have a nice weekend...

March 28, 2008—Assault by Iraq on Shiite Forces stalls in Basra—but Bush hails effort... NYT A1

--How is Pakistan different to Honduras?—insolent Paki to heroic Negroponte, NYT A8

--What do you know about our Chief Justice that we don’t know?—insolent Paki to heroic Negroponte, NYT A8

--...the most effective weapon on the war against terror is a people who have enforceable rights—insolent Paki to heroic Negroponte, NYT A8

--It is out of our profound respect for Jewish people that we seek to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them ... for ... salvation is only found in Jesus—World Evangelical Alliance NYT A13 [yall read it here first on Easter Sunday!...]

--Only a year ago James Cayne’s stake in Bear Stears was worth more than $1 billion. But on Thursday, Mr. Caye, the chairman of Bear, disclosed that he had sold all of his shares in the troubled investment bank this week for just $61 million. NYT C1

--Buyers’ Revenge: Trash the House after Foreclosure. WSJ A1

March 27, 2008

March 27, 2008—The past ten days will be remembered as the time the US government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse. WSJ A1

--On March 11, amid rumors that Bear Stearns Cos. Was in trouble, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said he has “comfort” with the amount of capital held by five of the largest investment banks, including Bear Stearns. Two days later, Bear sought emergency funding from the Federal Reserve. By March 16, the following Sunday, the brokerage firm had been sold to JP Morgan Chase & Co. in a government-backed fire sale. WSJ A6

--Iraq’s prime minister gave Basra gunmen and ultimatum. ... The violence raises the prospect factors credited for security gains may be evaporating. ... WSJ A1

--An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled Wednesday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw form the neighborhoods that form their base of power there. American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against he insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own behalf. NYT A1

puissance USA

March 26, 2008—The [Italian court] said that a peculiarity of American law—punitive damages—was so offensive to Italian notions of justice that it would not enforce the Alabama judgment. NYT A1

--In 2006, Dr. Claudia Henschke of Weill Corrnell Medical College jolted the cancer world with a study saying that 80 % of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through widespread use of CT scans. [The study was financed by a foundation which ] was financed almost entirely by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Ligget Group, maker of Ligget Select, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid cigarette brands. NYT A1

--The top State Dept. officials responsible for the alliance with Pakistan met with leaders of the new government on Tuesday, and received what amounted to a public dressing down from on of them... “If America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed...”NYT A7

--Four high tech electrical fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were sent to Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries, a mistake discovered only last week—a year and half after the erroneous shipment... NYT A9

--President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested Tuesday that a boycott o th opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics was a possibility, making him the first world leader to raise the prospect of punishing China over Tibet. NYT A9

--Western countries have failed to deliver $10 billion of nonmilitary assistance to Afghanistan over the last six years and the USA, by far the biggest donor, is responsible for half the shortfall... NYT A10

March 25, 2008

March 25, 2008.—Bush vowed the Iraq war’s outcome will merit the lives lost, a day after the US death toll rose to 4000. The US blamed Shiite militias for rocet attacks on the Green Zone. A government report concluded that returning military veterans earn less and have a harder time finding work than do civilians.—WSJ A1

--Al Copeland, founder of Popeye’s fried chicken, died Sunday. “His gaudy Christmas decorations, with more than a million lights, drew crowds to his home and a lawsuit from the neighbors.” NYHT C13

—301 days left until GWB returns to Texas

----Seeks nothing less than the intuitive revelation of universal truth—ART CRITICISM 101

March 24, 2008

March 24, 2008. I’m black and mad... Nothing makes [white people] more skittish than realizing that there are angry black people in their midst... guys such as Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus are paid to be mad. But, of course, white anger is seen as fundamentally reasoned and righteous, and Americans have an almost limitless capacity to forgive it when it isn’t... Imus was kicked off the airwaves for a racial insult he made against black women in May, but he was back at the mike in 6 month’s time; Limbaugh’s many transgressions hardly raise an eyebrow, including taunting Obama as “Barack, the magic Negro,”... William Buckley was eulogized as a genteel genius a few weeks ago, his sanctioning of Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1950s written off as a forgettable faux pas. Buckley’s real genius was dressing up white anger in the guise of intellect. Black anger is never seen as intellectual in nature, merely primal, and black public figures therefore have no such latitude (unless, of course, they’re in the conservative camp already, in which case they can rail to their heart’s content.) Erin Kaplan, LATimes SBT B7

--Efforts [by Circuit City] to cut expenses and improve results by reassigning some store employees and replacing 3000 higher-paid workers backfired last year as sales of high-margin home-theatre systems, warranties and accessories declined in the hands of a less-experienced staff. Instead of an expected upturn, the company now sees a “modest loss” for the fourth quarter that ended Feb. 29 and a pretax loss of between $100 million and $200 million for the full year. WSJ C2

Easter Weekend Update

March 23, 2008. New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades. NYT A14

March 23, 2008.When the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time on Feb. 26, 1993, President Bill Clinton flew to New York to be briefed on the attack and the response by city, state and federal authorities. According to newly released White House calendars of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s time as first lady, Mrs. Clinton stayed behind in Washington to attend a photo shoot with Parade magazine and a performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

March 23, 2008. In Iraq, Mr. McCain did not repeat his April 2007 mistake of touring a “safe” market while protected by a small army. (CNN tried to revisit that market last week, but the idea was vetoed as too risky by the network’s security advisers). NYT WK 9.

March 23, 2008.For French women, being sexy has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. Arielle Dombasle, the actress and cabaret singer married to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, dared to expose her breasts on the cover of Paris Match and took off her clothes in a song-and-dance revue at Crazy Horse in Paris. Some people feel she tries too hard. But give the lady some credit. She’s turning 50 and has a Barbie-doll body.

A 600-page sociological study of sexuality in France released this month concluded that 9 out of 10 women over 50 are sexually active. The sexiest French women seem naturally skilled in the art of moving, smiling and flirting.

Chic French women prefer to peel and polish rather than paint their faces. Too much makeup, they say, makes a woman seem older, or worse, “vulgaire.” “The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “But cosmetics are easier to buy.”

French women spend close to 20 percent of their clothing budgets on lingerie. But you also have to know how to wear it. When the Galeries Lafayette department store inaugurated its 28,000-square-foot lingerie shop in 2003, it offered free half-hour lessons by professional striptease artists. NYT WK 3

June 2, 2007. The American economy seems to have shaken out of its slumber. NYT B1

2003. [USA] adventurism is not just military, it is also financial… At the present time, however, the principal failure of the US is ideological and diplomatic. Far from being on the verge of world domination, America is steadily losing control throughout the world…. As for George W Bush and his neoconservative helpers, they will go down in history as the grive diggers of the American empire. --Todd, AFTER EMPIRE[xix, xxiii]

1999. The Lord decides to send down Cupid to shoot [Henry] Faust at a big St Patrick’s Day Easter ... Bunny festival in South Bend on Easter Sunday. Henry falls in love with Margaret, the poorest, nicest and most beautiful girl in South Bend. ... ‘she’ has a friend ... Martha, the most sophisticated girl in Indiana ... Margaret has Henry’s child, and crazed with grief and shame, drowns it in a creek. ... Margaret is convicted of murder and sentenced to death at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. --Randy Newman’s FAUST

Gooder Saturday--the Easter Legend

Dear Campers:

Some of the goys amongst you have asked “Hey how come this camp has so many jews in it? Wasn’t this camp supposed to have wit, brains and good taste?” Well, yes, of course, that is rather the point, but it is also because the jews are such a clean people that we try to keep them around in hopes of spreading good habits of personal hygiene. Anyone with any doubts concerning this point should simply check under the underpants the of nearest jewish lad sitting nearby. As to the jewish lassies, they normally have a sign down there saying “Closed During Menses,” which is almost as good.

But before all you jewish boys and girls get too snotty, just remember that you’re damned to hell—which is one other reason we have you here in Camp Nietzsche, i.e., we are hoping to save your souls. So take seriously the following EASTER LEGEND, in part because you don’t want to spend eternity like a KFC chicken wing, frying in a lake of fire; and in part because if we goys can’t get something like 100,000 of you signed up on “our team,” Jesus isn’t going to come back to earth and institute his happy reign over our planet. Don’t be self-centered about this, think about some people outside of “your tribe” for a change, please...

EASTER LEGEND

Is there anything less tolerable than a new, first time parent? They’re shoving photos of their lousy infants into your face at every opportunity, and they act as if their baby was the first exceptional thing to have happened since chimpanzees dropped out of the trees and started to walk. And then they bore you with their stupid stories of how junior can say MA or Tillie can do advanced calculus and she’s only three months old...

If you think humans are bad on this point, think of how the gods take this phenomenon and make it exponentially WORSE. When Yaweh, for example, impregnated Sophia, and she produced Jesus, the rest of gods found the new parents to be utterly insufferable. Zeus and Hera would run away the moment they saw either of them coming around the corner. Thor and Freya started making jokes behind their backs, but told them loud enough so the new parents could hear—in hopes of finally shutting them up. “Jesus looks like a monkey,” “I think he’s a retard,” and so on.

Sophia finally started putting her photos into an album for herself, but Yaweh was pissed. He had a thing about being under-appreciated, and so he decided to send Jesus to earth. After all, earthlings were made in the image of the gods, maybe he could get some appreciation there. And that is how we got Christmas.

Unfortunately, Yaweh sent Jesus into an occupied country, and if you want a sense of that, pretend you were a native in El Savador in the 1980s, or a native of Iraq right now. This means the quislings and occupying army took Jesus and tortured him to death.

“Dad, get me the fuck OUT of here!!” cried Jesus. “Beam me UP! Beam me UP!” was a message he continually punched into his cell phone.

So Yaweh took Jesus back home. It took a couple days, the angels thought they were working for a USA transportation system. But it was done.

And that’s how we got Easter.

Jesus’ gay friend John (the one he loved a lot) told everybody else that Jesus would be coming back. When Sophie asked Jesus about it, Jesus is said to have said “My, my, my, once bitten, twice shy, babe!”

And that’s how Great White got a hit a couple decades ago.

In the meantime, John’s message got messed up over time. Instead of fucking other men, people who said they knew what following Jesus meant started fucking little boys—or other men’s wives. And they got paid for it.

And as for when Jesus is coming back, well, they blame the delay on the jews who refuse to convert...

Good Friday--updated sin checklist

“While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a social resonance,” Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti told L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican City’s local paper. Bloomberg News parsed his remarks into a clip-n-savable list:

1. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control

2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating Poverty

March ides, 2008

March 20, 2008. The first number is the state’s report re: percentage of high school students who graduate, the second is the DOE calculation for the state: MS, 87, 63; NM, 86, 65; AL, 81, 66; SC, 74, 60; MI, 86, 73; TN, 80, 69; NV, 68, 56; NY 77, 65; CT, 92, 81; KS, 90, 79.—NYT A20

--June 2005: Cheney declares insurgency to be in its “last throes” NYT A11

--CNN poll puts GWB approval rate at 31%, a new low...

WASHINGTON — At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government. Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues. March 19, 2008 NYT

--there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them. … Our pre-eminent security priority -- underscored repeatedly by the president -- is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken. The United States could certainly defeat the Iraqi military and destroy Saddam's regime. But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive -- with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy -- and could as well be bloody. -- Brent Scowcroft, 8-15-2002, WSJ

--A rich enemy excites their cupidity, a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. To robbery, butchery, and rapine, they give the lying name of “government”; they create a desolation and call it peace.—speech attributed to Caledonian rebel Calgacus [by Tacitus, around 100 AD]. NYRB 28, 4-3-08

--Orwell’s insight was that the italicized phrases are colorless by design and not by accident. He saw a deliberative method in the imprecision of texture. The inventors of this kind of idiom meant to suppress one kind of imagination, the kind that yields an image of things actually done or suffered; and they wanted to put in its place an imagination that trusts to the influence of the larger powers behind the scenes. Totalitarianism depends on the creation of people who take satisfaction in such trust; and totalitarian minds are in part created (orwell believed) by the ease and invisibility of euphemism. … Slight uptick in violence is a coinage new to the war in Iraq, and useful for obvious reasons. It suggests a remote perspective in which 50 or 100 deaths, from 3 or 4 suicide bombings in a day, hardly cause a jump in the needle that measures such things. The phrase has a laconic sound, in a manner properly associated with men who are used to violence and keep a cool head. Indeed, it wsa generals at briefings—Kimmitt, Hertling, and Petraeus—who gave currency to a phrase that implies realism and the possession of strong personal shock absorbers. NYRB 28-9, 4-3-08

--Indeed, the single greatest victory of the Bush administration may be the belief shared by most Americans that the rise of radical Islam—so-called Islamofascism—has nothing to do with any previous actions by the United States… The protective silence regarding the 725 American bases worldwide, and the emotions with which these are regarded by the people who live in their shadow, cover up a clue in the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/1 were Saudis. The presence of thousands of US troops on Arabian soil was hotly resented… NYRB 30, 4-3-08
--..in these books, the idea of joining the military to defend America or uphold its values is largely absent. Rather, these soldiers signed up to escape dead-end jobs, failed relationships, broken families, bills, toothaches, and boredom. The armed forces offered a haven from the struggles of life in modern-day America, a place to gain security and skills, discipline and self- esteem… [the military] consists mainly of young men and women who, raised in working- and lower-middle-income families, yearn to make it into the middle class….In Canada and much of Europe, higher education is heavily subsidized by the state, and the tuition is nominal if not free. …In America, we’ve elected to put our money elsewhere. In the 1990s … New York State faced a choice between spending on prisons and spending on higher education. It chose the former. As a result, New York tody has state-of-the-art prisons and run-down campuses. …In today’s America, the hunger for a college degree is so great that many young men and women are willing to kill—and risk being killed—to get one. NYRB 34-36, 4-3-08

--The night can sweat with terror as before / We pierced our thoughts into philosophy,/ And planned to bring the world under a rule / Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.—WB Yeats “1919” NYRB 38, 4-3-08

March 17, 2008—In the credit market panic that began in August, we have now reached the point of maximum danger: A global run on the dollar that could become a rout…. The Fed’s main achievement o far has been to stir a global lack of confidence in the greenback … The Bush Administration is also not helping confidence in the dollar… The Fed needs to restore its monetary credibility, or today’s panic could become tomorrow’s crash.—WSJ A16 [it’s an editorial, folks!]

March 13, 2008—only 28% of Americans know that nearly 4000 US troops have died since the Ira war began, a survey found. WSJ A1

weekend update, March 16, 2008

3-14-2008—The dollar hit a record low against the euro and feel briefly to less than 100 yen for the first time since 1995. WSJ A1

3-14-2008--Severed fingers of five contractors kidnapped more than two years ago were sent to the US military in Iraq. WSJ A1

3-14-2008--Caryle Group, the powerful Washington-based buyout firm, has long been known for its gold-plated connections. Is chairman is Louis Gerstner, the legendary former IBM chief, and it once employed both British Prime Minister John Major and former President GWHBush. But connections don’t mean much i n today’s credit crunch. WSJ1

3-15-2008—When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible... The cheating was his decision to repair what is damaged and to feed himself where he is starving.—Laura Schlessinger, talk radio psychologist (SBT A4) so it WAS Hillary’s fault!! You read it here first!!

3-15/16-2008—I think that Mugabe will stay in power because he will do absolutely everything to keep power. A very very bad man, Mugabe....people who met him said now, this is a very intelligent man... Somewhere along the road he went bad, people can argue about why ... his lust for power ... has destroyed everything else he’s had. –Doris Lessing, WSJ A11

3-16-2008—life with fewer market norms and more social norms would be more satisfying, creative, fulfilling and fun. –MIT professor Dan Ariely (NTBR 21)

3-16-2008—the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard—HL Mencken (NYTBR, 21)

3-16-2008—I never thought I wanted to farm, but It feels like an honest living... Amherst Grad Benjamin Shute (not related to Dwight..)—NYTStyle 1

March 16, 1968. US soldiers gun down at least 300 civilian men women and children in My Lai.

one success after another

March 12, 2008—Adm. William Fallon, the top US commander in the Mideast, resigned abruptly amid disagreements with the Bush administration over Iran and Iraq strategy. WSJ A1

--Violence across Iraq killed at least 42 people. THE US raised to eight the number of soldiers reported killed Monday, making that the deadliest day for US troops in six months. Ibid.

The Pentagon said up to 90% of the foreign fighters in Iraq cross from Syria, despirte counterterrorism efforts. Ibid.

Iraq’s oil revenues are soaring but Baghdad still relies on the US for its spending, auditors told Congress. Ibid.

--Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, may revalue its currency or end its peg to the dollar as soon as next month.. WSJ A17

March 11, 2008

3-11—08—A rising tide of inflation pressure around the globe is putting more stress on the beleaguered US dollar, as central banks from China to Chile fight rising prices by letting their currencies strengthen. ... the United Arab Emirates is re-examining its crrency’s peg to the dollar... WSJ A1

--in about 7.59billion years from now Earth will be dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death... NYT D1

SPITZER AND PROUST

--The neighbors who are separated from me by a partition make . . . love every day with a frenzy that makes me jealous. When I think that in my case this sensation is weaker than that obtained from drinking a glass of cold beer, I envy those people who can cry out in such a way that the first time I thought a murder was taking place. . . —Proust (Tadie, 695)

--One is tempted to observe that while the French seem more liberal in amative matters, the opposite appears true of the English. The irony is the degree to which many English writers who prove so expert in the mediating media of language also prove unsettling in the personal media of their love lives. In other words, if the point of art is to provide access to rapture, one would think that an artist is sensitive to ascertaining rapture, and competent in employing media to recapitulate rapture. Yet English writers are constrained by both their media (language) and their cultures (sexually prudish). The cause, effect, or correlation, seems to be an eruption in their personal lives: either their erotic intensity feeds their art, and/or their art does not suffice to satisfy their erotic intensities. If nothing else, it makes an interesting parlour game to mark the heterodox sexual behaviors of authors who now populate the orthodox canon of English literature. A quick glance through The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature shows that Byron became a “constant companion of his half-sister Augusta,” as well as attaching himself later to a married woman (Teresa, Countess Guiccioli)(85-86). Shelley left a collapsing marriage for a “triangular relationship” with Mary Godwin and her step-sister (531). Charles Dickens found the young actress Ellen Ternan preferable to his wife Catherine (159). George Eliot “joined H. H. Lewes in a union without legal form (he was already married) that lasted until his death” (183). Swinburne demonstrated preoccupations with de Sade and masochism (566). Wilde was gay, and so, it seems, were Forster and Auden (29, 216, 633). D. H. Lawrence eloped with the wife of one of his professors (328). Rebecca West had an illegitimate child with H. G. Wells (628). Even the saintly C. S. Lewis enjoyed sadism in his sex (Wilson, 49-50, 57, 272).—EXTREME PROUST sec. 40

--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. –EXTREME PROUST, sec. 85

toll, tide, roll

3-10-08—Socialists win in Spain, get clear mandate. WSJ A3

--French Socialists Appear to make gains in local elections. NYT NYT A10

--Germany’s neo-socialist party Die Linke, heir of East German Communism, is inching closer to power as politics shifts to the left in the EU’s most populous country. ... [The party’s best known leader] Oskar Lafontaine ... used to be head of the Social Democrats. ... On German television last week, Mr. Lafontaine spoke fondly of the days when the German state owned more industries. ... Mr Lafontaine declined to be interviewed for this article unless his comments were published in their entirety and unabridged. ... WSJ A10

--Democrats take Hastert’s seat in Illinois NYT A11

--Southern Baptists saying previous positions on climate change “too timid.” NYT A11

Musharraf foes reach an accord to cut his power; show of Pakistan unity; Judges to be Reinstated—Deal is Setback to White House .NYT A1

March 8/9 weekend update & historical commemoration

--“I have read parts of a book, but never a full book. I attempted the wrong sort of book.”—Paul Raymond, British erotic entrepreneur NYT A13 [UK Hugh Hefner equivalent] 3-8-2008

--Mr. Bush confided to a friend a few months ago, as he predicted a Giuliani win, that he’ll eventually come out and campaign for the nominee big time. Talk about throwing the drowning man an anvil. –Peggy Noonan, WSJ A14 3/8/9-2008

--...there’s something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power ... people who don’t want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end.—Christopher Hitchens, WSJ A14 3/8/9-2008

--Glenn Beck of CNN asked the Rev. John Hagee, a conservative evangelical, what the odds are that Mr. Obama is the Antichrist. NYT WK13

--I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian. – Martin Luther, ibid.

March 8-9, 1968. Warsaw U. students clash with police, shouting “Down with censorship”” and Long live Czechoslovakia!”

March 9, 1968. Student demonstrations in Nancy calling for modernization of curriculum and reduction in size of classes. Worker demonstrations in Nancy against unemployment

March 6, 2008

3-6-08—Oil surged ... to a record close of $104.52 a barrel... OPEC blamed soaring oil prices on the weak US dollar and “mismanagement” of the US economy. WSJ A1

--The FBI revealed new instances of agents using improper methods to obtain personal data on Americans. –WSJ A1

--Euro hits [yet another new] high against dollar WSJ C14

--When [a Texas school district passed a Bible curriculum which postulated the story of creation, Noah, and his ark, as historical fact] the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, Shannon Baker, celebrated the decision in an e-mail message which read in part, “Take that, you dang heathens!” NYT A17

--Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party official s who described the findings of emergency internal audits. NYT A25

lawmakers guns and money

3-5-08—China announced a further sharp increase in military spending on Tuesday, a day after the US renewed is warning that a lack of openness surrounding the rapid buildup of China’s armed forces posed a threat to stability in Asia. NYT A6 [Chinese threaten to foreclose on mortgage on Pentagon]

--[Arizona republican State Senator] has sponsored a bill ... that would allow people ... to carry firearms at public colleges and universities. ... She initially wanted her bill to cover all public schools kindergarten and up... NYT, A10 [Chinese will NOT conquer Arizona....buy it maybe...]

40 years ago...

March 2, 1968. Demonstrations in Rennes and Besancon over student residential rights.

March 1, 1968. A bill restricting the immigration of Asian British citizens to Britain becomes law, to curb immigration o0f 200,000 Asians from Kenya, where noncitizens are being deprived of jobs.

Feb. 29, 1968. Kerner Commission cites white racism as chief cause of black violence and riots.

Jan. 30, 1968—Tet offensive begins. “You should have lost that war. We never lost a battle, and you never won one," said Westmoreland, to which Giap replied: "This is true. It is also irrelevant."

Jan. 9, 1968—Sweden grants asylum to US sailors who deserted in 1967

Jan. 5, 1968—Boston grand jury indicts Dr. Spock and Rev. Coffin for conspiracy to resist draft.

dollars and sense

3-4-08—Oil edged past a 28 year old record and gold approached $1000 an ounce as concerns about inflation and energy spurred a flight into hard assets. Crude hit $103.95 in intraday trading before closing at $102.45, up 61 cents. Gold settled at a record $981.50. ... The dollar briefly hit [another] record low against the euro. WSJ A1

--[Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz] believes the overall costs of the [Iraq] war ... will reach $3 trillion. ... “We could have but Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century.” [Vice Chairmen of Goldman Sachs International Robert Hormats] said “that the money spent on the way each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14, 000 more police officers. ... “taxes have never been cut during a major American war. For example, Presdient Eisenhower resisted pressure from Senate Repubicans for a tax cut during the Korean war.” NYT A25

--[GOP candidate for Indiana 2d district] Zirkle suggests that Americans consider segregating the country by race. SBT a1

weekend up date 3-2-08

--Iran offers $1 billion loan for Iraq projects. NYT, 3-1-08, A8

--[Fort Wayne] Bush aide [liaison to the social and religious conservatives] resigns over plagiarism in columns he wrote [discovered by Fort Wayne blogger]-- NYT, 3-1-08, A8

--Attorney general Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected referring contempt citations against President Bush’s chief of staff and former counsel to a federal grand jury. Mr. Mukasey said they had committed no crime. Mr. Mukasey said the chief of staff, Joshua Bolton, and the former counsel, Harriet E. Miers, were right in refusing to provide Congress with White House documents or to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors. NYT 3-1-08, A14

tired old Europe (again)

March 1, 2208—In a surprising victory, Northrop Grumman Corp and the parent company of Europe’s Airbus won a contract worth up to $40 billion to build the US Air Force’s next fleet of refueling tankers. The Air Force’s decision deals a major blow to Boeing Co., while giving Europe’s largest defense company a landmark foothold in the US military market. WSJ A1

--Meanwhile, the falling dollar has another, underreported and underappreciated effect: It makes US shares much cheaper for foreign investors. This should attract more foreign buyers in due course—pushing [stock] shares back up. WSJ B1