirt and a reader of Boardwatch Magazine back before Jack Rickard was undercut I'm familiar with it. These were the pre-ARIN IP numbers, the ones assigned before the Internet went public and blew up. Now. Put on your shades and hat while you cogitate that.

LATER: Just in case: the bit at the end is humor, such as it is. Sorry, I'm kind of desensitized on race to the point that I'll joke like that. But I had someone else who I have no doubts about flinch under a similar joke, and I'm seriously not sure how the Professor took it. So in the world's first display of Black Liberal Guilt, I'm making it clear, and will likely keep such humor confined to the Other Site.

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Check the letter Brad DeLong wrote to the L.A. Times about Type Two Tim's econonsense. I insert relevant portions of my own rant.

Dear Mike, With respect to Tim Kane's "Presto, A Better Jobs Picture"... Last February 11, in his Congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan gave his and the Fed staff's common view of the discrepancy between the (deeply depressing) payroll employment survey estimates and the (less, but still depressing) household employment survey estimates. Greenspan's and his staff's common view--which is the consensus view among competent, unbought economists who have looked at the issue--is that the principal cause of the discrepancy is not that the payroll survey is missing lots of newly-created jobs, but that the household survey is relying on estimates of immigration that are, since 911, much too high. As it was reported at the time:

'I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate,' Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, said in congressional testimony on Feb. 11. 'Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow.'... The Fed's conclusion was that the household survey's results had been inflated by overestimates of population growth.... If the population estimate is too high, the estimated number of jobs will also be too high. The bureau bases its population estimate on the 2000 census, but it then updates that estimate yearly with data on births, deaths and immigration. But immigration numbers are largely guesswork, because so much immigration is illegal. Fed officials suspect the immigration estimate is inflated because it fails to reflect tighter immigration controls since Sept. 11, 2001, as well as declines caused by the economic slowdown...

After Greenspan's testimony, I (naively) thought that we would see an end to the political hacks claiming that the labor market and the employment picture are hunky-dory, and that the household survey numbers gave the more accurate picture of the labor market--I thought that this particular zombie had been staked. Anyone making the argument would have to answer the question, "Why does Alan Greenspan--who says that he wishes you were right--say you are wrong?" And they would have no answer.*

What I said:

I thought this nonsense about using the household survey data instead of the payroll survey data was effectively debunked. I know this is a Krugman quote an so won't convince Bushites in and of itself. But maybe they'll note where I got the link from; I found the most commercial guys I could, to show people who are serious about understanding how the economy works have taken note.

The Krugman quote mentioned the same Greenspan statement Prof. DeLong quotes.

But I was naive. Here the zombie is again, like the last five minutes of a badly-written Buffy episode--back in the LA Times in a truly extraordinary piece of mendacious dreck:

"the household survey should be seen as the standard for long-term analysis, and payrolls should be kept in perspective. If the economy is going to take center stage in the political debate, we need to ensure we're arguing from accurate figures.

Note that Kane does not dare claim that the factors he stresses account for all, or even much, of the discrepancy between household and payroll estimates. Indeed, he does not even dare give any numbers about the size of the discrepancy--currently running at about 3 million since the business cycle peak of 2001:

What I said:

In order to spin things positively, Type Two Tim must avoid providing the actual numbers involved. He must also avoid mentioning that with 60,000 respondents as opposed to the payroll survey's 160,000, he's arguing in favor to the statistically less reliable of the two reports.

How much does job-changing distort payrolls? The BLS says it overstated payroll job losses by a quarter of a million, but it uses cautious assumptions. And let's not forget the fact that payrolls overlook many workers, as mentioned above. As a result, the study from BLS offers the lowest possible estimate of the overstated job losses. Its acknowledgment is just the tip of the iceberg. But does it really matter how big the hole is in the side of the Titanic? The point is, the payroll survey is now officially suspect. At the very least, it shouldn't be viewed as superior to the other sources of economic data. Analysts have little choice but to reevaluate all their economic assumptions.

To add insult to injury, Kane is as deceptive on the sinking of the Titanic as on the state of the American labor market. The size of the hole in the Titanic mattered a great deal. Had the Titanic rammed the iceberg straight on, or had it suffered a single puncture, it would have stayed afloat: its internal watertight compartments would have preserved it as they limited the spread of water within the hull. The Titanic sank because it *almost* missed the iceberg, and as a result the iceberg cut a very long gash down its side that opened not one or two but many of its compartments to the sea. To claim that it didn't "really matter how big the hole" in the side of the Titanic was is to demonstrate a truly amazing degree of ignorance about that historical tragedy. So, tell me: how does the LA Times get caught assisting in the game of "Opinions About Shape of Earth Differ"? And what institutional mechanisms exist in the LA Times to help you keep from being an unwitting participant in this game?

So I hit all the same points Prof. DeLong did. Three days ago. Betcha he gets all the credit, too. It's racism.

Been saying for a while this requires a layer of poor folks to support the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Check this chart, which I picked up at MaxSpeaks. Check how consistent the poverty rate is. I'm not talking just for Black folks. Check the very first table, the one for everybody. Max:

The poverty rates in the 1970s, under the old, awful, dependency-inducing welfare system, are comparable to the rates under the new, liberating welfare reform. The poverty rate for 2003, 12.5 percent, is higher than the rate in 1979 of 11.7 percent. Preemptive rebuttal to 'We're coming out of a recession, so it's not fair to compare current numbers to non-recession numbers.': The recession ended in 2001. 2003 is touted by Bushists as the turnaround year. If anything, '03 gives away too much, since it could have shown a large increase in good things from a low base. As EPI's resident labor market geniuses say: "It should be noted that these income, poverty, and health insurance results over the past year occurred in the second year of an economic expansion, with the nation's gross domestic product up 3% and productivity growth—a supposed determinant of the living standards of working families—up especially strongly, at 4.5%. As today's report shows, clearly the benefits of this growth have failed to reach middle- and lower-income families."

and this:

In his marvelous book After the New Economy, soon to be reviewed here on MaxSpeak, Doug Henwood makes the incisive hidden-in-plain-sight point that the persistence of poverty over the past three decades, notwithstanding the increase in real GDP, is a remarkable commentary on U.S. capitalism. The poverty standard is a real absolute one, so if the rising tide of GDP growth lifted all or most boats, we would see a secular decline in poverty rates. It didn't happen.

Now you know.

I actually posted two entries at The Niggerati Network. After rehashing the start of the Racism series I decided that wasn't the way I wanted to go. So I started over.

MoveOn.org has the first of ten prospective ads, one per week, posted.

Quote of note:

One guy, who identified himself as a former member of the American military, said he hates Team USA because the team doesn't "represent the America he fell in love with." I asked him to describe the America he fell in love with, and he said, "it was a country you could walk the streets without worrying about being mugged." So there once was a time when a man or woman could walk the streets without worrying about a wild gang of NBA players whacking them over the head with a bottle and taking their wallet or purse? That must've been a glorious time, because you can hardly go anywhere these days without looking over your shoulder wondering whether Tim Duncan or Stephon Marbury is stalking you.

The haters can't handle the truth By Jason Whitlock Special to Page 2 I must've missed the memo -- the memo that went out to the red-blooded American sports public and explains exactly when it became OK to throw patriotism out the window and openly root against a U.S. Olympic team. Yeah, I didn't get that memo. I'm wondering what was in it. Did it mention Allen Iverson by name? Did it have stipulations about the number of tattoos acceptable on an Olympian? Was there a cornrows clause? Or was the memo just straight and to the point? Americans do not have to support a group of black American millionaires in any endeavor. Despite the hypocritical, rabid patriotism displayed immediately after 9/11, it's perfectly suitable for Americans to despise Team USA Basketball, Allen Iverson and all the other tattooed NBA players representing our country. Yes, these athletes are no more spoiled, whiny and rich than the golfers who fearlessly represent us in the Ryder Cup, but at least Tiger Woods has the good sense not to wear cornrows. …In a poll on Page 2's Daily Quickie on Monday, 54.1 percent of the approximately 20,000 respondents said they wanted to see the USA team lose, and another 19.9 percent said they "kind of" would like to see it lose. I've sat on my radio show the past two weeks and listened to alleged patriot after patriot bitch about and shred Team USA and openly admit they want the team to lose. One guy, who identified himself as a former member of the American military, said he hates Team USA because the team doesn't "represent the America he fell in love with." I asked him to describe the America he fell in love with, and he said, "it was a country you could walk the streets without worrying about being mugged." So there once was a time when a man or woman could walk the streets without worrying about a wild gang of NBA players whacking them over the head with a bottle and taking their wallet or purse? That must've been a glorious time, because you can hardly go anywhere these days without looking over your shoulder wondering whether Tim Duncan or Stephon Marbury is stalking you. I know it's dangerous to make too much of the sentiments expressed by talk-radio callers. But they speak for somebody. Monday evening I wore my Team USA jersey to the Rams-Chiefs game. As I walked to the stadium, people laughed at me and my jersey and several people made disparaging comments about our basketball team.

Okay, not really because he's protecting his own interests and those of his cohort. But damn…

In his remarks, Greenspan said that the projected doubling of the U.S. population over the age of 65 by 2035 would add to the government's budget deficit woes. But he said it was important to be careful in how those deficits were addressed. He said that relying entirely on an increase in the payroll tax on workers to deal with the funding shortfall in Social Security and Medicare would make it more costly for employers to hire workers.

Making it more costly to live is MUCH better than making it more costly for corporation to pay folks.

Greenspan acknowledged that any decisions to trim benefits or boost payroll taxes could be difficult politically, but he said those decisions must be made and made quickly to give baby boomers time to adjust.

What Greenspan does NOT acknowledge is that payroll taxes are not the only way to raise funds. The problem, of course, is that those other methods affect his cohort. The +200K/yr folks that got 2/3rds of the loan against the future Bush pushed through for the already wealthy. Shows less care for the unborn than any abortionist. Anyway… Greenspan Urges Pension Benefit Cuts By Martin Crutsinger AP Economics Writer Friday, August 27, 2004; 10:21 AM JACKSON, Wyo. -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday that the country will face "abrupt and painful" choices if Congress does not move quickly to trim the Social Security and Medicare benefits that have been promised to the baby boom generation. Returning to a politically explosive issue that he has addressed a number of times this year, Greenspan said that it was wrong for the government to hold out the promise of more retirement benefits than it is capable of providing. He said this issue was particularly critical given the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers born in the two decades after World War II. "As a nation, we owe it to our retirees to promise only the benefits that can be delivered," Greenspan said in opening remarks to a two-day conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City on the challenges posed by aging populations. "If we have promised more than our economy has the ability to deliver, as I fear we may have, we must recalibrate our public programs so that pending retirees have time to adjust through other channels," Greenspan said. "If we delay, the adjustments could be abrupt and painful." Greenspan, as he has done previously, suggested that possible changes would be raising the retirement age to receive full Social Security benefits, which currently is gradually increasing from 65 to 67.

Probably because I'm going to be on the spot, but I've been thinking about this protest march thing. Specifically the predictions of trouble and confrontations. Who made those predictions?

Quote of note:

Some residents said the indictments were unjust. Others said they would further endanger an already dangerous neighborhood. Nicole Thomas, a resident of the Remeeder project, said the drug crews in her building protected residents from rival crews in nearby neighborhoods. "The people who got arrested are the same people who protect us and our kids," she said. "Nobody here feels more safe" after the arrests.

I actually feel drug prohibition is more damaging to society than drugs. This quote is a perfect example of why I feel that way. That plus Iran/Contra.

Mieka Johnson, 26 and a resident of Remeeder, said her cousin and uncle were arrested. She disputed the district attorney's estimate of the drug operation's revenue. "We live in crumbling, roach-infested buildings," she said. "These cops are talking about people here making $11 million. None of us here are making that kind of money."

Not like that fact is going to help, baby girl… 69 Indicted in Drug Ring at Projects in Brooklyn By ANTHONY RAMIREZ Sixty-nine people, most of them members of five closely linked families, have been indicted on conspiracy charges that accuse them of cooperating as one enormous narcotics trafficker to peddle heroin and cocaine in Brooklyn housing projects, prosecutors announced yesterday. The oldest suspect is a 61-year-old woman, while the youngest, from another family, is a 16-year-old boy. At a news conference, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, described what he called an unusual criminal enterprise. He said the accused divided up drug territories covering 34 buildings in the Remeeder, Unity and Long Island Baptist public housing projects in East New York, not far from Kennedy International Airport. Suzanne Corhan, head of Mr. Hynes's major narcotics investigation bureau, said the drug organizations, or crews, were especially difficult to investigate because of their blood ties. She declined to say whether any family members cooperated with the investigation, which lasted 18 months and was nicknamed Operation Family Affair. Mr. Hynes said the total annual revenue of the gangs, which operated for two years, was $11 million. At a pier in Red Hook where the news conference was held, Mr. Hynes displayed a 35-foot boat and seven luxury vehicles seized from the suspects, including a Cadillac Escalade and a van with a plasma television and a satellite dish. He said the boat and the vehicles may have been useful in the drug trade to attract customers and as covert meeting places. "But I think they were mostly for fun," Mr. Hynes said later, in an interview.

Stupid comment of note:

Organizers of the weekend marches said that the city was unintentionally encouraging protesters to gather in the park by declaring it off-limits. "They are coming Saturday and they are coming Sunday, and Mayor Bloomberg may well be creating Central Park as the free-speech center of New York City," Brian Becker, national coordinator of the Answer Coalition, said at a news conference.

Reasonable sounding response of note:

"We welcome people to the park, and hopefully the weather will be good," Mr. Bloomberg said. "There's a lot of people in the park - there's roughly a quarter of a million people in the park on a normal Sunday afternoon - and this will just add to that. So it will be crowded but it will be a lot of fun."

Reality of note:

If the past is any guide, demonstrators may not find an unfettered path. Over the last decade, the Police Department has frequently diverted pedestrians headed for large public gatherings and sent them on lengthy detours to reach the main assembly areas. At an antiwar rally on Feb. 15, 2003, tens of thousands of people sent on detours were not able to reach the central meeting site on First Avenue near 51st Street.

It May Be Hard to Tell a Rally From a Lot of People in the Park By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD Organizers of two large protests against the Republican National Convention planned for this weekend said yesterday that they would not directly encourage supporters to go to demonstrations in Central Park. But the leader of one group said she would be in the park, and the other group began handing out fliers spelling out legal ways to gather there. The groups toed a fine line between not defying court rulings upholding the city's refusal to grant permits for the use of the Great Lawn and acknowledging what appears to be a mounting effort among large numbers of people to gather there tomorrow and Sunday. City officials have refused to make the Great Lawn available for large demonstrations, saying they have to preserve the lawn's grass. …Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, which expects more than 200,000 people at the march, said she would have a picnic on the Great Lawn after the march dispersed. "I will be going to Central Park after the march is over," Ms. Cagan said, adding that she would invite other people to accompany her but not under the group's banner. Another group that was denied permission for a large rally on the Great Lawn, the Answer Coalition, began passing out leaflets yesterday alerting New Yorkers to their right to peacefully assemble there. The group's application for a rally at 1 p.m. tomorrow, filed jointly with the National Council of Arab Americans, was rejected by the city, a decision that was upheld by a judge. The flier does not explicitly urge people to gather, but it reminds people that "casual visits" to the park are allowed, and it includes reminders about the right to drum during daytime hours and the size of signs allowed without a permit (up to 2 feet high and 3 feet wide).

Federal Regulators Find Problems at 4 Big Auditors By FLOYD NORRIS The new regulatory body for the United States auditing industry said yesterday that its initial inspections of the Big Four accounting firms had found "significant audit and accounting issues" in work done by all four firms. It added that it had found problems in the quality control systems at each firm but said it retained confidence in all of them. Inspection reports on the four firms were released by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which was established by Congress in 2002 in the wake of the failures of Enron and WorldCom and the collapse of Arthur Andersen, the auditing firm that had certified the books at both companies. The board reviewed the details of 16 audits in 2003 at each firm. The versions of the reports that were made public left out large parts of the actual reports because Congress ordered that the firms be given a year to clean up many problems before negative assessments could be made public. William J. McDonough, the board's chairman, tried to soften the blow on the firms by saying the "criticisms do not reflect any broad negative assessment of the firms' audit practices" and emphasizing that "our findings say more about the benefits of the robust, independent inspection process envisioned in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 than they do about any infirmities in these firms' audit practices." He added that "none of our findings has shaken our belief that these firms are capable of the highest quality auditing." Nonetheless, the reports document cases where the four firms failed to apply one accounting rule, leading companies to understate the amount of their current liabilities - debts due within one year - and therefore overstate their working capital, an item that analysts often follow.

---

"Softening the blow" was necessary. We're talking about the guys that put together the figures that percolate up into the data used to judge the economy. We're talking the auditors for the Fortune 100. Without that blow softening all hell would break loose.

Quote of note:

approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

If it's torture in Iraq, it's torture in Gitmo and Afghanistan. Anyway… Army's Report Faults General in Prison Abuse By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - Classified parts of the report by three Army generals on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison say Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan. Moreover, the report contends, by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions, which they understood poorly anyway. Military officials and others in the Bush administration have repeatedly said the Geneva Conventions applied to all prisoners in Iraq, even though members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo did not, in their estimation, fall under the conventions. But classified passages of the Army report say the procedures approved by General Sanchez on Sept. 14, 2003, and the revisions made when the Central Command found fault with the initial policy, exceeded the Geneva guidelines as well as standard Army doctrines. General Sanchez and his aides have previously described the series of orders he issued, although not in as much detail as the latest report, which was released Wednesday with a few classified sections omitted. They have described his order of Oct. 12 as rescinding his order of Sept. 14. But the Army's latest review instead finds that the later order "confused doctrine and policy even further,'' a classified part of the report says. It says the memorandum, while not authorizing abuse, effectively opened the way at Abu Ghraib last fall for interrogation techniques that Pentagon investigators have characterized as abusive, in dozens of cases involving dozens of soldiers at the prison in Iraq.

I'm almost ready to give a sidearm, an M16 and 2000 rounds of ammunition to every refugee.

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Militias infiltrate camps, Darfur refugees tell UN envoy By Nima Elbagir, Reuters | August 27, 2004 GENEINA, Sudan -- Angry Darfur refugees told the UN's top envoy in Sudan yesterday they are still not safe because the Janjaweed, the Arab militias who drove them from their homes, are among security forces guarding refugee camps. "There is no security in the camp. There are still disturbances. There are still rapes," Adam Abdallah told UN envoy Jan Pronk and Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail. "The security [officers] in the camp are infiltrated with Janjaweed," he added.

---

LATER: Oh, yeah, and a couple of RPGs to take care of those damn helicopters.

Report finds steep rise in classifying of documents By Jennifer C. Kerr, Associated Press | August 27, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Government secrecy has increased sharply in the past few years -- keeping Americans in the dark about information they should be able to access, says a report released yesterday by a coalition of watchdog groups. It found the federal government created 14 million new classified documents in fiscal year 2003 -- a 26 percent increase over 2002, and a 60 percent increase over 2001. Those numbers cover more than 40 agencies, but exclude the CIA. At the same time, the government is declassifying fewer documents, the report said. Some 43 million pages were declassified in 2003 -- a significant decrease from 100 million pages in 2001. "There are secrets that are necessary, but there are a heck of a lot of secrets . . . that the public would benefit from, with their disclosure," said Rick Blum, coalition coordinator for OpenTheGovernment.org and author of the report. Blum said the recent spike began in 2000 during the Clinton administration. J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, said the government is producing more documents in a post-Sept 11, 2001, world, but that agencies are too quick to apply classification

This is the campaign finance reform the Bushistas pushed for, so this is what they got. I repeat: 527s are to the political process what unions are to the economic system…the best means to counter the concentrated economic force of the wealthy, the best means for the populace to have a voice. To Bush and the neocons, that means they have to go. Bush says he'll sue to curb outside ads By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff | August 27, 2004 ALBUQUERQUE -- President Bush plans to sue in federal court to stop the unlimited, unregulated political spending of so-called 527 groups that have waged $63 million in negative television commercials against him this year, and most recently gave rise to a veterans' coalition now assailing Democrat John F. Kerry's military record, the White House said yesterday.

But... Quote of note:

Despite being a suspected war criminal, Marko Boskic, 40, was able to enter the United States four years ago under his own name and moved to Peabody, where he hardly kept a low-profile. Boskic had repeated run-ins with the law that led to numerous arrests on charges of drunken driving and serious assaults.

Anyway… War crimes suspect charged in Boston Peabody man tied to Bosnian mass execution By Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff | August 27, 2004 A Peabody construction worker accused of being one of the executioners who slaughtered some 1,200 Bosnian Muslim men in 1995 was charged yesterday with entering the United States illegally by claiming refugee status and not revealing his role in a notorious Bosnian Serb Army unit that took part in the worst massacre of civilians in Europe since the end of World War II. Despite being a suspected war criminal, Marko Boskic, 40, was able to enter the United States four years ago under his own name and moved to Peabody, where he hardly kept a low-profile. Boskic had repeated run-ins with the law that led to numerous arrests on charges of drunken driving and serious assaults. In April, he was arrested by Peabody police and charged with drunken driving and possession of an open container of alcohol after he crashed his Dodge Intrepid into a pole at 2:41 a.m. Most recently, on Aug. 11, Peabody police cited him for leaving the scene of an accident. US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said federal authorities launched an investigation of Boskic after receiving a tip. Sullivan said authorities methodically built a case against Boskic, leading to his arrest Wednesday night at his Peabody condominium. During an initial appearance at US District Court, Boskic was ordered held without bail.

Revenge Really Is Sweet, Study Shows Thu Aug 26, 2004 08:47 PM ET By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Revenge feels sweet, and Swiss researchers said on Thursday they have the brain scans to prove it. In a study investigators said might help explain how social norms arose and regulate behavior, brain centers linked to enjoyment and satisfaction lit up in young men who punished others for cheating them. Dominique de Quervain of the University of Zurich and colleagues tested 15 male students, telling them they were doing an economic study. The men all sat in positron electron tomography, or PET scanners, that recorded brain activity. In the study, published in the journal Science, they paired the men in an exchange of cash. Player A could give all or some of his money to player B, who could then give some or none of it back. If the first player gave all his money, the amount was quadrupled and player B could share the reward with player A. This scenario would obviously benefit both the most, so player A had an incentive to share. If player B declined to share, player A could punish him by taking away imaginary points or taking away money. "We scanned the subjects' brains while they learned about the defector's abuse of trust and determined the punishment," the researchers wrote. The PET scans showed a clear pattern of activity in the brain's dorsal striatum, involved in experiencing satisfaction, when one player penalized the other for selfishness. This was the case even when player A had to use some of his own money to inflict the punishment. "Instead of cold, calculated, reason, it is passion that may plant the seeds of revenge," commented psychologist Brian Knutson of Stanford University in California.

Pentagon Opposes Independent Prison Abuse Probe Thu Aug 26, 2004 06:12 PM ET By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Thursday opposed calls for an independent investigation of prisoner abuse from human rights groups and a key congressional Democrat, who said such a probe was the only way to get to the truth. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation into U.S. prisoner detention and interrogation operations after two Pentagon reports this week greatly expanded the scope of culpability in the prisoner abuse scandal. "The investigations either completed or under way and the rigorous oversight by Congress provide the department and the public a thorough examination of the facts," said Matt Waxman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. Waxman said in a statement existing Pentagon inquiries "have put detention operations under a microscope." "What's needed now is not another investigation but time for the justice system to work its will and for the department to continue its efforts to improve detention operations." Alistair Hodgett, spokesman for Amnesty International USA, said no investigation conducted since the revelations that U.S. forces abused and sexually humiliated Iraqis at Abu Ghraib jail had been free to take a full look at who was responsible for the abuse and what caused it. Not one of the "patchwork of reports" had examined the CIA's role, he noted. "We need to have somebody look into all this who's not appointed by or under the command of the secretary of defense. There is a multitude of investigations, but they're all within the Pentagon or a panel that was appointed by the secretary of defense," added Reed Brody, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch.

Staying the course and all that rot…

Nearly 36 Million Americans Live in Poverty Thu Aug 26, 2004 09:38 PM ET By Andrea Hopkins WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor rose 4 percent to 35.9 million, with children and blacks worse off than most, the government said on Thursday in a report that fueled Democratic criticism of President Bush. Despite the economic recovery, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose for the third straight year to 12.5 percent -- the highest since 1998 -- from 12.1 percent in 2002, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report. The widely cited score card on the nation's economy showed one-third of those in poverty were children. The number of U.S. residents without health-care coverage rose 1.4 million to 45 million last year, while incomes were essentially stagnant, the Census Bureau said. The poverty line is set at an annual income of $9,573 or less for an individual, or $18,660 for a family of four with two children. Under that measure, a family would spend about a third of its income on food.

Here, have another thousand words. And when you look at the figures for the South, all I can say is, YOU ASKED FOR IT!

I think if I was hanging out me and Cobb would have a lot of fun and a lot in common. I think Avery capable of surpassing us both. He ain't done it yet. But in discussing the Confederate Battle Flag (cbf in his vernacular) he may surpass where I was at his age.

And I know, I know, "it's not about believing in what they were fighting for, it's about recognizing their bravery in fighting for what they believed in." But that's just stupid. What they were fighting for is wrong, and whatever bravery they displayed is sullied because they were being brave in an unjust cause. Put it like this: when you see a Palestinian throwing rocks at a tank, you don't think about how brave he is, even though I'd say that it takes a certain amount of bravery (and foolishness) to go against an armored vehicle with some hand-sized stones. That ain't no adulterating woman. Ain't no stoning a tank.

But okay, let's switch the focus off the past and look at the present. What does that flag represent that's worth arguing about in 2004? To my friends who are cbf apologists, I ask this question: if you came to my spot and saw the flag of the Black Panther Party, would you make some assumptions about my ideology what I think about white people? What about if I commemorated Huey P. Newton and H. "Rap" Brown's (still the best nickname ever) birthdays and talked about what great men they were? After all, the Panthers did some good things like feeding children before they went to school. Is that what you remember about the Panthers, though? Could be, but I doubt it. But just to take it up a notch, let's say that there was an organization that not only voiced rhetorical opposition to whites, but actually had the power in the community to systematically subvert justice away from them; they could drag a man outside in front of his family and kill him, and even though everybody in town knew who did it, nobody would be penalized. And then let's say that I flew their flag and posted their emblems. You wouldn't even come to my virtual home, let alone want to associate with me in person. But just to sew it up, here's the logic: "The klan flew/flies the confederate battle flag...I despise everything they represent....let me fly the same flag as they do." Come on, now. We can do better than that.

Because just like it's his right to fly that flag, it's my right to keep a suspicious eye on him and to keep my hand on the nearest (decimal point-named) implement.

Mark Safranski seems to think I'm going to turn into a conservative or libertarian because I'm such a stickler for reality. The funny thing is, in my late twenties I used to tell folks I was conservative…the actual phrase I used was "as conservative as possible for a person born in 1957." That would be conservative techniques to pursue progressive goals. In fact, I long ago decided each party has the same flaw: they use the wrong techniques to pursue their stated goals (that was when I believed they actually pursued those goals). Since the days of my foolish youth I've found myself so repulsed by Conservative goals that the parties that pursue them had to be rejected. Right now, for now, the Democratic Party feels they can't win if they don't visibly supporting effective efforts toward Black and minority empowerment while the Republican Party feels they can't win if the do.. Doesn't leave me much choice. And has nothing to do with Avery's post. I'm just free associating.

American 'gentlemen' sweep Olympic 200 - NANCY ARMOUR, AP Sports Writer Thursday, August 26, 2004 There was no flexing. No preening. No embarrassing displays with the U.S. flag. Bernard Williams must have learned a thing or two at the Sydney Olympics, because he his American teammates were on their best behavior Thursday after sweeping the 200 meters. …"I had my fun in 2000 and I made a lot of people angry," Williams said. "It's not fun when you're making people angry at the same time. I learned how to do it right." Williams was on the 400-meter relay team four years ago that posed and preened during a victory lap and then clowned on the medals stand. A bare-chested Williams draped himself in a flag then, flapping it as though he were a bird. The display embarrassed U.S. officials, and led to promises there would not be a repeat of such antics in Athens. There weren't. "We made it a focus," said Crawford, whose flamboyant personality was notably subdued. "We don't have to be arrogant about anything. We can carry ourselves with honor. That's the stars and stripes."

Nate at Cincinnati Black Blog is rightously pissed at Hamilton County Prosecutor and Southwest Ohio chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign Mike Allen and so is having a grand time reporting on the sexual harassment lawsuit that made the man fly all the way back from The Big Apple to confess to an extramarital affair. That's not why I linked, though. This is:

Every now and then it helps to publish some people's emails.

Funny, but I didn`t see any mention of Rape in The lawsuit. Mike Allen and Maybe Pat Dewine are guilty of Infidelity, But, They know who Their Fathers Are ! Allen and Dewine Financially Support Their Children ! Allen and Dewine Know How Many Chidren They Have! Allen and Dewine are Employed and Pay Taxes ! The Woman That Allen and Dewine Associate with are not Crack Whores, Spitting Out Babies(Like Rats) every Nine Months ! and the last time I saw Allen or Dewine, They Had Taken a Bath and Didn`t Smell Like Something from A Slave Pen !!!!! Boycottcincinnati ? Just Another Dark Gang Of Thugs ! I don`t have to call you "Niggers" You already do that to yourselves !!!!!

Here we have a white man accused of sexually harassing a white woman yet the email writer, who I think represents a lot of white people in Cincinnati, brings Black people into it and attacks us. What do Black people have to do with Mike Allen and his illegal activities.

Some three people folks have already found this out, but I get asshole email, I post EVERYTHING...headers and the whole nine yards. I've even traced them back to the ISP and posted THEIR name. And god help you if you use a domain name of your own instead of an ISP because I'm definitely posting that.

Quote of note #1:

Charlie Daniels recently angered some Arab-Americans with a song that included the lyrics "This ain't no rag, it's a flag, and we don't wear it on our heads." And Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for waving a giant Confederate flag during their rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama."

Giant Confederate flag. That's what you support by voting Republican. Quote of note #12

"I don't think anyone coordinated it this way," said Brandon Winfrey, who helped organize the Lynyrd Skynyrd party.

Right. The G.O.P. plans everything. It's just their plans are all fucked up. Anyway… G.O.P.'s Southern Strategy? Cranking Up Lynyrd Skynyrd By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON If the political right has a soundtrack, perhaps it used to be Bach's "Brandenburg" Concerto No. 2, the piece that introduced William F. Buckley Jr. on his program "Firing Line." But in 2004? Two words: "Free Bird." On the Sunday night before the first day of the Republican National Convention, the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (or its latest incarnation) will be performing at the nightclub Crobar in Chelsea for a party honoring Southern Republicans in Congress. There are only two original members left in the band, but, as the song goes, "a bird you cannot change," and the band is still touring and still quite popular in the red states. via [caught in between]

Even if, like the USofA, you're not really a democracy but think you are. Quote of note:

At the organizers' request, the NYPD is also shutting down side streets between 15th Street and 22nd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue on the east side of 7th Avenue and between 8th and 9th on the west. These side streets will serve as feeder lines into the main march up 7th Avenue. The organizers are expected to assign groups that want to march together to specific side streets.

Sources: NYPD, protest group agree on rally site March route also set for Sunday From Jamie McShane CNN NEW YORK (CNN) -- The New York City Police Department (NYPD) and representatives for United for Peace and Justice have agreed on a site for a protest rally this weekend, as well as the route for the march that will precede it, sources familiar with the situation told CNN Thursday. The rally, expected to be the biggest of 29 permitted protests scheduled around the Republican National Convention, will be held in Union Square Park, just north of the East Village area. Organizers had wanted to stage the rally in Central Park, but a judge this week backed up the city's denial of that request. A projected 250,000 protesters are expected to take part in the event Sunday, set to start with a march that is to step off between 11 a.m. and noon ET. The march is to move northward on 7th Avenue past Madison Square Garden -- in which the convention opens Monday -- and progress eastward on 34th Street to 5th Avenue. From there participants are to march south on 5th Avenue to 23rd Street, then east to Broadway, and south on Broadway into Union Square Park. At the organizers' request, the NYPD is also shutting down side streets between 15th Street and 22nd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue on the east side of 7th Avenue and between 8th and 9th on the west. These side streets will serve as feeder lines into the main march up 7th Avenue. The organizers are expected to assign groups that want to march together to specific side streets. In her decision Wednesday, Justice Jacqueline Silbermann ruled that for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) could not use Central Park because the city did not have enough time to ensure public safety and protect the park from damage. She also wrote that the city parks department had appropriately followed city rules when it denied the UFPJ the right to hold the rally in Central Park. City officials said the gathering would damage the park. The protest site has been debated by city officials and protest organizers for months. In July, the group agreed to hold a large-scale rally on Manhattan's West Side Highway after the protest march, but two weeks ago UFPJ announced that site was unacceptable.

Otherwise I'd get upset when people get paid for writing about what I've said for years. Well, as Dick Cheney knows, you can get anything done if you don't care who gets the credit.

Says what I think quite eloquently.

---

Tricky Timing … would just add that I think the "Kerry waitied too long" CW that's forming is a media driven excuse that lets them off the hook. They know that they are responsible for allowing these assholes to be taken seriously at all and instead of taking responsibility for failing at their job they are blaming the victim. It's an old story with these guys. "Oh he should have fought back a week earlier." Well, if the press were in the business of journalism instead of bloodsport entertainment, they would have investigated these guys before they gave them hours and hours of airtime to spread their filthy little psychodrama all of over airwaves. The people who waited too long were the journalists. Don't fall for the hype. I heard all these talking heads today going on and on about how this has hurt Kerry and yet they have no evidence to back that up, other than their own guilt. It reminds me of an earlier time when every single pundit idiot in washington predicted for month after month after month that Clinton was going down. They were just positive of it. "Any day now," they said, "the American people are going to reject this deplorable behavior." The screeched at the highest decibels on every cable show 24/7. Each new revelation was the smoking gun that was going to end his presidency. The 1998 election was supposed to be a deathblow. And month after month after month more than 60% of the American people continued to support Clinton and the '98 election was a blow out for the Democrats. Don't believe anything these people say about what "the American people" think. They are celebrities who have as much contact and understanding of everyday Americans as Madonna does. Wait for real data. We'll know soon enough.

A sane, respected family man does six months in Iraq. Quote of note:

Last month Guindon and his team were awarded Army combat honors after carrying out more than 100 missions.

Save us all from military honors. Airman dies day after return from duty in Iraq MERRIMACK — A decorated member of the New Hampshire Air National Guard killed himself at his home Wednesday, just a day after returning from a six-month tour of duty in Iraq. Tech. Sgt. Dave Guindon, 48, of Merrimack was a member of the 157th Air Refueling Wing based in Newington. In Iraq, he and four other members of the unit provided security to Army convoys. They returned Tuesday. According to the state medical examiner’s office, Guindon died Wednesday afternoon of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Maj. Gen. John E. Blair, who heads the New Hampshire National Guard, said even after having two days to absorb the shock, the news is baffling. “The problem is trying to rationalize an irrational act. It’s hard to know how to address this thing, I’m so confused and baffled. I don’t know how to categorize it,” Blair said yesterday. Blair was among those waiting at Manchester Airport Tuesday to welcome Guindon and his fellow airmen after a six-month deployment in Iraq. “I spent some time speaking with him Tuesday, and I got quite the opposite impression. He particularly was talking to me about the pride they had in helping our transportation company,” Blair said.

---

Don't know if I should thank Rook or not…

You don't want to be one of these jurors. Thought the Quote of Note:

Forensic exam results from state lab analyst Mary Jane Burton scarcely figured in the trial. Burton worked at the state lab during the 1970s and 1980s, and, contrary to department policy, she kept samples of items she tested, often taping them to her worksheet. The evidence that cleared Whitfield came from Burton’s files, as well as evidence that cleared at least two other men in the state of rape charges.

---

…indicates there may have been other means of preventing this travesty. I got no beef with the jury. As one juror said, they did their best. But he also said

Had DNA testing been available back then…Whitfield would never have been charged.

Now we know. Now we have the means not only to prevent such things from happening but to verify and undo many wrongs.

Jurors revisit decision that put wrong man in jail for rapes
By MICHELLE WASHINGTON, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 26, 2004
Last updated: 1:21 AM NORFOLK — Both rape victims pointed to Arthur Lee Whitfield in court, saying they knew with absolute certainty that he was the man who had attacked them. “Is there any question in your mind about the individual?” a prosecutor asked one woman. “No,” she replied. Over and over again, court documents show, the women told jurors they were sure Whitfield was the man who raped them the night of Aug. 14, 1981, within 45 minutes of each other. The rapist was black, muscular, weighed about 185 pounds, about 30 years old. The women gave police intimate details – the rapist had light eyes, either hazel or green, and was uncircumcised. The women picked Whitfield’s photo from a group of mug shots. They picked Whitfield out of a six-man line-up. Their testimony was enough to convince a jury of eight women and four men that Whitfield had committed the crime, despite testimony from his family and friends that he had spent the entire evening with them at a birthday party. Jurors sentenced him to 45 years in prison. In hopes he would see his family again, Whitfield later pleaded guilty to a second rape charge in exchange for an 18-year sentence. But the women were wrong. Last week, DNA evidence proved that Whitfield did not rape either woman. Whitfield was freed Monday, after spending more than 22 years in prison. “I wish I could apologize to that man,” Herman Chappell said Wednesday. He’s one of the jurors who convicted Whitfield. “I’d ask him in his heart to forgive me.”

How did the jurors feel?

Contacted Wednesday , several jurors who decided the case said it was each victim’s certainty that Whitfield committed the crime that convinced them. Eva Cozzens remembered the trial clearly, including the snowy weather. “The girls felt like he was the one,” Cozzens said. “His family wasn’t convincing.” The trial drained her. “I remember how much it taxes you to try to decide someone’s future,” she said. Now, she said, she’s grateful DNA helped clear Whitfield. “It’s a terrible feeling to know you have a part in something like that,” she said. John L. Walker, too, expressed happiness that Whitfield had been cleared. “You’re a blessed man,” he said he would tell Whitfield. Had DNA testing been available back then, Walker said, Whitfield would never have been charged. “As far as our job on the jury, we did our best,” Walker said. “My God,” thought Herman Chappell when he heard the news about Whitfield. He couldn’t remember the name of the man whose fate he decided, but the dates and places fit. Now 80 years old, Chappell remembered little of the testimony. But he did remember how horrified he felt for the victims. Now, he feels some of that horror for Whitfield. “I’ve got a lot of asking God to forgive me for making such a terrible mistake,” he said.

via TalkLeft

Stuff I found in storage that even I didn't know was there: - About 5 different audio sequencing programs - Seven discs of royalty-free samples…basslines, drum loops, sexy moaning voices... - The Art of Cooking on a Windows 95/98 CD-ROM, unopened (I used to like cooking; I think I was trying to recapture that) - Studyworks Mathematics Tutorials, covering Algebra I and II, Geometry (my favorite!) Trig, Precalc, Calculus and Statistics. It's a Windows 95/Win 3.1 (!!) disc, and being a Windows 3.1 thing I actually have more confidence that it will run under XP Pro than the Art of Cooking disk) - Starship Titanic

This is information some 60% of the population is dying to have. But I'm afraid you won't find it very satisfactory. The Niggerati Network was found by The TDT Observer Review at the same time as another blog, Not Counting Niggers.

I ran across two interestingly named blogs today, while checking so see which of my favorite blogs had been updated. I hadn't expected to find blogs with the names Not Counting Niggers and The Niggerati Network. However, I wasn't surprised since anything goes in the Blogosphere.

Don't bug on "Not Counting Niggers." It's a progressive blog, and named after a WW II era essay by George Orwell. Here's the relevant part of the Orwell essay:

In this connection it is well worth having a look at Mr. Streit's much-discussed book, Union Now. Mr. Streit, like the partisans of the "Peace Bloc", wants the democracies to gang up against the dictatorships, but his book is outstanding for two reasons. To begin with he goes further than most of the others and offers a plan which, even it is startling, is constructive. Secondly, in spite of a rather nineteen-twentyish American naiveté, he has an essentially decent cast of mind. He genuinely loathes the thought of war, and he does not sink to the hypocrisy of pretending that any country which can be bought or bullied into the British orbit instantly becomes a democracy. His book therefore presents a kind of test case. In it you are seeing the sheep-and-goats theory at its best. If you can't accept it in that form you will certainly never accept it in the form handed out by the Left Book Club. Briefly, what Mr Streit suggests is that the democratic nations, starting with fifteen which he names, should voluntarily form themselves into a union -- not a league or an alliance, but a union similar to the United States, with a common government, common money, and complete internal free trade. The initial fifteen states are, of course, the USA, France, Great Britain, the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, and the smaller European democracies, not including Czechoslovakia, which still existed when the book was written. Later, other states could be admitted to the Union when and if they "proved themselves worthy". It is implied all along that the state of peace and prosperity existing within the Union would be so enviable that everyone else would soon be pining to join it. It is worth noticing that this scheme is not so visionary as it sounds. Of course it is not going to happen, nothing advocated by well­meaning literary men ever happens, and there are certain difficulties which Mr. Streit does not discuss; but it is of the order of things which could happen. Geographically the USA and the western European democracies are nearer to being a unit than, for instance, the British Empire. Most of their trade is with one another, they contain within their own territories everything they need, and Mr. Streit is probably right in claiming that their combined strength would be so great as to make any attack on them hopeless, even if the USSR joined up with Germany. Why then does one see at a glance that this scheme has something wrong with it? What is there about it that smells -- for it does smell, of course? What it smells of, as usual, is hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Mr Streit himself is not a hypocrite, but his vision is limited. Look again at his list of sheep and goats. No need to boggle at the goats (Germany, Italy and Japan), they are goats right enough, and billies at that. But look at the sheep! Perhaps the USA will pass inspection if one does not look too closely. But what about France? What about England? What about even Belgium and Holland? Like everyone of his school of thought, Mr. Streit has coolly lumped the huge British and French empires -- in essence nothing but mechanisms for exploiting cheap coloured labour -- under the heading of democracies! Here and there in the book, though not often, there are references to the "dependencies" of the democratic states. "Dependencies" means subject races. It is explained that they are to go on being dependencies, that their resources are to be pooled among the states of the Union, and that their coloured inhabitants will lack the right to vote in Union affairs. Except where the tables of statistics bring it out, one would never for a moment guess what numbers of human beings are involved. India, for instance, which contains more inhabitants than the whole of the "fifteen democracies" put together, gets just a page and a half in Mr. Streit's book, and that merely to explain that as India is not yet fit for self-government the status quo must continue. And here one begins to see what would really be happening if Mr. Streit's scheme were put into operation. The British and French empires, with their six hundred million disenfranchised human beings, would simply be receiving fresh police forces; the huge strength of the USA would be behind the robbery of India and Africa. Mr Streit is letting cats out of bags, but all phrases like "Peace Bloc", "Peace Front", etc. contain some such implication; all imply a tightening-up of the existing structure. The unspoken clause is always, "Not counting niggers." For how can we make a "firm stand" against Hitler if we are simultaneously weakening ourselves at home? In other words, how can we "fight Fascism" except by bolstering up a far vaster injustice? For of course it is vaster. What we always forget is that the overwhelming bulk of the British proletariat does not live in Britain, but in Asia and Africa. It is not in Hitler's power, for instance, to make a penny an hour a normal industrial wage; it is perfectly normal in India, and we are at great pains to keep it so. One gets some idea of the real relationship of England and India when one reflects that the per capita annual income in England is something over £80, and in India about £7. It is quite common for an Indian coolie's leg to be thinner than the average Englishman's arm. And there is nothing racial in this, for well-fed members of the same races are of normal physique; it is due to simple starvation. This is the system which we all live on and which we denounce when there seems to be no danger of its being altered. Of late, however, it has become the first duty of a "good anti-Fascist" to lie about it and help to keep it in being. What real settlement, of the slightest value, can there be along these lines? What meaning would there be, even if it were successful, in bringing down Hitler's system in order to stabilise something that is far bigger and in its different way just as bad?

Pure socialist rot, you say? Maybe. But Orwell, and hence, Eddie Tews, used the word correctly,

Gen. J.C. Christian, Patriot has offered to replace Alan Keyes as the Republican candidate for Senator in Illinois. You must read his letter to State Senator Dave Syverson. Ya can't go wrong, folks. Even better, Senator Syverson answered him.

First, you need to understand how we got to this point. Jack Ryan was not my choice in the Primary, but it seemed to be the choice of many in the Party. It is unfortunate after he won the Primary the media acted improperly by going after custody hearing documents. When Ryan withdrew, we sought out a number of individuals to take his position, several that I supported. Individuals like Edgar, Rauschenberger, and Dillard to name a few. However, all of these individuals turned down the request to fill that appointment. So, with ninety days left in the campaign, the State Central Committee met to go through a number of names of individuals who might be interested in running. Of the seven or eight that were considered, a few were excellent prospects but they had no personal resources, and nothing committed from the National Republican Committee. These individuals would have no way to get their message out in that short period of time. So, the State Party whittled the list down to two for us to choose from, one choice was Alan Keyes and the second was Andrea Barthwell. If you read about the problems that Barthwell had and the fact that she had no resources or organization, there wasn't much of a choice to make.

You know what that means, right?

As far as I know, no other serious contenders, that had resources available stepped up to the plate to run on the Republican ticket. If you or some others were interested, clearly we would have talked to you.

Frankly, the response for Alan Keyes has been very good, especially because it is imperative that he help turn out disenfranchised conservatives in some key state legislative races and a key Supreme Court race going on in southern Illinois. Alan Keyes is taking in tens of thousands of dollars every day just from his website alone. He is able to debate Obama and say things about Obama that many of us are not in a position to be able to do.

Two serious questions:

1. what the HELL is a "disenfranchised conservatives"? Could he possibly mean…negro??
2. Okay, three questions. What is it that Keyes can say about Obama that "many of us"? can't? And why aren't "many of us" in a position to say those things?

Geez, that's four questions. But I couldn't help it. Also, given the things Keyes has said so far, it's pretty clear what Republicans want said and why "many of us" (read white Republicans) are not in a position to say those things.

Alex at Heretical Ideas has the right idea about Dean's rant…and about Dave Chapelle's humor:

When Dean Esmay made this post, my jaw dropped. I honestly don't know what he was thinking when he posted it. The explanation he gave a few days later, I admit, didn't make much sense to me either, where he tried to pawn off his race-baiting by saying "well, Dave Chappelle does racist humor, too!" Why? Because while some of Dave Chapelle's humor skates close to the racist edge, it never really goes over (except in the horrible "Real World" skit in the first season of the show--although I suppose it was equally racist to blacks and whites).

One of Alex's commenters nailed it totally, though:

I never thought of Chappelle as so much being racist to whites as he was basically protraying white sterotypes the way black stereotypes are portrayed in the media ALL THE TIME. Sometimes Dave does go over, though--like the "Real World" skit, which was just awful. Posted by: Alex Knapp at August 25, 2004 11:29 AM

I had a question to ask Dean, which was "how do you get annoyed at Black people in general over one getting seriously paid because people across the board find him seriously funny?" He doesn't have automatic registration or anonymous comments, so I have no idea if my registration will be approved and therefore if my question will be answered.

…will be familiar to some folks. By the way, I've decided Niggerati.net gets one substantial post per day, and maybe a technical update (like I just fixed a problem converting line breaks to <br /:> tags, which makes writing MUCH simpler). That will help folks keep up, though it will slow the introducton of topics on my part. Most of the tech stuff will be here at good ol' scattered Prometheus 6.

via Left is Right

Social networks. I'm coming to the conclusion they are a cross between Match.com and Usenet. I registered for Tickle though so I could take their 56 question Original Inkblot Test. Free, but don't be looking for me there because social networks in general don't hook me.

Earl, your subconscious mind is driven most by Reserve You approach the world with reserve because unconsciously, and perhaps consciously, you like to be in control. You keep your emotions to yourself and you may seem mysterious or enigmatic to others. You're often very cautious about truly expressing yourself. Even people who have known you for some time may find it hard to get close to you.

The reserve is 100% conscious, by the way.

Quote of note:

The issue arose on Monday when The Seattle Times wrote about Gregoire's time in the Kappa Delta sorority at the University of Washington and her decision to work from within the group to oppose its discriminatory membership rule. …The Times later said that neither Sims nor his campaign was the source for the newspaper's original story on the sorority. One of the Times editors was a sorority sister of Gregoire's, said political editor Tom Boyer.

Race surfaces in Wash. governor primary By David Ammons, Associated Press Writer | August 26, 2004 TACOMA, Wash. --The issue of race has surfaced in the contest between the two top Democratic rivals for governor, roiling a contest that had until this week been relatively quiet. Christine Gregoire, the front-runner, on Wednesday angrily accused her primary rival, Ron Sims, of instigating an outcry over her membership in an all-white college sorority in the late-1960s. Sims, who is black, denies the accusation. Gregoire, the state's first female attorney general, hit back Wednesday during a speech before the state Labor Council convention. "Knock it off, Ron!" Gregoire shouted, her voice shaking with anger. "It's time for this to stop." Gregoire told the audience she has spent a lifetime fighting discrimination -- and that Sims knows the truth. "He knows it is preposterous to suggest that I am in any way, shape or form a racist," she said. Sims, the King County executive, addressed the same convention Wednesday, but made no reference to the sorority flap. He told reporters that neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with the matter. He later issued a statement distancing himself from the brewing controversy. "Is Christine Gregoire a racist? Of course not," he said. "Have I ever inferred that she is? Absolutely not." …Local black leaders spoke out after the story appeared, saying Gregoire's actions had no impact on changing the sorority's exclusionary rules, which violated the university's nondiscriminatory policies of the time. They also criticized Gregoire for not being repentant about her involvement in the sorority. In his statement, Sims asked of Gregoire: "Is she proud of her role as a leader of the Kappa Delta sorority? She says she is. She says she was a leader to end discrimination. Was she or wasn't she? I think that's the real question at issue here. "It has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with whether she's taking credit for something she didn't do. It's not an issue of race, it's an issue of integrity."

Cops to cut down tree that draws crime August 26, 2004 FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. --Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies think they have found a solution for getting rid of drug dealers and prostitutes who congregate under a giant oak tree: chop it down. The sheriff's office is seeking permission to have the tree removed from a county right of way on Cypress Street. "We're not attacking the tree," Deputy Don Hess said. "The tree hasn't hurt anybody." But Hess said it provides cover for drug dealers and prostitutes and their customers. He said 30 to 40 arrests per month stem from criminal activity at the oak. So far county officials have stood up for the tree, but that resolve may be crumbling. "Why not deal with the people underneath the tree rather than cut down the tree?" asked Christy Johnson, a senior county planner.

---

Good point.

Suspensions lifted over blackface dispute Georgia fraternity, student group agree to apologize By Associated Press | August 26, 2004 ATLANTA -- A Georgia State University fraternity that had members in blackface at a party and a black student group that responded with a flier that alluded to lynching will both be allowed back on campus after the groups agreed to apologize. University officials said Tuesday that the two groups have reached an agreement that ends their suspensions from campus. The agreement, announced by vice president for student services Hazel Scott, calls on Pi Kappa Alpha and the Black Student Alliance to apologize jointly to the school community and submit letters of apology to the student newspaper. Pi Kappa Alpha also must implement a diversity and sensitivity training program and not permit any of its members to paint their faces black again. The racial dispute began after two fraternity members showed up in blackface at an off-campus hip-hop theme party in January. The alliance retaliated with a flier using the fraternity's name on a picture depicting a Ku Klux Klansman and a man in blackface with a noose around his neck. Pi Kappa Alpha filed a federal lawsuit last week against top Georgia State officials, including school President Carl Patton. Atlanta lawyer Thomas Venker, a former fraternity president, said he may now dismiss the suit. Venker said the students who dressed in blackface made a social misstep, but their actions were protected by the First Amendment and not barred under any state regulation.

Old Warriors Giving Their Last, Worst Shot By Tina Brown Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page C01 Bob Dole's nasty swipe at John Kerry's war wounds this week made you understand why Viagra has been losing market share to Cialis. The sight of that bitter old face piling on to protest that Kerry did not bleed enough is instant detumescence.

This direct language is what was needed from the media all along. Closer to the Truth Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page A22 TWO NEW OFFICIAL reports on the treatment of foreign prisoners have dragged the Bush administration and Pentagon brass a couple of steps closer to facing the truth about how and why U.S. soldiers and interrogators committed scores of acts of torture and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. An Army investigation released yesterday showed that culpability for the criminal mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison lay not just with a handful of reserve soldiers but with more than two dozen military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. On Tuesday a panel appointed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld demolished the fiction, clung to until now by President Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's whitewashers, that prisoner abuse in Iraq was an aberration for which no senior officials were responsible. "The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," said the report of the panel chaired by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels." As the Schlesinger report persuasively details, the malfeasance of Mr. Rumsfeld and senior commanders in Iraq includes their failure to anticipate chaotic postwar conditions and slowness to respond to the insurgency that began to emerge soon after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. These mistakes -- in addition to contributing to the deep troubles U.S. forces now face -- led to a situation in which thousands of Iraqi detainees, most innocent of any offense, were guarded by far too few U.S. soldiers in squalid and dangerous conditions. These errors point to a fundamental lack of competence on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld and senior commanders in conducting the war. But even more important, in our view, is the panel's support for the truth most fiercely resisted by the administration and its allies: that the crimes at Abu Ghraib were, in part, the result of the 2002 decision by the president and his top aides to set aside the Geneva Conventions as well as standard U.S. doctrines for the treatment of prisoners. Mr. Bush's political appointees in the Justice and Defense departments redefined the meaning of torture and pressed for interrogation techniques regarded by the Pentagon's own lawyers as excessive. Those techniques, the report says, "migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded." In Iraq, commanding Lt. Gen Ricardo S. Sanchez, "using reasoning from the President's memorandum" of 2002, approved some practices that had been outlawed at the Guantanamo Bay prison -- even though detainees in Iraq, unlike those at Guantanamo, were covered by the Geneva Conventions.

Incidents Grew in Severity, Report Says By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page A17 Forty-four separate incidents are graphically recounted in the new Army report on abuse committed by U.S. soldiers against Iraqis in their custody at the Abu Ghraib prison. They include direct physical assault of inmates, required nakedness, forced sexual posing and an alleged sexual assault. …In mid-September, Abu Ghraib was hit by mortar shells, killing two soldiers and wounding 11 others. Immediately after the attack, two Iraqis were brought in, and military intelligence soldiers were seen hitting one of them. When a military police officer told them to stop, the soldiers insubordinately told him that it was not his concern. "We are the professionals; we know what we are doing," they said, according to the report. In a second sign of the indiscipline that led the way to later abuse, the soldiers refused to identify themselves, as they are required to do when asked by a superior officer. In an inquiry by local commanders, the accounts of the incident offered by military intelligence soldiers and military police clashed. The detainee was found not likely to have been involved in the mortar attack and was released the next day, the report notes. The involvement of military intelligence soldiers in that incident appears to be significant. Of the 44 incidents detailed, 16, or more than one-third, were at the request or encouragement of those troops, the report said. That finding appears to counter the view first advanced by some Republicans that the scandal was the work of a handful of rogue MP soldiers.

A Failure in Leadership, All the Way Up the Ranks By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page A01 What began several months ago with the emergence of shocking photographs showing a handful of U.S. troops abusing detainees in Iraq has led this week to a broad indictment of U.S. military leadership and acknowledgement in two official reports that mistreatment of prisoners was more widespread than previously disclosed. The reports have served to undercut earlier portrayals of the abuse as largely the result of criminal misconduct by a small group of individuals. As recently as last month, an assessment by the Army's inspector general concluded the incidents could not be ascribed to systemic problems, describing them as "aberrations." But the findings yesterday of another Army investigation offered a more critical appraisal of what led to the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. It implicated 27 military intelligence soldiers in abuse, providing some support for assertions by some of the seven military guards previously charged that they were not acting alone. Counting other intelligence, medical and civilian contract personnel cited for failing to report the abuse, and three more military police officers alleged to have engaged in abuse, the report appeared to raise to nearly 50 the number of people who may face charges or disciplinary action for misconduct at Abu Ghraib. Further, the investigation found that senior officers in Iraq bore responsibility for what occurred by failing to exercise adequate oversight and neglecting to provide "clear, consistent guidance" for handling detainees. On Tuesday, an independent panel led by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger went higher up the chain of command. It cited the Pentagon's most senior civilian and military authorities for setting the stage for the abuse by issuing confused guidance, planning poorly and responding too slowly when problems arose. Both groups said they could find no evidence of policy of abuse or instructions from senior U.S. authorities approving mistreatment of detainees. But taken together, their reports provide a more complete and searing critique than before -- one likely to reverberate as additional prosecutions are launched and more congressional hearings are held to examine the question of accountability.

Abuse Report Widens Scope of Culpability Generals Point to Contractors, Military Intelligence Soldiers By Josh White Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 26, 2004; Page A01 Three Army generals said yesterday that an array of sometimes shocking detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison came in part at the hands of more than two dozen military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors, widening the scope of the international scandal as one Army general conceded that some of the acts qualified as torture.

So you can already buy HGH (Human Growth Hormone) to make your kid some four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier. And you can buy a better education, better equipment and medical care. I can't say this is all bad, but I can say it would suck if only the wealthy could have it. And it would be worse to do it strictly for cosmetic reasons.

Geneticists have tried to improve apples over the last 50 years, producing larger, prettier species that just aren't as tasty or as interesting as they used to be; it would be a tragedy if we did to humans what we've done to apples.

Building Better Bodies By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF For a glimpse of what post-human athletes may look like beginning in the 2012 or 2016 Olympics, take a look at an obscure breed of cattle called the Belgian Blue. Belgian Blues are unlike any cows you've ever seen. They have a genetic mutation that means they do not have effective myostatin, a substance that curbs muscle growth. A result is that Belgian Blues are all bulging muscles without a spot of fat, like bovine caricatures of Arnold Schwarzenegger. These mutants may also point to the future of humans, particularly athletes. Gene therapies are being developed that would block myostatin in humans, and they offer immense promise in treating muscular dystrophy and the frailty that comes with aging. But once this gene therapy becomes available for people who really need it, it'll take about 10 minutes before athletes are surreptitiously using it, particularly because, in contrast to today's doping, gene therapy leaves no trace in the blood or urine. [P6: emphasis added] The standard human shape would become different, and anyone with money could look like a body builder. As H. Lee Sweeney, chairman of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, writes in a fascinating article in July's Scientific American, "The world may be about to watch one of its last Olympic Games without genetically enhanced athletes." …A small number of humans have natural genetic mutations that are similar, and these people appear to live normally and to be exceptional athletes. For example, Eero Mantyranta of Finland was a three-time gold medalist in cross-country skiing Olympics in the 1960's, and his family later turned out to have a genetic mutation that produced extremely high levels of red blood cells. Likewise, The New England Journal of Medicine in June documented a human version of the Belgian Blues, a boy with a genetic mutation that interferes with myostatin. From the moment he was born, he had extraordinary muscling, and at age 4 he can hold a 3-kilogram dumbbell in each hand with his arms extended. A European weight-lifting champion is said to have a similar mutation. Perhaps the most important and complex decision in the history of our species is approaching: in what ways should we improve our genetic endowment? Yet we are neither focused on this question nor adequately schooled to resolve it. So we desperately need greater scientific literacy, and it's past time for a post-Sputnik style revitalization of science education, especially genetics, to help us figure out if we want our descendants to belong to the same species as we do.

Group Will Rally in Park or Not at All, Leader Says By DIANE CARDWELL The lead organizer of the largest rally planned for the Republican National Convention said yesterday that the rally would not be held if a judge upheld a ban on protesters using the Great Lawn in Central Park on Sunday. Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, which sued to try to force the city to grant a permit to rally in the park, told a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan that if the antiwar coalition was not allowed on the grass of the Great Lawn, "then we simply can't have the rally." Ms. Cagan said later that the group still planned to march up Seventh Avenue past the convention site at Madison Square Garden. But her testimony, at a hearing before Justice Jacqueline W. Silbermann, made it seem unlikely that the group would be able to rally afterward, as has been planned for more than a year. The rally would be held one day before the start of the convention. Although Justice Silbermann is not set to issue her ruling until today, lawyers for the antiwar coalition expressed little confidence that they would win the case. A day before, a federal judge upheld a similar ban against a group seeking to use the Great Lawn for a rally on Saturday. "I think it's going to be difficult to prevail," said Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the lead lawyer in the suit over the planned Sunday protest. Not only was he not optimistic that the judge would rule in the group's favor, but even if she did, he said, the city would have the right to an automatic stay of the ruling, leaving matters unsettled at least until Friday. "It just doesn't get better," he said. As a result, with just four days left, it is unclear where the protesters, who organizers say could number 250,000, will try to go. At a news conference outside the court, Ms. Cagan said that the group was not ruling out any options, including leading its march up to the park. But given how adamant she and other organizers have been about not starting a clash with police, that seems unlikely. "We don't think it will fall into chaos," she said, adding that their members "are coming to this demonstration committed to peace."

Dean asks:

So, to answer my own question: Do you know what annoys me most about black people? That poor white trash can't make the jokes that they pay Dave Chapelle millions of dollars to make every day. How sad is that?

The problem, again, is that Black people are allowed to make nigger references that white people can't. But let's be honest about who is making those decisions, okay? Who, exactly, is paying Dave millions of dollars to make those jokes? And more importantly, who is watching that they are willing to pay all that money? Don't even try to tell me the Black demographic is generating all that loot. It's like all the people in Dean's comments that like Black people but hate the culture they associate with Black people. White people pay for the production of that culture, not Black people. White people fund rap music by their purchasing more than Black people do. You want rap to go away, raise your children right. As for us, I'm not suggesting a single person stay away from one of the more accessible money-making opportunities a young Black person has. I'm suggesting they learn to handle the money, and that they don't believe the hype personally. And if Mainstream America is damaged by it, it's a self-inflicted wound as far as I'm concerned.

I only indulge because I spent some time yesterday on the Vanguard News Network Forum reading a thread that showed a lot of concern over cross-breeding. Hormone-Charged Birds Force Out Rivals in West Wed Aug 25, 2004 09:38 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hormone-fueled songbirds are steadily forcing out a rival species in North America's Northwestern fir forests and threatening the more timid warblers with extinction, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. They said high levels of testosterone may explain the aggressiveness of the Townsend's warbler, which has been steadily displacing its more timid sister species, the hermit warbler, for thousands of years. "The hermits have slowly been pushed out of Alaska and British Columbia, and now they are being pushed out of Washington," said Luke Butler, a biologist at the University of Washington. "They are running out of places to go." The Townsend's warbler outshines the smaller, less-flashy hermit warbler on several levels. It has dramatic yellow and black streaks, compared to the darker, less striking plumage of the related hermit warbler. Tests showed the Townsend's males have higher levels of male hormones, notably testosterone. Writing in Biology Letters, a journal of Britain's Royal Society, they also said the Townsend males seem to be stealing away hermit warbler females, especially in less-desirable habitat. "In low-quality habitat, Townsend's males are more able to attract females than hermits are," Butler said in a statement. In Washington and Oregon, the researchers found hybrid zones where the birds have mixed plumage. Blood tests show they have the higher hormone levels typical of the Townsend's species. "Many of these are presumably the result of hybrid matings between the 'tough-guy' Townsend's and the females of the 'wimpy' hermit species," Butler said.

Kerry Wins Backing from Nobel Economics Laureates Wed Aug 25, 2004 08:31 AM ET By Michael Conlon PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - John Kerry won the endorsement of 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists on Wednesday as he attacked President Bush for policies that he said have led to the creation of only low-paying jobs. The Democratic presidential nominee released a letter from the economists saying the Bush administration had "embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation." They cited "poorly designed" tax cuts that instead of creating jobs have turned budget surpluses into enormous budget deficits, a "fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation." The endorsement, in the form of an open letter American voters, was signed by George Akerlof and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley, Kenneth Arrow and William Sharpe of Stanford University, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Douglass North of Washington University, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of MIT and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.

Quote of note:

Ginsberg served as the Bush campaign's long-time chief outside counsel. He disclosed on Tuesday that he also gave legal advice to the Swift Boat group, which has attacked Kerry's record in television commercials and a book.

Bet you the legal advice was about how to make sure th elinks back to the bUsh campaign weren't traceable. Anyway… Bush Campaign Lawyer Quits Over Ties to Ad Group Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:43 AM ET CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - A top lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday after disclosing he provided legal advice to a group that accusing Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam War record. Benjamin Ginsberg was the second person working for the Bush campaign to be linked to the group, called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Bush's campaign insists it has no relationship with the group and has denied Kerry's charge the president's re-election team is using such "front groups." "I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing," Ginsberg wrote in a letter to Bush. A copy was released by the Bush campaign.

Check out Republicans have forfeited the aliegance of Black America at The Niggerati Network.

Dean Esmay has had an interesting conversation going the last two days.

Black People: Aren't They Annoying?
So here's a question for my white (and other) readers: Have you ever noticed how annoying black people can be? I mean, seriously. Just admit it: sometimes black folks, they get on your nerves. You want to be all "color doesn't matter" and you want to be all "that nasty crap is in the past" and so on and so forth. You also want to sit there saying, "well I don't discriminate!" and "I don't care about color!" and all that. But come on, you big fat liars. Tell the truth. Black people: don't they annoy you sometimes? Tell me all about it. I dare you, you cowards. Come clean. Sometimes, aren't they annoying? * Update * My God. Have you ever noticed what total wussies most white people are? I asked this question two hours ago and all I get is "hahahaha you're so funny Dean!" and "are you sure you want to ask this?" responses. * Update 2 * My wife just walked in on me and said, "Are you sure you want to ask this question? Are you crazy?" To which my answer is: YES! Come on, you fishbelly-white, narrow-nosed, thin-lipped jerkoffs. What are you afraid of? What, will God smite you for speaking your mind? Do you really think race relations can get better in America if you don't honestly say what you think?

This is hilarious from a guy who promised me a honest discussion on race about a year ago. But I ain't mad atcha. I'm not mad at any of the comments either. The URLs get filed for upcoming object lessons (and I'm really not mad, seriously). Dean's reason for all this comes down to jealousy, it seems:

A lot of people sent me notes or told me in person that it was disturbing that I should publicly ask this question. I got a lot of nervous laughter, and a lot of tongue-clucking. How incredibly rude of me to ask such a question! I grew up racist, by which I mean to say that everyone I knew was racist. I lived in a good, solid, blue collar Democrat part of Chicago, where if you were the wrong color your car had better not break down in our neighborhood. I also knew perfectly well that I should not walk into certain neighborhoods lest I get my ass kicked just for being white. Hell, the Illinois Nazi Party had its headquarters a few blocks from my house. Nowadays, guys like Dave Chapelle are making themselves rich on racist humor. That really gets to me. They're paying Chapelle millions of dollars, and that's all the man does: cracks racist jokes. Whenever he comes on the TV, I want to cover my son's eyes, because I don't want my boy watching that horrible racist crap. I think I'd rather watch a cracker in blackface. That would at least seem honest. So, to answer my own question: Do you know what annoys me most about black people? That poor white trash can't make the jokes that they pay Dave Chapelle millions of dollars to make every day. How sad is that?

Let poor white trash make white redneck jokes, then. THAT is the equivalent of Chapelle's race-based humor. I'll tell you, I LOVED Roseanne. Thought it was hilarious.

Is SF Soft On Hate Crime?
- Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate
Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Washington, DC -- It's all over but the sentencing. But I've still got a lot of problems with the case involving that mob of unruly white teens who beat up five Asian American teens in San Francisco back in June 2003. Just last month, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy found the defendant, a juvenile, to have committed two felony hate crimes against Asian Americans. But the judge gives him a break this week. He won't be sentenced as planned Aug. 25. Instead, sentencing will be pushed back to September or later. And the proceedings, which have been open to the public by legislative exception due to the nature of the crimes, may be closed. Why the hesitation now? Perhaps the judge is trying to show a little sympathy for the juvenile. But, then, why deny the public the satisfaction of seeing the City's legal apparatus take the issue of hate crimes seriously? Insiders say the case would never even have been brought to trial were it not for pressure from the Asian American community. In that case, the defendant would have been able to walk away from his hate crimes without a blemish -- just like more than a dozen of his friends who were also at the crime scene. That's how easy it is to get away with a hate crime in San Francisco.

FIRST LADY SNUBS P. DIDDY First Lady Laura Bush stunned organizers at Monday night's grand opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati by refusing to appear alongside rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Bush -- wife of President George W. Bush -- was scheduled to join actress Angela Bassett and U2 frontman Bono at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, but refused to be snapped with hip-hop mogul Combs. Insiders claim Bush was eager to avoid publicity with Combs, who subsequently axed his appearance at the event after news of the First Lady's decision broke. A source tells Page Six, "Her reps made it very clear to Freedom Center that they would not have Laura Bush appearing in the same photo-op as P. Diddy. "I'm not really sure why they didn't want her to pose with him, but maybe it has something to do with his scandalous past. For whatever the reason, Laura Bush's people did not want her photo taken with him." And staff at the center were further infuriated when Combs pulled out of the ceremony. A spokesman says, "I am not privy to why he's not coming. We are very disappointed." The hip-hop star blamed "an unexpected personal obligation" on his no-show.

The L.A. Times has another one of those Heritage Foundation ads editorials but a Type 2 Economist. It's titled Presto, a Better Jobs Picture, and with a name like that you can tell you need to be suspicious of its contents.

Presto, a Better Jobs Picture
By Timothy Kane
Timothy Kane is a research fellow in macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. August 25, 2004 Few people missed the headlines when the latest employment figures were unveiled earlier this month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The addition of only 32,000 new jobs, or 200,000 fewer than expected, alarmed everyone. Stocks swooned, reporters wrote economic obituaries and President Bush's political opponents crowed. But hardly anyone noticed a new study, published the same day by the same federal agency, that shows payroll job losses have been consistently overestimated since the 2001 recession. How can this be? The problem lies in the way we measure jobs. The BLS has two ways to do that. One is the payroll survey, which charts the number of jobs that employers report to the government. It shows we've lost 1.24 million jobs since March 2001 (including the 32,000 in July). The second is the household survey, in which the Census Bureau queries Americans directly about their job status. It shows we've added 1.81 million jobs since March 2001, including 629,000 last month.

I thought this nonsense about using the household survey data instead of the payroll survey data was effectively debunked. I know this is a Krugman quote an so won't convince Bushites in and of itself. But maybe they'll note where I got the link from; I found the most commercial guys I could, to show people who are serious about understanding how the economy works have taken note.

Bush grows more debt than jobs
PAUL KRUGMAN
N.Y.Times
March 19 As job growth continues to elude the U.S. economy, we're hearing two main excuses from the Bush administration and its supporters: The real situation is much better than you're hearing, and to the extent employment is lagging, it's the result of factors outside the administration's control. But after three years of extravagant promises and dismal results, the time for excuses has passed. Let's start with the real job situation. Readers have asked me about what Marc Racicot, who heads the Bush re-election effort, told Don Imus the other day. He claimed that those miserable job numbers are misleading, and that another survey presents both a more accurate and a much happier story. You can find the same claim all over the right-wing media. But it just isn't so. It's true that there are two employment surveys, which have been diverging lately. The establishment survey, which asks businesses how many workers they employ, says that 2.4 million jobs have vanished in the last three years. The household survey, which asks individuals whether they have jobs, says that employment has actually risen by 450,000. The administration's supporters, understandably, prefer the second number. But the experts disagree. According to Alan Greenspan: �I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate. Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow.� Even the less reliable household survey paints a bleak picture of an economy in which jobs have lagged far behind population growth. The portion of adults who said they were employed fell steeply between early 2001 and the summer of 2003. It has stayed stagnant since then. But wait � hasn't the unemployment rate fallen since last summer? Yes, but that's entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force. Even if you're out of work, you're not counted as unemployed unless you're actively looking for a job. We don't know why so many people have stopped looking for jobs, but it probably has something to do with the scarcity of jobs: 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work more than 15 weeks, a 20-year record. In any case, the administration should feel grateful that so many people have dropped out. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, if they hadn't dropped out, the official unemployment rate would be an eye-popping 7.4 percent, not a politically spinnable 5.6 percent.

Krugman is a Type 1 Economist. Type 2 Economists hate Type 1 Economists because they spread all messy data around. Type 2 Economists are part of the Marketing department. Now, if Tim was a real economist rather than a propagandist, he would be aware of the majority opinion on the relative value of the respective reports. But Type Two Tim has a job to do

But the new BLS study now acknowledges another reason: job-changing. When workers change jobs, they wind up being counted twice in the payroll survey � as employees for their former and new employers. When turnover rates are high, as they were in the late 1990s, it looks as if there are many more jobs than there actually are. But when turnover declines, as it has since 9/11, the jobs figure is closer to reality. Thus, some jobs are cited as "lost" when, in fact, employees have merely stayed at the same jobs.

So Type Two Tim feels we were never as well off as we thought we were. Since we're all anecdotal here, back in the 80s the standard greeting when brothers met, around my way anyway, was "You workin'?" And it was always asked because jobs was scarce and those that existed were touch-and-go. Came the mid-nineties, I wasn't hearing to anymore. I don't run in those circles much anymore (come to think of it, I don't run much anymore) but I've heard it again recently. In order to spin things positively, Type Two Tim must avoid providing the actual numbers involved. He must also avoid mentioning that with 60,000 respondents as opposed to the payroll survey's 160,000, he's arguing in favor to the statistically less reliable of the two reports.

Critics note that the household survey's employment level varies widely from one month to the next. However, variability isn't caused, as is so often charged, by the small sample size. It's caused by the fresh faces in the sample � 15,000 new respondents per month. Over the long term, the instability disappears, and trend lines are clear. Not only is employment growing by millions, but the labor force is too.

This is interesting. First of all, Brad DeLong had a silightly different take on the reason for the differences in the reports.

Nevertheless, enormous differences between the two surveys remain. Even after adjusting the household survey by "subtract[ing] agriculture, self-employment, private households, unpaid family workers, and those on unpaid leave, and add[ing] multiple job holders... seasonally adjusted," the payroll survey shows a 2.4 million fall in the number of jobs since March 2001, while the [fully adjusted] household survey shows a fall of only 0.2 million. This gap is not due to statistical sampling variability: workers are giving different answers to those conducting the household survey than employers are giving to those conducting the payroll survey: a lot of workers think they work (or say they work) for employers, but the employers don't think the workers work for them.

This makes sense to me because I've seen how people give the answer they should. Their public personas answer the survey or poll questions, not the persona that actually makes the decision on the spot. There's a graph in that post that suggests it is not the case that the instability disappears over the long term too.

And there's a third reason to suspect that the payroll survey isn't serving us well: Other economic indicators point to recovery. Real wages are rising. Unemployment is low and declining. (Indeed, the same day the 32,000 figure came out, the unemployment rate was reported to have dropped from 5.6% to 5.5%.) Jobless claims have been declining for the last year and are holding at about 340,000 a week. Levels below 400,000 are widely perceived to reflect a healthy, growing workforce.

If the doctor says the patient's temperature is dropped three degrees, that is good news�if the patient has a fever. Which is to say greater context is necessary for those numbers to have meaning, much less to add value to the discussion. Again, quoting Krugman in March:

Yes, but that's entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force. Even if you're out of work, you're not counted as unemployed unless you're actively looking for a job. We don't know why so many people have stopped looking for jobs, but it probably has something to do with the scarcity of jobs: 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work more than 15 weeks, a 20-year record. In any case, the administration should feel grateful that so many people have dropped out. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, if they hadn't dropped out, the official unemployment rate would be an eye-popping 7.4 percent, not a politically spinnable 5.6 percent.

Back to Tim:

But does it really matter how big the hole is in the side of the Titanic? The point is, the payroll survey is now officially suspect. At the very least, it shouldn't be viewed as superior to the other sources of economic data. Analysts have little choice but to reevaluate all their economic assumptions.

Only those analysts that paid no attention to the widely understood limitations of both reports. But then, Type 2 Economists aren't analysts.

Quote of note:

Two months ago, Bush told the graduating class at the U.S. Air Force Academy that a clash of ideologies should not be viewed as a fight between civilizations or religions. He called Islam a religion that "teaches moral responsibility that ennobles men and women." Fine words, those, and incompatible with letting one of his generals get away with preaching bigotry.

Three-Star Bigotry August 25, 2004 A Defense Department investigation has found that a top Army general violated Pentagon rules with his anti-Muslim remarks to Christian groups, yet one Pentagon official dismissed the errors as "relatively minor." That obtuseness reflects a stunning inability to understand how much the comments have hurt the United States abroad. It is unfathomable why Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has been allowed to keep his job. When Boykin's remarks became known last October, President Bush limited himself to a tepid announcement that the comments about Muslims and Islam did not reflect his point of view or that of his administration. And Boykin soldiers on. The general remains the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, the job he held while appearing in uniform to tell an Oregon religious group in June 2003 that radical Islamists hated the U.S. "because we're a Christian nation … and the enemy is a guy named Satan." He told a Florida audience months earlier that a Muslim Somali warlord was captured because "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Boykin's comments have been widely reported in the Muslim world. They resonate with supporters of Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamic fundamentalists preaching a war between Islam and Christian "crusaders" and Jews. Any time the flames of bigotry wane, a fundamentalist need only broadcast a tape of Boykin again and contend he is mouthing official U.S. policy, made clear by the fact that he holds the same job and wears the same uniform. U.S. Muslims have protested, for good reason.

If you see this post, you are indeed doomed. This is being prepared in MTClient 1.60, and it may well work because P6 is running a severely mutated version of Drupal…it's why anonymous commenting exists, and it supports Movable Type's XML-RPC extensions as well. At some point in the near future I'll see if the file upload works as well. Niggerati.net, on the other hand, is running vanilla Drupal 4.4.2. I've installed w.bloggar so I can post remotely over there. It's not as convenient as MTClient (for instance, all drafts are automatically saved to one name so you can't have several posts in the works). On the other hand, the damn thing works...Drupal supports the Blogger API. As I said, back to Pascal. MTClient needs to be multi-protocol or Drupal needs to support the MT interface. (No, I'm not complaining.) SECONDS LATER: You are indeed doomed. Major code adjustments to get MTClient fully compatible with Drupal…this edit is online because I couldn't retrieve the post…but I get to do the original post with spell checking and whatnot.

Kerry-Edwards 2004: Top Quid Pro Quos of the Bush Administration 8/24/2004 12:29:00 PM

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To: National Desk, Political Reporter Contact: Chad Clanton or Phil Singer, 202-464-2800, both of Kerry-Edwards 2004, Web: http://www.johnkerry.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following fact sheet was released today by Kerry-Edwards 2004: John Kerry: "For four years, we've heard a lot of talk in Washington about values. But values are not just words. They're what we live by. They're the choices we make. ... Every step of the way, George W. Bush has put the narrow interests of the few ahead of the interests of most Americans." Pharmaceutical Industry WHAT THEY GAVE: Pharmaceutical Industry Have Given Millions to Bush. The pharmaceutical industry gave nearly $1.4 million to Bush in 2000, including nearly $450,000 directly to his campaign and $950,000 to his inaugural fund. The pharmaceutical industry has given over $840,000 to Bush-Cheney in 2004. (Center For Responsive Politics, www.crp.org) WHAT THEY GOT: Bush Medicare Policy Grab Bag for Corporate Special Interests. The administration plan is larded with perks for private companies that increase the cost of Medicare and hurt seniors. The legislation made it illegal for Medicare to bargain over price with drug companies, which will add an additional $139 billion in corporate profits to the cost of the bill, according to Ben Peck of the Medicare Rights Center. Bush and GOP leaders overrode a majority in the House to block the re-importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off the cost. Bush's Medicare plan also made it illegal for the government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. (Medicare Rights Center, 11/7/03; Washington Post, 11/21/03; NY Times, 2/3/04; The Hill, 11/19/03; The Times Union, 12/12/03; USA Today, 11/25/03) Insurance Industry WHAT THEY GAVE: Insurance Industry Contributed Heavily to Bush. The insurance industry supported Bush heavily in 2000, and it is doing so again in 2004. The industry was the No. 10 contributor of hard money to the Bush campaign, giving over $1.6 million and includes 14 Pioneers. So far in 2004 the industry has given over $2.6 million and producing eight Pioneers and four Rangers. (Bush's Campaign Ads...Brought To You By Special Interests, Public Citizen, 3/04) WHAT THEY GOT: Bush Has Repeatedly Rewarded Insurance Companies For Their Patronage. Bush's Medicare bill gives $46 billion in subsidies to HMOs and PPO providers to induce them offer private plans to Medicare recipients. Bush successfully derailed a Patients' Bill of Rights in 2001, achieving the objective of the insurance industry Health Benefits Coalition to "get nothing," as its chairman put it. He also watered down medical privacy regulations that the insurance industry opposed and proposes malpractice reform that would be heavily tilted to the interests of the insurance industry. (New York Times, 2/3/04, 3/20/04, 8/1/01, 2/21/01; National Journal, 6/12/01; Washington Times, 6/13/01; Hartford Courant, 1/25/02; LA Times, 3/24/0; Weiss Ratings, 6/3/03; American Insurance Association Press Release, 3/13/02, http://www.aiadc.org ) Electric Utilities WHAT THEY GAVE: Electric utilities gave $13 million to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle. FirstEnergy President Anthony Alexander, TXU Chairman Erle Nye and Thomas Kuhn, head of the industry's main trade group, were named Pioneers in 2000. The coal industry contributed $110,000 to Bush's presidential campaign in 2000, making him the industry's top recipient. The electric utility industry gave Bush $447,000 in PAC and individual contributions during his 2000 presidential campaign. So far, electric utilities have given over $860,000 to Bush-Cheney '04. (Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.crp.org; Bush's Campaign Ads...Brought To You By Special Interests, Public Citizen, 3/04) WHAT THEY GOT: Bush Administration Relaxed Clean Air Rules, Saving Companies Millions. In August 2003, the Bush administration eased the "New Source Review" regulation of the Clear Air Act. The changes allowed older coal fired power plants and other facilities to avoid installing pollution controls when they expand or repair. The rule applies to about 20,000 facilities nationwide that are considered major polluters. The Washington Post reported that "the relaxing of regulatory rules is likely to save utilities and others hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars." (Baltimore Sun, 8/28/03; Chicago Tribune, 8/28/03; LA Times, 8/28/03; WP, 8/28/03) Oil And Gas Industry WHAT THEY GAVE: In the 2000 election cycle, the oil and gas industry contributed over $1.8 million to George W. Bush's election campaign. 2000 Pioneer and longtime Bush associate Don Evans, former chairman of the oil company Tom Brown Inc., was appointed Secretary of the Commerce Department. At least a dozen oil and gas industry officials were named to the transition teams at the Energy and Interior departments as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. So far, the oil and gas industry have given over $2 million to Bush-Cheney '04. (Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.crp.org; Bush's Campaign Ads...Brought To You By Special Interests, Public Citizen, 3/04) WHAT THEY GOT: Unfettered Access to Cheney's Energy Task Force. According to the Washington Post, "A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production." (Washington Post, 3/26/02) WHAT THEY GOT: American Petroleum Institute Got "Wish List" Incorporated Into Energy Plan. Nine days before Bush's inauguration, energy industry lobbyists gathered in the American Petroleum Institute's offices to make a "wish list" for the Bush energy plan. The list was forwarded to the Bush energy transition team, and eventually to the energy task force, where it was incorporated into the Bush administration energy plan. (Newsweek, 5/10/01; New York Times, 5/10/01; 5/20/01; USA Today, 5/14/01; ABC News, World News Tonight, 5/22/01; Washington Post, 5/17/01, 3/26/02) Companies That Outsource WHAT THEY GAVE: 37 Bush-Cheney Pioneers and Rangers are Outsourcers. Between the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, a total of 14 outsourcers pledged to raise $200,000 (Bush Rangers) and 23 pledged to raise $100,000 (Bush Pioneers) for the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Bush campaign received $5.1 million from corporate executives who are sending American jobs abroad. (Economy.com, Los Angeles Times, 2/10/04; New York Times, 10/6/03; http://www.whitehouseforsale.org ) WHAT THEY GOT: More Than a Million Jobs Sent Overseas Under Bush. Since Bush took office, up to 1.2 million jobs have been sent overseas. Yet, in 2004, the President's annual economic report claimed that outsourcing is good for America. Bush's Treasury Secretary John Snow said "You can outsource a lot of activities and get them done just as well at a lower cost." (Economy.com, Los Angeles Times, 2/10/04; New York Times, 10/6/03; Associated Press, 3/30/2004)

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Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.

Quote of note:

All in all, these excuses merely provide cover for poor performance and, in particular, Bush's ineffective policy choices. The president's repeated tax cuts did have an effect on growth and jobs; after all, throwing hundreds of billions of tax cuts at the economy has to do something. However, Bush's tax cuts for the rich raised the GDP in 2003 by just 0.1 percent, far less than the impact of the tax cuts on the middle class or the rise in defense spending. Better choices -- like aid to the states, one-time tax cuts aimed at lower and middle-income families, and extended unemployment insurance -- would have gained us 2 million more jobs by this year and left us with just half the fiscal deficit.

Excuses, Excuses The administration offers plenty of explanations for the poor economy -- just not the true ones. By Lawrence Mishel Web Exclusive: 08.23.04 Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the economy has hit a "soft patch." The recent flurry of bad news makes that pronouncement feel like quite an understatement. First, the 4-percent-plus growth we enjoyed for four straight quarters dropped to only 3 percent in the second quarter (April to June). Then came the news that only 32,000 jobs were created in July -- more than 100,000 less than we need just to keep up with population growth. Obviously, this news doesn't jibe with the White House message that "America's economy is strong and getting stronger." Just as obviously, the president will not take responsibility for the economy's poor performance or the policy choices that got us here. Instead, we can expect more excuse-making. The question is, are the excuses valid?

Quote of note:

Aref, 34, the leader of an Albany mosque, and Hossain, 49, a pizzeria owner, were arrested in a sting operation in which authorities said they agreed to help an FBI informant launder $50,000 from the sale of a shoulder-fired missile as part of a fake plan to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat. …The judge chided the government, saying the case is much weaker now than it first appeared. He said the two were not plotting violence and are not a danger to the community. "The evidence in this case appears less strong today," Homer said. "There is no evidence…to support the claim that Mr. Aref has any contact with any terrorist organization." "There still is no evidence of Mr. Hossain's involvement with any terrorist organization," he said.

U.S. Judge Blasts FBI Case Against Albany Muslims Tue Aug 24, 2004 07:23 PM ET By Ellen Wulfhorst ALBANY, N.Y. (Reuters) - Two Islamic men accused of supporting terrorism after an FBI sting operation were ordered released from jail on Tuesday by a judge who blasted the government's case by saying there is no evidence they have any links to terrorists. U.S. Magistrate David Homer ruled Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain should be released on $250,000 bonds and held in home detention under electronic surveillance while they await trial. He said that could take up to two years so the men will be allowed to work and attend mosque until the trial. The pair had been ordered held without bail earlier this month -- a ruling largely based on an address book that prosecutors said was found in an Iraqi terrorist training camp. The book referred to Aref as "the commander" in Arabic. The government now says that translation was an error and the word is "brother" in Kurdish

Lynne d. Johnson added it to her links listing at BlackThoughtware.org. George Kelly of Negrophile and AllAboutGeorge not only linked but posted there today. I'm talking about the soft launch you're tired of hearing about: The Niggerati Network. I have a good feeling about the site. Besides George and myself there are four other contributors working out how they want to work it. Because NN right now has no form but a lot of intent.

This is dragging on too long. Subpoena Novak. He should have been the first and the last.

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Time Reporter Answers Questions About Plame Leak
Cooper Reaches Deal with Justice Department to Avoid Jail By Carol Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 24, 2004; 4:13 PM Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper has avoided the threat of jail by agreeing to be interviewed yesterday by Justice Department prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative to journalists. Time magazine said in a statement today that Cooper agreed to give a deposition "because the one source the special counsel asked about," Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, had waived a confidentially agreement he had with Cooper. The statement from Time spokesperson Diana Pearson said that Libby also had agreed to allow the magazine to disclose its agreement with him. "The deposition, which took place yesterday in the Washington, D.C. office of Mr. Cooper's attorney, Floyd Abrams, focused entirely on conversations Mr. Cooper had with Mr. Libby, one of Mr. Cooper's sources for the articles he helped author about the leak in July 2003," the Time statement said. "Following the deposition, the contempt orders against both Time, Inc. and Mr. Cooper were vacated." An order signed yesterday by U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan and released today cleared Cooper of the civil contempt citation that Hogan had issued for Cooper two weeks ago.

Reforming Intelligence: A Forgotten Report Pressure builds on the Bush Administration to release a post-9/11 reform document By TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON Has the White House been sitting on a credible proposal for serious intelligence reform for more than two years? Knowledgeable government sources say that a classified March 2002 report from GOP foreign policy eminence Brent Scowcroft, produced for President Bush, proposed reforms similar to key recommendations of the 9/11 commission. Among them: making the current position of Director of Central Intelligence into the national intelligence czar, with authority over a separate CIA director and all or most of the $40 billion annual intelligence budget. One government source said the document contains little sensitive national security information and that its secret status is largely cover for the White House to avoid releasing a potentially embarrassing report. But pressure is now building on the President to make Scowcroft�€™s report public, or at least show it to lawmakers considering major intelligence reforms in the wake of the hard-hitting 9/11 commission report. At a hearing last week, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts said he had recently �€œbegged [Scowcroft] on hands and knees to release the report�€� to the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services panels. Roberts indicated that Scowcroft, who chairs the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, said that decision was up to Bush. Roberts hopes to call Scowcroft to appear before the committee, at least in closed session, an official said. Also during last week�€™s Senate hearings on intelligence reform, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld �€” who had strenuously opposed Scowcroft�€™s recommendations, which would strip key intelligence agencies and their multi-billion dollar budgets out of the Pentagon �€” acknowledged when pressed by Senator Edward Kennedy that he�€™d been briefed on the Scowcroft report and could think of no reason why it remains classified. The White House declined several opportunities to comment this week, and a Scowcroft aide said he was traveling and could not be reached.

Slavery Under Glass New black-history museums try to balance authenticity and uplift By RICHARD LACAYO/CINCINNATI Although most visitors to the new Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, will approach it from the side facing downtown, that's actually the rear of the building. The glass-walled main entry is on the other side, facing south across the banks of the Ohio River. The center turns its face in that direction for good reason. The river is at the heart of the story it will tell. In the mid-19th century, those waters were a fateful dividing line. Separating free-soil Ohio from slave-owning Kentucky, they were a desperate crossing point for runaway slaves. The river's north banks were the site of persistent low-intensity warfare between abolitionists and armed slave owners, who were permitted by law to pursue their human "property" into free states. In that era of escalating confrontation, Cincinnati and nearby towns became important way stations in the Underground Railroad, the informal network of safe houses, sympathetic whites and free blacks who helped conduct escaped slaves to safety. The Freedom Center, which has its grand opening this week, is part of a wave of more than 20 new museums dedicated to African-American history that are now in development around the country. They include the U.S. National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Va., the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African History and Culture in Baltimore, Md. Add to those the numerous locales from the 20th century civil rights movement, like the Montgomery, Ala., bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested, that are increasingly being turned into monuments and pilgrimage points, and it's clear that the story of African-American life, for so long passed over in near silence, is finally being set down in stone.

Israel Urged to Change Stand on Geneva Convention Tue Aug 24, 2004 11:51 AM ET By Mark Heinrich JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hoping to avoid sanctions, Israel's attorney general wants Israel to consider applying to Palestinians the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguarding the treatment of occupied people, political sources said Tuesday. It was another sign of emerging Israeli disquiet about potential exposure to international sanctions following a World Court decision in July that declared illegal its barrier built across Palestinian farmland in the West Bank. Israel has said previously the Geneva Convention's clauses on occupation do not apply to it because Jordanian and Egyptian control over the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 was not internationally recognized.

How can a Black person work for the Republican Party and not expect to be the gatekeeper for Black folks? Ex-worker sues RNC for discrimination
By Emily Fredrix, Associated Press Writer | August 23, 2004
WASHINGTON --A former field director is accusing the Florida Republican Party of racial discrimination in a federal lawsuit. Nadia Naffe also named the Republican National Committee and Bush-Cheney '04 in the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Tampa. Naffe says she was fired from her job, which she held from August 2003 to April of this year, after she complained about being assigned to work with black organizations, events and issues. Naffe, 25, of Tampa, was the only black field director at the time. She said she was told, "You understand your people." After refusing the assignments, Naffe said she was called insubordinate and "not a team player." The lawsuit says she contacted the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and was soon after fired. A message seeking comment from the Florida Republican Party was not immediately returned. Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the RNC, said Naffe has never been an employee of the committee. "Instead of true conservatism, she found herself faced with discrimination and intolerance. And instead of compassion, she found retaliation," said one of Naffe's lawyers, Cyrus Mehri of Washington.

Alleged vigilantes show videos of US, UN contacts By Paul Haven, Associated Press | August 24, 2004 KABUL, Afghanistan -- Three Americans accused of torturing prisoners at a private jail played videos at their trial yesterday showing a top Afghan official pledging his full support to the alleged vigilantes, then sending his security force on a raid with them. The videos, and one showing NATO peacekeepers in a separate raid, were part of the defense's effort to prove that the counterterrorism operation had the backing of the Pentagon and Afghan officials and was not a rogue mission as the prosecution alleges. Jonathan Idema, Brent Bennett, and Edward Caraballo face up to 20 years in jail if convicted on charges of kidnapping and torture. Four alleged Afghan accomplices are also on trial. The crowded courtroom was chaotic and often farcical, with poorly trained translators struggling to keep up with a stream of shouted commentary from Idema, the prosecutor, and witnesses sitting in the gallery. At times, the translators got caught up in the moment and offered opinions. Idema is conducting his own defense and frequently shouted objections based on his interpretation of the Afghan Constitution and criminal code.

D.C. Thornton links to James Hudnall's detailing the connections of intent etc. between progressive populist action groups and the Democratic Party. The gentlemen feel Mr. Hudnall has presented evidence of major hypocrisy on the part of Democrats.

Or check out this statement from a Democrat website.

The Democratic Party is partnering with MoveOn.org, People for the American Way, Campaign for America's Future, and dozens of other groups representing millions of Americans to organize a massive public mobilization. On Wednesday, May 14, join us by calling and emailing your representatives in Congress to let them know that the majority of Americans oppose more irresponsible tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to the wealthiest sliver of Americans.

Which is amusing since the Dems are trying to blame Bush for working with a 527 org. …And Bush, on the other hand, has said he's against 527s and asks for Kerry and to join him in stopping these ads.

Thing is, no one on the progressive side is complaining about 527 organization. We're complaining about lies. The important discussion comes down to whether there's evidence to even justify the rest of the conversation. The second most important discussion is set by the results of the first. If, as I hold, the entire discussion is frivolous, the next thing we need to do is internalize the fact that those who raised the discussion are bad actors. Not specifically Arnold, but… Again, when a 527 organization lies, the problem is the lie, not the organization. So of COURSE Kerry will not join George W. Bush in calling for an end to "these ads." He has no problem with "these ads," and therefore should not. On the other hand, Kerry has asked Bush to join him in calling for an end to "these lies." If Bush has no problem with "these lies" he should not join in Kerry's efforts to end them. Seeing the difference in the two positions is easy when you look at it that way, isn't it?

On the part of Regnery Publishing, I mean. By shorting Barnes and Noble they instantly feed the right's conspiracy machine and create instant buzz. And people hungry for something to actually examine are stuck listening to spin on TV. Anyway… Barnes & Noble Says 'Unfit' Sellout Not Its Fault Mon Aug 23, 2004 07:51 PM ET By Bob Tourtellotte LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Controversial book "Unfit for Command," which fires an election-year salvo at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's war record, has claimed one unintended victim -- bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Inc. Barnes & Noble, the world's largest bookseller, on Monday issued a statement saying it had sold out of the book and, in effect, held up its hands in surrender to what it called "thousands of complaints" from both supporters and detractors of the book. Supporters, Barnes & Noble said, are claiming the bookseller has intentionally not stocked the title or is hiding it, while detractors are asking stores to remove it altogether. "(Complaints) started in the stores, and the home office has been inundated as well," said a company spokeswoman. She said the company's statement was meant to "set the record straight." It is not Barnes & Noble's fault, she said, but rather small publisher Regnery Publishing who cut the chain's original order in half. "We've been put in the difficult position of having to defend ourselves over a title we can't seem to get enough copies of from the publisher," Barnes & Noble chief executive Steve Riggio said in the statement. A spokesman for Regnery was not immediately available for comment.

Quote of note:

"I think it is smart to have the Giulianis and the Schwarzeneggers," said Representative James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania. "Obviously, this race is going to be settled by the moderate voters of both parties. My lament is the party has not tried to figure out how to do that year-round."

G.O.P. Centrists to Speak at Convention, but Will They Be Heard? By CARL HULSE WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - To the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, the ideological bent of some of the speakers set to star at the Republican National Convention is proof that there is plenty of room for diverse points of view under the Republican umbrella. "We still have moderates in our party," said Representative DeLay, a Texas conservative. "We have so many moderates that that is all that is speaking at our national convention." Mr. DeLay's humor aside, the convention prominence being given to politicians like Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, George E. Pataki of New York and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York is fueling a debate over the role of Republicans who hew more to the center. Those who once might have been called Rockefeller Republicans say the prime-time slots set aside to present a centrist image show that the leadership knows the party must broaden its appeal to retain the White House. But they worry about their real influence in a party dominated by conservatives at a time when the ranks of House moderates are thinning and an activist group zeros in on candidates it brands RINO's, Republican in Name Only. "Frankly, if the president wins walking away with this, maybe the country is in a different place than where the moderate Republicans are," said Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Bush administration official who is writing a book titled "It's My Party Too." "If he loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people."

The tactic is now clear. Form some really obviously pandering organization and call it a 527. Have the organization do some really tacky things. When people complain about the pandering and the lies, blame 527s collectively for making it possible. It's the same thing that was done to redefine racism and affirmative action programs: smear the description so thinly, make it cover so much that it becomes impossible to specify them in any meaningful way. The intent is to assign a level of credibility to any organization that fits under these particular regulations, regardless of what they actually say. It doesn't matter if they are all discredited or all acknowledged. We should be clear that what we are now calling 527 organizations started out with a different name: populist action groups. We should be clear what the Republican machine, The Mighty Wurlizter, is targeting and why. Populist action groups are the return of a nightmare to the upper classes. They are to the political process what unions were to the economic process: a means of countering massively centralized power. This is a natural evolution in our political economy. And conservative folks will be needing such a voice one day as well, so they ought to be just as concerned over the twisting of intent within the letter of the law as progressives are. We can't stop wealthy people's attempts to add weight to their end of the lever via 527s. But we can make th eeffort useless by how we judge them. We should consider them valid to the degree they represent an actual constituency. If those six and seven figure donations Bush claims are driving them are the major source of funding we are not talking about a populist action group. We've talking an unsupported personal vendetta. And hold the organizations to Truth in Advertising laws; hold them legally liable for documentable falsehoods and active deception. That alone would silence, for example, the SBV crew.

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Quote of note:

The Bush campaign strongly denied any ties to the new group and said that to the contrary, the Kerry campaign had benefited from millions in advertising financed by advocacy organizations with links to the senator's election drive. A Bush spokesman, Scott Stanzel, also called attention to remarks Mr. Bush made Monday about 527 committees. "The president's view is very clear," Mr. Stanzel said. "His position is that all unregulated soft money is wrong for the process."

Businesses Plan Attack on Edwards
By GLEN JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - The United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups plan to spend roughly $10 million attacking trial lawyers, including Senator John Edwards, by financing a new organization that will run television and mail advertisements in critical swing states. That organization, the November Fund, was created this month in an effort to paint Mr. Edwards as among lawyers who, through a proliferation of lawsuits, have increased the cost of health care and insurance, damaging the business climate nationwide and as a result harming many communities. Officials involved in the new group declined to comment publicly. But its co-chairmen are Craig L. Fuller, who was an aide to President Ronald Reagan and chief of staff to his vice president, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Brock, former senator, labor secretary and Republican national chairman. …The November Fund begins its undertaking at a time when Republicans and Democrats are warring over the role of advocacy groups in this year's election, particularly so-called 527 committees like the November Fund, which can still collect the six- and seven-figure "soft money" checks forbidden to candidates and political parties. Liberal groups with Democratic connections have spent tens of millions on advertisements attacking President Bush in recent months, and a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has Republican links, has made headlines with commercials questioning Mr. Kerry's war record. The Kerry campaign has accused the Swift boat group of coordinating with the Bush campaign, a step that would be illegal under campaign finance law.

Defense Leaders Faulted by Panel in Prison Abuse By ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 - A high-level outside panel reviewing American military detention operations has concluded that leadership failures at the highest levels of the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff and military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, Defense officials said Monday. The report, set to be released Tuesday, does not explicitly blame Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the misconduct or for ordering policies that condoned or encouraged it. But the panel implicitly faults Mr. Rumsfeld, as well as his top civilian and military aides, for not exercising sufficient oversight over a confusing array of policies and interrogation practices at detention centers in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, officials said. The military's Joint Staff, which is responsible for allocating military resources among the various combatant commanders, is criticized for not recognizing that military police officers at Abu Ghraib were overwhelmed by an influx of detainees, while the ratio of prisoners to guards was much lower at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The report also criticizes the top commander in Iraq at the time, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, for not paying close enough attention to worsening conditions at Abu Ghraib, delegating oversight of prison operations to subordinates. The highest-ranking Army reservist charged in the Abu Ghraib case, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, said Monday that he would plead guilty to at least some charges. [Page A6.] In contrast to the half dozen military inquiries into aspects of the Abu Ghraib scandal, including the roles of the military police and military intelligence officials, the four-member panel led by James R. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary, was appointed by Mr. Rumsfeld to identify gaps in the reviews and offer a critique of senior officials' roles that uniformed military officers might be reluctant to level against superiors.

Of course they are. Though Dubya doesn't specify whose system they're bad for. It's the Republican Fund Raising System the 527s are bad for, in the same way that new, highly effective competition is always bad for an established power. Anyway… President Urges Outside Groups to Halt All Ads By ELISABETH BUMILLER and KATE ZERNIKE CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 23 - President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry. Mr. Bush spoke to reporters at his Texas ranch after a weekend in which veterans supporting and opposing Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, furiously debated mostly unsubstantiated accusations against him by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In television appearances, a book and television advertisements, these Vietnam veterans have argued that Mr. Kerry fabricated the circumstances leading to his three Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star and discredited veterans with his antiwar statements when he returned from Vietnam three decades ago. Asked on Monday about one of the anti-Kerry advertisements, financed largely by Texas supporters of Mr. Bush, the president said that he wanted to stop "all of them.'' "That means that ad, every other ad,'' he said. The president spoke on a day when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, in another indication of its web of ties to the Republican Party, acknowledged that a woman who helped set it up and works for it is an officer of the Majority Leader's Fund, a political action committee affiliated with the former House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas. The name of the woman, Susan Arceneaux, is given as the contact person on the post office box that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lists as its address. She is treasurer of the Majority Leader's Fund. Records show that like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group receives significant financing from Bob Perry, a Texan who has long supported Mr. Bush, and his company, as well as Sam and Charles Wyly, prominent Texas Republican donors. Sam Wyly, under the name "Republicans for Clean Air,'' took out advertisements in 2000 criticizing the environmental record of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Mr. Perry has donated $200,000 to the Swift boat group, records show, and Merrie Spaeth, a Republican strategist who has been advising the Swift boat group, was a spokeswoman for Sam Wyly's advertising campaign in 2000. Mr. Bush put his remarks about the advertisement by the Swift boat group in the context of his previous calls for a ban on advertisements from third-party groups known as 527's, using large, unlimited donations. Only when pressed by reporters whether he specifically meant the commercial from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, did he say "all of them.'' "I don't think we ought to have 527's,'' Mr. Bush said, referring to independent political groups that are running advertisements on both sides of the political spectrum. "I can't be more plain about it and I wish - I hope my opponents join me in saying - condemning these activities of 527's. I think they are bad for the system.''

Check this!

Blackball You might notice something missing from Hardball With Chris Matthews soon: Republicans. " Hardball may seem more like badminton during the Republican National Convention," threatens a GOP insider. What's up? The GOP thinks Matthews has gone over to Sen. John Kerry 's side and is too critical of the Bush campaign's editing of a Hardball interview with Kerry posted on the party's negative site, www.kerryoniraq.com. As payback, they've stopped urging Republicans to appear on the show. Hardball executive producer Tammy Haddad dismisses charges Matthews is biased: "We beat everybody up." So far, nobody from the White House has told her of the show's being blackballed.

Now you know I gots ta check out what got Chris so heated, right? Ta-daaa! Get your Windows Media Player ready and suffer the commercial. It's eight minutes of pure justice.

Hardball has a blog, called Hardblogger. I found an interesting bit of backstory on Bill Rood's bearing witness to the SBV's false witness. You know Bill Rood by now, right? the Chicago Tribune editor that was the only officer on the only other boat that was on the scene when Kerry got that Silver Star. Anyway, Keith Olbermann says

It's not big news outside of the midwest, but the Trib has been locked, for weeks, in a death-grip struggle over a panoply of bewildering issues, with the city's Democratic Mayor, Richard M. Daley. In Chicago, where pure partisan politics has devolved into a primary-based beauty contest, Daley is a small-d Dem. But outside of it, he's as Democratic as John Kerry or Bill Clinton. There are no questions about where his loyalties or his national self-interests lie. You will see his late father cast a vote for George Bush sooner than you'll see him do it (not impossible given Illinois's history of post-mortem election returns, but still unlikely). The Daley/Tribune battle has grown so fierce that the city, on inconclusive structural evidence, has threatened to padlock Wrigley Field, home of the Tribune's wholly-owned baseball money-machine, the Chicago Cubs. This is war between Daley the Democrat and the vast Tribune Corporation. And the Trib's suits ran Rood's historical valentine to Kerry anyway. News organizations are populated by humans, most of them politically aware, and many of them politically slanted. But news organizations are owned, virtually uniformly, by gigantic corporations that are, almost by charter, conservative. I worked for Tribune -- they're conservative. I worked within baseball -- it's conservative. So there's the political affiliation back-story to the Rood pieces. The stories wind up being pro-Kerry, and they're printed while the Conservative corporation for which the editors who approved them work, is locked in a steel-cage match with a Democratic mayor who wants to screw their Conservative ballclub. I think the non-partisanship of the reporting passes the smell test.

I'm sorry, but when I read

"He's got himself into this wicket now where he can't extricate himself because not every one of these people can be Republican liars,'' said Mr. Dole, whose right arm was left limp by a war injury. "There's got to be some truth to the charges," he said.

…my first reaction was, "I've seen that line of reasoning before…" It was from people defending The Bell Curve. In particular, it came from people who hadn't read the book, people who liked what they heard it said. The argument was, "well, even if THAT'S wrong, there's just so much there it can't all be wrong." The Bell Curve was, in fact, the first of a spate of cornerstones and doorstops published by the Right Wing Think Tank Industry, including The End of Racism…books whose most impressive aspect was their appearance of weightiness. The fact is, they can, indeed, all be Republican liars. They have the discipline and cash to pull it off. Find yourself an honest Republican and ask him, not if he thinks Bush is behind it but if he thinks Bush's people have the cash and discipline to run such a campaign. Dole was such a gentleman before his Rational Republican wing was plowed under by Newt and the Neocons. I miss that gentle old man…

"I mean, one day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons,'' Mr. Dole said. "The next day he's standing there, 'I want to be president because I'm a Vietnam veteran.' "

One day? Next day? TRY THIRTY YEARS. The loss of the ability to distinguish the different time frames involved is what convinces me Bob is still a gentleman at heart, he's just being manipulated by Evil Neocons. And that could only happen to a man of his stature if he's gone senile. Ipso facto… (I hear a certain plasticity of morals is a common side effect of Viagra toxicity)

Progressives' work will not be done with this election. From The Right's New Wing Diverse and well funded, the next generation of conservatives is winning battles on campus. But not all are fighting for George W. Bush By JOHN CLOUD …Three main conservative groups have reshaped student politics: --The Young America's Foundation (YAF), a Herndon, Va., organization, founded in 1969, that sponsored 200 conservative lectures across the country last year (in addition to the National Conservative Student Conference). At many schools, those speeches have become the biggest events of the semester. Last year at Duke, for instance, YAF speaker Ben Stein, an ex �€” Nixon aide and former Comedy Central host, attracted 1,500 people, 200 of whom had to be turned away �€” a bigger crowd than the one that had come to hear Maya Angelou two months earlier. With its $13 million annual budget, the foundation �€” run by a former Reagan Administration adviser, Ron Robinson �€” is now the nation's largest advocacy group devoted to student politics. (This YAF is not to be confused with another conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom, which flourished in the '60s and '70s.) --The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) of Wilmington, Del., a 51-year-old group whose first president was Buckley. The institute spends nearly $1 million a year helping students publish conservative newspapers. Its Collegiate Network of papers now includes 85 publications, a record number for the institute. The ISI spent an additional $9 million last year on conservative books, periodicals like Campus and fellowships worth as much as $40,000 for individual students. --The Leadership Institute, based in Arlington, Va. Led by former Reagan aide Morton Blackwell, 64, the institute had a record 3,562 graduates last year. The students, most of whom attend college or high school, learn about p.r., fund raising and direct mail; aspiring young pols get "candidate development" training. In its 25 years, according to Blackwell, the institute has trained some 40,000 conservatives �€” the movement's field army �€” including nearly 200 who went on to become state legislators and more than 300 who wound up as staff members on Capitol Hill. Because of the social movements of the '60s and '70s, when we think of college activism, we tend to imagine Kent State and braless young women. But today the left can claim no youth organizations as powerful as YAF, ISI or the Leadership Institute. One of the biggest young-liberal groups, the Sierra Student Coalition (an arm of the Sierra Club), has a budget of just $350,000 for 150 college chapters. There were once as many as 200 left-leaning Public Interest Research Groups at U.S. universities, but today only about half that number exist. Last school year, the 38-year-old National Organization for Women spent twice the amount it usually does on campus in order to publicize April's feminist march on Washington, but the total, $500,000, was just 4% of Young America's budget. New, energetic liberal groups such as Students Against Sweatshops and the League of Pissed Off Voters have won some media attention, but it's not yet clear whether they will thrive. By contrast, the College Republican National Committee, which atrophied to just 409 chapters in 1998, now lists active members on 1,148 campuses. The College Democrats of America say they have members on 903 campuses, 20% fewer.

Economic Models Predict Bush Election Win Mon Aug 23, 2004 02:25 PM ET By Alan Elsner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite an embarrassing failure in their forecasting four years ago, political scientists and economists are again predicting the outcome of the presidential election, and most foresee a win for President Bush. "If this election follows historical patterns, it looks very likely that Bush is going to win," said Ray Fair, a Yale University economist whose model is built mainly around gross domestic product growth and predicts that Bush will take 58.5 percent of the vote. Current polls show a very close race with many suggesting that Democratic nominee John Kerry may be slightly ahead. There is a wide variety of election models available. Each takes different combinations of factors to calculate a prediction for the Nov. 2 vote but all rely heavily on economic data -- usually growth, inflation, unemployment, wage growth or a combination of these factors. Chris Wlezien, a political scientist based at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford in Britain, is predicting Bush will win 52.5 percent of the vote in a model that combines income growth with presidential approval ratings. Four years ago, Wlezien forecast that then-Vice President Al Gore would win with 54.5 percent of the vote. In fact, he took 50.5 percent and lost the state-by-state Electoral College vote after the Supreme Court settled a bitter dispute over the outcome of the vote in Florida.

Louisiana Judge Reopens Ballot in Congressional Race Mon Aug 23, 2004 01:48 PM ET BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) - A Louisiana judge on Monday ordered state officials to reopen the ballot in a U.S. congressional race and allow new candidates to enter because of a last minute party switch by the district's incumbent. District Court Judge Allen Edwards ruled that Rep. Rodney Alexander sought to manipulate the ballot system when he switched his affiliation from Democrat to Republican shortly before the sign-up period ended on Aug. 6. His switch gave the state's 5th district voters a field of two Republicans and one low profile Democrat. Democrats had filed a lawsuit seeking Alexander's removal from the race because of his late party switch, or a ruling that would allow them to field a stronger Democratic challenger. "Anyone else who desires to qualify at this point, be it Rodney Alexander or anyone else, would have to qualify as is provided by the election code," said Andrew Ralston, the Judge Edwards' clerk. Officials must reopen the ballot for the Nov. 2 election this week, pending appeals to the judge's ruling. Alexander, who won his first term in a tight race two years ago in the largely Republican district, incensed Democrats when he switched parties just minutes before the sign-up deadline. He had qualified as a Democrat earlier in the week. The switch left Alexander with one GOP challenger, former state senator John "Jock" Scott, and a virtually unknown Democrat rival, Zelma "Tisa" Blakes. Under Louisiana's open primary system, if no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the top two vote winners face off, regardless of party affiliation.

I'm not going to make it to the Million Billionaire's March next Saturday. I just remembered there's two hours of Yu-Gi-Oh! coming on at 11:00. A man has to have priorities.

Bush Says 'That Ad' Attacking Kerry Should Stop
Mon Aug 23, 2004 02:53 PM ET By Adam Entous CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Under pressure from Democrats and Republican Sen. John McCain, President Bush on Monday called for ads attacking John Kerry's record in Vietnam to be stopped along with others run by independent groups, and said Kerry should be proud of his war service. "That means that ad and every other ad," Bush said when asked if he wanted to bring a stop to commercials by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which accuse Sen. Kerry of lying about his war record in Vietnam. Bush said Kerry "served admirably" in Vietnam, adding: "He ought to be proud of his record." But Bush stopped short of directly condemning the charge that Kerry lied about his actions.

The problem isn't that 527 organizations can produce political ads. The problem is untruthful political ads, regardless of who pays for them. This SBV thing is a dual attack, and I believe the secondary layer…the attempt to discredit 527s in general…is the more critical to the Republican Party. The things haven't been flexing for a full year and have already pretty much neutralized the Republican money-raising advantage. That, in the USofA, is power. The simple truth is, Republicans can't keep up in the 527 arena because they are the party of the wealthy and the party of the broke-ass-ain't-got-a-pot-to-piss-in but still-have-that-sense-of-entitlement. They CAN match the money but it would come in huge chunks that would put the lie to claims of populism. For instance, that group of negors in DC that took out the anti-Kerry racist ads on Black radio stations would likely be embarassed if forced to itemize the donations they've received. One week after the organization was formed they had the cash to take out those ads, so you KNOW the money came in one large package. Too many exposures like that and the class-warfare aspect of the Conservative platform will become too obvious. For the first time, populists have a tools to challenge the wealthy's lock on communications, organization and power. The rhetoric makes it clear the attack is being waged against the tool as much as, if not more than, the tool's effect. When Bush loses, watch the follow-up spin, on how liberal elites manipulated the campaign finance laws and only YOU can save us now. The Republican Party, more accurately the neocon contingent that runs it, are the last long-term thinkers in America (outside reifications of ancient deities). Long-term, the ability to attribute a Bush loss to progressive elites and their 527s would be almost as good as a Bush win. That will have to be countered. Progressives' work will not be done with this election.

I have come to the conclusion that Pat Buchanon is much like Sigmund Freud: he draws really questionable conclusions from really excellent observations. Quote of note:

Enter the "cakewalk" neoconservatives. Though disastrously wrong about Iraq's receptivity to U.S.-imposed democracy, and though they face disgrace and oblivion if Bush loses, they have one last card to play: That is to have America widen her wars with Afghanistan and Iraq with a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. For the neoconservatives, Iraq was simply Phase II of "World War IV" for imperial domination of the Middle East and serial destruction of the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The neocons have not abandoned this imperial project. Nor has Bush removed a single one from power, though they may yet cost him his presidency. And the neoconservative commentariat is again beating the drums for war �€“ this time on Iran. This is their hole card. If they can ignite a new war, the country may forget how they bungled the old war. In escalation lies vindication.

Neocons Seek Vindication in Escalation by Patrick J. Buchanan "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." This is the heart of the Bush Doctrine from the president's "axis of evil" address to Congress. And the nations that constituted that axis were Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Under this doctrine, Iraq was invaded, Saddam overthrown and his army disbanded, though we have yet to find any of the "world's most destructive weapons." With North Korea, the train has left the station. Pyongyang can now produce nuclear weapons and may possess half a dozen. For nations like North Korea and men like Kim Jong Il do not build costly and complex ballistic missiles simply to throw conventional explosives across an ocean. Which leaves Iran. With Moscow's assistance, Tehran has been constructing a nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Once operational, Bushehr will, like Yongbyon in North Korea, yield plutonium as a byproduct.

I've been picking out the protests and such I want to semi-attend (semi because I'm going as photographer/writer rather than participant). Friday, August 27th

• 7pm Critical Mass Against the RNC - North Union Square (16th St. and 4th Ave.) Critical Mass is an international event held in hundreds of cities on six continents that occurs on the last Friday of every month when bicyclists spontaneously come together to ride the ordinarily car-clogged streets of their cities.

Saturday, August 28th

• 5:00-7:45 Ring-Out against the RNC -RINGOUT's World Trade Center/Ground Zero Observance: Join us in ringing bells in a giant ring around the WTC site! 3,000+ small bells will be given out free & bring your own larger bells! If you want to help us or want participant updates, email us at [email protected]. www.RingOut.org

Sunday, August 29th

• 12pm Million Billionaire March - Outside front of Plaza Hotel (59th & 5th) Billionaires for Bush from all across America - from Beverly Hills to Grosse Pointe to Wall Street - will converge on the streets of New York for a massive "Million Billionaire March" to celebrate President Bush's favoritism towards the corporate elite. With a combined net worth of over $1,000,000,000,000,000, join the Million Billionaire March as we overwhelm UFPJ's tiny 250,000 person march. Limo and marching band to accompany; formal attire required. Sponsored by Billionaires for Bush.
• 3pm-Fun Calls for Action Against Broadway Plays, See 5pm. There has been a call for a "Mouse Bloc" and "Chaos on Broadway" to "Disrupt [the RNC delegates'] merry-making" See above links for details. There has also been a call for a Love-In-NYC as an antidote to the engineered fear of Homeland Security. Location TBA - email [email protected]
• 5pm Big Tent Event, Sponsored by the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay and lesbian lobbying group for the GOP. At Bryant Park Grill, 25 W. 40th St. between Fifth and Sixth Avenue (212) 840-6500 or (212) 206-8815. Fax (212) 206-8841

Tuesday, August 31st

• Conference and Rally of the Uninsured - First of a two-day conference by the Campaign for a National Health Program Now!. Download a pdf of their program here. At the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue.

You may notice I have little trust in the government of Sudan.

---

Nigeria Wants AU Troops to Disarm Darfur Rebels Sun Aug 22, 2004 05:46 PM ET By Dino Mahtani ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday proposed to give a greater role to African Union (AU) troops in restoring peace to Sudan's Darfur region on the eve of talks between the Sudanese government and rebels. Obasanjo, who is also AU chairman, said the international force should disarm Darfur rebels as part of a deal that would see the government disarm the Janjaweed, a pro-government militia accused of driving a million people from their homes. "I believe that the AU protection force with the observers and government of Sudan must work together to garrison the rebels and put them in a position where the arms are collected," Obasanjo said on live television show on Sunday. "Concurrently the government of Sudan must lay heavily on the Janjaweed." Rwanda has already sent 155 troops to protect AU representatives monitoring a cease-fire between the two sides in Darfur, and Nigeria is due to send another 150 this week. But Nigeria is already thinking of sending up to 1,500 troops and other African nations have offered to join them. Previous Darfur peace talks broke down in July after rebels demanded Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed as a precondition. "The government argument is 'If we disarm them, we have to make sure the rebels are disarmed'," Obasanjo said. "The government may not be capable of peaceful disarmament of the rebels. This is where the efforts of the AU will be necessary." The Sudanese government has already rejected the presence of foreign troops for anything other than protecting monitors. The Darfur revolt broke out in early 2003 after years of conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers over scarce resources in the arid, landlocked region. Obasanjo said Khartoum armed the Arab Janjaweed militia to fight the rebels, but refugees accuse them of looting and burning villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The U.N. says the fighting has sparked the world's worst humanitarian crisis with about 200,000 refugees in neighboring Chad and more than one million displaced inside Sudan. Up to 50,000 have been killed.

Vietnam Vet Says Has No Proof for Claim Kerry Lied Sun Aug 22, 2004 07:07 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A veteran who disputed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam war record acknowledged on Sunday he had no proof to back his charge that Kerry fabricated the reports of enemy fire that won him two medals. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Van Odell, a member of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that has spearheaded a campaign against Kerry's service record, said his was one of seven eyewitness accounts and he was not being directed by President Bush's campaign. He has charged that then Navy Lt. Kerry, a Swift boat commander, fabricated the "after-action" report saying he faced enemy fire on March 13, 1969, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart for being wounded while pulling a fellow soldier to safety. "I do not have a single document," Odell said. "I have the fact that I wasn't wounded in that 5,000 meters of fire that he wrote about."

They started out so well…

End to ban on reimported drugs is good medicine The state of Illinois is about to become a federal lawbreaker �€” and proud of it. Last week, it announced that in September it will help residents buy medicine from pre-screened pharmacies in Canada and Europe. That violates a ban against reimporting U.S.-made drugs from other countries. But when a prescription drug for heartburn, Aciphex, costs more than twice as much in the USA as it does in Ireland, Illinois figures being a scofflaw is worth it. Illinois represents the most brazen defiance to date of the federal ban, imposed because of safety concerns about reimported medicines. Its action shows how far politicians and consumers will go to cope with sky-high prescription drug bills at home. The steep difference in costs explains why seniors ride buses to Canada and Mexico to buy medicines, Canadian mail-order pharmacies thrive and other states have helped residents buy drugs abroad, but not as extensively as Illinois intends. An end to the ban is overdue. Although federal officials have threatened to punish violators of the ban, they've been reluctant to act. Now, support for the ban is cracking �€” and none too soon. President Bush said last week that he'd reconsider the ban if assured about safety issues, Democratic opponent John Kerry wants the ban lifted immediately, and Congress is weighing legislation to lift the restriction.

Then the screwed it up. Badly.

Drugs are cheaper abroad because government price controls keep other nations from paying their fair share of research-and-development (R&D) costs for new medicines �€” $800 million a drug on average, according to the drug industry. The U.S. pays higher prices to subsidize breakthrough drugs that other countries can buy on the cheap. Ending the reimportation ban could reduce the advantage other nations enjoy: Drugmakers can be tougher in negotiating with foreign purchasers so the buyers pay a greater share of R&D costs. Right now, these nations get a free ride because Americans pay more. The reimportation ban stops drugmakers from testing what other countries will pay, notes Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank.

What's wrong with this picture? If you assume drug manufacturers have a profit point they intend to hit but not exceed, the thought that higher prices in one market will force prices lower in another market makes sense. But if you assume business decisions are intended to maximize profit, that idea is absurd. And when you don't have to assume which of the above viewpoints is held, it's flat stupid to proclaim the other.

Quote of note:

Private plans will be discouraged from participating in Medicare if they have to get insurance licenses and sign contracts with doctors and hospitals in nearby states where they have never done business, Ms. Dennett said. "In many rural areas", she said, "providers are unwilling to contract with Medicare managed care plans," even at the rates paid by the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program.

Insurers Object to New Provision in Medicare Law By ROBERT PEAR ASHINGTON, Aug. 20 - A major obstacle to the success of the new Medicare law has emerged in recent weeks: private insurers have told the Bush administration that they will not expand their role in Medicare if they have to serve large multistate regions, as the White House wants. Congress sharply increased payments to private health plans last year in the hope that they would serve many more Medicare beneficiaries. But the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, the backbone of the nation's private health insurance system, and other insurers said it was not feasible for them to establish networks of doctors and hospitals spanning large regions like New England or the Midwest. They want the government to designate 50 regions, one for each state. That is the preference stated emphatically, in separate letters to the Bush administration, by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and by America's Health Insurance Plans, the chief lobby for the health insurance industry. A White House document describing President Bush's ideas for overhauling Medicare in March 2003 proposed "large multistate regions," and it included a map showing 10 sample regions. Large regions will force health plans to serve rural areas that they have historically shunned, administration officials say. Under this logic, if a health plan wanted lucrative Medicare business in Chicago and its suburbs, it would have to serve rural Illinois and Iowa and perhaps Nebraska as well. But Alissa Fox, policy director for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said, "The only way to assure vibrant competition and expand choices for beneficiaries is to establish 50 state-based regions". If the administration insists on multistate regions, Ms. Fox said, "it will be virtually impossible for most private plans to be ready for 2006," when drug benefits and new insurance options are supposed to become available. The level of financial risk increases with the size of a region, she said, so insurers will need more capital and larger reserves to operate in a multistate region. Diana C. Dennett, executive vice president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said her group also "strongly supports establishment of 50 regions".

July job figures decline in six swing states By Peronet Despeignes, USA TODAY WASHINGTON �€” Twenty-two states reported a drop in payroll jobs last month, double the number for June, according to new Labor Department statistics. Among them were six of the states that could decide this fall's presidential election. The declines in most cases were slight, but they drove home the frailty of the jobs recovery and highlighted risks to President Bush's re-election strategy. The White House has been counting on consistent, robust growth by now to restore confidence in the economy and counter grim news from Iraq. The battleground states showing job losses in July were Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, according to Labor Department figures released Aug. 20. Battleground, or swing, states are those expected to be close in this fall's election, and they are drawing the bulk of both campaigns' attention. The state numbers mirror a recent weakening trend in national jobs numbers. The Labor Department's latest national report on Aug. 6 showed the economy generated only 32,000 new jobs in July, down from 78,000 in June and from an average of 225,000 a month earlier this year.

Insurgents showing no sign of letting up By Jim Michaels and Charles Crain, USA TODAY BAGHDAD �€” Nearly two months after the establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government, the violent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces show no sign of flagging. A USA TODAY database, which analyzed unclassified U.S. government security reports, shows attacks against U.S. and allied forces have averaged 49 a day since the hand-over of sovereignty June 28, compared with 52 a day in the four weeks leading up to the transfer. Iraqi guerrillas are relying heavily on weapons that allow them to attack and then slip away, such as roadside bombs and mortars. In June and July, U.S. and Iraq forces were attacked with 759 roadside bombs and uncovered at least 400 others before they exploded. U.S. officials had said they expected the attacks to drop as Iraqis re-established control over their country. Their thinking: Iraqi security forces would be better at gathering intelligence, and support for militants would erode because insurgents would be attacking Iraqis rather than U.S. occupation forces. The officials still hold that view. But U.S. officers say the continuing attacks suggest that it will take time, possibly years, to crush the insurgency. President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said U.S. forces will stay in Iraq as long as they are needed to assist Iraqi security forces. Iraqi forces are not yet trained and equipped to the point where they can assume responsibility for the country's security. And insurgents �€” be they former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, criminals or Islamic fundamentalists �€” remain entrenched. While most attention has been focused on the showdown in Najaf between Shiites and the new Iraqi government, data show the insurgency is a stubborn and continuing phenomenon throughout the country. "If we have the political will and stamina to stay, I could see this going on for 10 years," says Randolph Gangle, a retired officer who heads the Marine Corps' Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities in Quantico, Va.

Novak is the only one who published this leak so he should have been the first one…the only one, in my opinion… spoken to. 'Time' reporter being unfairly punished in debacle over CIA leak Fri Aug 20, 7:29 AM ET When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (news - web sites) stand arm-in-arm on the stage of Madison Square Garden in 13 days basking in the thunderous cheers from the Republican convention, a prominent White House correspondent may reluctantly be missing the festivities. Time magazine's Matt Cooper could spend the GOP convention and perhaps the entire fall campaign in federal detention. …Punitive leaks have been a constant of Washington life, regardless of which party is in power. But what adds a sad irony to this story is that Cooper was not the journalist who unmasked Valerie Plame's undercover career. That role was obligingly played by conservative columnist Robert Novak, who in July 2003 reported that Wilson had been sent by the CIA to Niger on Plame's recommendation to investigate purported Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium.

The last actual technical bug has been located and exterminated; the XML icon and link to the site's RSS 1.0 file is at the bottom of the left column. That's not to say there's not still techie stuff to do. For full-text search to be really useful I need to return text fragments around the located terms rather than just the first X characters as I do now. And I need to write up usage docs…the search is a custom module using MySQL's FULLTEXT indexes and works in boolean mode. That means you can specifically exclude words, shift the weight assigned to the indiviual terms and other coolnesses. But very little of any upcoming work will be visible. Setting the site up for the fourth time has convinced me change is inevitable so I'll be sneaking in the data scrubbing I started before. Next change is going to be sane.

I can't bring myself to put "right" in the same title with David Gergen at the moment, but he's right:

Time to face the real issues
By David Gergen On May 10, 1940, As Britain trembled at Hitler's sweep across Europe, the king summoned a new prime minister to power. The next few days were a turning point, as Winston Churchill rallied his people and they valiantly held off the Nazi onslaught. Central to his leadership, as biographer Martin Gilbert points out, was his decision to form a unity government--one in which political rivals were forced to put aside old hatreds and, together, face the future. Churchill told his fellow citizens: "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future." One remembers that as our presidential campaign descends into the muck over who did what to whom during the Vietnam War. John Kerry can be justly proud of his heroism, but we have heard enough from him on the subject. And we are hearing altogether too much from George Bush's supporters as they try to smear Kerry. The president should call off the attack dogs, and both sides should move on.

Good editorial, gets into that which will need resolution, actual issues. Sadly, that has little to do with how Americans choose their leaders. No, I think the real problem is the way people respond to a leader once they have committed. Maybe it's the particular set of ideas currently wrapped around leadership. I don't know, something about American leaders and leadership is working my nerves for some reason.

Depression Spreads to the Market Peyman Pejman BAGHDAD, Aug 20 (IPS) - Seventeen months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqi traders say the economy is stagnating. Last year in August the streets of Baghdad were bustling with commercial activity. Almost at every corner sat a man exchanging money or selling something, usually an imported commodity. Shops were stacked ceiling high. Many were so full that owners showcased their goods on the pavement. Those days seem gone. Inventories are low and shop owners spend more time chatting with friends than pitching a sale. Traders and merchants blame primarily the worsening security situation for the economic slowdown. "The security is not good. People see the explosions and killings, and they are afraid to go out," says Nahez Abdel Wadood, manager of an airconditioners shop. "People used to stay out till 10 pm. Now no one goes out after 7 pm." …Baghdad traders see other reasons too for the downturn. "Right after the war, every company that was dealing with Iraq cut its prices because there were no customs duties, no taxes, no borders. Things were easy. Something that used to cost 500 dollars was slashed to 350 dollars," says trader Joma Khafaji. …Another major factor for the booming economy earlier was that the U.S. forces and administration bought a lot of goods locally. The transitional government of appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi has not produced that kind of shopping spree. The government has said instead that it will reinforce taxes and customs duties on many goods. That would make them even less affordable. …Some of the hot items on sale last year were television sets, refrigerators, deep freezers and airconditioners. But poor electricity supply means you cannot use these items much if you buy them. "What is the point of buying a new television set if I cannot watch it when I want to watch it, or getting cut off in the middle of watching something, and then I get even more frustrated," says a Baghdad resident.

For Powell, signs point to political revival By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | August 22, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Two months ago, it hardly seemed a secret that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell intended to retire. He was on the losing side in numerous tugs of war against hawks in the administration. As the nation's chief diplomat when diplomacy was overshadowed by war, Powell struggled to persuade allies to join a conflict that he hoped to circumvent. His credibility was tarnished by inaccuracies in his speech to the United Nations laying out the case against Saddam Hussein -- a speech aides say he was reluctant to give. Aides talked openly about how he was planning the final places he wanted to travel as secretary. "I'm just an old guy," he said at a youth conference in Ecuador in June. "I'm just getting ready for my retirement…You're the ones who are going to have to find the solutions." Now, some people close to Powell see signs of his revival, as the State Department asserts more control in Iraq and as the White House embraces a more multilateral foreign policy. And Powell, long the administration's misfit, may be willing to stay into a second term to help reshape President Bush's policies. "It is my understanding that Powell has let it be known that if the president would ask him to stay on and if he's not going to be marginalized, he would look at that opportunity," said Patrick Cronin, a former senior State Department official. Kenneth Duberstein, former White House chief of staff and a close friend of Powell's, added: "His departure is not a done deal. Colin has been very firm in saying that he serves at the pleasure of the president. There is nothing that indicates to me that has changed one iota." Powell, one of the most popular political figures in recent history, has seen his approval ratings decline from 88 percent in 2001 to 63 percent in April, according to The Harris Poll. Yet he remains among the most popular members of the administration, a fact that is not lost on Republicans. If Powell were willing to stay, it is not clear that he would have more leverage. Vice President Dick Cheney is known to have deep differences with Powell, and it is not clear whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- another Powell adversary -- would remain. "The reality is that Powell's view of how the world works is at odds with the vast majority of people in this administration, including the president's," said Ivo Daadler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The few victories he has had have been on the margins, and that's not likely to change."

This one isn't like global warming, where much is speculation (thogh solid, detailed speculation totally in line with our understanding of climatology). The destruction of the life-bearing capability of American coastal waters is real…documented…and here now. Seven thousand and more square miles of ocean simply dies, for two, three months every year. The affected area grows larger every year. And it's a direct result of human activity. Now, I grant we didn't know this would happen when we began using the chemicals that poison the sea. I place no blame for past actions taken in ignorance. But the ignorance is over now…we know. The fact that the ocean recovers for a while shows the damage isn't irreversible yet. But both the reports referenced below warn that we're approaching the point of no return. That would literally be a catastrophe. Quote of note:

President Bush, who has been largely silent on the subject, is obliged by law to respond to the Ocean Commission report. He should treat these issues with a seriousness he has not often shown on environmental matters. The threat to the oceans -- and to countless species threatened by overfishing, pollution, nutrient and chemical runoff, and invasive species -- represents one of the most pressing ecological crises of our time. It cannot wait much longer for leadership.

Saving the Oceans Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page B06 OVER THE PAST year and a half, two blue-ribbon panels -- the Pew Oceans Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy -- have put together major reports on the state of America's coastal waters. The reports, broadly speaking, agree on a depressing reality: This country's oceans are in trouble and absent dramatic policy changes will be irreversibly damaged. Both groups make extensive recommendations for averting such a catastrophe, which would both devastate major economic interests and constitute a fundamental betrayal of society's stewardship of its natural treasures. Over the past century this country has developed a commitment to preserving forest and desert wilderness, protecting air quality and safeguarding land-based species. The message of the two commissions is that policymakers must show a similar commitment to America's territorial waters, which comprise an area larger than the land mass of the United States.

Frederick Company Fires Employee Who Taunted Bush By Jessica Valdez Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page C06 Glenn Hiller wasn't surprised by the scattered screams and cuss words he heard after he heckled President Bush at a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday. But the Berkeley Springs, W.Va., resident never expected what happened the next morning, when he was fired from his $35,000-a-year job as a graphic designer. He said his boss at Octavo Designs, a Frederick-based advertising and design company, told him he had embarrassed and offended a client who provided tickets to the rally. "She told me my actions reflected badly on the company," Hiller said. He said he had worked at Octavo for five months. Hiller, 35, said he waited for lulls in the president's speech to shout questions and comments challenging what he called "half-truths" in Bush's statements. He said he asked Bush about the benefits of outsourcing jobs, justifications for the war in Iraq and inspectors' inability to find weapons of mass destruction there. He said that at one point, he shouted, "Would you sacrifice your daughters to liberate Iraq?" Hiller said he then was escorted from the event at Hedgesville High School in Berkeley County, W.Va., and was threatened with arrest by campaign workers. Hiller's boss at Octavo, Sue Hough, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Can we acknowledge that condemning 527 ads in general is a different thing than condemning statements taken out of context? $63 million spent disputing current policy choices is one thing. $2.5 million spent on personal attacks supported only by the fading memory of those who couldn't make any charges stick when their memories were fresh and deceptive partial quotes is another. Right?

I like facts. The Slow Boat Veterans can't support the charges that Kerry isn't entitled to his medals. Now they want to claim his testimony before Congress was traitorous somehow. I want to suggest you go to the source. Democracy Now! has the audio of his testimony as well as the full transcript so you can find the full statements that the Slow Boat of veterans selectively quote. I would suggest you simply disregard any implications supported by a fraction of a sentence.

Podesta needs practice at the fine art of lying. A couple terms in the acting school Reagan attended ought to do it. O'Neil is practiced and smooth. He makes charges that Stephanopolis didn't handle nearly as well as Chris Matthews handled Malkin. He accused Podesta of not dealing with the issues he raised then when Stephanopolis said to focus on the Bronze Star citation he starts by "reviewing" the unestablished Purple Heart charges. He's good. A liar, but good at it. O'Neil referenced an article in today's Washington Post article, effective because most folks don't read the Washington Post. But look at the conclusion the article draws:

An investigation by The Washington Post into what happened that day suggests that both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar.

Like most of Bush's campaign promises, what is actually done comes up short of what he promises. Quote of note:

In his bid for a second term, Bush is reprising much of the health care agenda he ran on in 2000

So why should you believe he'll keep the "compassionate conservative" promises THIS time? Anyway… Bush Health Care Plan Seems to Fall Short Gap Grows Between Hard Data, Projections for Covering 10 Million Uninsured By Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A04 If the Republican-controlled Congress enacted President Bush's entire health care agenda, as many as 10 million people who lack health insurance would be covered at a cost of $102 billion over the next decade, according to his campaign aides. But when the Bush-Cheney team was asked to provide documentation, the hard data fell far short of the claims, a gap supported by several independent analyses. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, academics and the campaign's Web site suggest that under the best circumstances, Bush's plans for health care would extend coverage to no more than 6 million people over the next decade and possibly as few as 2 million. "There's little reason to expect that there would be any reduction in the overall numbers of Americans without health insurance," Brookings Institution health policy expert Henry J. Aaron said. "We're swimming against a rather swift current in our efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, and the power of President Bush's proposals to move against that current is, it seems to me, very, very limited."