and so ends the first half of Year 2008...

June 30, 2008—Amind US policy disputes, Qaeda grows in Pakistan NYT A1

--US Advised Iraqi ministry on oil deals NYTA1

--School officials in Terrebone Parish are considering a policy that would require all commencement speeches to be in English. NYT A17 [how will they be able to tell?]

June 29, 2008—They are Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian, an Alvarez here, a Crowley there, with a Frumkin, a Strabone, an O’Male and who knows what else, all with at least one thing in common: They have semiofficially adopted the middle name Hussein in support of their preferred presidential candidate. NYT A1,A13 [I am Spartaus...]

June 28/29, 2008--With one trading day left in the month, the Dow is now down 10.2% in June, the worst performance for the month of June since 1930. WSJ A8

--June 28, 2008—There’s a 50/50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says. SBT A6

USA trumps Spain!

June 26, 2008—A Spanish parliamentary committee voiced its support for great apes’ rights to life and freedom, opening the door for Spain’s legislature to become the first national one to call for such rights for nonhumans. NYT A8 [well, not really, the USA has been giving extra votes to GWBush voters since Year 2000...]

June 25/22

June 25, 2008—The centerpiece of the Senate package is a resume-refinancing plan aimed at stemming the tide of more than 8, 000 new foreclosures a day that lenders are filing across the country. –NYT A1

— Justice Department officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in elite recruiting programs in recent years, tapping law school graduates with Federalist Society membership or other conservative credentials over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés, an internal report found Tuesday. The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s own inspector general and its ethics office, portrays a clumsy effort by senior Justice Department screeners to weed out candidates for career positions whom they considered “leftists,” using Internet search engines to look for incriminating information or evidence of possible liberal bias. One rejected candidate from Harvard Law School worked for Planned Parenthood. Another wrote opinion pieces critical of the USA Patriot Act and the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. A third applicant worked for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and posted an unflattering cartoon of President Bush on his MySpace page. Another applicant, a student at the top of his class at Harvard who was fluent in Arabic, was relegated to the “questionable” pile because he was a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that advocates civil liberties. And another rejected candidate said in his essay that he was “personally conflicted” about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants. NYT A1

--“Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ‘70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay.” Leinberger, cited at NYT A18

--June 22, 2008—If an American first lady, or would-be first lady, described herself as a “tamer of men” and had a “man-easting” past filled with naked pictures, Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, sultry prone CD covers, breaking up marriages, bragging that she believes in polygamy and polyandry rather than monogamy, and having a son with a married philosopher whose father she had an affair with, it would take more than an appearance on “The View” the sweeten her image. It’s hard to imagine the decibel level of Fox News if Michelle Obama put out a CD this summer, as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is, with songs featuring lyrics like “I am a child/despite my 40 years/despite my 30 lovers/a child; and this song, “Ma came”: “You are my junk/more deadly than Afghan heroin/more dangerous than Colombian white.../My guy, I roll him up and smoke him.” ... [Carla] charmed George and Laura Bush ... and then sitting next to the American president and keeping him entertained with a spirited conversation in English, one of her three languages and sort of his one language. Dowd, NYT WK 12

June 18

June 18, 2007—More than 10,000 dealerships, nearly all of which have sold American brands, have closed since 1970 .. NYT C10

--The revamped SAT, expanded three years ago to include a writing test, predicts college success no better than the old test, and not quite as well as a student’s high school grades, according to studies released Tuesday by the College Board, which owns the test. –NYT, A20

the empire wheezes

HARPERS, JULY 2008—Kevin Phillips: A major Republican weakness that doesn’t get noticed is their inability, despite all their macho muscle-flexing, to bring foreign wars to a successful finish. Our whole involvement in the Middle East, from the 1970s through the 2020s or however long it goes on, is going to do for the United States what two world wars did for Britain. It is a disaster. But it never gets examined in this way. ... Luke Mitchell: It seems that all decadent societies decline in the end. That is the story we know. But there have to be at least one or two that had a second act, when the people got it together. KP: There is indeed a second act for leading world economic powers, after they shed the burden of hubris and grandiosity, of being the world policeman and world banker. After thirty or forty years of adjustment, they come back in a less grandiose form. The Spanish and the Dutch and the British are doing pretty well right now. But they did have huge problems witih post-imperial withdrawal symptoms. pp 37-8, 40 “Why the GOP Must Die”

waning days of empire

June 17, 2008—But in recent weeks, the fingers have been wagging in the other direction. Senior Chinese officials are publicly and loudly rebuking the Americans on their handling of the economy and defending their own more assertive style of regulation. NYT A1

weekend update, June 14/15

June 15, 2008—The fears my parents had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew. Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was.. J<>

June 15, 2008—The word “elite” is not a pejorative comment [in France]; it’s a compliment ... In Old Europe, they’ve moved on, assuming that the American president has done all the damage that he can do. The blazing hostility toward W. has faded to indifference and a sort of fatigued perplexity about les imbeciles de regime cowboy got into office, and how America could have put the world through all this craziness. – Dowd, NYT WK 12

June 14/15, 2008—Some investors believe that the renewed focus among US policy makers on stabilizing the dollar isn’t only aimed at taming broader inflation but also has a specific goal: namely, to knockdown sky-high oil prices. WSJ B1

June 11, 2008

6-11-008—Saved by Senate Republicans, oil companies dodged an attempt to hit them with a windfall profits tax. WSJA1 [whew! And who says Republicans are incompetent in times of crisis?]\

--“Bush is not even popular in the role of the enemy anymore,” wrote Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. NYT A6

--The European Union’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, delivered an unusually blunt rebuke to Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that business and governments use software based on open standards. NYT C8

6/6

June 6, 2008—With the economy soft and thousands of Philadelphians delinquent on their mortgages, Sheriff Green this spring refused to hold a court-ordered foreclosure auction. WSJ A1

--A long delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. NYT A1

June 5, 2008

June 5, 2008--Bush toldOlmert that Iran posed an "existential threat to peace" in White House tlaks with the Israeli prime minister. WSJ A1 [Sarkosy must have been teaching him Sartre]

--Left-wing groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and unions are already actively regisgtering new Democrats in battheground states. ... [Mr Obama's] allies Acorn and the NAACP pay a bounty for each new voter registered, so their workers often register people who don't exist or who are already registered. ...Karl Rove, WSJ, A19 [takes a crook to know a crook, Karl...]

a day late and/or a dollar short

June 4, 2008—Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, making a rare public declaration on currencies, said the dollar’s steep fall has lead to worrisome inflation and stressed the Fed’s vigilance on the issue. WSJ A1

full plate weekend update

June 1, 2008.”They think they give you a [IRS rebate] check to go out and spend some money, but it’s not enough, “ said Mr. Gonzales [a Miami wine salesman] “The dollar does buy anything anymore.” NYTA1 [Gonzlaes surely is an infiltrator from Castro’s Cuba...)

--a January 2007 survey ... found that 47% of born-again Christians ages 40 and under believed that “the political efforts of conservative Christians” posed a problem for America. NYT A17 [and the other 53% still love their jesus koolaid...]

--SEIU now spends 50% of its budget on organizing, up from 20%. NYT A20 [my goodness, a union that wants to organize?!?!]

May 31, 2008—The Huge Hybrid: A New Tesit on SUV’s finds few takers. NYT A1 [how f#$%^& stupid are these US automakers?]

--[Iowa] provides a small, advance view of what some economists predict will be a broader shortage of skilled workers in the next 20 or 30 years, as tens of millions of baby boomers retire from the workplace, and the economy produces more jobs than workers. NYT A1,A10

--Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is facing growing opposition to a proposed security agreement that would set out how long American forces and military bases stayed in Iraq. [these camel jockeys have no sense of gratitude]

--Vatican asserts rule that bars female priests. NYT A7 [it’s in the Bible, look it up!!]

--“The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors... You know, the truth is, I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not”—GWBush 1999—NYT A27 [who says our President isn’t a good ‘60s baby boomer?]

--According to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, there have been more than four times as many weather related disasters in the last 30 years than in the previous 75 years. The Us has experienced more of those disasters than any other country. ...[the delayed White House report] re-affirmed that the situation will probably get worse... hurricane season begins Sunday. NYT A27 [if jesus isn’t pissed, mother nature is...]

--FC Barcelona will play in Chicago on August 3, and Giants Stadium on August 6. [ALL the news isn’t TOTALLY bad...]

May 31, Jun3 1, 2008--Congress gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as compensation for losing Toledo and Gary [after the Toledo War of 1835] WSJW9

--The truth—as I see it—is that the previous seven years and four months of the Bush Administration have been such an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate that it’s very difficult to imagine how a self-identified Republican could try to position himself as a populist.—David Foster Wallace, WSJ W2 [there might be lack of imagination here..]

--Mr McClellan dwells on a point that all in government know, that day-to-d-ay governance is now focused on media manipulation, with a particular eye to “political blogs, popular web sites, paid advertising, talk radio” and news media in general. WSJ A11

May 30, 2008—“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people. Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” Religion without that indignation at political evil [Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel (1907-1972)] believed, was not religion at all.—WSJ W11

--President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government presented a draft bill that would scrap the 35-hour workweek ... Union officials said they were stunned by Mr. Sarkozy’s decision to do away with the 35-hour workweek because ina radio broadcast Tuesday he said he wouldn’t touch it. WSJ A9

--Riders Swamp Public Tranasit—WSJ

--Wholesale power prices in Texas have surged to new heights, confounding market officials and worrying regulators who see early signs that the situation could destabilize the state’s deregulated energy markets. [the laws of evolution apply only to California]

--The senators also invited the former British counterterrorism official Tom Parker to testify. While his tone was diplomatic, his message was in fact quite at odds with the conventional wisdom in the room. Parker insisted that the most important thing about the British approach was its determination to treat terrorism as a crime—NOT as an extraordinary military threat. ...The principal lesson we should learn ... was not the poverty of the law enforcement model in response to terrorism, but the absolute necessity of that model. NYRB 6-12-08, p. 68

May 30, 1968—After careful preparation the Gaullist launch their countermeasures, while the Left momentarily hesitates. In the evening a carefully arrange demonstration of about one million gather in the Place de la Concorde, having been given special petrol rations to get there, canting such slogans as “Cohn-Bendit to Dachau” and “Students to the gas ovens.” In many cities the demonstrations are more violent; Gaullists in fast moving cars attack factories, isolate workmen, and shoot at Left wing demonstrators. The alliance with the OAS (extreme Rightwing former supporters of French Algeria) elements is apparent. De Gaulle swiftly dissolves the National Assembly, announces new elections and names a new Government. [104]