Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Dec. 25

And while little by little Christmas has lost its truth for us as an anniversary, it has at the same time, through the gentle emanation of accumulated memories, taken on a more and more living reality, in which candlelight … the smell of its tangerines imbibing the warmth of heated rooms, the gaiety of its cold and its fires, the scent of tea and mimosa, return to us overlaid with the delectable honey of our personality, which we have unconsciously been depositing over the years during which—engrossed in selfish pursuits—we paid no attention to it, and now suddenly it sets our hearts to beating . . .
--Proust, letters

Friday, December 21, 2007

Homage to Catalonia

In Catalonia, for the first few months, most of the actual power was in the hands of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, who controlled most of the key industries. The thing that had happened in Spain was, in fact, not merely a civil war, but the beginning of a revolution. It is this fact that the anti-Fascist press outside Spain has made it is special business to obscure...

...I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. ... There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. ... One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word “comrade” stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. ... In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude taste of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. ... The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. ... This period which then seemed so futile and eventless is now of great importance to me. It is so different from the rest of my life that already it has taken on the magic quality which, as a rule, belongs only to memories that are years old. It was beastly while it was happening, but it is a good patch for my mind to browse upon. I wish I could convey to you the atmosphere of that time...

...The Spanish bourgeoisie saw their chance of crushing the labour movement, and took it, aided by the Nazis and by the forces of reaction all over the world... In essence it was a class war. If it had been won, the cause of the common people everywhere would have been strengthened. It was lost, and the dividend-drawers all over the world rubbed their hands. That was the real issue; all else was froth on its surface... All the considerations are likely to make one falter—the siren voices of a Petain or of a Gandhi, the inescapable fact that in order to fight one has to degrade oneself, the equivocal moral position of Britain, with its democratic phrases and its coolie empire, the sinister development of Soviet Russia, the squalid farce of left-wing politics—all this fades away and one sees only the struggle of the gradually awakening common people against the lords of property and their hired bumsuckers. The question is very simple

--George Orwell, HOMAGE TO CATALONIA. 50, 101-103, 233, 240, 245

you read it here first

--After protesters clashed violently with the police inside and outside the New Orleans City Council chambers on Thursday, the Council voted unanimously to allow the federal government to demolish 4500 apartments in the four biggest public housing projects here.-NYT A27----Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005 [sic]

--In a 1963 essay for Ayn Rand’s newsletter, Alan Greenspan dismissed as a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs and fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings.” On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.” NYT A31-- Gaitskill gives Granite/Rand the needling she deserves, and it would all be very funny except for the fact that people beyond Dorothy take Rand seriously. People like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and a number of other people on the Right who now enjoy positions of great power and influence in this country. Indeed, the rest of the people on the Right who might not seem inclined to share the religionless vision of Rand and Greenspan nevertheless seem to embrace the worldview summarized in The Gods Disdained excerpt given above. Again: The book was about the struggle of a few isolated, superior people to ward off the attacks of the mean-minded majority as they created all the beautiful important things in the world while having incredible sex with each other. It ended with almost all the inferior majority being blown up in chemical disasters, perishing in airplane wrecks or collapsing buildings, all more or less simultaneously, all as an indirect result of their own inferiority. (163) With some minor adjustments, the paragraph might well describe the essence of the Left Behind fantasies of the Christian Nazis who revel in their dreams of apocalypse. In short, it might be fine if these issues of power, abuse, and abasement were confined to the bedroom. Unfortunately they leak and pour into offices, schoolyards, workplaces, and politics. EXTREME PROUST, p. 337

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Ozymandias

Dec. 20, 2007

--Morgan Stanley ... received a $5 billion investment from a Chinese fund in exchange for a 9.9% stake. WSJ A1 (in 1907 JP Morgan bailed the USA out of a depression)

--kitsch is the absolute denial of shit—Milan Kundera—HARPERS, p99 Dec. 2007

--The preoccupation with decay and sapped energy relates directly to the human condition. –Cliché #3, ART CRITICISM 101: YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

your government at work

...according to current and former administration and intelligence officials The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged. NYT A1 probably because no one has any clear recollection of anything

--The Federal Reserve, acknowledging that home mortgage lenders aggressively sold deceptive loans to borrowers who had little chance of repaying them, proposed a broad set of restrictions Tuesday on exotic mortgages and high-cost loans for people with weak credit. NYT A1—cows and horses out of barn, mice still there

Catching Americans who Travel illegally to Cuba or who purchase cigars, rum or other products from the island may be distracting some American government agencies from higher-priority missions like fighting terrorism and combating narcotics traffic, a government audit released Wednesday says. NYT A3—feel safer yet? Or is this why Castro is going to retire?

--Despite a significant reduction in violence in Iraq over the past three months, the Iraqi government has made little headway in improving the delivery of electricity, health care and other essential services, a new Pentagon report said Tuesday. NYT A6 where is Market God when we need Him?

--Thousands of Colorado’s electronic voting machines do not work properly and have been decertified NYT A14 another surprise

--A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bibl-based Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education. NYT A16 no surprise that God needs protection from Texas

--...as literary reading erodes, so does open-mindedness. ... readers are more likely to exercise, visit museums and engage in civic activities. WSJ B11, quoting NEW YORKER

--A week after Hurricane Katrina, a FEMA official ... issued a directive that would have cut through the red tape... FEMA higher-ups countermanded the order. SBT A9

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Dec. 18, 2007

--Russia delivers its nuclear fuel to plan in Iran; a setback for the US. NYT A1. . . . overall the result is easy to predict: a regulatory pole will emerge in Eurasia, one closer to the geographic center of the world, and there will be a slowdown in the flow of goods, capital, and migration that currently nourishes the United States. The United States will then have to live like other nations, notably by reigning in its huge trade deficit, a constraint that would imply a 15 to 20 percent drop in the standard of living of the population. . . Todd, AFTER THE EMPIRE (2003) 199

--...thousands of New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city... NYT A1--: --Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005

-... American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since the 1940s. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price. The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, It makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone”—a 7900 square mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate. SBT A3 For an American like me, growing up linked to a very different food chain, yet one that is also rooted in a field of corn, NOT to think of himself as a corn person suggests either a failure of imagination or a triumph of capitalism... You are what you eat, it’s often said, and if that is true, then what we mostly are is corn—more precisely, processed corn. OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA p. 20

--infused with a heightened awareness of life and death-.—ART CRITICISM 101, YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC (cliché #2)

Monday, December 17, 2007

Dec. 13-17

--Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission... NYT 12-16-07, A1

--Iraq’s death squads have become more careful about hiding their victims’ bodies, making it hard to assess how much power they retain... WSJ, 12-17-07 B8

--Electric-shock techniques used by Chicago police in the 1970s and described in a report by the city echoed those used by US soldiers in Vietnam in the 1960s. Most of the alleged incidents implicated former commander Jon Burge, a decorated Vietnam war veteran. WSJ 12-17-07 B8

--His work here and elsewhere has a lot to do with internal and eternal and the space in between.—ART CRITICISM 101, YOU TOO CAN BE AN ART CRITIC (cliché #1)

--Policewomen in Iraq have been told to hand in their guns in the latest sign of cultural and religious conservatism... WSJ B12 Dec. 12, 2007 a republican, if not democratic, Iraq

--Alberto Gonzales named ABA’s Lawyer of the Year. The monthly magazine gave awards to lawyers who made the most news... “Think about Time magazine’s Person of the Year,” editor and publisher Adams said. “In years past they’ve named people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin....” SBT A3 Dec. 13, 2007

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

22 ways to become a Republican (but you only need ONE!)

1. Believe that torture is moral.

2. Believe that torture is an effective tool in gathering information.

3. Believe that to catch a criminal in Afghanistan you should invade Iraq.

4. Believe “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”

5. Believe that King James wrote the Bible.

6. Believe that Jesus planted dinosaur bones in the ground around 4000 BC to fool atheistical scientists.

7. Hand over your child for butt fucking to any politician or preacher who yells Jesus! three times in a row.

8. Hand over your child for killing in some desert to any draft dodging politician who hollers USA! three times in a row.

9. Believe that Jesus toted a machine gun and drove an SUV.

10. Believe that 9/11 happened because the USA had too many homos; and Katrina; and the Holocaust.

11. Believe that climate change doesn’t exist because you can’t find it mentioned in the Bible—even in the Greek and Hebrew editions.

12. Believe that tax cuts for the superrich will really help someone other than the superrich.

13. Believe it is fine for a USA President to hold hands with a Saudi prince, as long as he doesn’t suck his dick—unless he greases it with oil—and then sucks it for oil.

14. Believe that affirmative action sucks until Jews and Asians take tests.

15. Believe that cancer, polio, deformed babies, and Pat Robertson prove the existence of intelligent design.

16. Believe that women should shut up in church, cover their heads, defer to any human being who wears a penis, and, in short, act like they live in Saudi Arabia.

17. Believe in Christian LOVE as long as the neighbor is not black, brown, poor, immigrant, or gay.

18. Believe that one of the happiest pleasures of living in Heaven will be to watch all the sinners suffer in Hell.

19. Believe that Jesus is coming next week so who cares about melting down the stupid planet, and who cares about selling the whole USA to Chinese gangsters and Arab oil magnates.

20. Believe that Condi Rice is a good role model for Negroes; that Alberto Gonzales is not a whore; that Colon Powell has integrity; that Brownie did a heckuva job; that George Tenet deserves the medal of Freedom; that Rush Limbaugh is not a drug addict; that Larry Craig is not gay; that Jerry Falwell has a brain; and that George Bush a manly man who can talk English real good.

21. Believe that when “treason prospers none dare call it treason” applies only to some 1960s campaign slogan.

22. Believe that live isn’t worth living unless you have at least one inferior to hate, some boogey man to fear, and some boss to adore.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Dec. 10, 2007

--Last month, a federal judge in Canada ruled that the US had violated international conventions on torture and the rights of refugees. NYT A16

--Seven South American countries planned to found yesterday a development bank to demonstrate their joint independence from multilateral lending practices that some have blamed for economic crises. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela will be founding members of Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, an initiative of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. All of the countries except Paraguay are led by leftists. WSJ A14

--...regime change, it turns out, is infectious—a militarily transmittable disease, almost invariable fatal, so far, to any political party or head of government so careless of hygiene to have had intimate relations with the Bush Administration’s Mesopotamian adventure[: Spain, Italy, Tony Blair, Australia, Hungary, Ukraine, Norway, Slovakia] NEW YORKER, Dec. 10, 2007 Hertzberg

--Madison Avenue is taking you back with a skein of campaigns celebrating sights and sound s of [the ‘60s] ...What is most intriguing about the rend is that the ads present many of the contentious aspects of the ‘60s--=the protests, the hippies, the challenge to authority—in a positive, even romantic light. ... The approach is ... a far cry from the demonization of the decade that still pervades political advertising, as evidenced by recent commercials for Senator John McCain that attacked Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has a product of the ‘60s culture. NYT C6

Sunday, December 9, 2007

weekend update, Dec. 8/9, 2007

--White House and DOJ officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the CIA in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday. ... Top CIA officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers... Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005 at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. NYT A1 Dec. 8,2007

--Dana Perino, the White Hose spokeswoman, said Friday that President Bush “has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before this week.—Ibid

--Destruction of CIA tapes could hinder prosecutions of terrorism suspects. –NYT A21, Dec. 9,2007

--At some point during the 20th century, the US invented adolescence. Where once there had merely been youth, there were now teenagers, with their own dress, music, magazines, books, economy, culture and expected patterns of behavior. ... researchers in sociology, psychology and human development [are now identifying] “emerging adulthood,” a time between ages 18 and 30 or so, when marriage and parenthood are often delayed, formal schooling is prolonged, job switching is frequent and parental support is extended. –NYT B11, Dec. 8, 2007



a few weeks before the Nobel Prize speech


"I have noticed that what young women are doing is looking for a husband, just as if there hadn't been any so-called feminist revolution," Lessing says. "Just open the newspaper and see, what has changed? Women are free to behave as men do, and they do, but they were doing that in the '20s.

"In the '20s after World War I, there were the bright young things, they didn't burn their bras, I don't know if they had proper bras, but they were just as good as men at stuff. They danced the tango, they lost their knickers, there was this great act of rebellion and humanism, and I don't think our liberated young women have gotten very much more advanced than that. They're very sensible in all kinds of ways. But a lot of them just want a man. I also know a lot of women who don't want children, which I think is marvelous."


In taking on the evils of World War I in her new book, Lessing is not shy about extending her condemnation to the wars of a new century. She called President Bush a "worldwide calamity," claims the U.S.' trauma from the Sept. 11 attacks has been overblown and insists U.S. military power has been less than fortuitous for the rest of the world.

"Well, it's not very pleasant, is it? I mean, I don't like it, who likes it?" she says. "I think what is likely to happen is that America might fall apart. . . . The whole of California would be perfectly happy by itself, I think, and the East Coast is such a different land. . . . So if there is some kind of cataclysmic thing, like a very bad economic problem, I can see it happening. And it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I think probably Americans will think it's bad. But I don't think the outside world will think it a bad thing." LA TIMES Oct.23, 2007

Friday, December 7, 2007

NYRB highlights, Dec. 20, 2007 issue

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Dec. 20, 2007

--any life that ends in exile cannot have been totally mediocre. P. 10

--The first time that a male black seadevil meets his much larger mate, he bites her and never lets go. Over time, his veins and arteries grow together with hers, until he becomes a fetus-like dependent who receives from his mate’s blood all the food, oxygen, and hormones he requires to exist. The cost of this utter dependency is a loss of function in all of his organs except his testicles, but even these, it seems, are stimulated to action solely at the pleasure of the engulfing female. When she has had her way with him, the male seadevil simply vanishes, having been completely absorbed and dissipated into the flesh of his paramour, leaving her free to seek another mate. P. 47 –should find a robot instead

---[To preclude internal civil war, Roman historian Ronald Syme wrote] it was necessary [for Augustus] to invent a foreign danger that menaced everything that was American—oops, I mean ROMAN. P. 52

--The country quietly accepted the decision in BUSH V. GORE, liking it or not. At the time I thought that was right. We have to be able to look somewhere for finality, and in our system that is the Supreme Court. Today I am not quite so sure. More vocal protest against a lawless decision might have been better for the country and the Court.—p. 61--Antony Lewis. So even a liberal can see it now...

--I didn’t realize the immense prestige that inhumanity and brutality have among nationalists. I also didn’t grasp to what degree they are impervious to reason. To point out the inevitable consequences of their actions didn’t make the slightest impression on them, since they refused to believe in cause and effect .... As is usually the case everywhere, a craven corrupt intellectual class was unwilling to sound the alarm that war crimes were being committed, accustomed as they were ... to being servants to power. 71,72—Simic writing on Americans—oops, I mean SERBS

--For Hitler ... it seemed obvious that America had achieved its industrial advantage and high standard of living through its conquest of the West and its extermination of the Native American population. If Germany, as Europe’s leading power, did not do something similar, the “threatened global hegemony of the North American continent” would degrade all the European powers to the level of “Switzerland and Holland.” ... Hitler’s drive to conquer Eastern Europe was based on a very modern model, a model of colonization, enslavement, and extermination that had its parallels in the creation of European empires in Africa and Australia, or the 19th century Russian conquest of Central Asia and Siberia. 76 USA!USA!

time for a robot merit badge

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 6 — A scout leader who once sued the City of Berkeley for challenging a national Boy Scout ban on members who are gay or atheist has been arrested on felony charges that for at least five years he sexually abused young males in the troops he led.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

NYT Dec. 6, 2007

--One big bank that saw the trouble coming, Goldman Sachs, began reducing its inventory of mortgages and mortgage securities last year. Even so, Goldman went on to package and sell more than $6 billion of new securities backed by subprime mortgages during the first nine months of this year. A1 Thank you, Market God!

--A Santa Claus starting his fourth year at a store in Cairns said he had been fired for saying “Ho! Ho! Ho!” which, according to local reports, the recruitment agency Westaff, the country’s biggest Santa supplier, feels might frighten children and be seen as demeaning to women. The agency wants its Santas to say “Ha! Ha! Ha!” instead, the reports said.—A8

--BAGHDAD, Dec. 5 — Senior Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had decided against a proposal to shift Marine Corps forces from Iraq to take the lead in American operations in Afghanistan. Mr. Gates told top Marine Corps officials and his senior aides that the situation in western Iraq, where the Marines now operate in Anbar Province, remained too volatile to contemplate such a significant change in how the ground combat mission in Iraq is shared by the Army and the Marine Corps. A14 the surge continues to work

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — The birth rate among teenagers 15 to 19 in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday, the first such increase since 1991. The finding surprised scholars and fueled a debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working. The federal government spends $176 million annually on such programs. But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates. A16. Everything else from GWB works so well

--About one in every 31 adults in the US was in prison, in jail or on supervised release at the end of last year, the DOJ reported yesterday. ... In several states, incarceration for blacks were more than 10 times the rate of whites. A16 is this a great country, or what?

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

why are these states smiling--or not?....

--In a nationwide ranking on depression and suicide rates ... those absolutely giddy South Dakotans topped the list as the happiest.—SBT Dec. 5, 2007 D1

--Attempted sex with a mannequin behind a closed door may be unusual, but it’s not indecent exposure which would require a 19 year old to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, according to the South Dakota Supreme Court. NLJ, Nov. 19, 2007

--Utah is the most depressed state... SBT op cit.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

d'oh...

-- Dec. 3, 2007--U.S. intelligence officials now believe Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in fall 2003 under international pressure. The findings represent a change from two years ago, when U.S. intelligence agencies thought Iran was determined to develop a nuclear capability and was continuing its weapons-development program. Officials said Iran continues to enrich uranium, which means it may still be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, according to the new assessment. –WSJ—American intelligence = oxymoron

-- BOISE, Idaho (Dec. 3) -- Eight men say they either had sex with Sen. Larry Craig or were targets of sexual advances by the Idaho lawmaker at various times during his political career, a newspaper reported.—AOL—should have found a robot

--The actor Brad Pitt’s ambitious efforts to build a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly, sustainable housing facility in New Orleans’ ravaged Ninth War in record time recently suffered a setback when develops discovered that construction is taking place on deeply polluted land. “Much of the Lower Ninth War is also toxic, so it’s really not a surprise,” said a source with intimate knowledge of the project. NYO, Nov. 26, 2007, p6—which is probably why Blacks were allowed to own housing there to begin with...

Monday, December 3, 2007

this guy is really really smart!

The ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money. In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

The return of peace, indeed, seldom relieves them from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war.

Adam Smith, THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (1776) pp 919-20

Sunday, December 2, 2007

weekend update, Dec. 1/2, 2007

--Norway’s sovereign fund is one of the world’s largest and most transparent state investment vehicles. Last year, it cited “serious and systematic” human- and labor- rights abuses in divesting itself of all of its shares in Wal-Mart Stores Inc., valued at 416 million.—WSJ Dec 1/2, 2007 A11

--Abundance (as Daniel Bell once observed) may be the American substitute for socialism; but as shared social objectives go, shopping remains something of an underachievement. –NYRB Dec. 6, 2007. P26

--Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and American official sasses the effects of this year’s American troop increase, there is a growing sense that, even as security has improved Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness. NYT A1 Dec. 2, 2007. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

--Robots in love. By 2025 “at the latest’ [David Levy ] predicts “artificial emotion technologlies” will allow robots to be more emotionally available than the typical American Human male.—NYTBR, Dec. 2, 2007, p 14

--Lawyers in love. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in October that attorney Michaell Inglimo did not violate a state regulation that bars a lawyer from having sex “with a current client.” Inglimo had sex with a client’s girl friend during a three-way session, but according to thbe judges, the regulation bans only direct sex with the client.—SBT, Dec. 2, 2007, A8

Friday, November 30, 2007

be afraid....

Nov. 30, 2007—[Republican SEC Chief] Cox plans to discuss how the increase in investments by foreign government investment funds, which manage between $2 trillion and $3 trillion in asserts, may “fundamentally change how markets work.” Cox says they could particularly affect US regulatory structure… His stance breaks with the administration and IMF, which has agreed only to study the phenomenon. WSJ A8


--In the past three months alone, Dubai International Capital purchased a minority stake in Sony; another investment arm of Abu Dhabi took an 8% stake in the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices and a 7.5% stake in the private-equity group Carlyle; Citic Securities, a Chinese state bank, took a stake in credit-troubled Bear Stearns; Dubai's stock exchange purchased a major share of both the Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange; the Chinese government took a stake in the Blackstone group; and last but certainly not least, another arm of the Dubai government bought the New York fashion emporium Barney's. This is only a sampling of the deals done, and in all likelihood a small subset of the deals to come. … The weak dollar is clearly a factor, and has enhanced the buying power of many foreign buyers. Of course the dollar has weakened in part because the U.S. is both a huge debtor and a large consumer of global goods, and that weakness is yet one more reason why our assets are so attractive at current prices. Simplistically, the system would say: Money goes out as we borrow and spend, and then comes back in the form of investments into our economy by the people we're borrowing and buying from. But then there's culture and politics and national identity, and that makes it not so simple. Finally, let's address the elephant in the living room: Many in the U.S. simply aren't comfortable with increased dependency on either the Middle East or China. Whatever the merits of those concerns, the interdependence of the global economy is a fact. As it stands, the sovereign wealth funds that are so eagerly investing in both the U.S. and throughout the world are controlled by groups that embrace the global capital system rather than others who might reject it. In life, in business and in international affairs, you don't usually have the luxury of selecting the perfect allies. For much of the 20th century, the U.S. could maintain the illusion that we would only work with states and groups that we liked and who we thought liked us. That may have been true then; it isn't true now. We had better get used to it. –WSJ A17


--The largest number of adolescents in history of coming of age world-wide. WSJ B1

Thursday, November 29, 2007

help me now i'm falling

Nov. 29, 2007-- India’s Ministry of Culture announces that foreign tourists can no longer pay in dollars when visiting the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites... Three of the world’s biggest oil exporters, Iran, Venezuela and Russia, are demanding payment in euros rather than US dollars. ... The main reason for the collapse of the US dollar is President George W. Bush’s attempt to fight expensive foreign wars while cutting taxes at home.--SBT, B5

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Keeping it legal (ii)

Nov. 28, 2007--Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006. At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination. ... Mr. Bloch believes the White House may have a c onflict of interest in pressing the inquiry into his conduct while his office invesitages the White House Political operation. WSJ A5

--With the NFL regular season entering the home stretch [the WSJ] talked with two lawyers who in their proverbial spare time rally hometown fans from the sidelines, [Linda Rothstein cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Heather Johnson moonlighting as a cheerleader for the Carolina Panthers]—WSJ B9

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

keeping it legal

Nov. 27, 2007—Bush signed a deal setting the foundation for a potential long-term US troop presence in Iraq. –WSJ A1

--The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to San Diego County’s practice of searching welfare applicants’ homes without warrants. –WSJ A1

--It may be a virtual world, but six merchants in the online environment Second Life have filed a real-world lawsuit over what they say are knockoffs of their digital wares. ... The vendors suing [Queens resident Thomas Simon] say he violated copyright and trademark laws by duplicating their product.—2007 LUSA 717 –11-19-2007

--Attempted sex with a mannequin behind a closed door may be unusual, but it’s not indecent exposure which would require a 19 year old to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, according to the South Dakota Supreme Court. NLJ, Nov. 19, 2007

Monday, November 26, 2007

our children is learning, and they test good too

Nov. 26, 2007—In nearly all of the states studied [by a Stanford/Berkeley center], students did noticeably worse on federal tests than on state tests. In Oklahoma, the gap in scores was a shocking 60 percentage points in math and 51 percentage points in reading. In Texas, that gap was 52 percentage points in math and 56 points in reading. The state that came closest to the federal standard was Massachusetts, where there was a modest 1 percent gap in math and 10 percent gap in reading.—NYT, A26

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Thanksgiving weekend update

Nov. 25, 2007—With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectations of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.—NYT A1—so declare victory and bug out, or make it the 51st state?

--Mr. Howard’s defeat[incumbent prime minister of Australia] follows that of Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, who also back the US led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair of Britain. (NYT A6)

--Venezuela -- As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin.

Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university.... Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students "terrorists" and written them off as "pampered, rich mama's boys." UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers. Mr. Chávez's description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. WSJ Nov. 24-25, A1, A12

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Adam Smith was right (sometimes)

DECATUR, Ga. (Nov. 19. 2007) - The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her. Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk's family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test. In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.—AOL News

Adam Smith, WEALTH OF NATIONS (1776): The clergy of an established and well-endowed religion frequently become men of learning and elegance … but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of people … Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves perfectly defenceless… Upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning and good writing may sometimes be on the side of the established church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries ...the methodists, without half the learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue. … It is with [clergy who depend upon voluntary oblations from the people] as with the hussars and light infantry of some armies: no plunder, no pay. ... [Quoting Hume:] ... “in every religion except the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly and delusion. Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violence abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency in the doctrines inculcated. Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address in practicing on the passions and credulity of the populace.”

Turkey Week News

NEW ORLEANS

--In one of the clearest signs yet of Hurricane Katrina’s lasting demographic impact, the City Council is about to have a white majority for the first time in over two decades, pointing up again the storm’s displacement of thousands of residents, mostly black.—A14, NYT 11-20-07 but we already knew that: --Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005 [sic]

THE EMPIRE’S FIRE SALE

--The Deal Story of 2008: Will the US get LBOed? For 2007, foreign buyers have accounted for 20% of M&A in the US… The irony is that the US is, in essence, funding its own potential takeover. … With a weak dollar and the ever-enriched positions of petro-based economies, it’s inevitable that the worries will continue to stew. “We’re moving to a sharecropper economy,” said Mr. Mulloy [of Sloan Foundation] “The other guys are going to be owning, and we’re going tobe working for them.” –WSJ C1, C3, 11-20-07

--Wealthy Nations in Gulf Rethink Peg to Dollar…. Kuwait chose in May to link its currency, the dinar, to a basket of currencies. WSJ, Al, A14 11-20-07. Good thing USA saved Kuwait from Saddam…

--In a recent video [hip hop impresario Jay—Z] cruises New York with a stash of euro banknotes. It’s a statement, and it echoes Warren Buffett’s bet against the dollar and a recent campaign by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, to promote the euro.—WSJ C10, 11-19-07

--the fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar—it’s the fall of the American empire,” Mr. Chavez said. NYT A1, 11-19-07

THE EMPIRE’S ILLITERACY

--[NEA] Study Links Drop in [USA] Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading. NYT B1, 11-29-07 EXTREME PROUST, sec. 45: Words are perhaps the most mediating of mediating media. Their role in human history has been both complicated and profound, enhancing humanity’s ability to cope with existence, undercutting humanity’s ability to appreciate existence, and then again assisting humanity in its hopes of appreciating existence. One irony is that just as Proust was beginning to explore these issues in depth (with words and words and words) the twilight for words may have been beginning. Proust’s lifetime witnessed a marked increase in the role that images might play in human communication, for better and for worse. Photography became more common. Cinema was invented. It became Benjamin’s “age of mechanical reproduction” for images, with newspapers, posters, and cinematic theaters. The trend has intensified since Proust’s death, with television, computers, DVDs, power point presentations, home theatres, cell phone theatres, and more to come. The irony is that writing may have had its origins in images, as a review of at least Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters might attest. Alphabets abstracted this medium from its more immediate (unmediated?) sources. Yet while writing’s ties to the immediacy of images may now be forever severed, the point now is the degree to which humanity’s new image generating capacities are attempting to make writing and words irrelevant. If more people are not trying to communicate through images or sound bites, certainly more political rulers and commercial hustlers are trying to manipulate through less words and more sight bites.

--In an episode that has embarrassed the Department of Education, thousands of flawed testing booklets forced the invalidation of USA reading scores on an international exam administered without major mishap in 56 other countries.—NYT A16, 11-20-07. We can read MY PET GOAT...

Friday, November 16, 2007

Nov. 16, 2007

--Poor are lagging in hurricane aid from Mississippi; Most money is unspent; US waives a rule that half of grants go to needy residents; NYT A1, 11-16-07; thank you George

--Ruling jolts even Saudis; 200 lashes for rape victim [sic]—NYT A3, 11-16-07—USA ally #1

--Led by robots, roaches abandon instincts. NYT A28, 11-16-07—sexual activity unclear

--“busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”—H4’s advice to H5, according to Shakespeare, NEW YORKER, p. 78, 11-19-07—why we’re in Iraq

when the rain comes

ATLANTA (Nov. 15) - A storm crashed through the Southeast and brought up to an inch of rain in parts of drought-stricken Georgia, but forecasters said the storm likely did little to ease the state's historic drought.
"The ground probably sucked it all up," said Vaughn Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. "The ground is so dry, I seriously doubt if any of the lakes rose any."
The Wednesday storm packed lashing rain and powerful gusts, injuring at least nine in Tennessee.
The roof of a Baptist church in Tennessee's Marion County was heavily damaged, said Jeremy Heidt of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. Three children were hurt by flying glass and were taken to hospitals, said Heidt

Thursday, November 15, 2007

more SAT practice questions

RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING NEWSCLIP:

ATLANTA, Nov. 14 — A day after Gov. Sonny Perdue asked God to forgive Georgia for being wasteful with its water, county officials in the wealthy suburbs northeast of Atlanta confirmed Wednesday just how profligate one consumer had been.

A homeowner in Marietta, Ga., used 440,000 gallons in September, or about 14,700 gallons a day. By comparison, the average consumption in the United States is about 150 gallons a day per person, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area about 183 gallons. –NYT Nov. 15 2007

1) 1)Sonny was praying to the wrong God

2) 2)Sonny always prays to money

3) 3)The rich can buy whatever they want and use it however they want, that’s what Market God sez

4) 4)What’s the problem? Sonny prayed to money and the rich guy turned off the tap

5) 5)Where’s the f%$^&* rain?

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

solidarity forever

In honor of the writer’s strike, excerpts from WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN (1941) by Schulberg:

--I’ve always been afraid of people who can be agile without grace [4]

----“But as long as you’re going in for it there’s plenty of good, dead authors that’ll hand you terrific plots on a silver platter. Why, I knew a guy who made a nice little pile out of one of DeMaupassant’s stories just the other day. And all he had to do was switch the hooker from a French carriage to a Western stagecoach. If you were smart you’d try to hit on something like that and write yourself an original.” [69]

--“Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on.” [69]

--“Work hard, and, if you can’t work hard, be smart; and, if you can’t be smart, be loud.” [89]

--“If you turn in one treatment with both your names on it and that fat swish lets the producer know he did all the writing, you’re dead. If you want to play it cozy, write a treatment of your own without letting Pancake know and then get to your producer alone and tell him you thought Pancake was so far off the line it seemed faster to straighten it out yourself. That way you’ve got a chance of scaring him into bouncing Pancake off the picture an grabbing yourself a solo screen-play credit” [93]

--“I’ve always like [sex] because it’s just about the most fun you get out of life and because … it’s always seemed like the friendliest thing two people can do in the whole world. That’s why I’ve never wanted to turn pro.” [95]

--The producer encourages as many as a dozen aspiring writers to work on his idea. They knock themselves out over his story for two or three weeks in return for nothing but the vaguest of promises. Then the producer comes out of it with enough free ideas to nourish the one writer he finally hires. [123]

--“Every time a man discovers that a woman thinks, the only way he can explain it is that she happens to have a male mind.” [143]

--“Don’t be serious honey,” she said. “Love is much nicer when it isn’t serious.” [146]

--“Talent can get you just so far. Then you got to start using your head [151]

--…under the bonnet or organized morality lurks a very filthy mind .” [169]

--The program began with Dan Young, the barrel-bodied, red-faced, profanely earnest studio manager, who seemed to feel that the story of how he had risen from truck driver right here at this studio to his present importance was a devastating argument for writers giving up the Guild foolishness and making the studio one big happy family. He even hinted that those who refused to participate in his family life (on his terms) would find themselves led by the hand to the studio gate and told never to darken this payroll again…. Sammy Glick [then] informed us that we would get further by voting the way the studio was asking us. If he had used the first person singular instead of the plural he would have been right. [191-2]

---“Sammy,” I said quietly, “how does it feel? How does it feel to have everything?” He began to smile. It became a smirk, a leer. “It makes me feel kinds … “ And then it came blurting out of nowhere—“patriotic” [285]

Nov. 14

--...[the dollar] has fallen on such hard times .. that even rap moguls are turning on it. In the video for his new song "Blue Magic" (off an album called "American Gangster" no less) Jay-Z can be seen flashing stacks of euos. On the official Web site for Wu-Tang Clan, the New York rappers who coined hte phrase "dolla dolla bill, yall," the group lists its new CD price in euros only. NEWSWEEK, Nov. 19, 2007 p. 14

--Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004. The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.—NYT A1, Nov. 12, 2007

--But even those who hailed absinthe saw unsettling shadows. Wilde explained: “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Monday, November 12, 2007

happy veterans day

--Nov. 11, 2002-- KHAWR AL AMAYA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq -- The U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf. … the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry. … That is a sea change for the U.S., which has patrolled these waters for decades. In the past, American warships and their allies flexed the West's military might in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate a broad commitment to protect the region, which produces almost a third of the world's oil. …N ow, amid rising prices -- oil futures finished Friday at $96.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 86 cents -- and new vulnerabilities in the world's stretched oil-supply chain -- from militants in Nigeria to occasional Iranian threats to disrupt Persian Gulf shipping -- the Navy finds itself with an additional, much more specific role: playing security guard to Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure—WSJ A2

Saturday, November 10, 2007

emergency review of books blog

--November 10, 2007--TV Writers’ Strike Leaves Jilted Authors Looking for a Bully Pulpit. David Levy’s publisher had built his entire book tour around a scheduled appearance on “The Colbert Report” last Monday. But then the members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike, and Mr. Colbert’s show went to repeats, leaving Mr. Levy to promote his book “Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships” (HarperCollins) through radio interviews and answering questions from about 70 people who attended a reading at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. NYT

--LEADERSHIP, Rudolf Giuliani: There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani’s famous book “Leadership” that is titled “Loyalty, the Vital Virtue.” In it, he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city’s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding’s father, Ray, was the chairman of the city’s Liberal Party, whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor. “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics,” he said. For some mysterious reason, the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family. Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding, giver of the Liberal Party endorsement, not only by giving his qualified son a good job, but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son, Russell, who wound up embezzling more than $400,000 for vacations, gifts and parties. We will not even go into the pornography part, except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer, only a few were of children. --NYT Gail Collins,

--THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD---"How foolish to think that one can ever slam the door in the face of age. Much wiser to be polite and gracious and ask him to lunch in advance." –Noel Coward, WSJ 11-10-07

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Nov. 8, 2007

--Stock Markets Tumble as Dollar’s Decline Adds to Anxiety…. “This is a critical juncture,” said Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs. “The dollar is behaving in the past couple days as though the market is testing its reserve-currency status.” On Wednesday, the dollar took a sharp turn lower against several major currencies, sliding to a new record low against the euro and hitting its lowest level in decades against the Canadian dollar. One dollar now buys only about 93 Canadian cents. At one point in 2000, the euro was worth only 85 cents. Now one euro buys $1.46. One spark behind the dollar’s latest downturn was a comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting that the country should buy more euros. … Today it’s oil-producing countries and emerging economies like China that find themselves sitting on mountains of dollar reserve that are losing value. WSJ A1, A20, 11-8-07

--What are we learning about the role of government? Ditch the cliché that government should be run more like a business. It’s too flattering to business.—WSJ A2 Nov. 8, 2007

--The US is recalling over 4 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots toys after reports of children being sickened by a chemical contained in beads they swallowed. WSJ A1, 11-8-07

-The Pentagon blocked a Marine lawyer from testifying before Congress that severe interrogation techniques had derailed his prosecution of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist. -- WSJ A1, 11-8-07

--Oregon voters defeated a plan to fund a children’s health-care program by boosting tobacco taxes, following an expensive [tobacco] industry campaign against the ballot measure. WSJ A1, 11-8-07

The arts

…the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs sponsored a collaboration between members of Enslaved and the noisy electronic duo Fe-mail. …Extreme metal, which once seemed like a threat to Norway’s cultural heritage, is inevitably coming to be seen as part of it. How long before the government finances an ad campaign, inviting black-metal fans from around the world to come to the most evil country on Earth?—NYT B5, Nov. 8, 2007—thanks be to Odin

--[warning to teen girls against taking up with guys in 20s or 30s ] You may think you’re pretty cool for having an older boyfriend, but what you have to remember is he’s not cool for dating you. He’s a loser. And you can find plenty of losers to date at school.—WSJ B1, Nov. 8, 2007-- thanks be to “The Midwest Teen Sex Show”

--Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to books clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.-NYT B1, Nov. 7, 2007—thanks be to the Market God of Justice!!

The Culture [so to speak]

--From 2004 through 2006, Americans pulled about $840 billion a year out of residential real estate, via sales, home equity lines of credit and refinanced mortgages…---NYT A1 Nov. 8, 2007

--Myth: Americans are Educated. … in the formal sense, fewer than half of us have graduated from college… The upshot, in business and political communications, is that complexity or intricacy of any degree almost always fails.—Frank Luntz, WORDS THAT WORK (2007) p 184 [Luntz is GOP political pollster and consultant who helped on “Contract With America,” the Davis recall, and the Clinton Impeachment language]

--Myth: Americans Read. … I’ve found again and again that nobody reads. Ibid., 187