Why Did They Bother?

Did anyone think this would affect belief?

"Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

"And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

"Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

Best Perspective On Immigration

Thom Hartman's essay is the best analysis of the current immigration crisis available in the popular media:

"It's frankly astonishing to hear 'progressives' reciting corporatist/racist/conservative talking points, recycled through 'conservative Democratic' politicians trying to pander to the relatively small percentage of recently-legal (mostly through recent amnesties or birth) immigrants who are trying to get their relatives into this country by means of Bush's proposed guest worker program or the many variations thereof being proposed.

"It's equally astonishing to hear the few unions going along with this (in the sad/desperate hope of picking up new members) turn their backs on Caesar Chávez and the traditions and history of America's Progressive and Union movements by embracing illegal immigration.

"Every nation has an obligation to limit immigration to a number that will not dilute its workforce, but will maintain a stable middle class - if it wants to have a stable democracy. This has nothing to do with race, national origin, or language (visit Switzerland with it's ethnic- and language-dived areas!), and everything to do with economics.

"Without a middle class, any democracy is doomed. And without labor having - through control of labor availability - power in relative balance to capital/management, no middle class can emerge. America's early labor leaders did not die to increase the labor pool for the Robber Barons or the Walton family - they died fighting to give control of it to the workers of their era and in the hopes that we would continue to hold it - and infect other nations with the same idea of democracy and a stable middle class."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm

Israelis Speak

Do these elections represent the final legacy and end-of-life wishes of a reformed militant, comatose in a world of violence he had spent most of his life creating?

"Ehud Olmert, the leader of the new Israeli government, told the new Palestinian government that 'we are ready to compromise and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there [the West Bank of Palestine] in order to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfill your dream and live alongside us.'

"...Of course, Olmert might be assassinated by the Israeli right wing, as was Yitzhak Rabin, the last Israeli leader who was prepared to negotiate a fair settlement with the Palestinians. But the greatest threat to Olmert's peace efforts will be the American neoconservatives who control the Bush regime."

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8783

"Alliances Of Violence"

Dahr Jamail chronicles the under-reported connection between events in Iraq and Israel, and a few more pieces of the puzzle fall in place.

"Speaking on al-Manar TV, Muqtada al-Sadr pledged, "From here I announce my solidarity with the genuine unity announced by Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah with the mujahideen movement Hamas. Let them consider me their striking hand in Iraq whenever the need arises. As the martyr Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said, Iraq and Palestine have the same destiny." 4/2/04, Iraq

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032906J.shtml

Abramoff Sentenced

Abramoff has been facing indictments from Florida to Washington. This sentence concludes one chapter in the Sun Cruz drama where the investigation of the murder of Gus Boulis continues. It is perhaps best viewed as a guarantee of his ongoing cooperation with a host of prosecutors in the unfolding of an unknown number of cases pointing to the black heart of government.

"Abramoff was sentenced this afternoon in Miami federal court to a prison term of five years and 10 months for a fraudulent loan deal to buy a South Florida fleet of casino ships in 2000.

"His partner, New York businessman Adam Kidan, in the $147.5 million SunCruz Casinos purchase also received the same sentence before U.S. District Judge Paul Huck.

"Both were charged last summer with lying to lenders about putting down $23 million to qualify for a $60 million loan to seal the SunCruz deal. But they never made the down payment, though they sent bogus documents to the lenders that showed they did -- the foundation of the wire-fraud conspiracy case.

"...Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to public corruption charges in January in a separate Justice Department probe partly linked to the SunCruz case, is helping both South Florida and Washington federal prosecutors with the broader influence-peddling investigation in the nation's capital."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/14214830.htm

En Route To Paradise: No God Is My CoPilot

You have to sympathize with the jurors. They are supposed to decide on the applicability of the death penalty in Moussaoui's case. So they have this psychotic about whom they have heard the testimony of his own fellow jihadist that he was deemed not right in his head, sort of code for unfit for command. Now they hear M, taking the stand in his own defense to phantasize about a fifth plane he was going to crash into the white house, with Dickie Reid the Shoe Bomber as his crew member. Right.

Maybe we have here one of those rare exceptions that justify torture---like the scenario in which your sister the nun has been kidnapped by a serial sodomist and strapped on the sacrificial altar in the pit, and the pendulum is descending---and we can invoke it in the cause of applying it to M in order to reveal the truth of his deathwish. Except that he is looney-tunes and probably believes his own lies. So we end up torturing him to death in pursuit of a truth that doesn't exist in a man who wants to die anyway...

Sartre, where are you when I need you?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=3952503f28f3910a&hp=&ex=1143608400&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1143648049-WBHFxx++OHQ6E4TecpHGrg

Dubious Standings And Exquisite Contradictions

In the wake of recent events that have promoted Shiite protests against the occupation, our administration is reportedly considering a different prime minister, such as

"...Adel Abdul Mahdi...(a) Maoist turned Islamist and free-market advocate (with) close ties to Tehran..."

After easing your conscience over delicate considerations of what democratization means, you would get out your ouija board and decide where this guy stands. Or leans. Or bows. Or squats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=3952503f28f3910a&hp=&ex=1143608400&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1143648049-WBHFxx++OHQ6E4TecpHGrg

-Modern Landscape Of Ur-

 

Ur And The Advance Of Factionalism

Sunday's raid on the Shiite mosque in Ur has threatened our efforts at political unification of the country as much as any recent event. The conflicting accounts and details of the raid contribute to the problem, and the non mea culpa of the US command sounds suspiciously simplistic, given that US troops were present in some capacity. Can the Iraqis (and whatever portion of aliens are involved in the mix) fight each other and us at the same time? Of course they can, and with full phylogenetic support: each faction is simply warring against "not ours."

"Frayed relations between Iraq's Shiite leadership and the American authorities came under increased strain on Monday as Shiite leaders angrily denounced a joint American-Iraqi raid on a Shiite compound and suspended negotiations over a new government.

"The raid on Sunday evening, which killed at least 16 people, also prompted the governor of Baghdad to announce a halt in cooperation with the American authorities, and Shiite militiamen to brandish their weapons in the streets of eastern Baghdad and declare their readiness to retaliate against American troops.

"The suspension of the difficult talks over the formation of a full four-year government prolonged a power vacuum that American and Iraqi officials said had created a fertile environment for a recent surge in lawlessness and sectarian violence..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/international/middleeast/28iraq.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Thanks For Nothing

Did these idiots really think there was ever any question about it?

"In a unanimous vote yesterday, the Federal Election Commission left unregulated almost all political activity on the Internet except for paid political advertisements. Campaigns buying such ads will have to use money raised under the limits of current federal campaign law.

"Perhaps most important, the commission effectively granted media exemptions to bloggers and other activists using the Web to allow them to praise and criticize politicians, just as newspapers can, without fear of federal interference...'

Argh, come on, now. Perhaps most important is that the e-cops saved themselves the folly of trying to prosecute a couple million of us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR2006032701474.html?referrer=email

-Chief Justice Contemplates Biting Souter-

 

Roberts Reptilicus

If you thought this squinty-eyed little lizard was the kind of conservative who would protect individual rights, forget it. In Georgia vs. Randolph the color of his scales was more apparent, and I don't mean the symbolic judicial scales. Here he shows all the inclinations of the neo who loves to slobber persons of power and prop up the pillars of their institutions---and, apparently, to the ire of his more reasonable colleagues.

"Justice Souter, usually mild-mannered to a fault, said in Footnote 4 that 'in the dissent's view, the centuries of special protection for the privacy of the home are over.' By invoking a 'false equation' between inviting the police into the home and reporting a secret, he said, the chief justice 'suggests a deliberate intent to devalue the importance of the privacy of a dwelling place.'

"Chief Justice Roberts responded in turn. The majority had mischaracterized his position on privacy and 'seems a bit overwrought,' he said in a footnote.

"In a concluding paragraph of his dissent, he said: 'The majority reminds us, in high tones, that a man's home is his castle, but even under the majority's rule, it is not his castle if he happens to be absent, asleep in the keep or otherwise engaged when the constable arrives at the gate. Then it is his co-owner's castle.'

"Justice Souter also attacked as a 'red herring' a warning by Chief Justice Roberts that the rule the court was adopting would hamper the ability of the police to protect victims of domestic violence."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/politics/23scotus.html?pagewanted=1

Iraq Horror Of The Moment

"'I injected more than 35 policemen and soldiers, including officers and some who were slightly injured,' the doctor, identified by a Kurdish security official as Luay Omar Taie, said in the taped statement. 'I used to stop the breathing machines or cut the electricity in the operations room or reopen the wounds.'"

That from a doctor in a Kurdish hospital who "told police that he sympathized with the radical Sunni Arab insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna. He said that the group paid him to kill the men and that he did it because "I hate the Americans and what they've done to Iraq."

And you thought gratuitous tonsillectomies were scandalous.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600236.html?referrer=email

Stupid Of the Day

If you wanted to set yourself up as dumb and insensitive---having written a book about the island lepors of Molokai--- start out by using a photo of an Italian seascape for the cover. Bingo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/books/27wils.html?th&emc=th

Tasini Revisits Rachel Corrie

He is the oge's choice to run against Hillary, and his speech at Riverside is one more reason why:

"Yesterday, I spoke at an event in New York City called Rachel's Words. Two years ago, Rachel Corrie, a human rights activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer as she tried to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist from demolition in Rafah, Gaza Strip. She was 23. A play based on her writing, 'My Name is Rachel Corrie' was scheduled to open yesterday in New York City but it's debut was postponed indefinitely, in all likelihood because of the controversy it would cause in a city with such a large Jewish audience.

"As a Jew who lived in Israel for seven years and whose family still lives there and has deep roots going back more than 80 years, it breaks my heart that there is a refusal to grapple with an almost untouchable topic in our country: why does the United States have such a one-sided policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict? And it's the reason I agreed to speak at the event which honored Rachel's life and her beliefs..."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0324-35.htm

Helen Thomas Gets A Crack At It

Having acknowledged her role as pariah among the white house press corps, and letting us all know how long she has wanted to ask w the simple question of why we invaded Iraq (and almost believing she would never get the chance), w finally called on the great old lady. It was a touching moment for those of us who watched it live, as she prefaced the question with an almost apologetic caution.

She needn't have worried. She was right that she would never get an answer to her question, but not because she would never get to ask it. The little fraud wouldn't answer it. When all the possibilities explaining the reasons for his stammering and evasion are examined, you end up with the sense that he doesn't know himself. It would take psychoanalysis or torture to discover it, and even then brain damage would get in the way.

"WASHINGTON -- Standing on a rooftop, a U.S. soldier recently fired a shot at an Iraqi man walking down the street. As the dying Iraqi grabbed at his wound, he cried out: 'What did I do?'

"That's for every American to answer."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/264134_thomas24.html

-Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid-

 

"Camels Of Mass Destruction"

You got to be kidding me. This is from one of those truckloads of cached documents we discovered following the invasion---the ones that war apologists keep promising will reveal the real WMD's. Well, here we have one, camels rigged with bombs. I wonder where they got that idea? Remind anyone of a certain dolphin program?

"'The largest section of the course will be specialised to focus on using the explosive material in the body, in motorcycle, in cars, and in camels.' Camels will be 'provided by the Directory of General Military Intelligence.'"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=T22JEBI15UW1ZQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/03/26/wsaddam26.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/26/ixworld.html

Raimondo On "Hillary The Hawk"

In the current issue of The American Conservative Raimondo pens one of the most devastating essays on Hillary's war stances I have read. There are always points in his arguments that invite questions, and hyperboles to be qualified, but the overall analysis is strong. Democrats are well reminded that her victory in 2008---barring a transformation of her political character---will ensure the continued operation of war and empire, and always, with them, the impoverishment of the Republic, the erosion of Constitutional rights. Ironically, in this context, the election of McCain would probably yield a similar militaristic bent, but maybe a higher regard for residual constitutional and traditional institutions, to the extent that is possible. In either victory, we should pray for a majority of the opposite party in the Congress, since political gridlock is the brightest of the stars likely to survive the fading horizon of our devastated lanscape. Of course, alternative victories are still possible, have we the will.

"Hillary has imbibed the same neocon Kool-Aid that has intoxicated the Bush administration and blinded it to the failure of its policies in Iraq."

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_03_27/cover.html

Quote For The Day

"The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

---Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq, regarding homosexuality

Domenech Cops To Plagiarism

The little weasel lasted 3 days at the Post. And the oge had already joined the mob kvetching to chief editor Jim Brady about him. I could have saved the effort of that email. At least they were spared the spectacle of this little nasty on a gay porn site.

"A conservative blogger on the Washington Post's website resigned Friday following allegations that he repeatedly had plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in earlier articles.

"Washingtonpost.com hired Ben Domenech just three days earlier to widen the ideological spectrum of its online commentary. But liberal bloggers objected that he was unqualified and extreme — for example, he labeled civil rights icon Coretta Scott King a 'communist.'"

These guys don't seem to have a lot of profiles to pick from. They're kind of limited to Prejudice, Plagiarism, Porn, Pejoration, Perjury, and Pecunia. No wonder they double up.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blogger25mar25,0,6947116.story?track=tottext

The Gift That Keeps Giving

Someone should tell the old bag, just stay away from these Katrina victims. She never gets it right.

"HOUSTON — In a city housing thousands of Katrina evacuees, Barbara Bush's donation to a local hurricane relief fund normally would not seem controversial.

"But more than a few eyebrows were raised when the former first lady stipulated that part of her contribution was to be spent on educational software purchased from her son Neil's company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Texas."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-donation25mar25,0,710881.story?track=tottext

Great Balls Of Fire

Like, of all the body parts from which they might harvest these latent stem cells, it couldn't be thumbs or elbows. Oh, no.

"If similar starter cells exist in the testes of men, as several scientists yesterday said they now believe is likely, then it may not be difficult for scientists to cultivate them in laboratory dishes, grow them into new tissues and transplant those tissues into the ailing organs of men who donated the cells."

I can hear the good doc now: "This won't hurt a bit. We'll just give you a little novocaine down there. And don't worry, we'll drop a grape in while we grow you a new one..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032401721.html?referrer=email

-Storming the Bastille-

 

Is Paris Burning Again?

You would think that even French aristocrats would get the message by now: the people are not going for transparent ploys by global capitalism to increase profits. First, they voted down the EU Constitution generally perceived as a tool to filter cheap labor into the country. Then disenfranchised Muslims raised hell, albeit in the slum suburbs. Now the youth are torching the city of lights itself in reaction to labor legislation as dumb as anything w could think up.

Ah, la vie Parisienne, c'est tres instructive...

"PARIS, March 23 -- It was just the scene the French government had been dreading: burning cars seven blocks from the Eiffel Tower, shop windows smashed along one of the capital's toniest streets, and columns of helmeted riot police advancing across the greensward of a prominent tourist venue.

"Antoil Ethuin, 48, stood outside the shattered windows of his Bike n' Roll rental shop Thursday, stunned by the destruction of the worst violence in two weeks of student protests in Paris and other French cities."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032301822.html?referrer=email

-Duckworth-

We hope she applies some of that courage to her political positions. 

Emmanuel's Clone Inches Past Cegelis In Hyde's District

We were hoping for a miracle, but Christine Cegelis did very well, to the shame of the national Democratic misleadership.

"The story of the race for the Illinois 6th District House seat, which encompasses portions of both Cook County and DuPage County, shakes out like this. In 2004, Christine Cegelis, a mother of two who worked in the technology sector, challenged Henry Hyde for the seat. Hyde had been an institution in the 6th to this point, holding the seat for sixteen terms in a district that had been reliably Republican for decades. Hyde, as well as many others, were quite surprised when Cegelis managed to get 44.2% of the vote after stomping her primary opponent by nearly a 2-1 margin.

"Hyde chose to retire in 2005, making the Illinois 6th an open seat for the first time since the Carter administration. The work done by the Cegelis campaign in 2004 essentially established, for the first time in a long time, a serious Democratic presence in the district. Cegelis chose to continue campaigning even after the '04 election, and had been working ever since towards a run in 2006. She had established a ground game and name recognition among the constituents she hoped to represent, and based her campaign on the need to bring jobs back to the area.

"Enter Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Emmanuel, himself a congressman from a neighboring district, has been a kingmaker with the DCCC as chairman. He saw the open seat in the 6th as an excellent opportunity to cut into the GOP majority in the House, and made the race for that seat a central priority of the DCCC. For whatever reasons, however, Emmanuel chose to ignore Christine Cegelis and the work she had done, and instead endeavored to pull a different candidate into the race."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032406Z.shtml

You Got To Be Kidding, Some More

OK, I guess there is some logic in here somewhere if you are from Texas:

"SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) -- Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said Wednesday.

"The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.
Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car."

Thanks to D for spotting this one.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/23/texas.bars.reut/index.html

Afghan Charged With Death Penalty For Converting To Christianity

This is more from the You-got-to-be-kidding-me file. With all the crap going down over our adventures in the MidEast, you would think somebody might have forestalled this piece of craziness. After all, how many Americans have died in Afghanistan---so that a Christian convert can be sentenced to death for abandoning Islam? Or does this meet W's definition of a democratized state? Bring the troops home now. We can't afford anymore of his democratization and enlightened constitutions.

(---I just heard on CNN that the puppets have found a way out: adjudicate the guy insane, and then he can't be tried. Good grief. I wonder if that works for impeachment too.)

"A man could be sentenced to death after being charged with converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under Afghanistan's shariah laws, a judge said yesterday. The trial is thought to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam will take four years after the fall of the Taliban.

"Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told Associated Press. The accused was charged with rejecting Islam.

"...'We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law,' the judge said. 'It is an attack on Islam.' He will rule on the case within two months.

"Shariah law states that any Muslim who rejects Islam should be sentenced to death, according to Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Repeated attempts to impose a jail sentence were barred.

"The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Mr Rahman converted back to Islam, but he refused. 'He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one,' Mr Wasi said. 'We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1734776,00.html

-Weekend War Protests-

The oge joined war protestors Saturday in upstate NY. Once more, the dominant color was over-the-hill-gray. Where have all the young folks gone? (Photo courtesy J., who is not quite over the hill)

Bill Moyers' Finest Hour...To Date

The oge was never a big fan of Moyers when he was myth huckster on PBS, but I have to admit, with this speech, he comes of age; not a great original thinker, maybe, but he can wield the language, and this speechifying is about as good as it gets at the moment:

"Bill Clinton is a Baptist. So is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. Al Gore is a Baptist. So is Jerry Falwell. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes.

"...For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/22/a_time_for_heresy.php

Inuits Signal Global Warming

The rate of the change is startling. Given the complexity of environmental interactions, how can we regard Katrina as anything but a preview of coming disasters? Manmade or not, global warming at the current rate may eclipse the other problems challenging the colossal ineptitude of the little fraud who inherited the white house:

"The global warming felt by wildlife and increasingly documented by scientists is hitting first and hardest here, in the Arctic where the Inuit people make their home. The hardy Inuit -- described by one of their leaders as 'sentries for the rest of the world' -- say this winter was the worst in a series of warm winters, replete with alarms of the quickening transformation that many scientists expect will spread from the north to the rest of the globe.

"The Inuit -- with homelands in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and northern Russia -- saw the signs of change everywhere. Metuq hauled his fishing shack onto the ice of Cumberland Sound last month, as he has every winter, confident it would stay there for three months. Three days later, he was astonished to see the ice break up, sweeping away his shack and $6,000 of turbot fishing gear."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101722.html?referrer=email

Mendelian Dilemma of the Negev Bedouin

After centuries of culturally sanctioned inbreeding (65+% marry cousins), the nomadic tribe lives with a host of genetically-distilled diseases:

"Many of the diseases among the Bedouins are not only rare but extremely severe. One such disease is aplasia cutis, in which babies are born with no skin on their skull. Some babies are born with neurological-spastic diseases and die within a few months. Other inherited conditions are blindness and severe mental retardation.

"In a Bedouin tent camp south of Beersheba, Omar, 11, lives with an especially rare disorder known as 'congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis.' Children with this disorder become their own worst enemies, burning and maiming themselves without feeling a thing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/science/21bedo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

FEMA Responds to NOLA

Abandoning their stalled rental car, Mike Brown and his team broke for drinks and dinner, then obtained pullman accomodations on the 5-star Dixie Queen steaming to New Orleans. 

The American Black Male

If you thought the stats for this tragedy had peaked, think some more:

"The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

The MSM Fail Again

As pathetic as the turnout for the protests on the 3rd anniversary of the war seemed to be, the media performed even worse. Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher writes:

"Editorials Dither While Iraq Burns.

"Anyone who hoped that this landmark would inspire the country's leading newspapers to finally editorialize for a radical change in war policy has to be disappointed, again. Calling for 'urgent diplomacy' is about as strong as the proposals get."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002199236

Tales From Gitmo

You got to be kidding me:

"My problem isn't just that I am poor, or that Saddam's government killed my second uncle. My problem, I'm sorry to say in front of the two ladies, but I want the Judge to know everything about me. I was never a "homo" or gay, but I have a problem. I can't get married because my penis. . ."

No, I swear, this is not from Savage Love:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/981hbpar.asp?pg=1

Karen Kwiatkowski On The Mess In Iraq

She raises more points in her short speech than most analysts do in a whole book. And her vision answers the critics who say we can't just pull out. Of course we can, and should:

"Of course, a small minority of neo-conservatives in both major political parties are the ones who dreamed, designed, promoted, advocated and implemented this disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East. But it was our political system that allowed this neoconservative concoction to be sold to American citizens and to the world without warranty, without a list of active ingredients, and without a warning that dangerous side-effects were not only possible but very likely..."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski146.html

Iraqi Airstrikes Increase

It just gets more desperate. Out now.

"American forces have dramatically increased airstrikes in Iraq during the past five months, a change of tactics that may foreshadow how the United States plans to battle a still-strong insurgency while reducing the number of U.S. ground troops serving here.

"A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year. Knight Ridder's statistical findings were reviewed and confirmed by American Air Force officials in the region..."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14098490.htm

Morwen Thistlethwaite's Home Page

OK, sure, it was the name that attracted my attention, but the website is definitely worth a look-at if you have ever been intrigued by knots.

http://www.math.utk.edu/~morwen/

Chemistry Of Behavior: Evolutionary Conflict In The Nuclear Family

Based on his theory that pregnancy reflects a state of evolutionary conflict between the mother and the foetus, David Haig predicted the cause of and reason for pre-eclampsia. Investigating the operations of genomic imprinting past birth, his work has strong implications for a number of behaviors and diseases into adulthood.

"Only a few of these genes have been carefully studied to understand how they work. But the evidence so far is consistent with Dr. Haig's theory. One of the most striking examples is a gene called insulin growth factor 2 (Igf2). Produced only in fetal cells, it stimulates rapid growth. Normally, only the father's copy is active. To understand the gene's function, scientists disabled the father's copy in the placenta of fetal mice. The mice were born weighing 40 percent below average. Perhaps the mother's copy of Igf2 is silent because turning it off helps slow the growth of a fetus.

"On the other hand, mice carry another gene called Igf2r that interferes with the growth-spurring activity of Igf2. This may be another maternal defense gene. In the case of Igf2r, it is the father's gene that is silent, perhaps as a way for fathers to speed up the growth of their offspring. If the mother's copy of this second gene is disabled, mouse pups are born 125 percent heavier than average."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14preg.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

-Dead, And Who Can Possibly Judge Him?-

 

Marjorie Cohn On War Crime

The president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild:

"Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, 'LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He ... and I'd say I ... were behaving as war criminals.'

"It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031306J.shtml

Nip 'n Tuck Goes South

Without comment:

"In 2000, many Americans learned about a new procedure called labiaplasty when a porn star known as Houston had her labia-reduction surgery filmed and distributed to subscribers, then later auctioned off the excised flesh over the Internet.

"Sharon Mitchell, executive director of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills, says few of today's adult film actresses are having the surgery because so many are already very young. But Mitchell, an adult film actress for 25 years before she earned a doctorate in human sexuality, says the adult film industry's emphasis on youth, as well as its growing audience among beauty-conscious women, is almost certainly driving the upsurge in the surgery."

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-rejuvenate13mar13,0,517673.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines

-The Master-

 

Vendetta

Yeah, Hollywood has probably ruined it, but they came close with Wagner's History of Violence, and not so bad as they might have been with Depp in From Hell, but Alan Moore is always a contrarian, and even if he refuses credit for Vendetta, how can you pass on a flick featuring a major role for John Hurt and at least the seminal imprint of the master, who, along with Warren Ellis---another Brit, and whose website definitely warrants a visit---stands at the pinnacle of contemporary story-telling, comics or not.

Want a solution to his Hollywood stalemate? Offer him complete script rights, designation of story-board artist(s), David Lynch as director, and filming in the UK---preferably of Promethea.

"If I had raped* and murdered a schoolbus full of retarded children after selling them heroin," he said, "I doubt that I would have been cross-examined for 10 hours."

---Alan Moore, on his testimony in the lawsuit over League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

*Some sources specify "sodomized" in place of "raped."

For Ellis:

http://www.warrenellis.com/

-Exothermic Oxidation: Le Feu Pour Le Feu-

 

Exquisite Ironies

South of the Potomac: all three arsonists arrested for the torchings of a chain of Alabama churches, were present/past students at the local Bible college, Birmingham-Southern.

A further irony---without imputing any command of theological subtlety on the part of the trio of torch-trotting terrorites: the bonfires were Baptist, their alma mater, Methodist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/national/10arson.html?th&emc=th

Israeli Settlements Illegal: Period

Since 1967 the Israeli government has known---secretly---that settlement of occupied lands was illegal according to the terms of the very treaty to which it was signatory, and has, in typical empirical tradition, lied to its citizens in the interests of political expediency.

Echoing Jimmy Carter's sober insistence yesterday that the settlements are the great obstacle to a two-nation solution, Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg foretells the dawning national tragedy:

"(Months after the 1967 war) The legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked 'Top Secret,' Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, 'My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/opinion/10gorenberg.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Let Them Eat Poison

Advancing the agenda of Soylent Green, the filthy hogs you elect to congress rewarded their masters in the food industry for their millions in bribes:

"The House approved a bill Wednesday night that would wipe out state laws on safety labeling of food, overriding tough rules passed by California voters two decades ago that require food producers to warn consumers about cancer-causing ingredients.

"The vote was a victory for the food industry, which has lobbied for years for national standards for food labeling and contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers' campaigns. But consumer groups and state regulators warned that the bill would undo more than 200 state laws, including California's landmark Proposition 65, that protect public health.

"'The purpose of this legislation is to keep the public from knowing about the harm they may be exposed to in food,' said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, a chief critic of the measure.

"Several critics argued that the bill was rushed through the House without complete hearings as a favor to a specific industry -- at the same time that members are talking about the evils of lobbying and proposing stricter ethical rules.

"Under the bill, any state that wanted to keep its own tougher standards for food labeling would have to ask for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which has been criticized by food safety groups as slow to issue consumer warnings."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0309-06.htm

Soul-Eaters Of The World

Here they are, in all their rapacious (and inherited) sin:

"The number of billionaires around the world rose by 102 to a record 793 over the past year, and their combined wealth grew 18 percent to $2.6 trillion, according to Forbes magazine's 2006 rankings of the world's richest people.

"Forbes editor Luisa Kroll noted that Russia's stock market jumped 108 percent between February 2005 and February 2006, while India's market rose by more than 54 percent during the same period. Brazil 'was another bright star' with a market gain of 38 percent, she said.
Kroll said the changes on the list weren't driven by U.S. investments.

"...The growth in emerging markets also meant the Czech Republic placed a billionaire on the list for the first time: Petr Kellner, who debuted at No. 224 with $3 billion. And while China's market grew just 3 percent, the country added eight more billionaires, up from two last year.

"Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates was again the world's richest man for the 12th year running. Gates grew wealthier, with his net worth rising to $50 billion from $46.5 billion. Investor Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., again ranked second; his fortune fell by $2 billion to $42 billion.

"...S. Robson Walton, known as Rob, who last year ranked 10th, fell to 19th with $15.8 billion. Christy Walton and Jim Walton tied for 17th with $15.9 billion each, while Alice Walton followed Rob Walton at $15.7 billion. Helen Walton, mother of the clan, did not make it into the top 20, landing at No. 21 with $15.6 billion.

"... Only six of the 78 female billionaires are self-made; most attained their wealth through marrige or inheritance."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/09/financial/f154718S29.DTL

Quote For The Day

"It was a completely unnecessary war. It was an unjust war. It was initiated on the basis of false pretenses. All of those are true, but we can't just pre-emptively withdraw."

---Jimmy Carter 03.08.06, Seattle

Of course we can, Jimmy. Just turn Saddam loose.

-Tel Aviv-

 

Carter's Peace Plan Recognizes Hamas

Think what you will about Carter as president, his current essay on breaking the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians is about as sensible as anything you are going to read at the moment. Of course, it remains the oge's humble opinion that the real villains in the area have been Arafat and those Israeli leaders who leveraged their personal political advantage by maintaining and exacerbating hostilities---much as the little fraud who inherited our white house does here. Carter summarizes his key points:

"1. Israel’s right to exist—and to live in peace—must be recognized and accepted by Palestinians and all other neighbors;
2. The killing of innocent people by suicide bombs or other acts of violence cannot be condoned; and
3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/09/colonization_of_palestine_precludes_peace.php

SpaceCapades: Dumb Stuff In Orbit

At least it's the Russians who will be teeing off the space station. Hopefully, we are still sobered by our episode of blowing up extraneous professionals.

"In what will easily be the longest chip shot in golf history, a cosmonaut is scheduled to hit a gold-plated golf ball this summer from a makeshift tee outside the International Space Station.

"If all goes as planned, the 17,000-mph drive will travel 2.1 billion miles before burning up in the atmosphere, giving a Canadian golf club manufacturer the kind of publicity that can't be found back on Earth."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-spacegolf9mar09,0,4732589.story?page=1&track=tothtml

-International Womens Day-

Some of those who leapt

"It Matters Little If 146 Of Us Are Burned To Death"

"I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.

"This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.

"We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.

"Public officials have only words of warning to us – warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement."

---Rose Schneiderman, Metropolitan Opera House, 1911, on the Triangle Factory Fire

-Un Viaje-

 

In The Agave Vats

Please, not tequilla--- Douglas Menuez makes slick, fashionable photographs most of the time. Here he edges toward the iconic in a b&w study that evokes proletarian art. Or a romanticized version of it.

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-2om/Menuez.html

More of Menuez---although more is not always better:

http://www.menuez.com/

Battle For Dubai, Or Something

So maybe there's a handful of xenophobic congressmen who actually want to kill the deal, and a handful more who think they have to satisfy their districts' prejudices (ok, common sense, if you insist), but it seems to me the Senate already has this deal worked out for a slo-mo act of acquiescence. So what is it besides fuss?

Nothing would make the oge happier than a good old fashioned showdown between Congress and the little fraud in the white house over this, but I don't see it. Best bet still is on the deal going through. Hope I am wrong.

"Efforts by the White House to hold off legislation challenging a Dubai-owned company's acquisition of operations at six major U.S. ports collapsed yesterday when House Republican leaders agreed to allow a vote next week that could kill the deal.

"Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) will attach legislation to block the deal today to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with President Bush, who sternly vowed to veto any bill delaying or stopping Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Co."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701229.html?referrer=email

DeLay Wins Primary

The oge understands that at some point you just run out of reasons for excusing the average slob his contemptible habit of voting his prejudice, hate, and ignorance. There comes the time when it is simply true not only that you get what you vote for, but you are what you vote for. So let's write off the Texas Republicans who re-elected the slimiest man in the House as the slimes they in fact must be. We'll see what happens in the fall.

"Rep. Tom DeLay, facing an unusual four-way Republican primary, won the party's nomination Tuesday, calling his victory a rejection by voters of 'the politics of personal destruction.'

"'I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me,' DeLay, 58, said in a statement issued by his reelection campaign..."

Isn't that special?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701500.html?referrer=email

Data Mining For Dems

How sweet. Not only will this fit Hillary's needs for 2008, but as a privately-funded venture it can reap millions in secondary sales to focused telemarketers: what a lovely merger between the new dems and industry. And why would Hillary want to share with other party candidates? Or is the oge paranoid as usual?

"A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage.

"The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and
money that should instead be invested with the national party..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701860.html?referrer%3Demail&sub=AR

-Philip Agee, Truth Sayer-

 

-Ron Paul, Truth Sayer-

Philip Agee and Ron Paul, Light Bringers

Most folks remember Philip Agee as the former CIA official who got disillusioned, published the names of a lot of agency personnel, and earned himself status as enemy of the state. He wrote the following speech in 1990 preparatory to a national lecture tour; as an associate just reminded me, Agee sketches a telling background to the (continuation of) US adventures in the Mideast. I would add that it is best read as a companion piece to Congressional Libertarian Ron Paul's Essay, The End Of Dollar Hegemony, http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm

Agee's 1990 piece begins:

"Sooner or later it had to happen: the fundamental transformation of U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time. Transformation, in this sense, from a national defense force to an international mercenary army for hire. With a U.S national debt of $3 trillion, some $800 billion owned by foreigners, The United States sooner or later would have to find, or produce, the proper crisis - one that would enable the president to hire out the armed forces, like a national export, in order to avoid conversion of the economy from military to civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, encouraged, it seems, by the Bush administration, is the necessary crisis. Not long after the invasion, I watched on Spanish television Bush's call to arms, when he said "our way of life" is at stake. For days afterwards I kept watching and reading for news of the tens of millions of people in this country, who would take to the streets in joy, in celebration that their days of poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and uncared-for illness might soon end. What I saw instead, like most of you, was the Bush 'way of life' - fishing, boating, and golfing on the coast of Maine like any respectable member of the Eastern elite. Bush's military machismo of recent weeks reminded me of what General Noriega said about Bush a couple of years ago, before Bush decided to smash Panamanian nationalism for the foreseeable future. You remember? Noriega told his deputy in the Panamanian Defense Forces, who later made it public, he said, 'I've got George Bush - by the balls...'"

http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=169

-Heard At Last-

"The New World:" Revitalizing Virginia Algonquian

Malick drew on the work of linguists to dramatize a dead language.

"The dialogue continues as the interpreter puts Smith's reply in Powhatan's own words, Virginia Algonquian, a language not spoken for more than two centuries. Like most of the 800 or more indigenous languages of North America when Europeans first arrived, Powhatan's became extinct as Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost their cultural identity."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07lang.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

New Signs Of Recent (Prehistoric) Human Evolution

I personally find their suggestion of continuing evolution to be at odds with some of their basic assumptions:

"The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.

"Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.

"Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny.

"Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

Biddle on Iraq and Vietnam

Biddle's analysis in Foreign Affairs of Iraq as civil (communal) war vis a vis Vietnam as a people's war, is obvious, but needs repeating, and his description of US failure to distinguish between the natures of the conflicts in its policy is well reasoned; his prescriptive thinking is less convincing.

"Unfortunately, the parallel (between Vietnam and Iraq) does not hold. A Maoist people's war is, at bottom, a struggle for good governance between a class-based insurgency claiming to represent the interests of the oppressed public and a ruling regime portrayed by the insurgents as defending entrenched privilege. Using a mix of coercion and inducements, the insurgents and the regime compete for the allegiance of a common pool of citizens, who could, in principle, take either side. A key requirement for the insurgents' success, arguably, is an ideological program -- people's wars are wars of ideas as much as they are killing competitions -- and nationalism is often at the heart of this program.

"...Communal civil wars, in contrast, feature opposing subnational groups divided along ethnic or sectarian lines; they are not about universal class interests or nationalist passions. In such situations, even the government is typically an instrument of one communal group, and its opponents champion the rights of their subgroup over those of others. These conflicts do not revolve around ideas, because no pool of uncommitted citizens is waiting to be swayed by ideology. (Albanian Kosovars, Bosnian Muslims, and Rwandan Tutsis knew whose side they were on.) The fight is about group survival, not about the superiority of one party's ideology or one side's ability to deliver better governance."

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85201-p10/stephen-biddle/seeing-baghdad-thinking-saigon.html

-AC-130's Advance Iraq Air War-

Photo features the extensive armament mounted port-side. 

AC-130's Accelerate Air War

Here we go some more:

"AN AIR BASE IN IRAQ - The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes — the lethal 'flying gunships' of the Vietnam War — to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learned.

"An AP reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected.

"The Iraq-based special forces command controlling the AC-130s, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, said it would have no comment on the deployment. But the plan’s general outline was confirmed by other Air Force officers, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject..."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11657894

Rick Santorum vs. Bob Casey: Big Deal

Gee, thanks, Chuck, Howie, and Harry, it just gets better and better. In a normal world, we couldn't tell Bob Casey from a middle-of-the-road Repub. Only in today's absurd trek right is there even a false glimmer of distinction. This guy is just another tool, anti-abortion, pro-Alito, weak on everything else---and we are supposed to support him, along with practically every other candidate endorsed by the national Democratic leadership. Well, under them, we will still be waging an insane "war" in Iraq, living under corporate rule, deprived of reasonable health care, evironmental responsibility, and clean elections. What difference will it make to us if they do get a majority in Congress?

The only hope for democracy is a grass-roots response, which these representatives of the national leadership, co-opted and corrupted, have done their best to forestall by reinfusing localities with new-Dem dollars and organizers. We have to get the message out that we will not support their leadership, we will not give them our votes. There are too many issues to defend simultaneously without diffusing our energy. The antiwar movement has more support, organization and well-known advocates than any other, it is the clearest issue to promote, and the converts tend to be activist. Let's hold this year's candidates to that standard, beginning with Hillary here in New York, and including all the congressional races which have sold their political souls to the same-o, "centrist" delusion of reform. We will vote for antiwar candidates where we find them---alternative candidates where they exist, third-party where they exist---or leave the lever alone (assuming we have levers).

More about Casey:

"Mr. Casey, 45, is an experienced statewide candidate, the son of a popular former governor, and in some ways the symbol of a new pragmatism in the Democratic Party. National party leaders heavily recruited Mr. Casey to enter this race, despite his long opposition to abortion rights, because, quite simply, they thought he could win..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/politics/05penn.html?th&emc=th

The Cerberus Of Democratic Economics

This is as good a lay article on the schizoid labor economics of the Democrats as I've seen, and an easy explanation of why you keep seeing obscenities like Slick Willie slipping between the sheets with the boys of Dubai, while Hillary feigns outrage for votes. God help us.

Jeff Faux and Gene Sperling are two titans of Democratic economic policy. Last week, at a forum sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future, they debated the core economic policy differences that define and divide old Democrats from new Democrats (click here for transcript). Jeff Faux is the founder and former president of the progressive Washington think tank the Economic Policy Institute. Gene Sperling was the head of President Clinton’s National Economic Council from 1996 to 2000. Both have just published new books. Faux’s book is titled The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future—and What It Will Take to Win It Back. Sperling’s book is titled The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity.
The two books provide a marvelous window on today’s Democratic Party. Faux is an old labor Democrat, Sperling a new Democrat. It is striking that two leading Democrats could come up with such fundamentally different accounts of the American economy. This suggests that the Democrats are really two parties when it comes to the all-important economic agenda.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/03/whos_your_daddy.php

-One Of w's 65 Special Security Officials-

Dogs Of Delhi

I guess this is real; I didn't get it from the Onion:

"NEW DELHI: A five-star hotel in the Indian capital is playing host to a special team that is part of US President George Bush's security entourage - some 65 dogs that are referred to as 'officials'.

“The specially trained dogs were flown in as part of the multi-layer security for Bush and have been put up in deluxe rooms at the Le Meridien Hotel in central Delhi.

“According to Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP Nilotpal Basu, who gave the information to the media, the hotel authorities initially refused to accommodate the four-legged 'officials', saying they did not have provisions for accommodating animals.

"But the US officials apparently insisted that they were not dogs, but skilled security 'officials' and no one should call them dogs, Basu told reporters at Parliament House.

"'These dogs cannot be called animals. They can be addressed either by their ranks such as sergeant, major, etc. And the hotel staff had to accept it,'" he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1434327.cms

The Cartoon Guys Answer

Jyllands-Posten publishes their Manifesto:

"We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

"The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats..."

http://www.jp.dk/indland/artikel:aid=3585740/

The Bulldozer Wins Again

The stage production of Rachel Corrie's story has been cancelled, a casualty of ignorant ethnic politics in the Big Apple.

"THE FLIGHTS for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule delivered; there were tickets advertised on the Internet. The Royal Court Theatre production of 'My Name Is Rachel Corrie,' the play I co-edited with Alan Rickman, was transferring later this month to the New York Theatre Workshop, home of the musical 'Rent,' following two sold-out runs in London and several awards.

"We always felt passionately that it was a piece of work that needed to be seen in the United States. Created from the journals and e-mails of American activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her adolescence in Olympia, Wash., to her death under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it a unique American story that would have a particular relevance for audiences in Rachel's home country. After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in order 'to meet the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax dollars,' and she was killed by a U.S.-made bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-viner1mar01,0,4597888.story?track=tottext