Frank's Fun Blog

The Perils of Polling

2009-08-14T09:37:00.001-07:00

pa href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/42_say_climate_change_bill_will_hurt_the_economy"img title="in_polls" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="138" alt="in_polls" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SoRvDWdflzI/AAAAAAAAA0k/Mh7P96Sktek/in_polls%5B4%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="138" align="right" border="0" / Rasmussen/a and a href="http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1730"Zogby/a both have polls out that aim to figure out how Americans feel about the climate change legislation travelling through Congress./p pIf Rasmussen happened to call you, you were in a a href="http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/2009/08/dueling_polls_o.html"bad mood/a:/p blockquote pIn late June, Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1000 adults. The poll showed that only 12% of respondents were strongly in favor, while 25% were strongly opposed. And 42% said that the measure would hurt the economy, while only 19% said it would help./p /blockquote pAnd you were much happier when Zogby caught up with you:/p blockquote pNow comes a competing poll from Zogby, which presents a far different picture. In this poll, a stunning 45% of the 1005 respondents were strongly in favor of the climate bill. Only 19% strongly opposed it./p /blockquote pWhat does this mean? Well, Business Week’s John Carey thinks that Zogby put the most positive spin possible on their questions while Rasmussen aimed at “objectivity” – emgood luck on that one!/em Carey concludes that “the public really doesn’t yet know what to think.” /p pWell, maybe. But we like the idea that Scott Rasmussen offers – that he was aiming to create a baseline for future polls. That works for both Zogby and Rasmussen. The trick is to see where the numbers go in future polls – especially as people start paying attention after the health care kerfluffle clears out and climate change comes back to the fore./p pFor ourselves, and only for right now, we’d lend more weight to Zogby because 45 in favor, 19 against (and presumably 36 undecided) seems a more plausible starting point for legislation not quite in the public eye but one about which strong advocates – and the House – have weighed in fairly positively. /p pA few more polls on the topic (from Gallup and Pew but really anyone) wouldn’t hurt, either./p pWe expect the polls will get really interesting when the Senate starts fighting over the bill in the Fall. Until then, let’s just say the numbers are all over the map./p pemDo you favor puppies or kittens? Why, yes, yes I do./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-5680988791433813785?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

Mid-week music madness

2009-08-14T07:56:00.001-07:00

Helen, my caseworker, proving that it is not just sorting out tax credits and benefits that she is good at. Apparently, this is a live version of the band's single.br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IaJAd1GXGUshl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IaJAd1GXGUshl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-3874157639956516010?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Takes on Facebook

2009-08-14T06:16:00.001-07:00

Gene Wojciechowski is standing outside Derek Jeter's window, lofting a boom box into the air

2009-08-14T04:36:00.001-07:00

Shorter a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_geneid=4392903sportCat=mlb"Wojo/a:blockquotEIf Derek Jeter is discovered to have used PEDs, I, too, will pump my fist -- span style="font-style:italic;"into my own broken heart/span!/blockquoteArguably the worst part of drug war moralism (Sporting Division) is that people like Gene Wojciechowski are permitted to earn a living by repeating the idiotic fantasy that certain players bear within them with game's Purity of Essence. It's bad enough that such declarations of abiding love for the game actually indicate their opposite, but when this peculiar form of romance is folded into the catechism of the Order of St. Jeter, it's difficult not to feel embarrassed for the guy. I mean, imagine if the "template for baseball professionalism" included, say, not adding superfluous leaps to routine grounders, or sharing pernicious viruses with supermodels -- ihow could Gene Wojciechowski face his children each morning?/idiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1742663981554836374?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

The Pain of Prayer

2009-08-14T01:15:00.001-07:00

Jesus called his followers to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. This is the cross-life. It is the only entry into the abundance life Christ promised. Yet it involves suffering and hard work (not to earn salvation, but in following the Savior).br /br /Part of the pain is prayer. Prayer, especially as praise and thanksgiving, can be joyful--communion with God as he reveals his goodness. But prayer can be hard and agonizing work. It often is for me. I must deny myself to pray over worries and concerns regarding myself, others, and this fallen and bleeding world, to keep praying when nothing seems to be happening, when my thought wander. Yet Jesus said to his disciples before his own supreme suffering, "Could you not pray for emone hour/em?" How many of us in America today pray for one hour at a time, or even one hour a week? I mean time dedicated only to prayer, not prayer throughout the day or ten second prayer before a meal.br /br /Jesus said we should not make a spectacle of our prayer, as did the Scribes and Pharisees, but how do we pray with feeling and intelligence publicly in a way that reveals our anguished yearning for the greater span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"in-breaking/span of God's Kingdom? How often do we weep over the world's woes as we pray--in the manner of Jeremiah?br /br /In hedonistic American, where for so many, the principal values are personal peace and affluence (Francis span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Schaeffer/span), we tend to avoid the difficult and medicate the painful at all costs. Yet the gospel calls us to embrace certain kinds of pain--the pain of struggling against a sinful world and self--for the sake of the greater good of the Kingdom of God.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-2647710029436726451?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Mortgage Laws and the Case for Moving Insurance Across State Lines

2009-08-13T23:35:00.001-07:00

The most common argument against allowing health insurance to move across state lines is that each state has their own state laws governing health insurance and thus it is not practical to do this. Different states have different levels of regulations and allowing health insurance to cross state lines would turn into chaos and take power away from the states the critics say. The critics say that insurance companies will simply set up shop in those states with the a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2008/10/purchasing-insu.html"loosest regulations/a.br /br /blockquoteToday, I asked Sandy Praeger to share her perspective on the issue. Praeger is insurance commissioner for Kansas and president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.br /br /Praeger told me she was against lifting restrictions on the sale of insurance across state lines.If the change was implemented, here’s what she predicts will happen: Insurers will set up shop in states with few regulations and market low-cost policies to people across the country. These policies will offer minimal coverage and appeal primarily to younger consumers.br /br /“It will be a race to the bottom,” Praeger said, and there will be “very few consumer protections. … You’ll have plans that don’t cover the benefits that people need. … And healthy people are going to buy those less costly plans, because they don’t think they need [the protection].”br //blockquotebr /br /br /Now, I have dealt with something similar in mortgages for years. In fact, in mortgages, there are numerous state laws and federal laws. For instance, in Illinois, there is something called the Illinois a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-75019525.html"high cost law/a. This law does two things. First, it sets a maximum rate that any borrower can be charged on any loan. Second, it sets the maximum fees that can be charged on any loan, 5.5%. My only experience with a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2007/12/illinois-high-cost-and-my-favorite.html"Illinois high cost /awas when a protege of mine tried to do a difficult loan that was deemed illegal at the end of the process. This was a loan on an investment property with a borrower with a marginal credit score and they were putting little down to purchase the property. As such, the rate on the loan approached 11%. Everything seemed fine until we got the loan ready to close and the bank realized it couldn't be done because the rate was illegal. In fact, there was no way to make the loan legal.br /br /Illinois high cost also comes up often fora href="http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page?_pageid=73,1827594amp;_dad=portalamp;_schema=PORTAL" FHA loans/a. That's because there is a 1.5% fee that FHA charges up front for Mortgage Insurance Premiums. As such, before anyone charges a single dime, there is already 1.5% of the 5.5% used. Of course, different banks have different interpretations of whether or not that 1.5% should be counted in the overall 5.5%. So, often there are disputes between bank and broker about whether or not a loan has exceeded the Illinois High Cost law.br /br /That's just in the state of Illinois. The state of a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/02/minnesota-case-study-in-complexities-of.html"Minnesota has created all sorts of state laws to prohibit "predatory lending". /aThe state of a href="http://www.hud.gov/local/nc/homeownership/predatorylending.cfm"North Carolina /aalso has very strict "predatory lending" laws. If a bank wants to do business in any state, they must follow the laws of that state along with federal laws as well rules set out by Fannie/Freddie and FHA. Sometimes, laws become so burdensome that banks actually stop doing business in a state. For instance, a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2007/12/sb-1167-and-my-favorite-reagan-quote.html"HB 4050/a, in my county of Cook, became so burdensome in 2006 that dozens of banks simply stopped doing business in that County.br /br /Why do I point this out? It's because mortgages is among the most heavily regulated industries in the country. Anyone who has ever closed on a loan knows full well just how regulated it is since they sign hundreds of pages worth of closing documents in response to regulation. We have something called a a href="http://www.bankersonline.com/regs/226/226.html"regulation z/a. That's because there are so many regulations that they span the alphabet. Each individual state sets out their own regulations along with federal regulations. Yet, banks are able to sell loans across state lines even despite this hyper regulation.br /br /In other words, the mortgage industry allows for mortgages to "cross state lines" despite the plethora of competing regulations. In fact, banks, much like insurance companies, set up shop in one state and then sell mortgages across state lines. They are able to figure out how to navigate all of the state laws, federal laws, and other regulations, and still be able to produce their product in all fifty states at one time. The regulations and complexity of mortgages is no less than is the regulations and complexity of health insurance. Yet, banks are able to figure out how to sell mortgages across state lines, and no one is claiming that you can only get a mortgage from a bank in your home state. In the same way, we could figure out how to sell health insurance across state lines.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-6595817996692559023?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

The Russians are Coming?

2009-08-13T21:55:00.001-07:00

With Akula subs off the coast, is it time to start re-reading The Hunt for Red October?br /br /Some of my thoughts over at a href="http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/090811443-the-russians-are-coming-3.htm"GlobalSecurity.org/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19194934-6828975014671744022?l=washingtonrealist.blogspot.com'//div

The Inner Limits of Debate: STP and Its Critics

2009-08-13T20:14:00.001-07:00

pa href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SnyP1MrnQ7I/AAAAAAAAAzs/XYhLN6Ycsho/s1600-h/STP%5B10%5D.jpg"img title="STP" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="133" alt="STP" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SnyP1SpFzRI/AAAAAAAAAzw/r5f_7TlH4wE/STP_thumb%5B6%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="194" align="right" border="0" //a Environmentalist groups do a lot of good work, so we’re happy to help them raise money, if being against nuclear energy helps them do that, but we would suggest that such groups freshen up their messages a bit. Or maybe take the financial hit and allow that maybe nuclear energy isn’t all that ghastly. But one or the other, please./p p---/p pSo here’s the deal./p pCPS Energy wants to a href="http://www.cpsenergy.com/About_CPS_Energy/News_Features/News/062909_nuclear_recommendation_NR.asp"add units/a to the a href="http://www.stpnoc.com/"South Texas Project/a, which it co-owns with NRG Energy and Austin Energy:/p blockquote pThe recommendation to the CPS Energy Board of Trustees comes after three years of detailed study of various energy options.#160; It also aligns with the Strategic Energy Plan, CPS Energy’s four-objective roadmap for satisfying future energy requirements./p /blockquote pIn CPS’s view, electricity demand will outstrip supply in its area of Texas (including San Antonio) soon enough, and CPS has already invested heavily in solar, wind and hydro power. So now, it’s time for more nuclear energy./p pWe like the idea (big surprise), but there could certainly be arguments to make against it:/p blockquote p“We are targeting no more than 5 percent bill increases every other year or roughly half that amount annually,” [Interim General Manager Steve Bartley] said.#160; “We’re well aware of the current economic downtown, so we’re trying our best to make this project affordable for our customers.#160; Even if we decide not to participate in STP expansion, we will still need customer bill increases to meet the demands of growth on our system.”#160;#160; /p /blockquote pWe suspect a href="http://www.cpsenergy.com/"CPS/a could charge less without the nuclear units, so a viable argument may be that Texans can’t afford the rate hike. One could also say that CPS’ do-or-die approach to this project is unproductive energy brinksmanship. And that’s just off the top of our heads. We don’t necessarily believe any of it, but they’re valid points of contention./p p---/p pSo we now bring you Energia Mia, a group opposed to any such expansion. South Texas Project has been so- so- well, to be honest, it’s been a safe, reliable neighbor for 20 years. But you have to a href="http://www.energiamia.org/pr_080509.html"start somewhere/a:/p blockquote pCPS has said that 5-8% rate hikes would be needed every two years for the next ten years to pay for more nuclear power. Electric rates could increase nearly 50% as a result./p /blockquote pAh, emthere’s/em our argument. That 50% figure at the end of 10 years seems to come out of thin air and even 25% seems high. But STP let itself in for this one. /p blockquote pquot;CPS wants to use old, outdated technology. Nuclear power is a thing of the past, a dinosaur, and we want San Antonio to instead look toward new technologies and today's energy solutions,quot; said Mariana Ornelas, an active member of AGUA, Aquifer Guardians of Urban Areas./p /blockquote pBy all means, throw mature (but we should note, continually developing) technology overboard. Newer and shinier objects await./p blockquote p“Exposure to radiation can lead to cancer and genetic damage, and nuclear reactors create radioactive waste for which there is no safe storage solution,quot; said community leader and former city council member Patti Radle./p /blockquote pSafe storage is kind of a non-starter – at least for now, used fuel doesn’t leave the plant – but it’s a debate worth having – the rest not so much./p blockquote pquot;CPS will not have any incentive to pursue efficiency if nuclear power is the goal,quot; said David Wells, with the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club. quot;Vast financial resources would go into nuclear power, and then instead of conserving, CPS would be trying to find buyers for the excess power generated.quot;/p /blockquote pWhat? They’d make money to share with ratepayers and stock holders? The horror of it. This one doesn’t make sense. CPS can presumably pursue nuclear energy and energy efficiency – and solar – and wind – and – you get the idea./p pemstrongUpdate (August 12): see the comments. The Sierra Club’s David Wells writes that he wasn’t correctly quoted in the original article and provides his full quote, which belies our “doesn’t make sense” jibe. Our apologies to Mr. Wells if we only intensified his distress. Newspapers can be awful manglers of quotes./strong/em/p p---/p pNow, we should note that nuclear energy is pretty small beans in terms of advocacy intensity. Most arguments pro and con stay at least within hailing distance of the same fact set and the amount of out and out lying about it is vanishingly small. (See the current health care debate for arguments that are, um, counterfactual and prone to emotional overkill.) That said, we could use a hardier debate – STP is winning this one in a walk./p p/p pema href="http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fnEnergy08/nuclear.html"The South Texas Project/a. “acronymSTP/acronym has the lowest production cost reported by nuclear power plants nationwide, at 1.356 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2006. acronymSTP/acronymS’s combined operating, maintenance and fuel expenses were the lowest among plants that report those costs to federal regulators.” And that’s lower than just about any plant of any kind – running costs of nuclear units is what makes them appealing despite their admittedly breathtaking construction costs – hey, Energia Mia should use that one!/em/p pemWe’re only discussing CPS here, but presumably NRG and Austin will weigh in here too. We’ll poke around and see what we see./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-3735788560390506636?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

The little girl who talked about mean signs at the Obama town hall (Dem plant - proof)

2009-08-13T18:34:00.001-07:00

a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2313884/posts"Via FreeRepublic:/abr /br /br /blockquotep align="justify"The second person "randomly" selected to ask a question was a young girl called Julia Hall from Malden MA (asks question at 29m:25s). /pp align="justify"br /a href="http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/08/11/HP/R/22002/Pres+Obama+Senators+Hold+Health+Care+Town+Halls.aspx"http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/08/11/HP/R/22002/Pres+Obama+Senators+Hold+Health+Care+Town+Halls.aspx/a/pp align="justify"br /Julia read the following question off a piece of paper: "As I was walking in I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming healthcare. How do kids know what is true and why do people want a new system that can help more of us".br /br /This randomly asked question gave Obama the perfect opportunity to dismiss talk about "death panels that will pull the plug on Grandma" and to blame Republicans for everything. Over on the town hall comments thread AtomicPunk09 discovered someone on facebook who might possibly be Julia's mother and had a photo of her with Obama:br /br /br /a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Manning-Hall/1545820503"http://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Manning-Hall/1545820503/abr /br /All old information and it cannot be proven that Kathleen is Julia's mother, right????br /br /br /Hold on, look who is sitting next to Julia in the video:br /br /br /img src="http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p170/MarkNH/arf/obama-planted-question.jpg" /br /br /br /br /Another "coincidence" is that Julia said she lives in Malden MA and Kathleen Manning Hall's campaign contributions list the occupation "Legal Asst, Looney and Grossman LLP" and a home address in Malden MA:br /br /a href="http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=nameamp;lname=Manning+Hallamp;fname=Kathleen"http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=nameamp;lname=Manning+Hallamp;fname=Kathleen/abr /br /Looks like she donated $636 to Obama in 2008.br /br /br /But wait, there's more:br /br /a href="http://www.city-data.com/elec2/elec-MALDEN-MA.html"http://www.city-data.com/elec2/elec-MALDEN-MA.html/abr /br /This lists donations to Obama of $230 on 6/15/07, $250 on 9/28/07, $500 on 9/30/07, $300 on 3/2/08br /br /a href="http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=locamp;addr=16+APPLETON+STamp;zip=02148"http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=locamp;addr=16+APPLETON+STamp;zip=02148/abr /br /On that link we have the $636 previously mentioned from "Kathleen Manning Hall" but we also have $1355 donated to Obama by "Kathleen Hall, Legal Assistant, Looney amp; Grossman" at the same address.br /br /(as an aside Looney and Grossman loves Democrats - their employees donated $12,101 in total to Democrats and $0 to Republicans)/p/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2529888690251492426?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Government Health Care and "Death Panels" (Just call them "end of life decision panels")

2009-08-13T16:54:00.001-07:00

a href="http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/08/there-he-goes-again.html"Tom Maguire .../abr /br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Somebody call White House flack Linda Douglass at Fishy-1-1 - Mickey Kaus is circulating discouraging arguments suggesting Obama's risky health reform scheme might actually lead to "death panels", and yet again he is relying on Obama's own words:br /br /If, as Harold Pollack argues, "rationing of life-saving or life-extending care" would not really be a priority for the "effectiveness" panels--such as the Obama-endorsed IMAC--then it was all the more stupid to bring the topic up, no? Here's the first graf from a Bloomberg account of an early Obama health care foray back in April:br /April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.br /br /Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life? ... [via Dish] ... 1:49 P.M./span/blockquotebr /Team Obama insists it's just a LIE, a LIE, I tell you ...br /br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"So Obama "suspects" that the legislative process will produce some sort of independent group that can give non-determinative "guidance" on end-of-life care for the chronically ill, with an eye towards saving money. Just don't call them death panels!/span/blockquotebr /I mean, how else you gonna save money? No hip replacement for you if you're too old! And the young don't need hips and knees and arthritis racked joints replaced. Think of the cost saving! it's mind boggling!br /br /a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/12/will-you-won-t-you-be-on-my-death-panel.aspx"And Mickey Kaus opines/a:br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Yikes. ... I'm sure the "not determinative" part was very important to Obama. Still! He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges. ... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this--Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example--Obama thought it would do it. . ./span/blockquotebr /br /Racists.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-7988067026972080740?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Good Luck With That

2009-08-13T15:14:00.001-07:00

a href="http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2009/08/11/politico-report-add-santorum-to-potential-presidential-candidate-list/"This could be a chance/a for some profitable InTrade arbitrage.br /br /Although, in fairness, he has a more plausible path to the nomination that Guiliani did...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8614316703354303081?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Rasmussen: Presidential Approval Index rating of -8

2009-08-13T13:34:00.001-07:00

blockquotediv align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"Obama's poll numbers are in free fall, despite the full-throated support of the GCM (Government Controlled Media)br /br /Overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove.br /br /The President earns approval from 85% of Democrats while 84% of Republicans disapprove. /spanspan style="color:#3333ff;"strongAs for those not affiliated with either major party, 42% give the President their approval.br //strongbr //spanspan style="color:#3333ff;"strongCongress earns good or excellent reviews from 14%.br //strongbr //spanstrongspan style="color:#3333ff;"In the health care debate, 41% view the town hall protesters favorably while 35% have an unfavorable view. Twenty-five percent (25%) agree with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that health insurance companies are villains. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree./span /strong/div/blockquotebr /Team Obama, the Democracts in Congress, and their willing allies in the SCM are losing the support of the American people as evidenced by the polls and the financial condition of the media.br /br /There is only one answer if you are a community organizer from Chicago, go for the muscle and intimidate the oppostion. Look for events to get hotter and things to turn violent. a href="http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/08/man-gets-attacked-for-selling-flags-at.html"Kenneth Gladney was only the first./a Don't think it can't happen here.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-5721455266796222260?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

The Democrats Vs. the Tea Parties Day 8: Taking Stock

2009-08-13T11:52:00.001-07:00

Right now, Fox News is carrying a town hall debate held by Arlen Specter in Lebanon, Pa. that is illuminating. First, it's the way all town hall debates should go if those that attend want to make sure that it's killed. So far, there have been fifteen people to ask questions. So far, fourteen have spoken out against the bill and one spoke in favor of it. The questions have been tough and probing. There has been passion but the Senator has been allowed to answer the questions. The questioners raised all sorts of concerns in the health care bill. A teacher said the bill was a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/ambiguity-real-house-health-care-bill.html"incomprehensible/a and suggested that all bills be written so that an eighth grader could understand it. One lady said that between the stimulus, cap and trade, and this health care bill the government is taking us on a path toward to socialism. Several folks were concerned that illegal aliens would be a part of the new health care bill and be a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care.html"given free health services/a. Several people were very concerned that the government would be given access to the a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care.html"people's financial statements. /aSeveral other people were concerned that the new health care bill would have government paid abortions.br /br /Specter, for his part, has said over and over that there is no Senate bill. He has rejected his support for any bill that gives the government access to people's bank accounts, vague standards, and imposes government funded abortions. As such, he would, if he kept his word, have to vote against HB 3200. One lady summed up what is going on with these town halls when she said this "you awakened a sleeping giant with this out of control government take over". What is clear from this town hall is that none of the folks were part of a mob, astro turfers, or organized by nefarious forces. Anyone that saw any of this particular town hall knows that in Lebanon, Pa. don't fit any of the stereotypes perpetrated by the Democrats and the media.br /br /Meanwhile, Senator Cardin held a town hall meeting yesterday evening that was a lot more combative.br /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k4TSCWrfQLkamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/k4TSCWrfQLkhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /Last night on the Panel on Special Report, there was generally agreement among the panel that the behavior at these town hall debates is actually helping the Democrats. This was a point first raised by Stephen Hayes on a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/democrats-vs-tea-parties-day-5-changing.html"Sunday/a. I think pundits simply don't get it. The anger is real. The passion is real, and that's because Americans are angry and scared. This is a wholesale rejection of not only the health care bill but frankly the entire agenda coming out of D.C. Of course, the latest polling shows evidence that I am right as public approval for Obama Care continues to be in a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/august_2009/support_for_congressional_health_care_reform_falls_to_new_low"free fall/a. It's now in the low 40's and I said it would get into the 30's before the end of the month.br /br /I have also said that as this develops it will also evolve. I said that some of these folks would wind up being interviewed on television and that's what's starting to happen now. The first is Dr. Brian Hill. He's a urologist, and independent, and he was confronted by Congressman Scott in Georgia. Here he is confronting the Congressman on CNN.br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5i7EgDqY0oamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5i7EgDqY0ohl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /This clip is of the man that confronted John Dingell at a town hall debate.br /br /embed id="mediumFlashEmbedded" name="undefined" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://foxnews1.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/foxnews1-foxnews-pub01-live/current/videolandingpage/fncLargePlayer/client/embedded/embedded.swf" width="305" height="275" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" play="false" scale="noscale" menu="false" salign="LT" scriptaccess="always" wmode="false" flashvars="playerId=videolandingpageamp;playerTemplateId=fncLargePlayeramp;categoryTitle=Health Careamp;referralObject=8052415amp;referralParentPlaylistId=19d7b8500c13fb2a903fb9742d79d71c5d8d78bcamp;referralPlaylistId=07373bea2a547ca71dccc8cfc357419426028f5c"/embedbr /br /So, over the next week, watch for this story to evolve from one that focuses on the passion of the protesters to one that focuses on the specific probing questions and the answers. I will give Specter credit for taking the fire. He took serious fire about two weeks ago at another town hall debate with Secretary Sebelius. Most pols would have cancelled future town halls after taking that much fire. That said, he clearly didn't know much of the details of the House plan. Over and over, he answered specific questions by saying there is no Senate plan yet. There is however a House plan and he clearly doesn't know the details of that plan. I suspect that is the knowledge of almost all politicians about the specifics of the bill. As voters continue to question pols about specifics of the bill, it will become clear that the politicians voting on the bill will know less than the voters themselves.br /br /The riveting story of the Democrats vs. the Tea Parties, as represented by the town hall protesters, continues and continues to evolve. It continues to move full steam ahead toward nailing the final nail in the coffin of this health care reform.br /br /Finally, so far, locally, the only town hall debate is from Rep. Jan Schakowsky. It will be at Niles West High School at 6:30PM on August 31st.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-3948797179056722944?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

D.D, Guttenplan: American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone

2009-08-13T10:12:00.001-07:00

American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stonebr /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/"Politics of Culture/abr /br /img src="http://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/500H/9780374183936.jpg"br /br /Investigative journalism is an endangered species. One of its most renowned and revered purveyors was I.F. Stone, a man who ran his own newspaper and never took advertising. D.D. Guttenplan has written a biography that puts Stone into the context of American history and politics. Will Lewis interviews him.br /br /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc090728american_radical_the"To Listen to the Interview/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-7041303089818735742?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Groothuis Sermon Available On Line

2009-08-13T08:32:00.001-07:00

My sermon at West Bowles Community Church, "Christianity in the Marketplace, I" (Acts 17:16-23) is a href="http://www.westbowleschurch.com/flash/"on line at their web page/a. Go to the "Sermon Archive" for July 26, 2009.br /br /I give the second installment on August 2 at 10:00 AM. This covers verses verses 24-34, the meat of Paul's remarkable speech to the philosophers of Athens.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-3096296035552808089?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Diplomatic Language Changes: Semantics or Policy Shift?

2009-08-13T06:50:00.001-07:00

How ObamaCare will control cost

2009-08-13T05:10:00.001-07:00

div align="justify"Via Powerline:br /br //divblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"At the end of the day there is STILL no way to have all three simultaneously of: (1) universal guaranteed coverage; (2) comprehensive quality and choice; (3) cost control....cannot be done...you get two out of three at most. Clearly the Obamacrats intend on sacrificing (2) since they are massively constrained by deficits and the basic premise of the middle class entitlement state is that it will never cost (you) anything...only "them"..."villains" or the "rich"....so the only choice is limiting choice and quality....and that in turn requires a de facto single payer accomplished through the subterfuge of dictating the terms of "private" insurance, turning them into all but public utilities, engineering the transfer to the "public option" over a relatively short period of time, and then dictating payment terms to providers through rate setting, service bundling and, most important in this context, the MedPAC council which will determine "quality-adjusted effective" treatment protocols. The net effect is that an elderly person won't get a hip replacement or a coronary bypass....and will have nowhere --- in the US --- to turn. /span/pp align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"br /The disingenuousness of the left on this point is breathtaking. Perhaps some are just too stupid to get the point....but the issue is NOT euthanasia, living wills etc....that's a pure straw man however insidious the proposal is and however dishonest they have been in covering it up or describing it. The real issue is the MedPAC council....there won't be any actual "death panel" adjudicating case-by-case....there won't need to be!....the MedPac council will set up criteria and rules, more or less in secrecy....rules determined by "experts" and by design removed from Congress to prevent pressure to approve expensive protocols at the end of life....or for "life unworthy of life"....a faceless bureaucracy with a maze of rules will simply be built into the system....diffused responsibility, nobody accountable, just the way it will be, no one can do anything about it.br /br /That's why they MUST control all provision through a de facto single payer...and effectively outlaw private provision....otherwise it will be seen that treatments are available and that some are "unfairly" grabbing medical "resources"...and they will not be able to control cost with a global budget.br /br /That's the basic issue with Medicare...it's single payer, universal for those over 65, permits unlimited demand and choice....and has no cost controls...and is bankrupting the government while simultaneously through cost-shifting wrecking the private market. Politically, it's the only way to control Medicare costs: fold it into a universal single payer plan with effective global budgeting and cost controls.br /br /Most people can see this or intuit it...and Obama and his minions have been effectively exposed as lying weasels....and liars who mistakenly assume that people are too dumb to figure out what's going on and what their real intentions and plans are.br /br /It's another post but it is truly glorious to see them all hoist on their own petard of Medicare and demonizing the elderly after demagoging SS and Medicare for decades./span/p/blockquotediv align="justify"br /br /Bottom line: no one will tell you that you can't have medical care as you get older. It will the "rules" that will tell doctors and hospitals what treatment is provided and what is not. Pain pills will usher you into the next life./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2314637912071930460?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Engaging with the electorate

2009-08-13T03:30:00.001-07:00

It is unlikely that even the Tories can afford to repeat the Totnes open primary experiment too often. The cost was estimated to be about £50,000. However, there is no doubt that the exercise gave the eventual winner a head start in contesting what is effectively a marginal seat at the next General Election.br /br /That does not mean though that other parties should rule out doing something similar in the future. Indeed the challenge is finding a form of selection that is much more inclusive and representative than the present party-based method whilst, at the same time, being affordable.br /br /a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6742614.ece" target="_blank"David Miliband's idea, published in Tribune/a of widening the party franchise is therefore worth serious consideration. He suggests emulating the model pioneered by the Greek socialist party, Pasok, in which sympathisers can register as “friends” and then take part in selection contests:br /br /em“The traditional political structures of mainstream political parties are dying and our biggest concern is the gap between our membership and our potential voter base,” he writes.br /br /“We need to expand our reach by building social alliances and increasing opportunity for engagement and interaction with our party.”br /br /He adds: “We say we want to listen to our voters, why not a system of registered voters as in the US to create the basis for primaries?”/embr /br /All the major parties have seen a fall in their membership base and this is one way to widen engagement in a structured and affordable manner as well as to restore confidence in politicians by giving people a greater stake in who the candidates are. The Liberal Democrats should not leave it to other parties to take the lead on this.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-5964305154910669146?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Some Perspective On Universal Health Care and the Founding Fathers

2009-08-13T01:50:00.001-07:00

How many times have you heard a Democratic politician or pundit say a href="http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/3/9/18277/26800"something like this/a?br /br /blockquotepAmong the OECD's 30 members -- which include Australia, Austria, Belgium,Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom -- there are only three lacking universal health coverage. The other two happen to be Mexico and Turkey, which have the excuse of being poorer than the rest (and until the onset of the world economic crisis, Mexico was on the way to providing healthcare to all of its citizens). The third, of course, is us."/pp(Here is a href="http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00000B6A/$FILE/JT03259332.PDF"the actual report/a from the OECD web site)br /br /"The story gets worse as the details emerge. Although the public share of health expenditure in the United States is much lower than any other OECD country except Mexico, the public expenditure on healthcare is much higher per capita than in most OECD countries. So we pay a lot more in taxes devoted to medical care -- not including insurance premiums, co-payments, fees, and other health costs -- than taxpayers in those 27 countries that have universal coverage. Our public expenditure provides coverage only for the elderly and some of the poor (through Medicaid and the SCHIP program for children) while other countries provide universal coverage while spending less."br //p/blockquotebr /br /Let's think about this for a minute. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance coverage and many pundits and Democratic politicians think this is bad. Isn't having health insurance a choice? If it's a choice what does it say about all those nations that have universal coverage. It means that there is no choice.br /br /This country was founded on liberty. It was founded on the principle that the government would leave the citizenry alone and only performing the basic functions of protecting the citizens. Now, we bemoan the fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't have universal coverage. Of course, universal coverage means forced coverage.br /br /What would the founding fathers think of someone proclaiming that the lack of "universal health care" in the U.S. is a bad thing? Health insurance wasn't even a creation when the Revolutionary War was fought. Now, some politician thinks that it should not only be a right but a demand of the citizens. In fact, anyone that views our nation as the only industrialized without universal coverage as a bad thing knows very little about the principles that this nation was founded on.br /br /This nation was founded on the principle of liberty. Health insurance should be as available and cheap as possible. It should not be mandated. It should NOT be paid for by the taxes of someone else. That infringes on the liberty of those being taxed. Anyone that looks at our place in the world, as the only industrialized nation without universal health care, and thinks that's a bad thing simply has no idea what this country was founded on.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-8589921342364534774?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

Capitol Hill Democrats Have Met Their Enemy and It Is Them

2009-08-13T00:10:00.001-07:00

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /Earlier this week, I asked a veteran Washington-based Democratic political operative who has worked for more than his share of liberals whether he had seen any indication that grass-roots “progressives” were getting angry with the party’s performance on Capitol Hill and were starting to make their anger known. br /br /“No. No. Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “Right now we are just happy to be in the majority. We were out of power for a long time,” he laughed. “But it will come; it will come,” sighed the Washington veteran, looking as if he might like either a glass of scotch or at least a couple of aspirin.br /br /Twenty-four hours later, I was interviewing a reliably liberal Democratic candidate running in 2010 in a swing state. I asked him what he will say when his formidable Republican opponent argues that the country doesn’t need yet more Democrats in Washington, D.C. — that it needs more officeholders who will act as a check on President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress.br /br /“I’ll say that if you look at what has been happening in Congress right now, we appear to have plenty of Democrats who are acting as checks on Democrats in Washington,” he answered with a smile.br /br /Rattle off names such as Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) to a member of Democratic House or Senate leadership, and they are likely to think, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”br /br /Democratic Blue Dogs and deficit hawks are showing their muscle right now. Whether it’s out of principle or merely a political reflection of the president’s loss of support on health care among independent voters in a number of recent surveys, moderates in the president’s own party are now driving the bus.br /br /The Democratic grass roots so far have been patient with Congress, but at some point that patience may wear out.br /br /Few people outside of the political class understand how Capitol Hill works, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many Democrats around the country assumed that a 60-seat Senate, an overwhelmingly Democratic House and a Democratic president would pass a health care bill with a public insurance option rather easily.br /br /Ultimately, the president is likely to get a health care bill that he will sign. No bill means broken promises by both the White House and the Congressional leadership, and with the healthy majorities that Democrats have on Capitol Hill, blaming Republicans will almost certainly not work, no matter how damaged the GOP brand currently is.br /br /But it is increasingly obvious — indeed it has been rather clear for at least the past couple of weeks — that the final health care reform product won’t be what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, would prefer. Nor will it be the bill that Obama would write, if he had the power to do so.br /br /Still, the president is likely to hail passage of any bill as a historic achievement, taking credit for “the most dramatic health care reform in the nation’s history,” or words to that effect. It really doesn’t matter exactly what is and what is not in the bill. The president will have to claim victory for producing “change” no matter the specifics.br /br /The key for Democrats is how much discontent will be caused by a bill that disappoints, maybe even angers, the party’s more liberal wing.br /br /Will activists be so happy to get anything that they swallow hard and smile even if the final bill lacks a pure public insurance plan option? Will they accept the president’s likely assessment of the final product, when he says that the final bill is a huge step toward universal coverage and controlling cost?br /br /The president continues to draw strong support from Democrats, particularly the most liberal in his party. Gallup’s massive mid-July aggregated weekly tracking numbers show Obama’s job approval at 92 percent among Democrats and 95 percent among liberal Democrats.br /br /Both groups apparently have great confidence in him and are likely to give his interpretation of the final bill great weight. But between now and final passage, will the voices on the Democratic left get louder and more angry? And if they do, what will that mean for the rest of the Obama agenda?br /br /The division within the Democratic Party has Republicans feeling almost giddy. The health care debate, following the stimulus bill, the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill, the auto industry bailout and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has resurrected two issues, spending and taxes, dear to GOP hearts. And many Republicans are now confident that the pendulum is swinging back to them.br /br /These are interesting times politically, even if Democrats do control all of the levers of power in Washington, D.C.br /br /a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_13/rothenberg/37207-1.html"emThis column/em/aem first appeared in /ema href="http://www.rollcall.com/"emRoll Call/em/aem on July 27, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-9014232215637853832?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Hall of Fame Game Live Blog

2009-08-12T22:30:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/Sn9nWxDFb5I/AAAAAAAAB4E/cbocA5IAYDE/s1600-h/Class_700b.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 196px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/Sn9nWxDFb5I/AAAAAAAAB4E/cbocA5IAYDE/s400/Class_700b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368122921669980050" border="0" //abr /As I mentioned on Friday, I will be live blogging the first preseason game over at a href="http://12stepdrop.com/"12StepDrop/a tonight at 8pm. We decided we might try something a little different and embed the viewer here as well. It will have a fantasy slant, but if you are watching a Buffalo-Tennessee preseason game, chances are you play a little fantasy ...br /br /If you haven't been by 12StepDrop yet, checkout the a href="http://12stepdrop.com/chatter/"Chatter/a section. It filters out all the useless tweets by the players and shows you just their thoughts on camp and their teams. Just what the internet needs, more fantasy data.br /br /See you back here at 8 ...br /br /iframe src="http://embed.scribblelive.com/6/1/3/8/" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" frameborder="0" height="800" width="450"/iframediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-7463526901110327225?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
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Beat Me in St. Louis

2009-08-12T20:50:00.001-07:00

div align="justify"Mark Steyn on the beating that the MSM is covering u p.br /br //divblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"As Jim Treacher says:br /br //p/spanblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"If Kenneth Gladney was an Obama supporter, right now he'd be more famous than Rodney King./span/p/blockquotep align="justify"br /br /span style="color:#3333ff;"Gotta love this "post-racial America": Democrat union heavies can beat up a black guy using racial epithets and leave him in a wheelchair unable to speak — and happily (unlike, say, a black professor being asked for picture ID) it's not "symbolic" of anything at all. Not a Sharpton in sight to speak up for him: Mr. Gladney's only shot at fame is an entry in The Guinness Book of Records under "Least Famous Black Hate-Crime Victim In America."/span/p/blockquotediv align="justify"br /br /Of course Mort Kondracke will not take notice. He's too busy castigating impolite people at Town Hall meetings. And Charles Krauthammer doesn't believe that this will lead to a backlash because ... it's what union thugs do ... and the NY Times will not take notice. /divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-9145012423679044132?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Sizing Up the 2010 Senate Contests in the Summer of 2009

2009-08-12T19:10:00.001-07:00

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /Six months ago, the 2010 Senate battlefield looked relatively bare, with a few obvious skirmishes mostly in states with GOP incumbents. Three months later, the outlook had brightened dramatically for Democrats, largely the result of a number of GOP retirements and solid Democratic recruiting on those open seats.br /br /But now, as the dog days of summer begin, the landscape has shifted again, this time improving significantly for Republicans.br /br /Democrats no longer have the momentum they once possessed. Even more important, signs of some Democratic vulnerability have appeared, giving the National Republican Senatorial Committee opportunities to shoot at, rather than forcing it to play an entirely defensive game, as it has the past two cycles.br /br /Fifteen months before the midterms, Democrats have major problems in two states — Illinois and Connecticut — while a third, Nevada, remains a potential headache. Republicans, on the other hand, have serious vulnerabilities in four states — Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio — and potential problems in two others. But of late, even those Republican vulnerabilities look less daunting than they once did.br /br /The announcement by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) that she will seek re-election rather than run for the Senate (or governor) immediately boosted Republican prospects in what remains a very difficult state for the GOP. But Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) should be a formidable candidate, while Democrats have a field that is less than intimidating.br /br /And in Connecticut, veteran Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has aired multiple TV ads in an attempt to remind Constitution State voters what he has accomplished and what he stands for — an open acknowledgment that he has work to do to repair his image. Republicans now worry that Dodd, who just announced he will have surgery for prostate cancer, will retire rather than seek re-election, thereby damaging their prospects of winning the seat.br /br /Democrats have two formidable candidates in Kentucky, while Republicans recently received a gift from Sen. Jim Bunning (R) when the endangered two-term incumbent announced that he would not seek a third term. That means Secretary of State Trey Grayson will likely be the GOP nominee, dramatically increasing the chances that Republicans can retain the seat.br /br /Former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) is moving toward a Senate bid in the Granite State’s open-seat contest, and while she is not yet a proven campaigner, insiders who know her speak effusively about her abilities and appeal. Democrats once viewed their likely nominee, Rep. Paul Hodes, as a solid favorite to win the seat, but the race now looks like a tossup, at best, for Democrats.br /br /Meanwhile President Barack Obama’s sliding popularity is at least a troubling sign for Democrats in both Missouri and Ohio, where Republican Senate candidates may benefit from the public’s growing concerns about federal spending, possible tax hikes and bigger government.br /br /Republicans still lack a top-tier challenger to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) recent personal troubles certainly don’t boost Republican prospects next year. Still, as the president’s point man in the Senate, Reid simply makes himself a juicy target in the midterm elections.br /br /Democrats have potential opportunities in North Carolina and Louisiana, but they still have work to do in both. The party has not yet recruited a serious threat to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and while Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) is widely rumored to be leaning toward a challenge to Sen. David Vitter (R), the state’s fundamentals and the midterm environment raise questions about the viability of the challenge.br /br /Republicans have three longer-shot opportunities that shouldn’t yet be completely discounted — Arkansas, Colorado and Pennsylvania — though in each case the Democratic incumbent has a considerable advantage. Pennsylvania, in particular, is intriguing, since a truly nasty Democratic primary seems likely and the GOP nominee, former Rep. Pat Toomey, is not without appeal.br /br /Eleven Republican and 12 Democratic Senate seats up next year now look safe. But if Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) decides to run for the Senate, as some GOP insiders now believe he will, another of those safe Democratic seats suddenly becomes a tossup.br /br /Republicans would be wise not to celebrate just yet. Their diminished vulnerability is, in part, the result of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s leaving the GOP, which cost them a seat that they probably were going to lose next year. And with Democrats controlling 60 of the Senate’s 100 seats going into next year’s elections, any additional Republican losses would add to the party’s existing woes.br /br /The widely expected resignation of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in the fall, which will lead to a special election in the first half of 2010, also creates some uncertainty. While Republicans will have a strong nominee and the NRSC will spend what it takes to hold the seat, the special election is at least a major distraction for the national GOP.br /br /If politics is about momentum and message, then the outlook for ’10 has changed considerably over the past couple of months. Democrats still have a wealth of opportunities and some advantages, but Republicans now have momentum and an improving issue mix. For the first time this cycle, I can imagine a scenario where Democrats do not gain Senate seats in 2010.br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_17/rothenberg/37443-1.html"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on August 3, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-8724781095903172515?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Bookworm: Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

2009-08-12T17:30:00.001-07:00

Amitav Ghosh - emSea of Poppies/embr /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/"Bookworm/abr /Host: Michael Silverblattbr /br /img src="http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebooks/product/400/000/000/000/000/096/309/400000000000000096309_s4.jpg"br /br /With Sea of Poppies, a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India. Ghosh locates the heart of a pernicious global network — drugs, slavery, indentured servitude, profiteering on a previously unimagined scale — in the innocent poppy blossom.br /br /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw090108amitav_ghosh"To Listen to the Interview/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-465310884902839603?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Now Also Appearing at ID...

2009-08-12T15:50:00.001-07:00

In addition to my duties at LGM, a href="http://www.informationdissemination.net/2009/08/new-contributor-alert.html"I will now/a periodically be blogging at a href="http://www.informationdissemination.net/"Information Dissemination/a. The focus there will be more maritime oriented, and a bit more policy wonkish.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-9104123558940476213?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Degree of Difficulty

2009-08-12T14:10:00.001-07:00

This dude's job a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8096137.stm"kind of sucks. /a br /blockquoteIf you think you face an uphill challenge at work today, spare a thought for Farah Ahmed Omar, the man in charge of Somalia's navy. He has neither boats nor equipment and admits he has not been to sea for 23 years.br /br /The interim government does not control much of the 3,000-km (1,860-mile) Somali coastline and then there is the headache of plentiful pirates. Mr. Omar said he was first put in charge of the navy in 1982, but speaking to the BBC by phone from the capital, Mogadishu, he did not sound too daunted by the task ahead. /blockquotebr /Responsibility without power... Via a href="http://warisboring.com/?p=2464"Axe./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-5339203470888210067?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Rachel Maddow: Exposing the PR Firms Behind the Fake "Grass Roots" Anti-Healthcare Movement

2009-08-12T12:30:00.001-07:00

I just watched this for the second time--this is essential viewing for a mapping of the method in which corporate culture is propagated through "astro turf" groups advocating as populist movements.br /br /Very simple, notice the way she maps out who "supports" the groups and who "runs" them and what that says about the ideological/organizational impulse of the architects of a movement. In other words the "ideas"... the money... and the organization... is directed by multi-millionaire, neo-conservative, corporate executives. br /br /Follow the money...br /br /object width="400" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ct--N3hJfxscolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcffeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ct--N3hJfxscolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcffeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="400" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-8019415537560442265?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Danger Then, Danger Now

2009-08-12T10:51:00.001-07:00

a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_39W8sI41dRQ/SnpuUg5EyrI/AAAAAAAAAT8/lWPhCgZhcH4/s1600-h/images.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366723204671130290" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 130px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 125px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_39W8sI41dRQ/SnpuUg5EyrI/AAAAAAAAAT8/lWPhCgZhcH4/s400/images.jpg" border="0" //abr /divListen to a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs"Ronald Reagan warning of socialized medicine several decades ago./a The last minute should give you chills, because we are now at the moment Reagan feared--the imposition of socialism and the obliteration of the American tradition of liberty./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-2307096191057542410?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Educating America About a Judge and Other Summer Follies

2009-08-12T09:10:00.001-07:00

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_8/rothenberg/36846-1.html?type=printer_friendly"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on July 16, 2009./spanbr /br /In a stunning statement Monday sure to affect her confirmation prospects, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor pledged her “fidelity to the law.” That must have been regarded as big news to the folks over at the Washington Post, since that was the bold headline on Page One of Tuesday’s newspaper.br /br /Tomorrow’s headline in the newspaper may well be “Dog Bites Mailman,” or possibly, “Wednesday Followed Tuesday.”br /br /The New York Times apparently wasn’t as excited by Sotomayor’s stunning admission. Its headline, “Judge Focuses on Rule of Law at the Hearings,” was more matter-of-fact, though the newspaper’s first paragraph noted that the nominee said that a judge’s job “is not to make law” but “to apply the law.” Wow.br /br /The Boston Globe’s Tuesday headline about the hearings was a straightforward “Sotomayor Makes Her Case,” but the subhead was “Nominee Pledges Allegiance to the Law.” Double wow. Just once, mind you, I’d like to hear a Supreme Court nominee refuse to pledge allegiance to the law. Imagine if Sotomayor, for example, had said that the law was a bucket of warm spit. Now that would have been newsworthy.br /br /One of the Senators who introduced the nominee, New York’s Charles Schumer (D), crawled way out on a limb to suggest that the judge “puts rule of law above everything else.” (Personally, I put a flawless third-to-second-to-first double play or my mother’s chopped chicken livers above the rule of law, but I suppose that disqualifies me from ever being on the Supreme Court.)br /br /So let’s see, the big news is that Sotomayor is going to follow the law, as opposed, I guess, to following the editorials of the New York Times, the public opinion polls or the sentiments of bloggers over at Daily Kos or RedState. My, that’s a relief. I really was afraid that Sotomayor might call someone at random from the Cedar Rapids phone book to ask how to vote on a case.br /br /We are told repeatedly that each confirmation is an opportunity to teach the American public about the political process and the law, but as far as I can tell, this confirmation, like other recent ones before it, will be little more than an opportunity for Senators to ramble on about their own views and for the nominee to duck and dodge her way to confirmation.br /br /The fact of the matter is that you could ask anyone currently on the Supreme Court and they, too, would say they had “fidelity to the law,” are “impartial” and “apply the law,” not make it. And yet, they can have totally different views of cases and produce wildly different opinions.br /br /No judge in his right mind who wanted to be confirmed by the Senate would testify that he planned to “make law” from the bench. But it’s done all the time. Call it “interpreting the Constitution” if you’d like, but many Supreme Court decisions have the effect of creating rights or obligations that did not exist.br /br /For Sotomayor, the confirmation process is now about not making mistakes, not being too clear about where she stands. If this is a “teaching moment,” it’s a lesson about platitudes, vagueness and glittering generalities. By all means, let’s cover it 24/7.br /br /The Sotomayor coverage is only the latest spectacle. This has been one of the weirder summers in recent memory, and we still have many more weeks ahead of us for other strange developments to materialize.br /br /The media’s frenzy over South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R) “disappearance” and subsequent acknowledgement of an affair with a woman in Argentina could have been short-circuited only by something as unexpected as entertainer Michael Jackson’s death, an ending that was as bizarre as the rest of his life was.br /br /Since I expect Members of Congress to try to politicize everything and to interject themselves into every pop culture development, I wasn’t shocked when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) announced that she would introduce a resolution honoring the late singer.br /br /Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) quickly snuffed out that idea. That’s too bad. I would have loved to hear the House debate whether to pass that resolution. In fact, I would have paid to hear it. (Maybe that’s a way for Congress to raise additional revenue: pay-per-view Congressional floor debates over mind-bogglingly silly resolutions. Of course, C-SPAN might object.)br /br /Then there was Sarah Palin, who didn’t merely announce that she wouldn’t seek re-election; she announced that she was stepping down from her post almost immediately. After she said something about lame ducks and dead fish, she went fishing.br /br /Conservatives were outraged at the criticism of the Alaska governor, even though if the same thing had been done by a liberal Democrat they would have raked that person over the coals. And liberals slammed the governor for her action, even though if it had been done by a liberal Democrat they would have defended her just like the conservatives did.br /br /Just another summer in your nation’s capital. Health care reform, anyone?br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-356373662374733429?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Government Motors Has a Great PR Day

2009-08-12T07:29:00.001-07:00

If you've ever been to an auto show, you're likely to see some very cool concept cars. For instance, back in 1986, I saw a car with a map that could give directions in it. It was quite a concept back in the 1980's. At this past year's auto show, Saturn had a concept car that was a hybrid that runs on battery and natural gas. This car was still year's away from being on the market. The thing about concept cars is that the technology is always fascinating. Can you imagine how innovative it was in the mid 1980's to see a car that could give you directions?br /br /So, it was a bit puzzling that everyone is going so ga ga over the a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/32370001"GM Volt/a.br /br /blockquotea href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq"General Motors/aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq" said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the /aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/tm"Toyota/aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq" Prius/blockquote/abr /br /Yes, I realize that the number quoted is eye popping, but so was a map that could you anywhere in the mid 1980's. Yet, I don't remember the hoopla surrounding that concept car when it rolled out of the auto show in 1986.br /br /It's true that the Volt isn't so much a concept car but one that is near ready for production. Of course, this same Volt has been ready for production for the last four years. In fact, at the last three auto shows I attended, the Volt was supposed to be out the very next year. Now, it's once again scheduled to be officially rolled out at the end of 2010.br /br /Yet, a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/11/wow-chevy-volt-to-get-230-mpg-in-the-city/"the /ahoopla a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124998537270122333.html"surrounding /athis a href="http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/shifting-gears/2009/08/11/chevy-volt230-mpg"announcement/a has a href="http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2009/08/chevrolet_volt.html"been /afiercea href="http://www.hybridcars.com/fuel-economy/chevy-volt-230-mpg-rating-what-does-it-mean-25986.html" and /aoverwhelming. A spokesperson for Center for American Progress called the Volt a "game changer". Here's a car that won't be out for a year and a half at a minimum and it's being characterized as a "game changer". In fact, the success of the Volt is integral to the success of the Obama administration. Its out of this world gas mileage, not verified yet by the EPA, fits into an overall strategy of turning us green, energy efficient, and away from oil. Its success would mean that GM would be successful and thus would make the government's takeover of GM be seen as a success.br /br /So, it's not surprising that the Center for American Progress, run by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, would consider this car the "game changer". Don't get me wrong, I hope the Volt is everything that they say it is. That's still far from clear. First, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 per year. Second, a plug in is not exactly perfect for everyone. Third, at the last auto show, the numbers were significantly more conservative than they are now. What I don't want is for news to turn into propaganda. A car still a year and a half, minimum, from being ready for sale shouldn't get this kind of hoopla. All concept cars have innovative technologies and so the Volt is no different. What's different is that the Volt is owned in part by the government, and it's part of an overall vision that the administration has for the industry and the country. I hope that's not what's driving the hoopla surrounding the roll out of this news. The hoopla seems to be way over done. After all, so far it's made exactly ZERO dollars for GM. Maybe, we should all temper the excitement until we have an actual car to examine.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-4773807882056623539?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

My favourite blogposts and nominations

2009-08-12T05:49:00.001-07:00

As part of the a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/lib-dem-blog-of-the-year-awards-2009-15844.html" target="_blank"Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards 2009/a Liberal Democrat Voice have set us all a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/ldv-weekend-meme-your-favourite-blogpost-15847.html" target="_blank"a meme to list our favourite posts since 1 September 2008/a so as to assist others in nominating for the category of best posting on a Lib Dem blog.br /br /I do not believe that I have anything on this blog of sufficient quality to compete in this category and cannot come anywhere near reaching the level of a href="http://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/my-inner-disgusted-colonel/" target="_blank"last year's winner from Alix Mortimer/a but nevertheless I have trawled my blog and found a few that may be worth reading through again:br /br /First up a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/09/uniqueness-of-welsh-liberal-democrats.html" target="_blank"from September 2008 is this post/a in response to a BBC journalist who blogged in Welsh about the Liberal Democrats in which he repeated almost verbatim every myth and smear directed at my party by our opponents as if they were fact. I was irked to say the least:br /br /emIf there is a consensus in Wales it is not a liberal one. It is a paternalistic, state-knows-best, politically-correct blanket, smothering individuality and innovation. The Welsh Liberal Democrats have tolerated and co-operated with this view for too long and in doing so we have allowed our values to slip. It is for this reason that Vaughan Roderick is fundamentally wrong. By embracing our liberalism we can underline our distinctiveness and break that consensus once and for all./embr /br /In the same month I was tempted into responding to an anonymous comment a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-regional-am-do.html" target="_blank"to outline precisely what it is that a Regional Assembly Member does/a:br /br /emOf course none of this will satisfy those who want rid of me for their own reasons or just believe that the Assembly is a waste of money and should be abolished. Being a full time politician is not like any other job that I have done. It is challenging and it is hard work. I am often tired but that is something I have learnt to live with, because whenever I feel that I cannot go on something comes along to make it all worthwhile and that is normally news that a constituent I have been helping has won their appeal, got the house they have been trying for or just had their problem sorted out thanks to my intervention./embr /em/embr /emAt the end of the day helping people is what I am there to do and nothing beats the feeling when it all works out for the best./embr /br /In November 2008 we had just started the contest for leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/11/breath-of-fresh-air.html" target="_blank"I set out my stall as a supporter of Kirsty Williams/a:br /br /emThe one advantage Kirsty does have is her ability to unite the group behind her. By instinct she is a conciliator and has always been at the centre of efforts to resolve disagreements within the group. In fact the present leader relies on her to do this job as he is not comfortable with it himself./embr /br /In December 2008 I courted controversy by inviting the poet Patrick Jones to read his poetry at the Welsh Assembly after the launch of his new book was cancelled by Waterstones due to protests by Christian fundamentalists. a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-welsh-tory-leader-democrat.html" target="_blank"This blog entry recorded what happened/a. For some reason the excellent Western Mail video has been deleted by YouTube:br /br /emToday was a good day for democracy in Wales. Patrick Jones came to the Welsh Assembly to read from his controversial book of poems, ‘Darkness Is Where The Stars Are’, whilst 250 Christians sang and prayed outside.br //embr /In January 2009 there was a a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-are-plaid-cymru-for.html" target="_blank"more partisan blog asking 'what Plaid Cymru are for'/a as well as a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/01/fighting-for-jobs.html" target="_blank"a more routine post/a dealing with some of the day to day work that I undertake as an Assembly Member.br /br /I have written numerous posts on the proposed referendum to give the Assembly full law-making powers in the fields of responsibility defined by Part Four of the Government of Wales Act 2006. This one however, a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/03/campaigning-for-yes-vote.html" target="_blank"in March 2009/a is the closest I have come to being able to define what is at stake in that referendum and why claims that we are asking for full law-making powers is just playing into the hands of the 'No' campaign:br /br /emWe will not be going so far as to create a Scottish Parliament-type of institution nor will we be even going as far as the Richard Commission envisaged, what we will be doing is voting 'yes' to an effective law-making government that is accountable solely to the electorate for delivering its democratically mandated manifesto./embr /br /Oh, yes and from the same month a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/03/salome-yn-gymraeg-sarcasm-warning.html" target="_blank"a comment on the sort of cultural imperialism we have to put up with in Wales/a whenever a London-based journalists are forced to cross the Severn Bridge:br /br /emIt must be really difficult working for the Guardian, especially when the editor insists that his reporters abandon their safe desks in the heart of the English metropolis and rough it in the provinces. If he did it more often then the paper's arts correspondents might discover that Britain has a rich and diverse linguistic and cultural tradition, not all of which is delivered through the medium of the English language./embr /br /In April the Welsh Liberal Democrats exposed the hypocrisy of Labour and Plaid Cymru Assembly Members in speaking on behalf of students and lecturers against cuts in further education when they in fact voted for the measures. I blogged on it a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/04/hypocrisy-on-further-education.html" target="_blank"here/a and our very effective video can be found a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/04/hyprocrite-plaid-and-labour-protesting.html" target="_blank"here/a:br /br /emToday, there was a well-attended demonstration outside the Senedd against these cuts. A number of backbench Government Assembly Members spoke in support of the protestors including Helen Mary Jones, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Alun Davies and Joyce Watson. They told the protestors that they opposed the cuts in further education. It was a Damoscene conversion.br /br /On 11 March the Welsh Liberal Democrats tabled a motion to Plenary that read: the National Assembly for Wales calls on the Welsh Assembly Government to re-examine its financial support for post-16 education. Amongst those voting against that motion were Helen Mary Jones, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Alun Davies and Joyce Watson.br /br /The sheer hypocrisy of their stance is breathtaking.br //embr /In June 2009 I a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-we-should-not-ban-bnp-from-our.html" target="_blank"blogged in support of Nick Cohen in the Observer on why the BNP should not be banned from our classrooms/a:br /br /emObjectionable as they are the BNP are a legitimate party. We must fight them by exposing the bankruptcy of their ideas, by putting in place solutions to the problems they exploit and by campaigning hard on the issues in the communities they are targeting. Their creed has no place in the classroom but teachers must be judged on their behaviour and their teaching methods not on the labels they wear./embr /br /Finally, a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/07/those-dodgy-immigrants.html" target="_blank"in July/a I posted on the threat to biodiversity from the importation of plants and species into a foreign environment:br /br /emMeanwhile, the Sun reports on another troublesome immigrant. They say that Britain is being invaded by killer chipmunks. We are told that the animals, who are described as vicious, disease-riddled rodents, have escaped or been released into the wild by traders or domestic owners terrified of infection. In addition the UK is apparently on high alert in case a wave of the vermin, which have wreaked havoc in France, pours through the Channel Tunnel.br /br /The chipmunks are an ideal target for The Sun because of their promiscuity. The females can have up to 16 babies a year, so the population will be growing fairly rapidly. If they could claim benefits then the story would amount to a 'perfect storm' for the paper. /embr /br /The question as to who is going to win the prize of Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year is already the subject of much speculation on the blogosphere and on Twitter. There is consensus that three bloggers in particular are in the running. These are a href="http://charlottegore.com/" target="_blank"Charlotte Gore/a, a href="http://markreckons.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Mark Reckons/a and a href="http://himmelgartencafe.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Costigan Quist/a. However there are many more excellent Liberal Democrat blogs out there including a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Liberal England/a, a href="http://sarabedford.com/blog/" target="_blank"Sara Bedford/a, a href="http://linlithgow-libdems.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Stephen Glenn/a, a href="http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/" target="_blank"Jenny Rigg/a and a href="http://janewatkinson.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Jane Watkinson/a to name but a few. It is a crowded field of exceeding high quality and I have no idea who might win. though I nominated Charlotte Gore just because she dropped so many hints all over the place.br /br /Last year I won the award for Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office, it is still on my mantlepiece. That is another tough field though I have nominated a href="http://blogs.myspace.com/adriansandersmp" target="_blank"Adrian Sanders/a as an MP who has been blogging for some time on My Space, who has a loyal following, is not afraid to innovate and take risks and who deserves some recognition for his work.br /br /I would also like to see the new Welsh Liberal Democrat collaborative blog a href="http://www.freedomcentral.org.uk/" target="_blank"Freedom Central/a get shortlisted in the category of Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2008), however I would not expect it to win.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Update:/span aftera target="_blank" href="http://charlottegore.com/2009/08/09/top-5-tips-for-politicians.html" this post by Charlotte Gore/a I am seriously reconsidering my support for her to be blog of the year on behalf of kittens everywhere.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-7203297425971963536?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

An Argument For Localism?

2009-08-12T04:09:00.001-07:00

a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090810/us_time/08599191496100"Horrible stuff/a:br /br /blockquotebr /The bountiful harvest of California strawberries, melons, grapes, peaches and nectarines overflows the nation's summer tables. But that luscious crop mostly emerges thanks to farm workers who labor in flat fields under a scorching sun - and has a price higher than the grocery-store bill. Every year many farm workers become sick, and some die. Typical of the fatalities was Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who was just 17. In May 2008, she died after picking grapes in Merced County for nine hours in 95-degree heat. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended her funeral and promised to do more to protect workers./blockquotebr /br /I thought about excising the black comedy of the last line, but thought I should leave it in. Schwarzenegger may like the idea of protecting farm workers in theory, but if it might require a marginal increase in tax revenues to enforce the law, I think he'll quickly forget the whole thing. Priorities, you know...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1373524026747954691?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Baitullah Mehsud, Tehrik-i-Taliban Leader: Is He or Isn’t He?

2009-08-12T02:29:00.001-07:00

Another Obama Disaster

2009-08-12T00:49:00.001-07:00

Read this a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/07/an_open_letter_to_president_ob.html"open letter to Obama on his "science czar" John span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Holdren/span./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-335284048486760840?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

It’s Time for All to Recharge Their Batteries

2009-08-11T23:09:00.001-07:00

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph on the cover of this newspaper’s July 28 edition is worth an entire library.br /br /The photo, showing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) looking straight ahead in a trance-like state and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), slightly out of focus, standing just behind her, is a modern political version of “American Gothic,” the famous 1930 Grant Wood painting.br /br /But it’s more than that. It perfectly captures where the country and the Congress are after the first six months of the Barack Obama administration.br /br /Almost every time that I have seen Pelosi either in person or on TV since she became Speaker, she has looked bright-eyed, often with a big smile on her face. Like Hoyer, her deputy and sometimes adversary, she is an energetic legislator who clearly relishes the spotlight and the day-to-day grind of politics.br /br /But the Roll Call photograph reveals a very different side of the Speaker — as a 69-year-old woman who looks just plain worn out. Hoyer, who turned 70 in June, looks as serious and as fatigued at Pelosi. Together, they are a couple of senior citizens who have had an unusually hectic six months.br /br /It has been 11 months since the nation’s financial services industry began to implode, leading to a dramatic increase in government intervention in the banking sector and then the automobile industry.br /br /During that time, we’ve had a presidential election and inauguration, multiple bailouts, a massive economic stimulus package and a Supreme Court vacancy and nominee. We’ve also had multiple developing political scandals featuring Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a close Pelosi ally.br /br /Then there has been the cacophony of chatter about cap-and-trade legislation, health insurance and health care reform, taxes, and spending. And I didn’t even mention Cabinet appointees who dropped out, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Bernie Madoff, Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney.br /br /The White House has been in “crisis” mode for the past six months, in part as a way to ram controversial legislation through Congress. But while that strategy helped bring swift passage of the stimulus bill, it has lost much of its steam.br /br /Both legislators and many in the public are simply tired of all of the chaos, and waiting an extra month or two or three to get the best health care bill possible doesn’t seem like a huge price to pay. And, of course, it isn’t — except that delay increases the chances that Republicans will be able to derail the entire package.br /br /One of the problems Democrats now face, and this includes the strategists at the White House, is that there have been so many estimates, promises, warnings, deadlines and projections that it’s hard to take any of them very seriously at this point.br /br /Does anybody really believe the president when he talks about how many jobs will be “saved” or created by the passage of a particular bill? Does anyone really know whether the Congressional Budget Office’s projections about savings (or the lack of savings) from a House Democratic health care bill are on the money? Would any sensible person really believe projections coming out of the Center for American Progress on the left or the Heritage Foundation on the right?br /br /Often I don’t know what to believe, so I don’t believe any of them. And I’m willing to bet that a lot of Americans feel the same way.br /br /It’s certainly not that voters have any greater faith in the Republicans these days. Polling doesn’t show dramatically increased confidence in the GOP or in Republican leaders.br /br /It’s simply that all of the activity of the first six months of the Obama administration has created enough skepticism and doubt around the country and on Capitol Hill to make things much harder for the president and Congressional leaders than things were in February or March.br /br /Democrats continue to have a couple of considerable advantages. While the president’s job approval numbers have slipped, they remain good. And he is still a strong communicator. Voters still have greater confidence in the Democratic Party than in the GOP on most of the key issues of the day — though no longer on the deficit and taxes.br /br /A month away from Washington, D.C., even to try to “sell” the Democratic health care agenda, could well re-energize Pelosi and Hoyer. And given the intensity of the legislative sprint that started at Obama’s inauguration, both parties — as well as the American public — could use a breather.br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_20/rothenberg/37575-1.html"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on August 6, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-7304848962132998704?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Natasha Singer: Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy

2009-08-11T21:29:00.001-07:00

Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapybr /By NATASHA SINGERbr /a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"The New York Times/abr /br /Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.br /br /The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.br /br /But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.br /br /The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.br /br /The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.br /br /The documents on ghostwriting were uncovered by lawyers suing Wyeth and were made public after a request in court from PLoS Medicine, a medical journal from the Public Library of Science, and The New York Times.br /br /A spokesman for Wyeth said that the articles were scientifically accurate and that pharmaceutical companies routinely hired medical writing companies to assist authors in drafting manuscripts.br /br /The court documents provide a detailed paper trail showing how Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing. The documents suggest the practice went well beyond the case of Wyeth and hormone therapy, involving numerous drugs from other pharmaceutical companies.br /br /“It’s almost like steroids and baseball,” said Dr. Joseph S. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who has conducted research on ghostwriting. “You don’t know who was using and who wasn’t; you don’t know which articles are tainted and which aren’t.”br /br /a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html?_r=2pagewanted=1hp"To Read the Rest of the Article/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-5016785610004433946?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Your MLB Announcing Schedule For The Weekend Of 8/8

2009-08-11T19:49:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SnxrqGXZ5BI/AAAAAAAAB38/3Y1gfSttjYo/s1600-h/papi.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 251px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SnxrqGXZ5BI/AAAAAAAAB38/3Y1gfSttjYo/s400/papi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367283226926244882" border="0" //abr /span style="font-weight: bold;"uSaturday, August 8th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"(FOX, 4:10, 88%) /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"- /spanspanJoe Buck, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Markets Include:/span Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Denver, Detroit, Fort Myers, Greensboro, Greenville, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Knoxville, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Tulsa, Washington, West Palm Beachbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Texas Rangers at Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"(FOX, 4:10, 11%)/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" - /spanspanThom Brennaman and Eric Karros/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" /spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Markets Include:/span Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Antoniobr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"uSunday, August 9th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Minnesota Twins at Detroit Tigers (TBS, 1pm) -/span Chip Caray and Dennis Eckersleybr /span style="font-weight: bold;"Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" (ESPN, 8pm)-/span Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Steve Phillipsbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"uMonday, August 10th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Detroit Tigers at Boston Red Sox/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" (ESPN, 8pm)-/span Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser and Steve Phillipsbr /___________________br /br /Also a quick FYI to all you fantasy heads out there. You may have noticed the number of posts has gone down a bit in recent weeks. This is because I've been working on a bit of a side project involving Fantasy Football. The site is called a href="http://12stepdrop.com"12 Step Drop/a, and even though it's still in the early stages of development, you should still check it out. It's a twist on the standard sites that are all stats and injuries, and I think you'll get a kick out of it.br /br /Myself and a few friends will be live-blogging the Hall of Fame Game over there this Sunday, so please stop by and comment if you have a second.br /br /a href="http://12stepdrop.com"12 Step Drop/abr /br /input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"!--Session data--input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"div id="refHTML"/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-1152729147655512951?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:63t7Ie-LG7Y"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?i=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a
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Palin's Moment

2009-08-11T18:08:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin has officially thrust herself into the debate on health care reform. This after noon, in the context of countering what he considers misconceptions of the health care bill, President Obama proclaimed, without mentioning Palin by name, a falsehood the idea of a "a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/deconstructing-palins-health-care.html"death panel/a". The president even proclaimed that "advanced care planning consultation", which he maintains is where the source of the confusion is, was first proposed by REPUBLICAN Senator Johnny Isakson. That reference caused Isakson to a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/heres-johnny-isakson-pushes-back-on-death-panels-but-also-on-house-democrats-bill.html"say this/a.br /br /blockquoteThe White House and others are merely attempting to deflect attention from the intense negativity caused by their unpopular policies. I never consulted with the White House in this process and had no role whatsoever in the House Democrats’ bill. I categorically oppose the House bill and find it incredulous that the White House and others would use my amendment as a scapegoat for their misguided policies. My Senate amendment simply puts health care choices back in the hands of the individual and allows them to consider if they so choose a living will or durable power of attorney. The House provision is merely another ill-advised attempt at more government mandates, more government intrusion, and more government involvement in what should be an individual choice.br //blockquotebr /Ever since Governor Palin issued a statement on a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434"Facebook/a, it has been the source of controversy. She has inserted herself into the debate and now it's time for her to make herself a player in this debate. There is nothing I hate worse than drive by criticism. In that, it is someone that makes a nasty criticism and then says nothing else. So far, that's all that Palin has said about the health care reform debate.br /br /If Palin wants to be a player on the national scene, she has the perfect platform now to make an appearance. Folks like Bill Kristol said, when she announced she would resign, that she could travel the country fighting for conservative principles. This health care proposal is an affront to conservatism.br /br /So, Sarah Palin has the perfect platform to make her first appearance on the national scene as a private citizen that defends conservative principles. If all she does is issue this provocative statement and says nothing more on the issue, then frankly she is not ready for primetime. If, on the other hand, she wants to be a player on the national scene, this statement must be the beginning of something. She could do an op ed, an interview, or even a speech. Now that she has thrust herself into the health care debate, she must go all the way into the debate.br /br /If Palin wants to be taken seriously, she must add more than vague provocative statements like "death panel". Palin must explain what she means. Her Facebook statement is four paragraphs. If she wants to be taken seriously, she must add more than four paragraphs. She must explain how and why rationing will lead to the "death panel". She must explain how and why the old and the weak will be the first to go in such a case. If Palin wants to help promote conservative principles her moment has arrived.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-6022399988183261617?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

New Jersey Governor: You Have 4 Months To Learn to Say ‘Gov. Chris Christie’

2009-08-11T16:28:00.001-07:00

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /The raid last week in New Jersey that resulted in the arrest of 44 people, including a number of officeholders, probably is the straw that breaks Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine’s back in November. When I asked one longtime Democratic insider about the race, it took him all of two words to assess Corzine’s prospects: “It’s over.” Another Garden State Democrat was more cautious, saying only, “It’s almost over.”br /br /All eyes will now be on the governor, to see whether he follows the lead of former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), who dropped his Senate candidacy late in 2002 when he and party insiders came to believe that he could very well lose his seat to the Republican challenger. Party leaders then picked former Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) to replace him on the ballot, and Lautenberg went on to win in the fall.br /br /Corzine’s ethics are not the issue, of course. His major problem is the state’s economy, which includes the budget.br /br /But after the raid, Garden State voters are now more likely to kill two birds with one vote — expressing their disappointment with the governor’s economic performance while also finally making a statement about ethics, corruption and good government. That’s exactly what happened in Louisiana in 2007, when Bobby Jindal (R) was elected governor.br /br /During the July FBI raid, authorities arrested a number of former and current officeholders, including Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini and Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega, all Hudson County Democrats. Ocean County Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt was the lone Republican arrested in the sting.br /br /For months, polls have shown Christie holding anywhere from a 6-point to a 12-point lead over Corzine, who served five years in the Senate before winning the governorship in 2005. Polls have shown the governor draws 38 percent to 41 percent in ballot tests, a sign of his weak position, and he is losing too much support among blue-collar Democrats and independent voters.br /br /“Independents,” one veteran New Jersey Democrat told me, “have stopped listening to the governor. He is well-known to them, and they are ready to move on.”br /br /Christie is perfectly positioned to benefit from growing voter embarrassment with the state’s reputation as an ethical cesspool. He recently added Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno, a 50-year-old former federal prosecutor, to his ticket as lieutenant governor.br /br /Guadagno is a former assistant U.S. attorney (where she was deputy chief of the Corruption Unit) and deputy director of the state Division of Criminal Justice. She favors abortion rights.br /br /Over the weekend, Corzine made his picket for his running mate, selecting state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, 74, of Bergen County.br /br /Weinberg, who has served for more than a decade in the Assembly, is known as a hard campaigner and a reformer (as well as an adversary of a former powerful Bergen County Democratic leader who is awaiting trial on corruption charges). The state Senator, who lost much of her savings in the Bernie Madoff investment scam, is also regarded as very liberal.br /br /Weinberg’s reputation as a reformer ordinarily would be an asset. But with state Democrats buried under an avalanche of bad news, her nomination isn’t likely to change the foul odor coming from state party circles. And Weinberg is widely disliked by Democratic county chairmen, who traditionally are responsible for running the all-important county organizations in the state and for getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day.br /br /“County [party] leaders don’t like Loretta. They find her anti-party-structure. They feel that she’s unable to do anything but complain,” one Democrat told me recently.br /br /It didn’t take long for the New York Times to report that Rep. Frank Pallone and Newark Mayor Cory Booker were expressing interest in replacing Corzine as the Democratic nominee if the governor were to announce that he had decided against running for re-election.br /br /But Corzine, who didn’t come up through the state Democratic machine and now has a running mate, insists that he is in the race until November. Unlike Torricelli, who, one Garden State Democrat observed, needed to find work after the election and knew that he couldn’t afford to just blow up the party, Corzine is financially secure and can afford to ignore the consequences of remaining in the contest.br /br /The comeback by then-Gov. Brendan Byrne (D), who trailed his GOP opponent by an even bigger margin in 1977 than Corzine now trails Christie, is certain to give Corzine at least a faint hope of victory. That hope and the governor’s stubbornness argue against a quick exit. Most insiders see only about a 1-in-5 chance that the governor will end his re-election bid.br /br /Democratic strategists aren’t yet certain what kind of a year their party will have in November, though they think a 5-point loss by Corzine and modest losses downballot is the most likely scenario. But they acknowledge that a much bigger Corzine defeat (in the order of 10 or 12 points) is possible, along with correspondingly larger losses in the Assembly and in local races.br /br /Whatever the outcome, 2009 will be at the very least a decent year for Garden State Republicans, and possibly something much better. The result, one Democrat told me recently, is that the message of November will be that New Jersey once again is a two-party state. And Republicans are likely to trumpet that comeback nationally.br /br /a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_16/rothenberg/37356-1.html"emThis column/em/aem first appeared in /ema href="http://www.rollcall.com/"emRoll Call/em/aem on July 30, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-7922844035038819684?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Chuck Kleinhans: Imagining Torture

2009-08-11T14:48:00.001-07:00

img src="https://www.hotmoviesale.com/dvds/29164/1/Lost-Command.jpg"br /br /Imagining torturebr /by Chuck Kleinhansbr /a href="http://www.ejumpcut.org/"Jump Cut/abr /br /img src="http://www.lib.washington.edu/media/criterion/images/thebattleofalgiers.jpg"br /br /Most of us don’t know torture, either as victim or perpetrator. We haven’t experienced it. We can only imagine it. We imagine it in terms of extreme pain we have felt, the feeling of panic and loss, violation of our body, perhaps in a accident or illness. But even then we don’t have the experience of being a prisoner, of being totally helpless. Therefore we have to imagine torture from descriptive sources such as news or, more likely, from fictions, particularly its representation in popular film and on TV.br /br /In this essay I want to survey the fundamental political facts of torture in the present moment in U.S. history and then provide a brief introduction to the visual imagination of torture in moving image media. Other articles in this issue of Jump Cut also discuss torture: Julia Lesage’s analyses of recent documentaries on U.S. CIA and military torture of prisoners taken in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Martha Rosler’s reconsideration of her pioneering video, A Simple Case for Torture. But the fundamental issues also cross over into the sections in this issue on porn and on horror. The human body, on display, in extreme sensory states, in danger, in degradation, in humiliation: these conditions overlap, as with a Venn diagram overlapping sex, horror, and violence. Considering these connections in a fast-changing current political and media moment is an urgent task now and in the near future.br /One: torture and the national imaginationbr /br /As the United States moved to the November 2008 Presidential election, other issues took the lead: the national domestic economy; the financial sector meltdown; the increasing housing crisis; the high cost of transportation, energy, healthcare, and food; the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so forth. In that frame, torture was not a front burner issue. As the election season narrowed the range of topics in public discussion and concentrated attention on individual candidates rather than offered any systematic analysis, torture appeared to disappear as an issue. But, we would argue, it is also deeply present in U.S. life and also deeply repressed. America is in denial about torture. First, it is a troubling topic. Deaths in combat are an uncomfortable topic, but understandable. Soldiers become casualties and kill others — combatants and civilians.br /br /But torture suddenly became one of the central issues in the Obama era, in part because of how the President chose to play out the choices: close Guantanamo; do not prosecute CIA agents involved in torture; do not pursue the war crimes of the previous administration; continue the imprisonment by moving prisoners to other sites; restore military tribunals. At the same time, those who want to hold the Bush-Cheney administration responsible have found a fulcrum point in the torture issue. Even more invitingly, Dick Cheney has become increasingly defensive and open, calling for release of classified documents to “prove” torture was effective and thus that he was right. Even the normally circumspect Condoleezza Rice has made public defenses of her past actions. And the right wing media amplifiers have blustered on, with TV talk show host Sean Hannity even offering to be waterboarded to prove it wasn’t really torture, and then chickening out when challenged to do so.br /br /Torture in custody always involves premeditation and planning. It is hard to talk about, to recognize, to face up to. The examples that come forward, such as the Abu Ghraib photos, or reports that the United States took children as hostages and terrorized them to get information about the whereabouts of their father, are disturbing. But we would argue that issue is really always present but repressed. The trace of denial can be seen in media representations, and covers not only documentaries, but also dramatic feature films about the war, and entertainment films and TV shows that touch on the subject.br /br /Torture is part of the contemporary national imagination. In summer 2007 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, at a Canadian meeting of international jurists, indicated he was a big fan of the TV drama 24.br /br / "'Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,' Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand. 'Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?' Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. 'Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so. …'"br /br / "During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 … 'There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed,' Judge Scalia said. 'They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family.'"[1][open endnotes in new window]br /br /Following the 9/11 attack, the war in Afghanistan, and the subsequent capture of Al-Qaeda suspects (and more, later in Iraq), the White House National Security Council’s Principals Committee met regularly to advise President Bush on the prisoners (euphemistically called in Bushspeak “detainees,” as if they were just being politely asked to wait a little while until another flight). Chaired by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the group included Vice President Dick Chaney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, or their principal deputies. They discussed and approved specific details of how Al-Qaeda prisoners would be interrogated. They approved combining techniques including slapping, pushing, slamming heads into walls, sleep deprivation, stress positions, loud music, and waterboarding. br /br /img src="http://ngepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/law-order-special-victims-unit.jpg"br /br /a href="http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/imaginingtorture/index.html"To Read the Rest of the Essay/abr /br /img src="http://libertasexemplar.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/jack_bauer_torture.jpg"div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-1613339892207463286?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Book Review: The White War

2009-08-11T13:08:00.001-07:00

In May 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in an effort to detach and seize several mountain provinces, as well as Trieste and portions of the Adriatic Coast. Since the beginning of the war, Italy had engaged in negotiations with both the Allies and the Central Powers. Although initially attached by treaty to Berlin and Vienna, neither the Germans nor the Austrians viewed Italian intervention as decisive or likely. The Austrians made some offer of territorial concessions, but this did not include Trieste. Moreover, Italian nationalism viewed the "Italian" lands held by Austria as far more integral to Italy's "natural" status than similar areas in French hands. Eventually, with minimal debate and without substantial public support, pro-war Italian factions had engineered a declaration of war against Austria. Three and a half years later, Italy would win Trieste at the cost of 650000 military dead, a percentage higher than that of the United Kingdom. a href="http://www.amazon.com/White-War-Death-Italian-1915-1919/dp/0465013295"Mark Thompson's The White War/a examines the Italian campaign in depth, and is harshly critical of Italy's civilian and military leadership.br /br /The idea of war against Austria was not particularly popular in Italy in 1915. The Italian state was itself relatively new, and had considerable difficulty winning the loyalties of locals and creating a cohesive Italian identity. The notion that Trieste and a few Alpine areas were necessary to create the "real" Italy was alien to the bulk of the Italian peasantry, and wasn't particularly popular to the working class. The intellectual class, however, ate it up. Although not fully united behind the idea of war, Italian intellectuals by and large saw Trieste and environs as belonging to Italy by right, and believed that war was the only way to win it. This is to say that they believed that war was a positive good; Italy wouldn't simply gain more by fighting, but any gains were better won with blood than won through negotiation. Gabriele D'Annunzio was the chief exemplar of the Italian intellectual warrior-caste; in addition to cheer-leading, he participated directly in the butchery by ineptly leading several bizarre military effort during the war. The control by the war-party of the Italian intellectual class, and accordingly its control over the media, meant that it was possible for the Italian government to wage an aggressive war with the genuinely unenthusiastic support of the bulk of the country. World War I was unpopular in Italy, but control of the media was able to substantially obscure this fact. br /br /Enthusiasm aside, Italy was not prepared for a major war. Its soldiers were poorly trained, it lacked artillery and infantry equipment, and its senior leadership was substantial behind the curve. The first offensives were, accordingly, disastrous. For an obsolete empire, Austria-Hungary fought well enough for three years. Imperial forces were consistently outnumbered by the Italians, and usually suffered from severe material shortages. The army of Austria-Hungary was a hodgepodge of different nationalities, each with its own reasons for fighting. Nevertheless, working with the benefit of forbidding defensive terrain, the Austrians did very well against the Italians. Italy threw its army repeatedly against fortified Imperial positions with little or no effect apart from the general massacre of its men. Italy won exactly one of the twelve Battles of the Isonzo, even then gaining only trivial Austrian territory. Nevertheless, the relentless Italian pressure put the institutions of the Dual Monarchy under severe strain, and limited Austria's ability to prosecute the war against Serbia and Russia. br /br /In October 1917 the Germans decided that they had had enough, and took command of a combined German-Austrian operation on the Italian front. With troops fresh from the collapsing Russian front, the Germans and Austrians were able to build up a substantial numerical advantage. When the offensive was launched, the Italian response was hopeless. Italian territorial gains were lost within days, and the Central Powers pushed almost all the war to Venice. The Italians were simply incapable of fighting a modern foe when that foe had sufficient equipment and reserves. A young officer named Erwin Rommel won glory in this campaign, capturing some 9000 Italian soldiers while commanding a battalion. The most memorable parts of A Farewell to Arms, for my money the most memorable Hemingway, also cover the Battle of Caporetto. The German and Austrian failure to exploit the victory is one of the great "roads not taken" of World War I. Italian lines had not fully solidified when the Caporetto offensive slowed, and it's possible that more vigorous prosecution could have effectively destroyed the Italian Army as a fighting force. Instead, the Germans withdrew to prepare for their spring offensives on the Western Front, and the Austrians were unable to make up the slack. In hindsight, there can be little question that a Central Powers strategy of serially knocking Allied countries out of the war would have been better than the gamble of unrestricted submarine warfare; by late 1917 the Germans and Austrians had essentially defeated Serbia, Rumania, and Russia, and breaking Italian resistance might have driven France and the UK to terms. br /br /Although Thompson doesn't dwell on the point, he does bring up the relationship between Catholicism and Italian nationalism. Italian nationalists viewed the Catholic hierarchy with great suspicion, largely because of its resistance to Italian unification in the 19th century. The fact that the Dual Monarchy was Catholic only served to increase the level of suspicion, and priests in occupied areas came under surveillance. Some were even interned. After the death of Emperor Franz Josef, Charles I of Austria took efforts at mediation through the Pope, although these came to nothing. Italy's other regional and class divides also received attention from the state, although it's worth noting that there was no general worker or regional uprisings to the extent seen in Germany or Austria-Hungary. br /br /Thompson is harshly critical of the Italian high command for most of the war, and repeatedly makes the point that the Italian Army itself was incapable of fighting a major war against a modern opponent. It is possible for both of these things to be true at the same time, but of course there is some tension between them. Offensive infantry action against a determined and entrenched opponent is possible, but it requires a great deal of training and social trust. The Italian Army lacked such training, and also lacked the national social cohesion that helped facilitate military effectiveness. Given that a defensive position out of the gate wasn't an option (why would you declare war, then go on the defensive?) I'm not completely convinced that Italy's generals deserve quite the degree of condemnation that Thompson accords. Of course, this isn't to say that the fault lies with the individual soldiers; Italians fought with extraordinary bravery against insurmountable odds, and experienced precisely what happens when a resistable force meets an immoveable object. I also wish that Thompson had included some discussion of the naval war. Although it wasn't decisive, it was taken seriously by both sides and had some effect on the larger war. It also included some events that were compatible with Thompson's thesis on a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/01/ticking-time-bombs-kiefer-sutherland.html"war and Italian nationalism,/a such as the a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/09/sunday-battleship-blogging-sms-viribus.html"destruction of the Viribus Unitas./a br /br /Thompson doesn't shy away from parallels between Italy's vicious war party and modern American neoconservatives. Neocons don't sing the praises of war as a postive act, or at least they don't do so publicly, but they do romanticize force in a manner reminiscent of D'Annunzio and his ilk. Neoconservatives also mirror the Italian war party in their view of the role of the media, which in war is understood to be one of maintaining fighting enthusiasm rather than telling anything approaching the truth. It bears mentioning that this approach to the media isn't just bad for democracy and bad for truth, but is also bad for war; in both the Iraq War and in Italy's experience of World War I, media control almost certainly produced a less capable military force, by obscuring the failures of military organizations and reducing incentive to change and adapt. br /br /Finally, Thompson's White War illuminates the folly of the a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/05/question-of-will.html"Cult of Will/a; the idea that objectives are achievable if we simply want them hard enough, and if that failure is the result of insufficient enthusiasm. The Cult of Will was present in full force in Italy in 1915, and anyone who pointed out that throwing poorly trained conscripts against prepared defensive positions in mountainous was stupid was immediately denounced as a traitor and enemy of the nation. But of course, all the enthusiasm in the world was insufficient to break the Austrian position; the Italians finally made meager gains only when the entire Central Powers collapsed in late 1918, an event which was not precipitated by the succession of inept Italian offensives. In the end, the fact that you really want something (and even that you want it more than the other guy; many of the Imperial soldiers couldn't give a rats ass about either the Hapsburgs or the Alpine provinces) doesn't meant that you'll actually get it. The Will to Win is great, but I'll take artillery if given the choice.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6997789163834447468?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Obama, Biden Seats in Danger?

2009-08-11T11:28:00.001-07:00

By Nathan L. Gonzalesbr /br /Lost in the focus on President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden’s history-making move down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in January was the fact that Republicans have a historic opportunity to pick up the pair’s former Senate seats.br /br /Over the past century, half of the dozen seats vacated by a new president or vice president have switched partisan control in the next election. a href="http://www.rollcall.com/pdfs/WhiteHouseChart.pdf"emClick here for the Senate chart/em/a.br /br /In 2010, Republicans have open-seat opportunities in Illinois and Delaware and could win both seats vacated by a president and vice president in the same cycle for the first time in U.S. history.br /br /The last time a newly elected president and vice president gave up their Senate seats the same year was in 1960. Democrats held President John F. Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in the next election, but the party lost Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s Texas seat when appointed Sen. William Blakley (D) narrowly lost a 1961 special election to John Tower (R).br /br /“Obviously people see these as elected [not appointed] offices,” said former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who was appointed to fill the vacancy in 1989 when Sen. Dan Quayle was elected vice president. “That’s why the first election is so critical.”br /br /Democratic chances of holding Obama’s seat improved when appointed Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) decided not to run next year. Burris’ tenure has been overshadowed by fallout from his controversial appointment by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), who has since been indicted and impeached. But after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) took a pass on the Senate race and Rep. Mark Kirk (R) jumped in, Republican chances improved dramatically.br /br /In Delaware, former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) appointed longtime Biden aide Ted Kaufman (D) as a placeholder to fill the vice president’s Senate seat. State Attorney General Beau Biden (D) is expected to run for his father’s seat once he returns from active duty in Iraq. Meanwhile, political operatives on both sides of the aisle are waiting for Rep. Mike Castle (R) to make a decision on the race. With Castle, who has represented the entire state both as Congressman and governor, this race might be one of the best GOP takeover opportunities in the country. Without him, it’s not even competitive.br /br /Over the past 100 years, three Senate seats vacated by a president-elect or vice president-elect have been filled with placeholders (not including Kaufman).br /br /In 1948, Democrats held the seat vacated by Alben Barkley (D-Ky.), who was elected vice president under Harry Truman. When appointed Sen. Garrett Withers (D-Ky.) did not run in 1950, Earle Clements defeated Charles Dawson (R) to keep the seat in Democratic hands. Clements lost re-election six years later.br /br /After Kennedy’s election in 1960, Benjamin Smith II (D-Mass.) was appointed to his Senate seat until the election in 1962, when the president’s brother, Edward Kennedy (D), was old enough run and serve.br /br /More recently, Republicans took over the seat vacated by then-Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.) after he and Bill Clinton were elected to the White House in 1992. Appointed Sen. Harlan Mathews (D-Tenn.) didn’t seek a full term, and Fred Thompson (R) defeated Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper 60 percent to 39 percent in the Republican wave of 1994.br /br /The political environment was a critical factor in many of these Senate races.br /“Some of these things are beyond the candidate’s control,” former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) said in a recent interview. “Dynamics come up that are quite beyond you.”br /br /Boschwitz was elected to the Senate in 1978 when he defeated Democrat Wendell Anderson, who had been appointed to fill the vacancy created when then-Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) was elected Jimmy Carter’s vice president. Republicans netted three seats in the Senate and 15 in the House that cycle, but the appointment became an issue as well.br /br /Anderson had resigned as governor in order to be appointed to Mondale’s seat by the new governor. Self-appointments are rare and can be politically trickier to explain to voters. In Minnesota, Anderson’s maneuver became an issue, the midterm cycle turned against the Democrats and Boschwitz took issue with Anderson’s absenteeism, resulting in a 17-point victory. Boschwitz held the seat until he lost to Democrat Paul Wellstone by two points in 1990.br /br /The stock market crash helped George McGill (D) defeat appointed-Sen. Henry Allen (R-Kansas) in 1930, who was appointed to the seat vacated when Charles Curtis (R-Kansas) was elected vice president under Herbert Hoover two years earlier. McGill was the last Democrat to represent Kansas in the Senate.br /br /Historically, appointed Senators who follow a president or vice president into office and then run for a full term have had nearly equal odds of winning or losing in the next election.br /br /Before Anderson in Minnesota, Mondale was appointed to the seat in 1965 when Hubert Humphrey was elected vice president under Johnson. Mondale was elected in his own right in 1966 with 54 percent and served until he was elected vice president.br /br /“The election is a way of ratifying or denying that appointment,” Coats explained. “Ninety percent of Indiana didn’t know who I was, so I thought I better get in front of them.” After his appointment to Quayle’s seat, the former Congressman defeated Democrat Baron Hill with 54 percent in 1990 and was elected to a full term in 1992 with 57 percent.br /br /After Sen. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.) was elected vice president under Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, appointed Sen. Thomas Kuchel was elected to the remainder of Nixon’s term in 1954 and served until 1968.br /br /Along with Allen in Kansas, the Blakley loss in Texas in the 1960s and Anderson’s loss in the 1980s, Democrats lost Harry Truman’s Missouri Senate seat, the only presidential Senate seat to immediately switch party hands in the last century.br /br /Frank Briggs (D) was appointed in Missouri after Truman was elected vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. But when Roosevelt died a few months later, Truman ascended to the presidency. Then in 1946, Briggs lost to James Kem (R), who was known as a staunch Truman opponent. Kem served only one term before he lost re-election to Stuart Symington (D).br /br /Surely, the White House doesn’t want to fuel Republican confidence or give the party a rallying cry by letting Obama’s or Biden’s Senate seat fall into GOP hands.br /br /Republicans lost Vice President Gerald Ford’s Michigan House seat in a February 1974 special election at a time when Nixon’s approval was sagging. The race also foreshadowed larger GOP losses that would come that fall.br /br /Democrat Richard Vander Veen’s special election victory was remarkable since the Grand Rapids-area district hadn’t elected a Democrat since 1912 — and hasn’t elected one again since 1974.br /br /Ford’s seat is one of two House seats that have been vacated by an incoming vice president.br /br /Speaker John Nance Garner (D-Texas) left Congress when he was elected vice president under FDR in 1932. Milton West kept Garner’s 15th district seat in Democratic hands for seven terms, but Garner may have been a bit jealous since he famously described his new job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”br /br /a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_15/politics/37321-1.html"emThis story/em/aem first appeared in /ema href="http://www.rollcall.com/"emRoll Call /em/aemon July 29, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Some updates made to original./emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-7338658864176447736?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Extent of RD Spending on Neglected Diseases

2009-08-11T09:48:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/SnlGXsdK5UI/AAAAAAAADpA/pqC_wfpzZDA/s1600-h/neglected.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 322px; height: 311px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/SnlGXsdK5UI/AAAAAAAADpA/pqC_wfpzZDA/s400/neglected.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366397803873101122" border="0" //aI have, ah, neglected to mention this a href="http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000030"interesting study/a on funding for neglected diseases which is the most informative one I've found to date on the topic. The Gates Foundation commissioned this study with the self-explanatory title of "Neglected Disease Research and Development: How Much Are We Really Spending?" It was run in conjunction with the creation of G-FINDER, arguably the most comprehensive database on neglected disease Ramp;D. The way I like introducing this topic to those unfamiliar with it is by contrasting big pharmaceutical firms traditionally spending massive sums on often cosmetic wants in the West--think of your Viagra and Botox. At the same time, life-threatening neglected diseases in LDCs lack for attention since these markets are not viewed as being profitable enough. While I dispute this notion, I must also admit that there have been limited examples of firms operating profitably with a longstanding or even exclusive focus on drugs for neglected diseases.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/SnnAuWBqlVI/AAAAAAAADpg/ISs1-6XDevU/s1600-h/neglectedfunding.gif"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 361px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/SnnAuWBqlVI/AAAAAAAADpg/ISs1-6XDevU/s400/neglectedfunding.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366532333407737170" border="0" //aEncouragingly, the authors find that spending by some Big Pharma firms on drugs for neglected diseases is approaching that by official funders. While I remain convinced that it is more likely that firms in the developing world will provide their own affordable solutions to neglected diseases than a wholesale change in attitude by Western pharmaceutical giants, these results may yet prove me wrong. And, of course, why wouldn't I want to be wrong?br /br /The article in its entirety is available either in HTML or PDF form from the well-respected online journal PLoS Medicine. What I excerpt here are the concluding observations:br /blockquoteWe therefore restrict ourselves to a few observations. The first is that research funding is highly concentrated and has little correlation with burden of disease, as measured by DALYs [disability-adjusted life years].br /br /For instance, HIV, TB, and malaria accounted for 125 million DALYs in low- and middle-income countries in 2004 and received nearly 80% of total funding; while pneumonia and the diarrhoeal illnesses accounted for 165 million DALYs in these countries in the same year but received less than 6% of total funding. Likewise, helminth infections received less than half the funding of kinetoplastid diseases although their disease burden was three times higher (12 million DALYs in 2004 compared to 4 million DALYs for the kinetoplastid diseases); while dengue had a disease burden 20 times lower than helminth infections at 600,000 DALYs in 2004 but received nearly twice as much funding.br /br /This observation should not be construed as a statement or belief that funding levels can or should be based only on disease DALYs. DALYs are the most widely accepted quantitative indicator of burden of disease, but remain an imperfect measure. For some diseases, such as Buruli ulcer, reliable DALYs are virtually nonexistent; correct estimates can be difficult to obtain in regions with weak data; and DALYs do not reflect the impact of co-morbidities, such as HIV and TB. The DALY comparison is noted here chiefly to give a sense of the differences in scale of funding for different diseases.br /br /It is important to note, however, that funding levels reflect many factors beyond DALYs. The current state of science for a given disease plays a role, since many would-be investors in product development look at feasibility as well as need. Conversely, other investors may specifically choose to invest in areas where science is lacking, believing their best contribution will be funding a breakthrough discovery to unlock the path to new products.br /br /Funders may also look at the state of existing therapies, preferring to focus on areas where no safe effective treatments exist (for example, some kinetoplastid diseases) to areas where treatments exist even though they may be limited or sub-optimal (for example, some helminth infections). Funders may also want to focus on diseases with a higher relative or absolute mortality, such as dengue or meningitis, rather than diseases with lower relative mortality but a higher DALY burden.br /br /The type of Ramp;D needed in a given disease area is also a crucial factor in interpreting the data, since Ramp;D costs vary dramatically depending on the kind of product being developed and how far down the development pathway that product is. Vaccines are far more expensive to develop than drugs, and drugs than diagnostics. Clinical development is also far more expensive than pre-clinical or discovery research. For instance, out-of-pocket development cost of a diagnostic test can be in the low tens of millions; while clinical development cost of a novel fixed-dose combination anti-malarial is estimated at US$30 million, and of a malaria vaccine at just over US$100 million. Thus, far more investment would be needed to develop a meningitis vaccine than a TB diagnostic, irrespective of the lower burden of disease for meningitis or a more advanced state of meningitis vaccine technology.br /br /Despite this, the concentration of funding on AIDS, TB, and malaria nevertheless suggests that investment decisions are not only influenced by scientific or epidemiological considerations, but may also be influenced by factors such as the presence of PDPs or civil society groups with active advocacy, fundraising, and investment activities; by funder perceptions or preferences; or by the presence of policy frameworks and funding mechanisms that prioritise specific diseases.br /br /The predominance of research into new products for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB is understandable—and the generosity of funding in these areas is a credit to donors—however, other high-burden, high-mortality diseases remain badly under-funded: pneumonia and the diarrhoeal illnesses stand out in this regard. The tendency to focus on drugs and vaccines over diagnostics, platform technologies, and developing-country-specific products is also of concern, particularly as these latter categories can represent a highly effective use of resources since any advance will be applicable to many neglected diseases and products.br /br /A second observation relates to the concentration of funding. The participation of so many organisations and countries in development of new neglected disease products is a remarkable and welcome change from past decades of inertia and neglect. It is clear, however, that these efforts are not evenly distributed, with several major OECD governments missing in action from the top 10, top 20, or even the top 50 funders of Ramp;D for neglected diseases. It is also remarkable that investment by some private firms is now rivalling or exceeding spending by many public organisations, and indeed many G7 and OECD countries. While we commend these companies and philanthropists, their efforts are meant to support, not replace, those of wealthy governments around the world.br /br /A broadening of funding efforts so that all who are able to contribute do so, and all diseases receive the attention they deserve, would lead to a dramatic positive impact on the health of developing country patients afflicted with these diseases. We very much hope that the information presented in the G-FINDER report will contribute to this process./blockquoteI definitely think this fine article deserves a wider audience.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9031925921218676704-5404866083245461158?l=ipezone.blogspot.com'//div

Delicious Irony

2009-08-11T08:08:00.001-07:00

Two stories from the Observer a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/09/cameron-kaminski-lisbon-treaty" target="_blank"here/a:br /br /emDavid Cameron's new alliance in the European Parliament hit fresh controversy last night when it emerged that its Polish leader had spoken out in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, which the Tories say would be a disaster for Britain and Europe.br /br /The revelation is likely to shock Conservative eurosceptics, who believed that the new European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), headed by Michal Kaminski, which includes the 25 Tory MEPs, was being set up by Cameron specifically to campaign against the kind of federal Europe that they insist the Lisbon Treaty would create.br //embr /and a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/09/mcdonalds-olympics-2012-london" target="_blank"here/a:br /br /emMcDonald's, the US burger giant, is set to become the only branded restaurant at Britain's Olympic venues, prompting fury from restaurateurs and environmentalists who say that food on offer should reflect regional foods and London's ethnic mix.br //embr /The irony here is not the failure to reflect regional foods but the fact that the Olympics are meant to promote healthy lifestyles.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-6469872410274242603?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Protesting Union Violence at SEIU HQ in St. Louis

2009-08-11T06:28:00.001-07:00

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Democrats’ Fear Is Showing on Health Care

2009-08-11T04:48:00.001-07:00

The subhead: strongThis administration feels it is the only legitimate beneficiary of “people power.”/strongem/embr /br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Nancy Pelosi, who will get her own bound volume in the annals of asininity, has outdone herself. When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured “AstroTurf” stunts, she replied, “I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”br /br /Now this is a pas de trois of dishonesty, slander, and idiocy. Not only is Pelosi lying when she says protesters are bringing swastikas to these town halls, not only is she suggesting that American citizens are Nazis for having the effrontery to get in the way of Obamacare, but she’s also saying that the alleged swastikas are obvious proof that these protests are manufactured by slick P.R. gurus.br /br /How does that work? What public-relations genius says: “Okay, we need these protests to seem like an authentic backlash of real Americans. Make sure everyone has enough Nazi paraphernalia!”/span/blockquotebr /br /Read the rest.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2964130148582245693?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Supporters Labeled the Organizers “Ridiculous” and the Event a “Shambles”.

2009-08-11T03:08:00.001-07:00

a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6790067.ece"Indeed/a. At least I rest easier knowing that the English racist / fascist set couldn't organize the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. Some further internal dissent can be found a href="http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/2009/07/statement-re-casuals-united.html"here/a.divbr //divdivThe title above appears in span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"The Times/span coverage of this event, where the English Defence League kicked off their promised season of anti-Muslim demonstrations in the center of Birmingham. divbr //divdivOnly, those against whom they were "protesting" (protesting span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"what/span, exactly?) and their allies were considerably better organized. Reports in the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"MSM/span are sketchy and inconsistent, with span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"The Times/span referring to the group as the English Defence League, while a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-arrest-35-at-birmingham-protest-1770030.html"the /aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-arrest-35-at-birmingham-protest-1770030.html"Independent/a/spana href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-arrest-35-at-birmingham-protest-1770030.html" refers/a to them as the more broad-minded English and Welsh Defence League. Both indicate that the Casuals United were possibly involved, possibly not. To wit, from the span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"Independent/span:/divdivblockquoteDiscussion and planning on online social networking sites led police to believe the group involved was the English and Welsh Defence League, or Casuals United./blockquotedivspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"The Times/span also suggests that both groups were in cahoots. Casuals United seem to be an umbrella organization of various football hooligan firms (so I guess in IR parlance it would be more the UN of hooligans rather than a NATO of hooligans . . . they'll stop beating up on each other only when a more threatening foe arrives). /divdivbr //divdivWhat interests me here is the alleged ties to, and denials from, those lovable non-racists in the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"BNP/span. Again, from span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"The Times/span:/divdivblockquoteThe English Defence League claim not to be a racist group and say that they have no ties with the British National Party. One of the websites linked to the League is believed to have been set up by a known span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"BNP/span member, but that has now been taken down in an apparent attempt to conceal any link./blockquote/divdivThere is evidence to suggest a connection between the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"BNP/span and this new English (and Welsh!) Defence League. More indirect evidence can be found a href="http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_english_defence_league_march_in_birmingham_4th_july_2009/"here/a. It's heartening to see the non racist span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"BNP/span (a href="http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/06/keep-johnny-foreigner-out.html"see my earlier post here/a outlining their lack of racism) embracing the globalization concept of outsourcing, and thus outsourcing their racism. A couple motivations spring immediately to mind for this from the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"BNP/span perspective. More likely and obvious, they want to raise the spectre of further racist clashes in order to draw attention to the salience of their "cause". /divdivbr //divdivLess likely (because I don't think that they are this clever) but more problematic due to the inherent efficacy of this approach is a reading of behavioral economics. If the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"BNP/span are outsourcing the more radical elements of their appeal to a new organization / party positioned to their right, according to the principle of the "decoy effect" this would make the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"BNP/span more appealing when contrasted to a context where this more radical decoy doesn't exist. The first chapter of Dan span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"Ariely's/span span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"eminently/span readable book span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"Predictably Irrational/span covers this concept (and there's a blog of the same name a href="http://www.predictablyirrational.com/"here/a). /divdivbr //divdivI can see the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"BNP/span and their even less racist cousins span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"UKIP/span making further inroads in local elections in England and Wales. Thankfully, local counsellors have very little power to do anything about anything./div/div/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6408622729606262860?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

The Founders Intended What Now?

2009-08-11T01:28:00.001-07:00

a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/small_state_big_state_red_stat.html"Ezra,/a channeling a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702045_pf.html"Alec MacGillis:/a br /blockquoteSo too is the section where he quotes Donald Ritchie, the Senate's official historian, explaining that "the authors of the Constitution really thought the House would be the driving engine, and the Senate would just be the senior group that would perfect legislation that came up from the House." Given how often the Senate's current role is defended on grounds of original intent, it's crucial to understand that the Founders actually meant for the more representative body to be the more powerful of the two chambers./blockquotebr /I see arguments of this sort every now and again, and I don't really understand them. A really common one comes in the form "the Founders didn't want a standing military." This latter one is wrong on the merits (some of the Founders didn't want a standing military, while others were pretty happy with the idea), but more broadly it depends on the idea that the Founders were kind of stupid. If they didn't want a standing military, then they should have been clear in the Constitution that they didn't want a standing military. Really, the idea that tension with Britain, France, Native American tribes, and Spain might produce strong incentives for a standing military was too complicated for the Founders to think out? It would never have occurred to them? Similarly, the above argument doesn't make a lot of bloody sense to me. I suppose it's possible that the Founders may have intended the House of Representatives to be more powerful than the Senate. If they did, it would have been nice for them to so indicate in the Constitution, and to do so a lot more clearly than they did. From the perspective of a Martian (which, in this case, isn't all that different from the perspective of a 21st century American) it's really not at all clear that the House should have a stronger legislative role than the Senate. It has certain powers that the Senate lacks, but then the Senate has certain powers that the House lacks. br /br /And so, I'm left to draw the conclusion that either a) the Founders couldn't anticipate that their vague, uninstitutionalized desires regarding the structure of the legislative branch would quickly fall by the wayside, or b) that the Founders didn't intend such, or at least didn't intend such as a group. I'm leaning towards the latter.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1156092287120166330?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

UNCTAD Ponders Trade, Dev't Migration Links

2009-08-10T23:48:00.001-07:00

Any discussion of migration boils down to the question of what constitutes development. That is, can sending folks away really be considered as development when the common frame of understanding is Smithian in discussing the wealth of span style="font-style: italic;"nations/span? To no one's real surprise, the answer for me is a firm "yes." Especially now when dependence on exporting products to the West is a nearly surefire recipe for misery creation, alternative ways of promoting the well-being of those from LDCs--which is closer to my idea of development--come into play which involve the movement of persons.br /br /Helpfully, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has just put out a recent a href="http://www.unctad.org/templates/Download.asp?docid=11810amp;lang=1amp;intItemID=2068"guide/a to help us understand the processes that can help maximize benefits from LDC migration. What follows is from the concluding section on "Ways Forward" though the rest of this short publication is well worth reading. I particularly like the section discussing the continuing importance of migration during the global financial crisis:br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"Strengthening the contributions of migrants to development by enhancing migration’s /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"positive trade, investment and development links has become an increasingly important and /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"timely endeavour, as the scope and depth of globalization has advanced. It remains an area/spanspan style="font-style: italic;" of active dialogue that is already benefiting from concerted efforts involving governments, /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"civil society groups, academia and the private sector to design more informed policies that /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"multiply the beneficial economic and social impacts of migration. Stakeholders may wish to /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"consider a variety of potential options to support and expand these efforts, including /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"through further research and analysis. Some potential options falling under the different /spanspan style="font-style: italic;"themes of this paper are presented as examples below. /spanbr /br /Improving understanding on migration patterns, trends and potentialbr /span style="font-style: italic;"Consideration could be given to the following: /spanbr /br /• Identifying and promoting ways to ensure that international migration better supports the development objectives of both sending and receiving countries by improving government capacity and structures for collecting labour migration data;br /• Improving bilateral and multilateral channels for the exchange of migration and related labour market information;br /• Encouraging and supporting more extensive analysis and research on labour migration issues that can be readily used by policymakers to design more informed and effective migration policies; andbr /• Examining how migration trends are influencing legal reforms in areas such as labour law modernization, land tenure, education, double taxation treaties and bilateral investment agreements, among others.br /br /Strengthening the development benefits of migrationbr /span style="font-style: italic;"Consideration could be given to: /spanbr /• Enhancing the benefits of migration by integrating and mainstreaming labour migration in national employment, labour market and development policy and coherence among these policy frameworks;br /• Supporting expanded analyses of the economic and social contributions that international migrants make to sending and receiving countries;br /• Enhancing consular services in receiving countries to provide information and assistance to national migrant workers; andbr /• Designing structures and mechanisms to empower migrants to contribute to sending and receiving country economies, including by involving all stakeholders in migration policymaking processes; simplifying administrative migration procedures for migrants and employers; recognizing migrant workers’ skills and qualifications; reducing remittance transaction costs; and opening up receiving country educational opportunities to migrant workers.br /br /Empowering diaspora communities as an engine for developmentbr /span style="font-style: italic;"Consideration could be given to: /spanbr /• Providing incentives for enterprise creation and development, including transnational business initiatives and micro-enterprise development by diaspora communities;br /• Facilitating the transfer of capital, skills and technology by migrant workers, including through innovative incentive schemes;br /• Providing incentives to, and ensuring open competition within, the financial services sector in order to reduce remittance transaction costs for migrant workers;br /• Providing incentives for the productive investment of remittances at both the national and community levels;br /• Adopting measures to reverse or mitigate the loss of workers with critical skills, including by creating attractive terms for diaspora to return home;br /• Adopting policies to encourage circular and return migration and reintegration into the country of origin, including by promoting temporary labour migration schemes, circulation-friendly visa policies, information dissemination on employment opportunities in their home countries, portability of social security rights and health insurance coverage, and related support structures;br /• Enhancing capacity-building in migrant source countries to ensure that circularity can function in practice. Initiatives to build such capacities in cooperation between migrant source and destination countries are often undertaken in the form of pilot projects;br /• Migrant source and destination countries can promote inter-institutional and twinning cooperation, including through linking companies or employers, to provide for controlled circularity; andbr /Additional surveys could be undertaken to improve understanding of the impediments to mobility encountered by private employers and recruiters.br /br /Understanding and adjusting to the impacts of financial crisesbr /span style="font-style: italic;"Consideration could be given to: /spanbr /span style="font-style: italic;" /spanExamining the current financial crisis from a migration and development perspective to reveal the full extent of the impact of such crises on migrants, their families and the economic and social progress of sending and receiving countries;br /Developing policies that take into account that the economic downturn has reduced the short-term demand for temporary labour migration, but there will remain a long-term demand for additional temporary and permanent migrant labours to compensate for forecasted shortages due to demographic changes in many developed countries;br /• Including migration related assistance as a component in development assistance programmes to assist sending countries adjust to decreased remittances and the economic and social impacts of sudden and unanticipated return home of their migrant workers; andbr /• Establishing mechanisms to assist migrant workers who have lost their jobs due to the crisis secure employment in both sending and receiving countries.br /br /Making migration a building block for international and regional tradebr /span style="font-style: italic;"Consideration could be given to: /spanbr /• Promoting bilateral and regional labour and trade agreements that reduce barriers to the international flow of labour, including by addressing aspects of economic migration, such as admission procedures, mutual recognition of education and qualifications, gender issues, family reunification and integration policy;br /• Providing developing countries with tangible opportunities for mode 4 services exports to developed countries through commercially meaningful multilateral commitments on mode 4 under the GATS; andbr /• Promoting the positive role of migration in deepening regional integration by mainstreaming migration into national trade policies.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9031925921218676704-567275587095770897?l=ipezone.blogspot.com'//div

The 1000th Post

2009-08-10T22:08:00.001-07:00

Some recent headlines which point to the ongoing rebalancing of power in the global system ...br /br /--India launches its first homegrown nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant.br /br /--the "G-2" meets under the style of the U.S. - China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.br /br /The G-2 dialogue will be interesting--it is one of the "four dialogues" I identified last year as critical to how the international system of the 21st century takes place. [The others are the Russia-Europe dialogue, the dialogue between the southern democracies and the Euro-Atlantic world, and the dialogue among the rising powers of the south and east, notably India and China.)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19194934-2589521948484205159?l=washingtonrealist.blogspot.com'//div

FORA TV: "Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace"

2009-08-10T20:28:00.001-07:00

"Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace" panel discussion at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This program was recorded on January 29, 2009.br /a href="http://fora.tv/"FORA TV/abr /br /The uncertainty and complexity surrounding the crisis in Gaza have captured the attention of the world. What needs to be done to prevent the Middle East peace process from slipping away yet again? - World Economic Forum br /br /Recep Tayyip Erdogan has served as the Prime Minister of Turkey since March 14, 2003. He is the chairman of the Justice and Development Party. br /br /David Ignatius - David Ignatius is a columnist for The Washington Post. His twice-weekly column on global politics, economics, and international affairs began appearing on the op-ed page of the Post in January 1999. br /br /Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean diplomat and the current Secretary-General of the United Nations.br /br /Amre Moussa - Amr Moussa has been the current Secretary-General of the League of Arab States since his election to the position in May 2001. He is a former Egyptian Foreign Minister and diplomat.br /br /Shimon Peres - Shimon Peres is the ninth and current President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as Prime Minister of Israel and once as Acting Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years.br /br /a href="http://fora.tv/2009/01/29/Gaza_The_Case_for_Middle_East_Peace"To Listen to the Forum/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-8712506263896263690?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Your First Two College Gameday Sites Are....

2009-08-10T18:47:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SoBeWNWNHLI/AAAAAAAAB4s/obMgQSwzKEw/s1600-h/gameday.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SoBeWNWNHLI/AAAAAAAAB4s/obMgQSwzKEw/s400/gameday.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368394491458559154" border="0" //abr /Yes, it's that time again. Time for College Football fans everywhere to bring random signs to various campuses around the United States, and attempt to distract the Gameday crew. ESPN today, announced the first two College Gameday sites for the year, and while we already knew that Atlanta was the first, the second doesn't really come as a surprise either. Via ESPN PR....br /blockquoteThe first two College GameDay Built by The Home Depot sites of the 2009 season have been determined with the show kicking off in Atlanta September 5 followed by Columbus, Ohio September 12. ESPN’s Emmy Award-winning Saturday morning college football show will be aired Saturdays at 10 a.m. ET beginning September 5.br /br /The 17th season of consistently originating from one of the day’s best games or matchups with compelling storylines – and 23rd season of the show -- will kick off from Atlanta for the second annual Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game pitting #5 Alabama vs. #7 Virginia Tech (all rankings from the USA Today Top 25 Coaches’ Poll). The matchup will mark the debut of the fourth annual Saturday Night Football Presented by Southwest Airlines series on ABC at 8 p.m.br /br /The following week, Saturday, September 12, College GameDay will originate from Columbus, Ohio for #4 USC at #6 Ohio State in a showdown between traditional power programs that will be televised on ESPN at 8 p.m./blockquoteThose were certainly the two obvious choices, and will certainly be different than the rest of the year. You can expect the Gameday bus to be at just about every SEC College this season, and to rarely head up North.input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"!--Session data--input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"div id="refHTML"/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-165350239520981201?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=UponU_pRtDs:KsJYe6byBa8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=UponU_pRtDs:KsJYe6byBa8:63t7Ie-LG7Y"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=UponU_pRtDs:KsJYe6byBa8:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=UponU_pRtDs:KsJYe6byBa8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?i=UponU_pRtDs:KsJYe6byBa8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a
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Whose agenda?

2009-08-10T17:07:00.001-07:00

Browsing the internet over lunch I inadvertently strayed onto the Daily Mail's website to find that not surprisingly they have taken a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204359/In-week-Harriet-Harman-takes-charge-feminist-initiative.html" target="_blank"a critical line on Harriet Harman's equalities agenda/a. Now I am not a great fan of the Labour Deputy Leader and some of her ideas but let's get a sense of perspective.br /br /According to the newspaper teaching pupils that it is wrong to assault women and about the need to form healthy relationships is part of some evil feminist agenda. They go further. A drive to reduce violence against women and young girls is apparently em'controversial'./em How exactly? In actual fact the programme aims to educate em'children and young people about healthy, nonviolent relationships/em', which is slightly different to the way it is being portrayed by the paper.br /br /The initiative is opposed by Cameron's new cuddly Tories and also by a family lobby group called ParentsOutloud. Their spokesperson thinks that PSHE classes are in danger of being em'hijacked by pressure groups'. /embr /br /She added: em'I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things. There will always be those who want to cram our school curriculum with social issues that need to be taught by parents and society.'/embr /br /Never has so much hot air been generated by so many reactionaries about such an important initiative. Do any of these people live in the real world?div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-3255275658765575201?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Elizabeth Schulte: The Story of Medicare (and the lessons of that struggle for today)

2009-08-10T15:27:00.001-07:00

The story of Medicare: The battle to establish a government health care program for seniors, and the lessons of that struggle for todaybr /by Elizabeth Schultebr /a href="http://socialistworker.org/"Socialist Worker/abr /br /IF YOU listen the current debate in Washington over proposals for some kind of national health care reform, the arguments that raged in the lead-up to the founding of Medicare--the government health care program for the elderly, which celebrated its 44th birthday on July 30--echo through to the current day.br /br /When the administration of John F. Kennedy discussed a plan for government health care that would cover people of Social Security age, the American Medical Association (AMA) fought back, along with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, with a well-funded campaign--complete with a commercial featuring actor Ronald Reagan, who was determined to talk to America about an "imminent threat":br /br / blockquoteNow, back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism, the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program...br /br / One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project...Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. /blockquotebr /br /The someday-Governor-and-later-President Reagan finished his appeal by asking listeners to write their members of Congress with the warning:br /br / blockquote And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free. /blockquotebr /br /Are you shivering in your boots? During her doomed vice presidential campaign, Republican "maverick" Sarah Palin brought Reagan's views back into the national debate--nearly half a century on.br /br /Of course, the danger of creeping socialism is a much less compelling argument today among ordinary people than it was during the Cold War. If anything, socialism is becoming a preferred alternative to the mess that capitalism has made of working-class living standards.br /br /Still, one of the familiar arguments from right-wing politicians--and many liberal politicians, for that matter--against a government-run health program is that people don't want the government controlling their lives. Americans, the argument goes, want to make their own decisions about their health care. And they all agree that the free-market system is the best way to guarantee we get the best care possible.br /br /Not only are these conceptions wrong, but they've succeeded in confusing and misleading people about exactly what kind of health care is even being proposed today. The Washington Post recently reported on a health care town hall meeting in Simpsonville, S.C., where a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."br /br /"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis told the Post. "But he wasn't having any of it."br /br /That's a pretty drastic example. But it shows just how successful the politicians and the media have been at confusing the national discussion on health care.br /br /a href="http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/06/story-medicare"To Read the Rest of the Essay/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-7599669639189753993?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Sincerely

2009-08-10T13:47:00.001-07:00

a href="http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html"A nice tribute. /abr /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XGDjrz4gdVcamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XGDjrz4gdVcamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8628909820479557184?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Guadalajara Summit

2009-08-10T12:07:00.001-07:00

One problem when every country in the world is a potential friend, ally and strategic partner of the United States is that it becomes difficult to focus resources on investing in critical countries.br /br /In security terms, we group the United States, Canada and Mexico within the rubric of NORTHCOM--envisioning North America as a single defense community. We hear the rhetoric about cooperation on drugs, crime, immigration and the economy--but it seems that we are still quite ambivalent about pursuing closer North American integration. (On a side note, we Americans critize the Europeans for their unwillingness to expand the EU to Turkey and Ukraine--but their reasons and concerns are similar to ours regarding Mexico, it seems). br /br /So I see statements coming from this summit but don't know to what extent the Western Hemisphere is at the top of the administration's priorities.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19194934-2184148475657488410?l=washingtonrealist.blogspot.com'//div

Family Values in Washington, DC, and the Need for Vigilance in Canada

2009-08-10T10:27:00.001-07:00

Whose racist and ultra kiasu?

2009-08-10T08:47:00.001-07:00

blockquotebr /Probably nobody has riled the a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn655fHo8XI/AAAAAAAAEFY/lXGtidpW9qA/s1600-h/IMG00038-20090809-1332.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn655fHo8XI/AAAAAAAAEFY/lXGtidpW9qA/s200/IMG00038-20090809-1332.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367932203129434482" border="0" //aDAP Socialist Youth and editors of a href="http://www.mysinchew.com/"span style="font-style: italic;"Sin Chew/span/a and a href="http://www.nanyang.com/index.php?"span style="font-style: italic;"Nanyang Siang Pau/span/a more in recent weeks than span style="font-size:180%;"Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah/span, a Chinese-Muslim senior lecturer from a local university.br /br /His articles in a href="http://www.utusan.com.my/"span style="font-style: italic;"Utusan/Mingguan Malaysia/span/a, the paper they've labelled "racist" because of its Malay-centric views, have been condemned as "insensitive", "zealous" and "hypocritical".br /br /Tee has been also accused of being aspan style="font-weight: bold;" racist/span a href="http://www.mysinchew.com/node/27931?tid=14"span style="font-style: italic;"here/span/a by the leader of the DAP's Socialist Youth movement, Mr Loke Siew Foon.br /br /Tee's latest piece today, headlined span style="font-size:100%;"a href="http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/info.asp?y=2009amp;dt=0809amp;pub=Utusan_Malaysiaamp;sec=Rencanaamp;pg=re_15.htm"span style="font-style: italic;"Bahaya matlamat menghalalkan cara/span/a/span is going to draw fire from Dapsy and the editors:br /span style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-style: italic;"/span/spandiv style="text-align: justify;"blockquotespan style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-style: italic;""Alhamdulillah, dengan peristiwa dan artikel ini, saya lebih mengenali sifat span style="font-weight: bold;"ultra kiasu/span bangsa saya sendiri yang selama ini saya kaji. Saya baru sedar betapa hipokritnya segelintir bangsa saya. Mereka tidak pernah bersyukur tetapi teramat takut kalah dan mahu sentiasa menang (kiasu) Fakta dan kebenaran dikelirukan bagi menagih simpati dan agenda politik tersembunyi./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""Ini budaya yang telah melingkungi pemikiran mereka walaupun kita sudah merdeka 52 tahun. Pemikiran mereka masih tidak merdeka, masih dikongkong oleh ketaksuban terhadap bangsa. Mereka menuduh UMNO rasis, mereka apa kurangnya. Mengata dulang paku serpih, mengata orang dia yang lebih."/span/span/blockquote/divI wish Ridhuan Tee all the best and hope that he has the stamina to engage the Dapsy and the editors of those powerful Chinese-language newspapers in a discussion that is more constructive tham what it is now.br //blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28452020-2434742580572917072?l=rockybru.com.my'//div

NEI's 2009 Top Industry Practice Awards on Video - Number Three: "The Secret Is Plastic"

2009-08-10T07:07:00.001-07:00

Over the last two weeks a href="http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2009/07/neis-2009-top-industry-practice-awards.html"NEI has released two/a a href="http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2009/07/neis-2009-top-industry-practice-awards_15.html"videos out of four/a highlighting the top industry practice awards that were given out at our annual nuclear conference back in May. a href="http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/newsreleases/new-nei-video-highlights-award-winning-innovation-in-nuclear-plant-water-system"Here's our third video installment of the series/a:blockquote“The Secret Is Plastic,” highlights new applications of plastic piping at two nuclear plants that enhance their operation and decrease the cost of maintaining plant water systems.pDuke Energy employees at the Catawba nuclear station in South Carolina and AmerenUE employees at the Callaway nuclear plant in Missouri shared the Materials and Services Process Top Industry Practice Award for the use of high-density polyethylene piping for plant water systems./p/blockquoteEnjoy!br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5BIUUOAqkAwamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5BIUUOAqkAwamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-7720707433399467619?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

Getting personal

2009-08-10T05:27:00.001-07:00

Plaid Cymru's Parliamentary Candidate for Montgomery has revealed her strategy for the General Election in a target="_blank" href="http://heleddfychan.blogspot.com/2009/07/oh-no-not-again.html"her latest blog post/a. It is to forget policy and local issues and attack the sitting MP personally instead.br /br /In her post, Ms. Fychan hits out at Lembit ?pik for the fact that he has taken up with a 21 year old model and has joined with Katie Green to conduct a perfectly legitimate campaign on the way that model agencies play on body image and the impact that has on young people. It is a particularly pertinent campaign in the light of the work carried out by a target="_blank" href="http://www.bethanjenkinsblog.org.uk/"Plaid Cymru AM, Bethan Jenkins/a on eating disorders and the One Wales' government's new strategy on this subject. It also affects many people in Montgomeryshire.br /br /Ms. Fychan says that she does not care who Lembit dates and yet she embarks on a bitchy and judgemental rant worthy of the strictest puritan. I can accept that she might dislike Lembit personally but that is no excuse to allow her feelings to dominate her campaign and bring it down to the gutter.br /br /I know that Lembit will not respond to this sort of personality politics because, despite the media coverage he gets, he is a serious politician commited to his constituents and to getting things done. However, it is ironic that at a time when Ms. Fychan is complaining that all she seems to read about Lembit is news of his personal life, the Montgomeryshire MP has a piece in the a target="_blank" href="http://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/76318/lembit-backs-regional-newspapers-in-parliament.aspx"County Times/a in which he voiced his support for local newspapers in a ‘Local and Regional Newspapers’ parliamentary debate:br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"Lembit Öpik said: “The local press is the key vehicle in reporting accurately and fairly on local goings-on – in scrutinising the workings of local councils and local courts./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“Unlike many national journalists, local reporters tend to live and work in the communities on which they report, so local people trust them as a source of news./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“They do not need to tap people’s phones or mobiles to get exclusives, because people trust them and talk to them, and people read the results of what they have investigated and what they write about, knowing that they are reading accurate reports about their own world./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“The County Times, which is the weekly in my area, is a classic example – a role model for how what I have described can best be achieved. It is 130 years old; it was founded in 1879, in the same year as Montgomeryshire elected its first Liberal MP, Stuart Rendel. Two great and revolutionary leaps forward occurred in that same year./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“Two journalists – Richard Jones and photographer Phil Blagg – from the County Times were in London with me last week because they believe in reporting accurately and seeing at the coal face what, in this case, their MP does, but they also do that in many other environments, whether industrial, educational, cultural or social./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""That is because they want to get it right in a way that, I am sorry to say, the national press seems not as concerned to do./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“But the problems are very serious. The County Times is part of NWN Media and is facing real difficulties. Northcliffe has just announced 30 more job cuts in Wales./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“Someone who works in the media in my area put it simply: To continue to do this we must survive as a local business. We are not asking for handouts, but we could do with some consideration from local Government. I agree with that sentiment.”/spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"“The local newspaper business model relies heavily on advertising. It accounts for about two thirds of local newspapers’ turnover, but in recent years advertising spend has been in a general decline of between 10 and 20 per cent, but since the recession hit, advertising in key sectors such as housing, cars and jobs has plummeted./spanbr /br /That Heledd is an example of a good local MP using his position to fight for the interests of his constituents. You should pay attention. You might learn something.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Update: /spanthe rather predictable reaction of Plaid bloggers to this post strongly reinforces the points I made on a target="_blank" href="http://www.freedomcentral.org.uk/2009/04/plaid-cymrus-smear-campaign.html"Freedom Central/a a few months ago.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-6119214471446454835?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Big Brother Swansea style

2009-08-10T03:47:00.001-07:00

At a meeting in the Canoldre Youth Centre today I was told that a number of young people from the area are replicating the big brother experience.br /br /A different group will be locked in the Gorseinon youth centre for a week each over the next five weeks where they will carry out tasks and learn to live together and in a more independent manner. Most of them do not know each other before going into the house.br /br /You can follow their exploits a target="_blank" href="http://www.swanseabigbrotherexperience.blogspot.com/"here/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-6078910691941878015?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

But...They're Totally In My Face!

2009-08-10T02:07:00.001-07:00

I suppose it's nearly tautological to note that Jack Shafer's a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2224440/"attempted defense/a of span style="font-style: italic;"Mouthpiece Theater/span (or, at least, his argument that the span style="font-style: italic;"Post/span should continue to waste its resources and credibility by producing it) completely fails. The first thing you'll notice is that he didn't even try to argue that it was funny, or insightful, or had any merit at all -- which is sensible, but rather critically undermines his argument. The second thing is that his other examples fail, because none of them were as unequivocally offensive or devoid of political or satirical content. I happen to agree that Robin Givhan's extensive analysis of Clinton's cleavage was both stupid and offensive, but she was span style="font-style: italic;"trying/span to make a point rather than just using slurs. (And, of course, none of the examples resulted in any consequences, handily refuting Shafer's attempt at a slippery slope argument.)br /br /But the biggest problem with Shafer's argument is his assertion that span style="font-style: italic;"The Poochie and Poochie/span span style="font-style: italic;"Show /spanwas "edgy." We're not talking about Richard Pryor circa 1974 here. We're not even talking about Parker and Stone. span style="font-style: italic;"Mouthpiece Theater/span's shallow reiterations of Villager non-wisdom were as thoroughly corporate as you can get. a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/spitting-out-mouthpiece-by-dday-where.html"It exemplified what is was allegedly satirizing./a The error the span style="font-style: italic;"Post/span here was that they actually thought it could be edgy, not that they pulled the plug when the awfulness became too much even for the people who sign Richard Cohen's paychecks.br /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QJEPDwGVirQamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QJEPDwGVirQamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-9117766536667770405?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Loke Siew Fook, did you write that about our Sultan?

2009-08-10T00:27:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn_BcU1ArqI/AAAAAAAAEFw/SysIGo191tI/s1600-h/lokesiewfook.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 86px; height: 113px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn_BcU1ArqI/AAAAAAAAEFw/SysIGo191tI/s200/lokesiewfook.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368221973220470434" border="0" //abr /div style="text-align: justify;"div style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"/spanblockquotespan style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"update:/span span style="font-size:180%;""No, I did not,"/span says Loke.br /The YB has left a strong denial in my comment box, which I am reproducing here:-br /br /p style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:85%;"/span/pblockquotep style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;"span style="font-size:85%;"Dear Mr Rocky,br /br /I strongly deny the allegation that I have written the article to insult the Sultan of Perak and Raja Nazrin. I have no prior knowledge whatsoever on that particular blog http://sjsandteam.wordpress.com/br /br /My ONE and ONLY blog is a href="http://lokesiewfook.blogspot.com/"span style="font-weight: bold;"lokesiewfook.blogspot.com /span/abr /br /I have NEVER written anything that insult the Royalty, Malays or Islam in my life. There is an effort to slander DAP Youth and myself and spread lies that we are anti-Islam and anti-Royalty.br /br /I do not know who is behind that blog and I have nothing to do with it.br /br /As a responsible blogger, I hope you can first verify the facts before making any assumptions. I will be lodging a police report today to deny the article and I hope you can publish my explanation to clear the air later. Thank you./span/pdiv style="text-align: justify;" /divp style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;" class="comment-timestamp"span style="font-size:85%;"12:08 PM/span/p/blockquotep style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;" class="comment-timestamp"span style="font-size:85%;"/span/pspan style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"Original article:/spanbr /This is the second time in less than 5 hours that I'm naming on my blog the DAP Socialist Youth's national leader,span style="font-size:130%;" /spanspan style="font-size:180%;"span style="font-size:100%;"span style="font-size:130%;"Loke Siew Fook/span (pic)./spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn8EtZMlZcI/AAAAAAAAEFo/k51z74ppvdA/s1600-h/LOKE.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/Sn8EtZMlZcI/AAAAAAAAEFo/k51z74ppvdA/s200/LOKE.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368014458753213890" border="0" //a/spanbr /This time, it is about allegations made over the weekend by some blogs that Loke, who is also MP for Rasah, had called the span style="font-weight: bold;"Sultan of Perak/span and son span style="font-weight: bold;"Raja Nazrin/span by some unsavoury names in a posting dated Aug 6 on the blog a href="http://sjsandteam.wordpress.com/"The Might of the Pen/a.br /br /The blog has since been deleted. But not before a href="http://marahku.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-is-downright-sedition.html"span style="font-style: italic;"My Anger/span/a ["This is Downright Sedition"] and a href="http://kitaanakmelayu.blogspot.com/2009/08/dap-hina-sultan-perak-dan-raja-nazrin.html"span style="font-style: italic;"Melayu Bersatu/span/a ["DAP hina Sultan Perak and Raja Nazrin pulak"] had saved the "evidence" in pdf file.br /br /Click a href="http://drop.io/ck5eyaw"span style="font-style: italic;"here/span/a to read what Loke was supposed to have written about the Sultan Perak and Raja Nazrin on the blog. I hope Loke will come out and clear his name soonest./blockquote/divbr //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28452020-9168272222877860594?l=rockybru.com.my'//div

ESPN To England: "It's Great To Be Here"

2009-08-09T22:47:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncbsE5lOtI/AAAAAAAAB2U/pIr1oAC6p1E/s1600-h/espn+uik.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 260px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncbsE5lOtI/AAAAAAAAB2U/pIr1oAC6p1E/s400/espn+uik.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365787925078686418" border="0" //aESPN is making a huge gamble by starting up a new European Soccer Channel, in just a few short months, so it comes as no surprise that they are putting a lot of money into an early advertising campaign. The "Leader" has taken out ads in print, on radio, on the tele and even billboards, based on the angle of "It's Great To Be Here", and has spent well over a few million pounds/dollars on said strategy. Via a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/03/espn-premier-league-campaign"The Guardian/a....br /blockquoteThe broadcaster has avoided using sports stars in its ad campaign, instead opting to focus on a "fan-centric" strategy.br /br /The TV ad, which has been shot at locations including Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart Lane and West Ham's Upton Park grounds in London, will use images of the football experience from a fan's point of view. It will run from 12 August, three days before the start of the Premier League season.br /br /ESPN's campaign, developed by the ad agency Wieden amp; Kennedy Amsterdam, is scheduled to run across its channels including ESPN Classic and ESPN America, as well as being made available across its five core web properties, which include CricInfo, Soccernet, Scrum and Racing Live.br /br /The campaign will also run on channels including Sky Sports and Sky Sports News as well as on Sky Movies, Discovery and FX.br /br /ESPN's target market is 18- to 34-year-old men. In addition, Wamp;K is developing dozens of promotional idents that will run around ESPN's football coverage led by the former BBC presenter Ray Stubbs. The idents, created by production company BDA, feature snapshots of the lives of fans of each of the 20 Premier League clubs./blockquoteAgain, this is a huge risk, and all the advertising in the World won't matter, if people thinking that you're ruining their viewing experience. I think ESPN should have probably spent some of that money on focus groups, so they don't miss what's important to the fans. But maybe they did that too.br /br /a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/03/espn-premier-league-campaign"ESPN plugs Premier League coverage in ads for UK sports channel/a (Guardian)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-4298118304035686820?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=LR_j3IKOC40:nidaMTpzh44:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=LR_j3IKOC40:nidaMTpzh44:63t7Ie-LG7Y"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=LR_j3IKOC40:nidaMTpzh44:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=LR_j3IKOC40:nidaMTpzh44:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?i=LR_j3IKOC40:nidaMTpzh44:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a
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Becoming President to live large

2009-08-09T21:07:00.001-07:00

div align="justify"It has been remarked by other much wiser than me that some people reach for public office to achieve something, others to be someone. Until recently we have not elected presidents for the money. With the Clintons that began to change. But until now, our republic has been rather austere in the way its leaders live. Oh, sure, politicians have their own medical system and transportation system and an especially well endowed retirement system, but on the whole – ignoring the lunches at Washington watering holes, wretched excess on the order of the Bourbon court has not been flaunted. As I said, that has changed. /divdiv align="justify"br /For example, congress has decided that its fleet of luxury jets is in desperate need of expansion so it ordered anothera href="http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=334363404866691" $200 million dollars worth/a, even as unemployment reaches double digits. Perhaps it’s taking its lead from our supreme leader.br /br /Present and Mrs. Obama and the children have lived large after assuming office.br /br /From a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/30/obamas-head-new-york-city-date-night/"dates in NY City/a, shopping sprees in a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6466571.ece"London/a and a href="http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/06/michelle-obama-takes-girls-to-london.html"Paris/a these occasions of living the good life, which in the United States are typically indulged in by the ultra wealthy on their own dime are now paid for by the American taxpayer to entertain the first family. Especially enjoyable are the private planes just of the wife, kids and mothers paid for by the American people.br /br /img src="http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j191/mikesamerica/mikesamerica2/1364130.jpg" /br /br /But this appears to be only the tip of the extravagant iceberg. Sometimes much smaller things are jarring. I spent my own money recently to go to the Maine lobster festival. It’s held annually in Rockland, Maine to celebrate that state’s most famous crustacean. While there I happened to get into a conversation with the chief lobster cooker who in real life works in a factory that makes wooden toys, a href="http://www.cedarworks.com/"Cedarworks./abr /br /Now these are not your typical wooden choo choo trains that trail behind infants on string; these are huge structures that range in price from a few thousand dollars to … oh, $65 thousand dollars.br /br /img src="http://media.cedarworks.com/images/headers/index_SL.jpg" /br /br /It so happens that this area was visited by the President and Vice President. While there the President decided to stimulate the local economy by buying its most expensive play set for the White House ... and while he was at it ordered another one for Camp David.br /br /Now my understanding of the finances of the first family are that they are worth somewhere between 2 and 4 million dollars. They have a salary of $400,000 and then there are – of course - the book royalties.br /br /Now a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to and in fact people who are worth this sort of money and earning this sort of salary don’t typically buy $130,000 worth of children’s toys on a whim with their own money.br /br /So I’m, fairly confident that these toys are paid for by you, me and the other taxpayers of the US as part of the Obamas determination to live large.br /br /The Obamas remind me from time to time of other figures in history. Not - unfortunately - to figures like Abraham Lincoln. I leave those comparisons to the fawning writers of Time and Newsweek. But they do remind me of characters from and movies and TV, specifically the character of the TV show “The Jeffersons” … moving on up. /divdiv align="justify" /divdiv align="justify"There’s a word for it: parvenu .../divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2805534671216986269?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

MLB Network Adding Day Games To Weekly Slate

2009-08-09T19:27:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SnsvSP9QaII/AAAAAAAAB3k/kxE1BVwWJlE/s1600-h/mlb.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 288px; height: 218px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SnsvSP9QaII/AAAAAAAAB3k/kxE1BVwWJlE/s400/mlb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366935371509688450" border="0" //aIn my opinion, there's nothing more relaxing than watching day Baseball during the Summer. Well unless you're an O's fan, and they're currently getting blown out by the Tigers. Anyway, the MLB Network is expanding their slate of live games with four day games during the month of August, and I couldn't be more in favor of this idea....br /blockquoteThe MLB Network will launch a new lineup of live afternoon telecasts with Thursday's game between the Rockies and the Phillies from Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park.br /br /That telecast will also lead off four Thursday attractions, with next week's game featuring the Tigers at the Red Sox.br /br /The new programming was revealed on Wednesday, when the Network announced its game broadcast schedule through Aug. 29.br /br /The added Thursday afternoon telecasts will be followed by the regularly scheduled Thursday Night Baseball, treating fans to doubleheaders as the division races head into the stretch.br /br /"Baseball is unique in that it has several weekday afternoon games," Tony Petitti, president and CEO of MLB Network noted in a statement, "and we see this as a great way for MLB Network to distinguish itself.br /br /"We wanted to provide fans with as many live games as possible and we're looking forward to airing matchups from some of the top contenders in the American and National Leagues," Petitti added.br /br /The debut Thursday afternoon game will precede the Red Sox at the Yankees -- who are still looking for their first win of the season over Boston following eight straight losses to their AL East rivals. /blockquoteThere are only three (four if you count today's) day games on the channel through the rest of August, but this should give the network some great leverage, as playoff races heat up in September. Here is the rest of the live schedule on the MLB Network through August.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 6th -/span Rockies @ Phillies (1pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 6th -/span Red Sox @ Yankees (7pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 8th -/span Cubs @ Rockies (8pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 13th -/span Tigers at Red Sox (1:30pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 13th -/span Astros @ Marlins (7pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 15th -/span Red Sox @ Rangers (8pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 20th -/span Mariners @ Tigers (1pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 20th -/span Diamondbacks @ Phillies (7pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 22th -/span Giants @ Rockies (8pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 27th -/span Dodgers @ Rockies (3pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 27th -/span White Sox @ Red Sox (7pm)br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Aug. 29th -/span Rockies @ Giants (9pm)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-2294945119615675047?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
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Is Obama Really Like the Joker?

2009-08-09T17:47:00.001-07:00

Frank J. Fleming explains ...br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"First off, it’s worth looking at whether the poster is racist. Liberals seem pretty certain it is. An LA Weekly blogger commented that “the only thing missing is a noose.” Now, you might be scratching your head and saying that the only people who would call this racist are brain-dead liberals who shriek “racism!” at every criticism about Obama as an alternative to thinking and only cause more problems by confusing the issue of racism and should thus be chased out of society and forced to live in the sewers, only emerging at night to feed on garbage and bugs.br /br /And while that’s quite fair and probably true, we should still give the possibility of racism a fair hearing. Don’t you remember the long, racist history of black people being compared to the Joker? Of course not, because I just made that up — but it could be true in some alternate universe. Also, the image involves white makeup on a black person. White on black — that has to be racist somehow. I’ll bet makeup places won’t even sell white pancake makeup to black people. They’d be like “No! Get out of here, black person! We won’t sell that to you! That’s racist!”br /br /Beyond the racism in the image that’s quite obvious to crazy people, the other question is whether there are any real substantive comparisons between Obama and the Joker. On the surface, they don’t seem at all alike. The Joker is psychotic, and I’ve heard Obama called a lot of things — arrogant, incompetent, deceitful, a Communist — but not psychotic. Obama doesn’t seem like he’s out to kill anyone — not even terrorists — and only leaves the option of killing people on the table to help make ends meet in his health care plan./span/blockquotebr /Read the whole thing.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2603377532227282008?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Man gets attacked for selling flags at a Russ Carnahan rally

2009-08-09T16:07:00.001-07:00

object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hfWDb1Kxdd4amp;color1=0xb1b1b1amp;color2=0xcfcfcfamp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hfWDb1Kxdd4color1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /blockquotep align="justify"a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/07/video-seiu-activists-try-to-set-obamacare-opponents-straight/"span style="color:#3333ff;"Pay attention, America. /span/aspan style="color:#3333ff;"This is a glimpse into the next three years of the Obama administration, at least using the same logic by which the Left accuses health-care reform opponents of “astroturfing”. If its policies get organized opposition, especially at events designed to allow for public debate, purple-shirted thugs will appear to crack heads and scare off the opposition./span /p/blockquotebr /br /Meanwhile the a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/politics/08townhall.html?_r=1amp;hp"NY Times does its best to torpedo the opposition /ato Obamacare by using the passive voice about an attack on a black man handing out flags at an event in Missouri.br /blockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"A volatile mix has resulted. In Mehlville, Mo., St. Louis County police officers arrested six people on Thursday evening, some on assault charges, outside a health care and aging forum organized by Representative Russ Carnahan, a Democrat. Opponents of the proposed changes, organized by the St. Louis Tea Party, apparently clashed with supporters organized by the Service Employees International Union outside a school gym. /span/p/blockquotep align="justify"Note how the videotaped attack on a small black man by as many as three union thugs is described as a “clash with supporters.” There is no question that this was an unprovoked attack, but the MSM is denying it./pp align="justify"br /The rest of the story uses the active voice and there is no doubt who are the demonstrators.br /br /There is no question that the demonstrators have been disruptive; but they have been peaceful and they have been a real grass roots movement – local people organizing themselves, not being paid and not being bussed in. The Democrats are not used to this kind of opposition, having been the disruptors and agitators in the past. So they have turned to brown shirt (or in the case of the SEIU blue shirt) tactics favored by the bully boys of past dictatorships. /pp align="justify"/pp align="justify"At Patterico the headline reads:br //pbr /a href="http://patterico.com/2009/08/06/angry-mob-of-racist-extremists-beats-black-man-at-town-hall-meeting/"Angry Mob of Racist Extremists Beats Black Man at Town Hall Meeting.br //abr /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"I guess the Democrats were right after all. At a town meeting held by a Democrat congressman, a rowdy group of organized and angry thugs showed up to make a point about ObamaCare, and then beat up a man. Race was involved, too: the victim was black — attacked by a man yelling racial slurs.br /br /It’s every Democrat talking point you’ve read about in the last day or two, come to life in an ugly fashion.br /br /With one twist. The black victim was a conservative, and the assailants may well have been union thugs:br /br //spanemblockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.br /br /“It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said./span/blockquote/embr /span style="color:#3333ff;"Not when you have angry mobs of left-wing extremists around . . ./span/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-6240329719891051193?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Lee Corso Not Letting Mild Stroke Slow Him Down

2009-08-09T14:27:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncWDMi6xFI/AAAAAAAAB2M/CJTNjaRBZU4/s1600-h/lee.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncWDMi6xFI/AAAAAAAAB2M/CJTNjaRBZU4/s400/lee.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365781725198337106" border="0" //abr /There was some scary news this past spring, but after some time off, Lee Corso has recovered a mild stroke that he suffered. According to the a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-sportsdiaz-column-lee-corso-02080209aug02,0,6822753,print.column"Orlando Sentinel/a, Corso is doing well and will be returning to College Gameday, once the season gets underway....br /blockquoteNearly three months later, Corso is piecing his life together again. He's graduated from physical therapy but remains in occupational and speech therapy. The stroke affected his right side. He is learning to write all over again, just like he's learned to talk all over again.br /br /Speaking publicly for the first time since the stroke, Corso sat down outside a Starbucks in Longwood a few days ago, took a few sips of an iced tea, and told a story etched in transformation.br /br /A man who has reinvented himself once already — going from a struggling football coach to a glib gridiron guru — is plotting another magnificent makeover. He will be back on TV once fall football begins. The ironic twist in the challenge is obvious: A chatterbox got silenced by a stroke. His voice, as he says, is "the ultimate thing for me."br /br /He speaks fine now. There are a few quirky moments when things don't quite connect, like when he's trying to recall precise moments through the fog of recovery. A critical step was passing a swallow test, he says, "inside the hotel (pause), inside the airport (pause), inside the hospital." It took three times, but he finally found the right word.br /br /But don't feel sorry for Corso. He doesn't. He knows he's blessed.br /br /He's piecing it all together slowly. He works out every day. Gathers strength in his right hand by squeezing Silly Putty. Twice a week, it's speech therapy. "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr," he says, mimicking one of the tongue exercises, then moving his tongue side to side, cheek to cheek. "When I first started I felt my tongue weighed 80 pounds. And I slobbered. I'm getting better at that. I'm trying to get the brain to realize that you can do this."br /br /The blessed part? Like most people who suffer trauma, he's gathered perspective and appreciation for life. Blessed by a family, including his wife, three sons and a daughter. Blessed by his "day job" if you will, as director of business development for Dixon Ticonderoga. It's the company's No. 2 pencils you see when Corso waves them at Kirk Herbstreit to make a point on GameDay. Blessed by getting to know people who cared from him unconditionally. Doctors, nurses, and the orderlies who bathed him during the first days of his hospital stay./blockquoteIt's amazing that Lee has recovered in such a short time, and that he'll be able to return to Gameday. Sure he's a little wacky, but the show just wouldn't feel the same without him. The show is rumored to be kicking off in Atlanta, for the Alabama-Virginia Tech game, so that's when we'll get our first look at the new Corso.br /br /a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-sportsdiaz-column-lee-corso-02080209aug02,0,6822753,print.column"Lee Corso won't let the stroke he suffered in May slow him down/a (Orlando Sentinel)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-5180096580776341641?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
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Italy Swings Open the Door to Nuclear Energy

2009-08-09T12:47:00.001-07:00

pa href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/Snb7iRoeVAI/AAAAAAAAAy4/UWrxfDDdQGQ/s1600-h/Italian%20nuclear%20plant%5B4%5D.jpg"img title="Italian nuclear plant" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="183" alt="Italian nuclear plant" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/Snb7jBYdeYI/AAAAAAAAAy8/9yTlIzgKEDo/Italian%20nuclear%20plant_thumb%5B2%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="148" align="right" border="0" //a No sooner does Italy drop its ban on new nuclear plant development than someone a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-eu-italy-enel-edf,0,3038113.story"starts developing them/a:/p blockquote pThe Italian energy company Enel has formed a joint venture with France's EdF to develop nuclear energy in Italy, the companies said in a joint statement Monday./p pThe companies billed the move quot;as the first substantial stepquot; toward establishing nuclear plants in Italy following the approval of an Italian law last month allowing a return to nuclear energy more than two decades after voters shut down the country's reactors./p /blockquote pThe new venture is called Italy Nuclear Development (Sviluppo Nucleare Italia). You can read Enel’s take on this development a href="http://www.enel.com/en/press_room/dettaglio.aspx?iddoc=1618970"here/a. Interestingly, a href="http://www.enel.com/en/"Enel/a is not completely new to this:/p blockquote pEdF and Enel have been working together since 2007 on the construction of a third-generation reactor in Flamanville in Normandy, in which Enel owns a 12.5 percent stake. By a separate agreement Enel will take an identical-sized stake in the second EPR reactor that EdF is to build at Penly in Normandy./p /blockquote pAt first, we thought Enel’s interest was to import some of the electricity from France – and that might well be part of the deal – but Flamanville and Penly are both in the northern part of France, nowhere near the Italian border. Given France’s profile – 80% of their electricity is generated by nuclear energy – maybe it doesn’t matter – maybe Enel was just getting up to speed on new technologies. In any event, here comes nuclear energy in Italy. Welcome./p pemAn Italian nuclear plant. The country had four at most and closed them all in the wake of Chernobyl./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-8143100387386952800?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

Jenny Price: Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.

2009-08-09T11:07:00.001-07:00

THIRTEEN WAYS OF SEEING NATURE IN L.A.: WE NEED TO REWRITE THE STORIES WE TELL ABOUT NATURE, AND LOS ANGELES IS THE BEST PLACE TO DO IT.br /by Jenny Pricebr /a href="http://www.believermag.com/"The Believer/abr /br /img src="http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/bimgdata/FC0822959399.JPG"br /br /...br /br /L.A. is notoriously short on parks and other public spaces. It is a stronghold of the gated neighborhood. L.A. ranks first among U.S. cities for the number of millionaires and forty-first in philanthropy. Forty-first. Here, you can so clearly observe the tendency—magnified in my adopted town but hardly unique to it—to confuse ideals of personal liberty with an ideal of being free to accumulate capital and use it to do whatever you want. You can watch the failure to ballast the quest for individual freedom with other, long-standing American-dream ideals of equality and community. This is the land of Prop. 13 and Prop. 187, where affluent Angelenos want the cheapest labor but no social services for the illegal immigrants who do it; and want the economic as well as cultural benefits of an ethnically and racially diverse city, but don’t want the diversity in their own neighborhoods; and want private canyons and beaches but expect the public to pay for the inevitable fires and mudslides; and want to commute in fabulously fuel-inefficient cars from enormous houses with forty-three-inch TVs and five bathrooms in remote canyons, but object to smog and traffic and pollution and, above all, to living anywhere near the industry and manufacture that bathroom fixtures, SUVs, and forty-three-inch TVs require. The point is that here you can watch the denial so intrinsic to the great American nature story play out as part of the larger desire to benefit from the innumerable ties to people and nature that sustain one’s life in the city, and yet refuse to make good on those connections.br /br /...br /br /a href="http://www.believermag.com/issues/200604/?read=article_price"To Read the Rest of the Essay/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-6490436671009169846?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

A political partnership

2009-08-09T09:27:00.001-07:00

So, when Harriet Harman suggested that the Labour leadership should be gender-balanced was that because she envisaged a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204739/Harman-gets-House-husband-Deputy-PMs-half-lined-safe-seat.html" target="_blank"her husband, Jack Dromey joining her in Parliament/a?br /br /Do we have the beginnings of the dream ticket to succeed Gordon Brown and Harriet herself as Leader and Deputy Leader?div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-4362888657083338997?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Shut the fuck up! I am the President

2009-08-09T07:47:00.001-07:00

p align="justify"object height="349" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jifjRVLVjzAamp;border=1amp;color1=0x6699amp;color2=0x54abd6amp;hl=enamp;feature=player_embeddedamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jifjRVLVjzAborder=1color1=0x6699color2=0x54abd6hl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="349"/embed/objectbr /br /"L' etat, c'est moi!", circa 2009.br /br /strongUpdate:/strong Others have noted the breathtaking arrogance of Obama’s remarks. This is the speech of a Caudillio, not the kind of speech given by the democratically elected leader of a Republic. It would sound right at home on the tongues of Venezuela’s Chavez or Zimbabwe's Mugabe, not the President of the United States addressing the people of his country.br /br /To those who are already a little a href="http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/08/racist-assumptions-of-white-liberals.html"apprehensive/a about the direction that Obama is taking the country, this is simply another indication of the mind of the man who promised to transcend politics. Of course it can be argued that a Caudillio – a dictator – does transcend politics; eliminating the need for political parties and elections. I don’t think that’s what people had in mind when they voted in the last election.br /br /John Hinderaker at Powerline: a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/08/024222.php"Shut Up, He Explained/abr //pblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"Barack Obama is an arrogant would-be machine boss who fundamentally fails to understand representative democracy, perhaps because of his below-average knowledge of history, which we've noted on a number of occasions. Fortunately, "shut up" is not yet a winning political argument. Not in the United States of America, anyway./span/p/blockquotep align="justify"br /br /Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO: a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTg2ZWMyZDFhODg5NDU2YzczZjFkZDA4M2IwNGUyM2U="American Caesar/abr //pblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"For Barack Obama, democracy appears to be a distraction. He really does seem to view himself as a Caesar.br /br /Shortly after taking office, Obama held a meeting with governors. At the time, one person in the room relayed Obama's request that critics and skeptics of the stimulus plan keep their concerns to themselves. Just let me do it, was his attitude. He got pushback and he wasn't happy. He wanted democratically elected state governors to shut up so he could do as he pleased. He knows better and we should respect that, seems to be the attitude.br /br /And if you disagree, you'll have Rahm to deal with./span/p/blockquotebr /br /From WTMJ radio Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin:br /a href="http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/52693642.html"SATURDAY HOT READ: SHUT UP, OBAMA EXPLAINED/a blockquotepspan style="color:#3333ff;"Can you blame him? You’re racists, you’re Nazis, and you’re political terrorists. Why should he listen?.../span/ppspan style="color:#3333ff;"/span/pp/p/blockquotebr /br /And from up North: The Canada Free Press: a href="http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13483"Obama Tells US Citizen Opposition to Shut Up--or Else/abr /blockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"Showing once again that he is no statesman--let alone President of the United States--Dictator-in-Chief Obama told his Union thugs to “get out there” and fight back against any and all US citizens who oppose both him and his programs. So, at Town Hall meetings in both Tampa, FL and St. Louis, MO they did. In Tampa, Randy Arthur was shoved up against a wall by purported SEIU thugs resulting in Arthur suffering chest injuries and a ripped shirt. At the same meeting, a Democrat Party official--Karen Miracle--was photographed assaulting Barry Osteen who had disagreed with Miracle’s husband on ObamaCare. /span/p/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-5471669997174263324?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Goodbye, Blog House!

2009-08-09T06:07:00.001-07:00

div style="text-align: justify;"blockquoteThe house at span style="font-size:100%;"66, Lorong Setiabistari 2, Bukit Damansara/span was my idea of a headquarters for the National Alliance of Bloggers (All-Blogs). We signed a two-year lease in mid-2007 and turned it into a place where bloggers could work from or wind down at the end of the day. The exco of the All-Blogs held their meetings in the living room of the house, organised a couple of talks by visiting bloggers, and discussed ways to engage a government that was then hostile towards blogs. We wanted a change in the national leadership and we talked a lot about the coming 12th General Election. The Bangsa Malaysia initiatve was launched here, Marina Mahathir held the multifaith doa selamat for Dr M also at this place, and citizens huddled together to follow the progress of their political parties on the night of the General Election from there. Pro-Opposition bloggers would mingle freely with pro-Government bloggers and they would call one another "brader" every time they met, right up to the last big event - the get-together to mark 100 days since the GE, a party where several people's reps from PR and one from BN, and their supporters, turned up.br /br /Last night, I handed back the keys of the house to a representative of the landlord and brought down the "Blog House" signage at the entrance.br /br /Where will the All Blogs go after this?br /br /Maybe nowhere, but the people who made up the Alliance have moved on: interim vice president a href="http://www.jeffooi.com/"span style="font-style: italic;"Jeff Ooi/span/a has gone on to become a Member of Parliament for Jelutong, (DAP) exco member a href="http://elizabethwong.wordpress.com/"span style="font-style: italic;"Elizabeth Wong/span/a is serving the people as an Adun for Bukit Lanjan, Selangor (PKR), and pro-tem secretary a href="http://www.nursamad.blogspot.com/"span style="font-style: italic;"Nuraina A. Samad/span/a has gone back to the Umno-owned NST as its managing editor. Some of the exco members have vanished from blogosphere and from my life while a few, including a href="http://www.muststopthis.blogspot.com/"span style="font-style: italic;"Tony Yew/span/a and Li Tsin (who has stopped blogging), still keep in touch.br /br /Perhaps it is time for a closure to a chapter ....br //blockquote/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28452020-1128462493701832724?l=rockybru.com.my'//div

Mercenaries and Civilization

2009-08-09T04:27:00.001-07:00

I appreciate international society's need for mercenary companies. Developing military institutions is difficult and time consuming, and even though mercenaries are expensive, they can provide short term emergency relief. Mercenaries have been a part of the domestic and international scene since time immemorial, and they've never really disappeared; they receded a bit during the Golden Age of the Nation-State, but have re-established their importance in the last twenty years. I also appreciate, to some degree, the desire of the US military to outsource some of its responsibilities to mercenary companies. The drive for privatization of government function in the 1990s was absurd and destructive, and cut many capabilities that necessarily should have remained public, but it's true enough that there are span style="font-style:italic;"some/span tasks performed by the military that can be done well enough by private firms. Finally, I think that there's potentially a role for mercenary companies in shipping protection, anti-piracy, and similar endeavours. br /br /All that said, I wonder if the notion of a "civilized" mercenary company is simply an oxymoron. This is to say that, while we can identify situations in which a mercenary company might be useful, it's virtually impossible to create a functioning organization that can abide by the rules of the civilized world. As Huntington tells us, military organizations are about managed violence. The professional managers of violence are tempered by their loyalty to nation and state; even when they stray, they tend to do so in the name of the state. Norms of professionalism keep professional military personnel within certain constraints, as do the policy preferences of the state. A organization which replaces loyalty to the state with pursuit of profit may be notionally possible, but I suspect that taking loyalty to the state out of the equation unglues military professionalism. When the military professional has many potential clients, and especially when the military professional is detached from a culture of self-sacrifice (all military professionals understand that they must be willing to accept danger and death as part of their jobs) I think that the professional norms may disintegrate. br /br /The strikeBlackwater/strike Xe experience a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill"resulted in an organization/a that was plainly unfit for operation even in the anarchy of Iraq. I doubt that the allegations listed in the Scahill article will be the last to come to light regarding Blackwater's operations, and of course Blackwater wasn't the only mercenary company in Iraq. It may turn out that Blackwater was just uniquely terrible, but I have my doubts.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-3285743365596264375?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

The Last Of The Big 3

2009-08-09T02:47:00.001-07:00

Looks like it's the a href="http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2009/08/smoltz_designat.html"end of the road /afor the final active member of the core of the best starting rotation of my lifetime, and the best post-season pitcher of the three. Even though he spent most of his career sticking it to the teams I was cheering for, he was a class act, and it was sad to see him go out that way. And it's not like he was hanging on well past his prime; remarkably, this will be the first year Smoltz hasn't had an ERA+ over 100 since span style="font-style: italic;"1988/span. It was a reasonable gamble by the Red Sox but it just didn't work.br /br /Given the Yankees' improved rotation Howard may not want to make out annual reverse-hedge bet for charity. But if I may be permitted to state the obvious, the Yankees are going to win the division this year. With Ortiz probably done, Varitek burnt to a crisp (or Casey "If You Liked Dave Stapleton" Kotchman), Bay and Drew unlikely to be anywhere near 100%, and utterly non-competitive shortstops, I just don't see them having the offense to win in the East, especially since their excellent top 4 isn't as good as New York's either (and neither is their rotation.) The real question is whether they'll stay ahead of Tampa, who have probably been the best team in the division this year.br /br /...and what a classic game. Normally, they would only have played about 5 innings by midnight...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-7967596393229863340?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Cardinal Rigali Urges Support for Pro-Life Amendments to Health Care Reform Bill

2009-08-09T01:06:00.001-07:00

a href="http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2009/09-165.shtml" target=_blankCardinal Rigali Urges House Committee to Support Pro-Life Amendments to Health Care Reform Bill/a United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. July 30, 2009:blockquoteCardinal Justin Rigali, Chairman of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, wrote on July 29 to the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee urging them to amend “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” (H.R. 3200) to retain longstanding government policies on abortion and conscience rights.br /pCardinal Rigali reiterated criteria for “genuine health care reform” set forth by Bishop William Murphy, Chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Policy, in his letter to Congress on July 17. He described health care as “a basic right belonging to all human beings, from conception to natural death” and said that “the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is working to ensure that needed health reform is not undermined by abandoning longstanding and widely supported policies against abortion funding and mandates and in favor of conscience protection.”br /pThe Cardinal enumerated several problems with the bill as introduced: It would be used to mandate abortion coverage in private health plans, expand abortion funding, override state laws that limit or regulate abortion, and endanger existing laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers.br /p“Much-needed reform must not become a vehicle for promoting an ‘abortion rights’ agenda or reversing longstanding current policies against federal abortion mandates and funding,” he wrote. “In this sense we urge you to make this legislation ‘abortion neutral’ by preserving longstanding federal policies that prevent government promotion of abortion and respect conscience rights.”/blockquotebr /pbRelated/bbr /ulbr /lia href="http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=6589Itemid=48" target=_blankWhy Catholics Will Not Get Abortion Out of the Health Care Bill/a, by Deal W. Hudson. InsideCatholic.com August 3, 2009.br //uldiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9017636-7192934636508627549?l=thepublicsquare.blogspot.com'//div

The Cove

2009-08-08T23:25:00.001-07:00

Has anyone seen a href="http://www.thecovemovie.com/"this film? /aIf so, please give me a review.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-4626589452205928921?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Deconstructing Palin's Health Care Statement

2009-08-08T21:45:00.001-07:00

Former Governor Palin weighed into the health care debate with a controversial a href="http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin?v=app_2347471856amp;viewas=1620497386amp;ref=nf#/note.php?note_id=113851103434"Facebook statement. /aHere's the part that's causing the most controversy.br /br /blockquoteThe Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.br /br /The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.br //blockquotebr /br /Now, she's taken criticism from all quarters. Jake Tapper wrote a a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/palin-paints-picture-of-obama-death-panel-giving-thumbs-down-to-trig.html"blistering attack of this statement. /abr /br /br /blockquoteOne can question whether there will by necessity be any rationing decisions that will need to come as a part of health care reform (a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/07/todays-q-for-os-wh-7222009.html" target="_blank"and, in fact, we have/a) but pictures of government bureaucrats forcing euthanasia upon seniors -- and, now, children with Down syndrome -- because they're not productive members of society are not part of any reasonable debate on the facts of the matter. (And frankly, I agreed withbr /Palin previously, when she was asking members of the media to keep her childrenbr /out of any public debate.)br /br /Asked specifically what the former governor was referring to when painting a picture of an Obama "death panel" giving her parents or son Trig a thumbs up or down based on their productivity, Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton responded in an email: "From HR3200 p. 425 see 'Advance Care Planning Consultation'."br //blockquotebr /br /Charles Johnson, of LGF, a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34398_Palin-_My_Baby_Will_Have_to_Stand_in_Front_of_Obamas_Death_Panel"also criticized Palin/a. Now, Palin's statement was far too provocative. There's of course no death panel that will decide who lives and who dies. The language she used went from proper criticism to fear mongering. She should have phrased her comments in a much more statesperson like manner. That said, those that criticize Palin on the merits of the statement simply haven't read the bill carefully.br /br /There is no question that this bill will create rationing, and there's no question that eventually care will be cut from those that are deemed "unproductive" like her son. In fact, those that criticize misconstrue her reference to page 425 which either mandates or makes optional planning for death. In fact, pages 425-430 do a lot more than merely suggest "advanced care planning". In fact, it's much more complicated than that. The a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care_27.html"rationing /astarts on pages 27-30 where "essential benefits" are discussed. A new bureaucracy, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, will be created to decide what insurance and procedures are deemed "necessary". On page 335, there is a section on "Outcomes Based Measures" which will have the same Health Benefits Advisory Committee do a cost benefit analysis of which procedures are cost effective. As such, if a procedure is deemed "unnecessary" and "not cost effective", it will be regulated out of existence. If you happen to need that procedure to live, get in front of the "death panel" and beg.br /br /Then, within pages 425-430, there is language regulating the type of care that those near death will get. Combine that with "Outcomes Based Measures" and "essential benefits" and suddenly 80 year olds won't get a hip replacement. If you only have a month to live anyway, your care will be minimum.br /br /This bill will also regulate pay and make it independent of specialty. This will drive doctors out of the business. (a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care.html"page 241/a) So, with 50 million more patients, less doctors, and the tools necessary to ration, that's exactly what the government will do. Furthermore, Palin correctly points out that one of the advisors to President Obama is Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of the Chief of Staff) Dr. Emanuel has famously said this.br /br /br /blockquoteHealth services should not be guaranteed to] individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia/blockquotebr /br /Now, if the White House creates a system with not enough medical professionals to cover all the new patients, mechanisms to ration care, and has advising it someone that has openly stated that the "unproductive" need to have their care cut off, how else should Sarah Palin read this but that her son won't get care.br /br /If you want to criticize Sarah Palin for her provocative language, scare tactics, and lack of statesmanship, I would agree. That said, on substance, Sarah Palin is absolutely correct.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-8604762579206130468?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

Start Up The Favre To ESPN Rumors Again

2009-08-08T20:04:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncugkdeAaI/AAAAAAAAB2c/cJtXstqcY2g/s1600-h/favre.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 250px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1x1mvb2W23Q/SncugkdeAaI/AAAAAAAAB2c/cJtXstqcY2g/s400/favre.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365808618113204642" border="0" //abr /Now that Brett Favre has officially turned down the Vikings, we can finally get back to the "Favre the Analyst" sweepstakes. It's been no secret that ESPN has been buddy-buddy with the ex-QB, and has pandered to his every whim and announcement, so the obvious choice is for him to sign on with the "Leader". While that makes the most sense, there are other networks that need him more, namely CBS. There are some issues though, and Michael Hiestand of a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2009-08-02-brett-favre-analyst_N.htm"USA Today/a, has laid them out for us....br /blockquotespan style="font-weight: bold;"•He might not have much to say./span This seems unlikely. But there is precedent for something like that, such as Joe Montana's stint on NBC.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"•He'd never do TV./span Just like Bob Knight never would.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"•Hamlet can still change his mind./span You've offered to mount cameras on Favre's riding mower so he can talk from there and not drop by a studio. You've put him in clever promos. And then by, say Week 4, some NFL quarterbacks go down and vacancies pop up and … well, who knows what happens then?br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"•Would he matter?/span Occasionally, analysts who've never called football on TV — the late Bill Walsh, Tony Kornheiser and, this season, Jon Gruden— go directly to calling marquee games. That involves quickly learning TV's mechanics and could be risky. But otherwise, it could be a waste to sign such a star for obscure games going to, say, 7% of the U.S.br /br /Which leaves NFL studio shows which, in TV terms, are a pretty big deal. The four pregame shows — on Fox, CBS, ESPN and NFL Network — each week collectively draw ratings that approach coverage of, say, a big college bowl game or final-round coverage of The Masters. And, unlike live event coverage where networks can't control whether you end up getting a good game, pregame shows are one of the few venues where networks compete directly for the same viewers with shows they control./blockquoteWhile I don't think he would have "nothing to say", I certainly think he's not cut out for calling live games. However, during an age of Sports Broadcasting in which networks hire big name former players for tryouts all the time just for the hell of it, there's really no risk in taking a flier on Favre. If he works....he works. If he doesn't....there's another crop of big names retiring this year.br /br /While I'd personally like some time without Brett Favre taking up the screen every second, I completely understand why ESPN would try to grab him now. But there is one thing that could save us from Favre in an analysts chair. The seriousness of Tavaris Jackson's knee injury. It's basically a coin flip but I'd much rather deal with Favre the Player nonsense, over Favre the Analyst nonsense, every week. That's just me though.br /br /a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2009-08-02-brett-favre-analyst_N.htm"Favre on TV? Seems like a no-brainer but .../a (USA Today)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-7331766096392842156?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
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Vancouver’s Early Adoption of Open Government is Good for Civil Society

2009-08-08T18:24:00.001-07:00

A circular argument

2009-08-08T16:43:00.001-07:00

Norther Ireland's Finance Minister, Democratic Unionist MP, Sammy Wilson, is a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/northern-ireland-racism-row-funding" target="_blank"in hot water again/a. He was previously criticised when, as environment minister, he denied that humans were responsible for global warming.br /br /Mr. Wilson has accused anti-racism groups of exaggerating the scale of the racism to gain public funding. He claimed there was an "anti-racism industry". In return he has been accused by the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities of playing into the hands of racists.br /br /Irrespective of the merits of each side of the case I do detect a bit of a circular argument in these exchanges.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-2611200600675503669?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Malkin on Anti-ObamaCare Movement: ‘Republicans Can Only Wish They Could Have Been So Competent’

2009-08-08T15:03:00.001-07:00

object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6CyltuyN2rQcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6CyltuyN2rQcolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcfhl=enfeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-628302468392896663?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Clinton to North Korea

2009-08-08T13:23:00.001-07:00

I have a short column up at Guardian:CIF on the a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/04/bill-clinton-north-korea-obama-carter"Clinton to North Korea visit. /adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-5234819603416905430?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Galaxies in Pegasus

2009-08-08T11:43:00.001-07:00

The stars like dust ...br /br /img src="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0908/NGC7331-hager800.jpg"div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-28489546453896194?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

The Democrats Vs. the Tea Parties Day 3: The Evolution

2009-08-08T10:02:00.001-07:00

The video making the rounds today is this one of Speaker Pelosi.br /br /br /embed id="mediumFlashEmbedded" name="FOX News" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://foxnews1.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/foxnews1-foxnews-pub01-live/current/videolandingpage/fncLargePlayer/client/embedded/embedded.swf" width="305" height="275" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" play="false" scale="noscale" menu="false" salign="LT" scriptaccess="always" wmode="false" flashvars="playerId=videolandingpageamp;playerTemplateId=fncLargePlayeramp;categoryTitle=undefinedamp;referralObject=7850499"/embedbr /br /Speaker Pelosi again repeated the characterization of these townhall confrontations as "Astro Turfers" or organized groups of protesters which are coordinated and well financed. She also claimed that folks that show up to these town hall meetings with swastikas. Now, I haven't seen that and so it appears to be a nast AND erroneous characterization.br /br /The Democrats have decided not to turn back and go full board trying to paint these protests as organized by well funded and nefarious forces. So, the protestors will have to fight back. So, what you are likely to see over the next week or so is that more and more of the folks that showed up at the town halls will start to show up on the media, radio, print, and television.br /br /As such, the people themselves will be able to answer these charges that they are "Astro Turfers". Just imagine that dichotomy. The Democrats will continue to attack personally these folks that show up to town hall meetings and then, the folks that show up on television as ordinary citizens. So, after a week or two of having protestors wind up on the media, it will be clear that they aren't Astro Turfers and the Democrats will be crushed even more.br /br /This thing has evolved rather quickly. It was only two days ago that a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/next-stop-race-to-define-townhall.html"I predicted /athat this would happen and already it is the leading story for the second straight day. The videos continue to roll in on confrontations at town hall debates. This one actually occurred at the AARP which supports the bill.br /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AoMNDdQ1_h0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AoMNDdQ1_h0hl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /Also, Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, has pronounced that he won't hold any town hall and only one on one sessions. Brian Baird has said he will only hold telephone town halls. I can tell you my two Senators and my Representative have scheduled none so far. So, will Democrats simply hide under their desks for the next three and a half weeks or will they continue to face these angry crowds? That's another way that the story will evolve. I also believe that you will soon see the protestors settle down more as this progresses. That's because after they show enough of these on television I think that folks will start to realize that when the video is full of yelling, screaming, and shouting down that the other side can portray you as unhinged.br /br /Yet, already, the sides have been set on a story that will dominate the news over the next month. The protestors, a product of the Tea Parties, are on one side. The Democrats are on the other side and it will ultimately lead not only to the final nail in the health care coffin but a bruising and bitter end to this debate for the Democrats. Let me leave this piece with another incident of Democrats getting an earful. This comes from a town hall held by Blue Dog Mike Ross, a Congressman from Arkansas.br /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kVpa5IoiF_gamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kVpa5IoiF_ghl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-5039979682636852346?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

Economist describes Anwar as a Chameleon

2009-08-08T08:22:00.001-07:00

blockquote style="font-style: italic;"/blockquotediv style="text-align: justify;"blockquote style="font-style: italic;"span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" /span/blockquotediv style="text-align: justify;"blockquote style="font-style: italic;"span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" /span/blockquote/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"blockquotediv style="text-align: justify;"pa onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/SnarJe2kZEI/AAAAAAAAEFA/fOVcudisQJw/s1600-h/chamaleon.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 165px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Az7aX_dORNk/SnarJe2kZEI/AAAAAAAAEFA/fOVcudisQJw/s200/chamaleon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365664185447638082" border="0" //a/ppspan style="font-size:100%;"span style="font-size:180%;"Name-calling. /spanA fellow blogger /spanand I were just talking about the latest antics of Ibrahim Ali, the "Independent" MP in Kelantan who won the last general election with the help of PAS but who's now the Islamic Party's biggest pain in the ass. In Malaysian politics, Ibrahim is affectionately known as the Frog Prince because of his propensity to jump from one party to another in the past.br //ppNow there's a chameleon in Malaysia's politics, according to the Economist:/pspan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" /spanblockquotespan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" "This points to a trap waiting to catch the silver-tongued Mr Anwar, who deftly tells different audiences—religious or secular—what they like to hear. The same blogosphere that helped his meteoric rise may one day pay more attention to his chameleon qualities. Malaysians would then come to ask more closely: who and what exactly does Anwar stand for?" /span- The Economist, Malaysia's Chameleon/blockquotepRead the full article here or a href="http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14140818"span style="font-style: italic;"here/span/a./pp/pblockquotepspan style="font-size:85%;"p.s. We were immediately thrown back to the early 80s, when Boy George's a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.blogger.com/e%20were%20imm"span style="font-style: italic;"Karma Chameleon/span/a was a huge hit:/span/pp/pblockquote style="font-weight: bold;"span style="font-size:85%;"I'm a man without convictionbr /I'm a man who doesn't knowbr /How to sell a contradictionbr /You come and gobr /you come and gotbr /br //span/blockquotep/p/blockquotep/pblockquotespan style="font-size:85%;"/span/blockquotep/p/div/blockquote/div/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28452020-5901507155486288196?l=rockybru.com.my'//div

Today's unlikely excuse

2009-08-08T06:41:00.001-07:00

The Met Office claim that they labelled June, July and August as the 'barbecue summer' to help journalists with their headlines.br /br /There is no suggestion at all that they might have got their forecasts wrong. If I was them I would get some new spin doctors.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-4206996259776844018?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Michael Crowley give a Lewinski to Obama

2009-08-08T05:00:00.001-07:00

Gerard Vanderleun eviscerates Crowley and leaves the carcass for the vultures with bad taste.br /br /Read the whole thing ... it ends with blockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"Garbled paragraphs such as Michael Crowley's will shine forever only in the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind of Michael Crowley. He, like all the other members of the media in the toilet for Obama, underwent a brain wipe sometime during the campaign; a time when giving the pretender a pass on his past was a required operation if you wanted to keep your options open in Washington. And as we learn in the film, "technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss."/span /p/blockquotebr /br /That will leave a mark.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-78480399133765717?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Stephen Rowley: The Classic Hollywood Town at the Dawn of Suburbia

2009-08-08T03:20:00.001-07:00

The Classic Hollywood Town at the Dawn of Suburbia br /by Stephen Rowleybr /a href="http://blogs.arts.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/"Refractory/abr /br /img src="http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/51BP4YSHC1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg"br /br /Abstractbr /br /This article examines the depictions of small towns in a number of Hollywood films from the 1940s, and describes some of the ideals of community that were shaping (and reflecting) the community attitudes that would underlie the post-war suburban boom. Two points are of particular interest. Firstly, what are some of the common physical and social characteristics of the communities as depicted in these films? And secondly, what can we glean from the films about the attitudes to community and suburbanisation that existed at the dawn of the suburban age?br /br /a href="http://blogs.arts.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/2009/06/25/the-classic-hollywood-town-at-the-dawn-of-suburbia-stephen-rowley/"To Read the Essay/abr /br /img src="http://z.about.com/d/classicfilm/1/0/L/3/-/-/Wonderful_Life2.jpg"div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-8069063826260467339?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Fixing Fannie/Freddie: The Latest Obama Gimmick

2009-08-08T01:40:00.001-07:00

Fannie Mae reported another terrible a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE5756ZH20090806"quarter today/a.br /br /blockquoteFannie Mae, the largest provider of U.S. home mortgage funding, on Thursday reported a $14.8 billion quarterly net loss that it said would force it to go to the U.S. Treasury trough a third time for money to stay in business.br /br /The company noted a "significant uncertainty" of its long-term financial health in reporting its eighth consecutive quarterly loss, which illustrates its struggle to make money in the face of rising defaults and pressure to do more to stabilize the housing market.br //blockquotebr /br /The mortgage giant is about to ask the federal government for another $10.7 billion lifeline. The government of course now owns both Fannie Mae and its sister company Freddie Mac. Now, the administration is floating an idea to help the deal with their long a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080504063.html"term viability/a.br /br /blockquoteThe Obama administration is considering an overhaul of a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/post200/2007/FNM/" target=""Fannie Mae/a and a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/post200/2007/FRE/" target=""Freddie Mac/a that would strip the mortgage finance giants of hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled loans and create a new structure to support the home-loan market, government officials said.br /br /The bad debts the firms own would be placed in new government-backed financial institutions -- so-called bad banks -- that would take responsibility for collecting as much of the outstanding balance as possible. What would be left would be two healthy financial companies with a clean slate.br //blockquotebr /br /This is very similar to what the a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html"Swedish government did to their banks/a. In that case, the whole banking system was nationalized, the bad debt was removed, the board and upper management dissolved, and then new private banks were created out of the rubble.br /br /In this case, it remains unclear if the management will be dissolved. In fact, its unclear if anything will happen besides the federal government completing a full bailout for these two giants in under this plan. In fact, this appears to be little less than bailing these two out from years of bad and irresponsible behavior.br /br /The president has proposed for a total overhaul of the regulatory framework of the entire financial system and all he will do to Fannie/Freddie appears to be to take their bad debts off their hands. He will have fixed none of their structural problems. They will still continue to have a monopoly and they'll now be even more tied to the Federal government. In fact, by doing this, all he'll do is create even more moral hazard and encourage a repeat in a few years. Let's hope this is NOT the final plan for the two mortgage giants.br /br /Here's my ideas for fixing the a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-solution-for-ending-fanniefreddie.html"two giants/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-418739990856837678?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

Questions over security of ID database

2009-08-07T23:59:00.001-07:00

a href="http://www.markpack.org.uk/nine-staff-sacked-for-breaking-rules-over-id-cards-database/" target="_blank"Mark Pack/a links to a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/08/04/237162/council-workers-sacked-for-snooping-personal-details.htm" target="_blank"this item in Computer Weekly/a, which reports that nine staff have been sacked from their local authority jobs for snooping on personal records of celebrities and personal acquaintances held on the core database of the government's National Identity Scheme.br /br /The report says that they are are among 34 council workers who illegally accessed the Customer Information System database, which holds the biographical data of the population that will underpin the government's multi-billion-pound ID card programme.br /br /They also provide some details on the breaches by council workers:br /ulliCardiff and Glasgow councils sacked staff after they looked up celebrities' personal records/liliTonbridge and Bromley councils sacked workers for looking up their friends/liliBrent sacked someone who looked at their girlfriend's details/liliA worker at Torfaen was sacked for looking at his own details/li/ulpWhat is especially worrying is that they say that this may just be the tip of the iceberg. Many of the breaches were discovered after sample checks, raising concerns that other breaches may gone undetected.br /br /It seems that over 200,000 government officials have access to the database, including staff at 480 local authorities, and numerous government departments, including the Department of Work and Pensions, HM Revenue amp; Customs, and the Courts Service. The Child Support Agency uses the database to trace missing parents.br /br /Clearly, this project amounts to more than just a collection of information to back up an ID card scheme. It is being used widely for a large number of applications and possibly being linked to other databases as well. With so many people having access to it there must be huge concerns about security and confidentiality. The Government needs to start providing more assurance on that aspect whilst at the same time being more open and transparent about how the data is being used.br /br /A level of oversight to provide accountability is essential in my view. It cannot be right that this sort of database is administered from behind closed doors without those on it having the ability to check the information it holds on us and how it is being used./pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-4195343561500959304?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

The New Democratic Party, Debating Its Old Name, Should Think More Globally

2009-08-07T22:19:00.001-07:00

F-35C for the Royal Navy

2009-08-07T20:38:00.001-07:00

Via a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InformationDissemination/~3/xZrtzuixSRs/another-cvf-change-of-plan-rumor.html"Galrahn/a, it looks as if the Royal Navy is ditching plans to buy the F-35B (VSTOL variant), and instead buying the F-35C (carrier variant) and a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5978437/Defence-jobs-at-risk-as-MoD-drops-jump-jet-fighter-engine.html"adding catapults to its new carriers./a As I've suggested before, this makes a lot of sense; the F-35B is appropriate for smaller carriers, but is wasted on a big deck ship, as it lacks the range and payload of its sister aircraft. As Galrahn notes, this probably won't save the Royal Navy much money, even though the F-35C is projected to be cheaper than the F-35B. Redesign and the addition of catapults (possibly EMALS) will eat up the savings. It does mean, however, that the CVF will be significantly more capable. If I ran the RN, I'd probably still buy some F-35Bs in order to keep one of Illustrious or Ark Royal around and effective, but the F-35C should be the main purchase.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-3405698617188575279?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Barbara Boxer Objects To Health Care Protesters' "Attire"

2009-08-07T18:58:00.001-07:00

object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZV84OBtGpSQhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZV84OBtGpSQhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /Barbara Boxer "Call Me Senator!" br /br /object width="560" height="340"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nVtQ7M0V15Mhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nVtQ7M0V15Mhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-5514220070621992429?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

England Won the Toss and Decided to Bat

2009-08-07T17:17:00.001-07:00

and it's been reassuringly, precipitously, a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/england/8183291.stm"downhill since that moment/a.divbr //divdivEngland 102, Australia 196-4, close of play first day, fourth test./divdivbr //divdivUnless the English bowl the Australians out quick, and then somehow re-learn how to bat overnight, this test is as good as done. A first innings of 102 all out is ludicrous, the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/shared/fds/hi/statistics/cricket/scorecards/2009/8/15082/html/scorecard.stm"scorecard/a embarrassing. The following small numbers represent, in order, the run contribution of the English batsmen for the first innings: 3, 30, 1, 8, 0, 37, 3, 0, 0, 3, 0. With Flintoff out for this test, the English tail is effectively lengthened by one. Not even a half century from your span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"first five batters combined /span? Even I, as an American, recognize this as perhaps not an advisable approach, unless you believe that luring your opposition into a false sense of giddy security represents your only chance./divdivbr //divdivThe flip side of course is that one of the Ozzie bowling lines stands out: Siddle 21-5. However, four of those five came from picking off the final four English batsmen (Swann, Harminson, Anderson, Onions), which in baseball terms is rather like pitching to four straight pitchers. However, Siddle's dispatch of Strauss on only three runs off of 17 balls set the tone for this innings. Strauss has been having an effective Ashes in 2009. Clark's 3-18 is perhaps more impressive as he secured the wickets of both Cook (for 30) and Collingwood for a duck./divdivbr //divdivWhile Mike Atherton wrote in The Times the other day that the 2009 edition of this series lacks quality of any sort compared to 2005, Simon Barnes a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article6741795.ece"replies in the same pages/a that the drama is more important than the relative quality, and this series does have the potential to match 2005 on that criterion. Or at least did, because if Atherton is correct in another observation, that who wins this test at a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article6742005.ece"Headingly will win the series/a, then it's looking rather over. An England win would capture the Ashes for England, but a Australia win will even out the series, requiring an outright England victory at the Oval in the final test to win the series./divdivbr //divdivAs with previous tests, I'll write one followup to this post towards the end of the test. Which very well could be in only a couple days at this rate . . . /divdivbr //divdivIn other obscure sports, Celtic a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/spl/celtic/2009/08/06/dinamo-moscow-0-celtic-2-86908-21574153/"managed to win/a away in Europe for the first time in over six years on Wednesday, which I somehow managed to watch. Indeed, it was a historic victory for the Bhoys, as they had never recovered from an initial home defeat in a two-legged European tie before./divdivbr //divdivThe reward for a job well done? a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/8187226.stm"Drawing Arsenal/a in the playoff round of qualification for the Champions League proper. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. And in one of life's delicious ironies, the BBC reports that in this final round of qualifying:/divblockquoteIf two of the four - from Arsenal, Lyon, Sporting Lisbon and Panathinaikos - fail to qualify, Rangers will move up from the third pot to the second, in theory giving them an easier group./blockquotedivMeaning if Celtic overcome Arsenal, it could directly help their occasional light-hearted rivals from across town./divdivbr //divdivExcellent./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-6164146409554445590?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

On the Peter Mandelson leadership speculation

2009-08-07T15:37:00.001-07:00

Is it me or are the media being allowed to continue to speculate about Peter Mandelson's leadership ambitions as a way of telling the country that things can get worse than a Gordon Brown premiership?div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-3094551905209491588?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Democracy Now!: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned

2009-08-07T13:56:00.001-07:00

Democracy Now! Broadcast Exclusive: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunnedbr /a href="http://www.democracynow.org/"Democracy Now/abr /br /Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. “This could be one of the key revelations of this era,” said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations.br /br /a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/28/broadcast_exclusive_declassified_docs_reveal_military"To Listen to the Report and Interviews/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-7545607521671715086?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Dubai Come Undone, Golfing Edition

2009-08-07T12:16:00.001-07:00

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/Sng18uPw1EI/AAAAAAAADo4/1TetjdoyhDo/s1600-h/racetodubai.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IzGDYJE7jOs/Sng18uPw1EI/AAAAAAAADo4/1TetjdoyhDo/s200/racetodubai.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366098273334514754" border="0" //aSometime ago, I described Dubai as a city of a href="http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2007/10/dubai-dreamscapes-nightmares.html"dreamscapes and nightmares/a. Flying on Emirates and landing in the still-busy city of Dubai speaks volumes about how much time, effort, and expense the emirate has spent in forging its destiny. In principle, Dubai's efforts to wean themselves off oil and gas exports makes sense. In the near future when its reserves run out, there will be a need to have other principal industries. To date, its leadership has bet large on travel and tourism as well as finance and commercial real-estate. In other words, these are precisely the areas hardest-hit by the ongoing credit crisis. Hence, it seems the reinvention of post-energy Dubai may need some reappraisal.br /br /A few days ago, the span style="font-style: italic;"Times of London/span had a long, sneering a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6716543.ece"feature/a on the fate of Dubai. You can read the condescending parts at your leisure. Here, I will just mention the more pertinent discussion of the fallout from the credit crisis:br /blockquoteThe credit crunch hit Dubai badly, and it is clinging to its despised but less feckless neighbour, Abu Dhabi, for a very large bail-out. Troubled state-backed firms owe British companies more than £400m. The plush apartment complexes down at the marina are half-empty, investment has collapsed and property prices with it — house prices are down by as much as 50% and are predicted to fall by another 20%. It is almost impossible to put a precise figure on the rate of the collapse, because, according to one estate agent, there is no market. Nobody is buying, nobody is renting; there is no new business. An estimated £335 billion of projects have been halted or are on hold. And it is predicted that the population [a majority of which are expats] could decline by 17.1% by the end of the year, so things will not be getting better too quickly.br //blockquoteIt seems that another project in the emirate has come undone: sponsorship money in the much-vaunted $20M a href="http://www.europeantour.com/default.sps?pagegid=%7BBD7FAD7F-8A0E-4A4C-B1AA-EC4C735BC15B%7D"Race to Dubai/a that was supposed to become the flagship event of the European Professional Golfer Association (PGA). When the lure for the event is money plain and simple, its luster dims significantly when there is, er, no more money. From the a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/08/03/racetodubai.money.reduction/index.html"span style="font-style: italic;"Chicken Noodle Network/span/a:br /blockquoteThe European Tour looks set to suffer a major body blow this week when it announces a reduction in prize money for this year's flagship $20 million Race to Dubai and Dubai World Championships. A golf insider from the region has told CNN that the impact of the credit crunch on Leisurecorp, the company behind the concept, and the fact the Dubai World Championship has not attracted the handful of marquee sponsors hoped for, has led to a decision to reduce the payout for one of golf's most lucrative competitions.br /br /The running of Leisurecorp's day-to-day business now falls under the control of Dubai real estate developer Nakheel. Since the start of the year Leisurecorp has made many staff redundant, put its flagship development "The Jumeirah Golf Estates" on hold and its CEO David Spencer, the brains behind the "Race To Dubai" concept, has left the company...br /br /With the reduction in prize money and persistent rumors among players that the Race Dubai will only be staged for one year instead of the original five, as promised when it was announced, the commitment of the players may be tested.br /br /The move will come as a major embarrassment to the European Tour who had rebranded itself around the sponsorship and described the launch of the Race to Dubai as the most significant development in its history. The concept was supposed to help it keep pace with the PGA in the U.S. which outstripped its European rival's prize fund by many millions of dollars, especially with the $10 million FedEx Cup.br /br /Dubai banked on the Race to Dubai to put it on the global map as a golf destination and was seen as the perfect marketing tool. But Dubai's financial struggles have affected many golf business such as the Tiger Woods course where construction has been put on hold and is now believed to be up for sale.br //blockquoteThe bigger they spend, the harder they fall nowadays. The perfectly manicured greens in a desert environment does speak volumes about the artificiality of the entire project. Was the Dubai of endless skyscrapers--each taller and more fanciful than the one before--just a a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5110710/Dubais-rulers-say-success-of-the-emirate-is-no-mirage.html"pipe dream/a? It may be another cautionary tale over lending to an entity with no credit rating to speak of despite endless a href="http://www.arabianbusiness.com/541100-dubai-seeks-credit-rating-for-next-year"suggestions/a that it would gain one. Were megaprojects and wads of cash thrown at sporting events really the ingredients for a successful post-energy future? I don't have the answers but think they're going back to the drawing board at Dubai mission control.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9031925921218676704-8520829167287861199?l=ipezone.blogspot.com'//div

Art Walk This Friday, August 7

2009-08-07T10:35:00.001-07:00

a href="http://emoseleygallery.com/"span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Elyane/span span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Moseley/span /awill have some of her beautiful paintings at the a href="http://www.sparkgallery.com/"Spark Gallery /athis Friday night for the a href="http://www.artdistrictonsantafe.com/calendar.php"First Friday art walk/a. It is at: 900 Santa Fe span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"Drive, Denver/span, CO 80204. I hope to see you there. They are open until 9:00 on Friday.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-8855258938160716846?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div