Link To Petition For McCain Anti-Torture Amendment

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=12322

Brainstems Gone Amok: Hanged Woman Dismissed As Halloween Prank

This one's from Delaware.

"State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

'"They thought it was a Halloween decoration,' Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/28/mistaken.suicide.ap/index.html?

Hazardous Occupation

From The Beheading Of The First Practitioner To This Weekend's Electrocution, Baptists Risk Gruesome Fates 

Brainstems Gone Amok: Texas Preacher Electrocutes Self During Baptism

By now the congregation has probably convinced itself that this was the will of God working to some mysterious end, but just in case any of them is listening:

Yo, you redneck idiots, you don't handle connected electric devices while standing up to your ass in a cattle trough filled with water, no matter how badly you want the enthralled throngs to hear you talking in tongues. I know that basic instruction doesn't appear in the Bible, but that's because they hadn't invented baptism in the Old Testament and they hadn't developed household electricity in the New Testament. I realize you have to know a little science to understand the problem, but there are options, like a wireless mic, an acoustic bull horn, and, even, god forbid, getting a freaking life.

"A pastor performing a baptism was electrocuted inside his church Sunday morning after adjusting a nearby microphone while standing in water, a church employee said."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-31-preacher-electrocution_x.htm

Link To Savethecourt.org

If Alito bothers you:

http://www.savethecourt.org/site/c.mwK0JbNTJrF/b.1142525/k.3576/Stop_Alito/apps/ka/ct/contactcustom.asp?auid=1198337

Who Said It?

"...the history of the last hundred and fifty years looks like a systematic preparation for the headlong collision between empirical and liberal democracy on the one hand, and totalitarian Messianic democracy on the other, in which the world crisis of to-day consists."

Who Said It?

"...empiricism is the ally of freedom, and the doctrinaire spirit is the friend of totalitarianism..."

What Me Worry?

What Me Supreme Court?

Assad Vs. The Brotherhood: Stay Out Of Syria

"...some Arab leaders and other allies say the Syrian government is already fragile and isolated. They have warned that international sanctions or other measures could topple the regime, destabilizing an important corner of the Middle East and possibly opening the way for Islamist groups such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-ussyria31oct31,0,4117674.story?track=tottext

Link To Support Vote Reform

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/Content/VotingReform/pen3.php

The Case For Impeachment: A Prosecutor's View

Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega outlines the case for impeachment, calling attention to the misrepresentations of NIE documents. Her analysis contributes to the case by citing the documentation in the NIEs that contrasts with the public representations and providing advice on the concrete steps we can take.

"As has been widely reported, the NIE is a classified assessment prepared under the CIA's direction, but only after input from the entire intelligence community, or IC. If there is disagreement, the dissenting views are also included. The December 2001 NIE contained no dissents about Iraq. In other words, the assessment privately available to Bush Administration officials from the time they began their tattoo for war until October 2002, when a new NIE was produced, was unanimous: Iraq did not have nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. But publicly, the Bush team presented a starkly different picture."

Well stated.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=32550

Berlusconi The Constant

I suppose all this is consistent with the Italian temperament: to be a strong supporter of bush, to have tried talking him out of invading Iraq, to commit 3K troops after the invasion, to tell the tale on the eve of his visit to Washington. . .

"Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, on the eve of a trip to Washington, said he repeatedly tried to persuade U.S. President George W. Bush against invading Iraq.

"Berlusconi is one of Washington's strongest allies but he did not send troops to join the invasion, preferring to despatch forces only after the fall of Baghdad.

"'I tried many times to convince the American president not to go to war,'' Berlusconi was quoted as saying by the La7 television network, which recorded the interview."

If the miserable little potus read the papers and had any idea what was going on in the world, it might make for an interesting meeting.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-italy-usa.html

Real American Dream?

Dummling The Simpleton Finds The Golden Goose 

A NATION OF IDIOTS

The oge perhaps rightly has been upbraided for calling average Americans who voted for bush "stupid;" what I meant, of course, is that they were politically stupid to vote for bush. Unless you are one of the very few very rich in the country, and your self-interest trumps all other concerns, including the health of the Republic and environment, the election of bush simply was not to your personal advantage. Accordingly, some factor/s other than self-interest motivated your vote, and the motive/s underlying your vote refer to a belief system that took precedence over political logic. I call that stupid, when a belief system, to the detriment of the organism, takes precedence over logic.

Of course, we are all politically stupid to some degree. The oge is increasingly convinced that he was stupid to vote for Clinton and Kerry in the last two elections, when he should have been supporting the growth of third-party candidates who actually stand for traditional American principles. The point is, political intelligence is a demanding achievement; simply learning enough political theory, practice, and history in order to vote competently is probably equivalent to the accumulation of skills needed to pass math 101, namely, what is or used to be, a command of trig and introduction to calculus, or, in the case of art history 101, enough knowledge to recognize and date a Rembrandt and to distinguish the stages of Picasso.

Unfortunately, voting intelligently also challenges us more immediately to examine our own values, since political issues refer so directly to personal beliefs. And given the mastery of politicians over obfuscation if not outright dishonesty, the matter entails some basic skeptical psychology.

So how bad is it, the state of the American electorate? How well do we discriminate between logical process and other belief systems? And among belief systems, how well do we discriminate the supernatural?

"A 2004 Harris poll on religion is instructive. Ninety percent of adult Americans professed a belief in God. More interesting, half believe in ghosts, nearly one-third believe in astrology and more than one-fourth believe that they were reincarnated from other people. Two-thirds believe in the devil and hell (but very few expect that they will go there themselves).

"A nation can afford only so much superstition. For example, 12th-graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries in math and science. This is an ominous statistic at a time when much energy is being expended in educational circles debating whether a creationist belief ought to be taught alongside evolution in science classrooms."

Little wonder that we have to pay the Russians---even after the wreck of their union---to get an American astronaut into space these days, or that the South Koreans have outstripped us in stem cell tech. Little wonder that over a million idiots work inside WalMart instead of walking pickets outside. Try to build a car using the tools of creationism, or developing a vaccine. The Islamists don't even have to worry about conquering us; half the work is already done for them, and all they have to concern themselves with is converting a nation of the mentally enfeebled from one fundamentalist supernatural belief system to its cousin.

Dr. Livingston goes on to examine what serves as a mind in the potus. He suggests, with little surprise, that the idiot probably can't distinguish between any semblance of objective reality and his own simple faith system.

Thanks to rl for referring us to this piece:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.livingston25oct25,0,441908.story?coll=bal-local-harford

(Most Of) The Rest Of The 7 Who Knew Plame

These are 6 of the 7 (outside of the CIA) identified by the AP as the unnamed persons in Fitzgerald's indictment, who knew about Plame.

After Cheney and Libby, the "'White House press secretary' is Ari Fleischer. Libby discussed Plame's employment at the CIA with Fleischer, noting 'that such information was not widely known.'"

"...'a senior official in the White House' and identified as 'Official A' also talked with Novak about Plame's job and identity a few days before his column appeared (has been indentified by several sources) as Karl Rove."

(We still don't know the details of Novak's alleged conversation with Rove; he has muttered something about not feeling free to discuss it because his source is still a subject of interest.)

"Names of two of the others were disclosed by a Justice Department official who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the identities have not been publicly released.

"Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman also told Libby that Plame worked at the CIA, apparently in response to a request from Libby...

"The 'assistant to the vice president for public affairs' is Catherine Martin. She learned that Plame was a CIA employee from yet another government official and advised Libby. The identity of the seventh government official remains a secret."

(Emphases mine)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Leak-Who-Knew.html

Planet Of Cheap Labor

 

Euro Economists Evaluate National Models In Global Economy

The key in this analysis is a national system which is both effective and equitable. Ours is rated effective but not equitable, and therefore not sustainable. One seems to have got it right. Read on.

"The GM crisis announces the end of the social regime of the big company that pays well and offers benefits. Ford will surely follow down this path, a path down which the automobile groups were preceded by the airlines, oil companies, steel and chemical industries.

"The good worker from these traditional sectors, a central figure of the famous American middle class, finds himself deprived of social coverage. He will have to pay personally for a health insurance policy. The weakest and the least prudent will join the 45 million Americans who now have no health insurance whatsoever.

"For pensions, there is a minimum, paid out by a federal body. But the latter, financed by companies' contributions, is itself in serious deficit. The American social system is therefore much less 'sustainable' than is economic growth.

"Europe has nothing to be proud of. Certainly it protects its citizens much better overall, but that occurs, in the majority of member countries, at the expense of growth and employment. André Sapir, from Brussels' Bruegel Research Institute, has just published a study that distinguishes four European models, of which only two are 'effective': the Anglo-Saxon model (weak unions, a wide salary range, social protection limited to a minimum) and the Nordic model (high level of social spending, strong unions, narrow salary range, freedom to fire but strong compensation for unemployed persons). Only one of those two - the Nordic - is both effective and equitable."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102805H.shtml

Theocracy Vs. Democracy: Danish Case As Microcosm

"Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten's decision to print twelve cartoons featuring Muslim prophet Mohammed has caused a stir among Muslim countries, daily newspaper Politiken reported on Thursday.

"A number of Muslim countries with embassies in Denmark have sent a protest to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the caricatures.
'We are hoping for understanding about Muslims' feelings about Mohammed. And we're hoping for an apology from Jyllands-Posten,' said Mascud Effendy Hutasuhut, minister counsellor at the Indonesian Embassy.

"In addition to Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina have complained about the cartoons, which they see as a hate campaign against Muslims in Denmark."

Right. Censoring the press will fix all that. Sorry, theocracies, doesn't work that way.

http://denmark.dk/portal/page?_pageid=374,610561&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&ic_itemid=879803

Kucinich (Yeah, He's Still In There) On Plamegatre

"These indictments are not about a single aide, it is about an Administration that went to any length to 'sell' the war in Iraq and mislead the public.

"From day one, this Administration has misled the public and the Congress, manipulated intelligence, and sought to quell dissent by all means necessary when it has comes to the war in Iraq. Now, a senior aide to the President and the Vice President is charged with lying to a federal grand jury and federal investigators.

"The President must come clean with the American public. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, it was not involved in the attacks on our country on 9/11, and before the war it was not aligned with Al-Qaeda."

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1028-03.htm

Huffington On Hillary's Dumb Message: Soulless And Vacuous

"Exhibit C was the report I got from the intimate Democratic strategy session held at Ron Burkle’s house in Los Angeles to discuss the Dems’ need for a united message. Those present included Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid’s chief of staff, Susan McCue, pollster Doug Shoen, Haim Saban, Rob Reiner, Steve Bing, and Warren Beatty. Among the highlights was the Hollywood unveiling of the Dems’ new slogan -- 'America Can Do Better' -- a soulless and vacuous phrase that sums up a party that’s become pathologically risk-averse. The discussion also included the latest report from Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, which is calling for an agenda focused on 'heath care, education and energy, followed by a top end tax cut repeal and homeland security'. In other words, let’s party like it’s 2004!"

But the Dems' new slogan is worse than soulless and vacuous; like the party itself, it neutralizes all accountability by attributing an implicit inadequacy to the national abstraction, as if "America" is to blame. And the inherent logic is pathetic, in that it requires an equation between "America" and the implicit deficiency of the current adminstration. Idiots. Any second-rate ad agency could tell them it's rotten and offensive. At this point, you can't tell the antiseptic from the pus.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20051027/cm_huffpost/009584;_ylt=A86.I09eYGBDhGAA9hn9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

Today's Cindy Sheehan

"If I go before a magistrate tonight or tomorrow after my next arrest, I will tell him/her: If you believe in what you are doing, give me the stiffest sentence possible. If you don't, then resign."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1027-20.htm

Great In Its Day: Shuttle Launch At Sunset

Plume Shadow Intersects Moon 

Nation's Shame: US Buying Russian Space Tech

What happens when you put all your eggs in one basket, and the basket finally is an obsolescent space turkey? And of course the idiots we elect to Congress do nothing to promote science and tech? Well, you end up buying more Russian space capability. Shame.

"The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to let NASA continue buying Russian spaceships to deliver astronauts and supplies to the space station until 2012.The Senate already adopted a similar measure, though some minor details need to be worked out before the legislation is finalized.

"NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asked Congress earlier this year to amend a arms control law that prevented the space agency from buying spaceships from the Russians. The intent of the law was to prevent Russia from providing nuclear technology to Iran.

"NASA has relied upon Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to and from the International Space Station since the Columbia accident in 2003 grounded the shuttle fleet. Only one shuttle mission has flown in the nearly three years since."

http://www.space.com/news/ft_051027_house_soyuz.html

DemRats Come Out Of Woodwork On Iraq?

Hope it doesn't hurt Kerry too much to switch up again, but this feint is really weak.
"Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday called for the withdrawal of 20,000 troops from Iraq by year's end as the first step in a proposal that would significantly reduce U.S. military forces in the region over the next 15 months.

"Kerry offered a middle ground between those advocating an immediate drawdown of the more than 150,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and the Bush administration, which has declined to set a timetable for a decreased U.S. military presence."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602172.html?referrer=email

Sheehan Does Hillary

"People I like support Hillary for president. Could I? Well, if she wins the nomination, and has denounced the travesty in Iraq, I could, especially against a pro-war Republican. But I fear she can’t speak out against the occupation because she supports it. Never again will I make the mistake of supporting a pro-war Democrat for president, just as I would never support a pro-war Republican.

"Sen. Clinton is in California now to raise money for her political campaigns. An invitation to one event read:

"'We must stand with Senator Clinton as she stands up for what we believe in. Hillary is and always has been our champion in the White House and the Senate.' She's one of the 'strongest, most passionate and intelligent Democrats.'

"...But she doesn't stand up for what I believe in. I don't believe in continuing this occupation of Iraq and I don't believe in killing more of our soldiers because my son has already been killed. Nor do I believe she is 'passionate.' I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys. She is intelligent, there's no doubt about that. But the intelligent thing for Democrats to do for 2006 and 2008 would be to come out strongly against the botched, bungled, illegal, and immoral occupation of Iraq, as Sen. Russ Feingold has. Republicans too, like Rep. Ron Paul."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sheehan/sheehan22.html

Some Victories

"...Congress failed to gather the votes they needed to pass $50 billion budget cuts to vital human services. And finally, just hours ago President Bush succumbed to your pressure and reinstated fair wages for Gulf reconstruction workers!"

http://www.ourfuture.org/

And on the environmental front, the demon Inhofe was blocked on his corporate giveaway:

"A bipartisan group of 9 senators voted to block efforts by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to pass legislation that would have provided a taxpayer giveaway to cash-rich oil companies, while rolling back clean air protections for millions of Americans. The measure failed to pass the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on a vote of 9-9, with Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) joining all 8 Democrats on the Committee to block the measure."

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=1068

Chaining Of Persons A Time-Honored Tradition 

Sheehan Declines NY Libertarian Bid For US Senate Race

A caution I just received from a local activist:

"Subject: Re: Cindy Sheehan for US Senator from NY?

We asked Cindy Sheehan about this when she spoke in Brooklyn last Saturday.

She said:

1) She'd already been asked by the Libertarian Party
2) She was not a carpetbagger -- her words, not mine.
3) She lives in California and IF she was going to run anywhere it would be there, against Diane Feinstein
4) She advised activists in NYC to chain themselves to Hillary Clinton's office doors and keep on doing it. She was pretty adamant that she would not run in NY."

(My emphasis)

Cindy Sheehan At The White House

"The indictments will hopefully be coming down to highlight the culture of corruption in this criminal administration that extends down to Congress and the Senate.

"What the indictments highlight to America and to the world is the wanton disregard for laws and humanity that Bush and Co. have. They also highlight to the world how apathetic we in America are toward letting criminals run our country."

Sheehan for New York senate race? Just whispers at the moment. Be afraid, Hillary.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102605J.shtml

 

Link To Sign Up With EarthJustice Action Center

http://www.earthjustice.org/action/

Richard Sales' New Dope On Plamegate

I won't vouch for anonymous sources, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in here:

"... According to U.S. officials close to the case an bill of indiictment has been in existence before October 17 which named five people. Various names have surfaced such a National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley...

"But letters from Fitzgerald, notifying various White House officiials that they are targets of the invstigation, went out late last week, a former senior U.S. intelligence official said.

"...But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights...

"The civil rights charge is said to include 'the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds,' one federal law enforcement official said.

"Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws...

"...Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides,, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

"...According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

"...They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, Gen. Wayne Downing, and Francis Brooke... Also iIncluded in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said."

(Emphases are mine, but not the typos.)

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/10/aides_to_be_ind.html

American Prospect Does Colin Powell

OK. He deserves it, but he is such an easy, shambling target... Except for one thing that no one really talks about: the guy is a multimillionaire now, and he likes it. Powell's distinguished military career, if you will, failed to teach him the difference between a loyal soldier and a whore.

"Has anyone in this town embarrassed himself in the last five years more than Powell? At least George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld believe this toxic gimcrackery they’ve been peddling to us. Powell never believed it, and he still peddled it. There’s a word for that, and it isn’t 'honor.'

"Powell needs to follow Wilkerson and Brent Scowcroft and come clean.

"I know he won’t; Wilkerson acknowledged at the New America lunch that Powell was upset with him for speaking out. But if Powell has any sense, he’d spill whatever beans he’s got, and soon."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10493

Buchanan On How We Are Elevating Iran To MidEast Supremacy

Nothing new here, but Buchanan has a way of putting it succinctly:

"But with Bush declaring Iran an 'axis-of-evil' nation, which was to be denied, even if it meant preventive war, any nuclear program or weapon of mass destruction, Iranians responded as nationalists. A hardliner won the presidency, and Tehran's defiance is now a popular policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. threat of military strikes to effect the nuclear castration of Iran becomes less and less credible the longer the war next door goes on.

"With Iraq smashed and perhaps splintering after we depart, Tehran is set to fill the power vacuum. History may yet record that the U.S. Army did all the heavy lifting in the Persian Gulf to make Iran its preeminent power."

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=7764

The Niger Forgeries and The Italian Connection Pt 2

Raimondo analyzes the Italian press' investigation of the Niger forgeries, with special attention to the roles of Hannah, Wurmser, and Ledeen:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7776

NYC Public Library: Getting Out Of Pictures

 

When Museums (And The NYCPL) Sell Off: A Glimpse Into The Debate

"'Deaccessioning has much to do with liberating storerooms - and collections management,' Mr. de Montebello (the Met's director) said. 'Having things we never show costs money to keep.'"

But:

"'History will make a fool of these museums,' said Robert Rosenblum, an art historian and a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/arts/design/26muse.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Assault On Working Families: WalMart Memo

An internal memo by the firm's executive VP for benefits to the board outlines facts and strategies to keep worker costs down. It also suggests the real price of doing business for the American taxpayer, who gets stuck subsidizing welfare, medicaid, and other social services for the chain's workers.

"Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

"...less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance... (Under a new health plan proposal) full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more."

Yeah. That will fix it.

Assault On Civil Rights: New Death Penalty Provisions Of Non-Patriot Act

Why?

"...an individual could be sentenced to death for providing financial support to an organization whose members caused the death of another, even if this individual did not know or in any way intend that the members engage in acts of violence.

"But critics are most concerned about procedural changes related to juries, including a provision that would allow a trial with fewer than 12 jurors if the court finds 'good cause,' with or without the agreement of the defense."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102502012.html?referrer=email

The Niger Forgeries And The Italian Connection

Here are the details as the Italians have them, and Hadley is in the thick of it:

"In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

"Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday."

We are hoping that Fitzgerald is on top of it.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10506

Tasini's Case For Universal Health Coverage

"It is a measure of our lowered expectations, fueled by media spin, that people shrugged and seemed to think that it was inevitable that workers for General Motors were destined to have their health care coverage slashed. After all, some seemed to think, at a time when their company is teetering on the edge of oblivion, these 'privileged' auto workers had 'gold-plated' coverage that almost no other workers in America have.

"But let’s be clear: The loss of benefits for GM workers was not inevitable. It happened as a result of many years of bipartisan political and economic decisions and the bipartisan lack of political courage to take on dumb ideology and corporate power."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051025/diagnosis_for_america.php

Ron Paul's Speech In House

"Supporters of the war in Iraq, as well as some non-supporters, warn of the dangers if we leave. But isn't it quite possible that these dangers are simply a consequence of having gone into Iraq in the first place, rather than a consequence of leaving? Isn't it possible that staying only makes the situation worse? If chaos results after our departure, it's because we occupied Iraq, not because we left."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=30573

NYTimes: Still Screwing Up

"Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday."

So that is the big scoop from the gray rag today. It took three reporters to write this installment of what is a continuously really rotten account of this case. The article's sources are described as lawyers involved in the case---and that's really helpful, since just about every point of view conceivable is represented by somebody's lawyers---and a former senior intelligence official. The article indicates a discrepancy regarding the likelihood that Cheney learned about Plame/Wilson from Tenet, but doesn't pursue it or even comment on it. Worse, this piece reports that Fitzgerald interviewed Cheney under oath, which would be news---if true---since virtually all the media, including the Times, have previously reported that neither bush nor Cheney was under oath.

"Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it."

If ever a rag needed a new broom, it's this one, starting with the senior editors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/politics/25leak.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Buchanan Condemns Neos, Dems, Media

Hey, that's everyone except radical libs and cons (of which latter group libertarians are a subset).

"While President Bush and his War Cabinet bear full moral responsibility for Iraq, they could not have taken us to war without the complicity of the 'adversary press' and 'loyal opposition.'
Today, this town is salivating over the prospect that Karl Rove and 'Scooter' Libby will be indicted for outing Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. Thirty months ago, many of those anxious to see the White House brought down were hauling its water. Consider the role played by our newspaper of record, The New York Times.

"To stampede us into a war neoconservatives had been plotting for a decade, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3, set up an Office of Special Plans. Its role: Cherry-pick the intel that Saddam was acquiring weapons of mass destruction and was hell-bent on using them on the United States. Then, stove-pipe the hot stuff to the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and ignore the contradictory evidence.

"... run it through a media centrifuge to convert it into hard news. Enter Judy Miller, self-styled "Miss Run Amok" and the go-to girl for the War Party. Miller took the cherry-picked Intel and planted it on page one, enabling War Party propagandists to hit the TV talk-show circuit and reference ominous stories in The New York Times about how imminent a threat Saddam had become."

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=7736

The Long Dumb Arm Of Government

If this doesn't wring a groan from your gut...

"The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.

"The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues."

Feel safer already?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html?th&emc=th

The Tentacles Of Abramoff

Abramoff's Victims Of Today Were His Co-Conspirators Of Yesterday. Good Riddance To Them All. 

The Tentacles Of Abramoff: Ralph Reed Ensnarled?

"Jack Abramoff, the GOP lobbyist under investigation by federal authorities for fraud, repeatedly sought the help of Bush strategist Ralph Reed to open doors at the White House for his business clients, according to e-mails made public Sunday.

"The e-mails show that Abramoff pushed for intervention from Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove on at least three occasions since 2001 to promote business opportunities.

"Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition and a nominee in the 2006 race for Georgia's lieutenant governor, wrote back obliging responses, according to the e-mail obtained by Time magazine."

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051024/NEWS06/510240353/1012

The Case Against Syria: Some Cautions

Is history repeating itself? bush and his thugs are heralding Mehtis' UN report implicating Syria in the Hariri assassination. But there are questions:

"This risk of investigators accepting questionable testimony from dubious sources is highest when the allegations are directed against countries or political leaders already held in disdain – as was the case with Iraq and is now the case with Syria. With almost everyone ready to believe the worst, few investigators or journalists are willing to endanger their reputations and careers by demanding a high level of proof. It's easier to go with the flow.

"In the Hariri case, the chief U.N. investigator, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, found himself under intense international pressure that some observers compared to the demands on U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix in early 2003."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/102205.html

Another View: Raimondo On The Real Object Of Libby/Rove

Justin Raimondo speculates that it may not have been Joe Wilson they were out to discredit so much as his wife and her front organization, before they separately traced the roots of the Niger Uranium forgeries. Fascinating.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7743

Another View: Weissman On Outing CIA Villainy

At the moment, the administration's critics are happy to see Fitzgerald use the shield law to undermine the iniquity of the neo cabal (if that is how it works out), and Wilson and his wife often appear the hero-victims in the scenario. Michael Weissman, however, provides an important perspective in this regard, reminding us that the shield law was an attack from the right on whistle-blowers (particularly Agee) who sought to hold the CIA accountable for the enormous damage the secret agency had done to the cause of human rights, utilizing, in the course of its brief history to "protect" us, torture, assassination, and manipulation of foreign governments.

Despite the exquisite ironies in the whole affair, it is well to remember that the CIA, driven by the short-term and usually short-sighted political aims of whichever incumbent political party, may have done as much harm to American interests over the decades as it has good. Why should we support a law which protects an agent who is involved in promoting torture, kidnapping, and assassination? It is analogous to the NYTimes' silliness in arguing that the Miller case was about journalistic freedom. No, what we have in both instances is the question of
whether the source is in fact a constructive whistleblower, seeking to serve the public, or a villain, promoting an iniquitous program. In the real world, black and white blur.

"As despicable as this White House treachery may have been, those of us who oppose it need to regain some lost perspective. Being bashed by Team Bush does not turn the Central Intelligence Agency into the home team or necessarily make Valerie Plame a modern-day Joan of Arc; nor should her outing stop journalists or anyone else from blowing the cover of her fellow agents when they are found engaging in kidnappings, torture, or attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments."

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=7741

Fitzgerald's Website

Whatever his reasons, it's up now. The initial postings are pretty much just of the documents setting forth his authority, but things could get juicy quick.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/

Pug-Face Condi Is Losing It: We Must Change The Nature Of Middle East

Like the senators wanted to hear that yesterday. The idiot bushhag just doesn't get it.

"Unless we commit to changing the nature of the Middle East, and if we tire and decide that we are going to withdraw and leave the people of the Middle East to despair, I can assure you that the people of the United States are going to live in insecurity and fear for many, many decades to come," Miss Rice said.

And when they kept pushing her on short term strategy, this is what they got:

"To execute our strategy we will restructure a portion of the U.S. mission in Iraq," she said. "We will embed our diplomats, police trainers and aid workers more fully on military bases, traveling with our soldiers and Marines."

Yeah, that will fix it. Whatever she's talking about. Will someone please put a bag over this idiot's head?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051019-095906-4805r.htm

Another View: McMansions, Fuel Costs, Suburbia, Mortgage and Construction Industries...and The Oblivious NYTimes

What would you expect from David Brooks? He has never impressed the oge with acuity or consistency, although he occasionally expresses indignation appropriately. Kunstler gets his off.

"The Times brings its usual magisterial lack of critical thinking to the subject. Among the conclusions: that the suburban sprawl housing bubble will continue indefinitely into the future, and that the price of houses will continue to rise, probably forever, too...

"Philosophically, the story is grounded in Times columnist David Brooks's concept that suburbia is a good thing because people seem to like it. But it's the Times's ignorance of practical matters that's really breathtaking. The nation's oil predicament is barely mentioned (and obviously only as an editorial afterthought, since the story was no doubt filed before Katrina and Rita shredded production in the Gulf of Mexico). Anyway, the issue is cavalierly dismissed. Missing altogether is America's even more dire predicament over natural gas, which is used to heat half the houses in America and 99 percent of the brand-new ones. Since the story focuses on large luxury houses over 3,500 square feet, featuring cathedral ceilings and yawning lawyer foyers, you'd think the question of heating these behemoths might arise, but no. The price of natural gas has quadrupled since 2002 and is still going up.

"But it's the story's willingness to embrace uncritically the Toll Brothers' credo of reckless and destructive greed that is most amazing...

"Here's the real dope on the situation. The big corporate production homebuilders, including the Toll Brothers, are selling their own stock like mad lately because they realize that the game is over, that they are in a twilight industry."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051020/concealing_the_suburban_nightmare.php

Could be. In any event, these days I wouldn't buy a house without a wood lot.

I KNOW it doesn't LOOK like a MUGSHOT....

but it IS!!!!!!!!!!!

For A Good Cause 

Gonads Gone Amok: Fla Law Profs Kiss Pig

Responding to laments that so much of the national and international news these days is depressing, the oge is doing his part to fight psychic numbing by launching a new series of human-interest stories under the heading, "Gonads Gone Amok." These stories will feature foibles of human reproductive instincts, hysterical and testicular, in all their rich variety, some funny, some tragic, but all instructive. Episodes involving politicians normally will not be included, since these are so numerous as to challenge selection.

Our premiere item, perhaps surprisingly, derives from the academic groves of the sunshine state.

"A kiss-the-pig fundraiser at a South Florida law school has divided students and administrators in a hog-wild controversy.

"... the dean of Nova Southeastern University's law school will stand by his belief that a fundraiser that forces a professor to smooch a potbellied pig is immoral because it scares and humiliates the pig.

''I personally observed the animal shivering and moving its head from side to side as it looked [frantically in my judgment] at those gathered all around,'' Dean Joe Harbaugh wrote in a Sept. 29 e-mail that he also posted on the school's online message board.

"Harbaugh was referring to last year's Kiss the Pig Charitable Fundraiser, an event law students have hosted for the past five years at the Shepard Broad Law Center's Davie campus."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12946977.htm

Gonads Gone Amok: Fla. Juvenile Officials Lock Up Retard With Sex Offender

Another glory day for Florida's challenged juvenile non-system:

"Guards at the lockup found a solution for Robert's care: They assigned Lee Donton, a teenage convicted sex offender, to bathe him, clothe him and change his diaper.

"Within weeks, Robert had been sexually assaulted, according to Tallahassee police. Now Donton, 17, is in a Tallahassee jail facing rape charges. And the Department of Juvenile Justice is facing another scandal as the agency's inspector general investigates allegations officers turned a blind eye to Robert's plight."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12947397.htm

Gonads Gone Amok: Arkansas Mom Gives Birth To #16

Thanks to AA for this one:

"Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas... is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?

"And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

Gonads Gone Amok: Mom Obeys Voices, Throws Kids In Bay

"A mother who said she was hearing voices when she allegedly stripped her three small children and tossed them into San Francisco Bay was in custody today after police recovered one child's body.

"The woman, Lashaun Harris, 23, of Oakland, was booked on three counts of murder, according to the San Francisco Chronicle."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-102005sfchildren_lat,1,993542.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews

Country Bard Dean Ween Also Celebrated Stallions

 

Gonads Gone Amok: Man Charged In Friend's Death-By-Equine-Sodomy

For many of us, it is hard to imagine a worse way to go:

"Paul Tait will be the only person charged in connection with the death of his friend, who died of massive internal injuries after being sodomised by the horse at a stud farm near the north-western US city of Seattle in July, police said.

"Tait, 54, was filming the antics during which a 45-year-old engineer with plane-maker Boeing 'received the injuries that ultimately led to his death', King County sheriffs said in an official report.

"He admitted sneaking onto a neighbour's farm in the middle of the night to have sex with animals in incidents that were videotaped."

Will Boeing comment?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/trucker-charged-in-connection-with-bestiality-death/2005/10/20/1129401341780.html

Will Bush Order Gonzales To Fire Fitzgerald?

Ray McGovern reminds us of an earlier precedent to Plamegate:

"When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the intrepid special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out Nixon's order; and so did his deputy William Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the Justice Department, where he found Robert Bork, who promptly dismissed Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.

"Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald's dismissal.

"Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?"

http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=7697

Blessings Of Democracy: Afghan Gov Who Oversaw Destruction Of Buddhas Elected To Parliament

"The Taliban disregarded worldwide protests in March 2001 and used dynamite and artillery to blow up the fifth-century Buddha statues, famed for their size and location along the ancient Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia. The Taliban considered them idolatrous and anti-Muslim."

The incident reminds one of Rockefeller and the Rivera mural.

"At the time, Mawlawi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi was the Taliban's governor of Bamiyan province where the statues are located. After U.S.-led forces ousted the fundamentalist regime in late 2001, he fled to the country's north and was never detained unlike other Taliban officials.

"On Sept. 18, he stood as an election candidate in neighboring Samangan province and won, according to results on the Web site of the U.N.-Afghan election organizers. Election law didn't bar former Taliban officials from taking part in the race."

At least Mohammadi is equivocating:

"Speaking to The Associated Press, Mohammadi said he should not be held responsible for the Buddhas destruction.'It was not my decision. It was foreigners like Chechans and Arabs with the Taliban who made the decision. They were crazy people,' he said in a telephone interview. 'Even though I was governor, I had no power.'"

So what will he do with power?

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/33838.html

Water Kills: Health Myth of Dehydration Debunked

How many years have the quacks been telling us to drink 89 gallons of water a day? Right.

"... in their zeal to avoid becoming dehydrated, runners may end up drinking so much that they dilute their blood. Water rushes into cells, including cells of the brain. The swollen brain cells press against the skull, and the result can be fatal. The resulting condition is known as hyponatremia - too much water.

"'There are no reported cases of dehydration causing death in the history of world running,' Maharam said. 'But there are plenty of cases of people dying of hyponatremia.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/sports/othersports/20marathon.html?th&emc=th

Free Markets At Work: RefCo Insiders Took $1B+

This boggles something:

"... investors and customers who are facing losses in Refco's bankruptcy will certainly want to understand how insiders could drain $1.124 billion from the firm's coffers in the year or so leading up to its demise."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/business/20refco.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1129813276-PE9ueWWPqXtVX0oaEZvVyQ

Old Whore-Of-The-Day Quote

"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and it will always be part of my record. It was painful. It is painful now."

---Colin Powell, on his promotion of WMD at the UN

Duh.

Suppressed Photo From Last Year's FEMA Drill, Docking Hospital Ship At NOLA

The Senior Cabins Were Starboard. Of Course.

War On The Middle Class: Link To AAUW Petition Against Budget Reconciliation

OK, a lot of the provisions under attack may not pertain directly to you at the moment, but a couple are worth looking at.

Cutting subsidies for student loans is just dumb. College education is already obscenely expensive, with cost increases generally ahead of inflation. With few exceptions, neither industry nor government compensates workers for the cost of learning specific workplace skills, so students pick up this hunk of the tab already. For years, bankers have been exploiting legislative loopholes, reaping windfall profits on student loans. Educating Americans means fewer tax dollars to supplement undereducated families' incomes---and that's a biggie.

Reduced Medicare benefits now will continue into the years of your own retirement. Even if you buy private insurance, most plans will require you to use Medicare as your primary insurer. These cuts are significant. AAUW estimates a couple's annual out-of-pocket expenses will increase by $1200 in 2006 alone.

Most significantly, the budget "reconciliation" leaves the tax giveaways to the rich untouched. This is just one more episode in the war on the middle class.

http://capwiz.com/aauw/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=8136621

First Abortion Case For Roberts Court: Refuses to Block Court-Ordered Transport Of Missouri Inmate

"The court's two-sentence order capped days of litigation in which the woman, 16 weeks pregnant, battled a new Missouri policy forbidding prisons to assist women seeking to terminate pregnancies. The woman is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said she is running out of time because Missouri bars abortions after 22 weeks.

"Late Friday, Justice Clarence Thomas intervened at the state's request to stop the transfer of the prisoner, referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Roe, to a Planned Parenthood office in St. Louis on Saturday. Over the weekend, he referred the case to the other eight justices, resulting in yesterday's decision.

"The order came unaccompanied by a published opinion or recorded dissent, so there is no way to tell how many justices, if any, might have voted against the order.'

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002567591_scotus18.html

Link To Pressure Congress On Iraq

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition.cfm?itemid=19754&ms=n03lk2

Raimondo Sees Big Things In Fitzgerald Probe

I hope he is right:

"Before Fitzgerald is done, we'll see the warlords of Washington hauled before a court of the people. We'll hear the whole sordid story of how a band of exiles, at least two foreign intelligence agencies, and a cabal of neoconservatives inside the Pentagon and the vice president's office bamboozled Congress and the American people into going to war. As the indictments come down, so will the elaborate narrative so carefully constructed by the War Party in the run-up to war be exposed as a tissue of fabrication, forgery, and fraud."

He sees a unified web of conspirators in the case for war:

"No wonder my source tells me that 'Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report (of the Italian parliamentary investigation into the Niger documents) with Paul McNulty,' the prosecutor in the AIPAC case. There are plenty of links between the two investigations: they are, in a sense, the same investigation, since many of the same people are involved. McNulty is delving into a single aspect of the cabal's activities, while Fitzgerald seems to have broadened his probe to include not only the outing of Plame, but also the origin of the Niger uranium forgeries and other instances of classified information leakage via the vice president's office."

And he fingers a main suspect in the forgery of the Niger documents:

"I am hardly the first to implicate Ledeen in connection with the Niger uranium forgeries. Former CIA counterterrorism officials Vince Cannistraro and Larry Johnson have pointed the finger in Ledeen's direction."

http://antiwar.com/justin/

War On The Middle Class: UAW Gives In To GM

The problem, of course, is that nothing will save the competitive standing of any domestic manufacturer until the American worker's wages are reduced to some continually-evolving global standard. No one is on top of this; the treachery of our politicians---accelerated by the recklessness of Bill Clinton---opened the floodgates to an insane version of "free" trade that ignored all the qualifiers and conditioners that had shaped the Yankee paycheck: worker rights, human rights, environmental protections, consumer protections, import tariffs and quotas, and a thousand other factors.

As a result, the tradition of carefully-crafted trade agreements which sought to protect domestic industry and the national workforce while involving the emerging economies of other nations gradually in a competitive scenario, is shot to hell. Why? Shortterm greed. We aren't alone in this. Europe is struggling with it, and Japan isn't far behind. Unfortunately, greed is so enshrined here that the filthy fatcats aren't reinvesting in the labor force. The living wage will continue to erode while young workers compete for those jobs that seem, for the moment, safe from outsourcing or resourcing in China, India, and South America, professional, technical, and managerial slots. In the process, since we are not supporting and educating vast numbers of the subclasses, we will amass a large population of unemployed and underemployed young men and women, poor whites and large percentages of minorities, along with displaced aging workers, whose misery will compound and break forth in riot, squalor, and disaster. To the extent they can be appeased, the political agents of the plutocrats will buy them off with promises, bread, and circus, a la the civil disorders of the '60's.

It is altogether unnecessary and avoidable. But that is a matter of morality, a forsaken value, and of will, requiring the intelligence to forge a 21st c model of corporate responsibility.

"General Motors said on Monday that it had reached a tentative agreement with the United Automobile Workers union to cut $1 billion in annual health care benefits for more than 750,000 blue-collar workers, retirees and their families as part of an effort to climb out of a financial crisis.

"'This is a very big step forward that we will build on,' said Rick Wagoner, G.M.'s chairman and chief executive. He called it 'the single biggest cost reduction that we've probably been able to announce in a single day in the history of G.M.'

"Even as it disclosed the breakthrough with its union on Monday, G.M. reported a $1.6 billion third-quarter loss, its largest quarterly loss in more than a decade."

Give me a break. We bailed out Chrysler long enough for the Germans to buy her (a holding function, in the big picture), and we are nursing major airlines on the teat of bankruptcy protection. The only thing at stake is the impoverishment of the workforce. The fiscal health or ruin of a corporation is illusion and abstraction, often no more than a heart beat away from a single ceo's sticky fingers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/business/18auto.html?th&emc=th&oref=login

Anatomy Of A Congressman's Corruption: Robert Ney

"'Just met with Ney!!! We're f'ing gold!!!! He's going to do Tigua,' Abramoff told Scanlon in a March 20, 2002, e-mail."

If Jack Abramoff gets that excited about something he's managed to bribe you into doing, be sure your days as a free man are numbered. Of course, in the ongoing climate of totally undisguised greed and government give-aways to the rich, maybe you can have some sympathy for a former school teacher from rural Ohio who got caught up with DeLay's crew of thugs and thieves. But not too much; Ney tried to play the game, and with some verve. He has no one but himself to blame.

Read the Washington Post's nicely researched piece on the rise and fall of this nasty little boob politician who couldn't say no to the greed and game.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701918.html?referrer=email

Cindy Sheehan's Essay For Monday

"I hate to spoil CNN's euphoria over the vote on the (Iraqi constitutional) referendum, but 5 soldiers and a Marine were killed by IEDs on Saturday. I wonder if the families of those tragically slain on the 'peaceful' day are celebrating the turn-out on Saturday?"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101705Y.shtml

New Halliburton Scam: Half-Step From Slave Trade

Just when you think the neos and their global profiteers have defined the lowest rung in hell, they out-do themselves:

"The two-part series retraced the journey of a group of Nepalese men who were lured to the Mideast with fraudulent paperwork that promised them jobs at a luxury hotel in Amman, Jordan, but instead wound up in Iraq working for the Halliburton subsidiary KBR, America's biggest private contractor there.

"...According to the Tribune, American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor into Iraq. Most of those falling for the fraudulent job offers are impoverished Asians who, the newspaper said, 'often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way with little protection.'

"The Tribune got on the story after 12 young civilians from Nepal were kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq and a few days later publicly slaughtered..."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-25.htm

Lessons In Civil Disobedience: Delaware County Rent Wars, Andes

"It was in the year 1845 that the well known Anti-Rent difficulties reached their culmination in this county. In the previous years the settlers who had up to that time paid their annual rents under what was known as the Hardenberg Patent claim refused longer to submit to what they considered unjust and exorbitant demands, while the lessors prosecuted for rent. Associations of the aggrieved were formed with the purpose of seeking redress and preventing the collection of the rents. Men disguised as Indians banded together to carry out the purposes of these individuals. The processes of the law were interfered with; and meanwhile judicial and legislative proceedings were on foot to remedy the difficulties.

"The climax was finally reached in a series of events taking place in Andes, and leading to the death of Deputy Sheriff Steele. An Act had already been passed forbidding the proceedings of the armed and disguised bands, and severe penalties were directed. The immediate occasion of the so-called Anti-Rent 'Andes tragedy' was the attempt of Sheriff Green Moore to sell the property of Moses Earl upon an execution for rent. Mr. Earl at that time resided about one and a half miles from Andes village, on the mountain road leading to what is now called Dingle Hill. The property is at present in the possession of William Scott."

http://www.dcnyhistory.org/books/murraypartIII.html

For more on the rent rebellion:

http://www.dcnyhistory.org/books/murraysectionVIII.html

The Senate 9 Assemble For Torture 

The 9 Pro-Torture Senators

"So, who are the Republican torture masters that voted against McCain’s amendment?

"Wayne Allard (R-CO)
Christopher Bond (R-MO)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
James Inhofe (R-OK)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Ted Stevens (R-AK) "

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance58.html

Why not give them a piece of your mind?

Economist David Henderson New Columnist At AntiWar.com

His debut column applies game theory to terrorism:

"'If you want to avoid acts of terrorism carried out against people in your country, avoid getting involved in the affairs of other countries.'" In other words, don't go around stirring up hornets' nests. I also advocated completely abolishing U.S. immigration restrictions on nuclear engineers, bio-technicians, and the other technical professions whose practitioners could build weapons of mass destruction, as a carrot to entice them to settle in the United States."

A little simple, maybe, but simple can be good.

http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=7647

potus Picks Union-Buster For OSHA

Surprise.

"Edwin Foulke was nominated last week to become the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Foulke’s main qualifications for the job are that he is a labor lawyer and was chair of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) for five years in the early 1990s.

"Foulke’s career as a labor lawyer has been with Jackson-Lewis, a national law firm that prides itself as being 'management’s #1 choice for union avoidance training for the past 10 years.' Lawyers on the Jackson-Lewis staff teach expensive seminars for employers in 'how to develop a pro-active strategy to protect your company’s union-free status,' 'drawing on [the firm’s] almost 50 years of experience in counseling companies on how to stay union-free.'"

http://www.nycosh.org./UPDATE/view_updates.php?updateid=109#articleAnchor503

WHIG: The White House Iraq Group

I can't believe any normal person could survive the toxic air in this room for three minutes:

"...The investigation into who leaked the officer's name to reporters has now turned toward a little known cabal of administration hawks known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which came together in August 2002 to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. WHIG was founded by Bush chief of staff Andrew Card and operated out of the Vice President’s office.

"Fitzgerald’s examination centers on a group of players charged with not only selling the war, but according to sources familiar with the case, to discredit anyone who openly 'disagreed with the official Iraq war' story.

"The group’s members included Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, Bush advisor Karen Hughes, Senior Advisor to the Vice President Mary Matalin, Deputy Director of Communications James Wilkinson, Assistant to the President and Legislative Liaison Nicholas Calio, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby - Chief of Staff to the Vice President and co-author of the Administration's pre-emptive strike policy."

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_role_in_outing_of_CIA_1012.html

And speaking of Matalin, could someone please explain to me how to account for the insane affair with Carville? If you were a white house neo in the thick of felonies and treason, how could you tolerate her in the inner sanctum, knowing who she married? Or if you were a Democratic strategist, how could you be comfortable with Carville? For that much, given their apparent polarization, how can they tolerate each other? Is their political orientation so superficial that it doesn't interfere with their (ugh) relationship? Or am I nuts?

The Yellow Kid Appeared In Color In 1895 

WEAK AND YELLOW: NYTIMES RESPONDS TO MILLER'S ROLE IN PLAME-WILSON

At the end of the 19th c rival publishers Pulitzer and Hearst engaged in a duel for circulation, driving the nation to war against the Spanish, with far more enthusiasm than their reluctant president. In the process they earned their reputations as practitioners of yellow journalism. In the opening years of the present century, the MSM, less sensationally, have followed and facilitated an eager white house in its drive to war, with reporting so dishonest, incomplete, and unexamined, it amounted to little more than government propaganda.

In this connection, Judith Miller was the lead shill for the neo cabal, and the Times was in the vanguard, publishing her bellicose junk reportage on in its front page. Today the rag, in a confused ritual of expiation, presented her personal account of her negotiated testimony in the Plame-Wilson affair, as well as the Van Natta article, which was supposed to be an unfettered, fully aired review of the history of her role in the context of the paper's editorial and publishing agonies. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, all the ink raises as many questions and alarms as it addresses.

Here is the oge's quick take. Miller's account is a revelation of minimal factual composition, self-serving in order to 1) preserve some fiction that she knew and knows what she has been doing, 2) keep her straight with the prosecutor (out of jail), 3) save her status as much as possible with the neos in the white house, and 4) represent her actions as principled journalism. The most incredible statements, already receiving attention in the media, concern what she says she can't recall:

"Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words 'Valerie Flame,' clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn't think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

"Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html?pagewanted=all

Throughout her piece she also betrays a kind of loyalty to Libby, indicated by a number of inept ploys to defend his legal vulnerabilities. What is most striking to me, however, is that she has written no more than a narrow account of her testimony, avoiding altogether the higher issue of how in her reporting she promulgated false information and deceived the American people in the drive to war. That she has not accepted responsibility for this behavior, that she seems to have no sense of or concern for the problems it poses not only for her paper but for the nation and the thousands of people impacted, is the strongest indictment of her character: selfish and self-centered, oblivious, and stupid in many ways, stroked and cultivated. The Times had a narcissistic nutjob on their hands all along, not just a willful, difficult employee. Her contacts, energy, and job skills aside, how disturbed a personality hers was, probably only a few of her colleagues really suspected; the paper's managers appear clueless.

On the other hand, Miller did give up Libby in her account, and, presumably, testimony, in that she acknowledges they discussed Valerie Plame/Wilson. And in this act she seems to have been trapped by the notebook; one is tempted to wonder if she otherwise would have protected him. This is likely the most significant item in her testimony.

As for the Van Natta piece: yeah, go ahead and read it, but not with any high expectations. It's a careful chronology of the paper's agonies, with names and interviews, but this is the best they can come up with:

"The Times incurred millions of dollars in legal fees in Ms. Miller's case. It limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day. Even as the paper asked for the public's support, it was unable to answer its questions.

"It's too early to judge it, and it's probably for other people to judge," said Mr. Keller, the executive editor. "I hope that people will remember that this institution stood behind a reporter, and the principle, when it wasn't easy to do that, or popular to do that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

So that is pretty thin gruel. Not only do they fail to see beyond their own cloistered torment, they do not even perceive the nature of their disease, or how they created it themselves, nor the real issues against the background of which their present ordeal is only a detail, or that the story isn't finished just because they published a minor timeline up to Miller's testimony. One pictures Mr. Sulzberger and company withdrawn into their inner chambers with a small cadre of aides and lawyers, debating their options as the unseen gotterdammerung approaches. In a sense, the entire NYTimes as an institution reflects the same narcissistic pathology as Miller. It is an ironic symmetry.

Yes, I'll continue to read it for the items that their huge resources capture---if by accident, half the time---and for the insights of some of their writers, but expect nothing of editorial coherence, nothing to contribute to the national debate. They are dead as an important organ of the fourth estate, succeeded by the innumerable wonks and wonkettes who are the true descendants of Twain and Mencken.

Things are happening fast. When Libby wrote his purple letter to Miller, he could not have foreseen the problem of the notebook. However well he play Svengali to her Trilby, narcissism is the opposite of omniscience. (I have used some form of narcissism several times in this piece; can things be that simple? Is it merely that a bunch of power-hungry narcissists have got control of the country?) Miller may have thought she was running things in her piece of the world, but she has been, first and finally, just a dumb tool. And Libby is unraveling in the webs of his own spinning.

It is almost impossible for us to know how Fitzgerald is assembling the pieces, but it remains a likely scenario that too many players have over-reached, have got their hands on too much, and we are feeling the first warm winds of a profound political meltdown.

Another GOP Deal Under Investigation: Armstrong Williams

When it rains, it pours, and somehow, even with a GOP lock on most of the government, the streams are flooding. Now this ridiculous character who as far as I can recall never had anything of any value to say in the first place, is sinking in cross currents; if he did fulfill his unlawful contract, he's a criminal, and if he didn't, he's a criminal for taking the money.

Are there enough prosecutors for all the political felons out there?

"Investigators at the Education Department have contacted the U.S. attorney's office regarding the Bush administration's hiring of commentator Armstrong Williams to promote its agenda.

"The action was disclosed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who has pressed for a criminal fraud investigation focused on questions about whether Williams actually performed the work cited in his monthly reports to the Education Department."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306542

Fisk Of Independent: Iraq Has Descended Into Anarchy

Get out. Now.

"Most of Iraq is in a state of anarchy, with insurgents controlling parts of Baghdad just half a mile from the so-called Green Zone, an Independent debate was told last night.

"Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, whose new book The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East has just been published by 4th Estate, painted a picture of deepening chaos and misery in Iraq more than two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article319160.ece

The Getty Villa in Malibu

Modeled After The Residence Of Lucius Calpurnius, Caesar's Father-in-Law, At Herculaneum 

The Getty: Central In The Ethics And Legality Of Artifact Collection

In an informative if ultimately unresolved article, Hugh Eakin reviews the conflicts overshadowing the acquisitions of a major museum and its curator. It's not a simple thing to delineate that point in the evolution of societies at which respect for the indigenous priority of artifacts trumps the exploits of dealers and diggers and the prerogatives of private ownership. Nations pass laws, but they are their laws in this area, for the most part. It is like war reparations: who pays, how much, when does it start, with what, and when does it end? Restoring history is tricky business. Consider the Elgin marbles, the Louvre's stock of Napoleonic plunder, the Met's Egyptian treasures. In any event, it is the case that the impressive Ms. True crossed the line the Italians drew.

"It was a major coup for the museum, and the crowning glory of a curator's career. After years of courting a wealthy New York couple, the J. Paul Getty Museum had outmaneuvered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other top institutions to capture one of the world's finest private collections of ancient art.

"That 1996 acquisition, encompassing more than 300 masterworks of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art collected by Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, was envisioned as the anchor of a lavish new center for classical art and archaeology planned at the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif. As Marion True, the antiquities curator, later described it, the collection was the center's 'greatest opportunity.'

"...Ms. True, who resigned from the Getty this month over a separate ethics issue, faces trial in Rome on Nov. 16 on criminal charges of conspiring with two art dealers to acquire millions of dollars' worth of looted antiquities. Among those identified in the indictment are 12 objects from the Fleischman collection, including several prominently displayed in the new Malibu galleries."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/arts/design/15muse.html?th&emc=th

New MidEast Alarm: Syrian Border Clashes

In a too-rare instance of doing its duty, the Times raises the under-reported (and obfuscated) issue of Syrian border clashes.

"A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government officials."

It some ways, it is surprising that the insurgents and their confederates have not exploited more extensively the vulnerabilities at Iraq's borders. Given, however, the growing lack of support for the war effort, one would think that our hawks would not be seduced into over-extension of their resources. On the other hand, that assumes that somebody with some brains is in charge. And it is likely that the neos' original wet dreams envisioned launching land and air assaults across the borders.

As a reminder, Iraq borders Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey, friends and foes, but all inhabited by Muslims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/politics/15syria.html?ex=1287028800&en=98e1500c165d0285&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Suppressed Photo Of Last Year's FEMA Drill Evacuating NOLA

 

Looming Menace: WalMart Banking

WalMart's bid to enter the banking business poses interesting challenges to free market proponents. Of course, if Congress ever woke up and did something intelligent, like taxing industry for collateral (hidden) resource-use, the real costs to society of WalMart's current operations would place the giant in an appropriately competitive position, relegating its obscene cash reserves to a more realistic level; once again, the fair exercise of an optimally free marketplace could be enhanced if government paid less attention to lobbyists, and more to using its authority reasonably to promote a level playing field.

"The letters to federal banking regulators, which poured in at a rate of 20 a day, are a catalogue of fear.

"The chief executive of a bank in North Dakota predicted a 'dangerous and unprecedented concentration of economic power.' The president of a bank in Colorado foresaw 'unacceptable risk to the banking system.' The head of a California bank anticipated 'long-term community disinvestment.'

"Wal-Mart's proposal to open a bank has sent a wave of concern through community bankers, who view the move as the first of several maneuvers that will turn the company into a financial services behemoth and drive them out of business."

You may duck into the slum retailer for a cheap pair of socks, but you don't need to get its credit card.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/business/15walmart.html?th&emc=th

Watch "BoxMart" Satire

http://www.jibjab.com/Home.aspx

 

Thanks To SCOTUS, MJ Refugee Trails Catheter Across Border

OK, so this poor son of a bitch sounds like he is one of the unluckiest people on earth. On the other hand, isn't it gratifying to know that your new, improved Supreme Court is so damned dutiful, looking out for how you live your life? Give me a break. Jefferson, Adams, et al. are groaning in their graves.

"SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was taken from a hospital, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer said.

"Steven W. Tuck then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, the attorney said.

"Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court Wednesday for a detention hearing."

By the way, who is the reigning drug czar at the moment?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/13/patient.arrest.ap/index.html

Crisis For NYTimes

We all know that the MSM---print, broadcast, and electronic all---have done the American public a terrible disservice for the past 5 years or so, swallowing the spit from this filthy administration. Beyond trampling their heralded fourth estate, beyond succombing to transparent ploys like the embedding of war correspondents, they have been actively complicit in promoting its criminal goals. Judy Miller's rah rah pieces were prime examples, parroting white house lies and hyperboles.

We hoped, last year, when the Times published their mea culpa, confessing that they among the media had not been so skeptical and objective as traditional journalistic values required, regarding the administration's actions and rationales, that the paper was turning that corner, maybe even to the left. Unfortunately, in astonishing ambivalence, they instead misrepresented Miller's predicament as a principle of journalistic integrity, rather than examining the unethical and maybe criminal dilemma she posed.

So one wonders, why? It is hard to believe that they are so stupid as to believe that. Then again, it was incredible that they could be so stupid as to believe in this thoroughly corrupt cabal infesting the white house. Their gullibility or treachery---whichever it is---is a mystery.

Accordingly, they may yet not get it right with Miller, even should she end up a convicted felon.

Huffington speculates about the issues the paper must confront.

"I'm hearing that the Times' big Judy-culpa is definitely coming on Sunday -- and also that Judy's camp is worried that it's going to be very hard on her.

"'The team of reporters working on the story is absolutely top notch,' a Times source told me. 'Don Van Atta is one of the best investigative reporters in the country."

We will see. To their shame, however, none of this will be news, just, at best, a sad review of avoidable failure. I do not expect epiphany.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/advance-word-on-the-t_b_8888.html

 

Florida's Alien Invaders: Yellow Dragon Disease Attacks Citrus

"The bacterium causing the disease, also known by its Chinese name huanglongbing, is spread by a small, winged insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. The bug was first seen in the state in 1998, but the disease was not seen until August, when it was found in Homestead, south of Miami.

"Although the disease poses no direct health threat to humans, it can be devastating to citrus trees and the industry, the authorities said. An infected tree produces discolored fruit with a bitter, medicinal taste, Richard Miranda, a spokesman for the state's Department of Agriculture, said yesterday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/national/14citrus.html?th&emc=th

Take The Politics Test

Plot your political ideation based on a series of questions.

http://www.okcupid.com/politics

Cindy Sheehan's Latest Essay

"No, most Americans probably did not sob when they saw the previews for Jarhead, and most Americans probably didn't go straight to their son's premature grave to place fresh flowers after their movie outing.

"I did. God forbid that I am angry and God forbid that I want someone to be held accountable for George's war of choice that has robbed so much from almost 2000 families."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101305Y.shtml

NOLA: Suspicions of Euthanasia Linger

Autopsies have been ordered for the 45 patients who died at Memorial Medical Center, as intimations of euthanasia continue to haunt the staff. This had to be one of the most horrifying scenarios of the disaster. Judge not.

"'[We] did everything humanly possible to save these patients,' the doctor told CNN. 'The government totally abandoned us to die. In the houses, in the streets, in the hospitals. ... Maybe a lot of us made mistakes, but we made the best decisions we could at the time.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/12/katrina.hospital/index.html

White House Tightens Controls On Intelligence

And that's exactly what the game is. This is how the oge sees it as of the moment. Pre-Iraq: the neos are firmly entrenched in the White House and Pentagon, but the CIA is a continuing problem. Tenet presents as weak but troubled, and he eventually capitulates. The career pros in the agency are more recalcitrant, but the pressure from above selects and/or cooks enough intelligence to fool or extort the idiots in Congress to go along with the invasion.

The neos didn't care about the fine points of post-invasion Iraq; they make reality, remember? And maybe they didn't even care that much about the manufactured intel on WMD, as long as it worked well enough and long enough to get them over there, but either they were skillful enough in creating a CIA parentage for the faulty information, or the CIA in fact produced enough bad WMD intel on their own, that the presumption of the source has so far proven durable.

So they dump Tenet per plan and toss Goss in there with his bloody hatchet to square-away the operation. It's a lot of work for him, and the oge is betting that he could only hack his way so far; I suspect that there is a lot of information in the ranks that will continue to leak, especially as folks retire. On the other hand, they are satisfied that he's got the hatch closed on the boiler.

And along with this is the growing clamor to do something about an intelligence system which seemingly failed to predict 9/11 and then fallaciously predicted WMD in Iraq. So welcome or not, a position for NID emerges and Negroponte, on whom the neos have enough dirt to control him even if he weren't compliant, is appointed. An incidental casualty in all this, of course, is basic civil rights, which Congress was so mindful to protect when it authorized the CIA for solely foreign operations, withholding police powers and a capacity for domestic surveillance. With the NID, those distinctions blurred. And they are about to get blurrier.

Today we are advised that the axman himself gets broader powers. He has been appointed something like a National Intelligence Manager.

If you thought the neos were on the run, if you are still rosy with the expectation that Fitzgerald is going to draw some deep arterial blood---and I certainly hope you are right---consider what the imperium has suddenly proposed: the deployment of the Armed Forces in massive domestic operations, and the control of our whole range of intelligence---15 agencies, domestic and foreign in purpose---under Negroponte the Ugly and Goss the Bloody. These increments are becoming quantum leaps.

Leak on, you who are patriots. We will need all the leaks we can get.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/international/middleeast/13intel.html

 

MS Piano Transcription of Beethoven Grosse Fuge Found

"Heather Carbo, a matter-of-fact librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years.

"It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven's 'Grosse Fuge,' a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer's own hand, according to Sotheby's auction house. The 80-page manuscript in mainly brown ink - a furious scattering of notes across the page, with many changes and cross-outs, some so deep that the paper is punctured - dates from the final months of Beethoven's life.

"The score had effectively disappeared from view for 115 years, apparently never examined by scholars."

It's a great find, to be sure, but it makes you wonder what else these nitwits might have. I mean, they sold a Mozart MS for over a million 15 years ago from the same donated batch. You would think they'd have taken another look around. Maybe the good evangelists should consider hiring a student intern. Maybe someone should tell them what a freaking catalogue is. It's not like they are inventorying the Louvre. Morons. They almost challenge the Taliban as curators.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/arts/music/13beet.html?pagewanted=1

The Drowning Of NOLA: A View Of What Really Happened

This version pinpoints what flooded New Orleans and why, and identifies the big problem, simply.

"Clearly, New Orleans needs a new comprehensive flood control plan for the future - yet no legislation yet introduced has called for developing one. Just as important, we need to understand the failure of the city's old levee system, both in order to build a better one and in order to apportion responsibility for the losses that New Orleans suffered. As it turns out, much of the destruction resulted not from an act of god but from human error."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/opinion/13barry.html?th&emc=th

The Corruption Of Capitalism: Refco

Anyone for a little cup of oversight? Is it really that easy to hide half a billion?

"The former chairman and chief executive of one of the world's largest commodities brokerage firms, Refco, has been charged with securities fraud, accused of hiding $435 million in the months before the company was taken public.

"The executive, Phillip R. Bennett, 57, of Gladstone, N.J., was arrested Tuesday night and charged in a criminal complaint yesterday by federal prosecutors in Manhattan."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/business/13refco.html?th&emc=th

Red State, Blue State: The Debate On The Great Divide

The oge read two analyses yesterday claiming the divide was a fiction. Then today we have an opposite picture based on massive census data. Guess what? Notwithstanding pockets of red and blue in each other's areas, this country sort of demonstrated there was a difference, after all: it was called the Civil War. Good grief.

"On teenage births, the same differences become clear. In New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, about 5 percent of babies are born to teenage mothers, while in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming, 10 percent or more of all births are to teenage mothers.

"The study also found that the percentage of births to unmarried mothers was highest in the South."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/national/13census.html?th&emc=th

Our Health Care Non-System: The Billing Nightmare

It's dead and stinking. Bury it. We tried privatization via insurance already. It isn't working. A handful of corporate thugs at the top are rich, but they couldn't even get there without creating one of the most wasteful bureaucracies in the world. So why are you surprised? Did you ever try to read an insurance policy?

"'I'm the president's senior adviser on health information technology, and when I get an E.O.B. for my 4-year-old's care, I can't figure out what happened, or what I'm supposed to do,' said Dr. David Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, whose office is in the Department of Health and Human Services. 'I can't figure out what care it was related to or who did what.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/health/13paper.html?th&emc=th

The High Stakes In Hostage Compensation

Not so great for hostages who don't make it, but:

"Relatives of a former U.S. hostage held in Lebanon for more than five years were awarded $91 million by a U.S. judge for emotional distress in a lawsuit filed against Iran.

"The family of Joseph Cicippio expects to recover the award from the U.S. Treasury, as Cicippio and other former U.S. hostages have done, lawyer James J. Oliver said. The government retains the right to pursue the funds from frozen Iranian assets.

"...Terry Anderson, former chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, collected about $26 million for his nearly seven years in captivity. Cicippio and his wife, Elham, received $30 million as part of a 1998 judgment that gave $68 million to three hostages."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101202029.html?referrer=email

Neos Go After Organic Food Standards

Nothing is safe.

"Organic standards are under fire in Washington. An industry-sponsored 'sneak attack' rider to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill would take away traditional organic community and National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) control over organic standards, and centralize control in the hands of White House-appointed USDA officials. This would likely open the door for non-organic animal feed and hundreds of synthetic ingredients and processing aids in organic foods."

Link below to petition Congress:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm

Alien Pythons Of Every Variety Are Invading Florida

Florida's Monster Alien Reptiles: Rock Python Devours Turkeys

These horror stories are coming by the hour.

"The 10-foot African rock python was lean and sleek when it slithered through the fence, where it had the pick of dozens of turkeys and chickens.

"But after gobbling one up, the bulge in the snake's belly prevented it from making an escape: It couldn't fit through the fence.

"It would have taken the python several weeks to digest the turkey dinner, but along came Felix Azquz early Monday to feed his birds..."

Not for the faint-of-heart.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12878412.htm

Frist's Finances Just Got Stickier

He's dirty.

"Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show.

"The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate.

"However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12875498.htm

Internet Resource For Fed Agencies

Negroponte's czar position affords a nicely-linked resource for the numerous federal intelligence offices. Expect the usual self-serving promotions, but beyond these, considerable information is available.

http://www.dni.gov/

Body Language Of potus

You need a steel gut to examine any aspect of the contemptible little moron, but here is one observor's take (Of course, the oge continues to insist that some of the idiot's pauses can be explained by concealed radio prompting):

"But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

"The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was 'trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression,' Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

"When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101577.html?referrer=email

Przewalski, Re-established 

Mongolian Horses Re-established

Extinguished in the wild 40 years ago, the indigenous Mongolian horse has been breeding since reintroduction.

"Przewalski's horse lived on the Eurasian plains for thousands of years. Some of the horses in the Pleistocene cave paintings in France, Dr. Ryder noted, 'are uncannily similar to today's Przewalski.

"But recognition of this horse as a separate species did not come until 1879, with the arrival of Col. Nikolai Przewalski in Mongolia. A Russian of Polish descent, he was on a secret mission to beat the British into Tibet, one more foray (unsuccessful, it turned out) in the 'great game' of British-Russian imperial rivalry in the 19th century.

"...comparisons of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material inherited through the maternal line, showed that the P-horse and the domestic horse diverged from a common ancestor 500,000 years ago."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/science/11hors.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Catarina, 2004, First Known South Atlantic Hurricane 

Flood Insurance: Why subsidize It?

I know. The oge has had his say on this before. But let's look at some specifics:

"Dauphin Island is one of the most vulnerable barrier islands in the nation. Since 1979, it has been struck by six hurricanes and has lost nearly 500 expensive vacation homes and rental properties. Yet owners keep building back, trying to elevate their homes out of harm's way. And the island has received more than $21 million in federal flood payments to help spur redevelopment."

Why?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001465.html?referrer=email

Why?

Christian Coalition Reported Sinking In Debt

This will bring tears to your eyes. And even these guys have a connection to Abramoff.

"The group's annual revenue has shrunk to one- twentieth of what it was a decade ago - from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to $1.3 million in 2004 - and it has left a trail of unpaid bills from Texas to Virginia. Among the creditors who have sued the coalition for nonpayment are landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and at least one former employee seeking back pay."

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=93369&ran=72372

War On The Middle Class: Auto Workers In The Sights

I have absolutely no idea when the freaking fat cats will reach the tipping point in cutting worker wages and benefits, but this tool they have in running for bankruptcy protection and tossing negotiated costs into the free-for-all, with tax payers ultimately picking up the tab---at some point, wouldn't you think even morons would see who is sticking it to them?

This Miller is a real dynamo. $10 dollars an hour for auto workers? Right. How long has it been since Detroit saw riots?

"Delphi Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Miller said General Motors Corp., his biggest customer, will have to file for bankruptcy if it can't wrest wage and benefit concessions from the United Auto Workers union during their next contract talks.

"Miller took Delphi, the largest U.S. auto-parts supplier, into bankruptcy after he couldn't get financial aid from GM and was unable to persuade the UAW to cut pay for long-time workers by as much as 64 percent to as little as $10 an hour."

Thanks to DS for the reference.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_us&refer=home&sid=aJjI2hVZs4cM

War On The Middle Class: Interim Victory For Little Guys

Hey. Look.

"In a major win for federal workers, a U.S. judge for the second time denied the Bush administration’s efforts to destroy the civil service system covering 160,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

"The Bush administration had asked U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer to narrow her Aug. 12 ruling blocking new personnel rules that would have virtually eliminated employees’ bargaining and workplace rights and ended civil service pay scales. On Oct. 7, Collyer rejected the administration’s request and accepted the unions’ argument that the rules essentially would eliminate the collective bargaining process."

http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/ns10072005.cfm

New England c.2080 

Doom of Dooms: The Worst Case Scenario In Climatology

In the '60's the oge met a guy who was literally in despair over what he saw as the inevitability of nuclear holocaust. Those of us who came of age during the cold war shared some of his paranoia and knew a few people convinced that the insane governments that had created the nuclear threat could not control it. From today's perspective, that entire era---not quite concluded---now appears more a political contrivance for power and control, a view which at least qualifies the element of inevitability, but that perspective was not available in the '60's, and our friend was distraught. The oge at some length managed to allay his dread by placing his vision of apocalypse in a cosmic frame: as the sun progresses through its normal life cycle, it will as a matter of course extinguish the entire solar system in its stages as super nova, the normal stellar process followed by millions of stars over millions of years. Against the cosmic scale, it would hardly matter if a planet got prematurely scorched a bit. We all end up, in any event, as the incinerated elements and heavy metals of the celestial soup, seeds for the next cycle.

So our friend found solace in that redefinition of planetary finality. I have no idea how long it lasted for him. If he is still among us and still prone to personal depression over scenarios of global disaster, I hope he has not encountered the current writings on nonlinear climatology.

Unless you are in a very bright mood, read no further. Short of a killer asteroid or the onset of global volcanism, this is as bad as it gets:

"Where other researchers model the late-twenty-first-century climate that our children will live with upon the precedents of the Altithermal (the hottest phase of the current Holocene period, 8,000 years ago) or the Eemian (the previous, even warmer interglacial episode, 120,000 years ago), growing numbers of geophysicists toy with the possibilities of runaway warming returning the earth to the torrid chaos of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM: 55 million years ago), when the extreme and rapid heating of the oceans led to massive extinctions."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/davis

WalMart Turns In Student Photo And SS Investigates

So now the kid probably has an FBI file. Thanks to MK for this little bit of 1984.

"Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class 'to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,' she says. One student 'had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.'"

http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100405

Meet Russ Feingold

In a recent interview with Salon's Michael Scherer, Feingold discussed many key issues. It is a good starting point to check out his thinking. If the Democratic Party ever stops slashing its own throat, it will be he, not Hillary, who carries the party's standard into 2008. Unless something happens with Cindy Sheehan or Howard Dean.

"Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold has latched his political future to the third rail of American foreign policy. This summer, he proposed a date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq: Dec. 31, 2006. The date raises a specter that no one in Washington -- and especially no Democrat -- has been willing to broach: that the American people should begin to prepare for a political failure in Iraq, at least a failure by President Bush's standard of establishing, before the troops leave, a fully functional, Democratic Iraqi state.

"It is not the first time Feingold has gone out on a political limb. In September, he was the only Democratic senator with presidential ambitions to support John Roberts. He was the only senator to vote against the USA Patriot Act. Before that, he spent nearly a decade fighting the culture of political payola, a fight he won in 2002 with passage of McCain-Feingold legislation."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/10/feingold/index_np.html

Alsop And the BSO Revisited

"'Listen, being music director is not a popularity contest,' she said. 'It's nice to be beloved, but highly unusual. My main goal is to make great music.'

"The orchestra committee responded with a public statement saying the musicians were ready to work with her."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/arts/music/09waki.html?th&emc=th

 

Monster Florida Snakes Eating Cats

This is your site for all the news about gargantuan alien reptiles slithering amok in the Sunshine State---and that's not just the politicians:

"(The cat's) whereabouts possibly were revealed Sunday. A snake expert says Frances is the bulge inside a 12-foot-long Burmese python that trapped and swallowed the 15-pound cat whole, just feet from its backyard in Miami Gardens."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12862535.htm

Will Question Miller Again 

New Development In Plame-Wilson: Judy Has A Notebook

"The latest twist in the Plame Affair only deepens the mystery: What's in the suddenly uncovered notebook that documents the previously unknown Judith Miller/Scooter Libby chat of June 25, 2003? Who told the prosecutor about it? And why, exactly, does he want to talk to Miller again?'

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001263179

Why We Aren't Getting The Real Deal On CIA

Goss' revenge attack on the agency, Tenet's cowardly deal with the shrub, and white house fears all conspire to bury the truth about CIA ops, past and present. It could be that neo politics, once again, have all but incapacitated another crucial agency.

"There’s no reason why Porter Goss, the embattled director of the CIA, can’t declassify and make public the agency’s internal investigation of its less-than-stellar counterterrorism accomplishments before September 11. And there’s no reason why Goss can’t reprimand any current or former CIA officers, including former Director George Tenet, if they deserve it. (Whether they in fact deserve it depends at least in part on what the report says.) But he won’t."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10394

IBM Promises Workers Protection From Genetic Data

Like the health insurance racket wouldn't use this if it could:

"I.B.M., the world's largest technology company by revenue, is promising not to use genetic information in hiring or in determining eligibility for its health care or benefits plans. Genetics policy specialists and privacy rights groups say that the I.B.M. pledge to its more than 300,000 employees worldwide appears to be the first such move by a major corporation.

"The new policy, which comes as Congress is considering legislation on genetic privacy, is a response to the growing trend in medical research to focus on a person's genetic propensity for disease in hopes of tailoring treatments to specific medical needs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/business/10gene.html?th&emc=th

In Case You Thought The Clinton Crew Was That Different: Former FEMA Head Gets Rich

"Not long before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, James Lee Witt, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and his colleagues called officials on the Gulf Coast to offer their help.

"'...I just don't want anyone to say that we used this as a way to profit or to try to get new business,' he said. 'I just don't want that.'

"In Louisiana, he cut his usual hourly fee to $275 from $500 for the no-bid state contract and declined to take on any other business there, despite what his partners say are numerous requests. Just one day after his news conference with Allstate, he backed away from his lobbying work for the insurer to avoid conflicts with his advisory role to the state.

"...Former President Bill Clinton helped enlist as partners former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate. Former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin reviewed the business plan. Former Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, said he put in a good word for Mr. Witt with Louisiana officials. And former FEMA officials, with their own networks of contacts, are on his payroll."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/national/nationalspecial/10witt.html?th&emc=th

Home Depots New Resource For Day Labor

It makes sense. Why would they not congregate here?

"The Home Depot became the nation's largest home improvement chain by figuring out how to make hardware friendly to consumers and how to put everything from plumbing fixtures to petunias under one roof.

"But the company is facing a knotty problem figuring out where to put one important part of the home-improvement business: the dozens of day laborers who gather outside its stores here and across the nation.

"Morning after morning in city after city, contractors as well as homeowners needing an extra hand or two drive up to a Home Depot and hire laborers to paint walls, nail down roofing or trim branches, usually for $8 to $10 an hour. Not only has this caused friction between the stores and neighboring businesses and homeowners who do not want the men around, but it has also thrust the company into the nationwide debate about what to do about these workers, the majority of them illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/national/10depot.html?th&emc=th

The Euro Experience: Belgium Confronts Radicalized Muslims

Generally home-grown radicals of Moroccan descent, the suspects in the recent round of arrests typify a larger pattern throughout the west of second-generation immigrants alienated, not acculturated.

"The first visible sign of Islamic radicalization came in the past few years, when a handful of Muslim women began appearing in public with their faces veiled in black.

"'I started receiving phone calls from the people of the city,' recalled Maaseik's mayor, Jan Creemers. 'There is something bizarre happening here, we see strange veiled women,' they said. Mainly old ladies calling me, terrified, saying they were sitting on a bench, and when they turned around they all of a sudden saw these strange figures appearing all in black. They almost had heart attacks.'

"The city imposed a fine of $150 on any woman who refused to reveal her face, saying it was a security issue. The only woman in town who refused was the wife of Mr. Bouloudo."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/international/europe/10belgium.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

 

Pat Tillman, Revisited

The man, the myth, the legend are transforming.

'"They could have told us up front that they were suspicious that [his death] was a fratricide, but they didn't. They wanted to use him for their purposes.... They needed something that looked good, and it was appalling that they would use him like that."'

That's his mother Mary talking. But what her son said himself is more telling:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/zirin

Thanks to D for this one.

The Tentacles Of Abramoff: Dems Call For Inquiry Into Guam Case

There is just no end to where this disciple of Mammon did not intrude his greedy extremities.

"The Democrats said in a letter to the Justice Department that an outside investigator was needed to determine if the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, the acting United States attorney on Guam, was demoted as a result of 'political manipulation of Justice Department officials' by Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/politics/07lobby.html

Mayor Yells Terrorists As Election Nears

Of course it could be a coincidence. It could also be a mistake. Just maybe voters are getting tired of hearing the blather of scare tactics with each election and dip in poll numbers.

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has already spent nearly $50 million of his own money on his re-election campaign, according to campaign records released yesterday, far ahead of the phenomenal pace of his spending in the 2001 election and putting him on track to break all records for expenditures for any office except the presidency."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/08/nyregion/metrocampaigns/08spend.html?th&emc=th

Refinery Bill Squeaks Through House

It's another give-away to big oil, but there were some occasional bright moments.

"But stiff resistance remained among Democrats and a handful of Republicans led by Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York, who is chairman of the House Science Committee. Mr. Boehlert complained that the bill promised federal subsidies to the builders of smaller refineries but did nothing immediately about pump prices.

"'We're enriching people, but we are not doing anything to give the little guy a break,' said Mr. Boehlert, who campaigned hard against the measure. As the vote scheduled to take five minutes started shortly after 2 p.m., it quickly became apparent that Republicans were in trouble as the 'no' votes piled up. The leadership quickly went to work."

Pelosi was gutsy too:

"'It took that long for the indicted leader of the House of Representatives to twist the arms necessary to get a vote against the American people, against the consumer, against the taxpayer and against the environment - in favor of the energy companies,' said the minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/08/politics/08energy.html?th&emc=th

Quake Shakes India-Pakistan Region

"A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake near the Pakistan-India border Saturday reduced villages to rubble, triggered landslides and flattened an apartment building, killing hundreds of people in both nations. Pakistan's army called the devastation 'a national tragedy.'

"In the capitals of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, buildings shook and walls swayed for about a minute, and panicked people ran from their homes and offices. Tremors continued for hours afterward. Communications throughout the region were cut."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/08/AR2005100800287.html?referrer=email

Petition Your Congressman To Return DeLay Sack Money

They are reported to be:

Sherwood Boehlert, Vito Fossella, Sue Kelly, John Kuhl, John McHugh, Tom Reynolds, John Sweeney, Jim Walsh

Link:

http://www.dccc.org/campaignforchange/petitions/armpac/NY

Israeli Supreme Court Reaffirms No More Human Shields

And that's about in the same category as the contemptible little potus' torture policy. Why don't we try our SCOTUS? Before Harriet, preferably.

"(Critics noted) a 2004 incident in which Israeli border police allegedly strapped a 13-year-old Palestinian boy onto the hood of their jeep for two hours to deter protesters from throwing rocks at them during a demonstration against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank. A photograph showed the boy tied to the protective mesh of the vehicle's windshield."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-shields7oct07,0,7259958.story?track=tottext

Vaccine For Cervical Cancer To Be Marketed Next Year

Excellent news. PS to promoters of ID: Have your wives and daughters wait at the back of the room, please, for the supernatural version.

"An experimental vaccine against cervical cancer has cleared its final clinical hurdle, showing in a large trial of more than 12,000 women that it is 100% effective in blocking the major forms of the disease, its manufacturer said Thursday."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-cervical7oct07,0,1874262.story?track=tottext

The Unraveling Of The potus: A Quote For The Ages

Thanks to D for this one:

"I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.'"

---g. w. bush, as quoted by Palestinian Dep. Prime Minister Shaath

But it gets better (or more horrible):

"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And by God I'm gonna do it,' Shaath quotes him as saying.

"In response, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in Washington: 'He's never made such comments.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/07/bush.report.reut/index.html

The Unraveling Of The potus: NYTimes Publishes Two Editorials Attacking Yesterday's Speech

Of course it was the same ol' same ol,' but I have to wonder why the Times wrote two editorials about it, especially considering that neither one is particularly good.

"It is hard to argue with his assertion that if militants controlled Iraq, they would be well positioned 'to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.' It is also hard to resist the temptation to say he should have thought of that before invading."

And the other ends with:

"The president's inability to grow beyond his big moment in 2001 is unnerving. But the fact that his handlers continue to encourage him to milk 9/11 is infuriating. For most of us, the memories are fresh and painful. We mourn the people who died on Sept. 11, as we mourn Daniel Pearl and other Americans, not to mention innocents from other countries, who were murdered by terrorists. The administration's penchant for using them as political cover is offensive. It threatens to turn our wounds, and our current fears, into cynical and desperate spin."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07fri1.html?th&emc=th

Monster Combat Worse Than Saturday Night Smackdown 

Gargantuan Alien Reptiles Invading Florida Since Election

Monster reptile species are colliding in a scramble to reach the top of the food chain. And I don't mean Cheney. This is too gruesome to be true:

"The 13-foot-snake and six-foot gator both wound up dead, locked so gruesomely it is hard to make heads, tails or any other body part of either creature.

"When the carcasses were found last week in an isolated marsh in Everglades National Park, the gator's tail and hind legs protruded from the ruptured gut of a python -- which had swallowed it whole.

"As an added touch of the macabre, the snake's head was missing."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12820947.htm

Suspicious Facts About Our Election System

This is a good compilation of facts (too-little known) about our election system, with some nice documentation. Check out, for example, Sen. Hegel's connections to the bushes and the electronic machine manufacturers.

And how about Diebold? They are leading manufacturers of ATMs, you know, the little machines that print you receipts for your transactions: now why wouldn't their voting machines do the same?

"1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

"2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

"3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

"4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.'"

http://www.nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

1918 Kansas Field Hospital 

1918 Flu Virus Reconstructed: It Was Avian

The decision was made to reconstruct the virus, despite reservations that scientists might be reviving the most dangerous potential bioweapon known.

"The 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, has been reconstructed and found to be a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, two teams of federal and university scientists announced yesterday.

"It was the culmination of work that began a decade ago and involved fishing tiny fragments of the 1918 virus from snippets of lung tissue from two soldiers and an Alaskan woman who died in the 1918 pandemic. The soldiers' tissue had been saved in an Army pathology warehouse, and the woman had been buried in permanently frozen ground.

"'This is huge, huge, huge,' said John Oxford, a professor of virology at St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London Hospital who was not part of the research team. 'It's a huge breakthrough to be able to put a searchlight on a virus that killed 50 million people. I can't think of anything bigger that's happened in virology for many years.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/health/06flu.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=dc3f8a88fd4c3d7d&ex=1286251200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

PS to proponents of ID: Why don't you guys just go to the back of the room and wait for some supernatural vaccine?

USA Poverty Check: Up

Like you have to ask.

"Since 2000, America's billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.

"Poverty and inequality take a daily toll seldom seen on television. 'The infant mortality rate in the United States compares with that in Malaysia -- a country with a quarter the income.' says the 2005 Human Development Report. 'Infant death rates are higher for [black] children in Washington, D.C., than for children in Kerala, India.'

"...The number of Americans in poverty is a group so large it would take the combined populations of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, plus Arkansas to match it. That's according to the Census Bureau's latest count of 37 million people below the poverty line.

"...America is becoming a downwardly mobile society instead of an upwardly mobile society. Median household income fell for the fifth year in a row to $44,389 in 2004 -- down from $46,129 in 1999, adjusting for inflation."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10530.htm

Ein Flugelspinnmaschine, At Max Tension 

The Unraveling Of The potus: Military Prisoner Abuse

This is also a good example of the power of one. Just as Cindy Sheehan has given focus to the antiwar movement, Capt. Fishback is supplying a nation's conscience in countering this administration's altogether incredible, unnecessary, and self-defeating policy of sanctioned torture. As issues go, torture sanctioned by a major civilized power in the 21st C will rank in history as a symbolic hallmark of national shame. We will see what blathering nonsense the wretched little sociopath manages to summon today in his speech to sustain his failed war policy.

Incidentally, it has been two years since the torture photos surfaced, two years for this congress of cowards to find an expression of condemnation that any school child would have exemplified for them.

"The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.

"Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR2005100502062.html?referrer=email

The Politics Of Fear And Psychic Numbing

I often hear statements like, "I can't take any more news, it's so awful." Well, yes, it is pretty awful, it has been pretty awful for quite a while, and it looks like it's going to continue to be pretty awful, except for that sense of freudenshade we are beginning to feel as the wretched little fraud who inherited the white house, comes apart.

Some perspective from an old grey ent: in the great social revolution that expanded the middle class after WWII, three profound themes developed, probably inextricably inter-related. These were corporate ascendancy, a consumption-oriented economy (not all bad in its incipient stages, except for the budding credit component), and the politics of the cold war. These were not unremarked; Eisenhower, for example, is well known for his caution regarding the military-industrial complex, set forth in his farewell address. To whatever extent these developments were products of the culture, with their own momenta, or manipulations by the powerful to suit their ends, we could debate, but the effect was to promote technology and dampen humanity. It conditioned what should have been the great emancipating spirit of a young, vibrant democracy, victorious on the world stage, to one of caution, conformity, and insecurity. To be sure, this was not cultural homogeneity, and there were currents of conflict and contradiction, but the overall characterization held true. While technology blossomed, much of the stifled humanism suffered, until---in a single decade out of the latter half-century, the '60's---a vision of a more peaceful, loving, and natural world of human beings found expression.

With that sole exception, the latter half of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st have been colored by insecurity, fear, and conformity, the climate generated by which is ideal for corporate and political exploitation. Among our political leaders, JFK was for many a flash of higher aspirations, and the tragic Johnson tried to advance a humanistic social program. Almost alone in the role of civic leader, Dr. King brought hope of liberation to the minorities. In the arts, icons of individuality and defiance appeared but seemingly were destroyed by their own energies: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Andy Warhol, Lenny Bruce.

Here is the problem. The '50's should have ushered in an era of unparalleled optimism and achievement---not bomb shelters. The '60's defied the cold and corporate warriors, but were exhausted by the effort of countering Viet Nam and civil division; much of the nation slumped into three decades of modest economic comfort, conformity, and mediocre politics, generally oblivious to the simmering problems of unregulated growing corporate control, eco degradation, and an increasing and increasingly impoverished domestic and global popoulation.

So here we are. If you idealize the modest comfort of the last three decades, when you weren't drafted to die in an Asian jungle or Arab desert, when you were content to drive the cars, eat the food, wear the clothes, and rent the rooms prescribed by a corporate culture, ignoring the fact that under the floorboards is a yawning universe of eco rot, then, having got through the present unpleasantness of the war on terror, if you can dodge Aids and the avian flu and heart disease, you may be a kind of second-rate optimist.

If, on the other hand, all of the above seems the sum of your life and disgusts you, period, you are a pessimist.

There is a third option, however. If all the above disgusts you, but you believe it can be undone and rebuilt with a better chassis, engine, and warranty, you just may be a first-class optimist, fit to help forge the nation glimpsed as you cruise the interstates in your '57 blue and white Bel Aire.

Professor Chernus takes up the problem here:

"Fear can be an energizing emotion. It can move us to fight or flight. But fear, when it becomes overwhelming, is more likely to paralyze. Think of the proverbial deer in the headlights. Long ago, in Hiroshima, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton discovered that when there's too much fear, it curdles into despair. If threat seems to be everywhere, with no escape in sight, people stop trying to imagine how things could get better. In fact, it seems that they stop imagining anything at all, except more peril. Lifton called this condition 'psychic numbing.'

"His great insight was that the bomb didn't have to fall for this tragedy to befall us. In a sense, Hiroshima had already come to America. During all those Cold War years, when Americans lived under the shadow of superpower 'mutual assured destruction' or MAD (as the madly accurate acronym of that moment had it), seeing no way out, psychic numbing took its toll. What historians often call the 'national security state' has actually been a national insecurity state, based on the sort of numbing fear that was bound to make Americans more conservative, more fearful of change."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051005/leading_without_fear.php

moronic potus Scares Nation Again---And Threatens Civil Rights Again

Picture a very stupid, spoiled eight-year-old brat smashing up a lot of expensive toys as he squats in confusion and frustration, barely understanding the original functions of most of the toys. Now plant that image in the Oval Office.

So yesterday the miserable little moron who inherited the white house saw fit to try to scare the American people with another bogeyman, because, hey, whenever he does that, his poll numbers go up. And hand-in-hand with scaring the nation, of course, he never misses a chance to attack your civil liberties by concentrating authoritarian power. So we have been introduced to the notion that federal troops should be used to combat bird flu (actually, to combat the poor American citizens who contract the flu). This guy is so screwed up, why doesn't he just come out and threaten to kill us all without provocation? If ever there were a stereotype of a stupid, cowardly bully, he is it.

Frankly, what was the point in raising now the spectre of a killer bird flu, with mass quarantines enforced by federal troops? The role of the federal government in this matter is properly the monitoring of migration and imports, the production and stockpiling of antiviral meds and vaccines, and the administration of a public health program for their distribution, concerning which the oge previously posted on 06.26 (The Zen of Avian Flu) and 08.07.

What the miserable little screw-up was trying to do was create a public defense of pressure he is getting from Congress on this one. Also note that the appeal to using federal troops echoes his remarks respecting the half-admitted failed hurricane response. Unable to administer his own bureaucracies, this pathetic ragbag can think only to throw the job to the Pentagon:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/politics/05flu.html

New Yorkers Panic This AM During Drill By Federal Troops To Enforce Avian Flu Quarantine 

Gay Penguins first Casualties In white house Offensive On Avian Flu

Federal troops have been dispatched to seize and euthanize gay penguins Squawk and Milou following yesterday's news conference wherein the president outlined the nation's strategy to guard against the anticipated avian flu pandemic. Citing the promiscuity of homosexuals and the attending torrents of aerosolized body fluids, the president described gay birds as a special menace. He then referred to Harriet Miers as a "bird of a different color."

Gay Penguins Squawk and Milou Designated To Be Put Down 

Andy Rooney's AntiWar Rant: The Video

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001887.htm

Plame-Wilson And Miers?

So many pundits are characterizing Miers' selection as capitulation on the part of the wretched little potus, that you have to wonder. If not for long. The idea of the nitwit possessing enough intelligence or conscience to change course from his usual head-banging vectors challenges the oge. I have known only a few sociopaths over the years, but it did seem that they experience a good bit of personal confusion and fear. So maybe.

But why capitulate? Have the scandals and failures of the past month or so finally driven through to the peanut recesses of his brain? Or can it be as simple as taking care of a woman whom he feels took care of him? If so, why now? Does he sense impending peril?

This is a stretch, but maybe. I am so exhausted by the degradation of the American nation at the hands of these fools and thugs, I hardly dare to give hope at this point, but here it is: what if the inner circle expects Fitzgerald is about to drop the hammer? What if the case threatens to penetrate the inner sanctum?

For a concise narrative of the Plame-Wilson affair, albeit penned just before Miller's release and testimony, check out:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10363

Most Devious Political Ploy Of The Day

This one is incredible. You have to wonder if the Iraqi governors got a little help with it.

[The Iraqi] parliament voted Sunday to alter the rules of the constitutional election. It decided that in order for the draft to be defeated, two-thirds of registered voters -- rather than two-thirds of those who cast ballots -- in three provinces must vote against it.

http://lefti.blogspot.com/

New House Scheme To Weaken Health Plans

It's HR 525. Four versions are circulating, but the bottom line is something called an AHP (Association Health Plan) which offers wonderful features like jacking up individual rates, loss of appeal rights, and zero fiscal solvency. Just another example of your duly elected officials serving your interests.

Sign the petition:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/590261171?ltl=1128438618

Lower Than Lynndie?

"Facing recruiting shortages brought on by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has decided to accept a greater number of recruits who score near the bottom of military aptitude tests, the secretary of the Army said Monday." Yeah, that'll fix it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-recruit4oct04,0,2086091.story?track=tottext

New Edition of Grand Theft Auto To Feature Killing Seniors

In what appears to be a promising grab at market shares, Grand Theft Auto has already retooled its newest edition to feature the world's most extensive array of killing methodologies, all targeting American seniors. 1,689 distinct techniques for killing seniors have been included in the new game, although, as Frank Geezwink, VP for Marketing, points out, this is a conservative number, since it does not include many additional opportunities for serial and mass killings of decrepit elderly targets.

In the game sequence "Nursing Home Mayhem," for example, some roadsters are enabled to toss molotov cocktails into a second-story infirmary, where the explosion of one oxygen tent ignites a sequence, wiping out the entire ward. A greater number of points is scored, however, on the street, by blowing up seniors on portable oxygen units as they flee in wheelchairs.

One of the new vehicles introduced in this edition is an ATV which runs with the bulls. His vehicle outfitted with a rack of pointed, electrified horns, the gamer is challenged to navigate the narrow, turning Spanish streets while tossing the bleeding bodies of screaming seniors back and forth with the bulls. Of course, elimination of competing vehicles is a preserved object of the game, but a lethal attack is possible only when the gamer plows through a crowd of seniors or crushes one between his and his opponent's cars.

"What we have finally achieved in this game," enthralled chief designer Edgar Malacey, "is the combination of rigorous, competitive killing, which is dangerous, with the pure, licentious, and comparatively safe act of orgiastic extermination. It's like, 'Breathe in, breathe out,' or the difference between pre- and post-coital sexual sensation. Although I haven't had sex yet.'"

Mr. Malacey's favorite sequence involved organ-harvesting, which he acknowledged was a gratuitous conceit in the game, given the shape most of the seniors' organs are in.

"What Katrina and Rita taught us," explained Sylvia Slumpkinstein, director of game psychology, "was how much hostility our gaming age group feels toward senior Americans. When we observed how our focus groups of adolescent young men responded to TV images of burning and drowning senior hurricane victims, we realized we could have a winner. And the icing on the cake was the political correctness of it all. I mean, everyone knows that it's the seniors who are driving up health costs and exhausting social security funds so there won't be any left for the rest of us."

When contacted, Sen. Hillary Clinton said she would have no comment on the morality of the new game until her staff had finished reviewing the findings of their own focus groups.

Me SCOTUS 

...And Me SCOTUS

SCOTUS Nominee Animated By Frank Oz

Those of us who watched carefully this morning as the little fraud in the white house presented his nominee, could make out the skillful manipulation of the Harriet Miers mummy. The give-away, of course, was the eyes; they were previously used in crafting the muppet "Red," and it is likely that the similarity in hair styles at that time drove the selection of Red's eye type.

Ms. Miers' body had been scrupulously preserved using the taxidermy method of boraxite dessication, which maintains flexibility of the tissues and political orthodoxy. Mr. Oz, who has experienced a far more intimate association with the tissues than others in white house operations, incidentally commented that there was some question regarding the spinster lady's state of chastity, although this comment was largely drowned out by the sound of Animal washing himself vigorously in the men's room.

First Secret Report On Katrina Response Leaked To Brits

Of course you have to go overseas to get this:

"The report was commissioned by the Office of Secretary of Defence as an 'independent and critical review' of what went so wrong. In a hard-hitting analysis, it says: 'The US military has long planned for war on two fronts. This is as close as we have come to [that] reality since the Second World War; the results have been disastrous.'

"The document was compiled by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of the US Army's War College and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts.
It charts how 'corruption and mismanagement within the New Orleans city government' had 'diverted money earmarked for improving flood protection to other, more vote-getting, projects. Past mayors and governors gambled that the long-expected Big Killer hurricane would never happen. That bet was lost with Hurricane Katrina.'

"...The report concludes: 'The one thing this disaster has demonstrated [is] the lack of coordinated, in-depth planning and training on all levels of Government, for any/all types of emergency contingencies. 9/11 was an exception because the geographical area was small and contained, but these two hurricanes have clearly demonstrated a national response weakness ... Failure to plan, and train properly has plagued US efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now that failure has come home to roost in the United States.'"

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article316682.ece

 

Seniors Imperilled From Coast To Coast

WTF? It is bad enough that we are burned alive in evacuation buses (the only known deaths caused by Rita) and drowned in nursing home beds. Now they are drowning us on field trips too. The oge is distressed.

"A boat filled with elderly tourists on a cruise of Lake George capsized suddenly and sank yesterday afternoon under a clear sky, killing 21 passengers and injuring several more, the authorities said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/nyregion/03boat.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

KATRINA AND THE VIOLENCE: LESSON IN BASIC FACT-GATHERING

During the early days of the Katrina response, when reports of shots fired at early responders were making news, CNN broadcast a brief interview with the Coast Guard Commander, wherein he said he had no reports from any of his helicopter pilots of their being fired on. Unfortunately, no one followed up on this fleeting but crucial item, and the media continued to spread sensationalist undocumented reports. A similar pattern of hearsay apparently characterized coverage of events inside the dome and convention center.

To be sure, responders need to be aware of the likelihood of lawlessness in any civil breakdown, and the degree can be alarming. On the other hand, journalists, as well as investigators, are equipped with a basic formula for reporting events, the five W's: Who, What, Where, When, and Why/How. Just covering those basic aspects of a report will see you through pretty well, but what they may not tell you is the reliability of your info. For that reason, it's good to add a sixth fact, "According to." It's here that contemporary journalists often lose their bearings, as we are seeing in the Plame-Wilson drama.

In the '70's, when the oge first had to reconstruct a violent incident, he was in the position of receiving data from a half dozen investigators covering about fifty persons. The initial data contained so many redundancies and contradictions that he immediately abandoned any hope of drafting an easy narrative in favor of systematizing the data on made-up spread sheets which formatted the information beginning with "What" and proceeding across the sheet to a sixth column, "According to." In this last column notation was made as to whether the informant claimed or appeared to be an eye witness, or whether the information was second-hand, which automatically triggered another interrogation. Sometimes the original source was three or four degrees removed, sometimes undiscoverable; often, multiple subjects were relaying information from a common source. In some cases, subjects gave early versions to other subjects which were closer to the actual events than later ones they provided to official interrogators.

One of these forms was used for each interview. Since an incident consists of a number of events, efforts were made during the interviews to sequence the specific events as one worked down the sheet, relating a given event to absolute time where possible or with respect to earlier or later events. A timeline was thereby generated. After the first round of interrogations, all the best data were extracted and repositioned on a master sheet, where contradictory data were weighted and noted. Uncorroborated and contradictory information indicated areas for further investigation.

This is not a complicated process, and while the foregoing example is a formal, documented one, executed after-the-fact, skillful investigators are aware of the process during all stages of their involvement, observing the need to evaluate data continuously. The problem is that so many other people, including too many journalists, no longer understand their responsibility to evaluate and weigh information. Their business seems merely to quantify information: how much sound and video will fit in so much time. Examples of this abrogation of responsibility abound; at all levels of professional reportage we see networks present issues in the context of two opposite sides, as if one must be right, or there are no more dimensions to a matter than two, and it seems never to occur to them that what they are explicating is not the issue at all, but the orientation of the commentators. Too often, accuracy and truth are sacrificed to mere politicization.

The same lack of responsibility has rendered reliance on anonymous sources in government not only bad journalism but dangerous journalism, in service to propagandizing. Judith Miller is a prime example of this problem in her reporting even before Plame-Wilson, but the NYTimes appears to support her still. I could understand this if it signified an effort to promote an editorial bias, but that doesn't seem the case. It is a mystery why such a clear and huge deficit in media operations goes uncorrected.

In any event, this seems to be the current MSM assessment of the matter in the Katrina story, and as you might expect, they seem oblivious to their central role in it:

"NEW ORLEANS - Among the rumors that spread as quickly as floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina, reports that gunmen were taking potshots at rescue helicopters stood out for their senselessness.

"On Sept. 1, as patients sweltered in hospitals without power and thousands of people remained stranded on rooftops and in attics, crucial rescue efforts were delayed as word of such attacks spread.

"But more than a month later, representatives from the Air Force, Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security and Louisiana Air National Guard say they have yet to confirm a single incident of gunfire at helicopters.

"Likewise, members of several rescue crews who were told to halt operations say there is no evidence they were under fire."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12802783.htm

Already Doomed? 

"Melting Planet"

Do not read this if you are depressed. Read something else, like about the rapture being upon us. On the other hand...

"Species are dying out faster than we have dared recognise, scientists will warn this week. The erosion of polar ice is the first break in a fragile chain of life extending across the planet, from bears in the north to penguins in the far south.

"The polar bear is one of the natural world's most famous predators - the king of the Arctic wastelands. But, like its vast Arctic home, the polar bear is under unprecedented threat. Both are disappearing with alarming speed.

"Thinning ice and longer summers are destroying the bears' habitat, and as the ice floes shrink, the desperate animals are driven by starvation into human settlements - to be shot. Stranded polar bears are drowning in large numbers as they try to swim hundreds of miles to find increasingly scarce ice floes. Local hunters find their corpses floating on seas once coated in a thick skin of ice."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article316604.ece

"F--king The PUC:" Army Now Confronting Admissions of Wide-Scale Torture

Like this is a surprise, recreational torture.

"FOR the first time, American soldiers who personally tortured Iraqi prisoners have come forward to give testimony to human rights organisations about crimes they comm itted.

"Three soldiers – a captain and two sergeants – from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury near Fallujah in Iraq have told Human Rights Watch how prisoners were tortured both as a form of stress relief and as a way of breaking them for interrogation sessions.

"These latest revelations about the torture of Iraqi detainees come at a time when the Bush administration thought it could draw a line under the scandal of Abu Ghraib following last week’s imprisonment of Private Lynndie England for her now infamous role in the abuse of prisoners and the photographing of torture."

Credibility? Try Capt. Ian Fishback, special forces, West Point grad... Why aren't the media all over him?

http://www.sundayherald.com/52035

DISASTER SHELTER AND RESETTLEMENT, REVISITED

A perspective: In his 09.03.05 post, the oge sketched the basic issues involved in the sheltering and resettlement of Katrina victims, now amplified by the addition of Rita's refugees. Right off, we need some context to establish what is predictable, doable, and within the reasonable purview of government. After 9/11, billions of your tax dollars were spent developing Homeland Security and re-informing a host of other government agencies in defending against terrorist attacks. In many conceivable scenarios, the scale of Katrina is not large. NOLA was not that big a city; the number of homeless currently reckoned in federal assistance is around half a million. Consider the numbers that would be impacted by the detonation of several dirty bombs (a relatively cheap, low-tech attack) in NYC, Washington, Chicago, or LA, with lingering radiation. In these scenarios, you could have not only the evacuation of several times the number of Katrina victims, but their isolation and treatment, even before the stage of resettlement. It is now evident that your elected officials developed no such plans and have been responding to the Gulf Coast victims using the time-honored method of idiots---trial and mostly error. (If you want to compare the incompetence of our current officials with a responsible example---a century ago!---check out the timeline of events for the San Fran Quake:

http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist10/06timeline.html)

Today's Washington Post summarizes the state of affairs in the sheltering and resettlement of the refugees; it is not a great state of affairs, so hold on to your wallet:

"Two weeks before President Bush's mid-October goal for moving Hurricane Katrina victims out of shelters, more than 100,000 people still reside in such makeshift housing, and 400,000 more are in hotel rooms costing up to $100 a night.

"Housing options promised by the federal government a month ago have largely failed to materialize. Cruise ships and trailer parks have so far proved in large part to be unworkable, while an American Red Cross program -- paid for by the federal government -- that allows storm victims to stay in motels or hotels is scheduled to expire Oct. 15. It is projected to cost the Federal Emergency Management Agency as much as $168 million.

"Federal officials are struggling to launch an alternative interim housing program that would give families whose homes are destroyed or uninhabitable a lump sum of $2,358 in rental assistance, or $786 a month for three months, with the possibility of a 15-month extension. So far, 330,000 families have signed up for the housing assistance. But if evacuees have to use those stipends to pay for hotel rooms when FEMA stops covering such lodging, the funds will not last long.

"Last week, the number of evacuees in hotels increased from 220,000 to more than 400,000 people, in 140,000 rooms. Many have no idea what they will do when the program ends in two weeks."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/01/AR2005100101437.html?referrer=email

For argument's sake, let's separate two issues, even though that is happening already as a result of governmental inaction, the resettlement of refugees and the reconstruction of New Orleans, simply because 1) it is manifestly obvious that the government is unable to accomplish either very well, and the combination not at all, and 2) the fate of NOLA may be better left to longer-term economic forces. If we look at the example of Galveston, commerce will simply not wait for the dubious effects of city planners and could relocate the port activity or at least redefine the civic profile of NOLA. I do not have the technical expertise to know if Baton Rouge is a candidate for relocation, but in large gestures or incrementally, economic forces will take care of the need for the port, working within, around, and without the government.

(Ironically, one of the few major political figures with the demonstrated interest to undertake massive civil engineering is Al Gore, and although I would not want to predict the success of his
projects, it would have been a valuable experience to see him tackle this problem from a position of social science.)

Accordingly, from the present chaos that characterizes the sheltering of the refugees, let's just accept the inevitable fact that we have no plan and devise the fairest, most economical course of action for everyone. Replace the notion of organized resettlement with a monthly stipend that covers everything, rent, food, and incidentals based on family size, with a one-time lump sum for a used car and rent deposit/security; there is a built-in incentive here for someone to stop paying exorbitant daily hotel rates. Authorize the stipends for four months, payable at any pre-determined social security, employment, or social services office in any state. (One tech from Mastercard or a 12-year-old Dutch kid could interface the computer rosters in, say, a half-hour; creating your relief rolls should not be a big deal, since your catchment area is defined by the disaster area and the evacuation/shelter process. The present refugee population, if the oge recalls correctly, is just half what NYC's welfare roll was in 1966, when it was automated by key-punch cards.) Even if the family of four can't find an Atlanta apartment immediately, they can check out of their $100/night hotel, climb in their 1996 Toyota, and get a room at Billy Bob's Moonlight Motel for half the price. They have discretionary funds for food and finding work. Or they can head south, or north; it's their choice, let them go. Health care is reimbursed at Medicare rates anywhere in the nation. People who need assistance after four months apply at whatever welfare office covers them, get approved or not, and the locality collects federal reimbursement for another two months. Then the feds are out of it, and those families that were already welfare families or would be welfare families may become welfare families again or anew, but that's between them and the locality.

Beyond this, men and women who were working are presumably entitled to unemployment insurance payments; ditto folks on OASDI and so forth. Let them collect those checks additionally. Private insurance is another matter; carriers should be obliged to report all scheduled settlements to the government, and redundant payments should be reassigned to the government, such as coverages for rentals and replacement of automobiles.

The smaller number of the truly dependent, those who cannot find their way out of the shelters, were likely dependent to some extent before Katrina, and their stay in the shelters should be
accepted and utilized as an essential stage in restorative services, with a modified stipend.

The government's role in the reconstruction of NOLA will likely develop politically, doing as much harm as it does good. The idea of restoring the city to its prior profile is simply an esthetic fancy and none of us should be expected to expend one tax dollar to that end, short of a general consensus that we consider mummers a national treasure worth preserving. Let the city come back as it will, nourished by whatever economic and cultural currents supply its roots. The federal obligation remains as before, mainly to compensate the infrastructure for ravages beyond the local scope, as it would any other compromised region. The geo-biotic degradation of the Gulf Coast is in fact a national problem, given that we do not levy on industrial operations the actual environmental costs of commerce. In this connection, it is an open question, to what extent the government---meaning we tax payers---owe uninsured homeowners the value of their destroyed property.

Sunset For Bali?

Bali Bombings, Again

Yo, you tourists out there, stop vacationing in Bali, ok? You might want to reconsider Egypt, too. And maybe Baghdad is still a scratch.

"The police found a total of 'six legs and three heads but no middle bodies, and that's the strong sign of suicide bombers,' Mr. Djalal said.

"At the beach-side restaurant in Jimbaran, near the Four Seasons hotel, two heads and two sets of legs without torsos were discovered in the debris, he said. This indicated two suicide bombers carried out the attack there, he said. At Kuta, another set of such remains was found in the shattered restaurant, Mr. Djalal said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/international/asia/02bali.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Arianna Does Judy

"If all it took for Miller to feel properly released was a phone call, why did she wait 85 days to make it?

"And so we don’t forget what this story is really about, and given that the aluminum tubes crap that Miller put on the front page of the New York Times was being heavily promoted by Cheney, how much of that bogus information came to Miller via Libby?

"...Why did the Times hold back the story about Miller’s release and let multiple other news sources scoop them? Were they trying to miss the evening news cycle and avoid the overnight thrashing their spin has rightly received?

"So, as the image of Judy as a principled, conscience-driven defender of the First Amendment gives way to the image of Judy wearing her 'new' waiver as a fig leaf allowing her to get out and sing, the big question remains: What is she hiding?"

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0930-24.htm

A Big Duh On Iraq: Gens Say Our Troops Fuel Insurgency

Just what evidence is there for the popular notion that our military command is the most competent of the myriad governmental units? Maybe there's a clue in that stat about a quarter of a million rounds of ammo fired for each dead Iraqi. Maybe all we got is a lot of ammo.

And just what else was supposed to be fueling the insurgency, anyway? El nino? Or is this some PR scheme to introduce the notion that there is an insurgency and it is getting fueled?

Or why do I even bother asking these questions?

"WASHINGTON — The U.S. generals running the war in Iraq presented a new assessment of the military situation in public comments and sworn testimony this week: The 149,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq are increasingly part of the problem.

"During a trip to Washington, the generals said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usiraq1oct01,0,7766978.story?track=tottext

Nitwit Picks Another Hack

One sign of a lower life form is its inability to learn from experience:

"WASHINGTON — Less than a month after the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped down amid accusations of cronyism and incompetence, the Bush administration is being assailed for nominating another political ally to head a key agency for responding to foreign disasters.

"One leading international relief group is publicly opposing the appointment of Ellen Sauerbrey to the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and others have expressed private concerns over her lack of experience in emergency response work."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-refugee1oct01,0,3602588.story?track=tottext

Totalitarian Nation: bush Propaganda Machine Illegal

So now it's official.

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

"In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated 'covert propaganda' in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/politics/01educ.html?th&emc=th

More high crimes and misdemeanors. . .