June 30, 2007
NOTHING'S RELATIVE:
Einstein's Revolution, and Counterrevolution (Tom Bethell, June 2007, The American Spectator)
A BASIC POINT ABOUT EINSTEIN'S life (1879-1955) is that he became more conservative when he reached middle age; not so much politically -- he remained a man of the left to the end -- but in his scientific outlook. This was reflected above all in his prolonged and unresolved dispute with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg about quantum mechanics. If you are unfamiliar with that controversy, there could be no better introduction than Isaacson's. He covers it in about 40 lucid pages, encompassing the contributions of Erwin Schroedinger and others. Most of us know little more than that Heisenberg enunciated an uncertainty principle, wherein observation affects the thing observed; to which Einstein retorted that God does not play dice. Here you will learn, painlessly, a good deal more than that.Heisenberg insisted that an electron does not have a definite position or path until we observe it. This was a feature of the universe, he claimed, not just some deficiency in our ability to measure. In denying that there is an objective reality out there, it undermined classical physics. When Einstein objected, Heisenberg confidently replied: "I believe that indeterminism, that is, the non-validity of rigorous causality, is necessary."
On the 200th anniversary of Newton's death, in 1927, Einstein defended classical mechanics. Two decades earlier he had "toppled many of the pillars of Newton's universe, including absolute space and time," Isaacson writes. Now he was a defender of Newton, of rigorous causality and (by implication) the established order.
Einstein: "You don't seriously believe that none but observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"
He was confronted with his own youthful rebelliousness.
Heisenberg: "Isn't that precisely what you have done with relativity?"
"Possibly," Einstein said, "but it is nonsense all the same."
Man is a subject, not an object.
TACTICS, BUT NOT THE PLANNERS:
London Finds Linked Bombs, a Qaeda Tactic (ALAN COWELL, 6/30/07, NY Times)
Security experts said that neither the bomb materials nor the cellphone triggering device was particularly sophisticated. Nor, said Sajjan M. Gohel, a counterterrorism expert with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, did the attack “seem to be very well planned.”But the idea of a multiple attack using car bombs — a departure from the backpack suicide attacks of the London bombings of July 2005 — raised concerns among security experts that jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda may have imported tactics more familiar in Iraq.
IF BEING A LAUGHINGSTOCK SHUT YOU DOWN...:
Who killed Antioch? Womyn: The college went from liberal bastion to PC laughingstock with its sex and dating policy. (Meghan Daum, June 30, 2007, LA Times)Even though it was founded in 1852 and has a number of distinguished alumni, Antioch College, the flagship institution of a larger system called Antioch University (there are campuses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, among other locations) has an endowment of just $40 million. That's appallingly low — neighboring Ohio colleges Oberlin and Kenyon have endowments of $700 million and $165 million, respectively.
There's no lack of speculation as to how this happened. Many have suggested that the career choices of typical Antioch alums (think public servant or activist rather than CEO or law partner) do not lend themselves to generous contributions. Others see a more general problem with liberal philanthropy. In a podcast interview for InsideHigherEd.com, Bard College President Leon Botstein (who in the 1970s was president of the seriously far-out and short-lived Franconia College) came down hard on what he sees as a failure of liberals to support their institutions.
"One of the tragedies of the progressive liberal movement," Botstein said, "is that unlike at a conservative institution — such as Princeton or Dartmouth, where the alumni are deeply loyal and give it support and money — for liberals, higher education is not a strong enough cause. Their causes are social causes, and higher education is left for the conservatives to fund."
Whether or not contemporary Princeton or Dartmouth can fairly be characterized as conservative (though, admittedly, you have to declare a major at these places, and it can't be in roach-clip design), Botstein makes a good point. He also conjectured that Antioch, which he called "the founding college of the American progressive movement," had been "killed" by, among other things, its own liberalism.
Botstein's not totally wrong, but as members of his baby boom generation are apt to do, he equates "liberalism" and liberals with the demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, including a six-week campus strike in 1973 during which students firebombed buildings to protest racial inequality at the school. But it was the next iteration of liberal excess that really did the place in. To later generations, Antioch is famous for one thing: its Sexual Offense Prevention Policy.
In 1993, it suddenly became national news that Antioch required anyone engaging in sexual activity on campus to ask for and grant permission throughout every step of the encounter. Conceived by a group called Womyn of Antioch, the policy stipulated that consent could not be granted through body movements, nonverbal responses or silence. Furthermore, it stated that "consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity" and that "each new level of sexual activity requires consent." Translation: dorm room make-out sessions were being punctuated by steamy questions like, "May I kiss you now?", "May I remove your (Che Guevara) T-shirt now?" and "May I … " (you get the idea).
Admittedly, this was the early '90s, a time when many liberal arts campuses were so awash in the hysteria of political correctness that it seemed entirely possible a lamppost could commit date rape. But the attention to the Antioch policy, which got as far as a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, not only came to symbolize the infantilizing dogma of the new left, it turned an already obscure college into a laughingstock.
..there'd be no Ivies.
WHACHOO TALKIN' 'BOUT, WILLIS?:
Presidential scholar confronts the president: Gives Bush letter decrying torture (Claire Cummings, June 30, 2007, Boston Globe)
Usually, the high school seniors who win the federal government's highest honor just go to the White House, pick up their Presidential Scholars medal, and get their picture taken for posterity with the president.Mari Oye had other ideas.
In the Georgetown University dormitory the night before the big moment, the newly minted Wellesley High graduate persuaded 49 of her 140 fellow scholars to sign a letter she and a dozen others had drafted and she had just written longhand on notebook paper, calling on President Bush to reject torture and treat terrorism suspects humanely.
Before the scholars posed for a photo with Bush on Monday, she handed him the letter. He put it in his pocket and took it out after the photo shoot. Reading silently to himself, the president looked up quizzically at Oye and said, according to her, "We agree. America doesn't torture people."
The "quizzically" is perfect in that it nullifies her entire protest.
JUST QUIBBLING OVER THE PACE AT THIS POINT:
Democracy? Hu needs it: Ahead of its congress later this year, the Chinese Communist Party is tolerating a surprisingly wide-ranging debate about political reform (The Economist, Jun 28th 2007)
[I]n a much-publicised speech this week, [Hu Jintao] acknowledged the growing public demand for a say in politics. [...]His speech set clear boundaries. The party's leadership must be upheld; reform must adhere to the “correct political orientation”. This means no Western-style parliamentary democracy or balance of power between the executive, legislature and judiciary. But his reference to “political participation” suggests he faces some pressure to set a clearer agenda. He said scope for participation should be expanded, but in an “orderly” way.
Even within Mr Hu's constraints, liberal intellectuals in China see room for big changes. A newspaper article published last October in the normally staid municipal party organ, Beijing Daily, launched a debate about political reform among academics and party officials that still rumbles on. Its author, Yu Keping, a leading party researcher, argued that democracy was essential for China. Study Times, one of the party's leading theoretical journals, republished the piece under the titillating headline “Democracy is a Good Thing”.
The party press does not usually harp on the merits of democracy. But Mr Yu was careful to stay within permitted boundaries. Even Mr Hu himself had said in April 2006 during a trip to America that without democracy there could be no modernisation—a slogan first taken up in China in the late 1970s by political dissidents. But “democracy” in party-speak has a quite different meaning from the one understood by dissidents and Westerners. It certainly does not mean allowing organised opposition. Mr Yu did not define his terms.
However, in February this year a liberal-leaning monthly journal, Yanhuang Chunqiu, threw caution to the winds. It published an article by Xie Tao, a retired vice-president of Beijing's Renmin University, singing the praises of Sweden's Social Democratic Party as a model for China's Communist Party. Mr Xie did not mention multiparty systems explicitly. But he scorned the party's continuing reverence for the “utopian” ideal of communism and warned that it could be destroyed like the Chinese Nationalist Party in the 1940s if it failed to reform politically.
Mr Xie's article touched a raw nerve. Party organisations in some universities arranged symposiums to attack his views. Other official newspapers, including the party's main mouthpiece, the People's Daily, criticised European-style social democracy as unsuitable for China. But the debate has not stopped.
Like Tex Antoine almost said, if liberalization is inevitable....
LESS IS MORE:
Khamenei plays for high stakes (David Blair, 28/06/2007, Daily Telegraph)
At present, Iran produces 4.3 million barrels of oil every day. This may sound impressive - but it could turn out another million if its drilling rigs and pipelines were not falling to pieces. The inescapable truth is that Iran is lamentably failing to exploit its own natural wealth.The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is keenly aware of this. But he faces an acute dilemma. Recovery is only possible if Iran allows Western trade and investment. The vital oil sector will never reach full potential without Western money.
Yet while Iran pursues its nuclear programme, it will remain isolated, devoid of Western investment. It will also be vulnerable to outside pressure. In extremis, the United States and its allies could strangle Iran's economy by imposing a blockade in the Gulf and halting the flow of imported petrol.
But if Ayatollah Khamenei were to sacrifice the nuclear programme in exchange for investment, his troubles would not end.
If the ayatollahs lead the Reformation, and get credit for producing what would be a fairly easy to achieve recovery, they may preserve the Islamic Republic, just not in the form Ayatollah Khomeini and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad dreamed of.
EXCEPT FOR ONE THING...:
Sharing the secrets of the Constitution (Roger Simon, Jun 28, 2007, Politico)
Don't you wish the U.S. Constitution was not a secret document, its contents known only to a few?Don't you wish there were copies of it that we could distribute to schoolchildren so they could become better citizens? Or maybe we could put it up on the Web for everybody to read?
What? The Constitution is not a secret document? Schoolchildren do learn about it? And it is on the Web?
I don't think so. And I think I can prove it.
...the words don't matter--it means whatever Justice Kennedy says it does...
TOUGH TO FIND THE MEDIUM THOUGH:
Indonesian Islam's softer hard line (Seth Mydans, June 28, 2007, International Herald Tribune)
"There is a view that Islam is on the march," said Greg Fealy, an expert on Indonesia at the Australian National University. "I don't see any evidence for that. Yes, there is a religious and cultural Islamization, in private and public. But in the political realm, there is hardly any evidence to support the view that Islam is rising."Some analysts said the Shariah ordinances are largely a response to the social dislocations that have accompanied the economic downturn of the past decade, colored by a rise in religiosity that has little to do with radicalism.
More broadly, they said, this Islamic ferment is a product of the democratic clamor that was unleashed in 1998 when the longtime strongman Suharto was driven from power.
The lifting of restrictions on organizations of all kinds, coupled with political decentralization, has permitted local communities to formulate many of their own laws.
The changes in mood can be seen on campuses, where students who might have demonstrated for democracy a decade ago are forming Islamic associations and turning toward religion. The short skirts of the past have been replaced by head scarves.
"Democracy is like a gate that is opened to let people say what they want," said Budi, a student at the secular University of Indonesia who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. "Having the door open wider, it was easier for us to promote Islamic values and teaching."
Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia's 235 million people call themselves Muslims. But Indonesian Islam has a history of accommodation of other beliefs and tolerance for differences.
After Muslim traders brought their religion in the 12th century, it embraced elements of the Hinduism, Buddhism and animism that flourished here. It is still characterized more by the mysticism of these roots than by the orthodoxy of Islamists.
"I don't think they're going to be liberal, but I'm vaguely optimistic that they'll be pluralist in some fashion," said Robert Hefner, an expert at Boston University on Indonesian Islam. "Indonesia has these awful political crises. But one thing that has consistently survived is this kind of sweet nationalism, not a racist nationalism - it's a multiethnic thing."
As America demonstrates, and Britain and Europe used to, a universalist religion is the only effective counter to nationalism. To precisely the degree that Indonesia becomes secular in the future it will unleash centrifugal forces.
UNTIL PUTZ DROOPS:
Mariners continue to apply pressure: Seattle wins sixth in a row to move 10 games over .500 (JOHN HICKEY, 6/30/07, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)
There's an old adage in baseball that you haven't gotten anywhere in a season until you've gotten to 10 games over .500.The Mariners have finally done that. Friday's 5-3 win over Toronto at Safeco Field, behind another five-out save from J.J. Putz and three big hits from Jose Guillen, leaves Seattle with a 43-33 record and a six-game winning streak.
"We're playing good," Guillen said. "But it's a long season. It's too early to say what will happen; anything can happen."
Whatever happens, Putz figures to be in the middle of it. The closer is 23-for-23 in saves after pitching Seattle out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth, then putting the Blue Jays away in the ninth.
It'd be one thing to be riding your sketchy-armed closer this hard if you'd groomed Brandon Morrow to succeed him when he goes on the DL, but the odd usage of the rookie has him struggling just to find the plate.
VIRTUOUS CYCLE:
YES may join Yanks in the tank (Bob Raissman, June 29th 2007, NY Daily News)
The Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network is officially in uncharted waters. For the first time since the network debuted five years ago, the Bombers' ship is sinking.If the losing continues, will viewers bail? And if they do, and Yankees ratings on YES plummet, will advertisers jump ship, too? And will this all lead to a revenue drop, the kind of dough that allows the Bombers to have a $200 million payroll?
In the midst of the most recent Yankees funk these questions are hardly hypothetical. Over at YES headquarters - the Chrysler Building Think Tank - the powers that be have to be pondering, for the first time, a very uncertain Yankees future.
For starters, if the team does not make the playoffs, what's going to happen next season? What the heck will team look like next season?
The future can wait. Especially when everyone in Yankeeland is choking on the present.
Having less money to squander would actually help the rebuilding process.
AND WE'D BE SOCCER FANS:
Outrage comes too easy for the Democrats (Derrick Z. Jackson, June 30, 2007, Boston Globe)
THURSDAY NIGHT'S debate was too easy for the Democratic presidential candidates. Before a hugely black audience at Howard University, they bashed the Supreme Court decision ending voluntary desegregation. They lambasted the Bush administration's bungling of Hurricane Katrina. Barack Obama said you can't have No Child Left Behind if you leave the money behind. The biggest cheer of the night came when Hillary Clinton said, "If AIDS were the leading cause of death between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country."That is precisely the point.
Actually, the precise point is that it doesn't and why it doesn't.
June 29, 2007
UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE TO DEFENDING CASHMONEY...:
Bad investments: Clemens headlines list of high-priced busts of 2007 (John Donovan, June 29, 2007, Sports Illustrated)
If you saw Roger Clemens pitch against the Orioles on Wednesday, you saw him stink up the joint. He wasn't completely, absolutely, without redemption terrible -- is he ever? -- but he certainly wasn't Clemensesque, allowing four runs in six innings while striking out none. The last time the Rocket failed to strike out a batter in a start was June 14, 2000, when he left the game after one inning.So Clemens being Zitoesque in his last start got me to thinking: Is he the worst use of megadollars in baseball this year? Is anything else even close? I mean, we knew that Clemens would have to be unbelievable to make this half-year, pro-rated $28 million crapshoot defensible. (Not that the Yankees, who manufacture their own money, are heading into foreclosure anytime soon.) Instead, the Rocket is 1-3 with a 5.32 ERA, the Yankees are 1-4 in his five appearances (he came out of the bullpen once) and the team is worse off now than it was before he signed. The Yankees are 11 games behind the Red Sox in the American League East. They were 10 1/2 back the night before Rocket's first game three weeks ago. Difference maker? The guy hasn't made a dent.
...Roger wasn't signed to make a difference on the field but on the back page of the tabloids and on NYC talk radio. Waving the white flag in April with the Mets in 1st would have been a marketing catastrophe as they head into what looks likely to be a down cycle of several years.
FERDINAND PARTON, I PRESUME?:
Energy plan avoids mileage changes (DAVID IVANOVICH, 6/29/07, Houston Chronicle)
House Democrats rolled out an energy package Thursday that aims to promote greater conservation and use of alternative energy sources but which steers clear of raising fuel mileage requirements for cars and trucks.
Democrats could have just kept the GOP in the majority if they wanted an energy bill that kowtows to Detroit.
HAVING WORKED THE MOB INTO A LATHER...:
Senators looking to pick up pieces: After overhaul bill collapses, work starts on smaller plans (MICHELLE MITTELSTADT, 6/29/07, Houston Chronicle)
[M]any Republicans now are reverting to their key priority: increased enforcement at the Southwest border and in the U.S. interior.And Democrats, for their part, are considering offering the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship to illegal immigrant students. And they are looking at ways to address acute labor shortages in agriculture by bringing in more foreign farm workers and placing them on a path to legal permanent residence.
"We have to have a different approach," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said shortly after the Senate fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to keep the tenuous immigration deal alive. "It's clear from the vote that this bill was not the right approach."
Hutchison, who was among 37 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent voting to shelve the bill, is pressing for what she calls a "graduated approach."
Under her concept, Congress would first pass bills increasing border security and creating a temporary worker program to fill unmet U.S. labor needs before turning to the most controversial aspect: What to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.
Fellow Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who also opposed the bill, agreed. "The one thing we have a consensus on that we need to do is to secure the border and to deal with the document fraud and identity theft that makes our current system so hard to enforce," he said.
...they have to appear to do something about the border and, under that guise, the amnesty will be enacted. It's just an argument over the pace of amnesty.
EXACTLY!:
US offers Canberra a trade fallback: AUSTRALIA could be invited to join the North American Free Trade Agreement as part of a strategy among Asia-Pacific nations to deal with the collapse of world trade talk (Geoff Elliott and Sid Marris, June 29, 2007, The Australian)
In an exclusive interview before her trip to Cairns for next week's meeting of APEC trade ministers, US trade representative Susan Schwab said alternatives to the so-called Doha round of global trade talks were being considered, with the US focusing on the Asia-Pacific region."You look at what's going on in the Asia-Pacific - there's so much promise, it's so exciting, and so how do you make sure you sustain that and how do you make sure it grows rather than turning in on itself," Ms Schwab told The Australian.
"I think you will see a real acceleration of bilateral and regional deals including something like a free trade agreement of the Asia-Pacific if the Doha round really disappears from the scene.
"One of the big questions with the proliferation of bilateral and regional agreements is this: is there an inclination - and if so what would it take - to knit together multiple free trade agreements? Because all of us have multiple free trade agreements. That is another issue - we would talk about it."
Asked whether that could mean including Australia in the NAFTA - the regional agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada struck under the Clinton administration - she said: "Exactly."
THIRD WAY NORTH:
Unemployment insurance to become mandatory in 2009 ( 29th June 2007)
The Swedish government said Friday it planned to introduce a mandatory unemployment insurance for all employees from July 2009, as almost a quarter of the labour force currently has no such cover."The ambition is that the insurance system will be obligatory by July 1st 2009," a labour ministry advisor, Fredrik Östbom, told AFP.
The key to privatizing unemployment insurance is that you be able to fold it into your retirement account.
24 AND COUNTING...:
Harrry Potter VII: Defenders of secrets, unite! (Motoko Rich, June 29, 2007, International Herald Tribune)
They have waited two long years, and now they have only 24 days to go. As the diehard fans of Harry Potter count the minutes until they can get their hands on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final installment in the monumentally successful series by J. K. Rowling, they are engaging in a frenzy of speculation and rumor-mongering about what will happen to their beloved characters.Predictions are flying across the Web and out of bookstores, where titles like "Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7," "The End of Harry Potter?" and "The Great Snape Debate" spew theories about who will die, who will get together with whom, and who is really good or evil.
At the same time, with little more than three weeks to go before "Deathly Hallows" goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, some people claiming to have actual knowledge of the book's plot are posting ostensible spoilers online. At one site, for instance, what appears to be a page from a manuscript appears, showing one paragraph outlined in red, suggesting that one of the most morally enigmatic characters in the series dies in the final book, with a few bars from the chorus of "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora playing on an endless loop in the background.
CRANK UP THE MLB RADIO:
Twins-Detroit series preview (Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 28, 2007)
Tonight offers a classic pitcher's duel. Santana is 10-3 with a 2.70 ERA for his career against Detroit. Verlander is 3-2 with a 2.90 ERA against the Twins. Since tossing a no-hitter against Milwaukee on June 12, Verlander is 2-0 with a 2.77 ERA. But he lasted only three innings in the Twins' 11-3 victory at Detroit on April 28.
IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:
How immigrants improve the curve: In the 'clash of civilizations,' newcomers may deserve to come out on top. (Rosa Brooks, June 29, 2007, LA Times)
[C]ontrast "our" culture with that of recent immigrants. On all too many measures, immigrants look a whole lot better.Immigrants exhibit no shortage of pluck. It takes guts to leave your home and everything you know — even if a green card awaits. And when it comes to illegal immigrants, just getting here takes astounding courage. Illegal immigrants endure astonishing privation and risk — just for the chance to improve their lot by doing the backbreaking work so few native-born Americans have the inclination to do. While we demand McMansions, they share cramped apartments. We're up to our ears in consumer debt; they save almost every dollar to send to their less-well-off relatives.
The younger generation of illegal immigrants is particularly impressive. Each year, thousands of unaccompanied children cross into the U.S. without their parents, many literally walking here from villages in El Salvador and Guatemala. Could our sheltered and chaperoned children manage such a trip on their own?
Immigrants tend to be straight arrows too. A 2002 survey by the nonpartisan group Public Agenda found that an overwhelming majority of immigrants believe that they have a duty to "work hard and stay off welfare" and "respect people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds." A Harvard study found that immigrant students also have more positive attitudes toward education than U.S.-born young people.
And contrary to widespread perceptions, immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. A study in Chicago looking specifically at Mexican immigrants found that "first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) … were 45% less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans." Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson suggests that increased immigration may have been a factor in reduced crime rates in the 1990s.
Another study done in New York City found that immigrants looked pretty good across the board. Compared to their native-born peers, for instance, "foreign-born [adolescents] had less asthma, less obesity, fewer school days missed and less involvement in substance use, sex, delinquency and violence." On average, immigrants even live three years longer than the rest of us.
No wonder Tancredo and his supporters are terrified of immigrants!
Immigrants put us to shame. They're healthier, stronger, thriftier and braver.
Immigrants are optimistic believers in the American dream while Tancredo and company are declinists.
LUCKILY, IT'S A CARTOON...:
Pixar cooks up the perfect "Ratatouille" (Moira Macdonald, 6/29/07, Seattle Times)
How good, and how much fun, is "Ratatouille"? So good that when it was over, all I wanted to do was watch it again. And how rare is this experience, in this summer of bloated sequels? Rarer than, let's say, a rat who loves to cook — and a screenwriter who knows how to transform a potentially unappealing tidbit of a story (A rodent? Around food?) into a feast.The wizards at Pixar, working with writer/director Brad Bird (they previously teamed up for the equally stellar "The Incredibles"), have once again delivered a technically impeccable film with humor and heart — and with surely France's most hygienic rat, Remy, at its center.
Voilà! A Rat for All Seasonings (A. O. SCOTT, 6/29/07, NY Times)
The moral of “Ratatouille” is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O’Toole. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” Mr. Ego muses. “But a great artist can come from anywhere.”Quite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, “Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
Its sensibility, implicit in Mr. Ego’s aphorism, is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals. Like “The Incredibles,” Mr. Bird’s earlier film for Pixar, “Ratatouille” celebrates the passionate, sometimes aggressive pursuit of excellence, an impulse it also exemplifies.
...so you can get away with explicit conservatism.
THE KEY TO THE CLAIM...:
Bush claims privilege over subpoenas (TERENCE HUNT, 6/29/07, The Associated Press)
President Bush, in a constitutional showdown with Congress, claimed executive privilege Thursday and rejected demands for White House documents and testimony about the firing of U.S. attorneys. [...]Over the years, Congress and the White House have avoided a full-blown court test about the constitutional balance of power and whether the president can refuse Congress’ demands.
Lawmakers could vote to cite witnesses for contempt and refer the matter to the local U.S. attorney to bring before a grand jury.
Since 1975, 10 senior administration officials have been cited but the disputes were all resolved before getting to court.
...is that the Executive should refuse to appear before the Judiciary as well.
REDEFINING BLACK IRISH:
Nigerian refugee becomes first black mayor in Ireland (SHAWN POGATCHNIK, 6/29/07, The Associated Press)
Ireland elected its first black mayor Thursday, the latest sign of how rapidly immigration is changing this once all-white nation.Rotimi Adebari, a Nigerian who arrived in Ireland seven years ago as an asylum-seeker, was elected unopposed to lead the council of Portlaoise, a bustling commuter town west of Dublin. [...]
Little more than a decade ago, a black person in Ireland risked being gawked at, so rare was the sight of visitors from different racial backgrounds. But Ireland has absorbed more than 30,000 asylum seekers – particularly from Nigeria – since the mid-1990s, a wave attracted by Ireland’s booming economy and its relatively lax immigration rules.
These days, West African entrepreneurs run stretches of shops in urban Dublin and other Irish towns and cities, and social activists like Adebari are encouraging the newcomers to integrate into their communities.
KILLER Bs:
Biggio shares moment with Bagwell (Alyson Footer, 6/29/07, MLB.com)
As Jeff Bagwell raced from general manager Tim Purpura's booth down to the dugout Thursday night, he felt tears well up in his eyes.Bagwell knew what 3,000 hits meant to Craig Biggio, having witnessed most of those in person as Biggio's partner in crime on the right side of the infield. Bagwell, who took a two-day hiatus from his golfing excursion in Colorado in order to be there for the big event, couldn't wait to get to the dugout to give his longtime friend and teammate a congratulatory wave, and perhaps a quick hug.
But Biggio, already in tears after being mobbed by his teammates and engulfed by hugs and kisses from his wife and three kids, had more in mind for Bagwell at this moment. Much, much more.
Biggio has never shaken the void he's felt ever since Bagwell left the game. He's never quite gotten over Bagwell's career ending the way it did. An argument could be made that Biggio took Bagwell's retirement harder than Bagwell himself.
On Thursday, Biggio knew just how to bring closure to a chapter left unfinished.
Biggio was determined to be on the field with Bagwell, one last time, even if it was in a symbolic manner. This gesture was as much for himself as for the fans who Biggio feels never had the opportunity to say the proper goodbye to the beloved first baseman.
Never mind that Bagwell wasn't in uniform, or that his crisp blue shirt and designer jeans didn't match Biggio's Astros attire. No one -- certainly none of the 42,537 screaming fans at Minute Maid Park -- could have predicted that Biggio would pull Bagwell onto the field to share the glory of the moment.
This night was about Biggio. But Biggio knows better than anyone that his legacy is firmly tied to Bagwell.
For Biggio, it's the names, not the numbers (Jayson Stark, 6/29/07, ESPN.com)
In case you hadn't noticed, only two other men in the history of this sport ever got 3,000 hits while spending most of their career at second base -- Eddie Collins and Nap Lajoie. Which means the last time a second base legend did anything like this, Calvin Coolidge was president.So try to digest this for a moment. Craig Biggio has gotten more hits than Rogers Hornsby, more hits than Joe Morgan, more hits than Ryne Sandberg or Robbie Alomar or Red Schoendienst.
Pretty cool names.
And it's those names -- not the numbers -- that get Craig Biggio's attention.
The numbers -- they go flying by nightly, spinning like a slot machine, impossible to comprehend or take stock of. But the names? The names are tough to ignore.
"It's not a numbers thing for me," Biggio said last summer, during a conversation about all the lists he was climbing. "Oh, certain numbers will hit you. There's no doubt about that. But to me, if you don't appreciate the clientele you start finding yourself hanging with [on those lists], you're nuts.
"I passed Babe Ruth in doubles one time. Babe Ruth. That was unbelievable to me. And I passed Carl Yastrzemski. I'll never forget that one. You know, you're just out there playing. You're not even thinking about stuff like this. And then you find yourself thrown in with all these icons of the game, and it's a great feeling. So it's not the numbers, really. It's the names."
Yeah, it's the names, all right. They're the golden names of baseball. The best there ever was.
And now Craig Biggio is one of them.
Questioning his Hall of Fame credentials--as ESPN Radio was this morning--is just moronic. Bagwell deserves it too. Together they may have been the best right side of the infield longer than any two teammates ever.
EXCELLENT, NOW ENFORCE THE NECESSARY COROLLARY:
Supreme Court Blocks Execution of Delusional Killer (RALPH BLUMENTHAL, 6/30/07, NY Times)
Amplifying its ban against execution of the insane, a closely divided United States Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a delusional Texas murderer who insisted that he was being punished for preaching the Gospel.In a rebuke to lower courts, the justices ruled 5 to 4 that the defendant, Scott Louis Panetti, had not been shown to have sufficient understanding of why he was to be put to death for gunning down his wife’s parents in 1992.
The court, acting on the last day of the 2006-7 term, declined to lay out a new standard for competency in capital cases. But it found that existing protections had not been afforded.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy provided the swing vote, joined by the court’s liberal wing: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Just as the incompetent ought not be executed for failing to exercise the self-control of which they are incapable, so does society have an obligation to re-institutionalize them for their own safety and that of others.
EMPHASUS ON THE WRONG SYLLAABLE:
Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education (JUAN WILLIAMS, 6/29/07, NY Times)
The focus of efforts to improve elementary and secondary schools shifted to magnet schools, to allowing parents the choice to move their children out of failing schools and, most recently, to vouchers and charter schools. The federal No Child Left Behind plan has many critics, but there’s no denying that it is an effective tool for forcing teachers’ unions and school administrators to take responsibility for educating poor and minority students. [...]In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation.
Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?
His response was that seating black children next to white children in school had never been the point. It had been necessary only because all-white school boards were generously financing schools for white children while leaving black students in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with hand-me-down books and underpaid teachers. He had wanted black children to have the right to attend white schools as a point of leverage over the biased spending patterns of the segregationists who ran schools — both in the 17 states where racially separate schools were required by law and in other states where they were a matter of culture.
If black children had the right to be in schools with white children, Justice Marshall reasoned, then school board officials would have no choice but to equalize spending to protect the interests of their white children.
The tragedy of Brown was the emphasis on separation rather than equality. Had the Court simply ordered school systems to equalize the per pupil spending for black and white pupils it would have truly empowered black pupils, parents, teachers and administrators while using the racists' own defense against them.
GOD GAVE US QUICKY-STOPS...:
Don’t Cry Over rBST Milk (HENRY I. MILLER, 6/29/07, NY Times)
Bad-faith efforts by biotechnology opponents to portray rBST as untested or harmful, and to discourage its use, keep society from taking full advantage of a safe and useful product. The opponents’ limited success is keeping the price of milk unnecessarily high.When rBST is injected into cows, their digestive systems become more efficient at converting feed to milk. It induces the average cow, which produces about eight gallons of milk each day, to make nearly a gallon more. More feed, water, barn space and grazing land are devoted to milk production, rather than other aspects of bovine metabolism, so that you get seven cows’ worth of milk from six.
This may not seem like a big deal, but when applied widely the effects are profound. For every million cows treated with rBST each year, 6.6 billion gallons of water (enough to supply 26,000 homes) are conserved, according to Monsanto, which makes rBST. With much of the nation enduring a drought and many cities in the West experiencing water shortages, this is a significant benefit.
The amount of animal feed consumed each year by those million rBST-supplemented cows is reduced by more than three billion pounds. This helps to keep the lid on corn prices, even as much of the nation’s corn harvest is diverted to producing ethanol for cars. And the amount of land required to raise the cattle and grow their food is reduced by more than 417 square miles.
At the same time, more than 5.5 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel (enough to power 8,800 homes) are saved, greenhouse gas emissions are lowered by 30,000 metric tons (because fewer cows means less methane produced by bovine intestinal tracts), and manure production is decreased by about 3.6 million tons, reducing the chances of runoff getting into waterways and groundwater.
Comprehensive studies by academics and government regulatory agencies around the world have found no differences in the composition of milk or meat from rBST-supplemented cows.
And consumers are apparently happy to drink milk from supplemented cows, in spite of efforts by biotechnology opponents to bamboozle milk processors and retailers into believing that consumers don’t want it. In various surveys to ascertain the factors that influence consumers’ milk purchasing decisions, the predominant considerations have been: price (80 percent to 99 percent), freshness (60 percent to 97 percent), brand loyalty (30 percent to 60 percent) and a claim of “organic” (1 percent to 4 percent). Only the “organic” claim is even remotely related to rBST supplementation. Unless prompted, the consumers surveyed didn’t mention rBST as a concern.
Some milk suppliers and food stores have increased the price of milk labeled “rBST-free,” even though it is indistinguishable from supplemented milk, and offer only this more expensive option, pre-empting consumers’ ability to choose on the basis of price.
...so we'd have milk for $2.99.
THE A TEAM IS DEAD:
London police defuse bomb that could've caused 'significant damage' (AP, 6/29/07)
British police defused a bomb found in a parked car in central London on Friday, and the new government called an emergency meeting of senior security chiefs to investigate what many feared could have been a planned terror attack.A British security official told The Associated Press that the car was packed with explosives, gas canisters and nuts and bolts and would have caused "significant damage."
He said there were similarities between the device and vehicle bombs used by insurgents in Iraq.
June 28, 2007
SWEET THREADS, CHAIRMAN:
Federal Reserve holds rates as inflation pressures 'moderate' (Stephen Foley, 29 June 2007, Independent)
The United States Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold last night and rowed back from suggestions it could raise the rate to dampen inflation.Its description of "moderating" inflationary pressures was new and, although the central bank said it wasn't yet convinced the trend was sustainable, the stock market took that to mean that rates will stay where they are for some months yet. US rates have now been on hold at 5.25 per cent for a year. "Readings on core inflation have improved modestly in recent months," the Fed's open markets committee said in its statement.
Hans Christian Andersen would recognize the process whereby the Fed is periodically forced to acknowledge that it's been fighting an inflation that does not exist and the rest of us pretend it's moderated.
MIXED?:
Harry's and Nancy's mixed half-year (The Economist, 6/28/07)
The Democrats owe their majority in large part to war-weariness. Many of their supporters thought they would pull American troops out of Iraq. They have not. They could have done so, by refusing Mr Bush the funds to carry on fighting. But that would have shifted to the Democrats the blame for the carnage that would probably follow a sudden withdrawal.Instead, Ms Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, sent President George Bush a war budget that included a timetable for withdrawal, knowing he would veto it. Their point made, they sent him another bill, without a timetable, that will fund the war until September. The bill also included benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet if it is to continue receiving non-military aid. It was far short of what the anti-war movement wanted, but it keeps Mr Bush on a shorter leash than he would like.
What else has the 110th Congress accomplished? Of the Democrats' campaign promises, the meatiest one so far enacted is an increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, which is widely popular and will benefit some Americans while perhaps throwing others out of work. The Democrats have also tightened up rules about lawmakers accepting gifts from lobbyists, although Ms Pelosi undermined her own anti-corruption crusade by trying unsuccessfully to place an ethically-challenged ally in the number-two job in the House.
Other pledges have been blocked, delayed or watered down.
A hike in a wage that no one recieves in exchange for GOP tax cuts is their only victory, yet it's a mixed record?
THE RELUCTANT THATCHERITE:
It's time to give the Third Way a second chance: Securing greater social justice depends on a strong economy, not the other way round (Anthony Giddens, 28 June 2007, Independent)
The long goodbye is finally over and Britain has a new Prime Minister. Tony Blair is gone. Will his distinctive political philosophy, the Third Way, disappear too?To answer the question, we have to dispel some of the misunderstandings of what that philosophy was, and is, all about. Nothing much should be read into the term itself. The "Third Way" is a label for the need to update left-of-centre thinking in the light of the big changes sweeping through the world, especially the influence of globalisation.
The "First Way" was the traditional left: traditional social democracy, which dominated political thought and practice in the early post-war period. It was based on Keynesian economics and upon the notion that the state should replace the market in major areas of economic life. That approach foundered as the economy became more globalised and as it came to be recognised that the state is often inefficient and clumsily bureaucratic. The "Second Way" was Thatcherism, or market fundamentalism - the belief that the realm of the market should be extended as far as possible, since markets are the most rational and efficient means of allocating resources.
Thatcherism produced some important innovations and restored British economic competitiveness.
Can't blame the poor guy for wanting to cling to the illusion that he's a man of the Left, but market fundamentalism, of course, preceded socialism and Thatcher and Blair, like Clinton and Bush, represent the Third Way, the use of market mechanisms to provide the social safety net and buffer folks from the depredations of the naked market..
STOP PLANNING AND USE THE MARKET:
U.S. Supreme Court votes to curb school districts' diversity plans (David Stout, June 28, 2007, NY Times)
The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, declaring that the districts had failed to meet "their heavy burden" of justifying "the extreme means they have chosen - discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments."The decision Thursday, one of the most important in years on the issue of race and education, may not eliminate race as a factor in assigning students to different schools. But it will surely prompt many districts to revise programs they already have in place, or go back to the drawing boards in designing plans.
The majority's rationale relied in part on the historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools - a factor that the dissenters on the court found to be a cruel irony, and which they objected to in emotional terms.
Give the kids vouchers and let them choose their own schools.
GAS IS THE NEW BREAD:
MPs press Ahmadinejad to end petrol rationing (Robert Tait, June 28, 2007, Guardian Unlimited)
MPs said they would press the government to alter or even scrap the scheme after angry protesters set fire to at least a dozen petrol stations in Tehran and chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad following Tuesday night's sudden introduction of quotas.Banks, supermarkets and fire engines were also attacked while further disturbances were reported in other big cities, including Isfahan and Shiraz.
There were unconfirmed reports that three people were killed in the violence, which led to 80 arrests.
In a sign of official nervousness that the disturbances might spread, the government temporarily closed the country's mobile phone text-messaging network after the widespread circulation of an SMS urging protesters to gather in Tehran's landmark Valiasr Square.
LIE DOWN WITH CRACKERS...:
New Senators Resist Overhaul of Immigration (CARL HULSE, 6/28/07, NY Times)
In narrowly winning her seat last year, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri ran hard against what she saw as a flawed approach in Congress to dealing with illegal immigration. Ms. McCaskill, a Democratic newcomer, says she is not about to change her view now.“I hope this never wears off, but I like to keep my word,” said Ms. McCaskill, part of a triad of moderate Democratic freshmen balking at the proposed immigration overhaul and complicating efforts by President Bush and Senate leaders to pass it this week.
Her compatriots in opposition are Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana. All three represent Republican-leaning states and are breaking with their leadership and most of their Democratic colleagues on the legislation, whose fate in the Senate could be determined on Thursday after a day of votes on amendments left the outcome up in the air on Wednesday.
Democrats can hardly act surprised that in order to win back Congress they recruited people who'd have voted against the Civil Rights bills.
Immigration Bill Prompts Some Menacing Responses (JEFF ZELENY, 6/28/07, NY Times)
The threat came in the weekend mail.The recipient was Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, who has been a leading advocate of the proposed legislation for changing the immigration system. His offices in Washington and across Florida have received thousands of angry messages in recent weeks, but nothing as alarming as that letter he received at his home. [...]
While the majority of the telephone calls and faxes, letters and e-mail messages have been civil, aides to several senators said, the correspondence has taken a menacing tone in several cases.
Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who is undecided on the final immigration bill, said his office received a telephone call recently that “made a threat about knowing where I lived.” Mr. Burr passed it along to the authorities. “There were enough specifics to raise some alarm bells,” he said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is one of the architects of the immigration overhaul, said he also had received threats in telephone calls and letters to his office. Mr. Graham said several other senators had told him privately that they also received similar messages.
“There’s racism in this debate,” Mr. Graham said. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but a very small percentage of people involved in this debate really have racial and bigoted remarks. The tone that we create around these debates, whether it be rhetoric in a union hall or rhetoric on talk radio, it can take people who are on the fence and push them over emotionally.”
Breaking down the Senate vote (Mark Murray, 6/28/07, NBC)
The Presidential candidates: All of the Democratic candidates voted YES. McCain, who was part of the bipartisan coalition that crafted and supported the bill, also voted YES. Brownback's initial vote was YES, but later, probably when the outcome was clear, switched to NO.Senators up for reelection in 2008: On the Democratic side, all the blue state senators voted YES (Biden, Durbin, Kerry, Lautenberg, Levin, Reed). But those Democrats running in red or purples states voted NO (Baucus, Harkin, Landrieu, Pryor, Rockefeller).
Most of the Republican senators up for re-election this cycle voted NO (Alexander, Allard, Chambliss, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Dole, Domenici, Enzi, Inhofe, McConnell, Roberts, Sessions, Smith, Stevens, Sununu, Warner). The exceptions, with YES votes, were Craig, Hagel, and Graham (who is one of the original and most vocal coalition members that wrote the bill).
Senate Leadership: The Republican leadership was split. GOP Leader McConnell, who's also up for re-election, voted NO. (He had voted YES on another procedural vote earlier this week.) McConnell was joined by Texas Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn, as well as Ensign, who's responsible for running the GOP senate campaigns this cycle. Lott and Kyl split with the leadership and voted YES.
ELECTIONS CONFER SOVEREIGNTY...:
Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East (Alastair Crooke, 7/05/07, London Review of Books)
The origins of the Hamas action in Gaza lie in the reaction of the international community, and of Fatah, to Hamas’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s movement, saw itself as the founder of the Palestinian Authority; it believed it was the natural party of government; and it had fought a long battle with Arab neighbours to establish itself as synonymous with the PLO, and therefore, implicitly, as the ‘sole representative of the Palestinian people’. Some within Fatah were unable to come to terms with their loss of power, or to reconcile themselves to the claim that, on the basis of the election result, an Islamist party best represented the views of the Palestinian people. At this crucial juncture, the International Quartet intervened: they pressed President Abbas not to yield to Hamas, to hang onto power; and they promised to support him if he did so.Not only was Abbas not to yield security control to the government and its Interior Ministry, as the constitution provided, but the International Quartet also demanded that he claw back powers from the new government and embody them in the presidency: financial responsibilities would be removed from the Ministry of Finance; the salaries of government officials would be paid by the president’s office; all key policy decisions would be enacted by presidential decree. The government was to be rendered powerless. As Azzam Tamimi notes in Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, the Hamas government had no police force at its disposal, and no authority over frontier crossings.
At the same time, the West imposed financial sanctions on the government and isolated it politically, insisting on conducting business and channelling funding exclusively through Abbas. In short, instead of helping Fatah through the transition and facilitating Palestinian unity – and taking advantage of a real chance to include Hamas, Islamism’s moderates, in the political process – the international community pursued an aggressive policy of internal division that established the conditions for the recent violence in Gaza. Europeans may wring their hands at what they see on their TVs, but European policy, acting in concert with the US, bears a large measure of responsibility for what has happened.
The US and some European countries, including Britain, also chose to finance, train and arm the security apparatus led by Muhammad Dahlan, whom many Palestinians suspected – rightly – was being groomed as the ‘strong man’ who would eventually assume the presidency and restore Fatah to power. The ultimate aim was to build a Fatah militia around Dahlan that could confront Hamas militarily – and win. American officials hoped in the meantime to place Fatah in a position to depose Hamas from power – in other words, to promote a soft coup d’état against the government. A strategy document prepared by one of the US-led coalition of ‘moderate’ Arab states which was circulating among Palestinians in March 2007 said that the US objective was to have Abbas dismiss the Hamas government in August. The International Quartet endorsed these plans in principle. The support the US and Europe give to Fatah is considerable and arrives by a variety of routes: through NGOs and development agencies; through Fatah reform initiatives; through youth development programmes; through information and media projects; and – most significantly – through a large programme aimed at recruiting, training, equipping and financing Fatah security cadres, Dahlan’s chief among them. In addition, every NGO contract has a clause inserted into it by USAID requiring the organisation to pledge that it ‘will not engage in activity with groups deemed as terrorists’.
In the scathing final report he wrote before resigning in May as UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto said: ‘The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca’ – where the two factions met in February and under the auspices of King Abdullah agreed a unity government – ‘the US envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”’ It was this situation that pushed Hamas into pre-emptive action. With Fatah refusing to delegate constitutional authority over the security services, and with the build-up of the Dahlan militia, the military arm of Hamas moved to seize all the key assets associated with Dahlan and his colleagues in Gaza. Having achieved complete control, the elected government is now finally in a position to provide security in Gaza.
...sooner or later.
AS THE FAX MACHINE WAS TO THE RUSSIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION:
Text Messages Giving Voice to Chinese: Opponents of Chemical Factory Found Way Around Censors (Edward Cody, 6/28/07, Washington Post)
By the hundreds of thousands, the urgent text messages ricocheted around cellphones in Xiamen, warning of a catastrophe that would spoil the city's beautiful seaside environment and foul its sweet-smelling tropical breezes. [...]The environmental activists behind the messages might have exaggerated the danger with their florid language, experts said. But their passionate opposition to the chemical plant generated an explosion of public anger that forced a halt in construction, pending further environmental impact studies by authorities in Beijing, and produced large demonstrations June 1 and 2, drawing national publicity.
The delay marked a rare instance of public opinion in China rising from the streets and compelling a change of policy by Communist Party bureaucrats. It was a dramatic illustration of the potential of technology -- particularly cellphones and the Internet -- to challenge the rigorous censorship and political controls through which the party maintains its monopoly on power over China's 1.4 billion people.
"I think this is a great precedent for China," said Zhong Xiaoyong, a Xiamen resident who, in his persona as the blogger Lian Yue, wrote extensively on efforts to stop construction of the factory.
A BETTER BILL, HARDER TO PASS:
Senate faces showdown on immigration: The bill's opponents succeed at deleting a provision for tamper-proof IDs. A crucial vote to end debate is expected today (Nicole Gaouette and Noam N. Levey, June 28, 2007, LA Times)
Supporters of the Senate immigration bill rebuffed all but one of the most serious challenges to the controversial legislation Wednesday, setting up a crucial vote today that could decide its fate.In a series of votes steadily interrupted by Republicans intent on stalling the proceedings, lawmakers rejected amendments aimed at gutting two key features of the bill: one that would allow illegal immigrants to seek legal status and another that would shift the basis for future immigration away from the current emphasis on family ties.
But the most ambitious attempt to overhaul immigration laws in two decades suffered a major setback late Wednesday when lawmakers approved an amendment that the bill's backers and the administration said would undermine its effectiveness. The measure targeted the bill's work-site enforcement section, removing all provisions that required so-called "Real ID" driver's licenses — tamper-proof, secure identification that does not yet exist, but that the bill's backers consider essential to cracking down on illegal hiring.
It's not like it was going to be enforced in the first place. After all, the Right isn't goiung to pass the tax hikes that would be needed to pay for enforcement, nevermind the national service obligation required to staff it.
GUARDIANSHIP CARRIES OBLIGATIONS:
Gas rationing in Iran ignites anger, unrest: Protesters burn at least 12 stations over the quota system, imposed to curb consumption of heavily subsidized fuel (Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, June 28, 2007, LA Times)
They have endured religious police, political repression and international isolation.But a quota imposed Wednesday on the purchase of subsidized gasoline sent Iranians to the streets, where they set fire to at least 12 gas stations, damaged government-owned banks and department stores and shouted slogans against the president, according to Iranian news agencies and witnesses.
To curb rapidly increasing gasoline consumption, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday began enforcing a rationing program that limits most motorists to 26.4 gallons a month at the subsidized price of about 42 cents per gallon.
Although Iran possesses huge reserves of crude oil and natural gas, it has too few refineries to meet the energy-hungry country's demand, forcing it to import more than $4 billion of refined petroleum a year, most of it from Europe. That dependence makes Iran vulnerable to economic sanctions from the West, which is pressuring it to halt uranium enrichment. [...]
But despite concerns voiced by supreme leader Ali Khamenei and security officials, the government revived the plan this week, putting it into effect with only two hours' notice.
While he's done much to constrain the President, it appears that to be worthy of his office the Ayatollah needs to remove him from power altogether and call new elections. That's an unfortunate departure from constitutional norms, but a nice demonstration of why republics require a monarch (or, in the Iranian case, a guardian).
MORE:
When Heroes Depart (DANIEL JOHNSON, June 28, 2007, NY Sun)
Then it was off to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen. This was a private meeting, the last of many hundreds over the past decade. When Winston Churchill, the first of Elizabeth II's prime ministers, resigned 52 years ago, he wore a frock coat and top hat.In his time, Mr. Blair has abolished the last vestiges of Victorian tradition. The constitutional role of the monarchy, though, is not just a tradition. It means that no prime minister, however dominant, is above the law.
SHOULDN'T HE HAVE HIS WINGS BY NOW?:
Got discipline?: In a free-speech ruling, Justice Thomas misstates the purpose of education (Jonathan Zimmerman, June 28, 2007, LA Times)
For the last decade, I've taught a history course with that title at New York University. My students and I examine the different purposes that Americans have assigned to public schools, including:A. to teach the great humanistic traditions of the West;
B. to develop the individual interests of the child;
C. to promote social justice;
D. to prepare efficient workers.
Over the last four centuries, Americans have struggled to balance these goals — and many others — in their schools. To Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, however, there's only one right answer:
E. to instill discipline and obedience
Public Education, Then and Now (Ben Boychuk, July 14, 2000, Precepts)
The ideals of that generation flowed directly from their learning and reading. Each and every founder raised his "public voice" to advocate universal education. From Washington and Franklin to Adams and Jefferson, every one offered his ideas about the state of education and the best ways to build an informed citizenry — from the lowliest mechanic's son to the most exalted Harvard grad.As Jefferson wrote of his Virginia education plan in a letter to his friend George Wythe, "The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
Jefferson was by no means alone. George Washington called for a national university in his First Inaugural Address. John Adams asked his son in Europe to collect books and ideas for republican schools. James Madison tracked the education efforts in Kentucky and praised innovations and challenging curricula there. They agreed with Noah Webster that, "Knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful Jealousy, will guard our constitutions."
Even before there was a Constitution, the young republic passed the first national education law on July 13, 1787. The Northwest Ordinance was written to govern United States territory north of the Ohio River. It read, in part: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
While the Justice's answer is not complete, all of Mr. Zimmerman's are inconsistent with the republican purposes of universal education. The point is to produce the informed and decent citizenry upon which consensual government depends to succeed. Fostering burnouts does nothing to advance that project.
WE'RE JUST THE SAME:
Hypernova: Illegal Indie-Rock from Iran (Shereen Meraji, June 19, 2007, Day to Day)
In Iran, people are not allowed to listen to Western music, let alone make it.But more than half of Iran's population is under 25 years old. So it's not surprising that young Iranians download music off the Internet, watch satellite TV and make music in a thriving underground scene.
Hypernova is an indie-rock band from Tehran influenced by groups such as The Strokes, the Arctic Monkeys and Queens of the Stone Age. Their new CD is called Who Says You Can't Rock in Iran?; they recorded it illegally in their home country.
Lead singer Raam says, "There's an element of danger involved in what we do. But the laws are so chaotic back home that they're hardly enforced. Ninety-nine out of 100 times you can get away with anything."
Their message here is as worthwhile as the tunes.
MP3: No One
MP3: Consequence
SEEMS UNLIKELY...:
A hot new television show for the summer season (Mike Duffy, 6/28/07, Detroit Free Press)
Shortly after "Burn Notice" announces its hang-loose, prime-time presence at 10 p.m. EDT Thursday on USA, Weston gets the word that he's been fired from his international gig in covert intelligence.The pink slip in this case is called a "burn notice," therefore the odd series title.
Perplexed and rather cranky about this turn of career events, Weston gets himself back to his home town of Miami and the plush, bikini-cosmic surroundings of South Beach to begin unraveling the puzzle of his sudden dismissal from the global spying life.
...but it's getting consistently favorable reviews.
IF OWNER INFLUENCE IS SO DANGEROUS...:
Accord Seen on Oversight of Journal (RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, 6/28/07, NY Times)
Negotiators reached an agreement in principle yesterday on protecting the editorial independence of The Wall Street Journal, an important step toward a purchase by the News Corporation of The Journal’s owner, Dow Jones & Company, people briefed on the talks said. [...]It is not clear how the current accord differs from the conditions laid down last week by the Bancroft family, owners of a controlling interest in Dow Jones — terms that Mr. Murdoch dismissed as unacceptable. Nor is it clear whether the family, which has veto power over any deal, would accept the changes.
The elder Bancrofts, who control most of the stock, have deep reservations about parting with a company that has been in the family since 1902 and a newspaper they revere. In particular, many of them are reluctant to sell to a company whose journalism they see as sensationalist and slanted to suit Mr. Murdoch’s business interests and right-wing politics.
...who's been protecting the paper from the Bancrofts for the past 100 years?
June 27, 2007
MAKES 4 MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE (via Mike Daley):
Southwest Chili Burger (Tillamook Cheese)
Instructions:Garnishes: Guacamole or sliced avocado, tomato and onion; lettuce; pickled jalapeno slices or pepperocinis.
Combine meat, cilantro, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper in a large bowl and mix well. Form 8 equal patties, about 3/4-inch thick.Broil, grill or pan-fry burgers until desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium. Arrange cheese slices evenly over burgers during final minute of cooking time. Serve in buns with desired garnishes. Makes 8 servings.
Guacamole Mayo:2 Avocados
4 tsp fresh lime juice
1 cup Mayo
1 tsp ground cumin
Prep
Peel and pit, avocado and mash until chunky, stir in mayo and cumin.
PET STATE:
In West Bank, Hamas is hard to find but still strong (Ian Fisher, June 27, 2007, NY Times)
"If Hamas doesn't like it, Hamas can destroy it," said Fais Hamdan, 34, a stonecutter with an "Islamist" beard in this village of 6,000 near Nablus, as he sat in the restaurant with the owner nervous about giving his name. "If they want to kill any political deal, they only have to attack a settlement or another Israeli target. Don't think that Hamas is very weak in the West Bank."
The central issue, as it has been for years, remains credibility.
Hamas crushed Fatah politically last year, sweeping legislative elections in January 2006, partly because Fatah was perceived as corrupt and nonresponsive to ordinary Palestinians. That reality, even many in Fatah complain, has changed little.
Hamas also remains, on paper at least, a strong political force, with the majority of legislative seats in Parliament generally, and in control of dozens of city and town councils around the West Bank. Israel has curtailed that as best it can: Of the 74 Hamas legislators, 40 are in Israeli jails - and many of its other leaders have been arrested since the fighting in Gaza.
But even that can have a counterintuitive effect possibly helpful to Hamas: Palestinian leaders often gain their contacts and political bona fides in Israeli prison.
More broadly, though, many Palestinians seem to hold little hope that anyone - the United States, Israel, or even Arab states fearful that Hamas's Islamism could spread - will actually make good on promises of aid to the West Bank.
That perception seemed reinforced Monday, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel met with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, and made what Palestinians considered a paltry opening gesture: only a portion of the $600 million in withheld Palestinian tax money, and just 250 prisoners held in Israeli jails, among some 11,000.
"Look at the irony here," the restaurant owner said. "Abu Mazen says he rejects talks with Hamas but he sits down with Olmert. And Olmert isn't going to give him anything! Then Hamas leaders appear on TV and say: 'Fatah negotiated for 15 years with Israel and nothing happened. Israel didn't give us anything for 15 years. Why now?' "
"And people are listening," he added.
Were you an Intifadite, you couldn't throw a rock insidfe the Beltway without hitting some "expert" who thinks Palestine can be divided, which just demonstrates the Western divorce from Palestinian reality.
ROLF BENIRSCHKE MAKES A COMEBACK (via pchuck):
Beckham plays the Yanks at their own game (Daily Mail, 26th June 2007)
With his move to Los Angeles imminent, it seems David Beckham is keen to embrace the culture of his new home town in every possible way.
At least with the pads on he only looks like Garo Yepremian with AIDs, but without them he actually looks like a girl:
YOU DON'T NEED TO GO PARTICULARLY FAR OUT ON THE LIMB...:
The FP Memo: The Endgame in Iraq: What happens when you take a 40-year-old CIA memo on losing a war and replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq”? The result is a set of conclusions that are just as true today. (Shawn Brimley, Kurt Campbell, July/August 2007, Foreign Policy)
...to safely predict that Iraq will not be taken over by your imagined equivalent of North Vietnam, which makes the comparison asinine.
SPEAKING TRUTH TO PEOPLE-POWERLESS:
People power: Arab economies in a global era (Marcus Noland Howard Pack, 2007-06-27, Open Democracy)
For two generations, the economic performance of the Arab countries of the Middle East has been middling. It has been worse than east Asia, better than sub-Saharan Africa, and about the same as Latin America and south Asia. Yet while there has been no crisis in the past - indeed, on some social indicators progress has been spectacular - the region now faces an imminent challenge: how to create jobs for the large cohort of young people reaching working age. The task is immense and the stakes are high: over the next decade or so, the region may experience population growth of 150 million people - the equivalent of adding two Egypts. Rising labour-force participation by women only increases the pressure. The region is a demographic time-bomb.
The picture is not entirely bleak: underpinned by relatively high oil and gas prices, the region as a whole has exhibited both steady growth of income and employment of late. The small emirate of Dubai appears bent on establishing itself as the Singapore of the Middle East. But whether the current level of energy prices will be sustained is an open question and in any event the impact of this windfall is felt unevenly across the Arab world, where some of the most populous states are not well-endowed in oil. Measured unemployment is decreasing. There may be some rot beneath the veneer, however.Remarkably, the net increase in employment over the past five years is accounted for entirely by women. The increase in employment opportunities for women is encouraging. But the stagnation of male employment is worrisome and in some countries - including Jordan and the oil-exporters of the Gulf - most of the newly created jobs have been filled by foreigners. This phenomenon is even more acute if one looks at private-sector employment, and there is some evidence of warehousing people in public-sector employment, particularly in the Maghreb. With a few exceptions, employment has not been growing in industries where productivity is increasing - that is, it does not appear to reflect an expansion of activity in rising dynamic sectors.
One method of rapidly creating a sustainable increase in employment is through an expansion of labor-intensive manufacturing or services exports, often in conjunction with foreign investors or local entrepreneurs integrating into global supply networks. But outside the petroleum sector, the region's track-record is inauspicious. Not just in comparison with China or India: in one recent year the Philippines generated more manufactured exports than the entire Arab world. And until the recent oil-fuelled expansion of intraregional foreign direct investment (FDI), the region typically attracted less FDI than Sweden. Even this recent surge in activity appears to be concentrated to a significant extent in so-called "non-tradable" sectors such as real-estate development that could be highly vulnerable to a downturn in the oil market or a contraction of global liquidity. The Arab world risks being left behind at precisely the moment it needs to accelerate job growth.
Wow, can they really get behinder?
WHAT COULD BE HEALTHIER THAN NUTS?:
Fudge fans offered a nutty alternative (ELIZABETH PUDWILL, 6/27/07, Houston Chronicle)
PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE* 3 cups sugar
* 1 (5-ounce) can evaporated milk
* ¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter
* 1 (12-ounce) jar peanut butter
* 1 (7-ounce) jar marshmallow cream
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extractGrease a 9-by-13-inch pan. In a medium saucepan, bring the sugar, milk and butter to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in the peanut butter, marshmallow cream and vanilla. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan. Refrigerate. Cut into squares when chilled.
EV...:
Pork reform: Stick a fork in it (Winslow T. Wheeler, June 26, 2007, Politico)
Just how open and honest the reformed process is can be seen in the new Department of Defense authorization bill that came out of the House Armed Services Committee in May. It did list 449 earmarks -- in small, unreadable print -- costing $7.6 billion, but the list was incomplete. An astute watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, found 53 additional, unlisted earmarks costing $744 million.When the Senate Armed Services Committee reported out its different version of the bill, S. 1547, it listed 309 earmarks costing $5.6 billion. When it comes up for debate in the Senate, 200 or more amendments will be introduced. About half of those amendments will be for home-state projects that for some reason the committee did not add during its initial review process.
During the week or two the Senate will take to consider the bill, there will be debates, some of them interesting, on the great issues of the day: the war in Iraq, nuclear nonproliferation, the worn-out U.S. Army and more. Interspersed through those debates will be strange presentations by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (Mich.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). They will be reading off procedural motions, calling up amendments and passing them by "unanimous consent"; they will do this time after time, sometimes passing as many as 20 amendments in one sequence. The amendments will not be debated; they may not even be described.
There's a reason why these items will receive such little scrutiny: They are the pork amendments. The senators pressing them will have "cleared" them with Levin and McCain. Then the amendments will go through the arcane but well-oiled approval process, with utterly no debate -- all in what calls itself the "world's greatest deliberative body."
This year, there may be some new twists, none of them having the slightest thing to do with the Democrats' reforms.
Which begs the obvious question: why should they vote for such a bill in the absence of provisions for their own districts?
YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN TROUBLE...:
No Wafer for Rudy: Giuliani campaigns as a Catholic, but he's on the outs with God (Wayne Barrett, June 26th, 2007, Village Voice)
When Pope Benedict XVI attacked Catholic politicians in Mexico who supported abortion rights last month, Rudy Giuliani was asked for his opinion. The presidential candidate replied in the language of the church: "Issues like that are for me and my confessor. I'm a Catholic, and that's the way I resolve those issues, personally and privately."Giuliani has invoked his Catholic heritage on Larry King; he's been described by The Washington Post as a "devout Catholic"; he's appeared on Fox News with the label "Catholic" floating on-screen; and he's handled a CNN debate question about a bishop who denounced him with a declaration unfamiliar to those who covered him as mayor. "I respect the opinion of Catholic and religious leaders of all kinds," he said. "Religion is very important to me. It's a very important part of my life."
The ex-mayor's newfound piety also includes a mantra about abortion that wasn't heard while he was in City Hall. "I hate abortion," he now says across America and, in a proposed 12-point plan, he declares that he's committed to decreasing the number of abortions. "I would encourage someone to not take that option," he says, though as a candidate for mayor he said he would pay for an abortion for his daughter. Today, he says it would be "OK to repeal" Roe v. Wade, though he hosted celebrations of its anniversary three times at City Hall. His wholesale reversal on Medicaid funding, late-term abortions, and parental consent are all part of a repackaging designed to soften not just his New York public record, but also the inconvenient details of his personal life.
Married three times, Giuliani simply isn't the Catholic candidate he claims to be. He can't have a confessor. He can't receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, or marriage. While bishops disagree about whether or not a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights can receive the sacraments, there is no disagreement about the consequences of divorcing and remarrying outside the church, as Giuliani did a few years ago.
...when even the Voice has a better grasp of the basic tenets of your putative religion than you do.
WHEN HE COMES....:
Fuel Rationing Introduced in Oil Giant: Despite being one of the world's largest oil producers, Iran has introduced gasoline rationing. The move caused long lines at the pumps -- and rioting. (Der Spiegel, 6/27/07)
According to Raja News, a Web site closely linked to the government, nine stations were attacked in the Iranian capital. There were also reports of chants lampooning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to office promising an economic upturn but has so far been unable to live up to the pledge.There were long lines at the pumps on Tuesday night as people tried to get one last full tank of gas before the new measures kicked in. The rationing, which the government had been planning for weeks and which was originally supposed to go into effect on May 21, was only announced three hours before taking effect at midnight local time.
"Is this good timing, to announce rationing only three hours before it starts?" Ahmad Safai, one of those waiting in line, told the Associated Press. "I had no gas in my car's tank when I heard the report."
Iran is the second biggest oil exporter in OPEC, but has limited refining capacity, meaning that it has to import more than half of the gasoline consumed in the country. Until now, the government has subsidized gasoline to keep prices down, but the program has proven exorbitantly expensive in a period when the Iranian economy is struggling. The new rules mean that car owners can only buy 100 liters (26 gallons) of subsidized fuel per month -- at a cost of 1,000 rials per liter, which works out to 7 euro cents per liter or 38 US cents per gallon. Taxi drivers will be able to buy 800 liters a month.
The rationing comes amid growing dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad's handling of the economy. Inflation is high and rising gas prices will likely only spark further price increases. A reduction in gasoline subsidies in May led to a 25 percent jump in gas prices.
...even the 12th Imam will be a capitalist.
RED, WHITE, BLUE...& GREEN:
Pestos make the most of fresh herbs for summer dinners (J.M. HIRSCH, 6/27/07, The Associated Press)
Pesto is a great way to make the most of fresh herbs.Though traditional pestos generally involve basil – which is pureed with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts and garlic to make a thick sauce for pasta – just about any fresh herb works fine.
And if you’re going to swap out the herb, you might as well tinker with the other ingredients, too. Using the same basic pesto formula (4 ounces of cheese, 2 cups packed fresh herbs and ½ cup nuts or seeds), tinker with complimentary ingredients, such as parsley, walnuts and feta. Or dandelion greens, almonds and pecorino.
Online collection features Culinary Delights recipes (Nashua Telegraph, 6/27/07)
Today, The Telegraph launches the Culinary Delights Recipe Guide for visitors of www.nashuatelegraph.com.The recipe guide, which can be found at www.nashuatelegraph.com/recipes, is filled with 25 years of recipes. The recipes, which have been submitted by readers over the years, are now in an online searchable database – making it easy for fans of The Telegraph’s Food section and Culinary Delights to find tasty dishes.
The recipes have been separated into 10 categories: Appetizers & Snacks, Bread, Breakfast, Desserts, Drinks, Ethnic, Main Dish, Salad, Side Dish, and Soups, Stews & Chili. Within those categories are a number of subcategories, making it even simpler to find a dish to make tonight.
The search function allows users to search by recipe name, ingredient and submitter’s name. Also, typing “winner” into the box brings up entries that were category and grand-prize winners over the years at Culinary Delights Cook-offs.
Once viewing a recipe, users have the ability to send the scrumptious recipe to a friend who would enjoy it, print out the instructions onto a 3- by 5-inch recipe card or submit a photo of their results to upload for others to see.
THE WHIFF OF JIMMY:
Brown ready to take reins in Britain: The brainy and somber incoming prime minister waited 13 years to lead (Kim Murphy, June 27, 2007, LA Times)
He shows up for work in famously drab ties with his nails bitten to the quick. He hates networking, and didn't marry until he was 49. He's the glowering figure often seen harrumphing on the bench behind his preternaturally poised boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the House of Commons.You might say he's the anti-Blair, in more ways than one. [...]
Brown's reluctance to delegate is legendary and stems, many say, from his characteristic impatience.
"When you get to be prime minister, you can't do everything. Therefore, you've got to trust and empower your colleagues more," a former treasury official said. "But he thinks he's smarter than they are, and he works harder than they do."
Brown has always been intellectually intimidating. "He's blind in one eye, and he reads everything. It's really terrifying what he reads. Scary," said Irwin Stelzer, a conservative at the Washington-based Hudson Institute who has known Brown for years. The two often find themselves on opposite sides of a debate.
Brown, who began as a brash and bookish young Scottish socialist, stuck closer to Labor's traditional leftist ideals than Blair and never became the smooth politician that Blair is. He eschews white tie at his annual address to the captains of British industry at the Lord Mayor's ceremonial house, a habit a Times of London columnist recently called "simply bloody rude."
The floor of the study of his weekend home in Scotland is likely to be heaped chaotically with books; at European Council meetings, where networking is everything, Brown often arrives at the last minute, reorders the agenda so the items he's interested in happen first, and catches an early plane home.
His conversation starters with friends are simple: "What are you reading?" is usually the first. Then, "Have you heard any good jokes?"
But his patience ends, many say, when the IQ at the other end of the conversation is found wanting. This is sometimes defined, those who don't get along with him believe, by whether his interlocutor sees the wisdom of his views.
Ruth Lea, an economist and 16-year treasury employee who now directs the London-based Center for Policy Studies, said she found Brown "amazingly intolerant" when she expressed disagreement with him over his program of tax credits for working families.
"He blew up. He just lost his temper with me. And then tried to bludgeon me by loudly justifying his decision," Lea said.
The beginning of wisdom as a leader is to recognize that most of the jobs are neither particularly important nor difficult. The notion that each is so vital that only you can do it and you should always leads to disaster.
IN LOCO, NOT LOCO:
Bong goes the court in free-speech ruling (Seattle Times, 6/27/06)
The U.S. Supreme Court needlessly chipped away at First Amendment free-speech guarantees with a ruling elevating a high-school prank to a dangerous promotion of drug use.The 6-3 ruling miscast the case before the court as about drugs. But it was about a student's right to speech.
Children don't have rights. Parents do.
Of course, all you have to do to see the Editorialists reverse field here is ask if the kids have the right to bear arms too.
SHIASTAN, QUICKER:
Kurdish Iraq focuses on investment and building (Kirk Semple, June 26, 2007, NY Times)
It is a measure of soaring Kurdish optimism that government officials here talk seriously about one day challenging Dubai as the Middle East's main transportation and business hub.The Kurdistan Regional Government is betting that it can, investing $325 million in a modernist terminal at the Erbil International Airport to handle - officials hope - millions of passengers a year and a runway that will be big enough to handle the new double-decker Airbus A380.
"We're not saying Kurdistan is heaven," said Herish Muharam, chairman of the Kurdish government's Board of Investment. "But we're telling investors that Kurdistan can be that heaven."
As the rest of Iraq has plunged into a downward spiral, Kurdistan has enjoyed relative political stability and limited violence, in part owing to a sectarian and political homogeneity lacking elsewhere in the country.
Which, unfortunately, is the template for the rest of the country too.
ALWAYS ON FIRE:
Gore Gore Girls 'Don't Cry': Exclusive! Download this garage rock romp from the Detroit group's new album, Get the Gore. (SAMANTHA PROMISLOFF, June 26, 2007, Spin)
Bye, bye angelic girl groups of today and yesteryear -- you're on the Gore Gore Girls' turf now. Part Ramones, part Donnas, with a pinch of Pipettes-like vocals, rhythmic Ronettes verses, and a splash of sock hop clap-alongs, Gore Gore Girls are loud, proud, and don't give a damn who knows it.
Don't worry, they're named for a '70s splatter flick, not the morose Gaia worshiper.
MP3: Fox in a Box
MP3: All Grown Up
MP3: Astral Man
MP3: Up All Night
MP3: I'm Gonna Get You Yet
MORE:
-Gore Gore Girls (Wikipedia)
-ARCHIVES: Gore Gore Girls (Detroit Metro Times)
-REVIEW: of Gore Gore Girls: Get the Gore (Alan Brown, PopMatters)
-REVIEW: of GORE GORE GIRLS: "Get the Gore" (Bob Strauss, LA Daily News)
-REVIEW: of Gore Gore Girls: 7x4 (GENE ARMSTRONG, Tucson Weekly)
VALETUDINARIANS ARE HARDER TO PUT DOWN THAN FREDDY KREUGER:
The U.S. is indebted to itself (Michael K. Farr, Jun 26, 2007, Politico)
There is an unsexy but very important issue being largely ignored by the 2008 presidential candidates: foreign ownership of U.S. government debt. As America continues to operate at a deficit, and as our debt held by foreign countries increases, we lose control over our economic destiny. The successful candidate in 2008 must reduce the deficit and regain control of the economic tiller. The candidate who can successfully and simply outline a workable plan will undoubtedly win friends at the polls and on the Hill.Foreigners currently hold about $2.2 trillion, or 44 percent, of the roughly $5 trillion in total U.S. Treasury debt held by the public. This percentage is up sharply from about 30 percent in 2000 and demonstrates just how dependent we have become on foreign central banks. We believe our increasing dependence poses systematic risks to both our economy and our security.
The notion that you should use the money you have invested at a 10% rate of return to pay off the the guys you're borrowing from at 4% is many things, but sound economics isn't one of them. The real danger to a growing world ecoomy is that we may not have sufficient debt to provide the safe harbor that is needed by 10 billion people but that only one country provides.