Linkmeister

Report from the ground

Michele has an e-mail from a doc who's in the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street in New Orleans.

The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that is admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families.

Read the rest at the link above.

via Rox.

Class and evacuation

Who stayed behind in New Orleans? Who didn't leave Biloxi and Gulfport? The people who couldn't afford to go anywhere, and the people who have so little that abandoning it seemed unthinkable. Go, read.

If every single person in New Orleans had a spare $300 and a car, most of them could have run. Now turn on the TV again and look at how many stayed.

via Making Light.

Prepare for cries of "persecution"

The Air Force bans promotion of religion:

The Air Force issued new religion guidelines to its commanders yesterday that caution against promoting any particular faith - or even "the idea of religion over nonreligion" - in official communications or functions like meetings, sports events and ceremonies.

[snip]

The guidelines apply not just to the academy, but also to the entire Air Force. They will be made final later this year after Air Force generals meet and consider recommendations from their commanders.

While the NYT found mostly positives in this news, the LA Times talked to the critics:

Spokesman Rob Boston [of Americans United for Separation of Church and State] called the interim rules a "useful first step" but said they appeared to lack any means of enforcement and encouraged further problems by allowing nonsectarian prayers.

I've previously discussed this here, here, and here. We'll see.

Plan B

The FDA has delayed making a decision on the Plan B emergency contraception pill, and most observers attribute that delay to the politics of abortion. So says the NYT. My response to that is that the NYT has an acute grasp of the obvious. But here's what I don't get:

Dr. Crawford said Friday that the F.D.A. would seek public comments over the next 60 days on whether it had the authority to approve Barr's application and whether it could enforce any regulation that would stop girls younger than 17 from buying the pill freely.

What? Since when does a federal agency ask the public whether the agency "has the authority" to approve a drug? Or whether it could "enforce" a regulation? Isn't that what the agency's employees are paid to do by us, the taxpaying "public?"

Pusillanimous idiots. If you don't want to approve it because you're afraid of Mr. Bush's religious-right and anti-abortion supporters, say so. Don't hide behind that nonsense.

For Commissioner Crawford's spin, go here. He seems to be hiding behind the "it's an entirely new situation" defense.

Donate Now

If you've got cash to spare (I know, but this is serious), that button on the left takes you to the American Red Cross donation form. Cash is by far the best thing to give in this kind of disaster; clothing and canned goods can more easily be purchased on scene and cash has the added benefit of supporting the local economy.

The way things look at this hour (1900hst/0100edt) New Orleans and its surrounding areas are gonna need an awful lot of help. Later advisories will be posted at the National Hurricane Center site here.

Update: The Nielsen Haydens have a bunch of useful links posted here.

Wow!

This game might be the best Little League World Series game ever played. Does anyone remember Game Six of the 1975 World Series? The Hawai'i kids played it out almost the same way; coming back from three runs down to tie the game in the bottom of the sixth and final regular inning, then hitting a home run to win it in extra innings.

There'll be a hot time in 'Ewa Beach tonight!

Update: The entire front page of the morning paper is devoted to the kids and the game.

Cojones needed

Here's the blurb on the NYT's Op/Ed pages attempting to entice you to read Frank Rich's column this week:

Even though their own poll numbers are in a race to the bottom with the president's, don't expect the Democrats to make a peep about the war in Iraq.

I'm afraid he's right. The Democrats, most of whom voted unenthusiastically to authorize Bush's nasty little war, have become afraid of their own shadows. They are reading history and concluding that if they say anything unpleasant about the President and his lies about Iraq they'll just turn into reincarnations of the party which nominated Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, thus losing all but three Presidential elections between 1968 and 1996. That might indeed be true, but I suspect they should read the polls (Gallup, 8/26/05). They might discover that the public is way out ahead of them on Iraq.

The Gallup organization said the president's disapproval rating was 56%. That rating, and the 40% approval figure, are the most negative ratings of the Bush administration.

They should also not forget that the guy who led in the Democratic primaries in 2004 was a moderate governor who was decidely anti-war, Howard Dean. Had it not been for the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, two small states which are hardly characteristic of Democratic voters as a whole, Dean might well have gone on to win the nomination, and the American public might have had a much different choice than it ultimately had. Who knows what might have happened then?

Rather than meekly continue to follow along this godawful path the country is being led down by the most incompetent President we've had since Warren Harding, the Democrats need to stand up and start shouting. Look what happened in Ohio recently, where a Democratic anti-war candidate nearly won in the most Republican district in that state. It can work, and more than that, you can earn back some self-respect at the same time. Remember your principles, dammit!

Hawai'i kids US champs!

Photo: Reuters

The Little League team from 'Ewa Beach won the US LLWS Championship game today. They play the winner of this evening's Curaçao - Japan International Championship game for the world title tomorrow.

There are always some fun stories in the papers when local kids do well at something, and this time is no exception. One of the local columnists puts it well:

You don't have to know an infield fly from a dragon fly to cheer this band of 11- and 12-year-olds in their quest to bring a world championship back to 'Ewa Beach.

Heck, you don't even have to know how to pronounce 'Ewa correctly. ESPN's announcers didn't for the first couple days and it didn't get in the way of their enthusiasm for this team.

The fun these kids are having is a joy to watch.

Whodaguy?

From Bush's speech in Idaho Wednesday:

So we're after the enemy across the globe. And we're determined, and we're relentless, and we will stay on the hunt until the terrorists have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

What's that guy's name? Oh, yeah. Osama bin Laden. Where is that guy?

The Arrogance of Power

Why Guantanamo is dumb, in addition to being immoral:

Al Qaeda's increasing European profile suggests that Guantánamo is providing little useful intelligence. But Guantánamo and the rest of the U.S. detention apparatus are also actually undermining prosecution of the war on terrorism, because Europe won't accept evidence procured via torture or duress. In January, for example, British officials arrested Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, and Richard Belmar--British nationals who had been recently released after being detained for three years at Guantánamo--immediately after they stepped off a plane at Heathrow Airport.

[snip}

There was only one problem: No information from Guantánamo Bay was admissible in British court, because it had been obtained under dubious legal circumstances. Despite the palpable worries British authorities had about them, all four walked out of a police station the next day, free men.

The Administration, the author argues, insists on keeping Guantanamo open not because we're still getting valuable information from prisoners there, but because the prison represents one of the Administration's unmentioned goals: to expand executive power and remove power from Congress and the judiciary. "For the administration, its expansion of executive power is synonymous with victory in the war--regardless of the real-world costs to the war effort."

I think we've all known that this Administration hates being checked by anyone or anything, be it Congress or the courts; this analysis just puts it into stark terms with examples.

Prophesies abound

I just spent $17.75 for gas at $2.82 per gallon. This is just ahead of a gas price cap that's about to be implemented here. Since nobody really knows how this is gonna work, there's all manner of speculation; will the prices go up, go down, stay the same? The cap is supposed to be reset every week based on wholesale prices on the mainland in three different locations, but how fast will the station owners respond each week?

The wholesale cap is set by taking average prices in various Mainland markets and adding a margin to account for the costs of shipping, distributing and marking gasoline in Hawai'i. The caps are supposed to provide oil companies with acceptable profit margins.

Should be interesting.

Insert knife, stir

If you ever wondered how the now-discredited practice of frontal lobotomy first became an acceptable medical procedure, MedPundit has a brief history. It's interesting and disturbing at the same time.

Link via Derek Lowe.

Reading assignment

Here's an interesting book list: the scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center have recommended science books for their lay friends.

The Center's scientists narrowed down their favorites to books they would readily recommend to their typical non- scientist friends. The chosen books had to be in print and selected from the categories of biography/autobiography, emerging science and scientific history.

• "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" By James H. Jones
• "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" By Jonathan Weiner
• "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World" By Michael Pollan
• "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science" By Dr. Atul Gawande
• "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" By Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
• "Gene Machines (Enjoy Your Cells, 4)" By Frances R. Balkwill and Mic Rolph
• "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" By Judith Miller and William Broad
• "The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story" By Richard Preston
• "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" By Oliver Sacks
• "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World" By Tracy Kidder
• "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA" By Brenda Maddox
• "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" By Anne Fadiman

Gulp. I've read "The Hot Zone" and Tracy Kidder's earlier "The Soul of a New Machine," but that's it. Homework!

Images

I spent two hours trying to track down a copy of a 1979 article so I could photocopy the thing today, and I'm annoyed. The local medical library has been forced to hand over its collections to the new University School of Medicine Library, and that one's not real organized yet. I finally found a copy and drove out to copy it, but it wasn't a particularly amusing morning. Fortunately, I ran across a link to Tom Toles' cartoon today, and it cheered me right up.

Also, if you haven't yet seen the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you should.

Cogito ergo blog

The blog is hungry. The blog will not be ignored. It is an insatiable little beast, a creature still unclassified by science -- hairy, warty, slobbering, with its own fiendish agenda. I often fantasize about killing the blog, but I worry that it will respond just like the crazed computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey": It will try to kill me first.

No, no. That's not me. That's Joel Achenbach in the WaPo. He may have it about right (write?). Anyway, he's got some funny things to say about the phenomenon.

From Skarlet.

Orwell predicted this

Your wretched refuse is not protected by law, at least in Montana.

The Supreme Court of Montana ruled last month that police could conduct a warrantless "trash dive" into the trash cans in the alley behind the home of a man named Darrell Pelvit. The cops discovered evidence of pseudoephedrine and Naptha--a solvent with uses including the manufacture of methamphetamine--and Pelvit eventually ended up in prison.

Pelvit's attorney argued that his client had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his trash, but the court rejected the argument and said the trash was, well, meant to be thrown away.

What's remarkable is the concurring opinion of Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson, who reluctantly went along with his colleagues but warned that George Orwell's 1984 had arrived.

Justice James C. Nelson concurs.

I have signed our Opinion because we have correctly applied existing legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence to resolve this case on its facts.

I feel the pain of conflict, however. I fear that, eventually, we are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment. I retain an abiding concern that our Declaration of Rights not be killed by friendly fire. And, in this day and age, the courts are the last, if not only, bulwark to prevent that from happening.

In truth, though, we are a throw-away society. My garbage can contains the remains of what I eat and drink. It may contain discarded credit card receipts along with yesterday's newspaper and junk mail. It might hold some personal letters, bills, receipts, vouchers, medical records, photographs and stuff that is imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow me access to the global economy and vice versa.

My garbage can contains my DNA.

As our Opinion states, what we voluntarily throw away, what we discard--i.e., what we abandon--is fair game for roving animals, scavengers, busybodies, crooks and for those seeking evidence of criminal enterprise.

Yet, as I expect with most people, when I take the day's trash (neatly packaged in opaque plastic bags) to the garbage can each night, I give little consideration to what I am throwing away and less thought, still, to what might become of my refuse. I don't necessarily envision that someone or something is going to paw through it looking for a morsel of food, a discarded treasure, a stealable part of my identity or a piece of evidence. But, I've seen that happen enough times to understand--though not graciously accept--that there is nothing sacred in whatever privacy interest I think I have retained in my trash once it leaves my control--the Fourth Amendment and Article II, Sections 10 and 11, notwithstanding.

Like it or not, I live in a society that accepts virtual strip searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount" cards that record my buying habits; bar codes; "cookies" and spywear on my computer; on-line access to satellite technology that can image my back yard; and microchip radio frequency identification devices already implanted in the family dog and soon to be integrated into my groceries, my credit cards, my cash and my new underwear.

I know that the notes from the visit to my doctor's office may be transcribed in some overseas country under an out-sourcing contract by a person who couldn't care less about my privacy. I know that there are all sorts of businesses that have records of what medications I take and why. I know that information taken from my blood sample may wind up in databases and be put to uses that the boilerplate on the sheaf of papers I sign to get medical treatment doesn't even begin to disclose. I know that my insurance companies and employer know more about me than does my mother. I know that many aspects of my life are available on the Internet. Even a black box in my car--or event data recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the beans on my driving habits, if I have an event--and I really trusted that car, too.

And, I also know that my most unwelcome and paternalistic relative, Uncle Sam, is with me from womb to tomb. Fueled by the paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt is. But, as Sam says: "It's for my own good."

In short, I know that my personal information is recorded in databases, servers, hard drives and file cabinets all over the world. I know that these portals to the most intimate details of my life are restricted only by the degree of sophistication and goodwill or malevolence of the person, institution, corporation or government that wants access to my data.

I also know that much of my life can be reconstructed from the contents of my garbage can.

I don't like living in Orwell's 1984; but I do. And, absent the next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the government (the former being more likely than the latter), the best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short leash.

As our Opinion states, search and seizure jurisprudence is centered around privacy expectations and reasonableness considerations. That is true even under the extended protections afforded by Montana's Constitution, Article II, Sections 10. and 11. We have ruled within those parameters. And, as is often the case, we have had to draw a fine line in a gray area. Justice Cotter and those who have signed the Opinion worked hard at defining that line; and I am satisfied we've drawn it correctly on the facts of this case and under the conventional law of abandonment.

That said, if this Opinion is used to justify a sweep of the trash cans of a neighborhood or community; or if a trash dive for Sudafed boxes and matchbooks results in DNA or fingerprints being added to a forensic database or results in personal or business records, credit card receipts, personal correspondence or other property being archived for some future use unrelated to the case at hand, then, absent a search warrant, I may well reconsider my legal position and approach to these sorts of cases--even if I have to think outside the garbage can to get there.

I concur.
/S/ JAMES C. NELSON

From CNet via Lindsay Berenstein

Mirrors indeed

In honor of our guests I took the car to the local car wash, and the brush machine knocked the driver-side mirror off. It's about 90 degrees out there; standing around while the Chevron attendant put it back together and filled out the forms to get a replacement ordered was not in my plans today. Oh well; at least they're gonna pay for it.

What is the Discovery Institute?

The NYT has looked into the backers of the Discovery Institute, which promotes Intelligent Design, and found (quel surprise!) the likes of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Philip F. Anschutz and Richard Mellon Scaife. Hmm. Anyone who paid attention to the backers of the VRWC during the Clinton years will recognize those names.

The institute would not provide details about its backers "because they get harassed," Mr. Chapman said. But a review of tax documents on www.guidestar.org, a Web site that collects data on foundations, showed its grants and gifts jumped to $4.1 million in 2003 from $1.4 million in 1997, the most recent and oldest years available. The records show financial support from 22 foundations, at least two-thirds of them with explicitly religious missions.

There is the Henry P. and Susan C. Crowell Trust of Colorado Springs, whose Web site describes its mission as "the teaching and active extension of the doctrines of evangelical Christianity." There is also the AMDG Foundation in Virginia, run by Mark Ryland, a Microsoft executive turned Discovery vice president: the initials stand for Ad Majorem Dei Glorium, Latin for "To the greater glory of God," which Pope John Paul II etched in the corner of all his papers.

And the Stewardship Foundation, based in Tacoma, Wash., whose Web site says it was created "to contribute to the propagation of the Christian Gospel by evangelical and missionary work," gave the group more than $1 million between 1999 and 2003.

By far the biggest backers of the intelligent design efforts are the Ahmansons, who have provided 35 percent of the science center's $9.3 million since its inception and now underwrite a quarter of its $1.3 million annual operations. Mr. Ahmanson also sits on Discovery's board.

More than that, though, the article describes the current conflict between those who believe in evolution and those who think God had a hand in earth's existence.

Why does no one ever ask these guys "who designed the designer?" Seems to me if you carry out their logic (this couldn't have happened by chance, so Somebody had a plan in mind) then by extension the Somebody should have been part of a plan as well. It's like looking into a mirror with another mirror behind you.

He said what?

This is rich. Dick Cheney, to a veterans' group yesterday:

The vice president cited the darkest days of the American Revolution, when the war was going badly and ragtag rebels were ready to go home until George Washington rallied them. "They stayed in the fight, and America won the war," he said. "From that day to this, our country has always counted on the bravest among us to answer the call of duty."

Right, Dick. So self-evidently you're not one of the bravest, huh? You of the five deferments during Vietnam, when you told a Washington Post reporter you had "other priorities."

Cheney and most of this Administration remind me of spectators at barfights. "Let's you and him fight!" is their cry, rubbing their hands together with glee. In this case, though, they've managed to allow 1800+ Americans and who-knows-how-many Iraqis to die for a false premise.

Home sweet (expensive) home

The deck railing is fixed.

Due to an unexpected but very welcome e-mail from the California part of the family, the house is far tidier than it has been in a while. (It was clean enough, but...cluttered.)

Now I don't want to cook till after they get here.

Vigils for the dead sons, daughters, husbands, wives

Kos has an open thread with stories of vigils nationwide.

Voice of America slanted too?

Is there anything these people won't screw up? Yeah, I know. It's purely rhetorical.

Sanford Ungar was the Voice of America Director from 1999-2001:

Meanwhile, employees in the VOA's battered newsroom have tried to fend off directives from VOA director David Jackson and other political appointees, who have suggested that the network report more favorably on the actions of the Bush administration in Iraq and the Middle East and more deliberately try to enhance the United States' reputation around the world. Editors have repeatedly been asked to develop "positive stories" emphasizing U.S. successes in Iraq, rather than report car bombings and terrorist attacks, and they were instructed to remove from the VOA Web site photographs of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, even though they were already widely available elsewhere. On several occasions since 2002, VOA management has objected to stories quoting Democratic politicians or newspaper editorials critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

The Director of VOA rebuts:

Ungar writes that the former newsroom director was "punished for refusing to make the daily news report more overtly sympathetic to" President George W. Bush. This charge is also not true and is unsupportable by the facts.

And that's it. No facts are given to put the lie to Sanford Ungar's charge. So Ungar cites a few of his own:

On November 17, 2003, Jackson objected to a report that $9 million had been spent on the security and 5,000 policemen deployed for President Bush's visit to London, saying VOA listeners had no interest in such details.

During an escalation of pressure in January 2004, he ordered the news division to stop reporting from Baghdad on car bombings and terror attacks, urging that it instead do "positive stories" emphasizing U.S. successes in Iraq. (Eventually, after being resisted by editors, this order was rescinded.) In a series of internal e-mails during January and February of that year, Jackson systematically passed along memos from the White House and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad reporting, for example, that the Iraqi postal service had resumed operation and would issue stamps without Saddam Hussein's picture, that cell-phone service was being introduced in Iraq, and that thousands of Iraqi teachers were being trained to return to the classroom. "This story offers so many angles," he wrote glowingly in the e-mail about cell-phone service. Jackson insisted that these press releases from the CPA did not require independent verification by VOA reporters on the ground in Iraq.

Don't forget that our boy Tomlinson at CPB is also one of the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs VOA.

The whole point of VOA as it was set up is to report news of and from America honestly and objectively, but these clowns seem to think that those two adverbs mean propaganda and slanted news is just fine.

Burning bushes

Adam Felber has found a copy of an inter-office memo from Jehovah. The other addressees are Israeli settlers.

Who served?

In the great "chickenhawk" debate, much has been made of the lack of military service by proponents of the war. Somebody at azcentral.com put together a bipartisan list of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and (gasp!) pundits (both on and offline) and their respective service time. It's in no way complete, but it's modestly instructive. What I find interesting is how generational it is: the Lehrers and Safires served, the Russerts and Dobbs did not.

For the record, I'm what the VA calls a "Vietnam-era" vet; USN(R) 1972-1974.

Link from Kos.

PR machine falters?

I suppose it was a calculated political decision for Bush to do this.

President Bush relived some of his childhood Saturday night when he attended a Little League playoff game near his ranch.

The world's most powerful former Little Leaguer watched several innings while players from Bryant, Ark., and Lafayette, La., competed for the southwestern regional championship.

If he can go spend an hour or two watching Little League baseball, wouldn't it have been a smart PR move to invite Cindy Sheehan into his office in Crawford to talk for half an hour or so?

New immigrant

Politics in Whistler, BC apparently is so unpleasant that its mayor is moving to Kauai. No worries, though; he'll telecommute until his term expires in November.

Great. We don't have enough ex-politicians selling real estate out here already?

I'm hungry

There's a serious market failure going on in the pre-packaged food industry.

When I lived in Japan as a 23-year-old sailor, I became an amateur anthropologist, spending some of my evenings studying human nature. Much of this research took place in bars, and these observations often required that I myself partake of the products bars served. As the research progressed, I often needed something to soak up the Kirin, so I and my fellow students would frequently repair to a noodle and dumpling shop for sustenance. I've been fond of ramen and gyoza ever since.

Now, finding Japanese noodles in American supermarkets is a snap, and finding pre-made frozen gyoza not much harder. But what if you want to make gyoza yourself? Well, you have to buy all the ingredients including the wrappers and then dice and slice like crazy. That's a heckuva lot of work.

So here's the market failure. When you can go into your local supermarket and buy pre-made salads, why has no one come up with pre-chopped gyoza ingredients? It's a tragedy, I tell you, a tragedy!

A robot named Stinky

The other day I was in a doctor's office; there was a copy of Wired magazine on the table. I picked it up out of boredom (sometimes I think patients should be allowed to bill doctors for their time, just as doctors do for theirs) and read a wonderful and heartbreaking story. A bunch of undocumented Mexican immigrant kids from Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix entered a contest put on by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center called the Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. Who was the competition? Oh, MIT, Cape Fear Community College, Monterey Peninsula College, Long Beach City College; all places with a lot more access to resources than a public high school in West Phoenix.

The robot competition (sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research and NASA) required students to build a bot that could survey a sunken mock-up of a submarine - not easy stuff. The teachers had entered the club in the expert-level Explorer class instead of the beginner Ranger class. They figured their students would lose anyway, and there was more honor in losing to the college kids in the Explorer division than to the high schoolers in Ranger. Their real goal was to show the students that there were opportunities outside West Phoenix. The teachers wanted to give their kids hope.

Just getting them to the Santa Barbara contest in June with a robot would be an accomplishment, Cameron thought. He and Ledge had to gather a group of students who, in four months, could raise money, build a robot, and learn how to pilot it.

[snip]

While other teams machined and welded metal frames, the guys broke out the rubber glue and began assembling the PVC pipe. They did the whole thing in one night, got high on the pungent fumes, and dubbed their new creation Stinky. Lorenzo painted it garish shades of blue, red, and yellow to designate the functionality of specific pipes. Every inch of PVC had a clear purpose. It was the type of machine only an engineer would describe as beautiful.

After reading that, if you're interested, here's a link to La Vida Robot Scholarship Fund to benefit Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Luis Aranda, and Oscar Vazquez. They're all stuck in immigration no-man's land, and they are just the sort of kids this country needs to nurture.

Classless

Some of you may have seen references to a Pentagon-sponsored "America Supports You Freedom Walk," with a performance by Clint Black. It's to take place on September 11. There has been lots of outrage expressed, particularly at the continuing attempts to connect Iraq to 9/11. When I first read about it, there was seemingly only one source: the Aussie paper "The Age." I thought I'd better try to confirm it, so I went to the DOD website, and sure enough, there it was at the bottom of the press briefing dated August 9.

Every year since September 11th attacks, Americans have commemorated that anniversary. This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk. The walk will begin at the Pentagon and end at the National Mall. It will include many of the major monuments in Washington, D.C. reminding participants of the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation that has so successfully defended our freedoms. Freedom Walk participants will be invited to a special performance by country singer Clint Black. And more information about this event will be on the Department of Defense website, America Supports You.

I'm as annoyed as anyone else by this conflation of Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and the September 11 attacks, but what really frosts me is the idea of a freakin' "March" with festivities on what should be a day of solemn reflection. This, coming from the Pentagon (which lost several hundred people that day, you'll recall), is a monument to poor taste.

How about demonstrating support for the troops by fully funding the VA and by fully equipping the men and women in the field with the armor they need?

What's wrong here?

On the left, Cindy Sheehan, deemed a national security threat for sitting in outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford. On the right, Osama bin Laden, deemed a national security threat for multiple terroristic acts including the murder of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11/2001.

Mr. President, you've lost your mind.

(Image juxtaposition concept stolen from Dark Syde in PZ Myers' comments.)

PUHCA

In its never-ending attempt to repeal the New Deal, the Republican Congress succeeded in adding a provision to the Energy Bill which repeals PUHCA, the Public Utilities Holding Companies Act. Big whoop, you say? Well, yeah. Do you remember a company named Enron? Repealing PUHCA will allow utilities to consolidate with little or no regulation. Their argument is that mergers would infuse capital into the industry, thus allowing them to update aging infrastructure. Sounds reasonable, right? We wouldn't want to have a repeat of that blackout from a few years ago. But...

The Petroleum Marketers Association (not a hotbed of consumer-friendly thought, one would imagine) says:

if PUHCA has become such a barrier to investment in generation and transmission as repeal supporters claim, why has the number of registered holding companies coming under its supervision nearly doubled to 30 over the past two years? Obviously, it has not stood in the way of mergers and consolidations.

Ironically, repealing PUHCA could actually impede competition as it would lift restrictions to the barriers place on utility mergers. As SEC Commissioner Hunt testified, this would ultimately lead to greater concentration in the industry, rather than opening it to more competition. Stand-alone PUHCA repeal would expose consumers to risks associated with risky financial transactions without sharing in any benefits of successful diversification.

That's bad enough, but there's more. Repeal takes regulatory authority away from the SEC and hands it over (in a reduced form) to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission. That body, you will recall, is the one which had to be forced to take action against Enron during the California energy crisis in 2000-2001, and (by testimony of its own economists) it wasn't up to the job. In fact, it didn't even try to to do the job. From PBS's Frontline, here's an excerpt from an interview with Stanford economics professor Frank Wolak:

It's an understatement that the FERC is not doing a good job?

Yes.

What do you mean?

They're doing horrible. They basically fail to enforce the law. How can you do anything worse than that?

That was in 2001. This is the same agency, run by the same kind of market-worshipping ideologues, which is going to "regulate" utilities as a result of the PUHCA repeal?

We consumers are so screwed.

R.I.P. Peter Jennings

I've been watching Peter Jennings do World News Tonight for as long as I've lived here; I always felt it was the best evening news show of the three.

He will be missed.

NYT obituary.

Update: Keith Olbermann has a very good tribute here.

No way to run a convention

Political undercurrents show up in the most unusual places. Lisa points to a blog post describing an uproar at the most recent Romance Writers of America conference. Intrigue, anger, dismay; it's all there. The MC was supposed to be Nora Roberts, maybe the most highly-visible romance writer currently on the planet. She didn't like the program as laid out by the committee, so she walked off minutes before the event was scheduled to begin. Why? Well:

...after reading the script for the presentation, Nora flatly refused to participate unless allowed to do MAJOR rewrites.

Flatly.

Refused.

What a diva, right? I mean, the nerve.

WRONG.

Because they refused to rewrite the script, and Nora didn't MC, and what followed, according to some who WERE in attendance, was a horror show to end all horror shows. Instead of a celebration of RWA and romance fiction over the past 25 years, the RITA/GH awards ceremony included the following:

* a video and audio rehash of every national and international tragedy that's taken place since 1980, set to a back-drop of kicky tunes from each year represented.

Imagine, if you will, footage of the tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square with "Don't Worry, Be Happy" playing in the background. Apparently, only a last-minute edit managed to save the ceremony attendees from being forced to watch the shuttle Challenger explode in mid-air and...AND...the Twin Towers fall.

Think about that. All those NYC agents and editors in the audience. Think about it some more.

Yee-HAW. We're celebratin' NOW, baybeee...

** images of political leaders flashed on the screen, looking handsome and honorable.

Okay...wait. Let me rephrase. Images of REPUBLICAN political leaders--specifically Presidents Reagan, Bush I and II--flashed on the screen, looking handsome and honorable.

There's plenty more, and it's pretty unpleasant. To get the full story, click on the second and third links. You'll find Nora Roberts' explanation for her exit at the second one.

I feel sorry for all the attendees.

The harried homeowner

I'm not sure when this happened, but it's gonna be expensive (Click to enlarge).

Two-faced talk

The Bush Administration is trying to keep North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear weapons, all the while saying it needs to build new ones itself (4-page pdf - see the item called RNEP). If I were a negotiator for the PRK or Iran, I think I'd bring that up during talks.

In a much less visible or publicized way, Congress is now about to allow proliferation of weapons-grade uranium for medical purposes.

A provision tucked into the 1,724-page energy bill that Congress is poised to enact today would ease export restrictions on bomb-grade uranium, a lucrative victory for a Canadian medical manufacturer and its well-wired Washington lobbyists.

The Burr Amendment -- named for its sponsor, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) -- would reverse a 13-year-old U.S. policy banning exports of weapons-grade uranium unless the recipients agree to start converting their reactors to use less-dangerous uranium. The Senate rejected the measure last month after critics in both parties warned that it would accelerate the worldwide proliferation of nuclear materials, but a House-Senate conference committee agreed this week to include it in the final bill.

The worst part of this is that the Canadian company "already has enough highly enriched uranium to make one or two Hiroshima-size bombs, and its factories do not have to meet the same security standards as Energy Department facilities."

Yet another example of the best Congress money can buy. National interest counts for far less than campaign cash, it seems.

Deport 'em all

Blair institutes anti-terrorism measures.

Tony's been reading the Patriot Act and he likes what he reads, I guess. I don't know whether due process is part of English law; I imagine the Queen's subjects will find out.

Republican piggery

When one thinks of expensive Federal public works projects, I'd imagine the Interstate Highway system comes to mind. Ha! It wasn't even close($25B over ten years) to the transportation bill just passed ($286.5B over five years).

Covering 1,752 pages, the highway bill is the most expensive public works legislation in U.S. history, complete with 6,376 earmarked projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Kern County, Calif., home of powerful House Ways and Means Chairman Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R), snagged $722 million in projects, or nearly $1,000 per person. Los Angeles County, with clogged highways and 10 million people, will receive barely $60 per resident.

And then there's Don Young's Alaskan bridge.

The transportation bill, passed in the U.S. Senate last week, authorized over $220 million for a 200 foot-high (61-meter-high) road bridge to connect Ketchikan, a city of fewer than 8,000, to a ferry-served island that holds the local airport and is home to about 50 people.

Can I have a helipad in the cul-de-sac across the street so I can get downtown faster, please? Republican Party, fiscal conservatives. Not!

Inuits build bases in Iraq

Kevin Drum touts a startling article in the current issue of the magazine he works for. It seems that native corporations in Alaska have become, through a web of federal contracting loopholes, general contractors for such projects as building bases in Iraq. How can that be? Well, he's excerpted some material from the piece at his site, but you should really click through to read the whole thing. It's basically an account of how privatization has become the Republican party's form of welfare.

Beware of phony think tanks

Here's a warning that one should check the bona fides of think tanks:

The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.

Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.

Example: "The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics."

Now come on. Where are the fact-checkers? This is more of the "balanced" view of reporting; one side says one thing, so there's a need to find someone who'll counter it in order to appear "objective." Another quote:

Gregory M. Herek, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, who has followed Cameron's career, said: "Most members of the public assume that a paper published in an academic journal is a legitimate scientific study. They don't understand that journals vary widely in their quality and in the rigor of their review process. Cameron's work is methodologically weak and in many cases the conclusions he draws from his data are not valid."

There's a distinction between the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Psychological Reports. Unfortunately, the casual newspaper/blog reader doesn't know it, and our press seemingly doesn't either.

Unintelligent proponent

News item:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Sounds reasonable but isn't. Why would you want to expose people to ideas that have repeatedly been refuted over the past 100 years? Do you want to teach people that iron can be turned into gold too?

Image from Beatnik Paradiso

Mustache love

Oh my. Adam Felber has somehow managed to acquire a copy of John Bolton's diary detailing his first week at the UN. (Hasn't Bolton heard of blogs? Diaries are so last century!)

(Parental Guidance required.)

PSA

Ha! Know anyone suffering from blog depression? This pamphlet can help!

Swiped from Al.