October 27, 2007—Facing staff shortages in Iraq, the State Department announced Friday that diplomats would have no choice but to accept one-year postings in the hostile environment of face losing their jobs.—NYT A8
--Several human rights organizations based in the US and Europe have filed a complaint in a Paris court accusing former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture. NYT A8
October 26, 2007—Washington insiders join in simulation of deepening energy crisis. Their “Oil Shockwave” exercise … involves a 2009 scenario in which oil prices reach $160 a barrel with Iran in turmoil. WSJ A6
--The dollar has dropped more than 25% against the euro since the end of 2002 and reached parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time in more than 30 years. It has lost almost half of its value against the Brazilian real since 2003. WSJ WS1
--Richard Thornburgh, USAG in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, charged Tuesday that political reasons motivated DOJ to open corruption investigations against Democrats in Mr. Thornburgh’s home state, Pennsylvania. –NYT A10, 10-24-2007
--Almost four years ago to the day, another set of fires ravaged the landscape around Los Angeles and San Diego. USA TODAY, 6A, 10-24-2007; …late summer is the beginning of the wildfire season in Southern California, M.Davis, ECOLOGY OF FEAR (1998) p. 96
Match the appropriate number with the appropriate letter….
1) 1.Dallas--US prosecutors failed to persuade a jury [in Dallas] to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any of the charges, or even reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts. NYT A1
2)22. DC--A government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp International, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police in Iraq. NYT A1
3) 3.Atlanta--For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought. … Scientists have warned of impending disaster. And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before. The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow. …. a history of inaction in Georgia and across the South when it comes to managing and conserving water, even in the face of rapid growth. Between 1990 and 2000, water use in Georgia increased 30 percent. But the state has not yet come up with an estimate of how much water is available during periods of normal rainfall, much less a plan to handle the worst-case event — dry faucets. … a sense of urgency has been slow to take hold. Last year, a bill died in the Georgia Legislature that would have required that low-flow water devices be installed in older houses before they are resold. Most golf courses are classified as “agricultural.” And Georgia is not at the back of the pack. Alabama, where severe drought is even more widespread, is even further behind in its planning. … It’s been develop first and ask questions later,” said Gil Rogers, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
4) 4. 250,000 evacuated in California as fires spread. NYT A1
5) 5. The Dollar’sGot Further to Slide. As the US economy moves from being an engine of global growth to a parth that is in line with the average of other major countries, the trade deficit will narrow and a weaker dollar will be part of that adjustment. WSJ A19
a) a)They can’t even get a conviction in Texas?!?!?!
b) b)So gimme an ADDITIONAL $46 billion for the war!! NYT A13
c) c)Ecology is a tool of Satan.
d) d)Malibu .. is the wildfire capital of North America and, possibly, the world. … stand at the mouth of Malibu Canyon or sleep in the Hotel St. George for any length of time and you eventually will face the flames. It’s a statistical certainty. … If Southern Californians seemed unprepared for [Ponet Square and Malibu fires of 1993] they had no one to blame but themselves. The conflagrations of 1993 came down grimly familiar pathways—an there was no shortage of omens. … Ignoring every lesson of the recent fires and earthquakes, two new mega-developments … are under construction in the environmentally sensitive, fire-prone Santa Clarita and Leona Valley areas of northern Los Angeles County…. Suburban firestorms are becoming ever more apocalyptic. The social cost of fire has increased in almost geometric relation to the linear growth of firebelt suburb populations…. Politicians and the media have allowed the essential lanuse issue—the rampant, uncontrolled proliferation of firebelt suburbs—to be camouflaged in a neutral discourse about natural hazards and public safety… The $100 million cost of mobilizing 15,000 firefighters during Halloween week 1993 may be an increasingly common entry in the public ledger.. –Mike Davis, ECOLOGY OF FEAR (1998), from chapter entitled “The Case for Letting Mailbu Burn” pp. 97, 98, 122, 142, 143 , 146-7
e) N Card, 2006: . . . 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. . . –Emmanuel Todd,p. 199 (2002)
If we act militarily we’ll do it with great precision and focus very closely on our objectives. … We’re developing a very strong humanitarian aid package. We can win without destruction. We’re already putting into effect a post-Saddam Iraq, and I believe there’s a good basis for a better future. Iraq has a good bureaucracy and a civil society that’s relatively strong. It could be organized into a federation… GWB to JM Aznar, former PM of Spain, 2-22-2003
The economic malaise [1973] had at least three deep-rooted causes. First, the Johnson administration had attempted to pay for both the Great Society and the war in Vietnam without a major tax increase, generating huge federal deficits, a major expansion of the money supply, and the inevitable price inflation. Second, and more important, by the late 1960s American goods faced stiff competition in international markets from West Germany, Japan, and other emerging industrial powers…. Third, the American economy had depended heavily on cheap sources of energy; no nation was more dependent on the automobile and the automobile industry, and no nation was more careless in its use of fossil fuels in factors and homes. … When administration economists kept predicting an imminent upturn, journalists recalled General Westmoreland’s predictions of victory in Vietnam. –G.B.Tindall AMERICA: A NARRATIVE HISTORY (1984) pp 1313, 1314.
--Kurds ambush Turks at Iraq border—NYTA1
--Louisiana elects Indian governor (he likes the “free-market” and “intelligent design,” two names for the same idea) NYTA1, NYTA17
--Chavez pushes South American bank to replace IMF, World Bank.--NYTA3
--Anti-immigrant party becomes largest in Switzerland.--NYTA4
--US Joint Chiefs Chairman wants high levels of military spending to continue even after Iraq war—NYT A8
--Poles dis-elect their pro-USA, anti-abortion prime minister—NYT A11
--Federal court cases to test “how far the government can go in keeping Americans safe from what a State Department manual calls the “irresponsible expressions of opinion by prominent aliens.” NYTA14
--“Sept. 11 was terrible, but if one re-examines the history of the IRA, what happened in the US wasn’t so bad.”—Doris Lessing NYT B2
--With subprime lending crisis, developing countries are now lecturing the West-NYTC1
--Blackwater softens it logo from macho to corporate—NYT C3
--USA vulnerable to terrorist attacks via insects—WSJ B12
--Among the 35 top-earning films of all time, measured by worldwide theatrical gross receipts (unadjusted for inflate), all but two (“Forrest Gump” and “The DaVinci Code”) can be classified as spectacle, fantasy, or animation.—NEW YORKER, p. 110, 10-22-2007—Actually, some of us would classify GUMP and DaVINCI as fantasy, but hey, THE NEW YORKER defines USA culture…
-- The reality is that human beings ultimately desire to achieve rapture. … If human beings cannot break through to the Paradise I have described, they will embrace any third-rate unmediated experience which approximates It. –EXTREME PROUST, sec. 85
Those of us who thought that GWB (aka King Sadim) couldn’t top three losses (Iran, North Korea and Iraq) must now admit they were wrong. He has trumped those three with a new trio (AL Qaeda, Taliban, Pakistan) PLUS nuclear weapons:
Oct. 20 — The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called “the nightmare scenario” for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play. … other current and former officials cautioned that six years after the United States forced General Musharraf to choose sides in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, American leverage over Pakistan is now limited. Similarly, they and Pakistan experts said that a series of policy miscalculations had left the administration with few good options. NYT A1
So, we apologize, and try to honor him with three poems:
LORD BYRON
An orator of such set trash of phrase,
Ineffably, legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile.
Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or congress to be made,
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains
With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.
(44, Dedication, sections 13 & 14)
WH AUDEN, 1936:
Against the ogre, dragon, what you will;
His many shapes and names all turn us pale,
For he’s immortal, and to-day he still
Swinges the horror of his scaly tail.
Sometimes he seems to sleep, but will not fail
In every age to rear up to defend
Each dying force of history to the end.
Milton beheld him on the English throne,
And Bunyan sitting in the Papal chair;
The hermits fought him in their caves alone,
At the first Empire he was also there,
Dangling his Pax Romana in the air:
He comes in dreams at puberty to man,
To scare him back to childhood if he can.
Banker or landlord, booking-clerk of Pope,
Whenever he’s lost faith in choice and thought,
When a man sees the future without hope,
Whenever he endorses Hobbes’ report
“The life of man is nasty, brutish, short,”
The dragon rises from his garden border
And promises to set up law and order.
--Auden, “Leter to Lord Byron,” 1936
AUDEN, 1968
The Ogre does what orgres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalk with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
--Auden, ”August 1968” --1968
Zey predict ze future!—Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of nuclear power plants… Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials… NYT A1, 10-18-2007--N Card, 2006: . . . 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. . . –Emmanuel Todd,p. 199 (2002)
--Zey build les sex robottes before l’ameriquannes!! --…there exst imitation women, complete in every detail, which all the charms and uses of real women: manikins with flesh you can push in and which comes out again, a longue which darts in and out for five minutes, eyes which roll, hair which you would swear was the real thing, and moistness and warmth where you would expect to find them, on sale at the manufacturer’s for 15,000 francs, for the use of religious communities or rich sailors….there are others to suit all pockets, down to male and female parts in gilded boxes which cost only 300 francs… The artist who makes these things—this public benefactor, this moralist endeavouring to avoid so many evils, to spar man, for instance, apart from anything else, that tempestuous age of woman, that unbearable period, the change of life-this rare artist was prosecuted six months ago and sent to prison, no doubt on a charge of immorality.—Goncourt Diaries, 6 May 1858
October 17, 2007—In December, the UN took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the US as the lone dissenter. Indeed, the US stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison.—NYT A1—USA! USA!!
-- A study found pervasive personal fianancial ties among industry and medical school and teaching hospital departments. WSJ A1 --Adam Smith’s Stoic Market God takes care of everything!
--Luxury is feeling no pain: Financial Turmoil or not, pricey wares of Burberry, LVMH, Hermes are selling. If there’s a financial crisis going on, nobody told the world’s luxury brands. WSJ C16 --Adam Smith’s Stoic Market God DOES take care of everything!
--Putin issued a veiled warning to the US against an attack on Iran. WSJ A1.
--N Card, 2006: . . . 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. . . –Emmanuel Todd,p. 199 (2002)
October 16, 2007--Young officers have been offered big cash bonuses [up to $35,000] to stay in an Army struggling to retain them. The Marines, meanwhile, are trying to move out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, a more popular move where they could focus on America’s real enemies—al Qaeda and its allies, the Taliban—instead of trying to police a civil war. NYT A22
--Low in Polls, Bush Makes More Time for Friendly Crowds [in Rogers, Arkansas] NYT A20 he’s in deep doo doo now, folks…
--The first baby boomers applied for Social Security benefits. WSJ A1
God is in charge, He’s just not named Jesus
Two months ago, when credit markets around the world were anxious over soured mortgage notes, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson said he was confident investors would work things out. NYT A1, 10-16-07
[Adam Smith wrote] “The ancient stoics were of opinion, that as the world was governed by the all-ruling providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every single event ought to be regarded, as making a necessary part of the plan of the universe, and as tending to promote the general order and happiness of the whole…” This doctrine anticipates the better-known statement of Smith’s own opinion that the self rich “are led by an invisible hand” to help the poor and to serve the interest of society at large.—Introduction to THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS, p. 8 (Oxford University Press, 1976)
Or Maybe It’s Man’s Fault
The Vatican, concerned about the impact of climate change on the poor, [is sending out the message] that believers’ decisions can contribute to global warming, which might intensify natural phenomena like typhoons. …[after a typhoon in the Philippines, auxiliary bishop says] “it is man who disordered everything and we are suffering the consequences of this.” WSJ B11 10-16-07
…in a sign that administration officials are more worried about market problems than they earlier let on, [Paulson] and other top Treasury officials are prod Wall Street and the mortgage industry for solutions. NYT A1,10-16-07
Or Maybe it’s God’s Fault
Everything that happens to us is our own fault. But that’s not our fault.-- Mary Hartmann, Mary Hartmann. NYRB,10-15-07 p 68
NIETZSCHE CARD, 10-15-2007
.
Of course this year our special guest must be Marcel Proust:
. . we have to rediscover, to reapprehend, to make ourselves fully aware of that reality, remote from our daily preoccupations, from which we separate ourselves by an even greater gulf as the conventional knowledge which we substitute for it grows thicker and more impermeable, that reality which it is very easy for us to die without ever having known and which is, quite simply, our life (vi, 298) ... This work of the artist, this struggle to is a process exactly the reverse of that which, in those everyday lives which we live with our gaze averted from ourselves, is at every moment being accomplished by vanity and passion and the intellect, and habit too, when they smother our true impressions, so as entirely to conceal them from us, beneath a whole heap of verbal concepts and practical goals which we falsely call life… Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs . . .
--IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME vi, 298, 299-300
Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.
"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.
At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said. –MSNBC, LIVE SCIENCE, Oct. 12, 2007
PROUST [to Puritan]: You match the spirit you comprehend, but it doesn’t match reality. The reality is that human beings ultimately desire to achieve rapture. You are to be congratulated that your discipline has forced humanity to unprecedented levels of productivity. But don’t fool yourself about the situation you have created. If human beings cannot break through to the Paradise I have described, they will embrace any third-rate unmediated experience which approximates It.
And it is these third-rate approximations of Paradise which underpin your consumption economy and its concomitant coarseness. Your production-oriented capitalism has had to use mediating tools like instrumental rationality and language. Yet it also has learned that to promote consumption, it must shed mediating materials in favor of tools involving less or no mediation. In general, this means that language-based culture yields to image-based culture. However, as television gives way to computers, image-based media give way to more thorough and virtual media (where images combine with sound, and maybe taste, smell and touch). Media, in short, becomes more immediate and less mediated.
And so the people in your socioeconomic order abandon language and become more and more stupid. Clever images manipulate them to consume pallid images of Paradise, which resemble Paradise in that they are unmediated in form, but which are not equal to Paradise because they are insubstantial in content. Because the pallid images afford some concrete pleasure, your citizens will prefer them to language.
In addition to their happy abandonment of language, the people in your socioeconomic order are happily abandoning the complications involved in engaging other human beings. I know you want to accuse me of asocial, irresponsible solipsism. But as your economy (based on words) abandons words, so does your economy (based on human interaction) abandon human interaction. Look at what has been happening to the products your economy sells to its consumers! Not only do they abandon the inconvenience of words. They also abandon the inconvenience of other people. The enjoyment of music used to be an experience produced directly by one or more humans, enjoyed directly by one or more humans. Now music need involve only the manipulation of a machine. Similarly, theater used to be an experience produced directly by one or more humans, enjoyed directly by one or more humans. Movies got rid of the actual human actors. Radio and television eliminated the necessity of sitting around and dealing with other humans in consuming mechanical sounds and images. Recording devices now ensure that such consumption is utterly asocial. In the “old days” before the proliferation of cable TV channels and recording devices, societies could imitate some version of community with the simultaneous consumption of television “events” like Roots. Tivos and podcasts are only intensifying the trend towards solipsism. So now consumption of music, theater, or whatever—can occur in utter and total isolation from other live human beings.
But you need to acknowledge how much it is that humans actually WANT it this way. In books like Bowling Alone your sociologists whine about the decline of sociability in the United States. Well, it’s the result of capitalist technology responding to particular human preferences.
And thus it is that in the end, your wonderful society is coming to resemble nothing more than a row of happy pigs, each one enjoying his or her own particular and isolated trough.
…
Casell Bryan-Low and David Pringle have reported on wireless operators providing erotic content on cell phones. A Hong Kong manufacturer has created Vivienne, a “virtual girlfriend” who “won’t have real or cyber sex with her admirers,” but who will provide “exciting conversations about all sorts of things.” Keith Bradsher provides additional information and perspective:
Men, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend? Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one? . . .
Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars. She loves to be given virtual flowers and chocolates, and she can translate six languages if you travel overseas. She never undresses, although she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease who draws the line at anything beyond blowing kisses.
If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right. . .
Presumably the pornography industry is in the process of providing products that will surpass the profferings of Vivienne—if it has not already done so. EXTREME PROUST, sections 85 & 95
Oct. 13, 2007--WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current addition of American forces as a “desperate” move that would not achieve long-term stability.
“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country—NYT A1
Oct. 12, 2007—The American’s share of national income has hit a postwar record. The IRS said the wealthiest 1% earned 21.2% of all income In 2005; the bottom 50% earned 12.8%. -- WSJ A1
—Fischer and Hout argue that the amount of schooling a person receives now overshadows nativity, race, or income as the nation’s prime divide.—Andrew Hacker, NYRB 10-11-2007, p. 32
-- History does not end. Amidst the emergence of democratic functioning across the planet we should not forget that the oldest democracies---the United States, Great Britain, France---continue to evolve. Everything seems to indicate that the latter are transforming into oligarchical systems. . .what if democracy is merely the political superstructure of a particular cultural stage---simply mass literacy? . . Secondary education and especially higher education reintroduce the notion of inequality into the mental and ideological organization of developed societies. After a brief period of hesitation and scruples, the more highly educated wind up believing that they are truly superior. In developed countries a new class is emerging that comprises roughly 20 per cent of the population in terms of sheer numbers but controls about half of each nation’s wealth. This new class has more and more trouble putting up with the constraint of universal suffrage. [16] Emmanuel Todd, last year’s Nietzsche card
Oct. 12, 2007—Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has hired a high-powered Washington lawyer to represent him in investigations of mismanagement of the Justice Department. –NYT, A18—guilty, guilty, GUILTY!!
--Owing to higher tax rates, individual Norwegians retain considerably less of what they earn. In return, they pay much less or nothing at all for health care, higher education, and other amenities that Americans have to buy. They also use their affluence to purchase more leisure, by choosing to wok fewer hours. Less tangibly, their taxes help to build a society that imprisons only a tenth as many of its citizens as we do. –Hacker, NRYB, 10-11-2007, p. 31—goddam gay faggot blonde people!!
Oct. 12, 2007—Al Gore awarded Nobel Peace Prize. —goddam gay faggot blonde people!!
The US military commander in Iraq increased criticism of Iran. General Petraeus accused Iran of inciting violence in Iraq and alleged Tehran’s ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Qods force. He also said Iran was giving milita groups advanced weaponry and guidance. WSJ, Oct. 8, A1
In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran...The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq. ... General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, in his report to Congress in September, buttressed the Administration’s case against Iran. “None of us, earlier this year, appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq’s leaders all now have greater concern,” he said. Iran, Petraeus said, was fighting “a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.” ... A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.”—Seymour Hersch, NEW YORKER, Oct. 8, 2007
Oct. 5, 2007—Guilty Plea Upheld, but Craig Won’t Quite Senate.—NYT A1, Not gay
--The Boy Scouts of America said Thursday that a painted plastic badge worn by some of its youngest scouts was being voluntarily recalled after a test revealed high levels of lead in the paint.—NYT A18; Scouts not gay, China gay.
--The Iraqi government … has thwarted investigations into corruption at the top levels of his administration, including probes of his relatives, while nearly four dozen anti-corruption employees or their family members have been brutally murdered, the former top Iraqi corruption investigator told a House panel yesterday.—WSH Post, A16—investigator must be gay
--the United States [stands out as] one of only four—the others being Libering, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland—with no paid family leave. NYT B6—USA never gay
A flaw involving the e-mail reply function for a daily antiterrorism bulletin led to a flood of millions of messages. … more than 2.2 million messages nationwide … clogged the e-mail accounts of government and private experts on domestic security, including the operators of an Illinois nuclear power station. NYT , Oct. 4, 2007, A1, A23
Conversion of the jews.—Republicans grow skeptical on free trade. WSJ A1
666.—Bush vetoed a bill that would have boosted funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over 5 years. WSJ A1
Ten horned dragon.—Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations. DOJ said to back harshest tactics after declaring torture “abhorrent”. In Dec. 2004 DOJ ceclares torture “abhorrent,” in Feb. 2005, with arrival of Gonzo, secret memo issued authorizing torture.—NYT A1
Satan falls from heaven.—Domenici (R-NM) said to be retiring. Domenici remains the subject of an inquiry by the ethics committee about the propriety of a call he made to the US attorney for New Mexico, asking about the status of political sensitive indictments. Mr. Iglesias was among those later dismissed [for not prosecuting ACORN, but hey, Domenici at least wasn’t being gay] NYT A18
The lazy slut from Babylon.—Subdued Thompson Stirs few sparks on stump. “Can I have a round of applause?” he asks one crowd.—NYT A1
--10-3-07—Iraqis need a year to control Baghdad US General [Odierno] says—NYT A8
--He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster, Nietzsche said…. Once there was the military industrial complex. Now we have the mercenary industrial complex. Mr. Prince [Blackwater CEO] a former intern to the first President Bush … is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family from Michigan. He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian groups. —Maureen Dowd NYT A25
--America’s heady deficit with the rest of the world has long looked like an accident waiting tohappen. With the dollar’s recent slide,it doesn’t look like it’s waiting anymore. WSJ C1
--9-29-2007—[Federal prosecutor Roy Atchison] was arrested getting off a plane in Detroit on Sept. 16 … The authorities there said he was carrying a doll and petroleum jelly, and that he had arranged with an undercover agent to have sex with a 5-year old girl. …His is considered one of the most conservative US attorney’s offices in the country. –NYT A8 –like the bear, he is not gay
