A Cry for Leadership on Civil Rights
By Mary Frances Berry
Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A27

In 1980, when I was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by President Jimmy Carter, the glass of equal opportunity was half full. Today it's teeming with new and intractable challenges that keep it half empty.

In the early days of my tenure, the unemployment rate for blacks was twice that of whites, and the black youth jobless rates -- teetering at 60 percent -- compelled Carter to start a youth unemployment initiative. There was much talk of how awful urban K-12 education was. The uneasiness surrounding the Supreme Court's Bakke ruling on higher education was balanced by the more hopeful Weber decision leaving in place affirmative action in employment.

Stepping Up to the Plate for the City
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A27

"Thanks for that stupid woman that you call council member to vote against the baseball stadium. Do you really think that that dumbass jungle monkey and her socialist ways is going to win? Why are you people full of envy for upstarting and growing a community that needs something like this? No wonder so many of you kill each other, none of you don't have brains and feed off like animals. Nice job socialists!!!!"

-- e-mail to D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp at 8:26 a.m. on Dec. 15.

Linda Cropp has come under heavy attack. She's been described as a double-crossing, treacherous demagogue because she had the temerity to question the cost of building a taxpayer-subsidized baseball stadium. Her eleventh-hour proposal to require half the cost of the stadium to be funded with private financing, which was backed overwhelmingly by her council colleagues, has sent the yahoos off the deep end.

A Tenuous Hold on the Middle Class
African Americans On Shifting Ground
By Alec Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 18, 2004; Page A01

Ground Gained and Lost

If it looks tough from Cobb's perspective today, the past century has told a story of progress for blacks and other minorities. The first two World Wars created new opportunities for factory jobs in the North, and blacks migrated by the millions from the Jim Crow South, creating the backbone of a nascent middle class, with relatively secure jobs and benefits. Coupled with the desegregation of colleges and universities and the increasing influence of black communities in urban centers like Washington, African Americans began to find firmer economic ground. Immigrant groups, particularly Hispanics, have also been absorbed into that generally rising economy.

It's about time this was settled. Taking your kid because someone else is foul was just…foul. And my sister does foster care so I know there have been improvements.

Anyway…

City Settles Suit Over Separating Abused Mothers From Children
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

The city settled a long-running class-action lawsuit by victims of domestic violence yesterday, essentially conceding that children could not be placed in foster care just because their mothers had been abused.

The settlement was no surprise as it came just months after the state's highest court had ruled that the city could not remove children in cases where the sole problem in a family was domestic violence.

Quote of note:

The United States has pledged to defend Taiwan if the mainland attacks, and China would risk derailing its trade-dependent economic growth if it launched an attack.

"This is a step the people have been demanding for many years," says Yu Keli, a Taiwan expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "There can be no ambiguity that China will fight Taiwanese independence no matter what."

China's Army May Respond if Taiwan Fully Secedes
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Dec. 17 - The Communist Party-controlled legislature has indicated that it is preparing to enact a law against secession, possibly mandating military action if Taiwan were to declare independence.

In Congo War, Even Peacekeepers Add to Horror
By MARC LACEY

BUNIA, Congo, Dec. 16 - In the corner of the tent where she says a soldier forced himself on her, Helen, a frail fifth grader with big eyes and skinny legs, remembers seeing a blue helmet.

The United Nations peacekeeper who tore off her clothes had used a cup of milk to lure her close, she said in her high-pitched voice, fidgeting as she spoke. It was her favorite drink, she said, but one her family could rarely afford. "I was so happy," she said.

After she gulped it down, the foreign soldier pulled Helen, a 12-year-old, into bed, she said. About an hour later, he gave her a dollar, put a finger to his lips and pushed her out of his tent, she said.

Quote of note:

In less than 12 hours, Pfizer said that it had found increased risk of heart problems for people taking Celebrex, a painkiller that is one of the world's best-selling medicines. AstraZeneca reported that a trial of Iressa, a lung cancer drug approved in the United States last year, showed that the drug did not prolong lives. And Eli Lilly warned doctors that Strattera, its drug to treat attention deficit disorder, usually in children, had caused severe liver injury in at least two patients.

Pricey Drug Trials Turn Up Few New Blockbusters
By ALEX BERENSON

From Economics Explained : Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going:

The whole market system is built on the assumption that individuals are rational as well as acquisitive—that marketers will have at least roughly accurate information about the market.

In common conversation people assume "marketers" means sellers but here it means "people that participate in the market," and so includes buyers too.

Without correct or adequate information marketers obviously cannot make correct decisions. But typically many marketers do not have adequate information. Consumers guide themselves by hearsay, by causal information picked up in random sampling, or by their susceptibility to advertising.…Even professional buys, such as industrial purchasing agents, cannot know every price of every product, including all substitutes.

Universal possession of the knowledge of every price of every product, including all substitutes by marketers that are by definition rational are the requirement for correct operation of "the market."

We're not even close.

Rather than wait for tomorrow morning's dose of "wisdom" from This Week, Meet the Press et. al., I thought I'd check a media pundit panel that has no melodrama: Washington Week on PBS. The streaming video from last night's show is available now. The full transcripts will be available Monday afternoon.

One Charged With Killing Mom, Taking Baby

By MARGARET STAFFORD
Associated Press Writer
Published December 18, 2004, 2:44 AM CST

…Several pregnant women have been killed in recent years by attackers who then removed their fetuses, in some cases to pass the children off as their own.

In the most recent case, a 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Oklahoma in December 2003, allegedly by another woman who pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. The fetus died and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Baby found in Kansas might be missing girl
Police: Woman charged with kidnapping leading to death

(CNN) -- Authorities believe an infant girl found at the home of a Kansas woman is the same baby taken from her mother's womb Thursday after the mother was killed in Missouri.

Lisa Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kansas, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, and then "removing the fetus," according to an FBI affidavit filed Friday.

Stinnett was killed at about 3 p.m. Thursday (4 p.m. ET) in her house in Skidmore in northwest Missouri.

Montgomery, whom authorities say had a miscarriage earlier this year, was arrested and charged with kidnapping resulting in death. If convicted, Montgomery could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty, and a maximum $250,000 fine.

Quote of note:

"The safest thing is probably taking something like Tylenol," a nonprescription painkiller, he said.

Pfizer says Celebrex increases heart risks
FROM STAFFAND WIRE REPORTS

Pfizer Inc. said it found an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes for patients taking high dosages of its top-selling arthritis painkiller Celebrex -- the same problem that led to the withdrawal of its one-time competitor, Vioxx.

The company said it has no plans to remove Celebrex from the market, but the disclosure on Friday sent Pfizer's shares tumbling because of fears that it could cripple sales of what had been the most-prescribed drug for treating arthritis.

Acting U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford said the government is advising physicians to consider prescribing drugs other than Celebrex to their patients.

We really talk like this. It's sick.

Her:

Okay, so recently I asked a bunch of people what they think their flaws and strengths are in writing, and I have noticed something (which I always knew, actually, but this time for some reason I thought about it more.) Specifically, I have noticed that the good, talented writers tend to have these very long lists of bitches about their own work and much shorter lists of things they actually like, whereas the crappy writers tend to have the reverse.

Further, the good writers tend to have deeper concerns: they write about how bad their characterization, dialogue, plotting, structure, etc is, whereas the notsogreat writers tend to say things like "I use too many commas" or "I'm weak on my research."

Now, what I'm wondering is this: Is it that the better writers are better because they perceive their own flaws whereas the others are kinda clueless? Or is it that the better writers perceive their own flaws because they're better, whereas the others don't have the skill to recognize the flaws? And what about talent? Does having a natural talent for writing tend to make you notice your own flaws more than someone who doesn't have that instinct?

I'll tell you what it's like.

'Cause I'm no racist. People just assume I'm a racist and I'm tired of it. Shit. Man I never think about race, who has the damn time?

Yeah, I know there's racists out there. I saw that thing about the Klan march on TV, I'm not saying there ain't no racists, I ain't stupid. But I ain't nothin like that. Nobody I know is like that. Those guys are an embarrassment.

But me and my friends, we don't have that kind of trouble anywhere we go. Unless there's black people around. Every time I saw something racial come up there was a black person involved. I'm not judging anyone, I'm just saying what I've seen.Really. Like,you always get all tight. You just feel racism is there, like a shadow in the corner of your eye. You look out for things like that, you don't want to get caught up in some racial shit because you know they're going to say it's you. And it ain't.

Finding Homosexual Threads in Lincoln's Legend
By DINITIA SMITH

Was Abraham Lincoln a gay American?

The subject of the 16th president's sexuality has been debated among scholars for years. They cite his troubled marriage to Mary Todd and his youthful friendship with Joshua Speed, who shared his bed for four years. Now, in a new book, C. A. Tripp also asserts that Lincoln had a homosexual relationship with the captain of his bodyguards, David V. Derickson, who shared his bed whenever Mary Todd was away.

Quote of note:

As Presley's only child, Lisa Marie is the sole heir to the estate, most of which is now to become part of a publicly traded company that will be called CKX Inc.

The agreement will pay her $53 million in cash and absolve her of $25 million in debts owed by the estate. She also is to get shares in the new company expected to be worth more than $20 million.

Lisa Marie Presley Selling Elvis Estate

By WOODY BAIRD
Associated Press Writer

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father's name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million.

Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to sell 85 percent of its assets to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, founder of music and sports promoter SFX Entertainment.

Doesn't this sound familiar?

---

GOP to sue over 573 found Wash. ballots
By Rebecca Cook, Associated Press Writer | December 16, 2004

SEATTLE --Republicans prepared a lawsuit Thursday to try to prevent King County from including 573 newly discovered ballots in a hand recount that could erase their gubernatorial candidate's razor-thin margin of victory.

The GOP expected to file a motion Friday in Pierce County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against King County officials. A judge was tentatively scheduled to hear the motion the same day.

Election officials in King County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Seattle, want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes that election workers mistakenly rejected.

Corruption costs Nigeria 40 percent of oil wealth, official says
100,000 barrels said to be stolen each day
By Reuters | December 17, 2004

ABUJA, Nigeria -- Corruption and mismanagement swallow about 40 percent of Nigeria's $20 billion annual oil income, anti-graft chief Nuhu Ribadu said yesterday.

Industry sources say at least 100,000 barrels, or 4 percent, of national oil exports are stolen every day in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest exporter. Despite its oil riches, 70 percent of the West African country's population live below the poverty line because of corruption and economic mismanagement.

Award limits eyed in suits involving FDA-approved drugs
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | December 17, 2004

Republican congressional leaders, emboldened by President Bush's pledge to overhaul medical liability, are expected to introduce legislation early next year that would prevent consumers from winning hefty damage awards from pharmaceutical companies if they are hurt by drugs and medical devices that have FDA approval.

The proposed legislation could cap medical malpractice awards at $250,000 per injured party, a change consumer advocates and trial lawyers say would effectively end such lawsuits.

The very programs that established our military superiority are threatened by the invasion of Iraq and the mismanagement of its aftermath.

Quote of note:

Four years after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pledged to transform the military into a leaner, high-tech force, officers familiar with Pentagon planning say the defense chief's vision of smaller, more capable ground forces is being confounded by reality.

The Iraq war, combined with the war on terrorism, is requiring many more ground forces than anticipated. More than half of the active Army has been deployed overseas in the past three years, while 90,000 Army National Guard troops have been called to duty.

As a result, generals, admirals, and top defense officials are coming to grips with what they see as the need to dramatically ''rebalance" the military and refocus on manpower, which steadily declined after the fall of the Soviet Union, at the expense of some costly hardware.[P6:But not, of course the missile defense system that no one with high school level physics understanding believes in.]

7:16 am EST, don't pay any attention to the timestamp on this post. And CNN's web site is dragging ass so I link this madness via Scotland.

Foetus Stolen from Murdered Woman's Body

US police are hunting the killer of an eight months pregnant woman whose unborn child was cut from her body and abducted.

Doctors have said the baby may well have survived the attack in Skidmore, Missouri.

“Someone was wanting a baby awful bad,” said Sheriff Bill Espey.

The 23-year-old victim, who was found inside her home by her mother, was probably strangled, said police.

Sheriff Espey said there were no visible signs of a struggle and no indication of forced entry into her home.

He said the victim had been married for a little more than a year and was pregnant with her first child. The victim’s husband was not a suspect.

Buying Into Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN

As the Bush administration tries to persuade America to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k), we can learn a lot from other countries that have already gone down that road.

Information about other countries' experience with privatization isn't hard to find. For example, the Century Foundation, at www.tcf.org, provides a wide range of links.

Yet, aside from giving the Cato Institute and other organizations promoting Social Security privatization the space to present upbeat tales from Chile, the U.S. news media have provided their readers and viewers with little information about international experience. In particular, the public hasn't been let in on two open secrets:

The Drug Lobby Scores Again

As ever, postelection herds of politicians are migrating from the public sector to the promised land of Washington lobbying, led this year by Representative Billy Tauzin, an architect of the people's new Medicare drug law who is becoming the pharmaceutical industry's chief lobbyist at a rumored salary of $2 million a year.

The eye-popping transition is quite permissible under current laws, which facilitate something dubbed Washington's revolving door. In truth, the process is closer to osmosis, with the "wall" between the public and private sectors serving as a semipermeable membrane in the body politic.

Thomas Scully, who helped steer the drug subsidy bill to passage as the administration's Medicare expert and overzealous public information censor, preceded Mr. Tauzin as a lobbyist for drug companies, leaving his government post in late 2003. The path is well worn. Remember Senator Zell Miller, the maverick Democrat fulminating for the people in a turncoat stint at the Republican convention? He may have to modulate his rants now in addressing corporate clients as a newly minted consultant on government. Joining him is Powell Moore, the assistant secretary of defense who dealt with Congress on big-ticket items and knows its power points well. There's not room on this page to list all the politicians and staff members moving from serving in the government to the richer world of influencing it.

Lapses Feared in 2000 Vetting of Kerik
By KEVIN FLYNN and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

In the days since Bernard B. Kerik withdrew his nomination as homeland security secretary late last week, the city's Department of Investigation has grown increasingly concerned about possible lapses in the background check it conducted on him before he was appointed New York's 40th police commissioner in 2000.

The agency said in a statement yesterday that it has been unable to find any evidence that Mr. Kerik had filled out a background form, as usually required, before his appointment to the post by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Officials are also interviewing employees and searching for records that might explain why a body of uncomplimentary information the agency had learned about Mr. Kerik was apparently never considered by City Hall before his appointment in August 2000.

Quote of note:

In particular, Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.

Bush Says Social Security Plan Would Reassure Markets
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

---

---

Okay, I shouldn't interrupt here but I need to say I don't give a fuck what the financial markets "think" about this one. The financial markets don't have to retire.

Okay, carry on.

Quote of note:

But Ms. Jaques is not any random single mother. She is the Iowa state director of a conservative advocacy group, FreedomWorks, whose founders are Jack F. Kemp, the former vice-presidential nominee, and Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader.

Ms. Jaques also spent much of the past two years as a spokeswoman in Iowa for a group called For Our Grandchildren, which is mounting a nationwide campaign for private savings accounts.

Her path to the stage was engineered by another advocate for private accounts, Leanne Abdnor, who previously organized a business coalition in Washington called the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security.

Clamor Grows in the Privatization Debate

Kremlin Reasserts Hold on Russia's Oil and Gas
By ERIN E. ARVEDLUND and SIMON ROMERO

MOSCOW, Dec. 16 - On Sunday, Russia plans to auction the jewel of what used to be its most profitable, high-profile and well-run private company: the oil giant Yukos. And if the auction takes place, the winner most likely will be a financially opaque, government-run natural gas behemoth, Gazprom.

Practically overnight, Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, would create an energy company that not only controls about 20 percent of the nation's oil exports but also has some of the world's largest energy reserves.

A Kremlin campaign that unfolded over the last year will have succeeded in dismembering the country's foremost private oil company, and it will send a signal to Russia's business elite that the state is back in business, literally.

Remember, Greenspan convinced us all to prepay into the Social Security fund in order to GUARANTEE its solvency at the projected payout rates years ago.

That was back when we were idealistic, I suppose.

Quote of note:

In particular, Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.

Bush Says Social Security Plan Would Reassure Markets
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

3 Years After Enron, Resistance to New Rules Grows
By FLOYD NORRIS

…the rulemaking effort has slowed, and Mr. Donaldson's plan to pass a rule this week was stalled as opponents gained one more delay in an effort to rouse opposition. A Republican commissioner, Paul S. Atkins, was critical of the proposal, saying the commission should get out of the way and let competition among markets benefit everyone. He did not address how to avoid having such competition benefit brokers rather than their customers. The S.E.C. is seeking more public comment.

The issue that is arousing passion is called a trade-through rule. It is supposed to assure that if an investor offers to buy a share for $25, no stock will be sold for less than that until his order is filled. To Mr. Donaldson, there is a need to protect investors who place such orders and provide liquidity to the markets.

Quote of note:

Over the last 30 years, General Blum said, the Guard has counted on these soldiers with prior military service for about half of its recruits. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many of these soldiers have been hesitant to join the Guard because of the increasing likelihood that America's citizen-soldiers will be activated and sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for up to 12 months. Indeed, many of the active-duty soldiers the Army would like to enlist in the Reserves have recently fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, and some have no inclination to do so again.

Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment
By ERIC SCHMITT

Quote of note:

The NRO's request marks the latest in a series of high-profile federal inquiries related to leaks of classified or sensitive information, including an ongoing probe into whether Bush administration officials illegally identified a covert CIA operative to reporters in the summer of 2003.

Justice Reviews Request for Probe Of Satellite Reports

By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A03

The National Reconnaissance Office has asked the Justice Department to consider opening a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a highly classified satellite program that has prompted criticism in Congress because of escalating costs, two administration officials said yesterday.

They knew when the mock warhead would be launched They knew from where it would be launched. They knew what its trajectory would be.

And the interceptor failed to launch. Because of "some kind of anomaly" (which means, "how da fuk I know?")

sigh…

U.S. Missile Defense Test Fails
Latest Setback in Pacific Fuels Doubts About System's Future

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A05

The Bush administration's effort to build a system for defending the country against ballistic missile attack suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when an interceptor missile failed to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years.

Lott Joins Republican Critics of Rumsfeld
He Cites Armor, Manpower in Iraq

By Jim VandeHei and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 17, 2004; Page A04

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) joined a growing chorus of Republicans sharply criticizing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld because of the Pentagon chief's failure to call for more troops in Iraq and to properly equip troops serving there.

Speaking to a local chamber of commerce Wednesday in Mississippi, Lott said: "I am not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don't think he listens to his uniformed officers." Lott said Rumsfeld should not be forced to resign immediately but "I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so."

Presidential Medals of Failure
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A37

Where's Kerik?

This is the question I asked myself as, one by one, the pictures of the latest Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees flashed by on my computer screen. First came George Tenet, the former CIA director and the man who had assured President Bush that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy of Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi army and ousted Baathists from government jobs, therefore contributing mightily to the current chaos in that country. Finally came retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the plan whereby the United States sent too few troops to Iraq.

I saw this headline;

Bush to Fill New Intelligence Entity Ranks

and my first thought was, "With what?"

Lawsuit Reform a Bush Priority
President Seeks to Limit Class-Action, Malpractice Cases

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A06

President Bush yesterday demanded congressional action on legislation to rein in class-action, asbestos and medical malpractice lawsuits, telling a White House economic conference he would make changing the civil tort system a "priority issue."

And why are we just hearing about this 2002 survey now?

Because the press was too busy kissing the administration's ass as we were lied into an elective war, you say?

Obviously there's a lot of grond to be made up.

Many FDA Scientists Had Drug Concerns, 2002 Survey Shows
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A01

Almost one-fifth of the Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed two years ago as part of an official review said they had been pressured to recommend approval of a new drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality.

…to create a category on your blog called "Assholes so deep there's an echo when you talk to them"?

Huh? Did you?

Previous incarnation of The Niggerati Network has a category called "Bizarro World." I should set that up and tag all Bush's shots across the bough in the class war with it.

This shouldn't even go in the economics category.
Bush Says Social Security Accounts to Ease Deficits (Update5)

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush said creating private retirement accounts under Social Security will signal to Wall Street that the U.S. government is confronting long-term budget deficits.

"We'll send a message to the financial markets that we recognize we have an issue with short-term deficits and long-term deficits with unfunded liabilities," Bush told an economic conference in Washington. The 69-year-old retirement program will begin paying more in benefits than it receives in tax dollars in 2018, according to the program's trustees.

Someone paid $26,500.00 own a digital island.

Isn't that just, like, an account on a Linux server and some data? Are people actually losing their fucking minds?

Type Two: The salesman

BRIAN WESBURY: The tort reform issue... the whole idea about creating more growth in the economy is that we always need to lower risk and increase rewards in the economy and that's the way you encourage more entrepreneurial activity.

Risk is tied to reward isn't it? This is a fantasy, not an economic plan.

That other stuff wasn't the only nonsense spouted by our economic salesman Brian Wesbury.

And then one last point about that and it is that these systems are in trouble; the Social Security system is under funded by $10 trillion. Taxes have to go up to pay for it or benefits have to be cut to make it work. Something has to be done. And what the president is trying to do is say look, let's not raise taxes. Let's not cut benefits, let's find a third way, a way through this hole that allows people to build ownership, build a stake in the economy, to build a cushion for their future, and so that we don't have to change the system as it exists for those people that are in retirement or very close to it but gives the youth of America a way to build assets, a way to become owners and a way to become more personally responsible in the future.

Can we kill this "personally responsible" incantation? What the hell has it to do with the discussion?

Mr. Wesbury is as full of it as those who want to claim the output of pharmaceutical companies' opportunity cost calculations are to be added in when accounting for the cost of developing a new drug…and for the same reason.

Right now, Social Security is not in debt. At all.

THE GREENSPAN BAIT-AND-SWITCH:

When Bush says young people must be allowed to divert some money into private accounts, will the employer contribution follow? Dollars to doughnuts the employer contribution will be based solely on the part of the employee's contribution that goes into the Social Security fund.

The discussion of Class War Strategies on The NewsHour feature an economist and a salesman posing as an economist.

William Spriggs is an economist and senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute here in Washington. And Brian Wesbury is the chief economist at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens and Thompson, an investment bank in Chicago.

Long term readers know I refer to these professions as Type One and Type Two Economists, respectively. And they know I have no respect for Type Two economics pronouncements, and that I love folks that come to the same conclusions I have.

Blogcritics has a post titled Am I racist? that I almost missed (but caught yesterday). I want to share my reaction in the comments.

Mr. Saxton:

You know P6, that by painting all white people with such a broad stroke of the brush with statements such as the above, about their reactions to black people (guilt/defense)that you're being a bit of a racist yourself for pre-supposing & pre-judging people.

Nonsense. I'm not pre-supposing or pre-judging, I'm pre-paring. The broad brush is applying a base to the canvas on which details are applied.

Liberal guilt came as the first response to seeing on TV how truly fucked Black folks were under the Dixiecrat regime (and yes, the North had the same issues, but differently manifest--like a different tone being used for the base).

…after which I'll get to that discussion on Bush's class war that was had on PBS' The NewsHour yesterday. The transcript is up and the Type 2 Economist is as absurd as I remember.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon read it.

I'll read Pandagon. That's enough. I just went to the dentist yesterday and need no more pain for a while.

Did you know there are teeth with roots that extend into your eyeballs?

Sheelzebub, she-demon extraordinaire, admires the handiwork of a distant relative

Well, I must say, this is wonderful news. There's nothing like a bunch of rabid ideologues to make things interesting during this silly, namby-pamby season of fake cheer and pseudo-goodwill.

Emboldened by their Election Day successes, some Christian conservatives around the country are trying to put more Christ into Christmas this season.

In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add "Merry Christmas" to the red-lighted "Season's Greetings" sign on the main government building and is selling yard signs that read, "We believe in God. Merry Christmas." And a Raleigh, N.C., church recently paid $7,600 for a full-page newspaper ad urging Christians to spend their money only with merchants who include the greeting "Merry Christmas" in ads and displays.

This is, of course, fantastic. Hey, the more they tell people to buy things, the better to attain our New Manifest Destiny, where we expand our great nation by using all of our old stuff to reclaim land.

I mean, sheesh, here I was breaking a sweat at first. Good Lord, you hear "Christian" and you think "Jesus" and then you think, "Oh, that pinko hippie who gave to the poor and showed mercy and all that crap." You know. That guy--the one who, if he was alive today, would dither on and on and on about poverty and injustice and violence and war. I have to tell you, it's a good thing that Jesus dude is dead--if he were alive today, he'd be as festive as a dead cactus.

Steve Gilliard got email from a pro-life Democrat that Democratic activists should think through.

Anyway a couple of thoughts. I think one of the major messes involving the abortion debate in the United States is that its interpretation is pretty much unique. The rights-based interpretation of abortion is pretty much ahistorical - I know, for example, that Susan B. Anthony expected one of the signs of women's liberation would be the elimination of abortion. That women would no longer be so far backed into a corner that abortion would be considered an option.

Similarly, it's unique to the U.S. and Canada. In Europe it's viewed as more of a health and biology issue - France has considerably tighter abortion laws than the united States. Actually, on paper, pretty much every western european country has tighter abortion laws than the united states; also considerably lower abortion rates. I'd argue that one of the holes we're in in the U.S., and the reason that abortion is not a 'settled issue' the way it is in Europe is only partly due to pro-life militancy, it's also because of a marked unwillingness on the pro-choice side to discuss the issue. Since Roe, U.S. abortion policy has been pretty much static with one side desperately trying to pack the courts and the other side desperately trying to prevent it.

keto at The Colorblind Society caught my attention this morning, but not in a nice way:

And in a newer story, a drag queen has been dropped from hosting a drag queen show in Atlanta. Relevance? This act, called Shirley Q. Liquor is a new fusion: blackface and drag. The performer, a white and gay man, plays a character which is "an uneducated southern black woman on welfare with 19 children".

I think this person is trying to get a job with the RNC.

Courtesy of Ed Brown at Vision Circle I see an open letter to Black Conservatives in BlackElectorate.com. The quoted section is on point. I need to get to the rest of it.

And Lester Spence of the same domain reminded me about the Applied Research Center, a crew I've been really remiss about checking in with since, oh, August or so. They have a report about charitable foundations giving short shrift to research focusing on minority issues. You can buy the book or register to download the pdf which, being cheap as hell, I shall do but I shall also subscribe to Color Lines because they present articles like this one. There's a whole bag of feminist sites that I should ping over this one.

I'm shifting the websurfing order a bit today. I may get around to scanning the newspapers but I'm starting the day by seeing who caught what that I missed.

And the longest discussion in the history of Prometheus 6 will branch. A couple of comments about a trackback to the discussion were interesting enough that I'd like to pursue them separately.

And I'm considering how to divide my efforts between the N-Net and here. News vs. editorial? Events vs. analysis?

I've found comment spammers looking for mt-comments.cgi were still capable of disrupting things a bit. Crapfloods can still work out to a DOS attack (in fact, when I was setting up my draconian defense measures a while back I found the reason my previous shared hosting provider kept telling me I was maxing out the CPU--some idiot was crapflooding the Niggerati Network via The Anonymizer. I blocked the whole damn service). I was tempted to redirect every request for mt-[fill in the blank].cgi back to the requesting IP but realized that would be a good way to piss off the Google algorithms (is there any way to clean up a database the size of Google's when there's like 16 domain names per human on the planet? The mind googles boggles at even estimating the effort). Instead I decided to send 410s (tells the requesting system the resource is gone forever). mod_rewrite is your friend. Well, mine, anyway.

I just saw a discussion on The 0w3n3rship Society between a Type 1 Economist and a Type 2 Economist on PBS' The Newshour (Bush's plan is so full of shit they couldn't find a real economist to argue his side, so they got a salesman).

aaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh

I. Can't. WAIT for transcript.

And I'm not happy right now. So after I point you to Solo's take on the Ricki Lake Larry Elder Show I'm out for the night.

All the components of my genetic heritage, to my knowledge, developed in warm climates.

The coldest damn day of the year in NYC and I have to go out there.

Quote of note:

Immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to receive advice from their doctors about diet and exercise, according to the study. The researchers weren't sure why that was the case, said Dr. Christina Wee, a Harvard doctor who co-authored the study.

But Wee said that immigrants tend to be healthier on average than native-born Americans because the energy it takes to immigrate discourages the weak and the sick from making the move. In many countries, people also tend to exercise more as part of daily life and to eat foods lower in fat and higher in fiber.

American lifestyle fattens immigrants
By JACOB GOLDSTEIN

The American dream is fattening.

The longer immigrants stay in the United States, the more likely they are to become obese, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Fortunately I've been bitching about this almost daily.

Concise summary of note:

Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that although the outlines of Bush's plan were becoming clear, the package was not desirable.

"Under these changes, Social Security would be neither social nor provide security," he said. "This would be a piece of a program to expose people to more and more risk…. There are millions of Americans who have no desire and no ability to gamble on the financial markets, and they shouldn't be pushed to."

Accidental-accuracy-from-an-osteocephalic of note:

But administration officials and some analysts say it is a mistake to view Social Security reform only from the perspective of its effect on federal finances.

"It's the classic conundrum of what do you look at," said William W. Beach, head of data analysis at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Do you look at the trust fund or do you look at the worker's portfolio? I argue that you want to look at the outcome for the worker first, and the trust funds second. Others see it differently."

Why the osteocephalic is right:

Lee Price, the Economic Policy Institute's research director, said some people, such as those who retired when the stock market was down, would suffer through no fault of their own.

"For the vast bulk of the population," said Brookings Institution economist Peter R. Orszag, "Social Security is the critical foundation upon which one should be building a comfortable retirement. You should be taking risks on top of this core foundation, not within it."

Investments to Kick Off Social Security Discussion
Critics prepare to block Bush proposal to shift payroll taxes into private accounts.
By Warren Vieth and Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writers

This doesn't even rise to the level of stupidity. It's pure blindness.

Quote of note:

But healthcare experts say enacting what they call an "individual mandate" would be challenging. Requiring all Californians to carry their own insurance would have to involve some sort of subsidies for those too poor to pay the premiums — a difficult task for a state deep in debt.

It could also have seismic reverberations in the insurance market, possibly encouraging some businesses to stop providing health insurance, experts say. Ensuring that everyone takes out insurance and guaranteeing that the very ill are able to obtain coverage could be difficult, they say.

Mandatory Health Insurance Is Urged

Quote of note:

"I'm a single mother with four kids," said Tajuana Green, 47. "How can they just put all our families out on the street?"

Green acknowledged there are gang members in the building, and added, "You got to get along, try to be nice." But she said that does not mean that she and her neighbors are criminals.

Some civil liberties advocates also questioned the city's rationale for giving as much as $5,000 in relocation money to some tenants but not others.

"That's appalling," said Catherine Lhamon, staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "If residents in that apartment complex are not being charged with criminal activity, there is no basis for distinguishing relocation expenses for some residents and not others."

The article says the gang that this is all in reaction to had been running the apartment complex for 20 years. That's crazy, and just like the feds just took down John Gotti when they decided to, this could have been addressed 19 years ago. SHOULD have been addressed 19 years ago.

I selected the particular quote to emphasize to show it's still being badly handled.

The apartment owners also protested the evictions. John Dudley of Sadley Properties, which owns two of the three buildings, said that the city and the Police Department gave them little support as they grappled with the gang.

…At the urging of Councilwoman Jan Perry, city officials negotiated with the property owners for two years to rid the complex of crime.

But for the last nine months, the city attorney's office has been building a case. In September, the office filed a public nuisance lawsuit in Superior Court.

Minor sympathy for the building's owners. If you've been negotiating with them for two years it's hard to say you only had months. And we're not talking nuisance abatement. We're talking nine people, including two children, shot to death since 2002.

But no one moved on it for 18 years.

Without government support, the residents had two choices: move (which I suspect isn't easy in L.A.'s housing market) or shoot back…a move I'm convinced would bring the government down on them faster than on the criminals because the residents are easier to find.

Anyway…

Judge OKs South L.A. Apartment Evictions
City officials sought the removal of all tenants from a complex called gang 'headquarters.'
By Jessica Garrison and Zeke Minaya
Times Staff Writers

And it you don't think those conditions would return if the New Deal was rolled back, consider that profitable corporations lay off workers to enhance their stock price. We already allow restaurants to deduct tips from their waitstaff's already minimum wage salary. We already have a youth wage that can be paid to anyone under 20 years old for the first 90 days of employment. Now tell me that if you get broke enough you won't let your 13 year old take a job that lasts 90 days. And take it again 90 days later. And tell me corporations won't see that and respond accordingly.

Quote of note:

As it is, the two-tier system is breeding discord between experienced workers and new hires who aren't happy about being paid less to perform the same tasks. Turnover among new hires is unusually high, union officials said, and some new employees are chafing at paying union dues that average nearly $50 a month.

Quote of note:

At issue in the balloting are thousands of "empty ovals" — ballots in which a voter wrote in Frye's name but failed to fill in the small oval next to the write-in line. Election officials had declined to count those ballots, and a Superior Court judge last month upheld their decision, saying that state election law required that ovals be filled in for a write-in to count.

Ballot Review Favors Frye
Counting San Diego's disputed votes shows write-in candidate would have beaten the incumbent mayor, already sworn in.
By Tony Perry
Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2004

SAN DIEGO — The hotly disputed race for mayor here took a sharp turn Tuesday as a review of disputed ballots showed that Councilwoman Donna Frye would have beaten incumbent Mayor Dick Murphy if all votes had been counted.

Quote of note:

"Heads up," an assistant special agent in charge of the Navy's investigative field office in the Middle East wrote to his superiors in a 6 a.m. e-mail June 14, pleading for more investigators. "Case load is exploding, high visibility cases are on the rise," he warned. "We have scrubbed all of our personnel and have no other trained personnel available to deploy."

Details of Marines Mistreating Prisoners in Iraq Are Revealed
By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2004

WASHINGTON — Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy corpsman they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday.

I'm pointing out (okay, traffic whoring) a post on The Niggerati Network about three upcoming PBS specials you must see.

And I also want to say I'm not sure how it worked out this way but cnulan, who has been posting on politics and such at Vision Circle, is posting on Christianity at the N-Net. The kind of post I read and find nothing I can add to. You might want to check it out.

New Homeless Initiative To Raise Bottle Deposit To 12 Cents

WASHINGTON, DC—A bipartisan Congressional initiative passed Monday promises that relief, in the form of a national, 12-cent bottle-and-can refund, will soon come to the nation's estimated 600,000 homeless.

"We can no longer ignore the problem of homelessness in our country," Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) said. "Under the new program, all aluminum and glass beverage containers will be required to carry a minimum refund value of 12 cents, boosting homeless citizens' incomes and endowing them with a sense of pride in their work."

Citing the track records of local deposit plans, the Subcommittee on Human Resources drew up a proposal that would tap into the nation's existing infrastructure to minimize the homeless epidemic without creating budgetary hurdles. Dubbed the Shelter And Recycling Initiative (SARI), it is the first nation-wide, federally mandated bottle-deposit program. It is also the first government program designed to lift the burden of homelessness from the taxpayers' shoulders.

The Onion, of course.

Really bitter satire. But really deserved.

---

Nigeria Chosen To Host 2008 Genocides

ABUJA, NIGERIA—At a celebratory press conference Monday, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that Nigeria's troubled but oil-rich city of Warri has been chosen to host the 2008 Genocides.

"Nigeria is excited for this chance to follow in the footsteps of Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan," Obasanjo said. "Much work remains to be done, but all of the building blocks are in place. Nigeria has many contentious ethnic groups, a volatile economy, and a dependence on food imports. We are well on our way to making 2008 a genocidal year to remember in Nigeria!"

Obasanjo acknowledged that many people considered Nigeria, a relatively stable West African nation, an unlikely candidate to host the Genocides.

Judge Suspended For Wearing Blackface To Party
POSTED: 6:52 am EST December 14, 2004
NEW ORLEANS -- The Louisiana Supreme Court has given a judge a six-month suspension for wearing blackface makeup, handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit to a Halloween party.

Judge Timothy Ellender will lose all of his pay during the suspension. That totals more than $50,000.

Ellender, who is white, said the costumes worn by him and his wife were meant as a joke. She dressed as a policewoman. And the party's host, Ellender's brother-in-law, was dressed as Buckwheat.

The justices agreed Ellender did not mean to insult blacks. Still, they ordered him to take a sociology course to get "a greater understanding of racial sensitivity."

Public Hospital Claims Major Drug Manufacturers Overcharging Disabled and Homeless for Drugs
Report showing an estimated $500 million per year in excess drug prices spurs suit

July 13, 2004

Montgomery, Ala.-An Alabama public health hospital today filed a class-action lawsuit against some of the nation's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers including Merck (NYSE:MRK), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY), claiming the drug manufacturers have been systematically overcharging public hospitals and community health centers for drugs by as much as $500 million per year.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Alabama, Central Alabama Comprehensive Healthcare Inc., an organization that provides care for the indigent, claims major drug manufacturers have charged prices far above the maximum allowed by a 1992 law designed to provide more healthcare access to the homeless, the disabled, children, and the poor.

Quote of note:

One of the parents bringing suit, Tammy Kitzmiller, expressed concern that the school board would mandate the teaching of “something that isn’t accepted as science.”

ACLU sues over ‘intelligent design’ in Pa.
Suit challenges policy on teaching alternative to evolution theory
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:43 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2004

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Eight families have sued a school district that is requiring students to learn about alternatives to the theory of evolution, claiming the curriculum violates the separation of church and state.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the lawsuit was the first to challenge whether public schools should teach “intelligent design,” which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power. The two organizations are representing the parents in the federal lawsuit.

Quote of note:

Before relinquishing authority to the current Iraqi interim government, the occupation authority spent $20 billion from the development fund, $11.1 billion of which were estimated to have come from oil sales.

The United Nations' oil-for-food program is undergoing a separate series of investigations by the United Nations itself and five Congressional committees, all seeking to uncover corrupt practices and officials who allowed more than $20 billion in proceeds to be diverted to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

U.N. Audit Faults U.S. on Handling of Postwar Iraqi Oil Sales
By WARREN HOGE

I know we have a healthy Libertarian contingent here. This is likely to annoy you even more than the Conservatives, but I must. I really would like you all to go beyond theory and consider the way things manifested when the government was as small as Libertarians desire. The situation is nicely summed up by the first sentence of a paragraph in a New York Times editorial:

In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired.

This is not an opinion. This is historical fact. And it did not change until required by law.

And it you don't think those conditions would return if the New Deal was rolled back, consider that profitable corporations lay off workers to enhance their stock price. We already allow restaurants to deduct tips from their waitstaff's already minimum wage salary. We already have a youth wage that can be paid to anyone under 20 years old for the first 90 days of employment. Now tell me that if you get broke enough you won't let your 13 year old take a job that lasts 90 days. And take it again 90 days later. And tell me corporations won't see that and respond accordingly.

What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal
By ADAM COHEN

Published: December 14, 2004

…We take for granted today the idea that Congress can adopt a national minimum wage or require safety standards in factories. That's because the Supreme Court, in modern times, has always held that it can.

But the court once had a far more limited view of Congress's power. In the early 1900's, justices routinely struck down laws protecting workers and discouraging child labor.

…But that may be about to change. The attacks on the post-1937 view of the Constitution are becoming more mainstream among Republicans. One of President Bush's nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown, has called the "revolution of 1937" a disaster.

A Watchdog Muted

The United States Commission on Civil Rights cannot legislate or regulate. What it can do is hold hearings and make a terrible racket if the government is not enforcing the laws of the land forbidding discrimination in voting, employment and housing.

The panel is a watchdog, exactly as President Dwight Eisenhower intended when he persuaded Congress to establish it in 1957. Mostly it has been run on a part-time basis by academics like the first chairman, John Hannah, then president of Michigan State; the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who was president of Notre Dame; and, most recently, by Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. The panel helped created momentum for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 and for the creation of civilian review boards to ease tensions between the police and minorities in the 1970's.

Most G.O.P. Plans to Remake Social Security Involve Deep Cuts to Tomorrow's Retirees
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: December 14, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - As President Bush gears up for a major public push to overhaul Social Security, he has focused almost all his rhetorical energy on the need to let people divert some of their taxes to private retirement accounts.

But nearly every leading Republican proposal on Capitol Hill acknowledges that private accounts by themselves do little to solve the system's projected shortfall of at least $3.5 trillion. Instead, those proposals rely on deep cuts in benefits to future retirees.

Quote of note:

The authority's director of labor relations, Gary J. Dellaverson, defended the practice, saying overtime can be cheaper than hiring additional officers. "What you want to avoid through the use of overtime is surplus," he said.

Can be cheaper…but it certainly isn't in this case.

M.T.A. Spent $15 Million on Officers' Overtime
By SEWELL CHAN

he Metropolitan Transportation Authority paid a third of its police officers more than $100,000 last year, and in some cases officers doubled and even tripled their base salaries by working overtime, according to the authority's payroll records.

At the top of the list of 212 officers whose compensation totaled more than $100,000 in 2003 was Lt. Francis P. Zaino, who made $204,859 on a base salary of $86,705. Another lieutenant, Thomas G. Nutter, was paid $199,037, more than double his base salary of $85,708. By that measure, Officer John Wu did even better. He was paid $196,234, more than three times his $61,102 base.

Quote of note:

Two other Republicans have pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy in the phone-jamming operation: Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican party; and Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin's who operated GOP Marketplace, a telemarketing service in Alexandria, Va. They are scheduled to be sentenced in February and March.

Former Bush campaign official indicted for phone-jamming
By Katharine Webster, Associated Press Writer | December 14, 2004

CONCORD, N.H. --The former New England chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign pleaded innocent in federal court to charges he helped jam Democrats' get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.

High court restricts pollution lawsuits
Says firms can't sue unless US orders cleanups
By Gina Holland, Associated Press | December 14, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday put restrictions on companies that want to voluntarily clean up their polluted land and sue former owners to share the costs.

The court ruled, 7 to 2, against a company that in 1981 bought land in Texas that had been used for aircraft engine maintenance businesses and then went to court to recover some of the $5 million it spent cleaning up pollution there.

The justices said the company improperly tried to use the Superfund law to sue because the government had not demanded that the cleanup be done.

Calif. governor eyes dramatic shift in power
By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times | December 14, 2004

SACRAMENTO -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose ambitious plans to overhaul state bureaucracy face opposition in the Legislature, is considering a change that would make it far more difficult for lawmakers to reject his ideas.

If successful, the move would amount to a dramatic shift in power toward the Republican governor, helping him surmount resistance in a Legislature controlled by Democrats.

Currently, Schwarzenegger's call for revamping government can be rejected by the Legislature through a simple majority vote of either the Senate or Assembly.

Waveflux is cracking on a CNN poll question: Would you pass the vetting process?

Let's see: a couple of late tax returns, paid. Two busts for smoking a joint in public as a youth: one fine, one dismissal. Nasty tendency to expose lies…

I think that last one would sink me.

No one is trying to force you to speak ebonics.

Your two threads are interesting.

But your commenter who says he can't find sentence structure in ebonics is full of it.

And this is a fact: language develops from the ground up. It's hard to say you're not speaking correctly when everyone (including you, Oliver) understands what you're saying. Furthermore, if you read the original historical documents, you'll find "proper English" is very, very new. The American nation, society and economy were created by people who couldn't spell worth a damn.

The "proper English" you extol is a trade language, like Swahili. It should be taught as such. And like any other skill it adds to your marketability. But "proper English"…like Chinese…has no more significance than that.

Quote of note:

"He was then jumped upon, hit in the head and beaten. From there, he was dragged to a nearby apartment, which was actually the apartment of a co-defendant. Inside the apartment, he was beaten. He was stabbed in the area of the chest with a knife. Lit cigarettes were put on him, and there was racial slurs written on his back," Beland said.

The suspects allegedly yelled that Parks was a disgrace to his race. They allegedly pulled him into a car, where the racial slurs continued, and threw him out of the vehicle.

White Man Beaten For Dating Black Woman
Date: Monday, December 13, 2004

1 in 10 bird species faces extinction by 2100
Computer forecast says 15 percent will be on the brink
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:12 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004

WASHINGTON - About 10 percent of all bird species face extinction by the end of the century and another 15 percent are on the brink, according to researchers who say such extinctions would have a widespread impact on the environment, agriculture and human society.

“Important ecosystem processes, particularly decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal, will likely decline as a result” of the loss of bird species, said Cagan H. Sekercioglu of the Stanford University Center for Conservation Biology.

The forecast of Sekercioglu and colleagues, published onlin

NIH researcher seekswhistleblower protection
Fishbein reported concerns about AIDS research
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:39 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004

WASHINGTON - The expert hired by the National Institutes of Health last year to improve its research practices after problems in an AIDS drug study surfaced is seeking whistleblower protection after disagreements with management have left him on the verge of being fired.

Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, a 10-year expert on safe drug research practices in the private sector before joining NIH in summer 2003, has met with congressional investigators and provided extensive information about problems in NIH research.

NIH officials declined to discuss Fishbein, citing personnel privacy, except to say the move to fire him is based on his performance.

I just heard on NBC Nightly News that McCain said he has "no confidence" in Rumsfeld.

Hoo hah.

White Houseknew Kerik had ‘colorful past’
Official says conduct was seen as ‘not disqualifying’
NBC News and news services
Updated: 2:07 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004

WASHINGTON - Bush administration lawyers who vetted former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik before President Bush named him to head the Homeland Security Department knew he had a “colorful past” but concluded that his long record of public service would outweigh questions about his conduct, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Monday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the lawyers were aware that Kerik had been questioned in a civil lawsuit involving questions about an alleged extramarital affair with a corrections employee; the failure to properly report financial gifts on disclosure forms; and an arrest warrant issued after he failed to pay condo fees.

I'm starting to feel they just want to clear the continent of human inhabitants.

Quote of note:

The documents show Tramont and other NIH officials dismissed the problems with the nevirapine research in Uganda as overblown and were slow to report safety concerns to the Food and Drug Administration.

NIH’s nevirapine research in Uganda was so riddled with sloppy record keeping that NIH investigators couldn’t be sure from patient records which mothers got the drug. Instead, they had to use blood samples to confirm doses, the documents show.

Officials warned of concerns about AIDS drug
But U.S. sent medication to Africa anyway, documents show
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:33 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2004

Mammon’s Speech to the Republican National Convention

Thanks everyone. You’re a perfectly awful audience filled with greedy sons of b------ who love denying health care, decimating education, destroying the environment, starting wars for oil profits and sending millions of new people into poverty, and I love you all very much. But while I have been following your exploits with great joy, I bet most of you have never even heard of me. Sure, you’ve heard of my lazy ass cousin Satan, even though he f----- up the only two assignments he got in the Bible. First, Job then Jesus, both times falling on his big fat face. Still he has a better publicist than I do, so while he wouldn’t need any introduction, I have to tell you who I am: I am the evil one in charge of greed, possessiveness, love of money. And I’ve come all the way from Hell to tell you that I couldn’t be happier with what your party has done for this country.

Man, I though Steve was tough on Kerik. But if people follow Josh Marshall's coverage, Kerik should just leave town.

Nichelle of Nichelle Newsletter dropped this link to a MediaWeek story on declining Black TV viewership and its financial impact on the U-People Network.

Only you have to go to The Niggerati Network to get it.

I was going to let Steve Gilliard handle the final fisking of Kerik. But courtesy of my boy Bruce C (mailing list folk) I find this and I can't resist.

Now his double affair laid bare
BY RUSS BUETTNER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, December 13th, 2004

Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment for the passionate liaisons, the Daily News has learned.

The first relationship, spanning nearly a decade, was with city Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero; the second, and more startling, was with famed publishing titan Judith Regan.

"stunningly attractive"? I guess you had to be there…

His affair with Regan, the stunningly attractive head of her own book publishing company, lasted for almost a year.

Dramatically, each woman learned of the existence of the other after Pinero discovered a love note left by Regan in the apartment.

The revelations about Kerik's private life come as repercussions over his suitability to be nominated for the post of secretary of homeland security. Kerik, 49, married with two children from his current marriage, withdrew his name from consideration in a sudden and unexpected call to the White House on Friday night.

Quote of note:

Private schools say quality is in the eye of the ultimate beholder: The parents. If they don't like a school, they will place their child elsewhere.

There goes the entire basis of the No Child Left Behind testing regime.

Yeah, it's the same article I was talking about last post.

Pre-K bill pits private vs. public concerns for care
A new pre-K program was designed to appease private and religious day-care centers, but Miami-Dade and Broward fear public programs could be harmed.
BY GARY FINEOUT AND MARC CAPUTO

The loose regulations benefit private and religious schools and day-care centers, and they expose the roots of the battle over pre-K: money, and who gets it once the state begins to pay for the $300 million to $400 million voluntary program for more than 150,000 4-year-olds in the fall.

This is too deep for a single post.

Republican lawmakers have long favored private schools. They created the nation's largest private school voucher program, which helped turn the classroom into an extension of the marketplace or even, critics say, a house of worship.

But the bill's proponents say lawmakers aren't out to benefit private secular and religious schools. They're just looking for a simple and cost-effective way out of a vexing supply-and-demand problem voters laid in their lap: Where do you put all the kids?

You know why there's a problem putting the kids somewhere?

Morris points out that many public schools are at or over capacity statewide as they implement a constitutional amendment calling for class-size reductions. Voters approved class caps in 2002, the same year they opted for the pre-K amendment calling for a "high quality" program.

And this is the same sort of protectionism free market-types claim distort the economy. You can distort the eductaion process the exact same way.

…To ensure public school districts in urban counties don't create their own large, pre-K programs that would make it hard for private institutions to compete, the legislation says any school district not meeting the class caps "in each classroom" is not eligible for state pre-K money.

Oh, no. I'm not done yet.

Pre-K bill pits private vs. public concerns for care
A new pre-K program was designed to appease private and religious day-care centers, but Miami-Dade and Broward fear public programs could be harmed.
BY GARY FINEOUT AND MARC CAPUTO

TALLAHASSEE - Before the ink dries on a law creating a statewide pre-kindergarten program, it will bear the hallmark of a Republican-led Legislature that would rather tighten public purse strings than regulate private and religious schools.

The voter-mandated pre-K program, the centerpiece of this week's special lawmaking session, likely won't meet the number of instruction hours or qualified teachers called for by early-childhood development advocates. The proposal, expected to pass with few changes, doesn't bar religious discrimination, either.

The loose regulations benefit private and religious schools and day-care centers, and they expose the roots of the battle over pre-K: money, and who gets it once the state begins to pay for the $300 million to $400 million voluntary program for more than 150,000 4-year-olds in the fall.

Quote of note:

Under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, armed forces personnel are prohibited from "unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal."

Military Appeals Court Reverses Heterosexual Sodomy Conviction
By JOHN FILES

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - A military appeals court has overturned the conviction of a soldier for heterosexual sodomy in a decision that legal scholars and advocates for gay rights say may have broader implications for gays serving in the armed forces.

The decision, issued late last month by the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals, was based in part on the Supreme Court opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared last year that the Texas sodomy statute violated the right to privacy.

A number of Democratic writers have said they need to work on the local and state level to build the backing necessary to maintain a credible national posture.

They're right. It's what Conservatives did, and it took them 30 years. And it's what the Religious Right intends to do.

I say let them Certain localities will locally legislate themselves right out of the modern world. These Christian Lysenkos have no idea what they're doing to themselves.

Anyway…

Christian Conservatives Press Issues in Statehouses
By NEELA BANERJEE

Energized by electoral victories last month that they say reflect wide support for more traditional social values, conservative Christian advocates across the country are pushing ahead state and local initiatives on thorny issues, including same-sex marriage, public education and abortion.

Senator Adds to Calls for Steroid Tests in Baseball

Senator Byron L. Dorgan joins Senator John McCain in vocally pressuring the Major League Baseball Players Association to accept such changes without hesitation.

Quote of note:

Although people close to the president say he likes and respects Mr. Giuliani, they say the president has long been leery of him as a man who could not be counted on for the loyalty demanded by Mr. Bush. And while the breakdown of Mr. Kerik's nomination is not lethal to Mr. Giuliani's relationship with the White House, the friends and officials say, it will hardly burnish his credentials with the president.

"It hurts him politically, so therefore by extension it's going to hurt him with the White House," said a Republican close to the administration who has worked for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Giuliani and who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the situation. "Nobody at the White House is saying to themselves, 'Damn that Rudy Giuliani.' It's more, 'Well, he got his licks.' "

Quote of note:

The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.

Gee. Ya think?

Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

Though given its timeliness as regards an ongoing conversation in the comments I could understand the accusation…

After you read the article though, just to balance things out, you might want to consider this as-worthy-as-it-is-lengthy commentary. Then come back for mine.

'Acting White' Myth, The
By PAUL TOUGH

When Bill Cosby spoke out publicly in May against dysfunction and irresponsibility in black families, he identified one pervasive symptom: ''boys attacking other boys because the boys are studying and they say, 'You're acting white.''' This idea isn't new; it was first proposed formally in the mid-80's by John Ogbu, a Nigerian professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and it has since become almost a truism: when smart black kids try hard and do well, they are picked on by their less successful peers for ''acting white.''

Economist Day-Pass

I'm a subscriber, so I wouldn't have known this otherwise: via Razib comes word that the Economist now has a day-pass system similar to that utilized by Salon, which means that now you cheapskates out there no longer have an excuse not to read the world's best newsmagazine.

Laundromats, actually. I once bought underwear to avoid doing laundry for three more days.

Last night I got forwarded a link to an article about the first national Black summit on AIDS.

A couple of days back Coretta Scott King wrote an editorial titled Blacks must tackle AIDS on road toward social equity

If you're all Victorian you may not want to read my post about it at The Niggerati Network. But you need to read the two articles linked above.

In fact, let me point up some documentation on what Black folks face, medically. Think of this as a continuation of the Racism is a public health issue post from the other day.

I'm right pleased Tavis Smiley and Darrell Green spoke out on cheating being universal, not just in sports.

Darrell Green said the reason he's not in the NFL today is, he'd be given a position but no authority. Sounds like my reason for not being Republican.

On Kerik:
Bernie was rejected because he wasn't honest with George. It doesn't seem Giuliani will take a reputation hit for pushing Kerik (really hard).

Sen. Collins: comes on to validate the White House "vetting process."

Rep. Harmon is trying to do that "reach out" thing by suggesting a Republican sheriff from Cali for DHD leader.

Sen. Durban on Humvees:
He's seriously breaking down the shortfalls in armor and equipment in Iraq.

Sen. Durban on secret satellites:
Big-ass waste of money. And we're counting on leaks to find out there's a problem.

With 25 Citizen Warriors in an Improvised War
By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: December 12, 2004

…Rooted in civilian life, these hometown warriors carry a heavier burden in Iraq than in any other American conflict of the last half-century. And Pentagon projections suggest that the proportion of reservists and guardsmen in Iraq could rise to 50 percent, particularly if the troop level of 150,000 planned for the Jan. 30 elections remains in effect afterward.

When scheduled troop rotations are completed early in 2005, the force in Iraq for the balance of the year will be composed of 6 brigades of reservists and guardsmen, and 11 brigades of active-duty soldiers. And many active-duty units have reservists performing support functions.

Homeland Security Department Experiments With New Tool to Track Financial Crime
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The Department of Homeland Security has begun experimenting with a wide-ranging computer database that allows investigators to match financial transactions against a list of some 250,000 people and firms with suspected ties to terrorist financing, drug trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes.

The program, developed by a British company and used in recent test runs at the Department of Homeland Security, gives investigators what amounts to an enormous global watch list to track possible financial crimes at American border crossings, banks and other financial institutions.

Quote of note:

that logic is as flawed as a perpetual motion machine. If it were true, the government could erase Social Security's entire projected deficit by selling bonds at 3 percent and buying stocks that yield 7 percent.

Social Security Reform, With One Big Catch
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON

OF all the arguments being made to replace part of Social Security with private retirement accounts, few are more seductive and more misleading than the prospect of earning higher returns.

Get ready to hear a lot about this next week, when President Bush is host for a two-day economic conference that is expected to focus sharply on Social Security.

How Consultants Can Retire on Your Pension
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

NINE years ago, William Keith Phillips, a top stockbroker at Paine Webber, met with the trustees of the Chattanooga Pension Fund in Tennessee to pitch his services as a consultant. He gave them an intriguing, if unusual, choice. They could pay for his investment advice directly, as pension funds often do, or they could save money by agreeing to allocate a portion of its trading commissions to cover his fees. Under a commission arrangement, Mr. Phillips told the trustees, the fund would be less likely to incur out-of-pocket expenses, leaving more money to invest for its 1,600 beneficiaries.

Quote of note:

It is unclear why White House lawyers could not uncover a warrant that Newsweek discovered after a few days of research

I don't believe they tried. I don't believe they felt it necessary.

Joseph Tacopina, Kerik's lawyer, said his client was not aware of the warrant,

Oh, yeah, that explains it all.

If I had a warrant out there and applied for a foot messenger position they'd find that warrant in minutes.

Anyway…

White House Puts Blame on Kerik
Nominee Initially Denied Having Hired an Illegal Immigrant, Officials Say
By Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A01

Quote of note:

The unusually frank comments were made in a conference session that was supposed to have been closed to the news media. But delegates' words were inadvertently piped to reporters in a nearby media center.

Arabs Reject U.S. Push for Reform
At Morocco Conference, Officials Say Support for Israel Hinders Progress
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A16

RABAT, Morocco, Dec. 11 -- Senior Arab officials attending an international conference to promote democracy in the Middle East emphatically rejected on Saturday the Bush administration's assertion that greater democracy in the region would help end terrorism. They argued that the administration's strong support of Israel made it difficult to undertake political reform or to stop extremists driven by hatred of U.S. policies.

Oh. That's WHY you want to get rid of him.

Nevermind.

IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped
U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.

But the diplomatic offensive will not be easy. The administration has failed to come up with a candidate willing to oppose ElBaradei, who has run the agency since 1997, and there is disagreement among some senior officials over how hard to push for his removal, and what the diplomatic costs of a public campaign against him could be.

Quote of note:

On Friday, Kerik was again at work trying to keep information about himself quiet. Tacopina was in contact with at least one TV news organization in a bid to keep it from airing an interview with another ex-jail supervisor, sources said. The interview contained other allegations against Kerik, some of which have already been in print, the sources said.

All of which catches the White House by surprise.

Be honest. What, beside the invasion of Iraq, has not caught the White House by surprise?

Kerik, lawyer tried to conceal claims
BY DAN JANISON AND GRAHAM RAYMAN
STAFF WRITER

December 11, 2004