Huey converts to Catholicism. Maybe George Bush should too.

That stupid Republican wolf commercial was sending a message. And reality sends a message back.

You don't think George Bush will come to regret that line, do you? He is taking every step he can to make sure he doesn't…

Quote of note:

"This is not what I go to church for," said Mary Ellen Dundas, 58, a Mission San Gabriel parishioner, who along with several others has written a letter of complaint to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. "This is not a moral issue. When I go to church, I go to be uplifted, to get what I need to move on to the next week. I don't want to hear that I'm a sinner for supporting Wal-Mart."

I think I'd like to see the official List of Moral Issues.

What we have here is a bunch of folks who have placed their "religion" in a little box that they venture into for a moment of refreshment before going on their amoral way. It explains a lot.

A LOT.

Anyway…

Clerics Speak Out on Wal-Mart

The Washington Post has a list of who is scheduled to be on what pundit show tomorrow. There's actually no one there I'm interested in hearing from.

Quote of note:

An IRS "fact sheet" provided by the agency noted: "Even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of nonpartisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition."

How many evangelical organizations are on that list, I wonder. And shouldn't the churches of those Catholic bishops or whatever that say you can't vote for a pro-choice Catholic be challenged as well?

60 Tax-Exempt Groups Under Investigation
At Issue Are IRS Regulations That Bar Political Activities
By Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press
Saturday, October 30, 2004; Page A04

About 60 charities, churches and other tax-exempt groups are being investigated for possibly breaking federal rules that bar them from participating in political activities, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday. Such violations would threaten their tax-exempt status, the IRS said.

Politics, Gas Fuel Battle Over New Mexico Forest
Thu Oct 28, 2004 09:08 PM ET

By Zelie Pollon
SANTA FE, N.M. (Reuters) - A Texas energy company may get rights to drill in a pristine swathe of a New Mexico national forest after a White House task force intervened on its behalf, a move that has become a hot issue in the battleground state before next week's presidential election.

Oil giant Pennzoil donated the 40,000-acre parcel in northern New Mexico known as Valle Vidal for conservation in 1982, and it has been a protected wildlife and recreation area as part of the Carson National Forest.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Houston-based oil company El Paso Corp., a large donor to Republican campaigns and candidates, asked the White House's energy task force in 2003 to intervene on its behalf with the Forest Service.

You have to admit, it has its own special flavor.

---

---

Oklahoma Black Leaders Upset Over Candidate Remark
Fri Oct 29, 2004 08:37 PM ET

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (Reuters) - A Republican Senate candidate from Oklahoma who has run into trouble over verbal gaffes was drawing fire again on Friday for saying black men have a "genetic predisposition" for a lower life expectancy than whites.
Dr. Tom Coburn, a Republican physician locked in a neck-and-neck struggle for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat, made the comment in a discussion of Social Security privatization during a locally televised debate on Wednesday night.

Coburn said black males were statistically more likely to die before they could benefit from Social Security.

Steve Gilliard hits you with…fashion tips for the election worker:

Ok, you're probably not thinking about Not What to Wear on election day, but you should. It depends on what you're doing, but overall, leave the ripped jeans at home. The more professional you look, the easier it will be to get things done.

This may sound odd, but it could be crucial in preventing problems. Certain clothes will send a clear message and scare the shit out of GOP vote thieves.

He touches on working in minority neighborhoods…I've never done voter canvassing, but what he says sounds reasonable though it's rare that I'm going to eat a meatball without having seen it made. And he says one thing so clearly and nicely I may have to appropriate the phrasing:

AngryDesi at Minority Report has a good analysis of voter suppression:

These activities serve to increase the transactional costs of democracy and therefore discourage participation. I think this has a disproportionate impact on minorities and working class voters. Who has time to wait all day to vote? Who wants their legitimate right to participate questioned?

That's the goal, right? Increase the transactional costs of democracy on the underclass and minorities to discourage them from voting. This is happening because the transactional costs of challenging voters are too low. In Pennsylvania, any voter can challenge any other voter. In order to respond to the challenge, the challenged voter must have another voter vouch for them. If they can't, the challenged voter must use a provisional ballot which is then cleared up later.

I just took the grand blog tour. Between this and what David is rightfully bitching about and this to make me look forward to a bi-partisan future, this lovely series of advertisements and, of course this:

Among other things, I'm about politicked out.

You cannot convince me the Department of Homeland Security should be chasing down trademark infringers.

Especially when they aren't infringing.

No, at all. They're not supposed to do it at all.

Quote of note:

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

Homeland Security Agents Visit Toy Store

Writer raided for doing research

Here's a deeply creepy manifestation of the Patriot Act: A writer of "mainstream women's fiction" was working on an adventure novel set in Cambodia and involving terrorists. For research, she was buying books online, checking them out from the library, and looking at Cambodia-related websites.

Her home was raided and her writing material confiscated (including her computers, her files, her contracts, and even her music CDs). She still hasn't gotten most of her stuff back.

I got this information from the November 2004 issue of Romance Writers Report, the monthly magazine of Romance Writers of America. I can't find the article online to link you to, but it's worth reading, so I'll put it under the cut.

Voter Alert on Judges

VOTERS IN Montgomery and Anne Arundel counties should beware of trick questions on their ballots. Thanks to a terrible system that subjects circuit judges to election challenges by "candidates" with scant qualifications, voters may be easily confused and wind up unintentionally removing a sitting judge who has undergone a thorough vetting before going on the bench. The names of the judges and any challengers appear in one alphabetical list on the ballot, with no indication of who is a judge and who is not. In Montgomery, four judges and one challenger are on the ballot; the top four vote-getters win. In Anne Arundel, three judges are listed along with thre

A fix would address the issue that health care should be a public good.

Quote of note:

What my research revealed was that the uninsured received about 80 percent of the care received by the insured and that they had a 37 percent higher mortality rate. (The mortality rate for all victims of serious car crashes was 3.8 percent, rising to 5.2 percent for the uninsured.) These outcome differences continued even after controlling for severity of injury, socioeconomic status and hospital resources that can vary between the insured and uninsured. Even insured and uninsured patients who were in the same accident and were rushed to the same hospital had these differences in treatment and mortality.

A Way to Help on Health Insurance

Quote of note:

"It's like the gold rush," said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. "It would be shame on them if they did not do what they did."

As oil companies reap the rewards of higher oil prices, consumers suffer. The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $2.03 yesterday, 2 cents less than a record set in May, according to a AAA auto club survey. Diesel fuel prices have reached record highs for weeks. Home heating oil prices are far higher than last year. The prices do not reach record levels when adjusted for inflation.

Big oil companies have been using hefty profits to increase dividends, buy back stock and, in some cases, repay debt. The big companies have not significantly increased their budgets for exploration and development while some smaller companies have spent more, analysts said.

Quote of note:

At the heart of the problem is that all mammalian cells -- with the exception of human cells -- bear certain molecules on their surface, known as N-glycoylneuraminic acid. (Human cell surfaces bear a different but related molecule, N-acetyl neuraminic acid.)

Varki had previously demonstrated that the vast majority of people have antibodies against this molecule, perhaps as a result of eating mammalian meat such as beef. The new work shows that human embryonic stem cells grown on mouse cells "consume" the mouse molecules and then display them on their own surfaces.

When human blood serum was added to the mouse-cultivated human stem cells in lab dishes, antibodies attacked the stem cells and killed them. In the eyes of the immune system, "these human cells look like animal cells . . . which leads to [their] death," Gage said at a recent scientific meeting.

Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture
By Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A01

The 377 tons of Iraqi explosives whose reported disappearance has dominated the past few days of presidential campaigning represent only a tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other munitions unaccounted for since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 18 months ago.

U.S. military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained 650,000 to 1 million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown. [P6: emphasis added]

It's Not Just Al Qaqaa
By PAUL KRUGMAN

…All of these stories would be getting more play right now if it weren't for the Al Qaqaa mess. Still, one can understand why the right is so upset.

After all, Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the failures of Mr. Bush's national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through Al Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was important to secure the site. If administration officials object that they couldn't have spared enough troops to guard the site, they're admitting that they went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell into unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat.

Citing July Speech, I.R.S. Decides to Review N.A.A.C.P.
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The Internal Revenue Service has begun reviewing the tax-exempt status of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, citing concerns over a speech given by its chairman, Julian Bond, at its annual convention last July in Philadelphia.

In a letter dated Oct. 8 and released Thursday, the I.R.S. told the association it had received information that Mr. Bond conveyed "statements in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency" and specifically that he had "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush in education, the economy and the war in Iraq."

Quote of note:

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.

"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Associated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."

In fact, the idea that the candidates would be "forced to pledge to protect civilian lives" simply doesn't take into account that 40-odd percent of the population believes Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Bad news dogs Bush as election nears
By Scott Lindlaw, Associated Press Writer | October 29, 2004

YARDLEY, Pa. -- The presidency comes with powerful tools that can help incumbents keep their jobs: a mighty public-relations machine, a bully pulpit, a famous airplane. Yet President Bush has been powerless to halt a recent tide of bad news, from surging violence and missing weapons in Iraq, to missteps by his own campaign, to a potentially damaging new probe by his own FBI.

TV video may show missing explosives
October 29, 2004

WASHINGTON --Videotape shot by a Minnesota television crew traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq when they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The video taken by KSTP of St. Paul on April 18, 2003, could reinforce suggestions that tons of explosives missing from a munitions installation in Iraq were looted after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The video was broadcast nationally Thursday on ABC.

For the record, unless you're actually in favor of policies that support living well, like a medical system that works to the benefit of humans rather than corporations, you're not pro-life. You're merely anti-abortion.

Anyway, this editorial does an excellent job of explaining for women how voting for George Bush supports those who would take control of their bodies from them. It's all coming back into focus because the Chief Justice is ill, but this is not a new threat. In fact, it's only an aspect of the problems an extreme right shift in the Supreme Court would bring about.

If John Kerry Wins, Abortions Could Remain Legal for 30 More Years

If you Google "why should you vote for george bush," the ninth item returned is this page.

Small Minority Says Draft Could Happen
New Conflict Would Further Strain Troop Levels

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A03

Many military experts believe that reviving some sort of military draft is extremely unlikely, even impossible -- but not all of them.

The issue has taken on urgency because of the dynamics of the presidential campaign, with Democratic operatives using the prospect of a draft to drive the youth vote, and the Democratic nominee himself raising the possibility on the campaign trail.

The military is in the high schools in New York City.

I don'ty know how many folks remember a few years back when schools were ordered to turn over contact information for all their high school students to the military. Parents could opt out, but this was before people realized you actually have to pay attention to what the government does.

Quote of note:

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said that he believed that the average level of claims over the past two weeks was consistent with job growth of around 160,000 per month.

"If sustained, payroll gains of that size, which would be an improvement on recent months, would keep the unemployment rate broadly stable," he said. "There certainly seems little near-term prospects of a significant improvement in the unemployment picture and it could even deteriorate if oil slows consumption."

Weekly Unemployment Claims Jump by 20,000
By Martin Crutsinger
AP Economics Writer
Thursday, October 28, 2004; 3:56 AM

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by 20,000, the largest jump in a month, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

I've noticed a few folks have had a problem logging in.

The password you get when you sign up is randomly generated and CASE SENSITIVE. So where you see a capital letter in your password you must enter a capital letter.

If you're still having a problem, email me and I'll give you a nice reasonable password that you can change to something you're comfortable with.

No joke. Since I'm in New York, I have a better option: The Working Families Party.This way I get to support the John Kerry ticket and a progressive party that doesn't sell out.

Actually, there's a couple of brothers running for local office that's I'll be voting for though they aren't in the WFP column. But we definitely work column E for the presidential vote.

This is not from Comedy Central or Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately.

Quote of note:

But Mike Angelos, a spokesman for Harry Pappas and his media chain, Pappas Telecasting Cos., said the legality of the $325,000 in contributions was researched thoroughly.

And why would they research the legality of the donations so thoroughly?

Because they know their intent is to get around the intent of the law. And it's a long term problem that bad actors like Pappas, Sinclair Fox and the like are in line to get six digital channels for each analog channel they now control. Free. Which is why you should check into Media for Democracy's campaign.

Anyway…

Valley media mogul donates airtime to GOP hopefuls

Faith, Hope and Clarity
By ROBERT WRIGHT

The Bush administration is suddenly taking pains to calibrate the president's devoutness: yes, Mr. Bush is very religious, but he's not too religious - not hearing-voices religious.

Last week several White House aides insisted that, contrary to the witness of the televangelist Pat Robertson, the president never said God had guaranteed him a low casualty count in Iraq. And as for those reports about Mr. Bush feeling summoned to the presidency: Laura Bush denies that her husband sees himself as a divine instrument. "It's not a faith where he hears from God," she said a few days ago.

Abu Ghraib, Unresolved

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first broke, the Bush administration struck a pose of righteous indignation. It assured the world that the problem was limited to one block of one prison, that the United States would never condone the atrocities we saw in those terrible photos, that it would punish those responsible for any abuse - regardless of their rank - and that it was committed to defending the Geneva Conventions and the rights of prisoners.

None of this appears to be true. The Army has prosecuted a few low-ranking soldiers and rebuked a Reserve officer or two, but exonerated the top generals. No political leader is being held accountable for the policies set in Washington that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other prison camps operated by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where prisoner abuse was systemic. And we've learned that the administration's respect for the Geneva Conventions, which some senior officials openly disdain as an antiquated nuisance, is highly conditional.

Quote of notes:

In one case, the Republicans challenged the registration of the weekend anchorwoman for Columbus's NBC affiliate, Monique Ming Laven, even though Ms. Laven had voted in this year's primary and had not moved since.

and

"We wanted to have all of these questions resolved this week," said Mark R. Weaver, a lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party. "Now, they won't be resolved until Tuesday, when all of these people are trying to vote. It can't help but create chaos, longer lines and frustration."

Democrats asserted that creating chaos and long lines has been the Republican goal all along, in the hopes of discouraging Democratic voters from casting ballots in this heavily contested swing state.

G.O.P. Bid to Contest Registrations in Ohio Is Blocked

4 Iraqis Tell of Looting at Munitions Site in '03
By JAMES GLANZ and JIM DWYER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts: ABC News
Thu Oct 28, 2004 02:10 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The amount of conventional explosives missing from an Iraqi storage facility may be substantially less than the 377 tons reported by Iraqi officials, ABC News reported late on Wednesday, citing documents obtained by the network.
The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo on the missing explosives was based on a "declaration" from July 15, 2002. At that time Iraqis said there were 141 tons of the explosives at the facility, ABC reported.

International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors record that just over three tons of high explosives were at the Al Qaqaa storage facility, ABC reported.

Quote of note:

Just three outs away from another crushing defeat at the hands of their bitter New York rivals, the Red Sox staged an epic rally to become the first team in Major League history to erase a 3-0 deficit and win a best-of-seven series.

Boston Fans Finally Celebrate Red October
Thu Oct 28, 2004 04:25 AM ET

By Steve Keating
ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - The Boston Red Sox lifted a championship and buried a curse Wednesday, turning fantasy into reality with a stirring World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.

In a match staged under a total lunar eclipse, Johnny Damon homered and Derek Lowe pitched seven shutout innings in a 3-0 victory which completed a four-game sweep in the best-of-seven series.

Disaster Toll Tripled in 2003 Amid Quakes, Heatwave
Wed Oct 27, 2004 08:01 PM ET

By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) - Natural disasters killed 76,806 people in 2003, three times the number of victims in 2002, a rise due in part to extremes in the global climate, the world's largest humanitarian body said on Thursday.

An earthquake that killed 31,000 people in the Iranian city of Bam and a heat wave in Europe that killed 35,000, accounted for the higher toll, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

In all, a quarter of a billion people were affected by drought, floods and earthquakes, which caused at least $56 billion in damage in 2003, twice the cost of the previous year, the Federation said in its annual "World Disasters Report."

Quote of note:

"It's highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail just disappeared," he said. "We're looking for it, we're trying to find it if in fact it was ever delivered to the postal service."

Postal Experts Hunt for Missing Ballots in Florida
Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:18 PM ET

By Michael Christie
MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties, officials said.

The issue evoked memories of the polling problems that bedeviled the Florida election in 2000 and which the state has been trying to address before next Tuesday's presidential election, which is again expected to be a very tight race.

Remains of New Species of Hobbit-Sized Human Found
Wed Oct 27, 2004 04:46 PM ET

By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in Australia have found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island in a discovery that adds another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution.

The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was 3 feet tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans.

It shared the isolated island to the east of Java with miniature elephants and Komodo dragons. The creature walked upright, probably evolved into its dwarf size because of environmental conditions and coexisted with modern humans in the region for thousands of years.

DKos:

In an interview with The Citizen on Friday, DeLay called the subpoena part of the strategy by Democrats to "criminalize politics."

"The Democrats are using the courts and the legal system to criminalize politics, for their political gain and character assassination," said DeLay via telephone.
DeLay supporters have pointed to a calendar listing on the Morrison Web site as a smoking gun linking Morrison to the LaRouchians.

"LaRouche is a con felon and all I can tell you is that Mr. Morrison has supported and campaigned with LaRouche followers and Mr. Morrison also has taken money and is working with the Daily Kos, which is an organization that raises money for fighters against the U.S. in Iraq," said DeLay.

Quote of note:

But that's also the problem with his administration: his convictions are so solid that they're inflexible and utterly impervious to reality. When Mr. Bush pumped up the intelligence on Iraqi W.M.D., his exaggerations reflected the overriding truth as he saw it - that Saddam Hussein was a menace. I think Mr. Bush considered himself truthful, even when he wasn't factual.

If Mr. Bush were a private citizen, I would admire his tenacity, just as I respect Barry Goldwater, Red Sox fans and Flat-Earthers. But for a president, I wish we had a clear-eyed thinker who understood the difference between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, or between a stuffed dog and a stuffed cat.

Pants on Fire?

Quote of note:

Menactra is generally expected to be the first of a series of new vaccines intended for 11-year-olds. The others include booster vaccines against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough and vaccines against cervical cancer and herpes.

Frightening parents about the consequences of failing to vaccinate their children will most likely be part of the campaign. For that task, meningococcal meningitis is ideal.

Panel Reviews New Vaccine That Could Be Controversial
By GARDINER HARRIS

A committee of experts meeting in Atlanta will debate today whether the government can afford to pay for a vaccine that could save the lives of nearly 3,000 people, many of them teenagers, from deaths caused over the next decade by a virulent bacterial meningitis.

Signs of Voter Fraud Appear
Registrations that are faked or tossed out have emerged in key states struggling to comply with ballot reform and a flood of new signups.
By Richard Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writers

October 27, 2004

LAS VEGAS — Broke, disabled and living at the Daisy Motel in downtown Las Vegas, Tyrone Mrasek Sr. took a temporary job late this summer registering voters here.

The employer primarily wanted President Bush supporters, but they were not easy to find. So Mrasek handed out cigarettes to drunks and ex-felons at a homeless shelter in exchange for signatures. Later he found a stack of signed registrations for Democratic voters in a trash can outside the company's office, he recalled.

Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3

MIAMI, FL—With the knowledge that the minority vote will be crucial in the upcoming presidential election, Republican Party officials are urging blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities to make their presence felt at the polls on Wednesday, Nov. 3.

"Minority voters should make their unique voices heard, especially the African-American voting bloc, which is always a major factor in every election," said Florida Republican Party voter-drive organizer Mark Monreal, as he handed out flyers at a community center in the mostly black Miami neighborhood of South Farms. "That's why we put up hundreds of brightly colored banners featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and the 'Vote November 3' reminder. We needed to make sure they know when we want them at polling places."

Iraq's Prime Minister Faults U.S. Military in Massacre
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 26 - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi blamed the American-led military forces on Tuesday for the weekend massacre of 49 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers, saying the military had shown "major negligence."

In a speech before the interim National Assembly, the prime minister said a committee had begun investigating the ambush, the deadliest of the guerrilla war. The assault took place Saturday night in remote eastern Iraq, as three minibuses of unarmed Iraqi soldiers were heading south on leave. Insurgents dressed as policemen waylaid the men at a fake checkpoint, killed all 49 soldiers and their three civilian drivers, mostly with shots to their heads, and burned the vehicles.

Company to sell genetically engineered cats
- PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004

(10-26) 18:03 PDT (AP) --

The biotechnology revolution is even shaking up the pet world.

First came a cloned cat. Then came the fish genetically engineered to glow.

Now, a Los Angeles company plans to strike it rich by exploiting the latest in biotechnology to create cats genetically engineered to be nearly free from the allergy-causing proteins that plague millions of people.

Allerca Inc. president Simon Brodie said by 2007 the company will use "RNA interference" to "silence" a gene in cats that produces the irritant, which is excreted through saliva and the skin.

Scientists researching everything from cancer to crops are using RNA interference to silence genes to create drugs, gene-searching tools and even a new way of decaffeinating coffee.

Quote of note:

Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to agree to the U.S. request for redeployment is a politically sensitive one for the British leader, whose popularity has plummeted because of his support for the Iraq war.

Britain's 8,500 troops are based around the southern port city of Basra in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq. Sixty-eight British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, compared with more than 1,000 U.S. troops.

British Troops in Iraq Begin Deployment
By RAWYA RAGEH
Associated Press Writer

2:24 AM PDT, October 27, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Nearly 800 British forces left their base in southern Iraq on Wednesday, heading north toward Baghdad to replace U.S. troops who are expected to take part in an offensive against insurgent strongholds.

Quote of note:

"It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there," Urcavich said.

"I'm very antiabortion, but the reality is the right to life encompasses a much broader field than just abortion," he added. "If I'm a proponent of life, I have to think about the consequences of not providing prescription drugs to seniors or sending young men off to war."

Conflicted Evangelicals Could Cost Bush Votes
Conservative Christians are still in his camp, but some are troubled by Iraq and other issues.

Marsh Bars Special Commissions From Insurers
The broker will disclose all fees to its clients. Others in the industry may have to follow suit.
By Thomas S. Mulligan
Times Staff Writer

October 27, 2004

NEW YORK — Beleaguered insurance broker Marsh & McLennan Cos. unveiled a reform package backed by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer on Tuesday that could be a template for an industry under fire.

Marsh said it would end questionable special fees it had been receiving from insurers, give its clients more information about all fees and commissions and create a new oversight unit to keep an eye on its insurance-brokerage operations.

Michael G. Cherkasky, Marsh's new chief executive, said in a telephone interview that the changes, effective Jan. 1, were meant to satisfy not just Spitzer but other regulators around the country, "including a notable regulator in California."

(Got programming to do tonight so I'm cheating by posting one of the articles I lost when I screwed up The Niggerati Network.)

Why affirmative action failed

InfoPlease has a timeline and history of affirmative action that will be useful as a starting point for research (for young students) or for people who don't know the history behind the existing tug of war over it (damn near everyone else in the country). It states very simply and directly what affirmative action programs were intended to be:

IN ITS TUMULTUOUS, nearly 40-year history, affirmative action has been both praised and pilloried as an answer to racial inequality. The policy was introduced in 1965 by President Johnson as a method of redressing discrimination that had persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees. "This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights," Johnson asserted. "We seek… not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result."

Why I believe in our president
by Thomas F. Schaller, Executive Editor
10.26.04

I believe in President George W. Bush. I've always believed him.

I believe the president invaded Iraq to secure liberty and democracy for the Iraqi people. I believe he had compelling evidence that Iraq was a significant threat to America and the world, and presented that evidence in a complete and balanced manner. Like 42 percent of Americans – and 62 percent of Republicans – I believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.

I believe we have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to ensure stability. I believe the rising American fatality rates, the rising casualty rates, and the rising American share of those coalition fatalities and casualties testify to the undeniable progress we're making there. I believe it is inappropriate and traitorous, however, for the media to broadcast pictures of American flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq.

U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.

They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

Quote of note:

The spending bills often earmark money for local projects and provide fodder for attack by good-government groups that object to "pork," or excessive spending on local projects in return for political support.

And Black folks don't get chitlins, much less pork. The only sign of support one can believe coming from a capitalist is money.

Anyway…

States See Federal Largesse as Election Nears
Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:32 AM ET

By Charles Abbott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whether as loan guarantees for a shop in Ohio or a grant for a Florida power plant, the Bush administration is showering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money on toss-up states in the presidential election.

The Scalia/Thomas Majority

Chief Justice
William Rehnquist underwent surgery yesterday related to "a recent
diagnosis of thyroid cancer." Rehnquist's serious condition – even as
he is expected to return to the bench on Monday – "gave fresh prominence to the future of the Supreme Court." Bush has said publicly that the Supreme Court justices he admires are arch conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. If re-elected, it is possible Bush could get three or more appointments, "enough to forge a new majority that would turn the extreme Scalia-Thomas worldview into the law of the land."
The result: "Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could
be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free
to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money
to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect
inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical
leave and environmental protections could disappear."

Not directly, of course, but by running a story about Emmett Till on 60 Minutes. As it happens I turn up very high on a Google search using the most common misspelling of Mr. Till's first name.

I've never been a big fan of putting 70+ year old folks on trial for things we KNOW they did and let them get away with for fifty or so years. But having been introduced to the idea of lynching as human sacrifice I decided to look for the value such trials have as ritual. From this perspective, the trials no longer look like clumsy attempts at racial reconciliation but seem instead to be purging rituals for Mainstream America…purging by sacrifice of a scapegoat.

Quote of note:

Pachauri urged the world to shift strategy from Kyoto's reduction targets for greenhouse gases to long-term global targets on how much of the gases the atmosphere should contain.

Carbon dioxide levels have risen about 30 percent since the start of the 18th century to almost 380 parts per million.

"We need a degree of agreement on where to stabilize concentrations," he said. "We have to try to come up with an understanding of where we are heading in the next 30-40 years."

I…don't have much confidence in mankind's ability to actively manage a system as chaotic as the biosphere.

Anyway…

Kyoto Too Little to Fix Warming - UN Climate Chief

NASA Spacecraft to Pass Close to Saturn's Moon
Mon Oct 25, 2004 04:58 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The NASA spacecraft Cassini, which is carrying a European Space Agency probe, cut off communications with controllers on Monday as it prepared to peer beneath a veil of smog shrouding Saturn's moon, Titan.
Cassini is set to pass within 745 miles of Titan's surface at about 12:45 p.m. (2:45 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, in the closest pass ever to the mysterious icy moon, whose atmosphere scientists have likened to a primordial Earth.

Cassini will snap infrared and radar images 100 times sharper than any taken so far of Titan, said scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

In Africa, Hoping for Kerry Because He's Not Bush
Tue Oct 26, 2004 07:16 AM ET
By C. Bryson Hull

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) - President Bush's administration boasts no other American presidency has done more for Africa than his, and many on the world's poorest continent agree.

But despite Bush's championing of a $15 billion anti-AIDS program and efforts to drop trade barriers, sub-Saharan Africa appears to want to see his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, in the White House for the next four years.

Though many Africans are preoccupied with crushing poverty, disease or conflict, the continent -- like the world -- is keenly interested in the outcome of the Nov. 2 contest.

Bush, Kerry Both Seen Pressed to Curb Drug Prices
Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:27 AM ET

By Lisa Richwine
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pharmaceutical industry is expected to face pressure to curb rising prescription-drug costs no matter which candidate wins next week's U.S. presidential election.

Drug makers prefer Republican President Bush's plan to contain costs, which relies on the private marketplace and competition to drive prices down, over Democratic Sen. John Kerry's more aggressive approach, several analysts said.

"It would be hard to imagine any president being more pharma-friendly" than Bush, said Diane Duston, a Washington-based analyst for Prudential Equity Group.

Bush Jobs Gain Claim Rests on Jobs Not Yet Counted
Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:56 AM ET

By Jonathan Nicholson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With days to go before the presidential election, the Bush administration is trumpeting the creation of nearly 2 million jobs in the past 13 months -- a claim critics say rests on payrolls not yet officially logged by the Labor Department.

The expected-but-not-yet-counted jobs underpin a figure President Bush and his team are using to rebut a charge by Democrats that Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see a net job loss during his tenure.

Lee Price, research director with the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Commerce Department, said Treasury chief John Snow -- one of the first to tout 1.9 million jobs created since August 2003 -- is indulging in data inflation.

Man arrested on chemical weapons charges
October 26, 2004

JACKSON, Tenn. --A man who authorities say hated the federal government was charged with attempting to acquire chemical weapons, explosives and weapons of mass destruction with the intent to attack official buildings.

Demetrius "Van" Crocker, 39, was characterized by U.S. Attorney Terrell Harris as having "hatred for the government, and anti-Semitic and racist views." Crocker is accused of attempting to obtain sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosives, according to a federal complaint filed Monday.

Crocker was arrested Monday after an undercover federal agent met him to deliver fake explosives and what Crocker believed were ingredients for sarin, considered one of the world's deadliest chemical agents.

Mosh is a nice piece of work. Even if somewhat derivative.

The Man Behind the Oval Office Curtain
It's Cheney's administration, and it's a shame.
Robert Scheer

October 26, 2004

Can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney running the show? Probably, but it is a risk that few thoughtful Americans, conservatives included, should want to take.

Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush — do you see a smile or a smirk? — it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in U.S. history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this administration.

Perhaps we should have expected all this from a man who, as head of the Bush vice presidential search team, selected himself. It was a forewarning of the Machiavellian arrogance that has made him the leading individual in an administration that has consistently believed that self-serving ends — such as helping Enron at the expense of California's energy needs or boosting Halliburton's profits at the expense of American troops — justify lying, secrecy and preemptive war.

Americans Are Electing a Supreme Court Too
By John C. Yoo
John C. Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Bush administration Justice Department official.

…Even one new justice could profoundly affect a court that is closely divided on important social issues. And two new justices could shift national policy dramatically.

Slim 5-4 majorities stand behind the decisions that have struck down prohibitions on partial-birth abortion, approved affirmative action programs in colleges and universities, allowed the use of vouchers at private religious schools and restricted use of the death penalty.

Quote of note:

The U.S. failure to guard hundreds of ammunition depots after the invasion has been well documented. Top military officials in Iraq believe that weapons taken from these sites have armed an insurgency that is taking American lives almost daily. More than 1,100 U.S. troops have been killed since the invasion began.

The explosive power of the stolen material — just half a pound of HMX brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 — has officials particularly worried.

"That's half a pound; 380 tons are missing — that's almost 40 truckloads," an IAEA official said on condition of anonymity. "Imagine what it could do in the hands of insurgents there. It's a huge concern that it is missing, whatever it may be used for."

Government withdraws 45-minute claim
By Times Online and agencies

The Government today formally withdrew its controversial claim that Iraq had had chemical and biological capable of being deployed within 45 minutes.

In a Commons statement, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, disclosed that a further line of intelligence reporting on Iraqi production of biological weapons agents before the war had also now been withdrawn by John Scarlett, the head of MI6.

Mr Straw’s statement means that the Secret Intelligence Service has now had to withdraw three of its main lines of intelligence reporting on Iraq’s weapons prior to the war.

---

---

By the way, has George Bush withdrawn his support for these claims? How about Dick Cheney? Have they repudiated the claims or simply stopped repeating them?

War and 'Competence'
What Abraham Lincoln could teach John Kerry about Iraq.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004 12:01 a.m.

A week before Election Day, John Kerry and his allies have once again changed their line of attack on Iraq. The issue isn't any longer whether we should have fought the war at all ("wrong war, wrong place, wrong time"), it is that the Senator would fight it with more "competence."

Sorry, we haven't decided the Iraq Invasion was the right war at the right place at the right time. We're just noting more proof that even were it justified it was mishandled. Badly.

The peg for this line is yesterday's story that a stockpile of explosives was stolen from under the Coalition's nose in Iraq. This is certainly bad news and looks like a blunder.

The Kitchen bills itself as A Community-based Online Book about Weblogging. And there's an interesting article

After the ‘haters’ community on diaryland (which I thought might be a little bit too ‘OMGtHeDrAmA’ to discuss here1), the Wordpress community is the finest example I’ve seen of the mob mentality amongst webloggers. I’d like to select two examples, more or less at random, of how having a ‘strong community’ fighting your corner isn’t always the asset it might at first appear.

…that provides illustrations of the force being mistaken for power.

People want to believe changing one thing can change everything; they think changing one thing is easy.

But nothing is caused by only one thing; and nothing causes only one thing. That you can abstract something in your mind is no guarantee it exists independently of you…this is especially true of those things that are abstracted for you and handed to you.

I am therefore asking for something unprecedented in American racial discourse.

Thought.

All other things being equal, knowledge and perseverance determine the outcome of a contest. But all other things aren't equal.

All other things being equal, the place you begin determines the order in which you finish. But all other things aren't equal.

It is illegal to shoot someone, but police can shoot someone to enforce the law. Remove that authority and government agents will be unable to act as they need to when they need to.

Incredible.

On the one hand, air and light being the best antiseptics, this may herald the blog's end. On the other hand, I might as well burn my passport because if I go overseas I'll probably get stoned to death (you decide if I'm talking about rocks or 21 year old scotch).

I suggest you check out Booker Rising for the results of some polling done by The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Interesting stuff.

And as you read, keep in mind they included 109 Black folks in the poll. And ask yourself if that's a large enough sample to say anything significant…much less accurate…about Black folks.

…who also needed to live in the world a while before realizing just how protected she was from all this.

Requisite Monthly Rant: The Point at Which I Pull that "Race" Mumbo Jumbo

I respect authority in many forms: God-given, parental, spiritual, governmental, you name it. I was raised to respect those with authority over me and I truly appreciate those who serve to ensure my safety on a consistent basis.

That said, despite a number of circumstances that should determine I do the opposite, I even respect police officers. However, I must say, my patience is wearing thin

Though to be honest she (my daughter) still gets jarred by the occasional reminder.

Dollar Falls, Gloom Over Economy Persists
By Andrea Ricci | October 25, 2004

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar fell sharply on Monday, dropping to within one cent of record lows against the euro as worries over the state of the U.S. economy persisted.

Record high oil prices, mixed U.S. economic data, low interest rates and a large and growing current account deficit have weighed on the dollar, pushing it down through several key technical levels, which in turn has sparked more selling.

"The risk of being long dollars is not one that the market is willing to bear," said Bob Lynch, senior currency strategist at BNP Paribas in New York. [P6: You, of course, have little option about which currency to hold and have probably been short dollars for some time now…]

Grab a copy of the magazine. It will take time to read the whole endorsement, which includes a recounting of the Bush administration's record that it so scathing only because it is so accurate and clearly stated. I've added the merest whisper of emphasis to the quote here and there.

THE CHOICE

by The Editors

Issue of 2004-11-01

Posted 2004-10-25

This Presidential campaign has been as ugly and as bitter as any in American memory. The ugliness has flowed mostly in one direction, reaching its apotheosis in the effort, undertaken by a supposedly independent group financed by friends of the incumbent, to portray the challenger—who in his mid-twenties was an exemplary combatant in both the Vietnam War and the movement to end that war—as a coward and a traitor. The bitterness has been felt mostly by the challenger’s adherents; yet there has been more than enough to go around. This is one campaign in which no one thinks of having the band strike up “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Opponents accuse Blair of lying to help Bush
By Associated Press | October 25, 2004

LONDON -- Political opponents of Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a renewed attack on his handling of the Iraq conflict yesterday, as British soldiers prepared to move deeper into the country to support US troops.

Four senior members of previous Conservative Party governments, including former Prime Minister John Major, leveled a series of allegations against Blair ranging from accusations of outright lying to moving British troops deeper into Iraq and into much more dangerous territory to help President Bush in the approaching US election.

Hat tip to David Sirota for the reminder.

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 2, 2004

With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

Ivan's pounding bares gap between rich and poor
BY CARA BUCKLEY
[email protected]

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - The sun was scorching and heat waves blurred the horizon as Taekia Christian scanned the sea for her boyfriend, out spearfishing for something to eat.

Her three children sprawled beneath a green canvas tent amid a bright mess of plastic toys. Behind it, Christian's uninsured old house sat in ruins, destroyed like many of her neighbors' homes by Hurricane Ivan. A mangled stack of cars, one of them hers, towered nearby.

But a few miles west, in the financial center of the Cayman Islands capital of George Town, tall mirrored buildings stood virtually untouched. Homes to banks in this British-controlled tax haven, they were built to withstand ferocious storms like Ivan, which ravaged the island of Grand Cayman six weeks ago.

(Originally posted at Open Source Politics a year ago, I thought I'd repost it as a lantern of sorts…a reminder that the nation has been tempted down the road George Bush, Dick Cheney, Antonin Scalia and John Ashcroft are so comfortable on; that though fear send us in a bad directions we always turn away when things become clearer. And to introduce the idea that maaaaaybe we should take steps to remain clear.)

We like to think all citizens of the United States of America are
guaranteed certain civil and human rights. Unfortunately, that
guarantee is subject to the vagaries of human judgment. At times of
national crisis this nation has always reduced the protections we are
"guaranteed" by law. In fact Justice Scalia has said in wartime, "the
protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum.
I won't let it go beyond the constitutional minimum."

Quote of note:

International law experts contacted for this article described the legal reasoning contained in the Justice Department memo as unconventional and disturbing.

"The overall thrust of the Convention is to keep from moving people out of the country and out of the protection of the Convention," said former senior military attorney Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "The memorandum seeks to create a legal regime justifying conduct that the international community clearly considers in violation of international law and the Convention." Silliman reviewed the document at The Post's request.

This is an American tradition: to craft reports and laws to legalize the inhuman (see the next post).

Anyway…

In N.M., Spotlight Is on Voting Rights
Charges Fly as Parties Dispute Registration of Hispanics in State's Arid South
By T. R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A06

ROSWELL, N.M. -- On the north end of town, where the Anglos live, people lined up in large numbers Saturday at the Roswell Mall to take advantage of the early voting site there. But down on the south side, in the Hispanic neighborhood, the designated early voting venue was locked up tight -- closed for the weekend.

For community activist Bonnie Aria, that distinction says all you need to know about voting rights here in southern New Mexico, a rugged expanse of arid desert country that could play a key role in the 2004 election.

I've said The only bad thing about Eliot Spitzer as AG would be New York losing him. I've decided the benefits of having Mr. Spitzer doing what he does on a national level outweighs any loss New York would take by his appointment.

Eliot Spitzer is blatantly pro-human and committed to holding corporations…which legally are humans…as accountable to the law as actual flesh and blood humans are.

Isn't that refreshing?

In fact, given that corporations attained their current level of invulnerability by manipulation of the 14th Amendment…which was written to protect the rights of freed slaves…I would like to see them subject to the same scrutiny Black people receive. They wouldn't get away with a damn thing.

Question of note:

Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review, lays out the major difficulty in the current issue of AJR:

"How do you handle controversial, explosive charges made in the heat of a political campaign by people with painfully obvious axes to grind?"

With integrity.

Point out the obvious axe and the nature of the accusation without going into detail…because the story is NOT the bullshit line being pushed but the fact that partisans are pushing a bullshit line.

And if you MUST report the details, take the line used in criminal proceedings: say this group of partisans who have this ax to grind are claiming this, with no support beyond partisan hopes, spin, etc.

Best of all would be to hold to high journalistic standards and when asked "Why isn't the MSM reporting this," tell the truth—because it's bullshit.

The general problem is the inability of the for-profit model to deliver top of the line health care to the entire population.

Go ahead and say the whole population doesn't need top of the line health care. Or say they need it but it's okay that they don't have it because they can't afford it.

Anyway…

Canada's Vaccine Plan May Be Model for U.S.
Program Supports Market for Producers
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A03

When it comes to getting flu shots for its citizens, the United States may someday soon look like a giant version of Canada, its national-health-plan neighbor to the north.

Like the United States, Canada has only two suppliers of influenza vaccine, fluctuating public enthusiasm for flu shots and a lot of wasted doses at the end of winter. What it doesn't have is any question about who pays for uncertainty or miscalculation. It is the government.

Quote of note:

But Lamy has stated that the bill may not go far enough toward meeting the requirements set by the WTO's ruling because it phases out the export subsidies rather than eliminating them and contains "grandfather" clauses effectively allowing certain businesses to continue enjoying the illegal subsidies if their contracts were signed early enough. Lamy's stance has left unclear whether the E.U. will terminate the sanctions.

"We will be asking the WTO to look into the [new law's] compliance with its original findings," the E.U. official said, adding that Brussels hopes to get a ruling on this matter within three months or so. Asked whether another ruling by the WTO against Washington would mean that the existing sanctions would go back into effect, or whether similar tariffs would be applied on a different list of goods, the official declined comment.

Senators Offer Intelligence Plan
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 25, 2004; Page A03

The chairman and the ranking Democratic member of the Senate conferees on the bill to restructure intelligence gathering said yesterday that a House Republican compromise proposal fails to provide the needed authority to a new national intelligence director and called for acceptance of their bipartisan counteroffer.

"The bipartisan counterproposal the Senate conferees unanimously offer the House answers the most critical question raised by the 9/11 commission: Who is in charge of the intelligence community?" Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said yesterday in a statement.

In This Climate, Victory's No Picnic, Either
By ROBIN TONER

THE long and bitter presidential campaign will (it is widely and devoutly hoped) be over in nine days. One man will win, and the voters will be rewarded with either George W. Bush's "ownership society," with sweeping change in Social Security and an overhaul of the tax system, or John Kerry's "stronger America," with a huge new health program and other assistance for the strained middle class.

Right?

Actually, probably not.

Theoretically, it could work that way, with a bitter campaign producing a robust mandate, functional control of the government for one party and a season of legislative accomplishment. But not many in Washington expect it to happen this time.

Quote of note:

The latest hip convergence is in the here and now, a time when hip's ideology, Leland notes, ''has become the mainstream's.'' Rather than taking the predictable stance that hip is played out, and nothing and no one will ever be truly cool again, Leland argues that hip is simply moving on as it always has, sloughing off the old polarities that defined it in the past -- black versus white, straight versus gay, Iron Curtain versus NATO -- and redefining itself in a new world where whiteness is as much an adopted pose as blackness. Whereas Elvis was a white Negro, the doofus Ashton Kutcher wannabe, in his ironically worn sideways Von Dutch white-trash trucker hat, is, Leland says, a ''White White Boy . . . a whiteface minstrel.''

'Hip': The White Negro Problem

Quote of note:

To understand what has gone wrong in health care, one need only look at the booming market for prescription drugs. Once upon a time, drugs were a needs-based product. You received a prescription when you were truly ill. Now many drugs are demand-driven, just like Froot Loops and Lucky Charms.

The Health of Nations
By DONALD L. BARLETT and JAMES B. STEELE

For years the people in Washington have offered one plan after another that they said would provide health care for all Americans and rein in costs. Each plan has failed. Today more people than ever have inadequate coverage or no insurance at all. And still costs continue to spin out of control.

I'm not, not really. In this case the "what" is enough for me.

Anyway…

After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN

Published: October 24, 2004

WASHINGTON - In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II.

Quotes of note:

Two economists, Warwick J. McKibbin of the Brookings Institution and Andrew Stoeckel of the Center for International Economics in Australia, have calculated that the war may have already cost the United States $150 billion in lost gross domestic product since fighting began in March 2003. That is close to one percentage point of growth lost over the past year and a half. If that figure is correct, the nation's annual economic growth rate, which has been 3.7 percent during this period, could have been nearly 4.7 percent without the war.

and

What really worries economists, though, is the future economic impact. "The longer this war runs, the weaker our long-run growth will be," Mr. Zandi said. That is because spending on things like the occupation and peacekeeping in Iraq does not do anything to bolster the American economy's productive capacity.

Quote of note:

A spokeswoman for the Iraqi government, Maha Malik, had a somewhat different account of the attack. She said insurgents had fired rocket-propelled grenades at two minibuses carrying the soldiers, The Associated Press reported. An A.P. reporter at the scene said the charred hulks of the buses were still in the area, as were human remains and pools of blood.

It was unclear whether the soldiers were part of the Iraqi National Guard, a domestic militia, or the new Iraqi Army. Kirkush is the largest training camp run by the Americans, and is located in a dry swath of desert near the mountainous Iranian border.

The murders of the roughly 50 soldiers raises questions of why the soldiers were unable to defend themselves, especially given the fact they were undergoing training by Americans, and whether they had sufficient protection as they were traveling back and forth from leave.