Down Time

Even with the changes in equipment, I'm fighting repetative stress injuries in my hands and arms. The reveres yell at me if I don't take care of myself, so I'm taking the rest of the day off to rest my aching apendages. Use this as an open thread.

Proportion

U.S. Troops Accused of Killing Iraq Family

By RYAN LENZ
The Associated Press
Friday, June 30, 2006; 10:20 AM

BEIJI, Iraq -- Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday.

The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of raping.

Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of coalition troops in Baghdad, had ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged killing of a family of four in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, the U.S. command said. It did not elaborate.

"The entire investigation will encompass everything that could have happened that evening. We're not releasing any specifics of an ongoing investigation," said military spokesman Maj. Todd Breasseale.

"There is no indication what led soldiers to this home. The investigation just cracked open. We're just beginning to dig into the details."

However, a U.S. official close to the investigation said at least one of the soldiers, all assigned to the 502nd Infantry Regiment, has admitted his role and has been arrested. Two soldiers from the same regiment were slain this month when they were kidnapped at a checkpoint near Youssifiyah.

At least four other soldiers have had their weapons taken away and are confined to Forward Operating Base Mahmoudiyah south of Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

When you turn people into brutalizers, some fraction of them are going to be unable to find the limits of their behavior.

So, I flip on CNN and Larry King is interviewing some fired talk show host....

Job Opening

Iraq National Security Under Your Wing

Friday, June 30, 2006; A25

Here's one for the up-and-comer who doesn't mind the occasional improvised explosive device:

"Mentor -- National Security Processes (Ministry of Defense). . . . located in Baghdad, Iraq."

That posting has appeared on IntelligenceCareers.com Web site, JobID 119938, put there by an outfit called MPRI Inc., a subsidiary of L-3 Communications. According to the posted description, the successful applicant, who will be paid "240K+" and do the job for about a year, "mentors, coaches, and assists . . . on all defense issues in implementation of Iraq's national security strategy. Mentors, coaches, and assists Ministry of Defense and senior civilian officials (3-star and higher) on content and management of Ministry of Defense advice to the Iraqi Prime Minister and National Security Council on military dimensions of national security issues."

The job seems custom-made for someone who went to the Bush White House on Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council staff in 2001, since the job requires a four-year degree and five years "of extensive experience in the field." Preference is to be given to someone with "actual experience as a principal staffer at the US National Security Council staff or comparable NATO or UN military or civilian interagency organization involved with national security management."

This would be quite a pay boost for a top NSC staffer, whose current salary could be about $140,000 a year. On the other hand, kidnappings and beheadings in Washington are relatively infrequent.

I have any number of friends stateside who work for the Beltway Bandits and they do pay well. They are popular landing places for retired military.

The Bleeding Coast

In Battered Parish, Officials Bear the Brunt of Neighbors' Anguish
By DAN BARRY

CAMERON, La., June 28 — They convened a meeting here the other night in just about the only building still intact. They recited the Lord's Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the elected officials of Cameron Parish tried again to govern in the protracted wake of chaos.

Six part-time members of the Cameron Parish Police Jury, a sort of county legislature, sat in a semi-circle in the dank Cameron Courthouse, where a calendar in the deserted basement is paused at September. One member is a farmer, another a carpenter. A third maintains portable toilets. Three wore baseball caps; all wore that look of forever-lost sleep.

Just outside the courthouse, flatness and emptiness: stores gone, subdivisions gone, people gone. Inside, a brief talk about taxes provided a nostalgic whiff of the comfortably mundane — until the discussion turned again to removing more storm debris, demolishing more buildings and trying to recover from the time-stopping September visit of Hurricane Rita.

In an audience dappled with the red shirts of the Army Corps of Engineers and the blue shirts of FEMA, a woman called out that her elderly momma still needed help with debris removal. Another woman, begging for help with the mosquitoes that envelop the parish, seemed to direct all of Cameron's pain and frustration toward the elected and appointed officials assembled before her:

"By God," she said, her voice shaking, "you better answer me."

And what could those officials do but nod and say they would take care of it?

James Doxey, the police juror representing Cameron town, would take care of it, and so would Tina Horn, the parish administrator, and so would Clifton Hebert, the emergency operations officer. Their own homes were washed away, too, but they would take care of it.

Pain and frustration are as common here as the mosquitoes that beat against cars like raindrops. Hurricane Rita — not Hurricane Katrina, but her less famous sister — all but ruined Cameron Parish, where about 10,000 people lived amid pasture and marshland in southwestern Louisiana 40 miles south of U.S. 90.

This place prides itself on its role in providing oil and seafood to the rest of the country, on its Gulf Coast wildlife, on its Cajun self-reliance. Still, nine months of cleaning up, of fighting insurance companies and of deciphering federal regulations — of wondering who will come back — have taken a toll on the people and those who serve them.

I don't have any answers, any plans or programs. I simply ache for these people.

Sing the Chorus of "Friends"

Postie Al Kamen keeps track of the Washington weird:

The Ties That Bind the Tongue

President Bush , at his news conference yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi , noted, as he almost always does, "that it was not always a given that the United States and America [sic] would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war -- 60 years ago we were at war, and today we talked about North Korea, and Iran, and Iraq, and trade, and energy cooperation." Bush waxed on about how "It's amazing fact that we're able to have these discussions. To me it shows the power of liberty and democracy to transform enemies to allies and to help transform the world."

Did he ever talk about WWII when Italy's Silvio Berlusconi came to town? Will he mention it to German Chancellor Angela Merkel when they meet soon?

Meanwhile, Bush came out swinging Wednesday in urging global free trade. "We shouldn't fear global competition," he said. "We shouldn't fear a world that is more interacted."

Long as they acted right.

That Sinking Feeling

Comrade Max's boss, Jared Bernstein, is blogging at Max's place. He makes some interesting points against the economic happy talk speeches Bush is giving these days:

· Over the course of the current economic expansion, real GDP is up 15%. · The Congress is busy killing a moderate minimum wage increase while working diligently to repeal the estate tax. · Profits as a share of national income are at a forty-year high. The share of income accruing to the top 1%, after falling in the wake of the dot.com bust, is again on the rise. · Productivity is up a stellar 15% over this recovery. Real hourly wages of non-managers are up bupkes (-0.6%). · New economy cheerleaders expound on the great job market, yet employment growth is up only 2% over this business cycle. The growth for the comparable period over the 1990s cycle was 7% and the historical average for cycles of this length was 10%. · Over five million more people are poor in 2004 (most recent data) compared to 2000, including 1.4 million kids.

In other words, this is an economy that looks pretty good until you take a closer look at the people in it.

In other words, the data back up that uncomfortable gut feeling that most of us have had for a few years.

Commutation Hell

Forecast: Gridlock
If rain can paralyze movement in downtown Washington, are we ready for a terrorist attack?

Thursday, June 29, 2006; A26

WHAT HAPPENS when rain knocks out a few traffic lights in downtown Washington? Thousands of commuters are stranded for hours.

And what would happen if al-Qaeda managed to explode a dirty bomb in the center of the city, sparking a mass exodus to the suburbs? Area homeland security and transportation experts can really only guess.

The region's torrent, which abated yesterday, was unprecedented and worse than unpleasant. The tropical downpour ruined cars, closed roads and brought parts of the federal government to a standstill. Tragically, five people died in rain-swollen creeks in Maryland. At the same time, the gridlock downtown Monday and Tuesday was a reminder of how vulnerable the District remains to sliding into logistical chaos during a major emergency.

Unpowered traffic signals on Independence and Constitution avenues made for interminable waits to get out of the city center -- and that was with a normal load of commuters trying to get home. Now imagine everyone in the District frantically trying to get out at the same time. Washington area emergency officials claim that if the city ordered an evacuation, it could extend green lights and put more intersection control officers on the street to promote traffic flow out of the center. Yet they also admit that, beyond models and a trial test after last year's Fourth of July celebrations, they don't know how effective these techniques would be.

Homeland security gurus counter that the chances of a citywide general evacuation are small. More likely are phased evacuations or public notices telling residents to stay put. But District and regional disaster planners should start assuming that D.C. streets will look like they did Tuesday should there be another terrorist attack. That means developing a better plan to communicate traffic and road conditions to tied-up motorists and a more robust regional infrastructure for coordination among emergency planners.

Terrorist attacks are still a phantom worry. Hurricanes are not and a mandatory evacuation here would be a surpassing nightmare.

Beating Back Ideology

In Rebuke for Bush, Court Block Trials at Guantanamo
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush's claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this follow-up case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

Thursday's ruling overturned that decision.

Chalk one up for the rule of law, which hasn't had a very good 5 and 1/2 years.

Late to the Party

Democrat Obama urges response to religious right
Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:47pm ET7
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats must shed their reluctance to talk about faith and reach out to evangelical Christians and other churchgoing Americans, a leading new voice in the party said on Wednesday.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois said Democrats need to respond to the religious right, which has increased its clout in recent years and twice helped elect President George W. Bush.

"If we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons will continue to hold sway," Obama said, naming two outspoken right-wing Christian figures.

Conservative religious leaders have put Democrats on the defensive by pushing such divisive issues as opposition to abortion and gay rights.

In a speech to conference on poverty hosted by Sojourners, a progressive faith-based group, Obama said Democrats should be willing to explain themselves in moral terms while respecting the separation of church and state.

"I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people.

"After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan," Obama said.

I've been blogging about this for four years and the Dems are just starting to get the message now? Jesus, don't they pay people to pay attention for them between fundraising events?

Just Making Shft Up

Bush's Challenges of Laws He Signed Is Criticized

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; A09

A bipartisan group of senators and scholars denounced President Bush yesterday for using scores of "signing statements" to reserve the right to ignore or reinterpret provisions of measures that he has signed into law.

Bush's statements have challenged, for instance, a congressional ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of the USA Patriot Act and even a legislative demand for suggestions on the digital mapping of coastal resources.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing marked the latest effort by Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and panel Democrats to reclaim authority that they say the president has usurped as he has expanded the power of the executive branch. It came on the same day Bush gave a speech pushing for a line-item veto that would allow him to strike spending and tax provisions from legislation without vetoing the bill.

Other presidents have used signing statements to clarify their interpretation of laws, but no president has used such statements instead of ever using the veto authority spelled out in the Constitution, said Harvard University law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., who is serving on a new American Bar Association task force examining Bush's signing statements. Bush has never used his veto power in his presidency.

"There is a sense that the president has taken the signing statements far beyond the customary purviews," Specter told the administration's representative, Michelle E. Boardman, deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. "There's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes and exclude the ones he doesn't like."

Democrats were more blunt, blasting such statements, which are estimated to number more than 750 on 110 laws -- more than all the statements issued by other presidents.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the committee's ranking Democrat, calling the practice "a grave threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances."

Specter has been more aggressive than any other Republican in challenging Bush's expanding authority. He has pushed the president to reshape his warrantless wiretapping efforts to comply with existing law; threatened to summon telecommunications executives who have given the government access to customer phone records; and challenged the White House's legal arguments for indefinite detentions at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But yesterday, Judiciary Committee members appealed to their fellow lawmakers, who Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said have been "complicit as so many of our precious rights under the Constitution have been ceded away."

Boardman countered that presidents since James Monroe have issued statements of interpretation to accompany laws, and that every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has issued statements reserving the right not to execute sections of laws that may contradict the Constitution. By her accounting, Bush has issued such statements on 110 laws, compared with 80 from Bill Clinton, as many as 105 from Ronald Reagan and 147 from George H.W. Bush in a single term. But President Bush issued multiple statements on many of those laws for a total of 750, and it is unclear how many statements the other presidents issued.

I've seen little evidence that W has even read the Constitution, much less understands it.

Guilt to go Around

EU members urged to admit to CIA renditions

· States under pressure to come clean on complicity
· Rights watchdog proposes new national security laws

David Gow in Brussels
Wednesday June 28, 2006
The Guardian

More than a dozen European governments yesterday came under severe pressure to own up to their secret services' role in handing over suspected terrorists to US intelligence after Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, admitted for the first time that European territory had been used for "extraordinary renditions".

As the Council of Europe, Europe's leading human rights watchdog, voted to continue its inquiry into CIA secret flights, Terry Davis, the secretary general, proposed laws to control national security services and revised safeguards on the use of civil and military aircraft.

Mr Frattini's intervention came as parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly to approve a report by Liberal Swiss senator Dick Marty that "named and shamed" 14 European states, including Britain, Germany and Sweden, and watched a video containing direct testimony on secret detention and torture from two survivors.

He said in Strasbourg it was a "fact" that incidents of "extraordinary rendition" had taken place on European territory since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, but insisted it was unclear whether governments were aware of them or had cooperated, and whether the flights were legal.

Urging national governments to investigate alleged CIA activities on their territories, he said: "It's extremely premature to draw consequences from the elements so far available. What we must do is make sure that national authorities understand that they not only have the power but the duty to carry out judicial investigations."

He added: "They have the duty to establish national committees. I am determined to encourage, to put political pressure if necessary, on the home affairs ministers so that we get the results [of the inquiries]." Mr Marty said collaboration with the CIA was "proven" and Mr Frattini said his report had shown "facts".

Mr Davis told parliamentarians Mr Marty's conclusions were contested by some governments but he did not think blanket denials were an adequate response. "The most effective way to refute allegations is through prompt, thorough and transparent official investigations. Those individuals who believe their rights have been violated through an action or an omission to act by a Council of Europe member state should seek redress and compensation."

I have a hard time believing that the governments weren't aware of what their security departments were up to. The Europeans can get over pointing fingers at the US.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

This is a local story, something I don't usually post, but I hope it gives you a flavor of the incredible flooding we're dealing with. There is more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. A number of federal agencies are closed for the rest of the week due to flooding and power outages. We've been through hurricanes that were less damaging.

3 Dead in Frederick County Flooding, Evacuation Ordered Near Rockville
Dam Threatens to Fail, Forcing More Than 2,000 From Their Homes

By Debbi Wilgoren, Nikita Stewart and Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; 10:08 AM

Two men and a woman were killed last night in Frederick County after being washed out of the back of a pickup truck that had just rescued them from rising waters not far from Interstate 270 near Middle Creek, officials said.

They were the first fatalities reported during six days of record-setting storms that have devastated the Washington area, washing out scores of roads, flooding hundreds of homes and forcing the evacuation of more than 2,200 people early this morning from neighborhoods around Lake Needwood in central Montgomery County.

Also in Frederick County, emergency crews continued searching for two teenagers, ages 14 and 16, who disappeared yesterday evening after going to explore rain-swollen Little Pipe Creek. Helicopters and search dogs were deployed shortly after daybreak, near where a bicycle used by one of the youths had been found.

The sun was shining as Washington woke up this morning, and forecasters said the rainy weather seemed to be tapering off because a stationary storm front parked over the region since last week had begun to move out. But with the ground saturated and accumulated rainfall still flowing down creeks and rivers, the morning commute again was disrupted, several downtown museums and federal government buildings remained closed and emergency officials warned that flooding remained a major concern.

Officials said the Potomac will continue to rise today and probably crest tomorrow. Meteorologists said a few residual thunderstorms were possible this afternoon.

The three people killed in Frederick had been stranded in their vehicle by floodwaters about 9 p.m. Tuesday night, close to the junction of Route 17 and U.S. 40 in Myersville.

"Someone in a pickup truck picked them up," said Frederick County Fire and Rescue Services spokesman Michael Dmuchowski. "They encountered high water again and they were swept out."

Gold-diggers

Open the Door to Curing Alzheimer's
Why This Research Must Become an Urgent Priority

By Robert Essner
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; A21

America is getting serious about preparing for the possibility of an outbreak of avian flu. Would that it could muster the same sense of urgency for a disease that is already here and is certain to become epidemic. The disease is Alzheimer's. It will claim one in 10 baby boomers, create a personal and fiscal nightmare for their families, and drain -- if not bankrupt -- state and federal health-care budgets. Medicare now pays one-third of all its health-care funds for some 4.5 million Alzheimer's patients. Are we ready for three times that number?

Alzheimer's doesn't have to be an inevitable part of aging. It is a disease for which research can find a cure, or at least a more effective treatment. In that way, it could be like HIV-AIDS -- a disease that, for most sufferers, went from a lethal diagnosis to a treatable chronic condition within six years of its discovery. One breakthrough AIDS drug rapidly led to another, because we mobilized pandemic-strength muscle against it. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration created review and approval processes that helped new therapies for AIDS reach people who needed them years ahead of what would have otherwise been possible.

The FDA now needs to give the same priority status to drugs for Alzheimer's as it has for AIDS and cancer treatments. And, the federal government needs to designate Alzheimer's as a No. 1 research priority.

If we don't do these things, the projections are staggering. Within the next five years, nearly a half-million new Alzheimer's cases will be diagnosed annually, as 78 million baby boomers reach age 65. Given those numbers, most of us will either become an Alzheimer's patient, care for one in our home or know a patient in our extended family. By robbing victims of memory, Alzheimer's strips away individuality, dignity and independence.

Alzheimer's is expensive. It requires $19,000 a year in out-of-pocket costs for each caregiver family. Last year Medicare spent $91 billion for Alzheimer's. That figure will nearly double in just four years -- and keep soaring as 14 million cases are diagnosed in boomers' lifetimes.

Within the pharmaceutical industry, there are 28 Alzheimer's compounds in development. But progress on all fronts is unconscionably slow considering the looming shadow of this epidemic. And, given the complexity of the disease, no single research organization has the resources to research all its facets as quickly as we must.

I have a little difficulty listening to Big Pharma scream about insufficient resources being put into research. If they cut into their obscene profits, there is a lot more that they could be doing.

Where's the Outrage?

Nuke the Messenger

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; 1:34 PM

In accusing the press -- and specifically, the New York Times -- of putting American lives at risk, President Bush and his allies have escalated their ongoing battle with the media to nuclear proportions.

Here's what Bush had to say yesterday: "We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."

Here's Vice President Cheney: "The New York Times has now made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future."

Here's press secretary Tony Snow: "The New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public's right to know, in some cases, might overwrite somebody's right to live, and whether, in fact, the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans."

It's a monstrous charge for the White House to suggest that the press is essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. But where's the evidence?

The White House first began leveling this kind of accusation immediately after a New York Times story revealed a massive, secret domestic spying program conducted without congressional or judicial oversight. See, for instance, Bush's December 17, 2005 radio address , in which he said the disclosure put "our citizens at risk."

But not once has the White House definitively answered this question: How are any of these disclosures actually impairing the pursuit of terrorists?

Terrorists already knew the government was trying to track them down through their finances, their phone calls and their e-mails. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, Bush publicly declared open season on terrorist financing.

As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances.

How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won't say. In fact, it can't say.

By contrast, it does matter to us.

This column has documented, again and again , that when faced with a potentially damaging political problem, White House strategist Karl Rove's response is not to defend, but to attack.

The potentially damaging political problem here is that the evidence continues to grow that the Bush White House's exercise of unchecked authority in the war on terror poses a serious threat to American civil liberties and privacy rights. It wasn't that long ago, after all, that an American president used the mechanisms of national security to spy on his political enemies.

The sum total of the administration's defense against this charge appears to be: Trust us. Trust that we're only spying on terrorists, and not anyone else.

But what if the trust isn't there? And what if they're breaking the law?

That's why it's better to attack. It makes for great soundbites. It motivates the base. And perhaps most significantly, it takes attention away from Bush's own behavior.

Where are the Grownups?

Iran's Supreme Leader Sees No Benefit in U.S. Talks
By REUTERS

Filed at 8:43 a.m. ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that talks with the United States would not benefit the Islamic Republic, which is embroiled in a dispute over its nuclear program with the West.

Washington has offered to join the European Union's direct talks with Iran if Tehran agrees to halt its uranium enrichment work. The demand was made in a package that has the backing of six world powers but Iran has not yet replied.

``Negotiating with America does not have any benefit for us and we do not need such negotiations,'' Khamenei was quoted as saying by state television.

Iran denies Western claims that it aims to produce nuclear weapons, saying it is only seeking atomic power.

The U.S. offer to join talks was viewed as a major policy change in Washington, which has not had diplomatic ties with Tehran since 1980. Some analysts, particularly in the West, viewed it as a possible deal clincher.

But Iranian officials have said they remain suspicious of U.S. intentions. Analysts said Khamenei's remarks might indicate pessimism in the leadership that such talks would yield results and sent a message that Iran was not in a rush to meet.

Given that Bush hands out ultimata rather than offering negotiations, I can understand Tehran's reluctance:

Bush: Iran must stop uranium enrichment

Monday, June 19, 2006 Posted: 1509 GMT (2309 HKT)

KINGS POINT, New York (AP) -- President Bush said Monday the United States will not waver in demanding that Tehran suspend all uranium enrichment-related activity before America would join international talks to resolve the nuclear standoff.

"Nuclear weapons in the hands of this regime would be a grave threat to people everywhere," Bush said on the eve of a trip to Europe.

Bush said the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia have adopted a unified approach to resolve the impasse with Iran diplomatically. He said that Iran must "fully and verifiably suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities" before the United States will join in negotiations with Iran.

"Iran's leaders have a clear choice: We hope they will accept our offer and voluntarily suspend these activities so we can work out an agreement that will bring Iran real benefits," the president said. "If Iran's leaders reject our offer, it will result in action before the Security Council, further isolation from the world and progressively stronger political and economic sanctions."

Baby Bush doesn't understand that there is a difference between serious negotiations and non-negotiable demands. Like a spoiled child, he expects to simply get his own way, or else. This is embarassing.

Start Building an Ark!

Rain Wreaks Havoc on Region

By Daniela Deane and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 26, 2006; 6:42 PM

Transportation authorities struggled to open flooded roads, tunnels and rail lines before the afternoon rush hour Monday as more rain soaked the area and weather forecasters warned of additional flooding for the battered Washington region.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning through 11 p.m. but cautioned that flooding could occur through tomorrow because moderate to heavy showers are still hovering over the area.

"Given what happened last night, it's not going to take much to cause flash flooding," said Luis Rosa, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Sterling.

Meteorologist John Darnley said a stationary front was "parked from New York extending south into Georgia and Florida." He said it was "training, going over and over the same area like a railroad train."

Torrential rains slammed the region with up to 10 inches of rain in the 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday morning, Weather Service meteorologists said. The highest rainfall was reported in Hyattsville.

The Metrorail system, which had been closed in some sections during the morning, reopened by mid-day.

All lanes of the Capital Beltway, which was closed this morning at Telegraph Road because of a mudslide, were re-opened at 10:10 a.m., according to Joan Morris from the Virginia Department of Transportation. The entrance to the Beltway at Eisenhower Road remained closed due to mud, however, Morris said.

I just came in from being out in this. I've lived in DC and environs for 21 years and I've never seen anything like this before. The street flooding and damage is worse than Hurricane Isabel in 2003. A whole bunch of federal agencies are going to be closed tomorrow, and that never happened after the hurricanes we've had in the area. One life-long resident told me that this is the worst since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

I decided I wanted to go out for dinner. I couldn't remember which block the restaurant I wanted to go to was in, but I figured I'd spot it from the street. Wrong-o. We were all driving about 15 mph, couldn't see the edges of the street or the car in front of me. I've never experienced rain like this north of the tropics. Mindblowing.

The Unitary Executive

Today's Froomkin

In this week's New Yorker (not available online), Jane Mayer profiles David S. Addington, Cheney's chief of staff and longtime legal adviser, who has "played a central role in shaping the Administration's legal strategy for the war on terror.

"Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share -- namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside."

She writes: "Conventional wisdom holds that September 11th changed everything, including the thinking of Cheney and Addington. . . . But a close look at the nearly twenty-year collaboration . . . suggests that in fact their ideology has not changed much. It seems clear that Addington was able to promote vast executive powers after September 11th in part because he and Cheney had been laying the political groundwork for years."

Mayer notes that former secretary of state Colin Powell recently told friends that Addington "doesn't care about the Constitution."

In a short Q and A on the New Yorker Web site, Mayer explains: "It seemed important to me to hold the creator of these policies accountable, so that the public could understand better who is behind them and how he thinks."

And what would Mayer ask Addington, if the notoriously secretive official let her? "I'd like to ask him whether, in his view, there is anything that the President cannot legally do in the service of national security."

I wonder if there will be anything left of the Bill of Rights by the time Bushco leaves office.

Wrapped Up Together

Divisive Plan to Unify Iraq
Sunnis object to much of Maliki's blueprint for national reconciliation. U.S. senators deride its call for amnesty for some insurgents.

By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
8:18 PM PDT, June 25, 2006

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki unveiled an ambitious, U.S.-backed plan for bringing together ethnic and sectarian factions that left open the possibility of offering amnesty to some insurgents who had killed American or Iraqi troops.

The 28-point plan, presented to parliament Sunday, includes amnesty "for those not proved to be involved in crimes, terrorist activities and war crimes against humanity," deliberately vague language hammered out over long and heated closed-door discussions involving both Iraqis and Americans.

Maliki, speaking to lawmakers packed inside the Baghdad Convention Center in the high-security Green Zone, said the plan "does not mean honoring and accepting killers and criminals." However, it calls for releasing thousands of suspected insurgents who "pledge to condemn violence and vow to back" the government. It also advocates ending rules that keep some former members of the once-ruling Baath Party out of political life, provided they haven't commit crimes in the past.

"We realize that there is a segment of those who rebelled against the righteousness, rational and logical and took Satan's route," said Maliki, who took over the premiership a month ago amid high expectations among his war-weary countrymen and U.S. officials. "To those who want to build and reform, we present hands that carry olive branches."

The introduction of the plan came as violence claimed at least 23 Iraqi lives and a video surfaced showing the execution of two men alleged to be Russian hostages seized in Iraq this month, along with footage of a third body.
....
Reaction from U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, was harsh. "The idea that they should even consider talking about amnesty for people who have killed people who liberated their country is unconscionable," Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) told CBS' "Face the Nation" that any amnesty proposal "is going to run into solid opposition" in the Senate, where he chairs the Foreign Relations Committee.
....
Many Iraqi analysts and politicians wondered whether the plan would be effective in drawing down the insurgency. Its most important features, first detailed in the June 17 issue of the Iraqi daily Mada, are designed to assuage continued Sunni Arab mistrust of the government. The moves would include the formation of national and provincial committees to negotiate amnesties; steps to demobilize militias and to prevent abuses by U.S.-led forces; and a review of laws purging from public life former members of the Baath Party, which ruled during deposed President Saddam Hussein's regime.

But the plan raised immediate doubts among the country's minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Hussein and now lead the insurgency. Many Sunni Muslims said the plan did not go far enough in heeding their demands, especially for the setting of a concrete timetable for the departure of U.S. troops, which many continue to call an occupying power.

"What do you want me to tell the honorable people? Not to hate the occupation?" said Sheik Ali Hatam Sulayman, a leader of the Albu Asaf tribe in the insurgent stronghold of Al Anbar province. "I can't. I'm sorry."

This is going nowhere. Take a gander at Satre's No Exit.

Disaster Management

Can Congress Rescue FEMA?
Calls for Independence Clash With Bids to Fix Agency Where It Is

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 26, 2006; A19

Ten months after Hurricane Katrina exposed failures at all levels of government, Congress is seeking to avert another debacle the next time the country faces a catastrophic natural disaster or terrorist attack -- and its focus is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The public debate has centered on calls to take FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security and allow it to again report to the president. The White House opposes such a move, and many in Congress say it is unlikely. Experts say the argument obscures older, deeper problems that undermine the nation's preparedness.

They cite unresolved questions before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Who should be in charge of domestic disasters in the United States? Should power be centralized in the White House or spread out to civilian agencies, the military and the states? And for what kinds of emergencies should FEMA prepare -- a nuclear strike, terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, or natural disasters?

"Spinning off FEMA doesn't really get to the root of the real problems," said Frank J. Cilluffo, director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute and a former special assistant to President Bush. "It's a politically expedient solution . . . that would give a false sense of security that FEMA was 100 percent effective."

Bruce P. Baughman, president of the National Emergency Management Association, agreed. "FEMA's position in the organization is not the issue. It's the leadership within the agency and the empowerment of the agency to carry out its mission," he said.

The latest debate over building a national system of preparedness stems from the abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina. The difficult 2003 Homeland Security Department merger took a deep toll on FEMA's operating budget, staff and voice within the new bureaucracy.

A string of federal reorganizations identified recurring problems in FEMA and its precursors, including weak managers, lack of funding and fragmented authority. In 1999, a congressionally mandated commission on national security led by former senators Gary Hart (D-Colo.) and Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) proposed creating a National Homeland Security Agency around FEMA.

But problems arose in the way Congress and the Bush administration implemented the changes after Sept. 11. Congress built the department but took away FEMA's power to award billions of dollars in state preparedness grants.

The White House predictably emphasized terrorism. And when Michael Chertoff took over the Homeland Security Department last year, he led another reorganization that dismembered FEMA's disaster preparedness mission, leaving it mainly with response functions, to the consternation of many.

As a result, FEMA's clout withered, and readiness among cities, states and the federal government decayed. Katrina exposed the seriousness of the problem.

Last year, nearly three-fourths of federal Homeland Security grants went to three terrorism-focused programs. Funds targeted at "all-hazards" fell from $1 billion in 2004 to $720 million, while those aimed at terrorism rose from $130 million in 2001 to $2.6 billion, the Homeland Security inspector general reported recently.

We've got massive amounts of flooding here after heavy rains and more rain expected. It's hurricane season and pandemic influenza lurks. Power outages already dot the area, the highway system has been rendered non-functional and public transit is having trouble. And this is after a couple of rain storms. If you think the system ain't broke, you haven't been paying attention.

Churchill's Black Dog

Acknowledging Depression
Public Figures Perform a Service in Revealing Mental Illness

By Kay Redfield Jamison
Sunday, June 25, 2006; B07

This past week [Montgomery County, MD, County Executive] Doug Duncan cited depression as the reason for dropping out of the race for governor of Maryland. One hopes that his directness will make it easier for other public figures to be more straightforward about their own experiences with this common, potentially lethal and yet treatable illness.

Most prominent Washingtonians who have depression are not open about their illness, nor do they make any concerted effort to improve the lives of the other 34 million Americans who also suffer from depression. They benefit from their access to the best doctors, researchers and hospitals, but they remain silent. This is understandable, at least to a point. There are risks involved in disclosing mental illness, including potential backlash from wary stockholders, skeptical voters, concerned investors, and unsympathetic employers and licensing boards. These concerns cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor should anyone feel pressured to discuss in public what they confide to their doctors and psychotherapists. Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

Yet when public figures remain silent about depression there is a cost to the rest of society. Silence contributes to the misperception that successful people do not get depressed, and it keeps the public from seeing that treatment allows many individuals to return to competitive professional lives. Silence also contributes to the myth that people who are brilliant or "full of life" cannot possibly become so despairing as to kill themselves. They do. Every day. In short, silence helps perpetuate the stigma of mental illness. Those in the public eye -- whether in business, journalism, politics or the professions -- have a unique opportunity to lessen this stigma, mobilize research efforts, raise money and educate others who do not have the same financial and educational advantages.

There are exceptions to this general unwillingness of public figures to discuss depression. Some people -- Mike Wallace, William Styron, Art Buchwald, Patty Duke and Dick Cavett, for example -- have spoken out for years. Tom Johnson, former chairman and chief executive officer of CNN, along with other well-known businessmen, athletes and entertainers, has participated in public awareness campaigns about depression. A few prominent individuals in science and medicine -- Sherwin Nuland, Yale surgeon and writer; Leon Rosenberg, former dean of the Yale Medical School; and Mark Vonnegut, writer and physician -- have openly discussed their depression and bipolar illness. Several politicians and wives of politicians have been public about their experiences with depression or bipolar illness, including Lawton Chiles, Patrick Kennedy, Tipper Gore and Kitty Dukakis. Each made a tremendous difference by doing so.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, author of An Unquiet Mind and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, among other books. She is herself a manic-depressive. I agree with her about the importance of public figures outing themselves to help de-stigmatize the disorder. But the medical profession needs to be doing more, too. A campaign of public service announcements are in order. Only a fraction of the people suffering from mood disorders ever receive treatment. There is nothing redemptive about unnecessary suffering, ever.

On Whose Back?

Tax Giveaway in Virginia
Why throw a bone to the rich?

Sunday, June 25, 2006; B06

TWENTY STATES and the District of Columbia tax the estates of well-to-do residents upon their deaths -- generally those valued at $1 million or more. In Virginia, the so-called death tax is even less onerous; it kicks in for estates worth at least $2 million, which seems a generous-enough exemption for the affluent.

But that's not sufficient for the governor or most Virginia lawmakers. They are poised to scrap the estate tax altogether and forfeit the $140 million it yields annually. That may not sound like a crushing sum in the context of a $72 billion biennial budget. But given the legislature's failure to find a long-term funding fix for the state's snarled roads and highways, it is odd that lawmakers would surrender that pot of money for the benefit of the state's richest individuals and families.

Lawmakers in Richmond agreed to scrap the estate tax during eleventh-hour bargaining over a budget last weekend. Although details of the legislation remain unresolved, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine favors the measure in principle. Granted, their reasons are different. The lawmakers, mostly Republicans, tend to support the measure out of a general antipathy toward all taxes; Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, is worried mainly that retaining the estate tax puts Virginia at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis other states.

The governor's rationale may seem plausible, but we are not aware of any exodus of Virginia millionaires seeking a safe haven in one of the 30 states with no estate tax. Even with this relatively modest levy -- rates start at 10 percent on qualifying estates, according to Americans for Tax Reform, which tracks state-by-state data -- Virginia remains a generally low-tax state that attracts and retains wealthy residents, particularly in Northern Virginia.

It may soften the fiscal blow somewhat that the repeal of Virginia's estate tax is legislatively coupled with a measure to limit tax credits for land owners who place their property under conservation easements, thereby restricting development and preserving open space indefinitely. If enacted, that cap should save the state some money on a program that has cost the treasury nearly $400 million since it was adopted in 2000. The program has usefully preserved some sensitive land but also has provided a windfall to some wealthy landowners who had no intention of selling their property for development anyway. But scrapping the estate tax -- the single most progressive tax levied by government -- sends the wrong signal at the wrong time. It sacrifices fairness for the many on the altar of special favors for the few.

The bottom line here is that tax relief for the very wealthy will be paid for by people like me. I guess Gov. Kaine has also been bought and paid for by the oligarchs, just like the rest of the government.

Echoes

U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, June 24 — The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.

Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced. Military officials do not typically characterize reductions by total troop numbers, but rather by brigades. Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq, and other kinds of units would not be pulled out as quickly.

Who votes for cut and run? The top commander in the theater, that's who.

The Cost

A deadly week for U.S. forces in Iraq

Associated Press

A look at 16 deaths of American troops reported by the U.S. military in the past week in Iraq:

_ Tuesday: The U.S. military recovers the brutalized bodies of two missing soldiers not far from where they were kidnapped four days earlier in the volatile Sunni triangle south of Baghdad. Four Marines are killed in separate attacks in Anbar province west of the capital.

_ Wednesday: A soldier dies south of the capital, and another Marine is killed in Anbar province.

_ Thursday: A Marine is killed in Anbar province and a soldier dies elsewhere in a non-combat incident.

_ Friday: Three soldiers of the Multi-National Division in Baghdad are killed by roadside bombs in separate attacks. Another soldier from the same division dies in a non-combat incident.

_ Saturday: A bomb kills two U.S. soldiers on a foot patrol south of Baghdad.>/blockquote>

The charts and graphs are on the link.

Posted by Melanie at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Do You Love Big Brother Yet?

'Big Brother' Bush and connecting the data dots

The Total Information Awareness program was killed in 2003, but its spawn present bigger threats to privacy.
By Jonathan Turley,
JONATHAN TURLEY is a law professor at George Washington University.
June 24, 2006

The Disclosure this week of a secret databank operation tracking international financial transactions has caused renewed concerns about civil liberties in the United States. But this program is just the latest in a series of secret surveillance programs, databanks and domestic operations justified as part of the war on terror.

Disclosed individually over the course of the last year, they have become almost routine. Yet, when considered collectively, they present a far more troubling picture, and one that should be vaguely familiar.

Civil liberty-minded citizens may recall the president's plan to create the Total Information Awareness program, a massive databank with the ability to follow citizens in real time by their check-card purchases, bank transactions, medical bills and other electronic means. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was assigned this task, but after its work was made public, Congress put a stop to it in September 2003 as a danger to privacy and civil liberties.

However, when Congress disbanded the Total Information Awareness program, it did not prohibit further research on such databanks, or even the use of individual databanks.

And, according to a recent study by the National Journal, the Bush administration used that loophole to break the program into smaller parts, transferring some parts to the National Security Agency, classifying the work and renaming parts of it as the Research Development and Experimental Collaboration program.

It was long suspected that Total Information Awareness survived, and the disclosure this week of another massive databank operation has only reinforced that fear. The spawn of DARPA seem to be turning up in secret programs spread throughout agencies.

The administration learned that it could not create a network of databanks in one comprehensive system, but it could achieve the same results by creating smaller systems that could be easily daisy-chained at a later date into the same kind of massive computer bank that Congress thought it had shut down. It is DARPA, albeit with assembly required for the ultimate user.

Consider some of the recent disclosures:

• A domestic surveillance program operated without warrants involving thousands of calls that are isolated by computers at the NSA.

• A massive databank that contains information on hundreds of millions of telephone calls of Americans that is described as the world's largest database.

• Access to information in a massive databank that carries 12.7 million messages each day on international financial transactions.

• Use of massive private databanks with access to an array of information on citizens, including at least 199 data-mining projects.

• Quiet support for a national registered-traveler program in which citizens voluntarily submit private information and subject themselves to background checks for faster passage through airport security. (The information would then be housed in a computer system accessible to the government.)

These computer databanks and programs are technically separate but collectively could exceed the dimensions of the DARPA program killed in 2003. Most of these systems have certain common characteristics, including the absence of congressional approval. Indeed, the recently disclosed financial transaction program was created by the Bush administration as an emergency program, but it has continued for years.

Although the administration has refused to involve the courts in such programs, it actually contracted out the role of oversight — according to the New York Times, it hired a private auditing firm to make sure that the monitoring of financial transactions was not being misused. Such outsourcing of civil liberty protections is hardly what the framers foresaw when they created a system of checks and balances.

Most of these programs are designed to look for suspicious conduct from everyday transactions. By combining information, the government uses "link analysis" to find something suspicious among otherwise innocent-looking transactions. It also is a technique that necessarily exposes innocent citizens to constant forms of surveillance or monitoring — the very danger of DARPA's Total Information Awareness program that Congress wanted to avoid.

It now appears that the administration has achieved by stealth what it could not achieve by persuasion in Congress: the creation of a computer network that could follow millions of citizens to reveal their movements and transactions.

It is all part of this administration's insatiable desire for information. With regard to its own conduct and information, the administration has fought against the notion of transparency — from refusing to disclose meetings with lobbyists, to denying Congress information needed for oversight, to threatening journalists with prosecution for revealing secret programs such as the NSA domestic surveillance program.

Yet, when it comes to citizens, the administration demands total transparency to allow it to monitor everyday transactions and conduct.

It is perhaps the greatest danger that can face a free society: a government cloaked in secrecy with total information on its citizens.

Feeling any safer?

Existentialism

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006; A03

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a single beam.

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that their spouse is the only person they can confide in. But if people face trouble in that relationship, or if a spouse falls sick, that means these people have no one to turn to for help, Smith-Lovin said.

"We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times," she said. "We're not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important."

Relationships take time and I don't get the impression that anyone has any these days. What's your experience?

Front Line

Schwarzenegger Denies Request for More Troops

By Peter Nicholas, Times Staff Writer
9:42 PM PDT, June 23, 2006

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office said Friday he turned down a White House request to more than double the number of California National Guard troops that will be deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border, fearing the commitment could leave the state vulnerable if an earthquake or wildfire erupts.

Just three weeks ago, Schwarzenegger and the Bush administration worked out a written agreement in which the state would send 1,000 troops to the Mexican border, as part of a 6,000-strong deployment aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

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On Wednesday, the Bush administration asked the governor's office for 1,500 more soldiers. The additional troops were to be sent to two other border states -- Arizona and New Mexico, according to a California National Guard official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Schwarzenegger took less than a day to give his answer: No.

"The governor did not feel that it was appropriate to send additional Guard out of state," said Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's communications director.

A White House spokesman suggested Friday night that Schwarzenegger's position could disrupt the Bush administration timetable for fortifying the border with National Guard troops.

Under that deadline, the 6,000 National Guard soldiers from different states are to be in place by Aug. 1, assisting federal Border Patrol agents.

"We are reviewing how this decision by California's governor may affect the overall deployment schedule of National Guard troops to the border as part of 'Operation Jump Start,' " said Blain Rethmeier, a White House spokesman.

Asked why the Bush administration wanted more troops from California, Rethmeier referred the question to National Guard officials in the Washington, D.C. area, who were not immediately available Friday night for comment.

Soon after Bush announced a plan in May to use National Guard troops to shore up the border, Schwarzenegger made plain he was unhappy about the operation.

He said he would only agree to dispatch soldiers if certain conditions were met. He capped the number of troops to be sent and insisted on a two-year deadline for their return, predicting that any kind of open-ended commitment would stretch years and possibly decades.

It was a carefully crafted position that seemed mindful of the larger political context.

Schwarzenegger is running for re-election this year -- a time when his support among Latino voters is sagging. Recent polls show Schwarzenegger with the support of 25 percent of Hispanic voters -- seven points below what he received in the 2003 recall election.

If the governor aligns himself with the part of his Republican base that wants tougher measures to police the border, he risks offending Hispanic voters. Schwarzenegger doesn't want to be seen as "militarizing" the border.

It's not hard to read the political calculation into this, but let's look another level down. If Guard troops are our first level response to emergencies and disasters, we are on pretty shakey ground. Given that this big country has a host of natural disasters that are endemic, this is frightening. We have done no systemic thinking about what the appropriate response to natural disasters should be.

Roots of Failure

Graduation in the Eye of the Beholder

Erratic record-keeping that varies from state to state makes it impossible for Americans to find out how schools in one place stack up against schools elsewhere. That is true for even the most basic comparisons. The No Child Left Behind Act, passed by Congress four years ago, was supposed to change all that by forcing states to file clear and accurate school performance information with the federal government in exchange for education dollars. But despite a lot of rhetoric to the contrary, the national record-keeping effort is still a mess.

In some ways, things have gotten worse. States are manipulating school data to avoid unflattering comparisons and to elude the scrutiny of the Department of Education, which is charged by law with enforcing new federal requirements.

Right now, the government can't even tell how many American students are dropping out of high school — which is a crucial indicator of how well the schools are doing their jobs.

I dispute this. While the statistics are, in fact, a mess, the reasons why students drop out don't accrue solely to the schools. This is a complex, societal problem and the family, the community and the schools are all part of the failure. The schools can't solve this alone.

Stay the Course

Roadblocks, Curfew Imposed in Baghdad

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 23, 2006; 8:52 AM

BAGHDAD, June 23 -- Adding a new layer of confusion to the security crackdown gripping Baghdad, the Iraqi government today imposed a last-minute ban on pedestrian as well as vehicular traffic throughout the city.

The 2 p.m. curfew was announced late in the morning, after many people were already traveling to work or to mosques for weekly Friday prayers. Originally, it was supposed to last all night. But hours later, a bulletin on Iraqi television announced the curfew would end at 5 p.m. (9 a.m. in Washington).

Under a security crackdown launched last week, vehicle traffic already was banned in the capital from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays, the Muslim Sabbath, when midday mosque attendance -- and the potential for violence -- is especially high.

The government gave no explanation for the additional restrictive measures, but they followed violent clashes reported in several Baghdad neighborhoods this morning. Three insurgents were killed and six wounded in fighting near the Haifa Street neighborhood, according to Ahmed Al-Nuaimi, an interior ministry official.

Residents in the commercial neighborhood of Karrada criticized the lack of advance warning about the curfew, even as they said they understood the purpose of the curfew was to improve security.

"Aren't they supposed to give us a day's notice? How are people who went to work or to pray supposed to get home?" said Muahmmed Saleh, 28, a taxi driver. "This is a decision by someone who is not wise, not reasonable." Nearby, a barber who lives in the southern neighborhood of Dora shuttered his shop quickly and set off walking home.

Iraqis who work in the fortified Green Zone streamed out just after noon, in an attempt to make it home before the lockdown took effect.

"We heard about this but plenty of people didn't," said Haider Haleeji, 28, a security guard for a translation company. "There are people who will have to sleep in the office because they won't be able to get home."

If this is what "staying the course" looks like to the Iraqis, that "hearts and minds" thing is pretty much over.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

Scientists believe world is at its hottest for 2,000 years

RUSSELL JACKSON

THE world is hotter than it has been for four centuries - and probably the hottest for 2,000 years - the United States' most prestigious scientific organisation said yesterday.

In a report to the US Congress, the National Academy of Sciences reported that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia".

A panel of top climate scientists told politicians that the Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming".

Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1F during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M; University who chaired the academy's panel. The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House science committee, Republican Sherwood Boehlert, to address those who question whether global warming is a major threat.
....
Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the past 1,000 years.

Have a lovely hurricane season, everyone.

Justice

Court Expands Right to Sue Over Retaliation on the Job

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006; Page A16

The Supreme Court made it easier yesterday for workers in most parts of the country to sue employers for retaliating against them when they complain about sexual harassment or other discrimination. The court ruled that employees may collect damages, even in some cases where the punishment did not involve getting fired or losing wages.

The decision, which had the full support of eight justices, expands the legal rights of millions of workers who are covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the main federal law against job discrimination, and their employers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the result but differed from the majority reasoning.

By setting a single national rule to define what constitutes retaliation, the court brought a measure of clarity to an area of law that generates thousands of cases per year, but had produced conflicting interpretations of Title VII in the lower courts.

Now, many retaliation cases that had previously been dismissed because the facts were not in dispute are likely to go to trial. That will encourage lawyers for alleged victims to take on more cases, and, accordingly, raise companies' costs for lawyers and defensive management practices.

In the case decided yesterday, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White , No. 05-259, forklift operator Sheila White had won $43,500 in damages and medical expenses from a federal jury, which found that her boss responded to her complaints about co-workers' sexual harassment by transferring her to a more arduous job and suspending her for 37 days without pay.

In an era when the Congress and the Court have been curtailing rights, this is a welcome expansion.

1984

U.S. Mining Bank Transfer Data in Anti-Terror Effort
By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
9:40 PM PDT, June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government, without the knowledge of many banks and their customers, has engaged for years in a secret effort to track terrorist financing by accessing a vast database of confidential information on transfers of money between banks worldwide.

The program, run by the Treasury Department, is considered a potent weapon in the war on terrorism because of its ability to clandestinely monitor financial transactions and map terrorist webs.

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It is part of an arsenal of aggressive measures the government has adopted since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that yield new intelligence, but also circumvent traditional safeguards against abuse and raise concerns about intrusions on privacy.

Under this effort, Treasury routinely acquires information about bank transfers from the world's largest financial communication network, which is run by a consortium of financial institutions called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT.

The SWIFT network carries up to 12.7 million messages a day containing instructions on many of the international transfers of money between banks. The messages typically include the names and account numbers of bank customers -- from U.S. citizens to major corporations -- who are sending or receiving funds.

Through the program, Treasury has built an enormous -- and ever-growing -- repository of financial records drawn from what is essentially the central nervous system of international banking.

In a major departure from traditional methods of obtaining financial records, the Treasury Department uses a little-known power -- administrative subpoenas -- to collect data from the SWIFT network, which has operations in the U.S., including a main computer hub in Manassas, Va. The subpoenas are secret and not reviewed by judges or grand juries, as are most criminal subpoenas.

"It's hard to overstate the value of this information," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said Thursday in a statement he issued after the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets reported the existence of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.

SWIFT acknowledged Thursday in response to questions from The Times that it has provided data under subpoena since shortly after Sept. 11, a striking leap in cooperation from international bankers, who long resisted such law enforcement intrusions into the confidentiality of their communications.

But SWIFT said in a statement that it has worked with U.S. officials to restrict the use of the data to terrorism investigations.

The program is part of the Bush administration's dramatic expansion of intelligence-gathering capabilities, which includes warrantless eavesdropping on the international phone calls of some U.S. citizens. Critics complain that these efforts are not subject to independent governmental reviews designed to prevent abuse, and charge that they collide with privacy and consumer protection laws in the United States.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the SWIFT program raises similar issues. "It boils down to a question of oversight, both internal and external. And in the current circumstances, it is hard to have confidence in the efficacy of their oversight," he said. "Their policy is, 'Trust us,' and that may not be good enough anymore."

A former senior Treasury official expressed concern that the SWIFT program allows access to vast quantities of sensitive data that could be abused without safeguards. The official, who said he did not have independent knowledge of the program, questioned what becomes of the data, some of it presumably related to innocent banking customers.

"How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?" the former official said. "And what do you do with the chaff?"

More than a dozen current and former U.S. officials discussed the program on condition of anonymity, citing its sensitive nature.

The effort runs counter to the expectations of privacy and security that are sacrosanct in the worldwide banking community. SWIFT promotes its services largely by touting the network's security, and most of its customers are unaware that the U.S. government has such extensive access to their private financial information.

U.S. officials, some of whom expressed surprise the program had not previously been revealed by critics, acknowledged it would be controversial in the financial community. "It is certainly not going to sit well in the world marketplace," said a former counterterrorism official. "It could very likely undermine the integrity of SWIFT."

Bush administration officials asked the Times not to publish information about the program, contending that disclosure could damage its effectiveness and that sufficient safeguards are in place to protect the public.[ed. but we can't tell you what these are]

Dean Baquet, the editor of the Times, said: "We weighed the government's arguments carefully, but in the end we determined that it was in the public interest to publish information about the extraordinary reach of this program. It is part of the continuing national debate over the aggressive measures employed by the government."

Your ass is in Crawford to do with as W seems damn well fit, just like he does at Gitmo, so just get over it, okay? You keep thinking you are something other than serfs, we are here to disabuse you of that idea.

Antediluvian

I was awakened by near continuous thunder and lightening, rolling across the stage of heaven in biblical proportions. We've had a dry spring and the moisture is welcome, but I check the weekly forecast tonight to discover rain is on the menu for every day this week. Feast or famine, we'll go from drought to urban street flooding this week.

I'll carry a brolly to my appointments today and tomorrow and be glad of the way the air smells after a storm. But I might need to buy a pair of Wellies.

Comfort Foods

Four days into the first big heat wave of the season, I'm craving oven heavy foods. Bummer. I'll make gazpacho on the weekend after a trip to the Farmer's Market. But, damn, I'm craving yorkshire puddings at the moment. I have to seek out a restaurant with popovers in the morning and don't know of a single joint which makes them around here.

The Normandy Inn in Minneapolis had some of the best popovers and prime rib in Minnesota when I lived there. I wish I could find something like that here.

Speak Truth to Power

Over at Defense and the National Interest, Bill Lind slugs this post with the hed, Aaugh!. You should read the whole thing, but here are the nut graphs:

Perhaps it’s time to offer a short refresher course in Guerrilla War 101:

* Air power works against you, not for you. It kills lots of people who weren’t your enemy, recruiting their relatives, friends and fellow tribesmen to become your enemies. In this kind of war, bombers are as useful as 42 cm. siege mortars.

* Big, noisy, offensives, launched with lots of warning, achieve nothing. The enemy just goes to ground while you pass on through, and he’s still there when you leave. Big Pushes are the opposite of the “ink blot” strategy, which is the only thing that works, when anything can.

* Putting the Big Push together with lots of bombing in Afghanistan’s Pashtun country means we end up fighting most if not all of the Pashtun. In Afghan wars, the Pashtun always win in the end.

* Quisling governments fail because they cannot achieve legitimacy.

* You need closure, but your guerilla enemy doesn’t. He not only can fight until Doomsday, he intends to do just that—if not you, then someone else.

* The bigger the operations you have to undertake, the more surely your enemy is winning.

The June 19 Washington Times also reported that

The ambassador from Afghanistan traveled to America’s heartland to promote his war-torn country as the “heart of Asia” and a good place to do business…

In his region, “all roads lead to Afghanistan,” he said…

Asia doesn’t have any heart, and Afghanistan doesn’t have any roads, not even one we can follow to get out.

The Bush administration: losing wars on two fronts. Of course, you won't know that if you get all your news from CNN or Fox

Rummy Broke the Army

Army takes older recruits
Wed Jun 21, 2006 11:09pm ET13

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army, aiming to make its recruiting goals amid the Iraq war, raised its maximum enlistment age by another two years on Wednesday, while the Army Reserve predicted it will miss its recruiting target for a second straight year.

People can now volunteer to serve in the active-duty Army or the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard up to their 42nd birthday after the move aimed at increasing the number of people eligible to sign up, officials said.

It marked the second time this year the Army has boosted the maximum age for new volunteers, raising the ceiling from age 35 to 40 in January before now adding two more years.

More than three years into the war, the Army continues to provide the bulk of U.S. ground forces in Iraq. Army officials have acknowledged the war has made some recruits and their families wary about volunteering.

The Army Reserve, along with the regular Army and Army National Guard, missed its fiscal 2005 recruiting goal, and it currently lags its fiscal 2006 year-to-date goal by 4 percent.

Army Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, the new Army Reserve chief, said he does not expect the Reserve to reach its goal of 36,000 recruits for fiscal 2006, which ends September 30.

I'm still waiting for Jonah Goldberg and the rest of the NRO warbloggers to enlist.

Approach/Avoidance Conflict

I normally try to provide a few lines of context for the stories I post. I have none for this.

Falling Japan birth rate due to lack of sex

TOKYO (Reuters) - More sex.

That's what one expert says is needed to solve Japan's baby shortage.

"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 percent had not had sex for more than a month "for no particular reason" -- a condition known as "sexless."

"As much as subsidies and welfare programmes are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem."

Japan's fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

Japan came last among 41 nations in a poll last year by condom manufacturer Durex, with lovers there having sex just 45 times a year compared to a global average of 103 times a year.

Kitamura said that while many men in workaholic Japan are simply too "stressed out" from their jobs to have enough energy for sex, many other couples simply do not have sex regularly.

In the association's survey, 44 percent of the people who said they weren't having much sex felt that having a relationship with the opposite sex was "very tiresome" or "tiresome."

Kitamura's advice? Couples should talk to each other.

"Ultimately, it's these interactions with the opposite sex that bring out the inevitable animal instinct in us -- to reproduce," he said.

It's Hard Work

Iraq, unfiltered
The New York Times

Published: June 21, 2006

Bush administration supporters regularly accuse the news media of reporting only bad news from Iraq and filtering out more positive stories. But just hours before American television screens began to be filled with upbeat clips of President George W. Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad last week, the U.S. embassy there cabled back a far grimmer picture of the mounting difficulties faced by its Iraqi employees.

The cable, reprinted by The Washington Post, told of embassy employees running a daily gantlet of religious dress-code enforcers and harassment by militia-style security guards - even at checkpoints surrounding the fortified Green Zone, where the embassy is located. When the Iraqi employees return to their homes, they face sweltering neighborhoods without regular electric power, daylong gasoline lines, and families torn by religious and ethnic tensions and mounting fears for the future.

The cable relays a report from an Arab editor that "ethnic cleansing" is going on "in almost every Iraqi" province. The embassy itself suspects that Shiite governmental authorities in Baghdad may be deliberately evicting Kurdish households in response to Kurdish evictions of Arabs in other parts of the country. A Sunni woman employee reports that "most of her family believes that the United States - which is widely perceived as fully controlling the country and tolerating the malaise - is punishing populations as Saddam did."

The cable is only a raw snapshot of the daily experiences of embassy employees, not a systematic nationwide survey. Yet embassy employees are in many ways better off than most Iraqis. At least they have jobs and someone to turn to for help. We can only guess what daily life must be like in besieged Sunni cities like Ramadi or the militia-ruled Shiite towns of the Basra area, some now too dangerous for reporters to venture into regularly.

Bush's six-hour visit to Baghdad was mostly spent inside the Green Zone, where he made much of what he had been able to learn from looking Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "in the eyes." Now that he's home, Bush needs to take a hard, unfiltered look at the more disturbing picture relayed by America's embassy.


Bush administration supporters regularly accuse the news media of reporting only bad news from Iraq and filtering out more positive stories. But just hours before American television screens began to be filled with upbeat clips of President George W. Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad last week, the U.S. embassy there cabled back a far grimmer picture of the mounting difficulties faced by its Iraqi employees.

The cable, reprinted by The Washington Post, told of embassy employees running a daily gantlet of religious dress-code enforcers and harassment by militia-style security guards - even at checkpoints surrounding the fortified Green Zone, where the embassy is located. When the Iraqi employees return to their homes, they face sweltering neighborhoods without regular electric power, daylong gasoline lines, and families torn by religious and ethnic tensions and mounting fears for the future.

The cable relays a report from an Arab editor that "ethnic cleansing" is going on "in almost every Iraqi" province. The embassy itself suspects that Shiite governmental authorities in Baghdad may be deliberately evicting Kurdish households in response to Kurdish evictions of Arabs in other parts of the country. A Sunni woman employee reports that "most of her family believes that the United States - which is widely perceived as fully controlling the country and tolerating the malaise - is punishing populations as Saddam did."

The cable is only a raw snapshot of the daily experiences of embassy employees, not a systematic nationwide survey. Yet embassy employees are in many ways better off than most Iraqis. At least they have jobs and someone to turn to for help. We can only guess what daily life must be like in besieged Sunni cities like Ramadi or the militia-ruled Shiite towns of the Basra area, some now too dangerous for reporters to venture into regularly.

Bush's six-hour visit to Baghdad was mostly spent inside the Green Zone, where he made much of what he had been able to learn from looking Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "in the eyes." Now that he's home, Bush needs to take a hard, unfiltered look at the more disturbing picture relayed by America's embassy.

"Looking him in the eyes" is a whole lot simpler screen than actually learning something about the culture, studying the history and actually knowing something about what the fuck you are doing when you invade a country. But, then, I see no evidence that Bush was ever interested in hard work.

Look Up the Definition of the Word "Pathetic"

This is from Think Progress:

Defense Department Disavows Santorum’s WMD Claims

Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.

Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.”

Fox’s Alan Colmes broke the news to Santorum. Watch it:

Transcript:

COMBS: Congressman, Senator, it’s Alan Colmes. Senator, the Iraq Survey Group — let me go to the Duelfer Report — says that Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there. And Jim Angle reported this for Fox News quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they already been degraded. And the official went on to say these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest beating at this Republicans are doing tonight thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the defense department.

SANTORUM: I’d like to know who that is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says.

Spin, Senator. It isn't going to help you.

Making Nice

An unpopular export
June 21, 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH'S TRIP TO EUROPE is being welcomed like an infectious disease. Bush was unpopular in Europe from day one of his presidency, but a charm offensive launched last year — and a more conciliatory approach toward European concerns — was meant to change that, or at least nudge the approval rating up a notch. Instead, recent polls show he is more unpopular than ever across the Atlantic.

Things have gotten so bad, in fact, that Europeans now claim the United States is a greater threat to global stability than Iran, according to a Harris poll. Given that a key goal of Bush's visit is to persuade European leaders to support his efforts to stem Iran's nuclear ambitions, that's a bit of a problem. Though Bush wants to talk about Iran, energy and Europe's failure to live up to its commitments to help pay for Iraq's reconstruction, European leaders will feel obliged to take the president to task over Guantanamo Bay and alleged secret CIA prisons.

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European disdain for the United States is nothing new, of course, and the feeling has long seemed a bit contrived. The French grumble about the U.S., but they love McDonald's and Hollywood. Austria, host to the meeting between the U.S. and European leaders, is one of the most fiercely anti-Bush nations in Europe. It prides itself on its neutrality, which is another way of saying it prefers to let the U.S. pay the financial and human costs of policing the world while its intelligentsia get to rail about American excesses in the war on terror. Nonetheless, Bush's disdain for multilateral institutions, environmental protection and international law has earned him a special place in the pantheon of unpopular U.S. political exports.

It is hard for Bush to alter his image at this point in his presidency, but he must do as much as he can to court European public opinion, lest governments on the Continent find it untenable to be associated with any Bush initiative. Bush's recent interview on German television, in which he said he would like to end internments at Guantanamo Bay, was a good start. He could build on it by acknowledging legitimate European concerns over climate change and repudiating the "rendition" of terror suspects.

Maybe the best PR move would be to make a surprise trip to a World Cup game in Germany. With the U.S. seen abroad as an insular nation that doesn't play well with others, a presidential visit to the hugely popular event — indeed, a humble recognition by the former baseball team owner that the World Cup is the biggest sports event on Earth — would carry enormous symbolic value. For security reasons, it would have to be unannounced and last-minute. But if Bush can drop into Baghdad unannounced, as he did last week, surely he can make a visit to Nuremberg.

Not bloody likely: he'd be boo'd enthusiastically and that wouldn't look good on TV.

Predictions

Some 85 Iraqi Workers Abducted by Gunmen

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Gunmen abducted about 85 workers Wednesday as they left work at an industrial plant north of Baghdad, police and a witness said. The workers were thought to be mostly Shiite and the plant is located in a predominantly Sunni Arab area.

The witness said that about 85 workers were taken near the plant's parking lot, while police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said they filled up a bus and a minivan. They were taken at the al-Nasr General Complex in Taji, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Baghdad. Taji is predominantly Sunni Arab area that has seen much insurgent activity.

Under Saddam Hussein, the complex was a military plant, but it now makes metal doors, windows and pipes.

Kamel Mohammed, an engineer working at the plant, said by telephone he saw two of the plant's buses and a minivan intercepted by gunmen in three sedans.

The two buses and the single minivan ferry workers from the plant to the Shiite areas of Shula and Hurrayah in Baghdad. They also forced other workers leaving the plant in their own cars to get out and into the buses.

The incident took place about 50 meters (yards) away from the plant's parking lot.

It was the most recent case involving mass abductions.

On June 6, gunmen in police uniforms raided a business district in central Baghdad, seizing 50 people, including travelers, merchants and vendors selling tea and sandwiches. Both Shiites and Sunnis work in the area.

So, when is the civil war going to start?

Fact Checking

Bush Gives Frist the Nod -- for Reelection

Bush, speaking to Republicans at the gala President's Dinner on Monday night, encouraged the crowd to support GOP candidates this fall. "If you want your taxes low, keep Denny Hastert and Bill Frist as leaders of the House and the Senate."

Bush later said: "I want to thank you for helping make sure that Denny Hastert and Bill Frist remain in their positions in the Senate and the House. . . ."

Of course, Frist is leaving the Senate in six months.

And the day can't come too soon.

Flu Police

Agriculture Department Faulted on Bird Flu Efforts
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The Agriculture Department lacks a comprehensive plan for detecting avian flu in poultry and wild birds, its inspector general's office said yesterday.

In an audit, the office found that the department relied too heavily on voluntary testing by the poultry industry and reports from state agriculture departments.

A spokeswoman for the department, Hallie Pickhardt, said that the agency "agreed with everything in the report, and we're either doing it or going to be doing it."

The audit began before Congress passed President Bush's plan for dealing with a pandemic flu outbreak, which gave the department an additional $91 million to fight avian flu, Ms. Pickhardt said.

But she added that the agency had no plans to make the voluntary testing now conducted by the poultry industry mandatory.

"We're confident in the testing procedure they're implementing," Ms. Pickhardt said. "They've been working very closely with us. This is their livelihood, too, and they have no reason not to report the information."

Instead, the department will supplement the voluntary testing with its own checks, she said.

The audit also recommended more testing in live-bird markets (where mild avian flu infections have been found in the past) and at illegal auctions of fighting gamecocks. It also called for a plan to protect workers with vaccines and flu drugs if infected flocks needed to be culled.

In January, the National Chicken Council, an industry trade group, said that its members, which produce more than 90 percent of the country's chickens, would test every flock for influenza two weeks before slaughter.

Oh, they are going to police their own. We all know how well that works out.

Killing it Softly

Perhaps the debate over Democratic themes for '06 should end with something like, "At least we can do the job." It's not very inspiring, but when we get headlines like this one, it just might work.

Drug Prices Up Sharply This Year

By MILT FREUDENHEIM
Published: June 21, 2006

Prices of the most widely used prescription drugs rose sharply in this year's first quarter, just as the new Medicare drug coverage program was going into effect, according to separate studies issued yesterday by two large consumer advocacy groups.

AARP, which represents older Americans, said prices charged by drug makers for brand-name pharmaceuticals jumped 3.9 percent, four times the general inflation rate during the first three months of this year and the largest quarterly price increase in six years.

Price increases for some of the most popular brand-name drugs were much steeper; the sleeping pill Ambien was up 13.3 percent, and the best-selling cholesterol drug, Lipitor, was up 4.7 to 6.5 percent, depending on dosage.

Over all, AARP said, higher prices mean that the cost of providing brand-name drugs to the typical older American, who takes four prescription medicines daily, rose by nearly $240 on average over the 12-month period that ended on March 31.

"When the manufacturers' wholesale prices increase, it gets passed through the system, regardless of who the final purchaser is," said John Rother, the policy director of AARP. Although the drug industry's main trade association challenged the accuracy of the AARP survey, a separate study, by Families USA, a patient advocacy group, found similar inflation rates among brand-name drug prices. While the higher prices have a general impact on the drug-taking public, consumer advocates said the higher prices have special implications for Medicare, which Congress barred from negotiating prices with drug makers when lawmakers devised the new so-called Part D drug program.

Commercial insurers, which are offering the drug insurance plans under Medicare's auspices, do have negotiating power. And they say that by switching to generic drugs, consumers can avoid most of the price increases.

The surveys measured manufacturers' wholesale prices, which would not necessarily reflect any discounts insurers might be able to negotiate.

But even so, the price increases in the Medicare drug plans since they began were identical in many cases with the jump in wholesale prices, Families USA said.

Some health care economists said the price increases, if they continued, could have a devastating effect on the new Medicare drug program.

"Higher drug prices may lead to higher premiums next year, which may discourage enrollees from joining or staying in the program, and fewer enrollees could drive premiums even higher," said Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a University of Minnesota economist who specializes in drug industry issues.

Mr. Schondelmeyer said one clear indication of the inflation's impact could be seen among the six million low-income elderly and disabled people who previously received drug coverage through Medicaid but were automatically switched to the Part D program when it began in January.

That shift was a windfall for drug makers, he said. "Medicaid would have paid 25 to 30 percent less under the old system, including rebates from the manufacturers, than the new Medicare Part D program is paying."

Again, the old grey lady sticks the money quote in the middle so I decided to emphasize it. The only response the drug companies had was that their costs only went up 2% this year so the study must be wrong. I'm glad they didn't expect anyone to read what the study was looking at, because that spin doesn't work (and btw. where are all of those wonderful products that their gross profits are paying for... if the justification for high drug prices is the cost of research, then why haven't they discovered a cure for cancer yet?).

Now isn't that interesting though... the drug companies are making 25-30% more with this system. I guess we can't say the new program isn't doing what it was designed to do... and if we can scare the grannies with gays marrying, Mexicans in the Attic (tm), and 9-11 then they won't notice vote in their own self interest. Another snip snip snip to the safety net... I hope there is something left before they get out of office.

On a Hot Night, Cool Food

This is a Molly Goldberg recipe and I have been cooking her stuff for years. This is reliable.

Cold Beet Borscht

* 8 beets, washed and peeled
* 1 onion, chopped fine
* 2 1/2 quarts water
* 1 tablespoon salt
* 1/3 cup lemon juice
* 3 tablespoons sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1 cup sour cream

Combine the beets, onion, water, and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat for 1 hour. Add the lemon juice and sugar and cook for 30 minutes. Correct seasoning; the soup may require a little more sugar or lemon juice, depending upon the sweetness of the beets. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Gradually add 3 cups of the soup, beating constantly to prevent curdling. Return this mixture to the balance of the soup, beating steadily. Remove all of the beets from the soup. Grate 5 of the beets and return them to the soup. The remaining beets may be used in a cold salad. Chill the soup, and serve very cold with a spoonful of sour cream in each plate.

NOTE: If a very thick soup is desired, place the remaining beets in an electric blender with 2 cups of the soup, and run the machine until the mixture is smooth. Add the mixture to the soup. I prefer it clear and cold with the sour cream providing the only thickening. The Republic of Soup means that everyone gets to make it their own way.

Serve this with some hommous and tahini and pita, and everyone will wonder why the hot weather stopped bothering them.

Good friends tolerate a little sweat when the grub is good.

The Family Table

The weather outside is going to be awful for the rest of the week, so cold foods that taste great, require no heat and keep you pumped with lots of good nutrition are at a premium. The link is for a gazpacho you can make in five minutes and serve with a loaf of really great bakery bread with some olive oil steeped with herbs. Dinner in 10 minutes. If you want to make it fancy, heat the bread with brie on the side and dress it with a chiffonade of fresh tarragon. On a hot night, this is haute cuisine.

When your kid complains, give them a pita bread pizza covered with mozarella and the quiet from that corner of the table will be notable. Use bottled pizza sauce and coarsely sliced cheese for peace on earth. Zap the pita in the microwave for 7 seconds and it will be like new. Add some sliced pepperoni if you want real peace. This works.

Fun with Potatoes

I can justify my cable tv subscription on the recipes I've learned from the TV Cooks (tm). One of my favorites, for decades, has been New York's Lidia Bastianich. Her Ligurian cooking comes from a part of the world where Italy meets Eastern Europe and the cuisine partakes of the best of each. Lidia is a New York restaurateur who has had three or four PBS cooking shows from which I've learned buckets, including how to make gnocchi from scratch. I don't know that I ever would have attempted this with a cookbook alone. This recipe is a North Italian classic and it is an easy introduction to gnocchi.

Gnocchi with Tomato, Basil and Olives

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup pitted Gaeta olives or Cerignola or other large green olives
1 1/2 cups tomato sauce (you've got this in your freezer, right?)
6 quarts salted water
1 recipe Gnocchi (see below)
1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
5 fresh basil leaves, washed, dried, and finely minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large, deep skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat until foaming. Add the olives and cook, stirring, until sizzling, about 2 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Bring the salted water to a boil in a large pot over high heat. Cook and drain the gnocchi according to the directions.

Bring the tomato sauce back to a simmer over low heat. Add the gnocchi and stir gently with a wooden spoon until coated. Stir in the grated cheese and basil. Check the seasoning, transfer the gnocchi to a platter, and serve immediately.

Makes 3 main-course or 6 first-course servings.

Gnocchi

large baking (Idaho) potatoes (about 1 3/4 pounds), scrubbed
1 large egg
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, or as needed

Place the potatoes in a large pot with enough cold water to cover. Bring the water to a boil and cook, partially covered, until the potatoes are easily pierced with a skewer but the skins are not split, about 35 minutes. (Alternatively, the potatoes can be baked in a preheated 400°F oven until tender, about 40 minutes.)

Drain the potatoes and let them stand just until cool enough to handle. (The hotter the potatoes are when they are peeled and riced, the lighter the gnocchi will be.) Working quickly and protecting the hand that holds the potatoes with a folded kitchen towel or oven mitt, scrape the skin from the potato with a paring knife. Press the peeled potatoes through a potato ricer. Alternatively, the potatoes can be passed through a food mill fitted with the fine disc, but a ricer makes fluffier potatoes and therefore lighter gnocchi. Spread the riced potatoes into a thin, even layer on the work surface, without pressing them or compacting them. Let them cool completely.

In a small bowl, beat the egg, salt, pepper, and nutmeg together. Gather the cold potatoes into a mound and form a well in the center. Pour the egg mixture into the well. Knead the potato and egg mixtures together with both hands, gradually adding the grated cheese and enough of the flour, about 1 1/2 cups, to form a smooth but slightly sticky dough. It should take no longer than 3 minutes to work the flour into the potato mixture; remember, the longer the dough is kneaded, the more flour it will require and the heavier it will become. As you knead the dough, it will stick to your hands and to the work surface: Repeatedly rub this rough dough from your hands and scrape it with a knife or dough scraper from the work surface back into the dough as you knead.

Wash and dry your hands. Dust the dough, your hands, and the work surface lightly with some of the remaining flour. Cut the dough into six equal pieces and set off to one side of the work surface. Place one piece of dough in front of you and pat it into a rough oblong. Using both hands, in a smooth back-and-forth motion and exerting light downward pressure, roll the dough into a rope 1/2 inch thick, flouring the dough if necessary as you roll to keep it from sticking. (When you first begin making gnocchi, until your hands get the feel of the dough, you may find it easier to cut each piece of dough in half to roll it.)

Slice the ropes into 1/2-inch-thick rounds. Sprinkle the rounds lightly with flour and roll each piece quickly between your palms into a rough ball, flouring the dough and your hands as needed to prevent sticking. Hold the tines of a fork at a 45-degree angle to the table with the concave part facing up. Dip the tip of your thumb in flour. Take one ball of dough and with the tip of your thumb, press the dough lightly against the tines of the fork as you roll it downward toward the tips of the tines. As the dough wraps around the tip of your thumb, it will form into a dumpling with a deep indentation on one side and a ridged surface on the other. Set on a baking sheet lined with a floured kitchen towel and continue forming gnocchi from the remaining dough balls. Repeat the whole process with the remaining pieces of dough. At this point the gnocchi must be cooked immediately or frozen.

To cook gnocchi:
Bring six quarts of salted water to a vigorous boil in a large pot over high heat. Drop about half the gnocchi into the boiling water a few at a time, stirring gently and continuously with a wooden spoon. Cook the gnocchi, stirring gently, until tender, about 1 minute after they rise to the surface. (You can cook the gnocchi all at once in two separate pots of boiling water. If you make a double batch of gnocchi, I strongly recommend cooking them in batches in two pots of water.)

Remove the gnocchi from the water with a slotted spoon of skimmer, draining them well, and transfer to a wide saucepan with some of the sauce to be used. Cook the remaining gnocchi, if necessary. When all the gnocchi are cooked, proceed according to the directions for saucing and serving in each recipe.

When saucing gnocchi, remember this tip: If the sauce is too dense or the gnocchi seem too dry, use some of the gnocchi cooking water to thin the sauce and moisten the gnocchi, as you would with pasta dishes.

To precook gnocchi:
Cook the gnocchi as described above, remove them with a skimmer, and spread them out in a baking pan lightly coated with melted butter. When ready to serve, return the gnocchi to a large pot of boiling salted water until heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain thoroughly and sauce and serve according to the particular recipe.

To freeze gnocchi:
It is best to freeze gnocchi uncooked as soon as they are shaped. Arrange the gnocchi in a single layer on a baking pan and place the pan in a level position in the freezer. Freeze until solid, about 3 hours. Gather the frozen gnocchi into resealable freezer bags. Frozen gnocchi can be stored in the freezer for 4 to 6 weeks.

To cook frozen gnocchi:
Frozen gnocchi must be cooked directly from the freezer in plenty of boiling water, or they will stick together. Bring 6 quarts salted water to a boil in each of two large pots. Shake any excess flour from the frozen gnocchi and split them between the two pots, stirring gently as you add them to the boiling water. It is important that the water return to a boil as soon as possible; cover the pots if necessary. Drain the gnocchi as described above and sauce and serve according to the specific recipe.

Makes 3 generous or 4 slightly smaller main-course or 6 generous first-course servings.

Serve these with a recent Barolo. This makes a superb first course before grilled steaks or chicken.

At The End Of A Long, Hard Day

There are some recipes I rely on to raise flagging spirits, comfort foods that always work. This is what I come home to at night on those days when you get an email at 4:30 about the project your boss forgot about that means you'll still be at your desk studying spreadsheets after the rest of the office has gone home because he needs a report for a 9 AM meeting tomorrow. Or the drycleaner ruined your favorite shirt, the cat's sick and the carburetor on the car is making that funny noise again. When you've had that kind of a day, this is definitely for you. Stop and pick up a salad on the way home and dinner is served. This is one recipe to always have in the freezer. This will serve 4 as a main course, 8 as a first course. But if I've had a really shitty day, this makes 2 servings for me.

Cheddar and Beer Soup

4 ounces butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup minced onions
1/4 cup minced celery
Salt
Cayenne
1 (12-ounce) bottle light beer
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups whole milk
1 pound sharp Cheddar, grated
Dash hot red pepper sauce
1 tablespoon chiffonade of parsley

In a large saucepan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly for 4 minutes to make a blond roux. Add the onions and celery. Season with salt and pepper. Continue to cook for 2 minutes or until the vegetables are wilted. Stir in the beer and stock. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Stir in the milk and cheese. Continue to cook for 10 minutes at a bare simmer. Season with salt and hot sauce. Reduce the heat and keep warm.

To serve, ladle the soup into each bowl. Garnish with the parsley and scatter with some garlic and herb croutons, store-bought are fine.

The only food I find more comforting than this is on the same theme of melted cheese and bread, welsh rabbit.

School Daze

I've been listening to Lou Dobbs bloviate about high school graduation rates and public education in general. The funny thing that never comes up is teacher salary rates and teacher retention. I just looked at a survey of salaries in my area. With a Master's degree, you can start in the local schools at about $40,000/year, not bad by national standards. But this is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Instead of getting a Master's in education, you can go to law school and pick up a JD and start at $150,000 as a first year associate with the K Street firms. If I were finishing undergraduate school and deciding what to do next, which one do you think I'd choose, hmmm? That Master's in education looks even smaller when you've got $30-40K of school loans to pay off on a teacher's salary.

The average home price in Fairfax County, Virginia, just hit a half mil. Think you'd qualify for an 80% mortgage on a teacher's salary?

Half of all teachers quit in the first five years. How are we supposed to crank out a quality product with an inexperienced teacher cadre? How come you never talk about that, Lou Dobbs?

Snowflakey

Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld's Attention Was Elsewhere

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A15

The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

Rumsfeld agreed but complained. "I find it strange," he said to the investigators, on the grounds that as a government official "the laws apply to me" anyway.

It was a bumpy start to an odd interview, as Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with "the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed.

Then-Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz, who resigned last year to take a job with a defense contractor, told senators at a June 2005 hearing that the transcript of Rumsfeld's interview was deleted from his 256-page report on the tanker lease scandal because Rumsfeld had not said anything relevant.

But a copy of the transcript, obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The issue is relevant because a series of reports, including others by the inspector general and by the Government Accountability Office, indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department's system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional.

"DOD is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective fashion," the comptroller general of the United States, David M. Walker, said in a little-noticed April 5 critique. The Pentagon, he said, has "a long-standing track record of over-promising and un-delivering with virtual impunity."

Walker based his blistering assessment on a detailed study of 52 different weapons costing a total of $850 billion, including five new multibillion-dollar weapons systems with cost overruns amounting to nearly 30 percent. "The all too-frequent result is that large and expensive programs are continually rebaselined, cut back or even scrapped after years of failing to achieve promised capability," he said. "A lot of it is because in the past, where there have been unacceptable outcomes, there hasn't been any accountability."

Some of the blame, Walker suggested, should be laid at Rumsfeld's office, which "does not seem to be pushing" for the dramatic overhaul of the Pentagon's system needs.

The tanker procurement scandal is the poster child for these problems. The Air Force in 2004 canceled its plan to lease the tankers from the Boeing Co., amid allegations of improper collusion with the company. Former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun and one of the interlocutors at Boeing were sent to prison; subsequent investigations showed that Druyun manipulated other large Air Force contracts to benefit military contractors.

After a Senate investigation unearthed evidence that the tanker purchase was viewed inside the Pentagon as a politically tinged bailout for Boeing, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and his top acquisitions deputy resigned from government. Boeing's chief executive was replaced, and last month the firm agreed to pay $615 million to settle all liability for the tanker scandal and an unrelated impropriety. It was the largest penalty paid by a defense contractor.

But the scandal never tarnished Rumsfeld, and in the previously undisclosed interview, conducted with principal Deputy General Counsel Daniel J. Dell'Orto at his side, the defense secretary makes clear that he does wars, not defense procurement. As a result, he could not recollect details of what subordinates told him about the tanker lease or what he said to them.

Rumsfeld is a former business executive and White House official who published a set of "Rumsfeld's Rules" that include the injunction: "Be precise -- a lack of precision is dangerous." But when investigators asked him whether he had approved the Boeing tanker lease in May 2003 -- despite widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules along the way -- Rumsfeld said: "I don't remember approving it. But I certainly don't remember not approving it, if you will."

Asked whether his subordinates, including former undersecretary of defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, had accurately invoked Rumsfeld's approval when they signed documents authorizing the Boeing tanker lease to go forward, Rumsfeld said, "I may very well have said yes. I just don't remember. . . . I am not going to sit here and quibble over it." He did say he remembered approving a gun for a tank in 1976, during his first time as defense secretary.

When pressed about the tanker lease -- the largest such lease in U.S. history -- Rumsfeld offered two explanations for his distance from it. The first was related to his focus on what he called "the global war on terror," including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what he termed the "continuing difficulties" with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"My time basically in the department was focused on those things and certainly not on acquisitions or -- or what have you," Rumsfeld said. "Basically I spend an overwhelming portion of my time with the combatant commanders and functioning as the link between the president . . . and the combatant commanders conducting the wars."

Asked if he was aware of concerns about the proposed Air Force lease from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon's own analysts, Rumsfeld responded, "I don't know what I knew then, compared to what I know now. . . . I am not able to go back and say . . . what did I know at a certain moment back in that period."

The only way I can make any sense out of this is that Rummy is certifiable. I don't know anything else which would cause a manager to be cavalier about that kind of money. The bottom line is that he is as incompetent as the rest of this cabinet.

Reporting Fiction

Report: U.S. activates missile defense system
North Korea seems headed 'towards a launch'

Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 2:50 p.m. EDT (18:50 GMT)

SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that North Korea had put its long-range Taepodong-2 missile on a launching pad, but it was unclear if the missile was fully fueled.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang said it would not be bound by a 2002 treaty prohibiting launches of ballistic missiles.

"They seem to be moving forward towards a launch, but the intelligence is not conclusive at this point," White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters traveling with President Bush to Austria aboard Air Force One.

The U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the Pentagon has activated its missile defense system, which has been in the developmental stage for years.

"It's good to be ready," the official said.

There's just one problem: it doesn't work. This has been widely reported in the news for a couple of years, but it appears that CNN didn't get the memo.

Journalistic Idiocy

North Korea's Non-Threat

by William Arkin

Can North Korea save the day and change the subject for the Bush administration?

Amidst an Iraq withdrawal debate and an Iran nuclear crisis, amidst a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and a grave threat to the Kabul government, amidst growing recognition of al-Qaeda gains in Pakistan, The We-Still-Can't-Resist-Putting-Any-Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction-Story -on-the-Front Page Times reported intelligence leaks yesterday that North Korea was imminently going to test an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labels it "provocative;" U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton is consulting with the Security Council on how to respond.

Much ado about nothing I say.
....
With the sanctioned leak and the suggestion of military confrontation, the Bush administration shifted to crisis mode: President Bush made anxious calls to dozens of foreign leaders. Secretary Rice warned that a launch would be a "provocative act" and a "serious matter" and one that could torpedo international efforts to control North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Missile defense advocates are popping Champagne corks.
....
North Korea, which can barely feed its own people and is not, shall we say, known for its technological prowess, may have succeeded in sinking all of its national treasure into developing a third rate missile. But so what?

Arkin calls this exactly right even as the cable news channels are being played like violins and a wide-eyed Kyra Phillips gets all excited about those big, bad Korean missiles. Shameful. These supposed "newcasters" are unbelievably gullible, poorly informed, badly educated and rather stupid. You'd think somebody who spent their careers in the "news" might actually learn something about it, but it appears they are all too damned lazy.

Out of the Shadows

'Dark Side' sheds light on Cheney

By Sam Allis, Globe Staff | June 20, 2006

"Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system.

"The Dark Side" is riveting television, heavily reported, that exemplifies what "Frontline" does best: go inside a major story and give us context. The title is a ripe double-entendre that applies both to Cheney and the turf on which the war against terrorists is fought. "We have to work the dark side, if you will," we hear Cheney say. "Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world."

To many, Cheney is the dark side of the Bush administration, and this program will only cement that judgment. ``Frontline" chronicles the brutal campaign by two consummate political in-fighters -- Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- to decimate the CIA, politically emasculate Secretary of State Colin Powell, and construct a near-limitless concept of executive power during war. While many of these strands are familiar, they have not been assembled as effectively before on television to present a coherent picture of what happened after 9/11.

Cheney didn't trust the CIA after it missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian revolution, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, so he created through Rumsfeld's Pentagon his own intelligence network to suit his agenda. Powell and former CIA director George Tenet were no match for this pair, who have known each other for three decades. By the time that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis ``Scooter" Libby, was indicted last fall, Powell and Tenet were long gone and the CIA was in shambles.
....
``Frontline" walks us through the bad intelligence that Cheney spouted in public, even after the CIA had challenged it, like an Al Qaeda -Saddam connection and Saddam's supposed purchase of enriched uranium from Niger. We hear that the president's first reaction to the WMD evidence was, ``Is that all we got?"

We hear that Powell was not told the truth about the provenance of facts on which he based his disastrous speech at the United Nations, and that Cheney and Libby made 10 trips to the CIA -- unheard of by the White House -- to push analysts on data.

Paul Pillar, a respected former CIA officer, was a principal author of a signal report on WMDs in Iraq that proved so wrong. ``The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public," he says. ``Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so, and I regret having had a role in it."

Check your local listings. The national broadcast is tonight at 9EDT on PBS, tho' only one of the three local public stations is carrying it here.

Ouch!

Oil Prices Rise As Bush Presses Iran

By GEORGE JAHN
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

VIENNA, Austria - Crude-oil futures rose Tuesday over Iran concerns after President Bush warned that nations worldwide will not back down from their demand that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment.

Concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions have clouded the outlook for the nation's oil exports _ and global oil prices _ despite expectations that U.S. stock levels will remain healthy.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose 72 cents by midday in Europe, trading at $69.70 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Monday, the contract fell 90 cents to settle at $68.98 after OPEC said high prices were affecting demand, and the prospect of rising interest rates fueled market concerns about economic growth.

July Brent crude futures on London's ICE Futures exchange rose 80 cents to $68.91 a barrel.

Traders had taken some relief from conciliatory remarks out of Iran on Saturday that the Western package of incentives meant to persuade the Islamic republic to give up its uranium enrichment program was "a step forward."

But the issue remains tense, with Bush saying if Iran rejects the incentives, it will face action before the U.N. Security Council and progressively stronger political and economic sanctions.

"The calming comments from Tehran have taken out part of the risk premium, but the threat of a potential supply disruption from Iran is still present, although not imminent," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz.

"In the short term, if we see progress toward a diplomatic resolution in Iran, prices will drop to the low- to mid-$60s," he said.

Gassing up the Beetle yesterday cost me $40. I remember when I bought my first $20 tank of gas last year, which sent me into shock. Where is all that jawboning on gas prices W promised us, hmm?

The Death of Outrage

Shredding a constitutional protection that isn't even used
Exclusionary rules were the exception, not the rule. Now they're history.

By David Feige, DAVID FEIGE is a former public defender and the author of "Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice."
June 20, 2006

A fixture of the U.S. legal landscape for nearly a century (the principle was first annunciated in the 1914 decision Weeks vs. United States), the exclusionary rule has been astonishingly effective at curbing precisely the kinds of police corner-cutting and abuses the 4th and 5th amendments were designed to target. Ironically, unlike tougher laws or longer sentences — highly popular sanctions that are generally ineffective at deterring crime — the threat of evidence-suppression actually has the deterrent effect it is designed to have.

But for all its efficaciousness and precedential heft, the exclusionary rule also has been the constant target of attacks from conservatives and is almost single-handedly responsible for popularizing the fiction that criminal cases are regularly dismissed on "technicalities." The reality is quite different.

As "tough on crime" rhetoric has come to a boil over the last two decades, and an ever-expanding number of column inches and talk-show rants have been directed at judges who impose light sentences or question police behavior, it has become less likely that even courageous judges would be willing to endure the public censure by actually applying the exclusionary rule.

For all its traditional centrality and high-minded value, the exclusionary rule these days is honored mainly in the breach. In an informal poll of several public defenders, most could count on one hand the number of times they've won suppression motions that have resulted in dismissal.

The fact that the exclusionary rule has been virtually dead for years may come as a surprise to those who don't see the daily grind of cases being processed through the system. But most insiders will concede that with sky-high arrest rates and a tidal wave of mostly petty prosecutions, there is rarely enough time for public defenders to even challenge an unlawful search, much less conduct a hearing, cross-examine the police officers and actually procure a ruling to suppress evidence. And that is too bad.

Police officers, genuine in their desire to see the guilty convicted, are generally careful not to break the rules when they believe that a judge might be watching. But remove the threat of judicial oversight and no one should be surprised when irremediable complaints of patently illegal searches and corrupt police behavior begin to skyrocket.

It may well be that putting to rest the barely breathing carcass of the exclusionary rule will finally require us to confront the consequences of allowing American law enforcement to police the public without any meaningful deterrent. As it continues to remove the constraints on police power, the Supreme Court will eventually force us to directly consider the depth of our commitment to the individual liberties that are enshrined in our Constitution.

Bush and his SCOTUS are systematically dismantling the Bill of Rights and the precedential scheme of laws which have protected our privacy for a couple of hundred years and the sheeple don't give a fuck. I really can't say much more without invoking Godwin's Law.

Hyping the Obvious

CNN is hyping Anderson Cooper's interview program tonight in which so-called actor Angelina Jolie reveals the secrets of birth. Mr. Cooper is apparently unaware that women have been giving birth for millions of years, and they have been doing it without millions of dollars in the bank.

Mr. Cooper should enquire of his mother, who probably didn't find him under a cabbage leaf.

Jail Those Who Hate Freedom

Closing Time at Guantanamo

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A17

We'd better not turn away just yet from the suicides of those three detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The rest of the world clearly isn't ready to move on. And with good reason.

In many newspapers around the globe "Guantanamo" is much more than the name of a beautiful harbor on Cuba's southern coast. It has become shorthand for a whole litany of American excesses in George W. Bush's "global war on terror," the most visible example of how the United States blithely ignores the values of due process and rule of law that it so aggressively preaches, if necessary at the point of a gun.

U.S. officials have portrayed the three men -- Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen, and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani of Saudi Arabia -- as irredeemable jihadists whose deaths were an act of war. Ahmed was allegedly a "mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative," Utaybi a "militant" recruiter for jihad, Zahrani a "front-line" warrior for the Taliban. One State Department official called their deaths by hanging "a good P.R. move," and while those words were quickly disavowed by higher-ups, the general reaction from the U.S. government has been something pretty close to "good riddance."

For all we know, these men might have been the evil miscreants our government says they were. Since our government wouldn't describe whatever evidence it claimed to have against them, it's impossible to tell. I think any reasonable observer would conclude it's also quite possible that these men were clinically depressed after being held for years in steel-mesh cells without legal recourse, without even formal charges, and that they simply sought the only kind of release they could possibly achieve. At least one of them, Ahmed, had been on a hunger strike for most of this year, which would have meant that guards regularly force-fed him through tubes stuck down his nose. What would that do to your state of mind?
....
The administration doesn't want to call the detainees prisoners of war, because that would accord them some rights under international law, and it doesn't want to treat them as criminal suspects since that would give them rights under U.S. law. So they remain "enemy combatants" for whom the rules seem to be whatever we decide at any given time.

The president's lament that he can't find countries that will take some of the Guantanamo detainees is, frankly, lame. It may well be true that some of these people are hard to get rid of. But any way you look at it, arbitrary, indefinite detention without formal legal charges is an abandonment of the very ideals this country is supposedly fighting to spread throughout the world. We're long past the point where the U.S. government's clear obligation is to give the detainees a proper day in court, with effective legal representation and access to the evidence against them.

And we're long past the point where the government needs to show the world what's happening at Guantanamo. Instead of hurrying to expel reporters, the Pentagon should invite one and all to witness the orderly, legal process of emptying and shutting down a prison that is doing this nation much more harm than good.

The rest of the world listen's to Bush's silly rhetoric and knows that words aren't worth much compared to his actions. Every time Bush says "they hate our freedom" (what the fuck does that mean, anyway?) all they have to do is point to Gitmo and the secret prisons in Europe. One of the things that "freedom" means is due process and the contempt that this administration shows for such Constitutional rights demonstrates that they are no friend of the US's traditional values.

Hard Truth

Sean-Paul Kelley pulls no punches:

I was on the radio tonight, as I am every Monday night, and one of the issues we argued about was North Korea.

First, I get tired of people saying, "they're crazy!" Using a foreign policy foe's alleged insanity is the lazy way out. It means you don't have to think actions and consequences all the way through. "Kim Jong-il is crazy, therefore we can't negotiate with insanity!" Conservatives will shout with steely resolve in their bleary, computer monitor dulled eyes. "Ahmed-i-Nejad is a new Hitler, so of course, we can't negotiate with evil!" They retort, knowing little of Iran's political structure. This talk is lazy intellectually and lazy ethically.

Why ethically? Because this way the burden of all negative consequences has been laid on your enemy, and you are without fault, when the opposite might be the case.

Second, I am so sick and tired of hearing this tripe that 'negotiations equal appeasement.' What has not 'appeasing' North Korea gotten us the last five years? More nukes for the Koreans and a possible three stage missile that can reach the US, that's what.

What did appeasement get us from 1995-2001? A halt in North Korean nuclear weapons production and a moratorium on missile launches.

What has not 'appeasing' Iran gotten us in the last 3 years? A civil war in Iraq and and Iran that is that much closer (but still far away) to being able to build a nuclear weapon.

A persistent unwillingness to negotiate is simply political cowardice: the failure to make hard choices that leaders are elected to make. Of course, this is quality is in ample supply in D.C. these days.

Adult human life is made up of competing interests. We negotiate to manage those interests and allow ourselves to interact with a minimum of conflict. Anything else simply reeks of the sandbox. Only children can demand absolutes which are fictions granted to them by adults.

The New World Order

Sick for a couple of days here and not getting much better. No insurance, so finding a doc isn't really in the picture. I'm going to try to get some sleep and hope tomorrow is better.

Block That Metaphor

WaPo's Al Kamen once again catches the real federal juice:

Next Up for Interior: J. Peterman Catalogues

Top political and career officials at the Department of the Interior have been working flat out these days, trying to come up with an agenda for new Secretary Dirk Kempthorne . Dozens of them retreated June 8 and 9 to a federal training center in West Virginia to brainstorm. Kempthorne may have a limited time to do something meaningful, a source said, so the idea was to come up with things he might consider.

Interior's White House liaison, Christopher Marston , followed up with an e-mail memo last week to "Fellow Retreat Participants."

"Doug, Russ and I have been charged with adding factoids and poetry to the attached list prepared by 'the Julie Team,' [ Julie Jacobson , a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Land Management] which the team presented to us Friday morning.

"We would appreciate it if you could help us with our task," Marston wrote. "We're particularly eager for information in the Hammacher-Schlemmer mail-order catalog model (for those of you who don't get . . . this great catalog, almost all descriptions start with 'the best, the biggest, the newest, the greatest).'

"For example," something poetic such as "the Department of Interior leads the most robust methane hydrates research program in the world."

Not bad. Kinda catchy. Keats would be proud.

Repeating the Past

U.S. Airstrikes Rise In Afghanistan as Fighting Intensifies
In Response to More Aggressive Taliban, Attacks Are Double Those in Iraq War

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 18, 2006; A01

As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East.

The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs.

U.S. officials say the activity is a response to an increasingly aggressive Taliban, whose leaders realize that long-term trends are against them as the power of the Afghan central government grows.

"I think the Taliban realize they have a window to act," Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the 22,000 U.S. troops in the country, said in a recent interview. "The enemy is working against a window that he knows is closing."

But some experts believe that the Taliban, the fundamentalist Muslim rulers ousted by the U.S. invasion in 2001, have sensed an opening in the south as the central government in Kabul has failed to gain much influence there and as the United States prepares to transfer command to NATO.

"I think it is an attempt by the Taliban to preempt the changeover from coalition to NATO command," said Barnett R. Rubin, a political scientist at New York University. "They are trying to show that there is a war in the south and that the British, Dutch, Canadian or any other forces will have to take casualties and fight, not just patrol and build schools. They hope that this will have an impact on internal politics in these countries."

The arrival of late spring, historically the beginning of Afghanistan's fighting season, usually brings an increase in combat. Since early May, a resurgent Taliban militia has launched numerous attacks in southern Afghanistan in which more than 300 insurgents, soldiers and civilians have died. It has attacked in larger numbers and more frequently, burning 200 schools in the south and driving out foreign aid groups. Suicide bombings, a tactic relatively new to Afghanistan, have also increased.

Commanders say the combat is more intense than in the past three springs, both on the ground and from the air. The offensive has coincided with an effort to wipe out opium poppy crops in the south, resulting in an alliance between wealthy drug traders and anti-government Taliban forces. Anti-government fighters are moving in where the government has left a vacuum, especially where there is money to be made from drug trafficking and extortion.

"The Taliban are opportunists," said John Stuart Blackton, a retired U.S. diplomat who consults on Afghan issues with the National Intelligence Council, which produces government intelligence forecasts. "They have no deep ideology and no deep theory that informs what they are doing. . . . In other words, they are better understood as being like a crime family in New Jersey."

The airstrikes between early March and late May concentrated on two areas -- the provinces of the south-central mountains that are the Taliban's major redoubt and eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and its allies operate. But U.S. warplanes have also hit targets near the capital of Kabul, near the main U.S. base at Bagram, and near other major cities such as Jalalabad and Ghazni.

The attacks have been executed by aircraft ranging from large B-52 bombers to small Predator drones, and have employed attacks including 2,000-pound bombs and strafing.

The U.S. military and its allies have started "going into areas that haven't been gone into with a lot of forces," most notably, Freakley said, in Konar province, north of Jalalabad.

"In general, I think our forces have been aggressive, and the Taliban's been more aggressive this spring than in the past," Air Force Maj. Gen. Allen Peck, deputy commander of the Central Command's air component, said in a separate interview. Peck helps oversee a two-war force that can fly from bases in the Persian Gulf region to hit targets in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Tom Ricks is a veteran war correspondant, so I wouldn't expect him to miss the obvious. You can't win a ground insurgency with air strikes. Bushco has the gift for losing everywhere. But I've seen little in his life pattern which indicates that he can do anything else, he's been a loser all his life.

Beleaguered Blogger

I've been fighting, and losing, a battle with a migraine headache all day. Sorry for the dearth of postings, but my brain stops working when I get these things and I just have to go in a dark room and whimper for a day or so. I'm whimpering now and the light from my laptop screen is enough to make my skull pulse with pain. In general, the day after leaves me feeling like I'm recovering from a week of flu. Weak, febrile and pretty shaky, these are two day events for me. I only get them a couple of times a year, but when I do, I'm flattened. I'll sleep poorly tonight and be in lousy shape in the morning, but that's life.

The Revolving Door

Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.

At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.

More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials.

"People have a right to make a living," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. "But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous."

Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.

"Almost" incestuous? Huh? At what point does any doubt creep into this equation?

The Learning Curve

Baghdad blasts mock US claims of Iraqi progress
Following death of Zarqawi and visit by Bush, leaders fail to bring end to cycle of violence
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 18 June 2006

A series of explosions ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 23 people and dealing a shattering blow to the new Iraqi government's attempts to impose a security blanket on the capital.

The seven separate blasts at locations across the city are likely similarly to frustrate the efforts of the White House to demonstrate a degree of progress in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month, and the surprise visit to Baghdad last Monday by President George Bush.

In the meantime, a new Pentagon investigation revealed details of abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq early in 2004 by members of US special forces. The report said the soldiers were continuing to use interrogation techniques that had been ruled unacceptable several months earlier by the Pentagon because they were too harsh, including feeding one inmate on bread and water only for 17 days.

After President Bush stressed to Iraqi leaders the importance of their taking greater responsibility for security, the new government responded on Wednesday with a huge deployment of forces in Baghdad designed to bring an end to the cycle of violence.

The security campaign included a ban on the use of private cars during the hours of prayer on Friday. However, even that measure was thwarted when a suspected shoe bomber detonated a powerful explosion inside one of Baghdad's most important Shia mosques, killing 13 people.

Police described scenes of carnage in the capital after yesterday's bombings, which began with a mortar attack on one of Baghdad's oldest markets in the prominently Shia suburb of Kazimiyah. At least four people died. Shortly afterwards another market was struck by a bomb left in a plastic bag, killing two civilians. And a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol left seven dead and 10 wounded.

The renewed violence comes as President Bush was seeking to take advantage of the death of Zarqawi to convince a sceptical American public that the situation in Iraq was starting to improve. However, a new CNN poll showed 54 per cent of Americans still believe the war was a mistake, and the political pressure on Mr Bush is growing in the run-up to crucial mid-term elections for the US Congress.

The White House public relations campaign on Iraq is also being clouded by the investigation into claims that a group of US Marines went on a rampage in the town of Haditha in November 2005 and indiscriminately killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including 10 women and children. Against this background, the new Pentagon report on the conduct of Special Operations forces in Iraqi prisons, released in heavily censored form to the American Civil Liberties Union, threatens to make President Bush's job still more difficult.

Some of the contents of the investigation, carried out by Brigadier General Richard Formica, were passed to members of Congress a year ago. No charges have been brought against the soldiers involved, as Gen Formica concluded that the problem lay with "inadequate police guidance" rather than "personal failure" on their parts.

Aside from the man on a ration of bread and water, other detainees were locked in cells so small they could neither lie down nor stand for several days, while interrogators played loud music to stop them sleeping.

The report also said that interrogators sometimes stripped detainees of their clothes, doused them with water and allowed them to stand shivering in air-conditioned rooms. It said one detainee subject to such treatment by Navy Seal interrogators in Mosul had died during questioning.

A series of explosions ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 23 people and dealing a shattering blow to the new Iraqi government's attempts to impose a security blanket on the capital.

The seven separate blasts at locations across the city are likely similarly to frustrate the efforts of the White House to demonstrate a degree of progress in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month, and the surprise visit to Baghdad last Monday by President George Bush.

In the meantime, a new Pentagon investigation revealed details of abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq early in 2004 by members of US special forces. The report said the soldiers were continuing to use interrogation techniques that had been ruled unacceptable several months earlier by the Pentagon because they were too harsh, including feeding one inmate on bread and water only for 17 days.

After President Bush stressed to Iraqi leaders the importance of their taking greater responsibility for security, the new government responded on Wednesday with a huge deployment of forces in Baghdad designed to bring an end to the cycle of violence.

The security campaign included a ban on the use of private cars during the hours of prayer on Friday. However, even that measure was thwarted when a suspected shoe bomber detonated a powerful explosion inside one of Baghdad's most important Shia mosques, killing 13 people.

Police described scenes of carnage in the capital after yesterday's bombings, which began with a mortar attack on one of Baghdad's oldest markets in the prominently Shia suburb of Kazimiyah. At least four people died. Shortly afterwards another market was struck by a bomb left in a plastic bag, killing two civilians. And a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol left seven dead and 10 wounded.

If this is Bush's idea of "progress" then I wonder what the "long, hard slog" looks like.

For those who haven't been paying attention, we are losing Iraq and have been since the day this unplanned and badly executed campaign was launched. You can't "do" war on the cheap and off the cuff and that's the Bush "plan," a man of small mind who thinks you can just make this stuff up as you go along. Iraq is the object lesson in how that school of thought doesn't work. Too bad that the object lesson requires so much death, but that doesn't seem to bother the Commander in Chief.

Get A Load Of This

Custodians of chaos

In this extract from his forthcoming memoirs, Kurt Vonnegut is horrified by the hypocrisy in contemporary US politics

By Kurt Vonnegut

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.

So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

When will we ever learn?

Cover Ears, Sing La-la-la

Red Cross bird flu appeal draws meagre response, despite need to prepare

Fri Jun 16, 1:43 PM ET

GENEVA (AFP) - The meagre response by donors to an international Red Cross appeal to help prepare for a feared flu pandemic sparked by avian influenza is preventing the organisation from stepping up efforts, it said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it has won almost no backing in the two months since it called for 17.4 million Swiss francs (13.4 million dollars, 11 million euros).

The federation said it had gathered just 3.2 percent of the funds required, as the media spotlight has shifted in many countries.

"Avian flu and a possible human pandemic are a real threat. Though the media headlines have disappeared the risk has not," says Dr Pierre Duplessis, the federation's bird flu chief.

"We need to put preventive measures in place now as this will help communities worldwide to be better prepared should a crisis occur. An investment of 17 million Swiss francs is a good investment to save lives."

A key plank of the federation's plan is to train 50,000 people to respond to the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

The funds are also needed to cover the costs of informing communities about the risks of bird flu and pre-positioning relief supplies to deal with new outbreaks, the Red Cross said.

Since utterly no one is paying any attention to this threat, having no resources to bring it to their attention is helpful. By the time the world wakes up to avian influenza, it'll be too bloody late.

Those Who Fail To Learn The Lessons of History

An Iraq Debate
Congress generates heat, but not many alternatives.

Saturday, June 17, 2006; A18

The truth is that U.S. generals in Iraq and the new democratic Iraqi government share with politicians here a desire for U.S. troops gradually to diminish their presence. They share, too, an understanding of what needs to be done for that to happen: continued training of Iraqi soldiers and police; disarming of sectarian militias; better provision of electricity and other daily necessities, and shaping the political structure to guarantee every region a fair share of oil revenue. Given the dire circumstances in Iraq today, if progress isn't made on those fronts, there may be little that U.S. troops will be able to contribute.

If progress does take place, though, it will be fragile. The succeeding six months will be crucial, too, and so will the six months after that. U.S. troops will still be needed, if in lower numbers and altered roles. That's why it remains prudent to focus on a goal and not a timetable.

The WaPo is ahistorical. The ending of this saga will look like a helicopter from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. We've already been down this road, fellas.

Hearts and Minds

Pentagon Study Describes Abuse by Units in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, June 16 — United States Special Operations troops employed a set of harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq during a four-month period in early 2004, long after approval for their use was rescinded, according to a Pentagon inquiry released Friday.

The investigation is the last of 12 major inquiries to be made public that focus on allegations of detainee abuse by American personnel in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the first to focus on Special Operations troops, who operate with more latitude than other military units. It detailed harsh treatment that continued at isolated bases even after the abuses first surfaced at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Special Operations interrogators gave some detainees only bread or crackers and water if they did not cooperate, according to the investigation, by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica of the Army. One prisoner was fed only bread and water for 17 days. Other detainees were locked for as many as seven days in cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down, while interrogators played loud music that disrupted their sleep.

The inquiry also determined that some detainees were stripped naked, drenched with water and then interrogated in air-conditioned rooms or in cold weather. General Formica said it appeared that members of the Navy Seals had used that technique in the case of one detainee who died after questioning in Mosul in 2004, but he reported that he had no specific allegations that the use of the technique was related to that death.

Despite the findings, General Formica recommended that none of the service members be disciplined, saying what they did was wrong but not deliberate abuse. He faulted "inadequate policy guidance" rather than "personal failure" for the mistreatment, and cited the dangerous environment in which Special Operations forces carried out their missions. He said that, from his observations, none of the detainees seemed to be the worse for wear because of the treatment. "Seventeen days with only bread and water is too long," the general concluded. But he added that the military command's surgeon general had advised him "it would take longer than 17 days to develop a protein or vitamin deficiency from a diet of bread and water."

General Formica's review focused on the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula, which included soldiers from the Army's Fifth and 10th Special Forces Groups. It did not cover the actions in Iraq of more highly classified Special Operations units, including Delta Force and some Navy Seal groups, or other specialized units including Task Force 6-26, a subject of extensive allegations of misconduct that were reported by The New York Times in March. General Formica recommended eight changes, including more training for Special Operations interrogators, minimum standards for detention conditions and new policies regulating the use of indigenous forces who worked with those in Special Operations. Pentagon officials said Friday that all eight had been carried out.

"It may be wrong, but it's nobody's fault" seems to be the motto of the Bush administration.

I wonder if the DoD thinks it is good policy to be writing Al Jazeera's Public Service Announcments?

I Am the Eggplant

Ratatouille,

Ratatouille is a southern French dish made from eggplant, zucchini, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and garlic. There are many different variations, and today you can find ratatouille pies, soups, and quiches. I like this version adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1), Knopf, 1971, because it preserves the integrity of each type of vegetable and is moist without being soupy. It has the additional advantage of using a small amount of oil because of the initial roasting of the eggplant and zucchini.
Ingredients

* 1/2 pound zucchini, scrubbed, and sliced into 1/8-inch slices
* 1/2 pound eggplant, scrubbed, and sliced into thin (3/8-inch) slices, about 4-inches by 1-inch
* 3 T. olive oil
* 1/2 pound thinly sliced yellow onions
* 1 sliced green bell pepper
* 2 cloves mashed garlic
* 1 pound ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and juiced
* 3 T. parsley
* salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray two cookie sheets with olive oil or another vegetable oil spray. Put the zucchini and eggplant slices on the cookie sheets. Brush very lightly with olive oil, and bake until slightly brown on each side. In a skillet, cook onions and peppers slowly in 2 T. olive oil for about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic, and season to taste. Slice tomato pulp into 3/8-inch strips. Place tomato slices over onions and peppers. Season with salt and pepper. Cover the skillet and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Uncover, baste with the tomato juices, raise heat, and boil for several minutes, until most of the juice has evaporated. Put 1/3 of tomato mixture in the bottom of a casserole. Sprinkle with 1 T. parsley. Arrange 1/2 of the eggplant and zucchini on top, then half of the remaining tomatoes and parsley. Put the rest of the eggplant and zucchini, and finish with the remaining tomatoes and parsley. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Correct seasoning. Raise heat for 15 minutes, basting if dry. Serve cold, warm, or hot with plenty of crusty baguettes and herbed olive oil. This is a famous first course or entree, if you serve it with plentiful olives, feta or asiago cheese with fresh herbs over pancetta on hot, fresh bread.

As a purely veg course, serve it with crusty bread and herbed olive oil for dipping. Finger food at its finest!

Bonus Check Day

I finally found an excellent local source for beef that won't break the bank (but this is still a paycheck day dinner.) The upshot is that I'm going to treat myself to filet mignon on the grill tomorrow night (Farmer's Market day for the fresh tomatoes and artisanal cheese!) for the first time in a year. Harris Teeter is an east coast chain that sells organic beef for just a bit more than regular grocery prices (as opposed to the highway robbery Whole Foods get for poorly trimmed meat) and it tastes like the stuff I remember growing up down the street from the stockyards in South St. Paul. Six ounce filet, here I come!

A really good piece of meat deserves a really fine sauce, and I'll be eating my favorite bernaise with my steak tomorrow night. Here is a recipe you can put together in about 20 minutes. You didn't think it was possible to make a filet better? This will do it.

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon minced shallots
2 tablespoons dried tarragon
Salt and pepper
3 egg yolks
2 sticks unsalted butter, melted in saucepan
2 tablespoons minced fresh tarragon

PREPARATION:
In a small saucepan combine vinegar, wine, shallots, and dried tarragon and
simmer over moderate heat until reduced to 2 tablespoons of liquid. Cool
and strain through a fine sieve.

In the top of double boiler or a heat-proof bowl whisk the egg yolks until
they become thick and sticky. Whisk in the reduced vinegar mixture and pepper.
Place the pan or bowl over a saucepan of simmering, not boiling, water. Whisk
until mixture is warm, about 2 minutes. (If mixture appears to become lumpy,
dip pan immediately in a bowl of ice water to cool, whisk until smooth and
then continue recipe.) The yolk mixture has thickened enough when you can
see the bottom of the pan between strokes and mixture forms a light cream
on the wires of the whip.

While whisking the yolk mixture gradually pour in the melted butter, a tablespoon
or so at a time whisking thoroughly to incorporate before adding more butter.
As the mixture begins to thicken and become creamy, the butter can be added
more rapidly. Do not add the milk solids at the bottom of the melted butter.

Season the sauce to taste with chopped tarragon, salt and pepper. To keep
the sauce warm, set the pan or bowl in lukewarm water or in a thermos.

Yield: 1 to 1 1/2 cups sauce

Note from the cook: as with hollandaise, once you start beating the eggs over the heat you cannot stop. Period. Let the answering machine catch the phone. To keep the sauce from breaking or sticking, you are a slave to the pan. You will, however, be amply rewarded. This makes enough for two hearty eaters or four normal people.

Normal people may also want to cut the amount of tarragon in half. I'm enamored of the stuff and like a lot in my bernaise. If you are using fresh, 2 Tbsp is about the right amount.

Real Devastation

I'm going to excerpt just the lead in to this Rolling Stone article, but please, please, read the whole thing. This is the real story of NOLA, post Katrina, and it is an object lesson of what the rest of us can expect following a disaster, natural or man made, in our communities. It is horrifying. This is the Abu Ghraib of the US, another Bushco production.

How to Steal a Coastline
The Gulf is still in ruins -- but Bush has opened the door for the casinos and carpetbaggers, and now there's a cutthroat race to the high ground

New Orleans, ninth ward, near the infamous levee, the last Tuesday in March. I'm in the passenger seat of a spiffy black Volkswagen, staring out my window in shock. Only one word comes to mind: Hiroshima. Houses all sideways and blown to bits, cars flipped over, ground covered with glass and wire and dismembered dolls' heads. No water, no electricity, no civilization.

Katrina might as well have hit yesterday. Almost nobody has come back. Goateed white college volunteers living in tents seem to outnumber actual residents 10-to-1. On any given street, anything moving is probably either a rat or a CUNY sophomore. The death smell still hangs everywhere.

The VW stops, and I'm staring at a nearby car, crushed under a house. Next to it is a half-crumpled shack with a message written in spray paint: "Possible child body inside."

"Holy shit," I whisper.

"You ain't seen nothing yet, dude," says the man beside me.

I last saw the Rev. Willie Walker when we went out in rescue boats together just after the storm. The affable black pastor's cell phone and BlackBerry are constantly buzzing; he's always making new contacts, trying to get something organized. The good reverend is a hustler for God. I like Willie a lot. He's sincere without being a bore. And another thing: When he's my tour guide, I always seem to end up interviewing a lot of pretty girls.

Back in September, Willie had told me while standing in his ruined church, the fatefully named Noah's Ark Baptist, that he feared what lay ahead.

"They're going to take it all," he had said. "They're going to bring in the developers, and this neighborhood is going to be gone."

Willie foresaw that some combination of post-disaster zoning, forced property condemnations, infrastructural inattention and carpetbagging real-estate vultures would turn Katrina into one giant gentrification project. "They're hoping that you take the money and move," he had told people on the street.

Now Willie is leading me on a tour of the ruined city. Willie is usually a chatty guy, but now, here in the Ninth Ward, neither of us is talking. New Orleans is not a conversation. It's an image. You have to see it in person to comprehend it. It's a Grand Canyon of continuing misery and failure.

"Jesus," I say, staring at the wreckage. "What the hell have they been doing all this time?"

Willie laughs morbidly. "Nothing, dude," he says. "Absolutely nothing."
....
Then there's the flip side. the Bush administration opened the door for big corporate developers by offering huge tax incentives. And they're jumping on it. According to residents, within a month of the storm, much of East Biloxi was papered with little pink fliers that read: IF YOU OWN LAND IN EAST BILOXI AND WOULD LIKE TO SELL YOUR LAND TO A CASINO/DEVELOPER, CALL (228) 239-XXXX

Around the time that FEMA was issuing its ABFEs for East Biloxi, Congress was passing the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, colloquially known as the GoZone Act. When President Bush signed the law on December 21st, he made it sound like a relief program for the little guy. "It's a step forward to fulfill this country's commitment to help rebuild," he said. "It's going to help small businesses, is what it's going to do."

Well, not exactly. GoZone does an important thing. It provides a first-year bonus depreciation of fifty percent for commercial real-estate investors within the designated areas, which include East Biloxi and most of the lower parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and western Alabama. What this means, essentially, is that investors who bought into large projects after August 28th, 2005, will pay a fraction of the usual taxes in the first year of the investment.

The GoZone law is just another hand job for the rich, of the sort that has become a staple of the Bush administration's post-Katrina strategy. If the strategy for keeping public money from reaching the poor is to force people to first stand upside down and sing "Come On Eileen" backward and blindfolded, the strategy for giving money to the rich is a little more subtle. First, you give them tax breaks for indulging in the same activity you told the poor was dangerous, then you issue aid packages that only find their way down to needy recipients long after the value has been torn from the package's spine by a string of rapacious subcontractors, each taking their cut, who of course never had to enter into a competitive bid for their trouble. Carrying charges, my boy, carrying charges!

"The labor starts off at twenty-seven, thirty bucks [a yard], and by the time it gets down to me, it's five or seven dollars," says Richard Rispoli, a gregarious Georgian contractor who came to East Biloxi to work after the storm. In Rispoli's case, the chain started at a local construction company and passed down through three subcontractors on the way to Rispoli, who ended up not being paid at all by the last subcontractor, who simply split with the money. (The common thief who steals the last exposed bits of the public-aid package is a recurring character in the Katrina story.) Living now in a trailer in East Biloxi while he awaits payment for his work ("If the trailer's a-rockin', don't come a knockin'!" says his girlfriend, Diane), Rispoli is now faced with the prospect of selling his equipment in order to raise money for the trip back to Georgia.

From the administration down to the subcontractors, this is nothing more than organized crime.

As Taibi says in the article, until you've seen the devestation which is the Ninth Ward, you can't really understand the depth of the damage and the suffering. My boss was down in NOLA before Christmas and he just choked up when I asked him, "How was it?" He's been in the disaster recovery business a long time, so that was an unexpected response.

These are black people who aren't Bush Pioneers so don't expect much to change.

Flunking Disaster

States, cities not ready for catastrophes, government says

Friday, June 16, 2006; Posted: 7:38 a.m. EDT (11:38 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks and 10 months after Hurricane Katrina, most American cities and states remain unprepared for catastrophes, a government analysis concludes.

The shortcomings in emergency planning, including antiquated and uncoordinated response guidelines, are cause "for significant national concern," the Homeland Security Department found.

Although emergency plans appear to be stronger in 18 states along the nation's "Hurricane Belt," the analysis cited preparedness gaps in 131 state and city emergency response plans. Planning for evacuations also remains "an area of profound concern," the review found.

"We rely to a troubling extent on plans that are created in isolation, are insufficiently detailed and are not subject to adequate review," concluded the department's 160-page review of findings and annexes that was delivered to Congress on Thursday evening. A copy of the review was obtained by The Associated Press.

"Time and again, these factors extract a severe penalty in the midst of a crisis: precious time is consumed in the race to correct the misperceptions of federal, state and local responders about roles, responsibilities and actions," the review found. "The result is uneven performance and repeated and costly operational miscues."

President Bush ordered the review of state and city emergency plans in a speech in New Orleans on September 15, weeks after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city. It analyzes response and evacuation procedures for all 50 states, the nation's 75 largest cities and six U.S. territories.

Documents made available to the AP did not cite individual cities or states, and a Homeland Security official suggested that portion of the report would be released later.

It criticized the states and cities in several key areas, including:

# Failing to address emergency needs for sick, elderly or poor people unable to help themselves.

# Being too slow to issue disaster warnings and other alerts to the public.

# Failing to designate a clear chain of command during major disasters.

The DHS National Plan (.pdf) was released today. My state's plan was one of the ones that flunked.

Let's not even think about what an evacuation for the DC metro area would look like.

Beyond Civil Unions

Dr. Alterman prints an interesting letter to his blog:

Eric, The argument against allowing the definition of marriage to be expanded to include same sex couples runs along the lines of "it's not natural", "marriage has always been between a man and a woman", etc. These to me are religious grounds and definitions. The legal status, rights, responsibilities and privileges of marriage and family should be a separate thing and available to many different people who want to define their families. I would vote for civil unions for everyone and leave marriage to the churches. That would require religious people to marry in a church and then go to the courthouse to legalize it in a civil union, but that doesn't seem like much different than already happens. The added complexity here is why stop at same sex couples? If we are simply talking about the rights and responsibilities of family, what if two elderly unmarried sisters wanted to form a civil union to define and legalize their bond in the same definition? Not in a perverse sexual way, but just to codify and obtain the legal aspects of marriage. In my opinion, when the state uses an entirely religious definition confer specific benefits upon a certain group of people just because they happen to be lucky enough to meet that category, it discriminates against all others. The discrimination is not just against gays, it is also against many single people of all sorts who live together in various family organizations without these benefits.

I can fully get behind that.

Zarqawi Bounce

Majority wants Iraq pullout date set, poll finds

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A narrow majority of Americans -- 53 percent -- favors setting a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, with 47 percent saying the deadline should be in a year or less, according to a CNN poll released Friday.

Among those who favor setting a deadline of a year or less, opinions also are divergent. The survey found 13 percent of Americans want withdrawal within a few weeks; 15 percent want it in six months; and 19 percent want it in a year.

The poll also showed Americans' approval of the way President Bush is handling the Iraq war is up 5 points from May's poll to 39 percent, while his disapproval rating fell 8 points, to 54 percent.

Approval of the way he is handling terrorism is up 2 points from May's poll to 49 percent, while disapproval is down 3 points to 42 percent.

Of the major national polls, only CNN is showing a bump outside of the MOE. It won't last; Preznit Nitwit will only screw up again. And, it's hurricane season.

Union Maid

What Was Missing At YearlyKos

By Christopher Hayes

The panel on “Labor and Power” drew a meager crowd of 40 people, tops. Next door, the “blogosphere expert” panel was packed. UNITE HERE’s political director Chris Chafe seemed dismayed. “If we don’t have this room filled to capacity at the next YearlyKos convention then we’re all going to lose,” he said.

In a post on DailyKos after the convention, labor expert Nathan Newman wrote, “The labor movement actually took YearlyKos very seriously, contributing money to help subsidize costs and sending top leaders to attend the sessions. … I know that the labor leaders were a bit frustrated that their interest in the blogosphere was not reciprocated.”

Generalizations about the netroots are a fool’s game, though one the pundits can’t help themselves from playing. And indeed, within the comments of Newman’s post, many Kossacks spoke up to offer their support for unions and the labor movement. But it was clear at the conference that the issues attracting the most attention—the Valerie Plame affair, bias in the mainstream media, electoral reform—tend toward the process-oriented and obscure. It’s a blessing there are thorough and talented bloggers to track these stories, but they aren’t the issues that most people wake up thinking about, or, for that matter, vote on.

YearlyKos made it clear that the netroots is a vanguard—a smart, savvy, compassionate and courageous vanguard, but a vanguard nonetheless. There’s nothing wrong with vanguards, but they do not a majority make.

This is one of my biggest gripes about the left blogosphere. With the exception of Nathan, Max Sawicky and myself, the big lefty bloggers are utterly oblivious to labor issues. The fact that the labor movement has been so marginalized in the last 30 years has implications for every working person in this country: every benefit you take for granted in the workplace, from vacation time to health insurance, was normalized by the labor movement first. As in the story below, now we have unions giving benefits back, so there is very little that stands between the non-unionized worker and the loss of benefits.

With Your Boots On

Delta to Request End to Pilot Pensions

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 16, 2006

Filed at 2:26 p.m. ET

ATLANTA (AP) -- Delta Air Lines Inc. will file a request with a bankruptcy court judge Monday to terminate its pilots' pension plan, the company's chief executive said in a letter to a lawmaker Friday.

CEO Gerald Grinstein said in the letter to U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson that the nation's third-largest carrier will ask that the pilots' pension be terminated effective Sept. 2.

The move was not unexpected, and Grinstein said the Atlanta-based airline is still seeking pension reform in Congress in hopes of preserving the pension plan for other employees.

''The unfortunate reality is that even if a pension reform bill containing airline relief passes, unless the pilot plan is terminated, Delta cannot successfully restructure and emerge from bankruptcy,'' Grinstein wrote.

He added that the relief Delta is seeking is necessary ''if we are to preserve tens of thousands of jobs and provide ongoing service to tens of millions of customers in local communities around the world.''

Once the filing is made with the court, the request to terminate the pilots' pension would have to be approved by a judge. There likely will be objections, though the pilots, for their part, have agreed not to object.

Pilots are pretty well paid so I'm not boo-hooing about this other than what it portends for all of us. Like most lower middle class people, I've never made enough money to be building up a big investment portfolio for retirement. Barring something unexpected, I don't expect to ever be able to afford to retire. The concept of an employer funded pension is pretty much going the way of the passenger pigeon. Retirement is going to be something that is only for the wealthy in another 20 years.

Snow Job

White House Hotheads

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, June 16, 2006; 1:14 PM

Snow on the Rocks

We'll start with Tony Snow, who unleashed what may well have been the most inappropriate answer of his rocky one-month tenure at yesterday's briefing .

Here's a question Snow certainly knew was coming:

"Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?"

And here is Snow's initial response:

"It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something."

Yup, they sure do want something. Like maybe some sensitivity to the loss of life from the man speaking on behalf of the White House, for starters.

Snow also apologized yesterday for an earlier stumble: confusing one black congresswoman (Sheila Jackson-Lee, who attended a White House meeting last week) -- with another (Cynthia McKinney, who wasn't even there).

But more importantly, Snow yesterday amply illustrated his emerging -- and highly irritating -- modus operandi: When he doesn't want to answer a question, which is often the case, he either pleads ignorance or gets argumentative -- or both. And an increasingly common tactic: Demanding that reporters define the terms that he himself has just used.

Here's one exchange from yesterday, with Peter Baker of The Washington Post:

"Q Tony, the investigation of Karl Rove is now over. Why is it, then, inappropriate for the President of the White House, three years later, to finally give us some sort of explanation or assessment, judgment, of Karl Rove's actions when it had nothing to do with the Libby trial?

"MR. SNOW: Because, as you know, there is -- well, they may have. There is talk that he may be called . . ."

Rove played an important role in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, but publicly denied it through then-press secretary Scott McClellan and in television interviews.

Pressing on, Baker noted that "Scott McClellan has nothing to do with the Libby trial, [Rove's] conversation with ABC News has nothing to do with the Libby trial.

"MR. SNOW: Well, that's fine. I will continue my statement first. I can't give you any texture or background on the Scott/Karl stuff, because I wasn't here. But the President made it pretty clear that a lot of this stuff -- and as you know, Peter, once you get up on the stand, and Karl may be called to the stand -- they can ask about anything.

"And so it is our view that we're simply not going to get involved in making comments on something that may be brought to trial, when Scooter Libby is still under indictment and is going to go to trial with the special prosecutor."

Baker of course was correct. His question had nothing to do with the Libby trial. But he moved on:

"Q Let me ask a general question then. In 2000, the President said it wasn't enough to simply not be indicted in the White House, that he had a higher ethical standard. Is that, in fact, still the ethical standard --

"MR. SNOW: Yes.

"Q -- or, in fact, should we interpret from his comments yesterday that as long as you're not indicted, everything is fine?

"MR. SNOW: Apparently, you've indicted Karl.

"Q No, I'm asking a question.

"MR. SNOW: And yes, the answer is, the ethical standard still applies.

"Q And what is the ethical standard?

"MR. SNOW: You tell me."

But the capper had to be Snow's obstinate obfuscation of the administration's position on permanent military bases in Iraq -- a highly contentious and significant issue.

According to Agence France Presse , Snow had addressed the issue quite directly at the off-camera morning gaggle: "At a morning exchange with reporters, spokesman Tony Snow said it was 'wrong' to say that the United States planned to keep troops in Iraq forever, even after Iraqi security forces are up and running.

"Prodded about the construction of permanent military facilities in the war-torn country, Snow replied: 'No permanent bases. Don't have permanent bases anywhere.' "

Sounds clear, huh? But when Hearst columnist and White House gadfly Helen Thomas brought the issue up again at the briefing, Snow was pugnatiatuis and equivocal.

"Q Would you like to reaffirm what you said earlier today, that the U.S. wants no permanent bases in Iraq?

"MR. SNOW: Well, I think -- let me -- because -- can you define what a permanent base is?"

At the end of the exchange, the administration's position was as unclear as ever.

Accountability is for other people.

Bad Actor

Does the World See Bush As a Moron?

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted June 15, 2006.

Do you suppose the rest if the world just assumes George W. Bush is a moron when he goes overseas?

Bush said his message to the Iraqi people is, "Seize the moment." Do we think they knew what he meant? Is carpe diem part of Iraqis' general knowledge? Then, the president urged the Iraqis to end sectarian strife. I, too, think this would be a good idea. Thought so for at least three years. Basically, what I'm getting at here is, do you suppose the rest if the world just assumes George W. Bush is a moron when he goes overseas?

I realize the trip was arranged to try to take advantage of the killing of Zarqawi, for Bush to "get a bounce out of it," as they say back in Washington politics. But I'm just not sure there's much bounce left in Iraq. It's not good enough anymore to turn a corner or see a light at the end of the tunnel -- too many corners, too many lights later. I guess we can still seize the moment, although the confusion over how Zarqawi died kind of undercuts that.

The trouble with Iraq is what keeps happening there. We haven't rebuilt the place -- in fact, it keeps getting worse in terms of basic services. You have to admit, leaving a place worse off than Saddam Hussein kept it is not a bragging point. Number of people killed keeps going up, signs of militias out of control, sectarian violence, spreading anarchy ... not good.

Years ago, Mrs. T. Cullen Davis, of tacky Texas murder trial fame, said as her husband tried to grab a fabulous necklace he gave her, "This ain't no takesie-backsie." (You may now take a deep breath while considering the depth of that comment.)

I feel that Iraq is also a "no takesie-backsie." It is a putrid human, social and political disaster, and getting worse, not better. The people who got us into this should not be forgiven - - they should not even get a "bounce" from it. There is only one thing I want from them -- to get us and our Army out of there, instead of cavalierly announcing that will be left to "future presidents."

Bush photo ops are for spinning fiction. When I saw Bush in Baghdad on Tuesday, the image that invaded my mind was his photo op in Jackson Square, New Orleans, back in September. His krew brought in generators to illuminate the church he used as a backdrop. Nine months later, Gentilly is still a ghost town. He only does theater, follow through doesn't appear to be part of his skill set.

The Shelter Bubble

Housing Tighter for New Yorkers of Moderate Pay
By JANNY SCOTT

The number of New York City apartments considered affordable to hundreds of thousands of moderate-income households — with incomes like those of starting firefighters and police officers — plunged by 17 percent between 2002 and 2005, according to a new report by researchers at New York University.

The report, to be released today, for the first time puts hard numbers on a cost squeeze that has intensified with the real estate boom. The researchers found that the number of apartments affordable to households earning about $32,000 a year, or 80 percent of the median household income in the city, has dropped by 205,000 in just three years.

While precise comparisons for earlier periods are not available, this appears to represent the sharpest decline in the number of apartments within the reach of such households since the mid-1990's.

The report also found that while the median rent for unsubsidized apartments jumped to $900 from $750 — a 20 percent increase in three years — the median household income in the city shrank to $40,000 from $42,700.

Whether the rising housing costs are seen as a sign of the city's economic vitality or a harbinger of trouble depends on who is talking. Several economists said they were proof of the city's success: Lots of people still want to live in New York. But housing experts warned that high rents could force workers out of the city or into overcrowded conditions and multiple jobs.

"The market will work through this, but there are people who really lose," said Chris Mayer, director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at the Columbia Business School. "Whether that's a city problem really depends on how much city government or residents feel this is an inevitable thing they can't fight, or whether they're going to try to do something about it."

New York is a lab for the rest of the country. All of the big cities on the coasts are experiencing the same thing, to one degree or another. The same is true here. I live in a small condo in a first ring suburb of DC. The people who teach in our schools, clean our buildings, drive our taxis and cook in our restaurants have to live an hour away. If I had to buy this condo today, I wouldn't be able to afford it and the property taxes may yet drive me to cheaper digs.

No Exit

Stephen Rebello interviews uebercapitalist Lee Iacocco (.pdf):

How would you rate the priorities Bush and his friends have set?

Forget the economy, global warming, our infrastructure of roads and bridges
that are rotting away. And forget health care, which is a scandal, and is our
Achilles heel. A civilization that doesn’t take care of its young people and their
young minds through education, and that doesn’t take care of its aging parents?
Do you think our priority was going to Iraq, really? They didn’t have
nuclear bombs that I knew of. We’re in a war we should never have gotten
into, and yet they haven’t resolved the nuclear powers like North Korea and
Iran, so the priorities are wrong. Meanwhile, it’s going to be a half-trillion-dollar
war in Iraq. And we brought what to them? Democracy? I think we brought
them civil war. We’re after oil. Hitler bombed the hell out of Romania because
he wanted the oil fields. Before Pearl Harbor, we forget how we were twisting
the Japanese in the wind and shutting off their oil supply. No matter what you
talk about, every real confrontation is based on fossil fuel because we’re just
hooked on it. Selling nukes to India? Common sense has gone out the window.
You can tap my phone without a warrant? Where is the media? I would
think they’d be outraged at the way they’ve been conned. And the Democratic
Party is sitting on its hands. What are they doing, worrying about running
Hillary? Where is our country headed?

Reality-Based Community

Sidney Blumenthal sees the events of the last couple of weeks in pretty much the same way I do, looking at reality beyond CNN's relentless cheerleading for Bushco:

"Mission Accomplished" in a business suit

Ignoring U.S. intelligence, Bush inflated Zarqawi, then made a pointless trip to Iraq to pose as a heroic dragon slayer. It doesn't work anymore.

If Zarqawi's killing was a new version of Saddam Hussein's capture ("We got him!"), Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad on Tuesday was "Mission Accomplished" in a business suit. Six months after the Iraqi election, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at last having appointed defense and interior ministers amid sectarian civil war, Bush declared, "They themselves have to get some things accomplished." One thing Bush was attempting to accomplish was a reversal of his own political fortunes. Zarqawi's death had provided a convenient platform for the unfolding of his scripted theater featuring a two-day Camp David retreat of his war cabinet, the midnight flight to Baghdad and repeated references to Sept. 11, but no broad new initiatives for a political solution. .... The depth and breadth of the insurgency are depicted in a new documentary, "Meeting Resistance," that has not been publicly released. It is directed by Molly Bingham, an American journalist who was briefly jailed in Abu Ghraib by Saddam's regime at the onset of the U.S. invasion, and Steve Connors, a British journalist. This breakthrough film, the single most astonishing documentary yet on the Iraq war, portrays a full range of insurgents, from fighters to spies to imams, speaking in their own voices, explaining their motives and actions, from the first days of the insurgency onward. "I began to see something, that we had become an occupied country," says one who became a warrior. It is as though "The Battle of Algiers" had been shot from the inside, from the point of view of the insurgents, and not played by actors. Among other revelations, insurgents express their hostility in 2004 to Zarqawi as an obstacle to unity against the occupation but not as an impediment to the insurgency's popular growth. "So now," says an insurgent, "whether Zarqawi is captured dead or alive has no impact."

Bush's latest effort to foster belief in a "turning point" may trap him within his own psy-op. Unless Bush successfully includes the Sunnis in the political process and creates a new internationalized diplomacy, he will remain narrowly circumscribed by the consequences of his accumulated failures. Burdened by years of misjudgment, disinformation and delusion, Bush has again risked committing the blunder of raising expectations followed by deeper disillusionment within the "U.S. Home Audience."

If you haven't seen "The Battle of Algiers," rent it this weekend. The parallels are uncanny and I imagine the ending will be the same.

When the Trains Collapse

Running Hoover's Railroad

Anybody who has lived in an old house with wiring from the Depression era knows something about Amtrak's troubles. Plug in the iron and the TV and, zap, suddenly there is an eerie pre-industrial silence, signaling that the electricity has gone out.

Similarly, last month's sudden blackout in the Northeast Corridor focused the attention of thousands of commuters on how decrepit some of the Amtrak rail system really is. While Amtrak has yet to determine the precise reason that thousands of commuters were stalled on May 25, with hundreds stuck for hours in tunnels, it has acknowledged that some of its infrastructure was new when Herbert Hoover was president.

Officials have promised that they will have emergency cars ready to rescue people from tunnels a little sooner in the future. That's nice, but the passengers would prefer not to need rescuing in the first place. For a modern, reliable system, Transportation officials have estimated they need several billion dollars extra each year to upgrade the infrastructure alone.

At this point, Congress is just starting to figure out how much money to give Amtrak next year, and the news is not comforting. The House of Representatives approved a paltry $1.1 billion, just a shred over the lowball amount requested by the president. The Senate is expected to come in with a little more, just enough for Amtrak to squeak along for another year.

Amtrak officials seem to be working hard to patch up the older parts of the system. But recent delays serve as only the latest reminder that Amtrak's problems are not bad management so much as stingy government. With gas prices up and airplanes overloaded, the nation's leaders should be trying to figure out why this advanced nation does not have a more advanced passenger rail system.

The system works well enough most of the time which is why the public is not screaming. What they don't understand is that it is floating on a thin film above disaster. I'm afraid that something really bad will have to happen before anything will change.

Collapse

Crisis Seen in Nation's ER Care
Capacity, Expertise Are Found Lacking

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 15, 2006; A01

Emergency medical care in the United States is on the verge of collapse, with the nation's declining number of emergency rooms dangerously overcrowded and often unable to provide the expertise needed to treat seriously ill people in a safe and efficient manner.

That's the grim conclusion of three reports released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine, the product of an extensive two-year look at emergency care.

Long waits for treatment are epidemic, the reports said, with ambulances sometimes idling for hours to unload patients. Once in the ER, patients sometimes wait up to two days to be admitted to a hospital bed.

As a system, U.S. emergency care lacks stability and the capacity to respond to large disasters or epidemics, according to the 25 experts who conducted the study. It provides care of variable and often unknown quality and depends on the willingness of doctors and hospitals to lose large amounts of money.

Fixing the problems is likely to cost billions of dollars and will require the leadership of a new federal agency, which Congress should create in the next two years, they wrote.

"This is a crisis that could jeopardize everyone in this room, and all their loved ones," A. Brent Eastman, a surgeon and chief medical officer of the ScrippsHealth hospitals in San Diego, said at a daylong conference on the reports, which were prepared by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.
....
From 1993 to 2003, the U.S. population grew by 12 percent but emergency room visits grew by 27 percent, from 90 million to 114 million. In that same period, however, 425 emergency departments closed, along with about 700 hospitals and nearly 200,000 beds.

This is what a patchwork for-profit health care system has given us, which is no system and lousy care, for those who can afford it. For the rest of us, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is out of the reach of those without insurance, anyway.

Bush Brings Us Down

Global Image of the U.S. Is Worsening, Survey Finds

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: June 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 13 — As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the United States, a new opinion poll has found.

Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent said they had a positive opinion, down from 41 percent last year, according to the survey. It was done in 15 nations, including the United States, this spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.

Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent). In Turkey, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.

Declines were less steep in France, Germany and Jordan, while people in China and Pakistan had a slightly more favorable image of the United States this year than last. In Britain, Washington's closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50-percent range in the past two years, down sharply from 75 percent in 2002, before the war.

Support for the fight against terrorism led by the United States is also down, Pew found.

Although strong majorities in several countries expressed worries about Iran's nuclear intentions, in 13 of 15 countries polled, most people said the war in Iraq posed more of a danger to world peace. Russians held that view by a 2-to-1 margin.

"Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it's a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

The latest declines came after a year in which anti-American sentiment had slightly receded, aided by good feeling over aid for tsunami victims and political progress in Iraq.

The polling was conducted before the completion last week of the Iraqi government or the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Were I going abroad this year, I'd have the Maple Leaf sown on my bag and in my lapel.

Between the Lines

Juan Coles parses Reuters on Bush's Baghdad flyby yesterday:

This Reuters report has to be read carefully to see how parlous the situation in Iraq really is. The president of the United States, who supposedly conquered the country three years ago, had to keep his visit secret even from the prime minister he was going to visit, until five minutes before their meeting. That tells me Bush's people don't trust Nuri al-Maliki very far. In fact, apparently Bush's people don't trust Bush's people very far-- only Cheney and Condi are said to have known about the trip in the US. And, Air Force One had to land after a sharp bank, to throw off any potential shoulder-held missile launchers in the airport area. The president couldn't go to the Green Zone in a motorcade, for fear of car bombs, but had to be helicoptered in. This ending says it all: "Bush left after night fell to return to Washington. The plane left at a steep angle with its lights out and the shades drawn."

In almost surreal rhetoric, Bush said Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs must be curtailed. He said this after the Iraqi vice president and the head of the biggest bloc in parliament both went off to Tehran and praised Iran's stabilizing role. If Bush thinks that Shiite Iranians are the problem in fanatically Sunni Ramadi and Adhamiyah, we're in even bigger trouble than I thought.

Bush tried to define down victory to a general ability of people to go about their lives. He said it was unreasonable to expect to end "all violence." But Mr. Bush, no one suggested that you end "all violence." The goal here is to win the guerrilla war.

During a guerrilla war, people always go about their daily lives, except when a bomb is going off in their specific neighborhood. So if the goal is that Iraqis should be able to buy bread and go to school and drive to work, most of them have that already most of the time. It is just that little problem of some 12,000 people a year being blown up, assassinated, or beheaded and their heads wrapped in cellophane and stored in banana crates along the side of the road that remains.

In other words, Bush defines the main weapon in the guerrilla war, carbombings, as ineradicable, and declares that he can win that war without actually ending its main weapon. It is a cheap trick of rhetoric, a prestidigitation of the lips. "These are not the 'droids you're looking for."

If his lips are moving, he's lying.

Still the Economy, Stupid

Consumer Prices Rise in May

By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; 9:52 AM

The rising cost of energy and rent led consumer prices to another significant advance last month, the Labor Department reported today, reinforcing expectations that the Federal Reserve will jack up key interest rates again this month as it continues efforts to get a grip on inflation.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index, the broadest gauge of the cost of living, advanced 0.4 percent in May. Energy led the way with a 2.4 percent surge.

Excluding energy and food, "core" prices rose 0.3 percent during May and 3.8 percent over the past three months.

The figures surpassed many projections by economists. The three-month increase represents the most rapid rise in inflation in a decade.

The numbers were also outside the "comfort zone" for inflation recently stated explicitly by the Federal Reserve, which has boosted key interest rates to 5 percent in 16 successive increments. The Federal Reserves Open Market Committee meets again on June 28 and is widely expected to add another quarter percent to the rate.

The belief that inflation, and interest rates, will continue to rise over the next few months internationally has fueled a global retreat in stock market indices from New York to Tokyo, predicated on fears that this rising cost of money may generate across-the-board cuts in business spending and investment.

Yes, lower and middle class people are feeling the pinch and that's the reason why "wrong track" poll questions are getting increasing majorities.

Our New Laureate

New Hampshire poet Donald Hall named new poet laureate

By Beverley Wang, Associated Press Writer | June 14, 2006

WILMOT, N.H. --A fax last week informed Donald Hall he would be the next poet laureate of the United States, and since then, between phone calls, sitting for photographs and giving interviews, he has been thinking about his new job.

"I had one friend, I asked him to give me ideas for what I can do as poet laureate, and he typed out 85," said Hall, a former New Hampshire poet laureate.

Maxine Kumin, a friend and former state and national poet laureate from Warner, founded a women's poetry series. Ted Kooser, the current poet laureate, has a weekly newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry."

In the living room of his farmhouse Tuesday, Hall wondered whether he could persuade a cable television network to run an occasional program of poetry, or convince satellite radio to create a poetry-only channel.

"I think most of the things I think about are unrealistic because they would take a great wad of cash to get started," he said. But you never know. "I can ask," he said, smiling.

Hall, 77, will assume his duties this fall. Poet laureates receive $35,000 for the year as well as a travel allowance.

The Library of Congress says it tries to keep official duties of its poet laureates to a minimum so they can work on their own projects.

Hall is to speak at the library's National Book Festival on Sept. 30 in Washington and to open the library's annual literary series in October with a reading of his work.

"Donald Hall is one of America's most distinctive and respected literary figures," Librarian of Congress James Billington said in an announcement prepared for delivery Wednesday. "For more than 50 years, he has written beautiful poetry on a wide variety of subjects that are often distinctly American and conveyed with passion."

At 12, Hall wrote his first poem, an overwrought piece about death. Two years later, he declared his ambition to become a poet.

"When I was 14, I decided that's what I wanted to do with my whole life, and that's what I've done."

"It was because of the love of the art that I began to write at all, not because I had something to say, but because I loved the art of poetry."

His poems, chronicling seven decades of life, are rich with New Hampshire's rural landscape, in particular Eagle Pond Farm, where Hall's grandmother and mother were born and where he spent his boyhood summers before moving there permanently 30 years ago. He was born in New Haven, Conn.

I have most of his books and look forward to his appearance here at the National Festival of the Book this fall. His voice is distinctive, the style is comfortingly New England. Go to the library and pick up a copy of "String Too Short to be Saved" and recall a simpler time peopled by a pre-microwave generation.

Missing In Action

In Iraq Visit, Bush Seizes on a Step Forward
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 13 — In visiting Baghdad on Tuesday, President Bush was trying to deliver a carefully calibrated message to Americans: that Iraq and the administration's strategy there appear to be turning a corner, but troops will not be withdrawn anytime soon.

Mr. Bush could have spoken with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki by secure videoconference from Camp David. Instead, he embraced Mr. Maliki both figuratively and literally — at the same time embracing the political reality that Iraq is so central to his presidency that he cannot escape developments there, and must try instead to make the most of any good news.

"I'm impressed by the strength of your character and your desire to succeed," the president told the new prime minister, as the officials he left behind — Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — watched via remote video link. "And I'm impressed by your strategy."

It was powerful political theater, choreographed by an experienced team that played up the drama and secrecy of the moment, and were rewarded with a day of relatively unfiltered cable news coverage. The trip, including a stealthy nighttime helicopter departure from Camp David, unfolded with the precision of a campaign event, complete with the image of the commander in chief addressing cheering American troops.

But it was also a gamble. For Mr. Bush, the new Iraqi government is a life preserver, evidence of progress toward the goal of establishing democracy in a hostile environment.

I noted that the only thing Bush does is theater, and this was another set piece. Nothing else has changed. What strategy is it that Bush is impressed by? Enquiring minds want to know!

Th WaPo and the NYT remain impressed by these PR touches without ever asking "So, now, what?" I guess they are just happy to get a trip on Air Force One and that's where their interest ends. Adam Nagourney and Jim Risen are just stenographers for the most inept administration in history. It sure looks that way if you peruse the morning headlines.

Late Night Funnies

I'll take a nap in the afternoon to stay up for this (courtesy of Comrade Max:

Leno to Host Carlin, Coulter on Wednesday

The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; 3:19 PM

LOS ANGELES -- "Tonight" host Jay Leno might want to consider wearing referee stripes on Wednesday's show when Ann Coulter and George Carlin are his guests.

Coulter, the acid-tongued conservative with a new book out, and Carlin, the quick-witted, antiestablishment comedian who's in the voice cast for the new animated film "Cars," were booked at separate times for the NBC late-nighter, a spokeswoman said Monday.

But the duo's meeting could produce serious fireworks for "Tonight," which usually limits its political fodder to Leno's bipartisan monologue jokes.

Coulter, author of "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," has drawn fire for attacking the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks in which their husbands died.

In her book, Coulter accuses the women of "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

Carlin makes the Trots look moderate. This promises to be entertaining.

The First Amendment

Hmmm, this is what I missed this morning:

Progressive Dems Suppress Anti-War Dissent
Peace Activists at Hillary Clinton's Speech Try to Take Back "Take Back America"

By MEDEA BENJAMIN

The Take Back America conference, an annual event held in Washington DC this year from June 12-14, is supposed to be a venue for prominent progressives to gather and debate the major issues of our day. Their aim is to "provide the nation with new vision, new ideas and new energy." But choosing New York Senator and probable presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a keynote speaker and then stifling dissent against her pro-war position hardly seems the stuff of a new vision for America.

The peace group CODEPINK is widely known for bringing its anti-war message to the halls of power, including inside the Republican National Convention and at President Bush's Inauguration. But it has also targeted Democrats such as Hillary Clinton who support the war. "We have a campaign called Birddog Hillary," says CODEPINK's New York coordinator Nancy Kricorian. "We follow her around the entire state asking her to listen to the voices of her constituents and stop her support of Bush's 'stay the course' policy in Iraq. So far, she hasn't been listening."

Fearing that CODEPINK would openly confront Clinton on her pro-war policy, the organizers of Take Back America entered into negotiations with CODEPINK a few days before the conference. "We had lengthy discussions where they pleaded with us not to protest during her keynote breakfast address," explained Gael Murphy, one of the cofounders of CODEPINK. "Instead, we were told that we could distribute flyers explaining Hillary's pro-war position to the crowd inside and outside the hotel, and we would be called on to ask her the first question after the speech. We agreed."

However, when CODEPINK showed up on Tuesday morning in advance of Clinton's speech, the security guards refused to allow them to pass out flyers, even outside the hotel. "Take Back America violated the agreement from the moment we arrived," said Ms. Murphy. "Even though we had a table inside the conference, burly security guards blocked us and informed us that it was a private event, that we were not welcome, and they escorted us out of the building. We telephoned the conference staff who then told us that we couldn't enter the hotel, couldn't leaflet the event, the hallways-anywhere. They went back on their word and tried to quash even peaceful, respectful dissent."

A few CODEPINK women did manage to get inside the breakfast, however, as they were legitimate ticket holders. Once inside, the CODEPINK women soon realized that they had been deceived about the second part of the agreement: They would not be allowed to ask the first question, or any question, because Hillary Clinton would not be fielding questions from the audience. "We were really upset that we had been lied to by Take Back America, and that there would be no space at this 'progressive conference' to have a dialogue with Hillary Clinton about the most critical issue of our time-the war in Iraq," said Katie Heald, DC coordinator for CODEPINK. "We got up on our chairs holding up our hands with the peace sign, and were pulled down from the chairs. We tried to take out our banner that said "Listen Hillary: Stop Supporting the War" and it was grabbed from us. And when Hillary started talking about her Iraq strategy, criticizing Bush but not posing a solution, we shouted 'What are YOU going to do to get us out of Iraq,' but she ignored us."

Ann Wright, the army colonel and diplomat who resigned over the war, was appalled by the actions of the conference organizers. "They took away leaflets supporting Jonathan Tasini, the anti-war Democrat who is running against Clinton in New York. They searched people's bags for banners; they even took away an 'Impeach Bush' banner from Veterans for Peace. Free speech needs to be upheld by progressives and trying to curtail dissent undercuts the whole purpose of this conference," said Wright.

I'm appalled.

The Quease Factor

I'm still feeling like the dog's breakfast, but will shortly go foraging for some comfort food for a queasy tummy. Sorry for the dearth of postings, but my brain doesn't seem to be working very well today.

All Hail

June 13, 2006:
Bush Flies to Baghdad to Back Iraqi Leader
By JOHN F. BURNS and CHRISTINE HAUSER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 13 — After a secretive overnight flight to Baghdad, President Bush held his first direct talks with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki today, offering a dramatic show of support to the new government while driving home the message that the country's future is in Iraqi hands.

Mr. Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad, which was kept secret from some of his aides as well as from Mr. Maliki himself, followed the killing last week of the most-wanted terrorist in the country, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, although the trip had been planned before that.

White House Counselor Dan Bartlett said that Mr. Bush had wanted to come to Iraq as soon as the final positions in Mr. Maliki's government — the interior and defense ministers — were chosen.

It is President Bush's first trip to Iraq since Nov. 2003, when he joined American troops for Thanksgiving dinner and thanked them for standing up against the "band of thugs and assassins" they are fighting in Iraq. His visit today, expected to last about five hours, came after a string of bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 20 people in violence that surged after the killing of Mr. Zarqawi and the naming of his successor.

Mr. Maliki, who has vowed to crush the insurgency, announced several details today of a security plan for Baghdad.

Heavy security was deployed in the Green Zone. Hundreds of Americans working at the Republican Palace, where Mr. Maliki greeted Mr. Bush, had been given the afternoon off. Military forces were posted in armored combat vehicles as Mr. Bush arrived at the blue-domed palace.

CNN reports that al-Maliki was given five minutes notice of Bush's "visit." When the emperor of the planet demands your presence before the throne, I guess you just comply and drop everything. This is the wonderful "democracy" we've bequethed to the Iraqi people.

Conference Report

Not pneumonia after all, but some sort of GI complaint. I shall not return to the Hilton Ballroom tomorrow. I feel like death eating a cracker and my right hand, with only one day off the trackball, is in agony. It was great to spend the day with Susie, but, if this is a bug, I don't want to hand it around. I've been up since five AM for the third time in a week of 18 hour days and that's guaranteed to keep you feeling crummy, so spending the day tomorrow as the quintessential blogger in her bathrobe feels like the right thing to do. It's supposed to be another gorgeous day before the first feeder bands of Alberto start to move in early Wednesday.

We need the rain, it was a dry winter and spring, but I've gotten a lot of experience with urban flooding since I moved east in '78. I don't have a basement, so that problem won't be mine, but getting around when the streets are flooded is a headache.

Expect tomorrow to be another light day while I give my guts and my aching hands a rest. The alternative is getting yelled at by the reveres (note the new URL, they've moved to the science blog place) and being incapacitated by the end of the week. I do not like getting yelled at by the reveres and I'm not a big fan of pain. There is some pent up desire and some big themes I want to address because of the posting problems I experienced today, but I'm going to have to balance desire with capacity (can you tell I'm over 50?) The recovery curve is longer at my age and I have to take a harder look at what price I'm willing to pay than I did even three years ago when I started this blog. DemfromCT recommends regular naps for those of us over 50, but I can't sleep when it is light out, no matter how tightly I draw the blinds

Thanks to all the people who stopped by the blogger tables today and said nice things about Bump. It was a pleasure to meet you all. Readers and commentors are a necessary part of the blogging world and the comments are the most interesting part of any blog.

Hang in there with me as I trying to get my aching bod back into some kind of shape with rest.

Conference Day Last

The WiFi connection drops more than half the time, the air conditioning is vile (I'll be lucky if I don't have pneumonia by the time I get home tonight) and so day one of this conference is going to be the last day for me. I'll stay home with my reliable cable connection and a much more comfortable set up from both a physical and ergonomic point of view. Too bad, there are a lot of interesting people here.

Surprising Corners

Blending In, Moving Up

By Tyler Cowen and Daniel M. Rothschild
Monday, June 12, 2006; A21

Beneath the surface of the immigration debate is a debate about shared values. If we look at just three of those values -- the English language, family and hard work -- we see a higher level of Latino assimilation than is often presumed.

Despite claims to the contrary, census data show that most Latino immigrants learn and speak English quite well. Only about 2.5 percent of American residents speak Spanish but not English. The majority of residents of Spanish-speaking households speak English "very well."

Only 7 percent of the children of Latino immigrants speak Spanish as a primary language, and virtually none of their children do. Just as they did a century ago, immigrants largely come knowing little English. But they learn, and their children use it as a primary language. The United States is not becoming a bilingual nation.

A key indicator is the rise of the English-language Latino publication market. National magazines such as Hispanic Business (circulation 265,000) and Latina (circulation 2 million) are published in English. So are regional publications in cities including New York, Houston and Los Angeles. The reason is simple: English is becoming the language of Hispanic American commerce and culture. Just as few Jewish-interest magazines are published in Yiddish, in a generation most Latino-interest publications will probably be in English.

The family has long been the core social unit in America, and immigrants share that value. Census data show that 62 percent of immigrants over age 15 are married, compared to 52 percent of natives. Only 6 percent of Latino adults are divorced, compared with 10 percent of whites and 12 percent of African Americans. Latino immigrants are more likely to live in multigenerational households rather than just visiting grandparents a couple of times a year.

Most Latino immigrants want to become U.S. citizens. This process takes years, so recent immigrants are not a good barometer. But according to the 2000 Census, the majority of Latinos who entered the United States before 1980 have become citizens. And second-generation immigrants are more likely to marry natives than immigrants, further assimilating their children. The majority of immigrants also own their own homes, a key part of the American dream.

I know Tyler and a liberal he ain't: he's a freemarket libertarian guy. He's making the case for the facts of hispanic immigration in the US. But that's not what Bushco is up to, facts don't matter when you are playing to the anti-brown, racist base.

Instability Showers

Smoke of Iraq War 'Drifting Over Lebanon'
In Political and Social Life, Returned Fighters Inspire Climate of Militancy

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 12, 2006; A01

The war in Iraq has generated some of the most startling images in the Middle East today: a dictator's fall, elections in defiance of insurgent threats and carnage on a scale rarely witnessed. Less visibly, though, the war is building a profound legacy across the Arab world: fear and suspicion over Iraq's repercussions, a generation that casts the Bush administration's policy as an unquestioned war on Islam, and a subterranean reserve of men who, like Abu Haritha, declare that the fight against the United States in Iraq is a model for the future.

Abu Haritha's home, Tripoli, is one of the most visible manifestations of the war, a rough-and-tumble city being transformed by growing radicalism and religious fervor that may long outlast the death of Zarqawi and the U.S. presence in Iraq, now in its fourth year. Here, and elsewhere, that militancy may prove to be the inheritance of both the war and the Bush administration's professed aim of bringing democratic reform to the region.

As those currents gather force, Abu Haritha waits with a certain ease, confident of what is to come.

"Iraq is a badge of honor for every Arab and Muslim to fight the American vampire," he said.

"The Americans may enter Syria, they may enter another country, and we should prepare ourselves for them," Abu Haritha said at a cafe in a crowded alley. "We have to face them so that history won't record they entered our land without confrontation."

W's legacy: destabilizing the entire damn middle east.

A Short Century

WaPo's Al Kamen covers Inside the Beltway news you won't find anywhere else:

Mission Accomplished?

The doors may be closing shortly on the nine-year-old Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative think tank headed by William Kristol , former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now editor of the Weekly Standard, which is must reading for neocon cogitators and agitators.

The PNAC was short on staff -- having perhaps a half-dozen employees -- but very long on heavy hitters. The founders included Richard B. Cheney , Donald H. Rumsfeld , Paul D. Wolfowitz , Jeb Bush , I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , William J. Bennett, Zalmay Khalilzad and Quayle.

The goal was to continue the Reaganite, muscular approach to projecting American power and "moral clarity" in a post-Cold War world, the group's manifesto said. The targets were liberal drift and conservative isolationism.

PNAC and its supporters dominated the Bush administration's foreign policy apparatus and championed a policy to get rid of Saddam Hussein long before Sept. 11, 2001.

In its famous 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton , PNAC said "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime . . . now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy." Clinton was urged to use all diplomatic, political and military means to topple him.

Despite the happy chatter before the Iraq invasion about cheering crowds and bouquets and cakewalks and how the war was going to pay for itself, the signatories wrote that "we are fully aware of the dangers of implementing this policy."

There had been debate about PNAC's future, but the feeling, a source said, was of "goal accomplished" and it looks to be heading toward closing. Former executive director Gary J. Schmitt , who had been executive director of President Ronald Reagan 's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, left recently for a post at the American Enterprise Institute. (Not a big move. Actually, only five floors up from PNAC.) Still, seems like a short century.

But that's about the amount of time it is going to take to undo the damage they did.

Serf Class

U.A.W. Facing Tough Choices, Leader Warns:
By MICHELINE MAYNARD

LAS VEGAS, June 11 — The president of the United Automobile Workers union told his members in a strikingly blunt report released Sunday that they cannot ride out the automobile industry crisis and should be prepared to make tradition-breaking decisions to help rescue the industry.

In the report, to be given to members at the union's convention, which opens here on Monday, the union president, Ron Gettelfinger, pointed to many causes of the industry's grave malaise, including "bad management" and declining auto sales.

But Mr. Gettelfinger acknowledged that the union's health care benefits helped create a ballooning health cost crisis that had become "unsustainable" in the face of the auto companies' declining sales. This, he said, was a reason why the U.A.W. agreed to substantial health care concessions last year.

"This isn't a cyclical downturn," Mr. Gettelfinger said in the report. "The kind of challenges we face aren't the kind that can be ridden out. They're structural challenges and they require new and farsighted solutions."

Damn straight this isn't a cyclical downturn. It's a traincrash for working class Americans which is a result of 30 years of right wing labor policy to create a permanent underclass of workers who toil for low wages for the corporate ueber-bosses. At the moment, they are winning.

Away Game

It feels more than slightly weird to be blogging from the exhibition hall of the Washington Hilton. This is not my natural territory, but I'm at Take Back America for the third year, this year as one of the featured bloggers. I have no idea how this is going to work out, but I'm up for an adventure and hanging with the other oddballs who do this.

The Hidden Victims

Now, another name for rage.
You might call it bad behavior, but in medical terms, it's `intermittent explosive disorder.
By Janet Cromley, Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2006

Most who brave the Los Angeles freeways have experienced the warm, fuzzy ministry of another motorist cutting into their lane while waving the international friendship sign. This can render even the most laid-back, Prius-driving, yoga master a bit testy.

But for a small number of people, this minor driving altercation will spark rage so profound, so visceral, that it leads to car chases, fisticuffs and maybe even a few nights in the slammer. Now researchers say these people may be suffering from a seldom-studied condition known as intermittent explosive disorder, a condition that could be twice as prevalent as thought.

New research suggests that, depending on how it is defined, the disorder may affect 7.3% of the adult population, or as many as 16 million Americans, in their lifetimes, according to a study led by Ronald Kessler, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School. In a given year, nearly 4% of the population, or as many as 8.5 million Americans, may experience the disorder, says Kessler.

The findings, derived from a nationwide household survey of 9,282 adults conducted between February 2001 and April 2003, was reported in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

As characterized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the standard diagnostic reference book for psychotherapists — a person with intermittent explosive disorder has on several occasions been unable to resist aggressive impulses that result in serious harm to individuals or property; the degree of aggressiveness is "grossly out of proportion" to the situation; and the episodes are not better accounted for by another condition, such as ADHD, and are not due to the physiological effects of a drug or a general medical condition, such as head trauma or Alzheimer's.

In some cases, the episode may be preceded by heart palpitations, head pressure or hearing an echo.

In short, true intermittent explosive disorder leaves garden-variety freeway altercations in the dust. In fact, even bona fide road rage — which tends to get the most air-time in the nightly news — isn't how the disorder most often manifests itself.

More typical, says Kessler, is the person who gets furious at a spouse or child for a minor disagreement over something as mundane as dinner not being served on time or neglected chores.

"It's true that periodically you hear about someone beating someone up at a baseball game," says Kessler. "But much more common are the hidden cases where the victims are the spouse and kids."

In another context, these people would be called abusers and their families removed from danger. The people who blow up on the freeway are going to blow up at you next. Flee while you can. Take it from one who knows.

The Same Old, Sad Left

pragmatic_realistic has a blogger on the scene and who deconstructed the Kosvention. I have to give it front page status here, it is too good to pass up. Schadenfreude for me, for sure. Wanna make something out of it.

Kos on the commanding heights

Okay, so I'm a behind-the-times old Sixties lefty. Guilty as charged, yer Honor. I throw myself on the mercy of the court. But would somebody explain to me how anybody who thinks of himself as a "progressive", or a person of the Left in any sense, can fail to be pleased when a CIA agent is "outed"? Personally, I love it when that happens, and I wish somebody would out 'em all. Don't you?

Well, the regular communicants of Daily Kos don't see it that way. I'm lurking, under deep, deep cover -- disguised as a security guard, actually -- at their "first-annual" convention in Las Vegas. It's Day Two (Day One was reported at yesterday.) and -- we've all been there -- Day Two has a slightly bleak, morning-after quality. (We'll get back to the CIA in a minute.)

Day One was undoubtedly exciting: all these folks who knew each other only under screen names finally meeting in the flesh -- fairly prepossessing flesh in some cases, less so in others. I hope there were at least a few hookups, though as a journalist, I personally would have declined embedding (not that it was offered, dammit).

Day Two has had the slightly tentative, halting air of a post-coital breakfast. Perhaps that's why the Kosniks turned from each other's now-known, and suddenly too-familiar faces, to the safer ground of celebrity-worship. The first celebrity made available for the purpose was Ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband of "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame and whistle-blower on the Niger yellowcake story.

Wilson is a classic FSO type. He's well-spoken, he knows how to play gravitas in the left hand and levity in the right simultaneously, and he seems to be profoundly comfortable in his own skin, without a shred of Kos' conscious and showy arriviste self-assurance. Wilson's Paderewski coiffure says that he is a man of culture as well as a man of the world, and if ever I saw a coiffure that wasn't lying, it's Wilson's.

The Kosniks ate him up. Standing ovations, big belly laughs at every donnish little witticism -- he's the guy they'd all like to be. And when he dropped the tidbit that his Frau had the best score with an AK-47 on the CIA rifle range, I feel sure a lot of 'em crossed the line from wanting to be him to wanting to do him. Or her. I felt a little frisson myself, to tell the truth. (For her, of course. Ahem.)

Wilson repeatedly referred to the "national security" of the United States, and flirted with accusing the administration of treason -- an accusation made explicit by one of his fellow panelists, another ex-CIA guy, Larry Johnson, who has been breaking blogsphere lances left and right on Plame's behalf ever since she became a household name. Johnson was apparently a bud of Valerie's in the Agency, lucky dog.

Now "treason" and "national security," it seems to me, are expressions that ought to send any Lefty running for cover. But it didn't have that effect on the Kosniks. They loved it. They were delighted to be on the same side as this orotund, world-weary vieux-prepster Foreign Service dude, and the furious, carpet-chewing, traitor-hunting Johnson.

History notoriously repeats itself, and I couldn't help thinking that what the Kosniks are feeling today, as they are stroked by politicians and patricians, must have been a lot like what the chastened, newly anti-communist liberals of the late Forties felt -- the Hubert Humphries and the Sidney Hooks -- as they came in from the cold, damp and shivering, and were handed a cheering Martini by Dean Acheson. Of course the famous line, "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" comes irresistibly to mind.

Speaking of Martinis, they were laid on, abundantly, at a reception given by Virginia governor and presidential hopeful Mark Warner, which rounded out the day. Warner, or somebody, spent some serious money on this bash. It was held at the top of a Space Needlish tower, apparently something of a local attraction -- such an important structure that the blazer thugs put you through an airport search routine before they let you on the elevator. And I suppose in fact if Osama wanted to strike at the heart of America, he could do worse.

Warner's Martinis were handed around on little trays -- plastic glasses, though, a chintzy touch -- and there was a profusion and variety of food that outshone a Great Neck wedding. All in all, it made General Wesley Clark's little soiree the previous night look pretty shabby.

Warner worked the room with wolf-like intensity -- he even cornered me, while I was trying to get a picture of him, and gave my hand a manly pump, gazing deep into my eyes. I was still thinking about Valerie Plame, though, so Warner didn't make as much of an impression as he might have.

The Kosniks were in seventh heaven. You could tell by the excited voices, the drawn-up, self-important stances, the handshaking and backslapping. They thought they'd arrived. They thought they were in.

You can't grow up in a little Protestant church down South, like I did, without having the Scriptures come to mind occasionally. What came to my mind up in that Space Needle, as I looked down at the streetlights stretching out into desert darkness, and heard the giddy voices of the Kosniks raised in illusory triumph behind me, was a bit from Luke's gospel:
And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan.

The Kosniks, smart and likable as so many of them are, haven't the astuteness of the distinguished Galilean. He understood that the Devil's promises are hollow ones; but I fear the Kosniks will have to discover that by experience.

I don't think I have to say much about this. This is an interesting sandbox, but it remains a sandbox.

I'll be at Take Back America through Wednesday afternoon. I'll be sitting on Blogger's Row with the other bloggers. One of the things I like about this is that we have been at this for so long that drinking the Koolaid at one of these cheer-led events isn't an option for us. If you are around the Washington Hilton on Connecticut this week, drop by and say hello, you can do that for free. We're on the mezzanine level of the hotel, kept safely away from the expensive guests.

Thank you, thank you, we'll be there 9-5 daily. You'll get the unvarnished reflections of each of us. None of us are into woodworking.

The $265/day room block at the Hilton is a real roadblock to attendence for any of those working class voters the Dems want to corral. That would wipe out my savings if I weren't local. These conferences really are elitist events and Suzie Madrak and I will be the only working class voices at the event. That's pathetic. And it sends the message that only the elite educated have opinions worth considering at these events. The lessons of "Harry and Louise" remain to be learned by the Left.

Christian Norton, are you reading this?

Could I have afforded YKos? Next question...

And it will be a cold day in Hell when I go to a conference in Vegas.

Scratch the considerable arriviste surface and Markos is an asshole who is really in this for himself. That's my personal experience, up close and personal.

Pentagon Papers Redux

Daniel Ellsberg is in search of himself.

Iraq's Pentagon Papers
This unjustified war is waiting for its whistle-blower, says the leaker of Vietnam's secret history.

By Daniel Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial in 1973 for leaking the Pentagon Papers, but the case was dismissed after four months because of government misconduct.
June 11, 2006

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates — so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public — about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth — earlier than I did — before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

It is past time for Americans to summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. We must force Congress and this president, or their successors if necessary, to act upon the moral proposition that the U.S. must stop killing men, women and children in Iraq, and must not begin to do so in Iran.

Neither the lives we have lost, nor the lives we have taken, give the U.S. any right to determine by fire and airpower who shall govern or who shall die in countries we have wrongly attacked.

Beyond the Propaganda

Iraqis in Al Anbar province leaving army in droves
Soldiers tired of poor living conditions, irregular pay

By Andrew Tilghman, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, June 11, 2006

HADITHA, Iraq — Iraqi soldiers in Al Anbar province are leaving their army in droves, draining much-needed manpower from fledgling Iraqi security forces and preventing U.S. troops from reducing troop strength in the volatile region, U.S. and Iraqi military officials say.

Lousy living conditions, bad food and failure to receive regular pay are the main reasons behind the exodus, which is running at least several hundred soldiers a month, the officials say.

“Many of my soldiers have not gotten paid in six months. Sometimes, they don’t eat for two or three days at a time. I tell my commander, but what else am I supposed to do?” said Lt. Moktat Uosef, a 29-year-old Iraqi army company commander based in Husaybah.

Uosef’s brigade is one of the most troubled. The 4th Brigade of the 7th Iraqi Army Division has lost nearly half its soldiers during the past six months, dropping from 2,200 troops in December to fewer than 1,400 in May, according to Marines who work with the Iraqi unit.

In Haditha, the Iraqi army brigade has been losing about 100 soldiers a month, dropping from more than 2,000 at the beginning of the year to fewer than 1,600 in May, Marines said.

“We won’t make any real progress until we stop hemorrhaging the personnel,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kenny, who heads the U.S. Marines’ team of military advisers working with the Haditha-area unit, the 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army division.

This is Stars and Stripes, mind you, not Antiwar.com. This is quite a different picture than we get from Bushco speeches, innit?

Eight Random Things About Me

I was tagged by Susie:

1. The very first record I ever bought was a Nonesuch disc of Vaughn Williams' "Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis."

2. I prefer hot chocolate to coffee in the morning.

3. Out of the thousands of musicals I've played over the years, "A Chorus Line" is still my favorite.

4. I don't own a DVD or VHS player and I'm functioning just fine, thanks.

5. My favorite television program is "Emeril Live."

6. Among the jobs I've held: hardware store clerk and paint mixer; computer trainer; public radio station program director; college instructor; data base manager; newspaper music critic;
telephone fundraising solicitor.

7. I'm a really lousy liar so I don't even try anymore.

8. The three most powerful words in the English language for an interviewer are "tell me more." If you are looking for the interviewee to hang themselves or sell themselves, this is the phrase that bursts the dam.

I'm tagging:

any one of the reveres (you can work this out among yourselves)

pogge

Kevin Hayden

Missing the Point

Zarqawi's Hideout: Bombed, Bulldozed
Structure Hit by F-16 Is Demolished In Search for Clues About Insurgency

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page A21

HIBHIB, Iraq, June 10 -- The two bombs that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, left a strange tomb nestled in the quiet farmland about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

A handful of U.S. soldiers escorted a small group of journalists on the media's first visit to the site on Saturday, walking east across a bridge of palm trunks over a canal of still, green water into the grove of tall Mesopotamian palms where Zarqawi's three-year game of cat-and-mouse with U.S. forces came to an end.

The sight that greeted the visitors was a 600-square-yard wasteland of broken concrete, twisted steel and splintered tree trunks, bound by a wall of cinder blocks that remained largely intact as well as crude irrigation ditches. Scattered in the wreckage were the mundane artifacts of lives that came to an end at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday with the explosion of two 500-pound, laser-guided bombs dropped from an F-16 fighter jet.

The bombs left what one American command sergeant major described as "a big hole." What the bombs did not destroy Wednesday night, U.S. bulldozers did the morning after. In their search for weapons, booby traps and information that would lead them to other insurgents, U.S. troops demolished anything left of the structure, pushing a substantial amount of rubble into what soldiers said had been a 40-foot-deep crater. The blood and the bodies were gone.

The Sabbath Gasbags are having their wargasm over the death of Zarqawi, which tells you how little they understand about war in general and insurgencies in specific. War isn't an episode of Survivor or American Idol and insurgencies are not dependent at all on personalities or individuals. That is what a guerrilla war is, independent. This changes absolutely nothing, although the cable channels would like it to be the big, end of the season wrap. It's hurricane season and they'd like to move on to their next big product because they can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Day Late, Dollar Short

The Fox talking heads are congratulating Bush for calling for a council of his war advisors this weekend at Camp David. Riiiight. Three years into Iraq and 2,500 American deaths and he finally decides to call his people together? This is something to celebrate? You might have thought he would have done this before he committed our blood and treasure, but, whatever.

Storm Warning

Storm could land in Big Bend
staff and wire reports

The first tropical depression of the 2006 hurricane season formed today and is expected to make landfall in Florida sometime Monday or Tuesday.

Tropical Depression One is expected to increase in strength to a named storm but is not expected to become a hurricane.

The depression formed southwest of Cuba and is expected to make landfall somewhere between southwest Florida and the panhandle.

This is 'way early for the first tropical storm of the season. Way early.

Recovery Zone

Just a reminder that I'll be live blogging the Take Back America Conference Monday-Wednesday of next week. As a consequence, I'm light blogging this weekend to let my hands and arms rest before what will be a pretty intense blogging experience. I'm suffering from repetitive motion injuries and am pretty sore. Rest is the only thing which helps. Getting old is hell.

Sexist Assholes

Here's today's schedule for Yearly Kos. Go count how many women panelists there are. I guess there just aren't any women political bloggers out here.

Birds and Bureaucrats

WHO Knows Better
Neither the world, nor the World Health Organization, is prepared for a real pandemic.

Saturday, June 10, 2006; A18

IT'S LONG BEEN the world's public health monitor, responsible for detecting and eradicating infectious diseases. Now the World Health Organization has accidentally acquired another role -- as a source of disarray in global financial markets. When the WHO announced a while back that the sixth member of a single Indonesian family had died after contracting the virus strain known as H5N1, stock markets that were already jumpy plunged. The Indonesian rupiah, the Singapore dollar and the Thai baht all fell against the U.S. dollar.

In fact, the agency had concluded that there was no bird flu pandemic: The family members who contracted the disease were all blood relatives living in close proximity to one another. Other family members, unrelated by blood, did not get sick, suggesting both that those who died had a genetic susceptibility, and that the virus has not in fact mutated in such a way that it is spread easily from human to human. Markets concluded otherwise.

The lesson for the WHO, and for governments, is clear: Managing both the medical and the economic reaction to bird flu now requires superb communication of good information in real time. Yet information coming out of Indonesia has been sporadic and incomplete. This is both because understanding of the disease is not very good in general -- the health agency did say it was not raising its alert level to the pandemic phase -- and because the WHO is still understaffed in rural Indonesia and most everywhere else. Unofficial reports also indicate that medical facilities are so bad in parts of rural Indonesia that people there are reluctant to go to hospitals, because they see others enter them and die.

The long-term implications are also clear: Any international response plan that relies on sending caches of Tamiflu or another antidote into the less-developed world to stamp out early signs of an epidemic is unrealistic. Instead, the developed world needs to work harder on coordinating and targeting its work on vaccine production -- and on helping the WHO, which, despite all the scare stories about bird flu, still has neither the staff nor the funding to deal with a serious outbreak of infectious flu.

The WaPo is generally correct in the editorial, but it misunderstands some basic facts about the WHO: the member states control the information they have and won't release it to WHO if there might be economic blowback on them; vaccine technology is about 50 years out of date and we won't have a vaccine using the old technology which can be delivered to anything like the bulk of the population until years after a pandemic outbreak.

Our colleagues the reveres have more here this morning, with links to the long series on WHO they wrote last week.

Tropical Weather

TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC [National Weather Service-Tropical Prediction Center]
NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
530 PM EDT FRI JUN 09 2006

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...

SURFACE OBSERVATIONS INDICATE THAT PRESSURES ARE FALLING IN THE
NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND A CIRCULATION HAS FORMED BETWEEN
HONDURAS AND WESTERN CUBA. HOWEVER...SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT
THE THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY REMAINS POORLY ORGANIZED AT THIS TIME.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE BECOMING MORE FAVORABLE FOR
DEVELOPMENT AND A TROPICAL DEPRESSION COULD FORM AT ANY TIME. THIS
SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE SLOWLY NORTHWARD...BRINGING ADDITIONAL
HEAVY RAINS PRIMARILY TO THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND PORTIONS OF CUBA
DURING THE NEXT DAY OR TWO. AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT IS
SCHEDULED TO INVESTIGATE THIS SYSTEM TOMORROW AFTERNOON...IF
NECESSARY. ALL INTERESTS IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE
SOUTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF
THIS SYSTEM.

The first named tropical system last year became a tropical storm on June 11. This is looking to be another record year.

Making America Safer

I'm sure this isn't the type of terrorist George was thinking about when he gave his speech yesterday. Still, I feel al ot safer with this guy off of the street than I do with someone in Iraq.

Police foil planned abortion clinic bombing

AP
June 8, 2006

RIVERDALE, Md. - A man who told police he made a pipe bomb to attack an abortion clinic was arrested Thursday, shortly before the device went off in a friend’s home while authorities tried to disable it, according to court documents.

No one was injured by the explosion, which started a fire that burned the top floor of the Riverdale home, officials said.

Some friends of Robert F. Weiler Jr. had tipped off police about the 25-year-old’s plans Wednesday night.

Weiler then called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and surrendered to state troopers at a rest stop on Interstate 68 just after midnight. Investigators found a handgun and ammunition in his car, officials said.

According to an ATF affidavit, Weiler planned to bomb an abortion clinic in Greenbelt and use a .40-caliber handgun he had stolen from a friend to “shoot doctors who provided abortions.”

Still, I'll bet you he never missed church on Sundays and was a "nice and quiet" person who wouldn't harm a fly.

Dream On

A Good Day in Iraq
Will the new Iraqi government, and the Bush administration, build on a rare military success, or squander it?

Friday, June 9, 2006; A22

THE KILLING of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a big gain for the U.S. mission in Iraq and the country's new government, the more so because it comes at a critical moment. With one airstrike, U.S. forces deprived Iraq's insurgency -- diverse and fragmented though it is -- of its sole widely recognized leader, probably its biggest fundraiser and recruiter, and the organizer of some of the most spectacular and demoralizing attacks in Iraq, from the bombing of the United Nations headquarters three years ago to the beheadings of foreign hostages to the massacres of Shiite worshipers in Najaf and Karbala. Although al-Qaeda in Iraq makes up only a part of the Iraqi insurgency, it has been the organization most intent on fomenting sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites; the elimination of its leader will surely contribute to stanching that civil conflict.

The successful operation follows some of the darkest days of the war, when the kidnapping and killing of civilians in Baghdad seems to have reached new heights. It also coincides with the long-awaited selection of interior, defense and national security ministers for Iraq's new democratic government. As advocated by the United States, the appointees are professionals who are independent of sectarian parties and militias. The new defense minister, Abdul-Qadir Muhammed Jasim, commanded Iraqi forces during the successful clearing of insurgents from Fallujah in 2004; he should be able to work closely with U.S. commanders in deploying the Iraqi troops who are to begin taking responsibility for security in much of the country this year.
....
To do all this, the Iraqi government desperately needs continued U.S. military and economic support. That's why it was a little unnerving, in the middle of yesterday's celebrations, to hear President Bush speak of plans to hold high-profile consultations early next week on "how to best deploy America's resources in Iraq." U.S. commanders have been eager to reduce American troops from the current level of about 135,000 to 100,000 by this fall; the Pentagon may seize on the good news to justify the reduction. Both Americans and Iraqis would love to see U.S. troops come home -- and a redeployment might help Mr. Maliki politically, not to mention U.S. Republicans facing this fall's elections. Yet officials from both countries were unanimous in predicting yesterday that the challenge from the insurgency will continue to be severe. Perhaps U.S. troops can be drawn down without worsening that threat; but it would be tragic if, after so much suffering, Iraq's first democratic government were denied the means to succeed.

This is of a piece with all of the WaPo's editorializing on Iraq: fantasies at best, lies at worst. The death of Zarqawi is of absolutely no consequence to the prosecution of this illiegal, immoral war, period.

Not OurSpace

There were a couple of articles that I wanted to comment on from last week that deal with online privacy and social network sites. I know my students are huge fans of these sites and spend a great deal of time on them. However, I do wonder if they know what can happen to them if they put something up there that the school admins don't like? For example in School district to monitor student blogs from the Boston Healrd and in MySpace or OurSpace? in Salon this week (yes, you need to click through the advertisement... sorry).

Look. the kids know they don't have complete freedom of speech in the schools. At the one I work at, we require them to sign a student code of conduct at the start of the year that removes many of their Constitutional rights in this aera (especially to protest or to petition). This isn't new, but it offers the CYA that the administration needs in case something strange takes place. At the same time though, I don't think the schools should be trolling around on MySpace or Facebook or any of these other sites, unless there is clear evidence of a major threat to the school (ie: something more serious than, "Man, my history teacher stinks! I wish he'd drop dead." not that I'm encouraging any of my former students to say that about me...).

Naturally, Congress decided to jump on the bandwagon here, since they don't have any other pressing business at hand. In fact, this article shows what legislation is coming through so solve this *problem*.

After all, how long do we think it will be before the Pentagon starts to use this data all in the name of securing the nation, of course. There are ways to stop it, but t hat would require getting a Congress that cares more about a person's privacy than how much money someone can make with their personal information.

Rhyms with Witch

'Godless' author Coulter unknown at church she claims to attend

Max Blumenthal
Published: Thursday June 8, 2006

Appearing on the cover of her latest manifesto, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, adorned with a wooden crucifix necklace, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter takes on liberals on explicitly religious grounds. Invoking the sectarian rhetoric of the Christian right, Coulter denounces liberalism as "the opposition party to God," and "a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man's immortal soul."

Coulter fills the pages of Godless with attacks on Hollywood – a traditional Christian right boogeyman – and, quoting controversial Holocaust-denying columnist Joseph Sobran, assails public schools for teaching an "amalgam of liberalism, feminism, Darwinism, and the Playboy philosophy" rather than "Biblical truth." Coulter also calls the Episcopal Church, "barely even a church."

Yet Coulter is curiously reticent in Godless about her own religious convictions. Nowhere in her book, for instance, does Coulter declare whether she belongs to a particular religious denomination, nor does she state where – or even if – she attends religious services. An April 17, 2005 article in Time Magazine by John Cloud provided a rare description of Coulter's attendance of church, as Cloud suggested that she has been a regular attendee of New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, to which "she brings a lot of people…"

In his article, Cloud described accompanying Coulter to Redeemer:

Not long ago, I went to church with Coulter--Redeemer Presbyterian, an evangelical congregation in Manhattan. The actor Ron Silver had also tagged along--Coulter brings lots of people to church, including, at one time, an ex who is Muslim. Pastor Timothy Keller spoke of the importance of allowing one's heart to be "melted by the sense of God's grace because of what he did on the cross for you."

When contacted by Raw Story, however, Redeemer Presbyterian's Communications and Media Director Cregan Cooke could not confirm that Coulter had ever attended services at the church.

"The only thing I have heard is hearsay that she is an attender" of Redeemer, Cregan told Raw Story. "Our database shows that she is not a member."

We have a word for people like her: hypocrite.

Oversight Watch

Specter Offers Compromise on NSA Surveillance

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 9, 2006; A04

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has proposed legislation that would give President Bush the option of seeking a warrant from a special court for an electronic surveillance program such as the one being conducted by the National Security Agency.

Sen. Arlen Specter's approach modifies his earlier position that the NSA eavesdropping program, which targets international telephone calls and e-mails in which one party is suspected of links to terrorists, must be subject to supervision by the secret court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The new proposal specifies that it cannot "be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to gather foreign intelligence information or monitor the activities and communications of any person reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign enemy of the United States."

Bush has cited his constitutional authority as president as justification for undertaking the warrantless NSA surveillance. The White House and Vice President Cheney have said up to now that no additional legislation is necessary to bring the program within the law.

Specter's bill, introduced yesterday at a committee meeting, was a compromise worked out with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and designed to gather enough Republican support so it can be taken to the floor for a vote. During a conversation with Cheney yesterday afternoon first disclosed by an administration official, Specter (R-Pa.) said he arranged to have Justice Department officials begin reviewing his proposal.

Go ahead and roll over again, Arlen. It's just a Constitutional crisis and you are, after all, a Republican first and an American second, you spineless worm. Holding the idiot president of your party accountible for something? Not something you're going to do.

Foolin'

After Zarqawi, No Clear Path In Weary Iraq
Difficult Questions Surround Legacy of Insurgent Leader

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 9, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, June 8 -- Analysts and military spokesmen said Thursday that the death of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed Wednesday when two 500-pound bombs obliterated his hideout north of Baghdad, will not extinguish the sectarian conflict that he helped foment and that is now claiming many more lives in Iraq than his campaign of beheadings and bombings.

The slaying of the Jordanian-born guerrilla leader eliminated the biggest advocate of the extreme violence against civilians that has made the Iraq war so grisly. Zarqawi and his radical Sunni Arab group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, carried out suicide attacks that could kill 100 or more passersby in a flash of light and videotaped the last gasps of foreign hostages being decapitated.

But other crucial questions, analysts say, are thrown completely up into the air: whether other foreign fighters will show themselves equally eager to slaughter civilians, whether the Sunni insurgency will split into fragments or broaden its base and, above all, whether the Shiite-Sunni killing that Zarqawi's attacks helped unleash can be reined in.

"The immediate aftermath of this will probably be an upsurge of violence" as Sunni insurgents hurry to show that Zarqawi's killing has not broken the resistance, said Michael Clarke, an expert on terrorism at the International Policy Institute of King's College London.

"In the medium term, in the next month or two, it will probably help to downgrade sectarianism," Clarke said by telephone. "But the dynamic of sectarian violence is probably past the point of no return."

Just about everything you read about this in the MSM will be bullshit. This changes nothing, the "insurgency" (which is a bullshit word) aren't heirarchacal and your local commanders haven't really twigged to that yet. Yes, this is Viet Nam all over again.

Speaking Too Clearly

Fed chairman's efforts to clarify throw off markets

By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Thu, Jun. 08, 2006

The new chairman's rough patch began on April 27, when he signaled before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that after 16 consecutive interest-rate increases since June 2004, a pause might be in order. Stocks rallied.

Days later, however, in what he thought was a private conversation with a CNBC reporter, Bernanke said that the markets had misunderstood his message and that a pause was in no way certain. CNBC reported it on May 1, sparking a Wall Street roller-coaster ride.

Soon after, data came out suggesting that energy prices were driving inflation to the upper limits of the Fed's comfort zone. The implication: A late June rate increase was now more likely than a pause.

Bernanke's words in April had proved too optimistic, given that the Fed's main mission is to quell inflation, primarily by setting short-term interest rates.

Testifying before the Senate in late May, Bernanke apologized for "a lapse in judgment on my part" in talking loosely to a reporter. In the future, Bernanke said, he'd stick to formal channels to communicate to the public.

But even speaking that way roiled the markets. In a speech to a Washington conference on Monday, Bernanke left little doubt that future rate increases should be expected because price inflation had reached a danger zone.

The Fed chief also said that the U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing down. He pointed to slowing consumer spending, the cooling housing market and slower job growth. A slowing economy normally prompts an end to rate increases or spurs rate cuts to rekindle economic embers. But Bernanke left no doubt that he's more worried about rising inflation than slowing growth - and their combination is troubling.

"These are unwelcome developments," he said.

The Dow Jones industrials promptly plunged 200 points, and stocks slumped further through the week. What the markets heard was that rate hikes might extend beyond the next expected bump up to 5.25 percent at the Fed's June 28-29 meeting.

Why such volatility? Bernanke, after all, was just engaging in the "plain speak" he'd promised.

Blame Greenspan, who for more than 18 years as Fed chairman developed an oft-impenetrable language to communicate the Fed's thinking.

"I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said," Greenspan once famously quipped.

The markets, it appears, don't want straight talk.

"The markets and Bernanke haven't quite learned how to listen to each other," said James Glassman, a senior economist for investment bank JP Morgan Chase. "I'm sure he thinks he's leaving the door open ... but the market needs simple messages, and the markets have sort of been used to getting spoon-fed."

The danger in Bernanke's plain talk is that it creates expectations that can be dashed by new contradictory data. When he said that future Fed rate decisions would be dependent on emerging data but looked favorable for a pause, he didn't leave the Fed much wiggle room for unexpected data - as the next set of inflation numbers promptly proved.

Greenspan avoided trapping himself in pronunciations that upset the markets, preferring carefully worded vague statements that led market analysts to debate endlessly what he meant. That left him room to act as he saw fit.

Bernanke's signals, on the contrary, set off market forces that now complicate his future rate decisions.

Two prominent former Federal Reserve governors interviewed by Knight Ridder suggested that Bernanke's problems are less self-inflicted than a reflection of how difficult it is to determine when to stop raising interest rates.

"The problem here is that Bernanke came in when the easy work was over. Bernanke was not able to give the kind of more precise guidance" that comes earlier in a rate-raising cycle, said Laurence Meyer, a Fed governor from 1996 to 2002.

Conducting monetary policy is like navigating in fog.

Night Off

I'll be live blogging from the Take Back America Conference in DC next week as one of the featured bloggers. I'm going light on posting this week to give my arms and hands a rest: I'm having repetitive motion injuries and the reveres give me a terrible hard time if I don't take care of myself. I've been blogging seven days a week for nearly three years and this is hard on the bod. Only rest works on these injuries, so I just have to take it easy this week.

Treat this as an open thread for whatever is on your mind this evening.

Bizarre

VERBATIM

Thursday, June 8, 2006; Page A21

During yesterday's Senate debate on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) stood by a large portrait of his family and offered the following:

"As you see here, and I think this is maybe the most important prop we'll have during the entire debate, my wife and I have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. I'm really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we've never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship."

Failure is Inevitable

Sidney Blumenthal's realpolitik:

The Bush way of war has been ahistorical and apolitical, and therefore warped strategically, putting absolute pressure on the military to provide an outcome it cannot provide -- "victory." From the start, Bush has placed the military at a disadvantage, and not only because he put the Army in the field in insufficient numbers, setting it upon a task it could not accomplish. U.S. troops are trained for conventional military operations, not counterinsurgency, which requires the utmost restraint in using force. The doctrinal fetish of counterterrorism substitutes for and frustrates counterinsurgency efforts.

Conventional fighting takes two primary forms: chasing and killing foreign fighters as if they constituted the heart of the Sunni insurgency and seeking battles like Fallujah as if any would be decisive. Where battles don't exist, assaults on civilian populations, often provoked by insurgents, are misconceived as battles. While this is not a version of some video game, it is still an illusion.

Many of the troops are on their third or fourth tour of duty, and 40 percent of them are reservists whose training and discipline are not up to the standards of their full-time counterparts. Trained for combat and gaining and holding territory, equipped with superior firepower and technology, they are unprepared for the disorienting and endless rigors of irregular warfare. The Marines, in particular, are trained for "kinetic" warfare, constantly in motion, and imbued with a warrior culture that sets them apart from the Army. Marines, however well disciplined, are especially susceptible because of their perpetual state of high adrenaline to the inhuman pressures of irregular warfare.

As Bush's approach has stamped failure on the military, he insists ever more intensely on the inevitability of victory if only he stays the course. Ambiguity and flexibility, essential elements of any strategy for counterinsurgency, are his weak points. Bush may imagine a scene in which the insurgency is conclusively defeated, perhaps even a signing ceremony, as on the USS Missouri, or at least an acknowledgment, a scrap of paper, or perhaps the silence of the dead, all of them. But his infatuation with a purely military solution blinds him to how he thwarts his own intentions. Jeffrey Record, a prominent strategist at a U.S. military war college, told me: "Perhaps worse still, conventional wisdom is dangerously narcissistic. It completely ignores the enemy, assuming that what we do determines success or failure. It assumes that only the United States can defeat the United States, an outlook that set the United States up for failure in Vietnam and for surprise in Iraq."

Haditha is a symptom of the fallacy of Bush's military solution. The alleged massacre occurred after the administration's dismissal of repeated warnings about the awful pressures on an army of occupation against an insurgency. Conflating a population that broadly supports an insurgency with a terrorist enemy and indoctrinating the troops with a sense of revenge for Sept. 11 easily leads to an erasure of the distinction between military and civilian targets. Once again, a commander in chief has failed to learn the lessons of Algeria and Vietnam.

Bush's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions has set an example that in this unique global war on terror, in order to combat those who do not follow the rules of war, we must also abandon those rules. This week a conflict has broken out in the Pentagon over Rumsfeld's proposed revision of the Army Field Manual for interrogation of prisoners, which would excise Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions that forbids "humiliating and degrading treatment." And, this week, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., proposed a bill that would make the administration provide "a full accounting on any clandestine prison or detention facility currently or formerly operated by the United States Government, regardless of location, where detainees in the global war on terrorism are or were being held," the number of detainees, and a "description of the interrogation procedures used or formerly used on detainees at such prison or facility and a determination, in coordination with other appropriate officials, on whether such procedures are or were in compliance with United States obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture." The administration vigorously opposes the bill.

Above all, the Bush way of war violates the fundamental rule of warfare as defined by military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz: War is politics by other means. In other words, it is not the opposite of politics, or its substitute, but its instrument, and by no means its only one. "Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd," wrote Clausewitz, "for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."

Rumsfeld's Pentagon, meanwhile, reinforces Bush's rigidity as essential to "transformational" warfare; by now, however, the veneer has been peeled off to reveal sheer self-justification. Rumsfeld is incapable of telling the president that there is no battle, no campaign, that can win the war. Saving Rumsfeld is Bush's way of staying the course. But it also sends a signal of unaccountability from the top down. The degradation of U.S. forces in Iraq is a direct consequence of the derangement of political leadership in Washington. And not even the elder Bush can persuade the president that his way of war is a debacle.

While CNN is having its daily wargasm over the death of Al-Zarqawi, Sidney captures reality, and the networks once again miss the point that war isn't driven by celebrities. Bush has turned this country into a pariah state.

Who Is On Your Side?

Halt Is Urged for Trials of Antibiotic in Children
By GARDINER HARRIS

A Food and Drug Administration official called in May for a drug company to halt clinical trials of an antibiotic in children because the drug could be deadly, according to internal memorandums sent to other F.D.A. officials.

The drug, Ketek, made by Sanofi-Aventis, is being tested as a treatment for ear infections and tonsillitis in nearly 4,000 infants and children in more than a dozen countries, including the United States, according to postings on a government Web site. But Ketek, which is currently approved for use only in adults, has been reported to cause liver failure, blurred vision and loss of consciousness in adults.

"How does one justify balancing the risk of fatal liver failure against one day less of ear pain?" Dr. Rosemary Johann-Liang, an official in the Office of Drug Safety at the agency, wrote in one of the memorandums, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Sanofi-Aventis is sponsoring four clinical trials in children ages 6 months to 13 years, according the Web site posting. The drug agency approved plans for the trials.

There is growing evidence that Ketek is unusually toxic, according to a recent review by F.D.A. safety officials. Twelve adult patients in the United States have suffered liver failure, including four who died; 23 others suffered serious liver injury.

The safety officials wrote in their review that the agency should consider forcing Sanofi-Aventis to withdraw Ketek from the market, severely restrict its uses, even in adults, or add a prominent warning to its label about potentially fatal side effects.

More than five million prescriptions for Ketek have been written in the United States since its approval two years ago.

Asked about the memorandum written by Dr. Johann-Liang, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, Susan Bro, said that it was "a preliminary, raw assessment" and that "the final decision will be made by experts who have the full benefit of a large section of opinion and scientific fact."

Melissa Feltmann, a spokeswoman for Sanofi-Aventis, said in an e-mail message, "We are engaged in ongoing discussions with the F.D.A. regarding Ketek."

Other antibiotics cause liver failure, but Ketek seems to do so almost four times as often, the safety officials concluded in the review.

With this fatality rate in adults, what the fuck were they thinking about even trying this in kids? Isn't it nice to know your government is looking out for you?

Posted by Melanie at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No Difference

U.S. Strike Kills Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 — Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American air strike on an isolated safe house north of Baghdad at 6.15 p.m. local time on Wednesday, top United States and Iraqi officials said today.

At a joint news conference with Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said Zarqawi's body had been positively identified by fingerprints, "facial recognition" and "known scars." He said seven of Zarqawi's associates had also been killed in the strike.

The announcement of Zarqawi's death, shortly before noon today in Baghdad, appeared to mark a major watershed in the war. With a $25 million bounty the United States had on his head, the Jordan-born Zarqawi has been the most wanted man in Iraq for his leadership of Islamic terrorist groups that have carried out many of the most brutal attacks of the war, including scores of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

"Today, we have managed to put an end to Zarqawi," said a beaming Mr. Maliki, who took office three weeks ago at the head of Iraq's first full-term government since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He said the death should be a warning to other insurgent leaders. "They should stop now," he said. "They should review their situation and resort to logic while there is still time."

The announcement came on the same day that Mr. Maliki's new government took a crucial step forward by winning parliamentary approval of nominees for interior and defense minister, which had been blocked by disagreements between political parties.

American and Iraqi officials all muted their high spirits today with a recognition that violence is bound to continue, a point underscored by a midday blast in eastern Baghdad that killed at least a dozen people, news services reported.

"Unfortunately, this kind of violence has become routine," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a televised interview.

Zarqawi, an adopted name taken from the town of Zarqa in Jordan where the insurgent leader was raised, had assumed an almost mythic status for his long run of terrorist attacks and statements issued on Islamic militant Web sites that declared his goal to be the establishment of a new "caliphate" in Iraq. The term is taken from the term given to the vast areas of the Arab world that came under strict Islamic rule within 100 years of the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century A.D.

Bush is looking for any little piece of good news so this is going to give Wolf Blitzer something to talk about all afternoon, but this has no strategic significance whatsoever. NPR wants to treat this like a "step forward." Sorry, that's bullshit. In Fourth Generation Warfare, this is just moving around the deck chairs.

Art Imitates Life

Rumsfeld Painting Expected to Be a Hit in Baghdad

By HAMZA HENDAWI, AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (June 7) - Muayad Muhsin was both inspired and enraged by a photo of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld slumped on a seat with his army boots up in front of him.

"It symbolized America's soulless might and arrogance," said Muhsin, whose similar painting of Rumsfeld will be unveiled in an exhibition opening in Baghdad on Monday.

The painting, expected to be the show's main attraction, and the rest of the exhibit illustrate the simmering anger of Iraqis with the United States as the country continues to endure violence, sectarian tensions and crime three years after Saddam Hussein's ouster.

Muhsin's Rumsfeld painting is not the first artistic expression by Iraqis of the perceived injustices by the United States in their country, but it is the first to depict a top member of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. After Bush, most Iraqis see Rumsfeld as the man behind the invasion of their oil-rich country and the chief architect of U.S. military actions in Iraq.

Those who closely follow him remember his infamous comment - "Stuff happens" - when asked why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness in the Iraqi capital in the weeks that followed their capture of the city in April 2003.

Another memorable Rumsfeld comment, also made in 2003, was his suggestion that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were deeply hidden in Iraq. "It's a big country," he said.

Muhsin first saw the Rumsfeld photo about 18 months ago. He went to work right away, but did not finish the painting - entitled "Picnic" - until about two weeks ago.

The oil-on-canvas, 5-by-3-foot work shows Rumsfeld in a blue jacket, tie, khaki pants and army boots reading from briefing papers. His boots are resting on what appears to be an ancient stone.

While Rumsfeld's image is true to life, he sits next to a partially damaged statue of a lion standing over a human - a traditional image of strength during the ancient Babylon civilization. The statue's stone base is ripped open, revealing shelves from which white piece of papers are flying away, later turning into birds soaring high into an ominously gray sky.

Muhsin said the symbolism has to do with Washington's repeated assertions in the months before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction, the cornerstone in the Bush administration's argument for going to war.

No such weapons turned up, but the Bush administration maintained that removing Saddam's regime alone justified the decision to invade Iraq.

"They did not find the weapons and, instead, found the annals of an ancient civilization that turned into birds of love, peace and knowledge," said Muhsin, himself a native of the area around the central Iraqi city of Babil, or Babylon, south of Baghdad.

"Rumsfeld's boots deliver a message from America: 'We rule the world,"' Muhsin, 41, told The Associated Press in an interview. "It speaks of America's total indifference to what the rest of the world thinks."

The musicians (Dixie Chicks, Springsteen, Neil Young, Pearl Jam) and now the visual artists are telling the true story of the Bush years.

via Huffington Post

Blogger Blues

I got a chance to get out of the house and have lunch with a friend today, something I can rarely do. The weather is beautiful so I should spend a little more time outside.

I'm having a bad hands day, however, so, rather than risk a scolding by the reveres, I'm going to take the rest of the day off. The new trackball mouse helps some, but I find that my mouse hand just hurts in different places. Rest is the only thing that really helps.

Dispersion Principal

Reports Reveal Katrina's Impact on Population
By RICK LYMAN

After the twin barrages of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, the City of New Orleans emerged nearly 64 percent smaller, having lost an estimated 278,833 residents, according to the Census Bureau's first study of the area since the storms.

Those who remained in the city were significantly more likely to be white, slightly older and a bit more well-off, the bureau concluded in two reports that were its first effort to measure the social, financial and demographic impact of the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.

The bureau found that while New Orleans lost about two-thirds of its population, adjacent St. Bernard Parish dropped a full 95 percent, falling to just 3,361 residents by Jan. 1. The surveys do not include the influx in both areas that has occurred this year as more residents begin to rebuild.

While the New Orleans area lost population, the Houston metropolitan area emerged with more than 130,000 new residents, many of them hurricane evacuees. Whites made up a slightly smaller percentage of Houston's population — 62.8 percent of the city in January compared with 64.8 percent last July, a month before Hurricane Katrina hit.

In Harris County, which includes Houston, median household income fell to $43,044 from $44,517, while New Orleans area's actually rose, to $43,447 from $39,793.

The physical impact of the hurricanes is well documented. Now, with these reports, bureau officials said they hoped to begin drawing into sharper focus the human landscape, showing in stark statistics how the storm's impact was felt most keenly by the poor, members of minorities and renters.

"One of the keys for me is that the data we are seeing really supports the anecdotal stories we've been hearing for months," said Lisa Blumerman, deputy chief of the bureau's American Community Survey. "We now have quantitative data that supports the stories from the storm."

One of the reports looked solely at population gains and losses, while the second studied demographic shifts before and after the storm.

The reports' findings had been expected, said William H. Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution. Still, he said, there were some small surprises.

It was not only New Orleans but also the entire metropolitan region that became whiter, less poor and more mobile, Mr. Frey said. At the same time, he said, assumptions that the evacuees who went to nearby Baton Rouge, where the population grew by nearly 15,000, were disproportionately poor and black were proven incorrect. A more middle-class group settled there, while the poorer and more vulnerable, who had less choice about where they landed, went to more distant cities.

This is a first glimpse at what happens to highly stressed, economically marginal populations in the way of natural disasters and is a worthwhile read. I'm casting my eyes on maps of the east and Gulf coasts and wondering which other fragile populations we'll be learning about this year.

The Soldier's Wife

In today's Stars and Stripes:

Iraq mission not essential

I have spent two of the last three years without my husband. He is serving his second tour in Iraq. I am not a complainer, but I am absolutely fed up with the Army. Everyone seems quick to point out that soldiers “signed up” for this. When my husband joined the Army, deployments were few and far between and even when they did occur, six months was the absolute worst-case scenario. No one ever dreamed of yearlong deployments, time after time.

It is nearly impossible for a marriage to survive under these conditions. I am an independent woman, but I got married so that I could share my life with my husband. The only sharing we are able to do is by short phone calls or e-mails.

Iraq is totally different from any other deployment. The Navy goes out and floats around in the ocean for six months. Big deal. The Army is “boots on the ground” in a war zone. It’s bad enough that my husband is taken away for a whole year, but the stress of worrying about him is nearly incapacitating at times. No one is safe in Iraq.

The consequences and fallout from Iraq will be seen for decades to come. The children left without fathers or mothers, the maimed and crippled soldiers whose lives have been forever changed, the breakup of homes and families, and the resulting psychological problems will haunt America for years to come.

There is nothing in Iraq worth the life of one American soldier. There are so many problems at home in the United States that should be fixed before we worry about what is going on half a world away. Imagine the good that those billions of dollars could do at home.

Bottom line: My husband signed up to protect and defend the United States of America. America was not attacked by Iraq or Saddam Hussein. Following is a quote from George H.W. Bush’s 1998 book “A World Transformed”: “I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. … To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero … assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.” No truer words were ever spoken.

Debbie Ray
Fort Sill, Okla.

Photo Op

WaPo's Dan Froomkin reports on the increasing bizarrity of 1600 Pennsylvania:

Off to the Border

Bush flies to Artesia, N.M., and Laredo, Tex., today to stump for his immigration proposals.

Ed Henry reports on CNN: "The jury is out on whether yet another trip down to the border will help the president break the stalemate on Capitol Hill over immigration reform, but it could help the White House in their efforts in trying to rebuild the president's image with another photo op down at the border, just like last month, when he headed down to the Arizona-Mexico border to highlight efforts to crack down on border security.

"You'll remember we saw some pictures of the president on an all- terrain vehicle, inspecting border activities. These trips square directly with what Time magazine reported back in April about what they referred to as an informal five-point recovery plan for the president by the new White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten. Point number one on that list, beef up the number of agents along the border, get the president down there to actually take some pictures. And Time magazine quoted one proponent of the Bolten plan as saying, 'It will be more guys with guns and badges. Think of the visuals. The president can go down and meet with the new recruits, he can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go around on an ATV.' "

Julie Mason blogs for the Houston Chronicle: "En route to Artesia, Air Force One is landing in Roswell, N.M. And today's date is 6/6/06, if anyone is keeping track."

Impure Politics

Base Assumptions
Why Should the Faithful Believe Bush Now?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, June 6, 2006; A15

This month's offensive by President Bush and his allies in Congress against gay marriage and flag burning proves one thing: The Republican Party thinks its base of social conservatives is a nest of dummies who have no memories and respond like bulls whenever red flags are waved in their faces.

The people who should be angry this week are not liberals or gays or lesbians, but the president's most loyal supporters. After using the gay-marriage issue shamelessly in the 2004 campaign, Bush and Republican leaders left opponents of gay marriage out in the cold as they concentrated on the party's real priorities: privatizing Social Security and cutting taxes on rich people.

When Bush was at his position of maximum strength after the 2004 election, did he use his political energy on behalf of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? Not at all. In an interview with The Post on Jan. 14, 2005, he dismissed the question, arguing that since many senators felt that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was already an effective bar to the spread of gay marital unions, there was no point in fighting for a constitutional change.

"Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen," Bush said then. "I'd take their admonition seriously."

On Jan. 24, 2005, Republican Senate leaders announced their top 10 legislative priorities. The marriage amendment was nowhere to be seen.

At the time, social conservatives knew they were getting rolled. In mid-January, a group of them expressed their dismay in a letter to Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser.
....
Social conservatives, who are a lot smarter than their leaders think, should watch the Senate closely this month. My bet is that their so-called champions will fight much harder on behalf of the interests of the affluent than for the "values" that conservative politicians proclaim with such pious urgency whenever they're in danger of losing an election.

I dunno, EJ. If social conservatives are so much smarter, why are they still tuning in to Rush?

Tuesday Business

While I'm working on my laundry, I'll set you the same puzzle I've given myself: use the word stochastically in a sentence.

The Gifts of Freedom

No Escaping Iraq Violence
Gunmen abduct more than 50 at a bus zone in Baghdad, where daily life can be torn apart without warning.
By Megan K. Stack and Saif Rasheed, Times Staff Writers
June 6, 2006

BAGHDAD — Clad in camouflage uniforms, the gunmen came peeling through the thick morning heat in police trucks. They stopped at a downtown strip of travel companies where Iraqis gather each morning to board buses bound for the safer lands of Syria and Jordan.

The gunmen leaped to the ground, witnesses said, and they worked fast. They seized more than 50 bystanders, pulling men away from their families and hauling drivers from behind the wheels of the buses. They handcuffed the men, blindfolded them and stuffed them into the backs of the trucks like human loot. They covered some of their captives with sheets.

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And then they were gone, slamming doors and speeding off into the brilliant morning sunlight. It was only 9 o'clock in a city where security has come unraveled, just another mundane scene that splintered suddenly into violence.

"Those are criminals going after the ransom," said Saad Tawil, a 42-year-old manager of one of the travel companies clustered on the street in downtown Baghdad. "They will see who is important or rich, and who is not, after interrogating them."

But other mass kidnappings that have struck the capital this year remain unsolved. In some cases, the victims have never turned up, living or dead.

The mass kidnapping came one day after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was forced to concede that Iraq's warring factions were too mutually distrustful to agree on who should run the security services. Having suspended indefinitely a parliament vote on those key ministries, Maliki has left the army and police leadership dangling in a vacuum at a time when bloodshed in Baghdad, and across Iraq, has spiraled upward.

In Baghdad, leaving home to work, shop or visit family has become an increasingly dangerous proposition. Violence rears up without warning; residents navigate a citywide obstacle course of roadside bombs, shootouts and security checkpoints.

The city just had its deadliest month since U.S.-led forces invaded the country in 2003, new Iraqi government documents indicate. More people were shot, stabbed or otherwise violently killed in May than in any other month since the invasion, according to Health Ministry statistics. The figure does not include slain soldiers or civilians killed in bombings, on whom autopsies are not usually performed.

Last month alone, 1,398 bodies were brought to Baghdad's central morgue, the ministry said. All over the city and out into the provinces, corpses surface on a daily basis in garbage dumps, in abandoned cars or along roadsides. They often bear marks of bondage and torture.

The attacks are frequently characterized by their brazen nature. Gunmen climbed onto a Baghdad bus Monday and killed at least two Shiite students, an Interior Ministry source said.

Over the weekend, masked gunmen set up a roadblock north of Baghdad, stopped a passing bus and ordered the men to disembark. Dividing the Sunnis from the Shiites, they told the Shiites they were "traitors" who would be killed on religious principle, a witness told the Associated Press.

The assailants shot their victims execution-style. When they were done, 24 passengers were dead. Most of them were teenage university students and elderly men.

Cry "havoc" and let slip the dogs of war....

War is not "waged" so much as it is "unleashed" and it is not a tame force.

Walking Down the Aisle

I've spent the day listening to all the CNN yack about "gay marriage" all day today. In many ways, this is nothing more than presidential affirmation of a kind of political hate speech, and I want to show you the ways that this works.

Civil/statutory law recognizes marriage as a domestic contract, with rights and responsibilities which are guaranteed and enforceable, as are all contracts. The state's interest in such contracts do not extend beyond the courts' protections of those rights and responsibilities and the determination that both parties have the necessary legal standing to make such a contractual relationship. In this regard, what Bush and the Republicans have done today is create a special class of people who are unable to enter into a contractual relationship which is guaranteed to all other competent adults. This is a human rights issue. Privileging straight people with rights unavailable to a discriminated class ought to be of concern to all of us.

I heard a long list of peculiar ideas of why sexual orientation is categorically different than race today, none of which have any merit in the area of torts, contracts and domestic law. The standard set by Loving v. Virginia which struck down the anti-miscegenation laws in the South ought to be the guiding precedent for lawmaking today in the area of domestic law. The argument that "this is the way we have always done it" privileges tradition over evolving social standards and the Constitution. If the state has an interest in stable families, how does allowing more of them threaten marriage? If marriage is under so much threat, how come we haven't criminalized infidelity? Why is divorce legal?

Since there is nothing in statutory law or the states' interests in prohibiting a marriage contract between consenting adults, the objections must come from someplace else.

Let's look at the theological arguments. While the Catholic Church does make this argument, it doesn't hold any water with a serious systematic theologian. If you look at the branch of theological studies called "theological anthropology," is the human person divisible in to classes of persons who have different standing with regard to their relationships with God, each other and all that is? The Catholic Church speaks with a forked tongue on this issue, calling the "homosexual state" "objectively disordered." This is the only class of persons so labeled by their very ontology, that is, who they simply are. The Church is willing to say the same about some behaviors, but only one class of persons is given this judgement by their very being. This does not hold up to objective anthropological scrutiny and condemns some persons to a secondary status by an accident of birth, genes or environment or some combination about which we still don't know much. We see gay people who desire and acheive loving, stable and committed relationships. The idea that they somehow fall into a secondary class of "grace" doesn't pass the smell test. If adultery, abuse, disparagement and all of the other indignities that people can visit on each other can be atoned for and forgiven and returned to a state of grace, the idea that there is a state of being which cannot be is nothing more than classism and cannot be taken theologically seriously.

Those who wish to make the Biblical argument are restricted to the Old Testament and I recommend some special study of the Book of Leviticus. Homosexuality is forbidden with the same set of prohibitions like dress codes which have fallen out of both Jewish and Christian mores. I believe we gave up the death penalty for adultery a while back. One the other hand, both traditions give pride of place to the Decalogue, the Ten Commandmants, in which we allow without state sanctions some behaviors which are clearly forbidden by God (and I'm speaking metaphorically here. We all agree that adultery is a categorically bad behavior, for example, but it isn't a felony any more than envy is.)

If the civil, theological and Biblical arguments for forbidding same sex marriages don't hold up, we are left with the last argument of scoundrels, "that's the way we have always done it." As the Supreme Court demonstrated in Loving, it is an argument which doesn't hold up either as a legal argument.

The state is forbidden from privileging any one theological argument over another, so the theological and biblical arguments are not available to the legislative branch in this case.

The lesbian couple down the block have exactly the same set of struggles to get the bills paid on time, schlepp the kid to the soccer league, figure out what to make for dinner and try to figure out when the laundry done that the rest of us do. Maybe they have sex a little differently (but not so much) than I do, but, so what?

We don't have a 50% divorce rate in this country because of gay couples, and you can take that to the bank.

Learn from the Neighbours

6 face explosives charges in alleged plot
Last Updated Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:37:48 EDT
CBC News

Six of 17 suspects arrested over the weekend in connection with an alleged plot to bomb Ontario targets have been charged with planning to cause a deadly explosion.

The charges, released Monday morning, reveal that Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleem, Qayyum Abdul Jamal and Saad Khalid have been accused of the most serious charges in the alleged plot.

If convicted, they face sentences of life in prison.

All of the suspects have been charged with offences under the Anti-terrorism Act, which was passed by Parliament months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.

Twelve of the men have been charged with knowingly participating, directly or indirectly, in the activity of a terrorist group.

Those charges relate to activities in Mississauga, Ont., Toronto and the Township of Ramara, which is located about 150 kilometres north of Toronto.

Three of the suspects have been charged with importing firearms and prohibited ammunition, and supplying prohibited weapons.

Ten of the men are charged with engaging in terrorism-related training. Residents in Ramara reported hearing gunshots from an area where men were seen dressed in camouflage gear.

All 17 of the accused will appear in court Tuesday for a bail hearing.

The CBC story doesn't tell you that this was a police/RCMP sting. My skepticism about the Harper administration is sufficient for me to suspect an entrapment put-up job for the purpose of using fear in Canadian politics as has been so successfully prosecuted down here. Canadians can expect their own Canadian themed color coded terror alert scheme before the end of the month.

Farewell, Fluffer

WaPo's Dan Froomkin offers a send off for NYT White House Stenographer Liz Bumiller:

Bye Bye Bumiller

Bidding farewell to the White House beat after almost five years, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller on Sunday offered up a collection of anecdotes in an attempt to clear up what she considers the most important "misperception" about the beat: that it's an awful job.

Her piece offers no great insight into the president ("like just about everyone, he can be short-tempered, impatient and brusque"). And, much like the man she's so dutifully covered, Bumiller declined to engage her critics.

Bumiller, for instance, doesn't address the widespread concern that an overly credulous press corps has been complicit in its own emasculation at the hands of a White House that sees no obligation to explain itself to anyone. Her "White House Letters" in particular have often been cited as examples of fluffy appeasement.

She does write that to "report effectively on one of the most secretive White Houses ever" she "worked the phones in concentric circles inward, from members of Congress who were mad at the president, to put-upon State Department officials, to those ubiquitous 'Republicans close to the White House.'"

But as she herself notes: "Not incidentally, the anonymous Republicans were often White House-sanctioned leakers -- lobbyists, former party officials -- who would pass on information West Wing officials wanted out. . . . White House officials then said they had no idea where these terrible leaks were coming from."

Quite the legacy.

Republican international PR...

New policies on prisoners being drawn up by the Pentagon will reportedly omit a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment." Citing unidentified but knowledgeable military officials, the Los Angeles Times said the step would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift by the US government away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

'Cause you know, we can't have any impediments to fighting the terrorists.

The Cost of Threats

Crude Oil Rises as Iran Says U.S. Risks Disrupting Shipments

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose to the highest in three weeks after Iran's supreme leader said the U.S. risked disrupting oil shipments from the Persian Gulf region.

The U.S. could ``seriously endanger energy flow in the region'' by acting against Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said yesterday. Iran, the fourth-biggest oil producer, borders the Strait of Hormuz. About 17 million barrels a day is transported through the waterway. Countries along the Gulf produce 27 percent of the world's oil, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

``The Iranians are playing hardball,'' said Steve Bellino, senior vice president for energy risk management at Fimat USA Inc. in New York. ``The U.S. and Europeans are holding firm, so we are heading for a showdown.''

Crude oil for July delivery rose 57 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $72.90 a barrel at 11:39 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures reached $73.84, the highest since May 11. Oil touched $75.35 on April 21 and 24, the highest since trading began in 1983. Prices are up 32 percent from a year ago.

Regular unleaded is back above $3.00/gallon in my neighborhood after a brief trip into the $2.90's last week. I noticed it was well above $3.10 when I was in Connecticut on the weekend. This is the price we are paying for Bush's sabre rattling.

The End of Journalism

David Carr:
Show Me the Bodies

FOR war photography, Vietnam remains the bloody yardstick. During the Tet offensive, on Feb. 9, 1968, Time magazine ran a story that was accompanied by photos showing dozens of dead American soldiers stacked like cordwood. The images remind that the dead are both the most patient and affecting of all subjects.

The Iraq war is a very different war, especially as rendered at home. While pictures of Iraqi dead are ubiquitous on television and in print, there are very few images of dead American soldiers. (We are offered pictures of the grievously wounded, but those are depictions of hope and sacrifice in equal measure.) A comprehensive survey done last year by James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times found that in a six-month period in which 559 Americans and Western allies died, almost no pictures were published of the American dead in the mainstream print media.

Not much has changed since then, even though soldiers from all branches continue to perish (although not at same deadly rate as in Vietnam, where more than 1,000 soldiers died in some months in 1968). Is there a taboo, political or otherwise, on the publication of photos of women and men who paid the ultimate price in Iraq?

There is a very real public appetite for unalloyed images of the Iraq war. "The War Tapes," a documentary filmed by National Guardsmen from New Hampshire on convoy security in the deadly Sunni Triangle, won the Tribeca Film Festival's documentary award and has picked up enthusiastic reviews. "Baghdad ER," HBO's gory look inside battlefield medicine, has been seen by 3.5 million viewers and is the cable network's most-watched news documentary in two years.

EVEN the tabloids are looking to the war to sell magazines through what now seem like forbidden images. Shock, a new photo tabloid magazine from Hachette Filipacchi, ran a blood-red battlefield image on its cover and eight pages inside drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. The photos were gruesome, but nothing that was not manifest in the pages of Life, Newsweek and Time during the Vietnam War.

In part because the current administration restricted access to returning coffins from Iraq, conspiracy theorists suggest that a sanitized visual narrative is being constructed for an increasingly unpopular war. But the hardy few Western journalists who are still finding a way to shoot pictures in Iraq say that it is practical, not political, realities that dictate what we see.

A study of 200 American and international journalists covering the Iraq war, done by American University School of Communication in 2004, found that 17 percent of them worked for organizations that would not publish pictures of the dead, and 42 percent had rules discouraging the practice. Absent government censorship, there are a variety of taste issues and commercial considerations — a dead body is never a good adjacency for ads — and a squeamish public aesthetic that can lead to germane but grisly photographs being left on the darkroom floor.

In November 2004, Stefan Zaklin, a photographer for the European Photopress Agency, was embedded with a United States Army company whose captain was shot and killed entering a house in Fallujah. He took a gritty, horrific portrait of the fallen soldier that ran in several European publications, but has only shown up in United States publications in stories about photos that went unpublished.

"There's really no way to know why this image wasn't published at all in the United States," he wrote in the blog Fabrica Forma Fotografia. "Every editor — whether a photo editor or their superior — who made the decision not to publish this picture had a reason. They might all sound different after one listen. But listen again, and you will hear the grinding wheels of the free market turning American journalism into dust."

Fixing a Non-Problem

Reward for the Hereditary Elite . . .

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, June 5, 2006; A15

It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.

The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today's Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright.

The nation faces rising inequality. Since 1980 the gap between the earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth has jumped by almost 50 percent. The United States is by some measures the most unequal society in the rich world and the most unequal that it's been since the 1920s. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Identify the most progressive federal tax and repeal it.

The nation faces the prospect that inequality will damage meritocracy. When the distance between top and bottom widens, it becomes harder to traverse the gap; people of low birth are stuck at the bottom, and human talent is wasted. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take the tax that limits what the super-rich pass on to their children and get rid of it. Send a message to hereditary elites: Go ahead, entrench yourselves!

For most of the past century, the case for the estate tax was regarded as self-evident. People understood that government has to be paid for, and that it makes sense to raise part of the money from a tax on "fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits," as Theodore Roosevelt put it. The United States is supposed to be a country that values individuals for their inherent worth, not for their inherited worth. The estate tax, like a cigarette tax or a carbon tax, is a tool for reducing a socially damaging phenomenon -- the emergence of a hereditary upper class -- as well as a way of raising money.
....
People often remark on the perversity of popular support for estate-tax repeal. A majority wants to abolish the tax, even though only the richest 2 percent of households have ever had to pay it. Yet this shoot-your-own-foot weirdness is easily explained: Most people just don't know that, under the law's current provisions, a couple can bequeath $4 million without paying a penny to the government.

But I'm fascinated by the spectacle of elite support for this policy. How can the president and the abolitionists in Congress, who understand the tax and its details, possibly want to kill it? They all say they accept the principle that the tax system should be fair -- Bush officials are constantly claiming that their tax cuts are progressive. They all accept the principle that free trade and competition get the best out of American firms, so what about subjecting rich heirs to competition from ordinary Americans?

Repealing the estate tax is like erecting protectionist barriers around the hereditary elite. It is anti-meritocratic and unfair -- and antithetical to this nation's best traditions.

ElderLawAnswers tells us:

House Democrats have released a report detailing the effect that a repeal of the tax would have on the estates of oil company executives and members of the Bush cabinet. According to the report, estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million, and would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The family of retired ExxonMobil chief Lee R. Raymond would receive a $164 million windfall.

Do the ordinary working people who support the repeal understand that they are basically handing a gift to the wealthiest families in this country for which they themselves are going to have to pay in increased taxes? No, they don't, and no one is going to tell them.

There are real problems in this country, like the 46 million people who have no access to health care but this is how the Republicans chose to spend their time and our money.

You Are A Market, Not a Patient

Medical Privacy Law Nets No Fines
Lax Enforcement Puts Patients' Files At Risk, Critics Say

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 5, 2006; A01

In the three years since Americans gained federal protection for their private medical information, the Bush administration has received thousands of complaints alleging violations but has not imposed a single civil fine and has prosecuted just two criminal cases.

Of the 19,420 grievances lodged so far, the most common allegations have been that personal medical details were wrongly revealed, information was poorly protected, more details were disclosed than necessary, proper authorization was not obtained or patients were frustrated getting their own records.

The government has "closed" more than 73 percent of the cases -- more than 14,000 -- either ruling that there was no violation, or allowing health plans, hospitals, doctors' offices or other entities simply to promise to fix whatever they had done wrong, escaping any penalty.

"Our first approach to dealing with any complaint is to work for voluntary compliance. So far it's worked out pretty well," said Winston Wilkinson, who heads the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights, which is in charge of enforcing the law.

While praised by hospitals, insurance plans and doctors, the approach has drawn strong criticism from privacy advocates and some health industry analysts. They say the administration's decision not to enforce the law more aggressively has not safeguarded sensitive medical records and has made providers and insurers complacent about complying.

"The law was put in place to give people some confidence that when they talk to their doctor or file a claim with their insurance company, that information isn't going to be used against them," said Janlori Goldman, a health-care privacy expert at Columbia University. "They have done almost nothing to enforce the law or make sure people are taking it seriously. I think we're dangerously close to having a law that is essentially meaningless."

The debate has intensified amid a government push to computerize medical records to improve the efficiency and quality of health care. Privacy advocates say large, centralized electronic databases will be especially vulnerable to invasions, making it even more crucial that existing safeguards be enforced.

The highly touted Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -- known as HIPAA -- guaranteed for the first time beginning in 2003 that medical information be protected by a uniform national standard instead of a hodgepodge of state laws.

When privacy comes into conflict with an opportunity for data mining and marketing, marketing always wins. HIPAA is a failure, except in its ability to further complicate our lives and those of the practitioners we need to consult.

My ISP continue to have service problems: there are websites I cannot load continuing today and that is going to slow down posting. Sorry. My local cable monopoly has been pretty good about keeping things running, so I don't know what is going on today.

Good Morning!

If the break of day gets much better than this, I don't need to know about it.

Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwiches with Fried Eggs

SERVES: 4

* 8 slices of peasant or Tuscan bread
* 6 ounces thinly sliced Serrano ham or prosciutto
* 1 1/2 ounces Manchego cheese, shaved (1/2 cup)
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 4 large eggs
* Salt and freshly ground pepper
* 1 bunch of arugula, stemmed
* 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

directions

1. Preheat the oven to 300°. Lay the bread slices on a work surface. Arrange the ham and cheese on 4 slices, then close the sandwiches.
2. In a large skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in 1 tablespoon of the oil. Brush the sandwiches on 1 side with the melted butter and oil, then add to the skillet, buttered side up. Cook over moderate heat, turning once, until the cheese is melted and the sandwiches are golden, 4 minutes. Transfer to a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven.
3. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in the skillet. Crack in the eggs and cook over moderate heat until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny, about 2 minutes. Top each sandwich with an egg and season with salt and pepper.
4. In a medium bowl, toss the arugula with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Transfer the sandwiches and salad to plates and serve.

Alternatively, poach that egg to a hard yolk and put it *inside* the sandwich. I like these on toasted English Muffins.

Home Again

My time with my colleagues was productive and wonderful, and it was deeply satisfying to spend time with them. I'll have more to say about this later, after I've had a couple of night's sleep to process it all.

My cable is wonky this morning and making it hard to post.

...As Others See Us

A Martian's Electic Observations of Earthlings

by Caroline Arnold
Published on Saturday, June 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

I, Naitram, formerly of the Planet Mars, am pleased to offer you Earthlings who call yourselves Americans a few eclectic observations on your lives and prospects on Planet Earth.

Notwithstanding the preoccupations of your science-fiction writers, I have not considered your reproductive habits, your beliefs in supernatural beings and/or science, or your heroes and villains, but only examined your behaviors by asking three questions: How do you spend your money? How do you spend the energy and resources of your planet? How do you spend the time of your lives?

My first observation is that you spend a very large part of your money to destroy and hurt one another. To wit: a war now expected to cost $1 trillion; a rumored $44 billion a year to maintain 16 military and civilian intelligence agencies for scrying out terrorists to be detained, tortured or killed; $1 billion for a fence with armed soldiers to keep poor brown people from crossing your southern border; a half-billion for a luxurious embassy in a small nation you wrecked for no apparent benefit. You have also spent more than $5 trillion over 50 years for nuclear weapons that are only "good "(in your quaint idiom) for massive destruction and killing – and that figure does not include environmental damage or lives lost or blighted.

You have spent untold trillions of dollars extracting fossil hydrocarbons, fresh water, and ores from your planet to build machinery, vehicles and infrastructure for the profit and convenience of a few at the expense of many, while degrading a vital system for regulating global temperature, perhaps irreversibly.

You Americans use more power for audio and video equipment that is plugged in but turned off than for the same equipment when it’s actually in use. These "energy vampires" consume 5% of all the electric power generated in your nation – and most of your electricity still comes from coal-fired generators that cost heavily in human lives, greenhouse gases, mercury pollution and mountain-tops.

You spend little money on family planning, healthy environments, basic health care, or diplomacy for the rest of humanity – unless you construe war, genocide and epidemics of disease to be forms of population control, conflict resolution, and health management.

Of the almost $2 trillion you spend annually on your own health care about 20% goes to administration, bureaucracy and profits; another 10% goes to large pharmaceutical corporations

About a quarter of you are overweight from consuming excess carbohydrates, yet you spend an average of four hours a day watching TV, a half-hour commuting to your jobs, and you use power mowers burning fossil hydrocarbons to cut a herbaceous plant that feeds no one, and you drive your SUVs to fitness centers to spend time on bicycles that don’t go anywhere.

Your schools are supported primarily by local property taxes, and 87% of home-property owners are white. Non-white children whose families cannot afford to buy homes do not get the same quality education.

In a small corner of Ohio you will pay the new president of Kent State University a salary of $350,000 plus perks. In nearby Ravenna you offer barely 7% of that amount to the Program Director of the King-Kennedy Community Center, who copes with everything from writing grants and supervising volunteers to answering phones, comforting children, and cleaning the floor.

Worldwide, I observe that a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. I see the women of Africa spending 40 billion working-hours annually carrying water. But when tap water was supplied to a village in Ethiopia and the women’s time spent carrying water was reduced from three hours to 15 minutes a day, the birth rate and survival rates in the village went up and the nutritional status of children went down.

Overall, I suggest that the survival of your kind cannot be purchased by investing in ever more advanced technologies for food production, mining, manufacturing, transportation, electricity generation, communication and computers, nor will you live longer or better by exploiting the poor, ignorant, and weak.

Words of warning & wisdom from afar.

Issues du Jour

Republicans plan controversial votes on gay marriage, flag burning

By James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Fri, Jun. 02, 2006

WASHINGTON - When President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, Republicans said a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage sealed the election, drawing legions of conservatives to the polls.

Bush and Republican senators now will seek another dose of conservative magic to embolden their party's base. Call it nostalgia - or election-year jitters.

In Saturday's radio address, Bush will urge support for a national ban on gay marriage. A meeting Monday at the White House with opponents of gay marriage will follow, then a full-blown debate and vote in the Senate on a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman.

Next, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning.

None of the measures is expected to pass, though the estate tax debate could yield a compromise that applies the tax only to the largest inheritances.

The detour into socially conservative causes comes as Congress is locked in a stalemate over immigration policy, paralyzed over ethics legislation and flummoxed by the Iraq war.

Despite the futility of the gay-marriage and flag-burning votes, some Republican strategists said they were just the jolt that conservative voters - angry over illegal immigration, profligate spending and congressional scandal - needed to overcome their growing antipathy toward the party.

"Every time you have that conversation it reminds (voters) of what team they're on," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent voice in conservative circles.

Some conservatives, such as political direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, are skeptical about Republican motives. The upcoming votes, he said, aren't enough to compensate for what he considers a pattern of wayward behavior.

"No conservative is going to take this as a change of heart or as a newfound belief in conservative principles," he said.

Other Republican operatives say the strategy is a waste of time when most Republican voters are angry or divided over the Iraq war, high gas prices and immigration.

"Those are the issues that are dominating people's dinner-table talk," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. Reed dismissed Frist's plan, saying: "If you're a gay who likes to burn flags, it's going to be a long year."

I'm straight and I've never burned a flag in my life. It's still going to be a long year.

Meeting of the Minds

Greetings from a very damp corner of Connecticut where the Flu Wiki mods continue our summit today. Drop us mail if you have a concern, the computers will be on while we meet. I'll be home late tonight if you have mail for me.

Pogge is sort of happy to be off the Net. The Reveres and I, not so much.

It's the Company you Keep

US blocking deal on fighting Aids

02 June 2006
Mail and Guardian

The Bush administration, heavily influence by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat HIV/Aids worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. "There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place," said a European official attending UN talks in New York on Thursday night.

Fraught negotiations were continuing to try to salvage as much of the package as possible. More than 140 nations are attending the UN summit in New York which began on Wednesday. The meeting is intended to update a 2001 declaration that provided the momentum for a worldwide campaign against HIV/Aids. A new declaration is due to be agreed on Friday.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, told the summit: "The world has been unconscionably slow in meeting one of the most vital aspects of the struggle: measures to fight the spread of Aids among women and girls. These shortcomings are deadly."

A report published on Tuesday by the agency UNAIDS says new figures suggest the infection rate is slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries.

The report adds that an estimated 38,6-million people are living with the Aids virus, HIV; 4,1-million were newly infected last year; 2,8-million died of Aids last year; and treatment with medicines is available to less than half of those infected with the virus.

Of those infected worldwide, almost half -- about 17 million -- are women, and three-quarters of those are in Africa.

The British government, which has sided with Washington so often over the past decade, is in the progressive bloc at the summit, along with Canada and other European countries, and is diametrically opposed to Washington over its approach to HIV/Aids.

Although the US is the world's highest spender in combating the virus, much of the money goes towards sex abstinence campaigns rather than the distribution of condoms or needle-exchange programmes.

Hilary Benn, Britain's International Development Secretary, who flew to New York last night and will address the UN General Assembly on Friday, distanced himself from the US approach.

He said: "We have to take action on the evidence of what works, on what saves people's lives, and not on ideology. That means making condoms available and reducing harm to people at risk: injecting drug-users, sex workers and men having sex with men."

It's not humane to not help people when there is a process that WORKS in reducing the spread of a disease, nor does it make sense. That Yankee practicality and ingenuity can't be used when you only see 1 RIGHT answer because you are blinded by personal views. The US is putting conditions and regulations on these deals that they know won't be accepted by the international community on their own, so they hope that in desparation to get anything done, the activists will take these deals no matter how bad they are.

Talk about negociating in bad faith... is it a wonder why the rest of the world is losing their respect for us? Even better, Britain won't support us but the ultra-conservative Muslim groups will.... but I thought they hated us for our values?

Child Protection?

EPA workers blast agency's rulings

Friday, May 26, 2006
ALEX PULASKI
The Oregonian

By pandering to farmers and chemical manufacturers, the Environmental Protection Agency risks gutting a 10-year-old law designed to safeguard children from dangerous pesticides, workers within the agency charge.

In a letter sent this week to agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, nine representatives of unions representing about 9,000 EPA scientists, risk managers and other workers said the agency "has lost sight of its regulatory responsibilities in trying to reach consensus with those that it regulates, and the result is that the integrity of the science upon which Agency decisions are based has been compromised."

Since 1996, the Food Quality Protection Act has been under attack from both sides -- pesticide makers and farmers asserting that the law is being applied too stringently, and environmentalists and consumer advocates charging that it is being undermined. The law was intended to protect children from hazardous effects of pesticides in foods and in the environment.

The letter sent Wednesday represents the second time in recent months that workers within the agency have openly questioned whether their chief is putting children at risk by bowing to industry pressures.

"Our colleagues in the Pesticide Program feel besieged by political pressure exerted by Agency officials perceived to be too closely aligned with the pesticide industry and former EPA officials now representing the pesticide and agricultural community . . ." the letter states.

"Equally alarming is the belief among managers in the Pesticide and Toxics Programs that regulatory decisions should only be made after reaching full consensus with the regulated pesticide and chemicals industry."

In response, the agency issued a one-paragraph written statement from spokeswoman Jennifer Wood.

"EPA has been reviewing all pesticides in question and applying new, stricter standards as required under the Food Quality Protection Act, with a specific focus on their effects on children's health," she said. "EPA remains committed to its mission of protecting human health and the environment."

In a letter sent to Johnson in December, the American Federation of Government Employees, a union with members who work for the EPA, said the agency's proposed rules on accepting data from trials exposing humans to pesticides -- instead of typical animal studies -- had so many loopholes that they invite unethical behavior such as intentionally dosing children and pregnant women.

The Gilded Age never had it so good. The best part is that you don't have to prove the science wrong, just confuse the issue enough that all of those graduates that didn't develop thinking skills will just hold their heads and give up trying to follow along and say, "Whatever".

Any bets on when the pesticide industry will try to reform DDT?

Texas Style Governing

This is what passed for a public/private partnership. So I guess the question is who is accountable?

NEEDY TEXANS' APPLICATIONS FAXED INTO A 'BLACK HOLE'

June 2, 2006
By POLLY ROSS HUGHES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN - Three months ago, dozens of documents from Texas containing highly confidential financial and health information began arriving over a fax machine at a Seattle warehouse.

Shaun Peck, a clerk at the warehouse, searched through the mysterious documents — revealing Social Security numbers, medical evaluations, income tax forms and pay stubs — and wondered why they kept coming and where they should be going instead.

Back in Texas, frustrated elderly, disabled and poor people have long wondered why they sent applications for benefits to the state only to be told they never arrived.

Peck didn't know it, but he had discovered the much-rumored "black hole" eating up Texas applications for Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The snafu is just the latest example of confusion during the state's transition this year from public to private screening of health and welfare applicants under an $899 million contract with outsourcing giant Accenture LLP.

At least 144 of the faxes, and possibly many more destroyed in a shredder or manually disconnected, were intended for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission or its private contractor in Midland but landed instead at the Seattle warehouse.

But, despite a call and two e-mails from Seattle to the state agency more than three weeks ago, misdirected faxes still arrived at the Seattle warehouse this week from applicants apparently clueless that a problem existed.

"I have not heard anything back from them. Nothing at all," said Cindy Sandford of Seattle, who alerted Texas officials May 9 about the wayward faxes at the request of the warehouse manager.

It wasn't until Wednesday — the day the Houston Chronicle raised questions — that the agency and its private contractor actively began checking into and fixing the mistake.

No one is accountable and it's OUR information out there.

"Who wanted this war? "

Nobel laureate flays Bush

Jun. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI

Gunter Grass, celebrated German novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, sculptor and commentator, is a living legend. When this Nobel laureate speaks, people listen.

His address in Berlin to the annual Congress of International PEN, the worldwide organization of writers, had been much anticipated, especially given his long admonition to intellectuals to speak up on the political and moral issues of the day.

He himself has done so all his life, most famously against the Nazi past and contemporary neo-Nazism and xenophobia. He has not always been right, of course, having opposed post-Cold War German unification.

Grass, at 78 still spry and energetic, quickly gets into his topic, "The hubris of the world's only superpower," and proceeds to offer a sweeping critique.

His words find resonance among the writers gathered here, including another Nobel laureate, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

"Armed force is used by this superpower to defeat the terrorism it is itself responsible for," Grass says, citing Osama bin Laden, the by-product of American support for Afghan jihadists in the 1980s. "The war (on Iraq), deliberately started in blatant disdain of the laws of civilized societies, produces still more terror."

Yet George W. Bush is searching for new enemies and targets.

"Dictatorships, and there are plenty to choose from, are referred to as rogue states and threatened vociferously with military strikes, including the deployment of nuclear weapons. But it only further stabilizes the fundamentalist power systems in those countries.

"Whether the term `axis of evil' is used to refer to Iran or North Korea or Syria, politics could not be more stupid and hence more dangerous. Yet the entire world is watching and pretending to be powerless."

Grass quotes liberally from the blistering speech given last year by British playwright Harold Pinter in accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature: "The United States supported and, in many cases, engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II — Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile ...

"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place in those countries ... but you wouldn't know it. The crimes of the U.S. have been systematic, constant, vicious, and remorseless but very few people have actually talked about them.

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's brilliant, even witty, a highly successful act of hypnosis. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?"

Having cited Pinter, Grass adds his own condemnation of "the hypocritical method of keeping the body count" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Although we meticulously keep count of the victims of terror attacks — terrible though their number is — nobody bothers to count the dead caused by American bombs or rocket attacks."

The death toll from America's "three Gulf Wars," as he called it — "the first one having been fought by Saddam Hussein against Iran, with support from the United States" — runs into hundreds of thousands.

"In Western evaluation, not only are there first-, second- or third class citizens among the living, but also among the dead."

We are third class citizens among...the living? Or the dead?

Pre-Science Friday

The word filter here won't let me post the title that boing boing had for this article, but it's worth reading anyways.

Chocolate generates electrical power

01 June 2006
New Scientist magazine

Willy Wonka could have powered his Great Glass Elevator on hydrogen produced from his chocolate factory.

Microbiologist Lynne Mackaskie and her colleagues at the University of Birmingham in the UK have powered a fuel cell by feeding sugar-loving bacteria chocolate-factory waste. "We wanted to see if we tipped chocolate into one end, could we get electricity out at the other?" she says.

The team fed Escherichia coli bacteria diluted caramel and nougat waste. The bacteria consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen, which they make with the enzyme hydrogenase, and organic acids. The researchers then used this hydrogen to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan (Biochemical Society Transactions, vol 33, p 76).

Maybe I shouldn't throw away those M&M;'s I cleaned up in my classroom today... they might be able to power my cell phone soon.

Morning Song

If the break of day gets much better than this, I don't need to know about it.

Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwiches with Fried Eggs

SERVES: 4

* 8 slices of peasant or Tuscan bread
* 6 ounces thinly sliced Serrano ham or prosciutto
* 1 1/2 ounces Manchego cheese, shaved (1/2 cup)
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 4 large eggs
* Salt and freshly ground pepper
* 1 bunch of arugula, stemmed
* 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

directions

1. Preheat the oven to 300°. Lay the bread slices on a work surface. Arrange the ham and cheese on 4 slices, then close the sandwiches.
2. In a large skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in 1 tablespoon of the oil. Brush the sandwiches on 1 side with the melted butter and oil, then add to the skillet, buttered side up. Cook over moderate heat, turning once, until the cheese is melted and the sandwiches are golden, 4 minutes. Transfer to a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven.
3. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in the skillet. Crack in the eggs and cook over moderate heat until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny, about 2 minutes. Top each sandwich with an egg and season with salt and pepper.
4. In a medium bowl, toss the arugula with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Transfer the sandwiches and salad to plates and serve.

Alternatively, poach that egg to a hard yolk and put it *inside* the sandwich. I like these on toasted English Muffins.

Flu Blogger on the Move

This blogger has been tied up with wiki business and life errands all day. I have a shiny new driver's license to show for two years of wrangling with the Commonwealth of Virginia and the City of Falls Church. It ain't been pretty, but I have ID to fly to CT tomorrow for the Wiki Flu Summit and spend a day hanging with my Wiki homies. Now I have to get packed for a very early trip to the airport, and I'm not good at travel stuff. I hate it. When the travel backpack comes out, the cats start to complain. I'll only be gone one night, but they don't know that. I hate cabs, airports, airplanes, but these are the best tools for the job. I have a connecting flight in Pitt on the way up to CT and have to go through effing Atlanta on the return trip so I'm dreading the flights, even while brightening to the idea that I'm going to spend 24 hours with my Wiki buddies, which is sweeter than sweet, even if what we have to discuss is pretty dark.

These are my colleagues and have been for a while. I'm even prouder to call them friends. It will be good to hang with them.

More Gulf Madness

Workers: Asbestos danger

By MIKE KELLER
Tue, May. 30, 2006
Sun Herald

The health of laborers and the public are at risk because companies are skirting asbestos-handling laws while regulators look the other way, say workers engaged in the Coast's cleanup.

Current employees of contractors spoke to the Sun Herald. They refused to use their names for fear of retaliation or dismissal.

All said they had been trained and certified in proper asbestos-abatement techniques with a combined total of more than 15 years in the business.

All worked for different companies operating at different points of structural inspection, demolition and debris removal.

The violations they reported have come together to create what they said is a tempest of long-term health danger, one that neither the public nor workers even know that they need to take shelter from.

Asbestos is a natural mineral fiber once used in building insulation and is still used in some manufactured products like brake pads. Its use was heavily restricted in 1981.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control lists the material as a source of serious diseases like asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.

Danger lies in the clearing and hauling of asbestos-containing buildings. Workers descend on the area with heavy equipment like backhoes and debris trucks. They tear the buildings apart and load debris, creating clouds of pulverized construction materials they breathe in and that scatters with the wind throughout the neighborhood.

Public health, according to the employees, was further compromised by open-air debris trucks hauling and scattering along the roads potentially asbestos-containing refuse to landfills meant only for safe construction and demolition waste.

The contractors who came forward said workers are not wearing the proper equipment on structures that may contain asbestos. They said workers should be wearing face masks and full body suits.

Other workers said regular dust masks were not good enough for buildings that may contain asbestos and contractors should be handing out dual cartridge respirators to employees.

They said the disposable face masks commonly used on sites were as useful at blocking asbestos fibers as wearing no protection at all.

Victoria Cintra, a spokeswoman for Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, said she also knows of widespread violations and the immigrant laborers her group represents are being put at unacceptably high risk.

"These violations are terrible," Cintra said. "People are going into houses and removing God knows what and they are doing it at best with Latex gloves. (The companies and regulators) have no regard for the future that the immigrant community will be going through in 15 or 20 years."

This is what happens when no one is in charge. It's not like the contractors don't know what the effects of asbestos is, because it's very well documented. And it's not like they don't know how to properly deal with it either. They aren't doing it because it costs money and it means caring about the people you hire instead of treating them like a resource.

All of those people who wanted deregulation in the 80's and 90's can be proud. They are going to have to pay more for health care costs and disability benefits because these workers won't be able to work once this stuff gets in their lungs. Still, even after hearing about this, many people in Mississippi will vote (R) because they are afraid of the wave of gay immigrant that is supposedly coming over the borders if Democrats take over in 2006.

This is what we have sunk to

Ethics lessons for US Iraq troops

2006/06/01
17:47:29 GMT
BBC News

US-led troops in Iraq are to undergo ethical training in the wake of the alleged murder of civilians in Haditha.
For the next 30 days, they will receive lessons in "core warrior values", a military statement said.

Correspondents say Haditha, where US marines are suspected of massacring up to 24 Iraqi civilians, could have a huge effect on US public opinion.

The Iraqi prime minister has condemned the suspected massacre, adding he would conduct his own investigation.

"The cabinet... denounces these practices and will form an investigative committee," said Nouri Maliki.

In a separate incident, US forces were accused of shooting dead a pregnant woman as she was rushed to hospital.

The US military says at least three other cases of alleged misconduct are being investigated, though no details have been given.

The news of ethical training for US-led troops is likely to be greeted with cynicism by many Iraqis, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad says, as the troops have long been accused of deliberately targeting civilians.

Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, said in a statement that 99.9% of his troops "perform their jobs magnificently every day".

"Unfortunately, there are a few individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path," he said.

He said the training would emphasise "professional military values and the importance of disciplined, professional conduct in combat" as well as Iraqi cultural expectations, according to the statement.

Excuse me, but aren't they "trained" on this before they are shipped off with live ammunition? Haven't we learned anything from the Vietnam experience... you aren't going to save a nation if you destroy it.

Panflu Plan

Hospital bloc plans for pandemic
Thu, June 1, 2006
Hospitals decide protecting staff beats waiting for outbreak.
By HELEN BRANSWELL, CP

TORONTO -- A bloc of Canada's largest and most influential teaching hospitals has decided to buy enough of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to protect all of their employees from becoming ill during a pandemic -- a decision that will require huge and costly reserves of the drug.

The policy runs counter to the current federal, provincial and territorial thinking, which suggests saving limited stores of Tamiflu for the treatment of people who become sick rather than trying to stave off illness, a drug-intensive process called prophylaxis.

The move could place significant pressure on other hospitals and public health officials to follow suit; health-care unions elsewhere could demand the same level of protection in exchange for assurances their members will show up for work during a pandemic.

"I think there's really no reason why unions wouldn't say 'This is what we want' following that example," Dr. Perry Kendall, chief medical officer of health for British Columbia said of the announcement from the Toronto Academic Health Services Network, which comprises 12 hospitals, including the Hospital for Sick Children and St. Michael's Hospital.

Kendall and others suggested the decision reflects the high level of trauma that haunts health-care workers in Toronto as a result of the city's devastating SARS outbreak in the spring of 2003. That disease spread largely in hospitals and it took an extraordinary toll on health-care workers and their families.

The SARS experience means that a lot of health care workers in Canada wouldn't show up for work absent some sort of intervention. As the reveres have pointed out to me, used prophylactically, Tamiflu is pretty effective. Keeping enough on hand to use for the real duration of any pandemic wave is another matter. The Toronto Academic Health Service Network's decision is likely to be hugely controversial, however. Given limited supplies of the drug, it likely won't be available to the lay public if we start getting sick.

The Peter Principle

Big Bonuses Still Flow, Even if Bosses Miss Goals
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

It was the kind of mistake that wage slaves can only dream of. Because of what the company called an "improper interpretation" of his employment contract, Sheldon G. Adelson, chairman, chief executive and treasurer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, received $3.6 million in salary and bonus last year, almost $1 million more than prescribed under the company's performance plan.

Four more top executives of the Las Vegas Sands, which owns the Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino, received more than they should have. The total in excess bonus payments for the five men was $2.8 million.

The compensation committee of the board conceded that it had made an error. But it said that "the outstanding performance of the company in 2005" justified the extra money, and it allowed the executives to keep it.

Shareholders of Las Vegas Sands did not fare as well. The value of their holdings fell 18 percent last year.

As executive pay packages have rocketed in recent years, their defenders have contended that because most are tied to company performance, they are both earned and deserved. But as the Las Vegas Sands example shows, investors who plow through company filings often find that executive compensation exceeds the amounts allowed under the performance targets set by the directors.

Executives of companies as varied as Halliburton, the military contractor and oil services concern; Assurant, an insurance company; and Big Lots, a discount retailer, all received bonuses and other pay outside the performance parameters set by the boards of those companies.

It is the equivalent of moving the goalposts to shorten the field, compensation experts say.

"Lowering the hurdles is especially disconcerting because very often the goals are not set all that high to begin with," said Lucian Bebchuk, professor at Harvard Law School and author with Jesse Fried of "Pay Without Performance." Mr. Bebchuk said shareholders should be especially alert to increases in bonuses because more companies were shifting away from stock options and into cash incentives.

Some employment agreements actually stipulate that they will provide bonuses even if company performance declines. The agreement struck in 2004 by Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, entitles him to a bonus even if earnings per share fall at the company. If earnings rise by 15 percent in any given year, Mr. Chernin's bonus is $12.5 million. But if they fall 6.25 percent, Mr. Chernin's bonus is $4.5 million, and an earnings decline of 14 percent translates to a $3.52 million bonus.

Last year, Mr. Chernin received $8.3 million in salary and $18.9 million in bonus pay. A company spokesman declined to comment on the bonus structure. He confirmed that the company's chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, has a similar bonus arrangement. Company filings show that Mr. Murdoch received a bonus of $18.9 million last year.

The rich really are different than you and me. The culture of the extremely affluent has no accountability. This sort of flies in the face of the American myth that you do well by working hard and doing a good job. Above a certain level, that's a crock. The very wealthy protect each other and create a culture of incompetence that's insulated by money. Our very own W is the product of this culture.

Still Crazy After all of these Years

Well, Laura and I have always said that we'll really be scared once the terrorists start to target places like Nebraska. Apparently, the NSA must have overheard that and thinks they can sway our votes.

Security Cuts for New York and Washington

NY Times
By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 1, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 31 — After vowing to steer a greater share of antiterrorism money to the highest-risk communities, Department of Homeland Security officials on Wednesday announced 2006 grants that slashed money for New York and Washington 40 percent, while other cities including Omaha and Louisville, Ky., got a surge of new dollars.

The release of the 2006 urban area grants, which total $711 million, was immediately condemned by leaders in Washington and New York.

"When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said. "They don't have a map of any of the other 46 or 45 places."

In Washington, Mayor Anthony Williams said: "It was very shortsighted for the federal government to gut our homeland security funding program, even more so because so many dollars continue to be spent in rural areas that are far less likely to emerge as targets."

Homeland security officials said the grants were a result of a more sophisticated evaluation process, combined with a smaller overall allocation of money from Congress.

For the first time, they said, teams of law enforcement officials from around the nation evaluated the effectiveness of the spending proposals submitted by the 46 eligible urban areas, cutting grants for cities that had shoddy or poorly articulated plans.

"We want to make sure we are not simply pushing dollars out of Washington," said Tracy Henke, assistant secretary for grants and training. "The reality is you have to understand that there is risk throughout the nation."

Ok, I get the point that the terrorists might strike anywhere, but come on. New York & Washington are still the two major targets along with LA, Chicago, and probably Dallas. While Louisville is a nice place with the Derby and baseball bats (not to mention the hq for the Presbyterian Church USA), I don't think it's on the Top 10 list of places to hit. Really, it's not.

Other articles point out that New Orleans had its funding cut, no surprise since Mother Nature already trashed the place, but Florida's magically increased significantly. Hmmmmm.... of course it increased for Charlotte down the road from me so I guess the NASCAR fans can feel safe at the races.