New Horizons

Well, here I am again, back at New Horizons in Anaheim, exactly a year to the date that I was here before!

The flight down yesterday was uneventful. The plane was a Southwest 737, in AZ Grand Canyon colors, with a *swoosh!* wing tip. The airport was uncrowded and unrushed (is the post 9/11 fever dying out, have all the passengers fled, or was it just a slow time?). Kids in the back of the plane made a lot of noise counting down the takeoff roll. I would have fallen asleep just before landing, but the kids started up again, counting down the landing touchdown.

The rent-a-car drive from the airport was weird. My eyesight is so bad now (I have an optometrist appointment for about a week from now), and it's impacting my driving: I can't read the signs. Plus, I have a totally unwarranted confidence in my ability to negotiate the streets of unfamiliar cities (which got me in trouble at Christmas in Las Vegas). Plus, I rarely plan ahead and don't look at maps. Unsurprisingly, I ended up on the wrong road, instead of taking Highway 55 to Tustin, I took the 405 to Long Beach. I drove all over Orange County, transitioning eventually to the 605. All these city names - Westminster, Artesia, Cerritos, Hawaiian Gardens - and I don't know where the freak I am! But after a while, I figured it out. Finally stopped and looked at a map. Drove two to three times as far as I had to to find the hotel. The Marriott Towne Suites are exactly the same as last year. I am a "Platinum Guest," whatever the hell that is. I get two free Milano wafers and a bottle of Dasani purified water. Sweet!

Met a fellow student named Austin Kerr, who lives in Davis and works at EDAW, just two blocks away from Sierra, directly across J street from the Subway Restaurant (my most famous rut of all: where I've eaten lunch almost every day since 1997). Sometimes you have to travel far to meet your neighbors!



I like this tree just outside New Horizons (a picture of the same tree a year ago is on the blog)


A picture of the Metrolink train (similar picture as a year ago).


Springtime in Anaheim - a "Painted Lady" butterfly?

Disannoyland

Looks like it's time to go to Anaheim for two days. The purpose is to learn the workings of a computer program called HARP. I'm not too keen on this class or this trip, but maybe there will side benefits. A chance to get some sleep for a change. A chance to visit that dinner theater in Tustin. An opportunity to visit Deva's, maybe. See what's going on in the Southland. Catch some rays. Learn about the hazardous interface between toxics modeling and dispersion modeling. Get more work tasks. Like that's what I really need these busy days.

I'll try to blog while I'm down there, but if I don't, at least I'll have stories when I get back.

Hotel Rwanda Review

An excellent review of a superb and memorable film:

One of the most remarkable things about Hotel Rwanda, then, is that the movie is not a sermon--or at least not only a sermon. Its backdrop may be this recent history of African horror and Western disgrace but in the foreground it tells a tale intended less to shame than to inspire, that of Paul Rusesabagina, a real-life luxury hotel manager who used his wits, connections, and sheer decency to save more than 1,200 Tutsi and Hutu refugees from the carnage that claimed the rest of his country.

Mountain Biking...

...Copper Canyon, haunt of the Tarahumaras.

Anguish

In a corner of Red-State Kansas.

What Is He Thinking?

Strange story:

...Finkelstein is putting together a "Stop Her Now" campaign designed around Swift-Boat style anti-Hillary charges.

It won't be the first time that Finkelstein has led the attack against a Democratic candidate: again and again in his career, the reclusive advisor has made "liberal" a dirty word as he's bashed and smeared his clients' opponents. But Finkelstein's anti-Hillary campaign will be his first since the right-wing partisans who fund his work found out this little truth about Finkelstein: In December, he got married -- to another man.

Limelight

Interesting stuff, among the things posted on Drudge - zapping fruit flies with mind-controlling lasers. Orwell would be impressed:

Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells, researchers say they were able to make the flies jump, walk, flap their wings and fly.

Even headless flies took flight when researchers stimulated the correct neurons, according to the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Cell.

Scientists say the study could ultimately help identify the cells associated with psychiatric disorders, overeating and aggressiveness.

Biologists have long known that an electrical stimulus can trigger muscle response, but this approach used focused beams of light to stimulate neurons that would have been impossible to study using electrodes.

Such a Fate for a Cheerleader

From the Carpetbagger Report, regarding George W. Bush's recent trip to Italy:

Let me get this straight, many Catholic pilgrims were booing — at the pope’s funeral — at the very sight of the president on a TV screen. Want to talk about unpopular? That’s unpopular.

Sin City

Went and saw "Sin City" last night. I was attracted to the talk on the "Charlie Rose Show": cutting-edge film-noir animation. I forgot that Quentin Tarantino's inclusion in the project meant just one thing: violence. Stupid violence, funny violence, tedious violence, colorful violence, good violence, bad violence, and regular, old bruising violence. Can't remember much now except the blood and the stylized evil of the thing.

When Nature Gets Rambunctious

Fun story:

It's interesting to read the story behind the photos. This occurred on April 28th, 1979.

The river is the Tombigbee River and this happened to be the record high water ever for that area. The towboat you see coming down on the bridge is the Motor Vessel Cahaba owned by Warrior Gulf Navigation out of Mobile, Alabama. Warrior Gulf is a subsidiary of Pittsburgh Steel.

Didn't Realize

Max's Opera Cafe closed at the end of last year! Andee Thorpe, a Max's alumnus, says it's supposed to reopen downtown, though, hopefully later this year.

Wide Load

This afternoon, I washed Cloudy the Rabbit (in anticipation of her visit to the vet this week) and also washed Sparky, and put them both out to dry in the afternoon sun. I heard a fuss in the backyard, though: it sounded like two upset blue jays spitting and hissing at a cat. Instead, it was two baby possums in distress, one in my yard and one in the yard next door, calling out for help. They had both fallen off Mama Possum, who was busy balancing on the fence top, with two of her remaining babies clinging on her back. Mama Possum was slowly pacing and turning around on the high, narrow beam of the fence top, endangering the safety her two remaining passengers.

Even though possums are a possible danger to Cloudy the Rabbit, I decided to help Mama Possum through this particular crisis. Even though I might regret my acts later, it seemed like the right thing to do. The babies looked really cute (not quite like last year's scraggly, adolescent possum).

Using a dust pan, I collected the baby possum in my yard and returned it to Mama's back, then went into the yard next door and tried to so the same with that baby possum. Baby possum lost its grip and fell again, however, this time in my yard, so I crossed back into my yard and tried again to help out, this time successfully. Then I heard another cry from next door: there was yet another baby possum in distress in the next door neighbor's yard. So, I crossed back over and put the baby back on a relieved Mama Possum. She was sure carrying a wide load: four big babies on her back, and a fifth big baby stuffed in her pouch!

By the time I left for Saturday ballet class, the back yard was a picture of bucolic bliss: wet Cloudy, miserable and suspicious, was trying to warm herself in the sun under the birch tree, and clueless Sparky, barking at phantoms, still hadn't figured out there was even one possum nearby (much less six). Mama Possum seemed to be eyeing Cloudy from the fence top, perhaps with hunger, or envy for Cloudy's carefree single life. Mama Possum was slowly changing direction yet again on the fence top (a really, really bad idea under the circumstances), and from somewhere in the yard next door, I heard again the bleating of a baby possum (presumably having fallen yet again from Mama's back).

Rafael Bonachela Interview

Oh, he's Spanish! I thought he was Italian!

A Surprise Arrest

A disturbing local story:

A 22-year-old woman who worked in the gift shop of Sacramento's Il Fornaio restaurant was arrested Wednesday in connection with a bold, midday gang slaying on Florin Road in February that highlighted a raging Asian gang war in Sacramento.

...The 5-foot-1-inch, 100-pound suspect is believed to have been the driver in the Feb. 20 shooting of a 23-year-old Marysville man who was attacked in his car at a stoplight in front of Florin Mall next to a church bus filled with children, Sacramento County sheriff's investigators said Wednesday.

As chaperones on the bus watched in horror, two men emerged from a 1997 Toyota Camry ..., skirted the bus, and shot (the victim) Pra Yang 14 times before escaping as the light turned green at Florin Road and Stockton Boulevard.

Il Fornaio restaurant is one of the poshest restaurants in downtown Sacramento. If such an unassuming person is a 'made man,' so to speak, what about everyone else you meet on a typical day in the city? Makes me want to hide under my bed!

Second Friday at Luna's

A pleasant evening at Luna's Cafe, listening to a variety of local poets. My understanding is that second Friday in April is now a tradition there, where the poets get to read selections written by their favorite poets.

I came to see Gil Rodriguez reprise Artaud, of course (Gil is my next door neighbor and Artaud is one bizarre French poet). Gil is a wonderful performance artist. Tonight Gil needed all his skills: he momentarily forgot his lines and had to improvise Artaud. He did it without apparent flaws, which is something performers have a hard time doing unless they really know their material well, which Gil does.

Jose Montoya was among the poets there (he is apparently well-known in Sacramento). Montoya asked violinist Arturo Balderrama to accompany him with a Yaqui tune. That sparked a memory from my days in Tucson, in the mid-80's.

Near I-10 in Tucson, just off W. Grant and behind the smog inspection station, there is a distinct barrio (Pascua) where many Yaqui Indians live. The Yaquis, originally from Sonora, were refugees from the Mexican Revolution, and had established the barrio on what was then the fringe of Tucson. 20th Century growth engulfed the barrio as the city limits expanded, but the place remained where it was, quite distinct. My customary jogging path ran right in-between the smog inspection station and the barrio.

One day, perhaps during Holy Week, I was jogging past the barrio when I suddenly noticed a number of Yaqui men, in full ceremonial Indian regalia, dancing in a line to the sound of tribal drums. I tried to jog past without drawing attention, but the Yaquis saw me approach. They broke their line dance, rushed up, and in full Indian dress, began jogging in an exaggerated way to the sound of the drums right beside me.

What a dramatic collision between new-fangled modern ways and ancient traditional ways! The Yaquis were mocking me! I didn't know, however, whether to be angry or to just laugh out loud! I smiled at them and continued jogging. After a while, the Yaquis broke off, and we parted ways, with a few waves and slight smiles. Certainly made an impression on me! The past lives with us still, modern city or not. May we all have the grace and the will to pass on traditional ways to the young, and from them to their young, ad infinitum! May we all mock the present!

Just Close the Blinds

Once again, a tornado passes only 4 miles away from here, and I'm unaware of its existence.

The first time was February 22nd: today is the second time. In both cases the tornado passed about four miles north of here (I'm in downtown Sacramento). KFBK radio is reporting the tornado today hit around Northgate and San Juan, just about the same neighborhood it hit in February. I'm getting worried about that neighborhood: what makes the sky gods so angry?

In February, I was working on a Saturday afternoon when the tornado passed. The lights flickered (the tornado was thrashing power lines and breaking stuff). Oblivious, I prudently saved the spreadsheet I was working on. Today, no lights flickered, so I remained unaware of any problems (I guess the power lines are still down in that neighborhood).

Afternoon heating in the Sierra foothills is promoting convection. That, and that low pressure system moving in as well. There may be more storms this evening. I promise to remain utterly inattentive to whatever is going on in the sky (unless the lights flicker, of course).

Helpful John Cornyn

Nice judicial robes there. It would be sad if anything were to happen to get such nice robes stained. Blood stains are the worst, they say. Let us help you keep your robes fresh and safe!

Celebrity Autonomy

Yesterday, Blogger was really acting acting up, and so I couldn't blog. Very frustrating. Now it's working again, and I suddenly have nothing to say. So, how's the weather?

Ballet practice yesterday in Woodland. Showers yesterday, and again today. I received my latest CD in the mail, the long-awaited critical success: "Britney Spears: Greatest Hits." Now I can listen to her most significant, insightful works. Not that they are all that significant and insightful, although there are few tunes that are nice for my inner dancer: 'Slave For U,' 'Toxic,' 'Do Something.' She's a terrible actress and mediocre singer, but a great dancer. Very popular in Iran, for some reason. She should dance some more: pouting songs about just wanting freedom, privacy, and autonomy while dealing with the demands of running a media empire tend to leave me a bit cold. A couple of weeks ago, Drudge was saying she was pregnant, then yanked the story quickly. Did he misunderstand the EPT results he picked out of her trash dumpster? Is she pregnant?

There was a funny blip in today's Bee regarding Madonna's two kids: they've been learning French in school, and now exclusively speak French to each other at home, because neither Madonna or Guy Ritchie speak a word of it. Get some autonomy and some privacy, and let their mother run the media empire. Good for them!

I'll Stick With Coach Class, Thanks!

Human rights activists, watch your back!:

Police in Indonesia have named two new suspects in the investigation into the murder Munir Sa'id Thalib of Indonesian Commission for Missing Persons and Violence, in Jakarta.... The activist, Munir Sa'id Thalib, died on a flight to Amsterdam after ingesting a large amount of arsenic.

Munir Sa'id Thalib died in agony hours before his Garuda Indonesia airlines plane touched down in Amsterdam. According to an autopsy carried out by Dutch police, he had ingested nearly 500 milligrams of arsenic, enough poison to kill four people.

The two new suspects are both airline cabin crew: one was working in the plane's pantry and the other was the stewardess who served Mr. Munir his meal.

Police have already named a Garuda pilot as a suspect - he apparently offered his business-class seat to Mr. Munir, and there have been inconsistencies in his explanation as to why he was on the flight.

But friends and colleagues of Mr. Munir, a 38-year-old lawyer and human-rights activist who had challenged some of Indonesia's most powerful vested interests, believe that other people could have been behind the murder.

Benedict DeLay

Always willing to sell out American soldiers for cash:

And now we know, as Kevin points out, that DeLay was doing all of this as the beneficiary of largesse from the Russian security services. Taking an expensive vacation at the expense of the military of a foreign power to support America's enemies probably doesn't amount to treason under the Constitutional definition, but it comes close.

Sub-Launched Nuclear Weapons

How reliable are the W-76 warheads? Now that the land-based missiles are largely retired, the W-76 is our main nuclear warhead, but it may not be as reliable as we think:

Dr. (Richard L.) Morse (Los Alamos National Lab) specialized in scientific explanations for the complex flows that curl through the extraordinarily hot gases known as plasmas, which lie at the heart of an exploding nuclear weapon. His main goal was to help scientists develop a giant laser that, in lieu of an atomic match, would fire on a tiny radiation case surrounding an even tinier pellet of hydrogen fuel, releasing a burst of nuclear energy. Heat from such miniature hydrogen bombs was envisioned as one day being used to make electricity.

But Dr. Morse found that nature had erected tricky barriers to that goal. In particular, he documented how a form of turbulence known as Rayleigh-Taylor instability (named after the physicists Lord Rayleigh and Geoffrey Taylor) could perturb the expanding plasma of the very hot radiation case, forming waves, ripples and whorls that blocked ignition of the thermonuclear fuel. He also found that extremely small variations in the case were responsible for the onset of turbulence, making it hard to eliminate.

In 1996, Dr. Morse brought similar analyses to bear on the W-76's thin case, arguing that it would probably fail. He said that for decades, officials had swept the issue under the rug and that Mr. Cremer, the designer, had struggled with the problem.
In an interview, Dr. Morse said he was soon "disinvited" from the evaluation and left Los Alamos for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. But he added that concerns about the W-76 only grew.

Dr. Beckner (National Nuclear Security Administration) disagreed. He said the joint review found that the W-76 "looks like a pretty good weapon."

...At a secret meeting in March 2004 at Los Alamos, Dr. Morse led four critics who laid out their concerns to lab and federal officials, including Dr. Beckner. Dr. Morse characterized the discussion as acrimonious.

"It was a verbal mud-wrestling match," he recalled. The lab and federal officials "would not be candid with us. We told them things they didn't know. It was very, very disappointing."

In contrast, Dr. Beckner said the meeting and subsequent analyses left him with "high confidence that this nuclear weapon is a good design, was built properly and will function if required."

In early July, news reports in New Mexico began to describe the dispute, and the director of Los Alamos days later scheduled a secret lab symposium to review the "technical challenges" to understanding how radiation cases act in the first microseconds of a nuclear blast, according to a synopsis of the planned meeting.
As the number of news reports grew, officials denied that there was any problem with the W-76. They cited a history of detonations of the weapon at the Nevada Test Site.

In late November, the dependability issue emerged nationally as Congress approved a small budget item that began a new weapons design effort known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. Its goal is to have weapons scientists design a new generation of nuclear arms that are more reliable and more durable, reversing the cold war trend of making small, lightweight, powerful weapons. If possible, the effort is to proceed without nuclear testing.

Grapes of Warth Watch

And so, the joint cases were plea-bargained, and the jury sent home without being able to determine guilt or innocence "behind unreasonable doubt."

Trigger-Happy

If I'm an agoraphobic Floridian, can I shoot at everyone?:

Florida's legislature has approved a bill that would give residents the right to open fire against anyone they perceive as a threat in public, instead of having to try to avoid a conflict as under prevailing law.

Outraged opponents say the law will encourage Floridians to open fire first and ask questions later, fostering a sort of statewide Wild West shootout mentality. Supporters argue that criminals will think twice if they believe they are likely to be promptly shot when they assault someone.

Candidate Adventures

From today's Wall Street Journal, regarding Ali Ghaleb, a Sunni lawyer from Tikrit, Iraq:

Mr. Ghaleb put himself up for election last year. Then he joined the opposition to the elections and resolved to withdraw, but got kidnapped and missed the deadline to remove his name from the ballot. On election day, he found himself a reluctant winner.

Big Bonuses

Big bonuses are supposed to be incentives to motivate hard work, right? So what exactly do they do for dead people?

Southern Symbols

I was amused by Diane McWhorter's story in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday, in her review of John M. Coski's history, ''The Confederate Battle Flag'':

Some years ago, I was looking into a potential elementary school for my younger child. It was a highly recommended prospect, located on the politically correct Upper West Side of Manhattan and named after one of General Sheridan's colleagues. Halfway through the school's guided tour, I decided ''no way,'' explaining to a fellow Southern mom who was there, ''Do you really think you could tell the folks back home that you're sending your child to the William Tecumseh Sherman School?''

Sonoluminescence

Science News (March 5, 2005) reports that sonoluminescence (the emission of light from collapsing bubbles in a fluid bombarded by ultrasound) may be so hot that fusion might be sustained:

Indeed the new data provide "indirect evidence" of temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees K inside the imploding bubbles....

That's amazing, if true!

They Are Blue, Aren't They?

I can't find my little blue pills! I can't find my little blue pills! I can find *that* but beyond that I can't find - anything at all!

The condition, known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), causes a rapid reduction of vision and can, in the most serious cases, lead to blindness.

Report co-author Dr Howard Pomeranz said the drug had long been linked to sight problems.

"For years, we have known some men who take Viagra will experience temporary colour changes in their vision and see things as blue or green.

"NAION is a much more serious condition because it can lead to permanent vision loss."

Breaking Wind

Regarding the recent report, "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction," and the report's conclusion that there was no politicization of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, Jacob Weisberg notes:

You can't see the wind either, but it still blows things over.

Knifed

Josh Marshall:

Who's turning on the bug man? Call me cynical: but Drudge is playing this story awfully prominently. That makes me wonder whether a thumb at the White House that used to be turned up just turned down. More concretely, a lot of DeLay's lieutenants are now under indictment or on their way there. Eventually, you've got to figure one of them starts to squeal. You've seen Deliverance, right?

Half-Staff

Did we lower the flag for Popes Paul and John Paul I in 1978? My memory is that we did not.

My Name is Gannon. Jeff Gannon

This is ridiculous, but it's great - missing child Johnny Gosch grows up to be - Jeff Gannon?!:

Reports the Register: "The complete concoction goes like this: Gosch was kidnapped into a pedophilia and child pornography ring that serviced the upper echelons of Washington, D.C., society. He was brainwashed by the CIA, trained to be part of a top-secret escort program. Then, he became Jeff Gannon and was given a plum job as a White House correspondent with the online conservative news service to keep him quiet. Finally, he was "uncovered" by the bloggers.

Additionally, the newspaper notes, "[Bloggers] try to link both Bush presidents to this conspiracy, prove that Hunter S. Thompson's death was not a suicide and investigate a so-called government-sponsored pedophilia operation they claim continues to abduct children."

More Pozen

Ryan Lizza at TNR weighs in on Pozen's disastrous ratchet proposal and Bush's desperation:

...the long-term effect of progressive indexing would be to turn Social Security into a welfare system and erode support for it. While there is now some wealth redistribution inherent in Social Security, there is also a relationship between how much one contributes to Social Security and the benefits one receives upon retirement, a linkage that is the linchpin of the system's near-universal support. Under the Pozen plan, benefits for high and middle earners would, over time, be drastically reduced, while benefits for low earners would hold steady. The entire benefit structure would be flattened, turning it into a wealth-transfer system from rich to poor and shattering the system's political popularity.

...Conservatives are tearing their hair out as they watch Bush negotiate with himself in public, moving from full price indexing (drastic benefit cuts) to progressive price indexing (less drastic benefit cuts) in a few months with no response from Democrats. Even worse, the private accounts in the Pozen plan are half the size of Bush's original plan, so Bush is likely to lose conservative supporters, especially in the House, by embracing Pozen. "Pozen's plan is further to the left than we need to move," says conservative activist Grover Norquist. "Plus, the other challenge is that any benefit cuts are problematic because Bush campaigned in 2000 and 2004 saying he didn't want any benefit cuts."

So why is Pozen the White House's new best friend? Because Bush is desperate. He is boxed in by his decision to make the inclusion of private accounts and the exclusion of tax increases his two nonnegotiable demands. The only real policy olive branch he can offer Democrats is on the restructuring of benefits, and it's not enough.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Teaching them 'liberal' judges a lesson. Cornyn: good cop, a former judge, just trying to be helpful to his brethren. Bad cop: that Doberman DeLay.

Conservatism and Vicious Cycles

Economic big-think over at Smirking Chimp, regarding oil. The authors claim ex-urban growth is but a paradoxical symptom of our basic dilemma: we are addicted to petroleum! Conservatism is a natural reaction to shortage and so as petroleum gets scarce, we see a conservative trend.

But the more I think about this, the more skeptical I'm getting. It's hard to tell exactly where the circular logic fails, though. Even though the consumption of petroleum grew greatly over the 20th Century, at any specific time, there were always limits on the availability of petroleum. Nevertheless, progressives saw their influence grow at the expense of conservatives during the first two-thirds of the 20th Century.

The Depression was caused in large measure to the failure of consumption to keep pace with production. That may be the cause of a future Depression in the U.S.: the middle class is being systematically starved of wage increases commensurate to its production, with wealth gravitating towards the top. It may be that the circular logic fails with the need to grant tax cuts to the rich: that grant only slows, doesn't stop, the process of progressive indebtedness to foreigners, and losing control over the American economy's destiny. I don't think the gang currently in power cares much about the nationality of ownership. Just so long as they are rich!

Nevertheless, here are some selections from an interesting reading:

The competition is not over scarce energy in itself, but over a particular form of energy which can be used to substitute for everything else. There is nothing in this world that one cannot get more cheaply by using more oil to get it ... Americans moved to the suburbs because it was cheaper to drive farther than to work through the problems of urbanization, and one could get a larger house with a larger yard in the bargain. As long as it was cheaper to pay rent to Saudi Arabia for the oil ... people chose to pay rent to OPEC rather than taxes to the government....

But what happens when America buys energy? What does that trade deficit mean? This is the second step of the vicious circle: while many nations sell some energy, a few nations export energy, but import virtually nothing. ... (Oil) profits, rather than going into developing Saudi Arabia, are poured back into the US.

The reason oil causes a particular problem in the world economy is that one can make huge profits in an oil economy, without having the entire superstructure of a cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial, liberal and technological society around it. One cannot manufacture cars, develop technology or develop medicines without a large population of educated people, but one can run an oil economy with a relatively small core of people, many of whom can be imported....This means the trade deficit creates an investment deficit: the US takes in more investment from the rest of the world than it sends out to the rest of the world.

However, with investment pouring in from nations where the investors are also the government, more and more control over the US economy at its highest levels is in the hands of the wealthy of nations like Saudi Arabia. Should they chose to pull their wealth from the US, or even simply stop rolling over their financing, the result would be a rapid drop in the value of US stocks and assets.... To prevent investors in these countries from gaining control, the developed world, and particularly the US, is forced down a particular path: it must cut taxes on our wealthy, so that they match the taxes on the wealthy of Saudi Arabia. The "race to the bottom" starts at the top. This cutting of revenues is what drives the US budget deficit: without the reduction in revenues from upper-bracket tax rates being lowered, and without the interest on the National debt, there is no financial crisis. This means that the trade deficit, combined with the nature of a few energy exporting states, creates the budget deficit.

The money then comes back to the United States at the top of the economy - in the purchase of financial stocks primarily - and then filters downward. This "top down economy," called "trickle down economics," means that America cannot invest in getting out of the energy trap, because the very people who hold the purse strings have no interest in ending it. The only way to slow the process is by, as you should guess, holding real wages flat, because if people earn more, they burn more oil, and make the trade deficit worse.

The reason Reaganomics was put in place then, and remained in place even after the Democrats took back both the Congress and, by 1992, the Presidency, is that no single point on the circle could be broken: raise real wages, and the trade deficit gets worse, raise tax rates by enough to rapidly wipe out the deficit, and face the prospect of foreign ownership of the "commanding heights" of the American economy. Instead of finding a way off of the dependence on foreign oil, and instead of untangling money from oil, Reaganomics used cuts in capital gains taxes and upper-income marginal income tax rates, and the increase in FICA taxes as a regressive tax to reduce consumption as a way of allowing foreign investment to pour into America. The cost was that wages would have to stay flat in real terms, and that corporations and stock wealth would have to grow almost without limit.

This means that the reason Reagan won, and gradually pulled the media and much of the public mood behind him, was that in a world which is zero sum - and the amount of oil being the basis of profit meant it was zero sum - people become conservative, grasping at whatever bits of their bundle of ultimate scarcity they hold. It meant that allowing the rich to become richer was essential to keep America under the control of Americans. It meant that corporations had to be allowed to become larger and larger, so that they were harder and harder to hold accountable through political means. It also created another vicious circle: Americans had more and more of their wealth in their homes, which created more pressure for sprawl, which, in turn, created more and more demand that gasoline prices remain low, so that people could trade cheap energy to pay less for expensive land.

The process became a vicious circle because larger and larger corporations with more and more wealth at the top became the dominant political force. Natural selection of a political kind took over: attempts to change one of these features of the economy met with disaster. Raise wages, and inflation returned; raise taxes, and autonomy was threatened; cut oil consumption, and other nations would consume more oil to sell to the United States. In other words, progressivism ebbed because there seemed to be no single point of attack that did not involve a dramatic energy austerity, and the resulting reduction in American standards of living....

The vicious cycle is this: that a cheap energy deficit created a trade deficit, creating an investment deficit, which then created the political pressure for a wages and wealth deficit, which, in turn, made the cheap energy deficit worse, and even more political pressure for even more inequality of wealth and to keep the one lever Americans still had - the ability to drive further to keep costs down, since they could no longer strike or organize to raise real wages. This started the cycle all over again. This is the key to the move to the right - by creating an economy which is determined by the scarcity of one commodity: oil, and a money system which bends around the dynamics of that one commodity, an environment is fostered in which people think as conservatives first.

Terror-Alert Van

I saw a lot of these vans during the gubernatorial race. A lot of good they did keeping us safe from steroid extremists.

Painted red, white, and blue, the TerrorFirst! van is the first mobile unit devoted to monitoring terrorist threats on a local level. The van is equipped with live satellite feeds to and from the Fox News channel, a fax machine prepared to receive alerts from the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, an English-Arabic phrase book for translating any intercepted al-Qaeda correspondence, and a field-issue anthrax-detection kit.

"In a minute's notice, the van can be completely prepped, on the road, and speeding toward any site of terrorist activity within the WMFB broadcast area," Bogert said. "Assuming two attacks don't happen concurrently, of course."

According to Bogert, the TerrorFirst! van features a rooftop satellite dish, a diesel-powered generator in case terrorists take down the Tennessee power grid, emergency snow chains for use in the event of a nuclear winter, a supply of promotional "Fox 11 News...Looking Out For You" T-shirts and bumper stickers, and a gun rack. The van is outfitted with several state-of-the-art monitoring systems, as well.

"TerrorDoppler can detect a dirty-bomb detonation of any significant magnitude from up to 40 miles away," Bogert said. "The van can transmit a map of contaminated areas to the station for broadcast. That way, Fox 11 viewers gain valuable minutes—time which could be used to plan escape routes, call loved ones, and gather survival supplies."

Light Years Away

Just beginning the planning process. I was alarmed today to discover that almost all of Kylie's Australian Tour tickets have already been sold:

West Australian fans proved just how much they loved Kylie earlier this year when three Perth concerts sold out in a matter of hours. As a fourth show in Perth isn't possible, Kylie's management and promoter have been in talks determining whether seats could be added to the existing shows to meet the demand for more tickets. It looks like it worked, because an additional section of tickets will be released for Kylie's first Perth concert at the Burswood Dome on Sunday, June 12.

But what if I can't make that concert?

If you shouldn't be so lucky, then you should try your hand winning a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket. Festival Mushroom Records have weaved a lot of magic and have confirmed a national 'find the golden ticket' (read: peel a sticker off the cover of the single which reveals a unique code that you enter into a ninemsn database) competition where anyone who buys Giving You Up in its first week of release (from April 10-16 only) gets the chance to sit front row at one of Kylie's Australian Showgirl shows! There are five double passes hidden... so happy hunting!

That's ridiculous! I'm not going to buy every CD-single in Australia next week hoping to get lucky! Nevertheless, in response to heavy demand, new shows HAVE been squeezed into her itinerary:

True to past form, Kylie has sold out another Showgirl concert at astonishing speed. A fifth Melbourne concert went on sale this morning at 9.00am with all tickets snapped up in just two hours.

In response to the continued demand for tickets, Kylie has agreed to celebrate her birthday with her fans with one final Melbourne concert on Saturday 28 May. ...Kylie said; "I can’t think of a more appropriate way to spend my birthday than at home in Melbourne doing what I love best. I’m enjoying the Showgirl tour so much and I’d love to share this special day with my fans in Melbourne."

Promoter Michael Gudinski said; "Kylie’s Showgirl tour is already one big party from start to finish, so it seems fitting that Kylie is prepared to perform on her birthday. This will be an unforgettable night for her Melbourne fans."

The sixth Melbourne concert will absolutely be the last chance for fans to see Kylie in Melbourne on the Showgirl tour. So get your party shoes on and secure your tickets now.

So, I made a stab at the newly-announced third show in Brisbane Queensland, on Australia's fabled 'Gold Coast', north of Sydney, on Monday June 6th (which works out to June 5th on this side of the International Date Line). I secured one "Gold" ticket:

Kylie announced the European leg of her tour in 2004 and the tour exploded from the original dates to a thirty-five date run. Ticketing websites and booking agencies went into meltdown as the systems literally couldn't meet the demand for tickets.

...An enormous AUS$3 million stage will be especially shipped from the UK for the Australian tour.

And while no money will be spared in the production of the tour (staging of Show Girl will exceed the AUS$10 million cost of the Fever tour), Kylie is adamant the costs won't subsequently hit the wallets of her fans.

After a number of discussions with promoter Michael Gudinski, it was decided to keep ticket prices exactly the same as her 2002 Fever tour.

Michael Gudinski said the decision is illustrative of Kylie's long term dedication to her fans.

"Kylie wanted to ensure that her Show Girl ticket prices were kept as reasonable as possible.

"This is an enormously spectacular show, which will cost a fortune to stage, but Kylie's decision from day one was to keep the prices as they were on her last tour."

The Brisbane Entertainment Centre (BEC), built in 1986, sounds like a nice place: smaller than ARCO Arena's 17,317 seats.

The Brisbane Entertainment Centre is Queensland’s premier entertainment and meeting facility and was purpose built to accommodate the most complex events, from an intimate setting of 500 people up to a maximum of 13,500 for the grandest extravaganzas and international conferences.

Now the hard part - getting time off work and plane tickets and lodging! (Oh yeah, and unloading those silly Irish tickets!) Fun facts about the tour:

The show represents Kylie's finest moments in music, performance and style and is an homage to the showgirl, one of the most exotic, decadent and sensual icons of our times. Inspiration has come from the Moulin Rouge to the Folies Bergere, from the Doris Girls of the Paris Lido to the entertainment palaces of Las Vegas, from the underground burlesque bars of Soho to the Busby Berkeley musicals of the thirties. Kylie's show pays tribute to the showgirl in all her forms and guises. It also amalgamates the strengths of Kylie's past three major tours - the intimacy of 'Intimate and Live', the celebratory aspects of 'On A Night Like This' and the technological futurism of 'Fever'.

Kylie recently admitted that the scale of this tour came home to her when she realised the amount of trucks it would take to get the show from one city/country to the next - this show needs 15 trucks to ferry it around, including half of a truck devoted solely to feathers!

The show is so huge that it needs well over 100 people to get it on the road. The million pound, art deco inspired stage is believed to be the biggest ever built for an arena tour and features 5 hydraulic lifts within its construction. Like Kylie's 2002 Fever tour, Showgirl pushes the technological boundaries, using innovative technology in video, lighting and sound. At each venue the trucks will start unloading at 7am to have the show ready for 9pm.

Onstage with Kylie will be 7 band members and 12 dancers.

Here's a nice picture (via Bogs Doddy, from this site):

Thinking About Australia

Thinking? Thinking! I was alarmed when I saw my first Web page of plane fares, but the Australian Dollar is currently worth about 77 American cents, so the impact won't be as bad as I first thought. But are Kylie concert tickets available? Maybe I should go to Perth - what looks like the back of the outback to this naive Californian!

Looking Forward...

Interesting poetry reading next Friday night at Luna's Cafe. My literary next-door neighbor, Gil Rodriguez, has some interesting things planned, including, among other things, more Artaud, the semi-psychotic post-WWII French poet widely - and understandably - derided in his lifetime, but whose poetry functions much better as performance art.

To my unpracticed eye, having once seen Gil perform Artaud with his Und Heimlich group, it looks like Artaud the Poet missed his true calling, perhaps on Cable-TV's Comedy Central: like Lewis Black on acid. Gil has teased out what works best in Artaud's highly-conflicted mess of a legacy. Keep the date in mind: Gil's approach is excellent and intriguing!

Brrr!

Boy, that was an abrupt rain-soaked frontal passage this evening! Reminds you of what spring is supposed to be all about. April showers, May flowers, and all that. Just wish I had put away my tools!

Damaged Goods

Digby makes the point that the conservative world-view was damaged by the Schiavo matter. Once a week, I see a conservative lawyer of my acquaintance, and we chat briefly. He was livid about the Schiavo matter. The gap between FOX News and the Constitution was too great to bridge.

For instance, a conservative doctor of my acquaintance was stunned by the Schiavo matter. This man watches nothing but Fox news and could not believe the anti-intellectual religiosity of their coverage. This is a matter that he knows intimately and he could see clearly that the coverage wasn't "fair and balanced." Indeed, it wasn't true. It's as if a veil fell from his eyes.

My conservative Rush loving neighbor was heard complaining the his hero didn't know what he was talking about on the Schiavo case. That is a first. This guy is a true believer --- who also has a very sick wife.

My nurse sister-in-law (also a born again Christian and avid FOX watcher) insisted that all the news be turned off in the house because she couldn't stand the exploitation of the patient or the sideshow outside that hospice. She's very depressed about all this.

See, the right isn't like us. They think that the so called liberal media is irretrievably biased but believe what they see, read and hear on their own media. We on the left, on the other hand, have no faith in any mainstream media, really, or any alternative media either for that matter. We have developed the habit of culling from various sources and analyzing the information ourselves as best we can. Even then we are very skeptical. Nothing that the media could do would particularly shock or disappoint us. No so with the other side. A fair number of them are actually hurt and bewildered by what they saw in the Schiavo matter.

The President

Cases the joint.

An Arrest

In the Arellano case.

Good Wishes!

Courtesy of Gabe:

Killing the Goose

These combination of budget cuts and heightened secrecy will ultimately throttle economic expansion in the U.S. The scientific cutting-edge will move off-shore. If the economy's high-tech seed corn is eaten now, where else will the big boom come from that will allow retirement 'privatization'?:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff.

Hundreds of research projects supported by the agency, known as Darpa, have paid off handsomely in recent decades, leading not only to new weapons, but to commercial technologies from the personal computer to the Internet.

The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy. They are accusing the Pentagon of reining in an agency that has played a crucial role in fostering America's lead in computer and communications technologies.

"I'm worried and depressed," said David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who is president of the Association of Computing Machinery, an industry and academic trade group. "I think there will be great technologies that won't be there down the road when we need them."

...University scientists assert that the changes go even further than what Darpa has disclosed. As financing has dipped, the remaining research grants come with yet more restrictions, they say, often tightly linked to specific "deliverables" that discourage exploration and serendipitous discoveries.

..."Virtually every aspect of information technology upon which we rely today bears the stamp of federally sponsored university research," said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington and co-chairman of the advisory panel. "The federal government is walking away from this role, killing the goose that laid the golden egg."

The Politics of Churlishness

Martin Peretz at The New Republic has long disdained the American political approach to the Israeli/Palestinian debacle. Internationalist institutions like the U.N. have also utterly failed there.

Peretz grants the Bush Administration much credit for its policies towards Israel/Palestine. I must agree, sticking with Ariel Sharon and his centrist vision is by far the best approach anyone has yet conceived. It's Bush's biggest international success. I loathe Bush and his administration, though, and I'm not willing to concede as much credit to Bush as Peretz does: the victory belongs instead to Sharon. Peretz seems to think Bush is out to democratize the Middle East, and is essentially sincere in his goals, but I suspect Bush is instead trying to maintain the flow of oil with a projection of U.S. military power and keep the "ruling Arabs happy." Bush disdains his father's approach as being inadequate to our national security, so he's come up with a new-fangled but still dishonest new approach. Democratization is a slogan Bush employs. Like his father with the Hitler/Saddam analogy, Bush's desire to liberate the Middle East is phony. Peretz states:

The traditional Republican mentality that was so perfectly and meanly represented by Bush père and Baker precluded the United States from pressing the Arabs about reform--about anything--for decades. Not Iraq about its tyranny and its record of genocide, not Syria about its military occupation of Lebanon and its own brutal Baathist dictatorship, not Egypt about loosening the crippling bonds of a statist economy and an authoritarian political system, not Saudi Arabia about its championing of the Wahhabi extremism that made its own country so desiccated and the world so dangerous, and certainly not the Palestinians about the fantasy that they had won all the wars that they had actually lost and were therefore entitled to the full rewards due them from their victories.

Not much has really changed in that respect, despite the invasion of Iraq. The ruling circles of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt have little to fear from Bush's initiatives. Peretz is nevertheless right about Clinton's reluctance to respond effectively to bin Laden. But once again, Peretz gives Bush too much credit for statesmanship:

What the Bush administration gradually came to realize was that fighting the Muslim terrorist international could not be done in a vacuum. If the Islamic and Arab orbits were to continue to revolve around sanguinary tyrannies, there would be no popular basis in civil society to rob the cult of suicidal murder of its prestige. So, rather than being a distraction from the struggle against the armed rage suffusing these at once taut and eruptive polities, confronting their governments was actually intrinsic to that struggle. The Bush administration recognized that removing the effect means removing the cause.

No, Bush just wanted the oil and the glory. And to kick Saddam's ass. These plans predated 9/11. How effective are Bush's attacks against Muslim extremism, really? Great skepticism is warranted.

Whatever the proper historical and cultural analysis of the past, however, the fact is that democracy did not begin even to breathe until the small coalition of Western nations led by the United States destroyed the most ruthless dictatorship in the area.

And does democracy yet breathe? Looks like it's still on life support to me! (sorry, I'm being churlish).

After a year and a half of nearly daily Sunni bloodletting among them, the Shia have not wreaked the vengeance they surely could and, equally as surely, some of them long to take. The U.S. liberation-occupation has now tried to cobble together these diverging Iraqis into the beginnings of a democratic regime. Wonder of wonders, these estranged cousins have shown some talent in the art of compromise; and trying to make this polity work is hardly an effort undertaken without courage.

That's Ayatollah Sisatni's work there (churlish me):

In any case, this churlish orthodoxy tells us that the Sunnis need to be enticed into the political game lest it be deemed illegitimate. In this scenario, it is the murderers who withhold or bestow moral authority.

Not the moral authority - they have guns! They must be dealt with in some constructive way!

Suddenly, the elections in Iraq, Bush's main achievement there, exhilarating and inspiring, sprung loose the psychological impediments that shackled the Lebanese to Syria. Even if the outcomes will not be exactly the same, this was Prague and Berlin at the end of the long subjugation to their neighbor to the east.

Not quite. As Juan Cole churlishly notes, Bush didn't even want these sort of elections. They were forced upon him by Sistani. Hamas and Hezbollah hold far too much sway to be pollyannish yet about the future of Lebanon. Peretz continues:

It is simply stupid, empirically and philosophically, to deny that all or any of this would have happened without the deeply unpopular but historically grand initiative of Bush.

The glory of Bush! But couldn't Bush at least be honest in his rhetoric, actions, and motivations? His thuggery enrages people all around the world. People like me!

Have Democrats begun to wonder how it came to pass that this noble cause became the work of Republicans? They should wonder if they care to regain power. They should recall that Clinton (and the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter even more so) had absolutely no interest in trying to modify the harsh political character of the Arab world. What they aspired to do was to mollify the dictators--to prefer the furthering of the peace process to the furthering of the conditions that make peace possible. The Democrats were the ones who were always elevating Arafat. He was at the very center of their road map. After he stalked out of a meeting room in Paris during cease-fire talks in late 2000, Albright actually ran in breathless pursuit to lure him back. It was the Democrats who perpetuated Arafat's demonic sway over the Palestinians, and it was the Democrats who sustained him among the other Arabs. And so the cause of Arab democracy was left for the Republicans to pursue. After September 11, the cause became a matteralso of U.S. national security.

True enough, to the discredit of the Democrats. Thuggery isn't the answer, though. Too many lives are at stake!

Now that there is some real hope among both Israelis and Palestinians about the future, let us examine the reasons for it. The first is that Bush made no gestures to the hyperbolic fantasies of Palestinian politics. He gave them one dose of reality after another. The second is that he gave Israel the confidence that he would not trade its security for anything--which means that Israel is now willing to cede much on its own. (Israeli dovishness for American hawkishness: This was always the only way.) The third is that Bush is holding Sharon to his commitments, and everyone who is at all rational on these issues now sees the Israeli prime minister as a man of his word and a man of history. After all, Sharon has broken with much of his own political party.

Bush HAS been effective this way!

It has been heartening, in recent months, to watch some Democratic senators searching for ways out of the politics of churlishness. Some liberals appear to have understood that history is moving swiftly and in a good direction, and that history has no time for their old and mistaken suspicion of American power in the service of American values. One does not have to admire a lot about George W. Bush to admire what he has so far wrought. One need only be a thoughtful American with an interest in proliferating liberalism around the world. And, if liberals are unwilling to proliferate liberalism, then conservatives will. Rarely has there been a sweeter irony.

I hope Peretz isn't talking about that Social Security traitor Joe Lieberman, but he probably is.

Look, Democrats can adopt Bush's approach in Israel/Palestine, and I hope they would. But Martin Peretz/Peter Beinart have shown a keener interest instead in exiling Moveon.org and Michael Moore from the Democratic party. Also, by working so closely with Lieberman, Peretz/Beinart are betraying the New Deal, with Bush's misguided Social Security 'reform'. Peretz is shooting himself in the foot as long as he maintains this course. There are better ways. Michael Moore is a gifted propagandist and should be put to work, not thrown into the cold. Moveon.org is the future of the Democratic party. Lieberman's star is fading fast. Democrats can always steal Bush's approach, but backstabbing is unwarranted!

"Alarm Bell in the Night"

To add to Dr. Teresa Whitehurst's article I blogged about earlier this week, wondering if a kristallknacht was nigh, here's another article at TNR by Rochelle Gurstein, wondering if the Terri Schiavo incident in the Culture Wars is another step towards a 21st-Century Civil War. Perhaps the 'Culture Wars' are going to get more interesting than they've been heretofore. Was the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing just an early harbinger?:

I couldn't get out of my mind a diagram from a history textbook that listed the causes of the Civil War next to a thermometer with the temperature rising until it reached the boiling point, from the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Nullification Crisis of 1832 to the ominous decade of the 1850s--the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law; the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and the years of violence known as "Bleeding Kansas"; the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision; John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859; and finally, Lincoln's election in 1860. At every point, the people living through these conflicts did not recognize them as the fateful events that would lead them headlong into civil war. Will some true believer presently unknown to us violently take matters into his or her own hands so that he or she will one day occupy a similar place in history as John Brown? History, of course, never repeats itself, but I couldn't help wondering, are we now living through what, from the perspective of future generations, will turn out to have been another such fateful time?

Fun Facts From 'Science News'

• African elephants can imitate the sounds of Asian elephants, and distant heavy traffic;
• Vampire bats have the ability to run;
• Ant larvae ask for food by swaying;
• Certain red feathers of parrots contain pigments unique to parrots: polyenal lipochromes, unlike the carotenoid pigments other birds obtain from their diet.

Good for Senator Lautenberg!

If federal judges can be threatened, people like Tom DeLay can certainly be threatened too. What is wrong with DeLay for making these threats? Has he lost his cool? Doesn't he realize the possible consequences, to himself as well as his allies? DeLay has certainly disgraced his office.

Report by the President's Commission on Intelligence Gathering

What a sorry exercise in blaming the intelligence agencies for deliberate lies and egregious faults among the policymakers! The editorial writers at the New York Times timidly call this report "A Profile in Timidity":

Sadly, there is nothing about the central issue - how the Bush administration handled the intelligence reports on Iraq's weapons programs and presented them to the public to win support for the invasion of Iraq. All we get is an excuse: the panel was "not authorized" to look at this question, so it didn't bother. The report says the panel "interviewed a host of current and former policy makers" about the intelligence on Iraq, but did not "review how policy makers subsequently used that information."

...The panel said timidly that "it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." But it utterly ignored the way President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team, and Condoleezza Rice, as national security adviser, created that environment by deciding what the facts were and saying so, repeatedly.

It does not say that these powerful people knew or should have known that there was no new intelligence on Iraq, and that as the intelligence reports were sanitized for the public, the caveats were stripped out. Instead, it loyally maintains the fiction that Mr. Bush was just given bum information by incompetent intelligence agents.
The way the administration hyped the intelligence on Iraq is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity. It is vital that the public know the answers because Americans are now being asked to accept a new set of claims about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

Maureen Dowd gets closer to the center of corruption:

As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence.

Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.

As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.

The Office of Special Plans turned to the con man Ahmad Chalabi to come up with the evidence they needed. The Iraqi National Congress obliged with information that has now been debunked as exaggerated or fabricated. One gem was the hard-drinking relative of a Chalabi aide, a secret source code-named Curveball, who claimed to verify the mobile weapons labs.

Mr. Cheney and his "Gestapo office," as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam's aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones and Al Qaeda links into Mr. Powell's U.N. speech.

The former secretary of state spent four days and three nights at the C.I.A. before making the presentation, trying to vet the material, because he knew that Mr. Cheney, who had an idée fixe about Saddam, was trying to tap into his credibility and use him as a battering ram.

He told Germany's Stern magazine that he was "furious and angry" that he had been given bum information about Iraq's arsenal: "Some of the information was wrong. I did not know this at the time."

The vice president and the neocons were in a fever to bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up a case to attack Saddam, even though George Tenet was panting to be of service. When Mr. Tenet put out the new National Intelligence Estimate on Oct. 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution and after our troops and aircraft carriers were getting into position for battle, there was one key change: suddenly the agency agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was pursuing the atomic bomb.

...It is laughable that the report offers its most scorching criticism of the C.I.A. when the C.I.A. was simply doing what the White House and Pentagon wanted. Isn't that why Mr. Tenet was given the Medal of Freedom? (Freedom from facts.)

The hawks don't want to learn any lessons here. If they had to do it again, they'd do it the same way. The imaginary weapons and Osama link were just a marketing tool and shiny distraction, something to keep the public from crying while they went to war for reasons unrelated to any nuclear threat.

The 9/11 attacks gave the neocons an opening for their dreams of remaking the Middle East, and they drove the Third Infantry Division through it.

Even Dowd doesn't hit the nail on the head, though. The Bush Administration is criminally irreponsible for starting a war on false pretenses. What a disgrace! Historians will have a fine time with this maggot-filled mess!

Abrupt Speech Changes in Canada

Interesting. Being born in New Mexico, and living in California, I was unaware of anyone pronouncing avenue as aven-you. But being from NM, I certainly understand having local ways being trampled by outsiders. And if the outsiders control the media, heaven help us!

I was at my limit. I heard yet another one of my friends replace ‘avenyou’ with ‘avenoo.’ It wasn’t that there was anything necessarily wrong with pronouncing avenue without the ‘you’ (or what is called a y-continuant in linguistic circles), it’s just that the y-continuant wasn’t missing from the word before I left for a European summer vacation only 3 months before!

It seemed as if everyone I knew had adopted the new avenoo, and it was driving me nuts. Maybe, I thought, they were conspiring to test my sanity. The nagging question actually drove me to consult the University of Winnipeg’s voice and diction coach, who also noticed the trend. She said that it was an American speech pattern, heard commonly in the media on American television programs. But, she said, it seems that the pronunciation has finally spread like wildfire north of the 49th parallel – our old pattern has been all but dropped entirely in Canadian television and radio, and now, among the general public.

RIP, Terri Schiavo

We never knew you, except at the eye of the hurricane. And soon, the reckoning will start.

Best of B3ta QOTW

Woo-hoo! My story was chosen to be among the 'best' ones on B3ta's Question of the Week (QOTW)! I've been having a hard time breaking through to the 'best' page, because the Website caters to fairly-juvenile British humor, for which I'm not particularly well-suited by background or temperament. B3ta tends to prefer stories about nasty, humilating, permanent traumas. I succeeded only once before, with "My Knife," in response to QOTW "What have you lost lately?" But even though I start with a disadvantage compared to young, careless, impulsive, heavy-drinking, accident-prone Britons, a good story is a good story, and that makes the competition fun.

This week's QOTW was:

There you are innocently going about your day when suddenly a particular song transports you back to a specific time and place. For me, Animotion's Obssession instantly brings back the fear and nerves of school exams. And you? Tell us all about it.

My response was:

Clocks
I was playing Coldplay's "Clocks" while driving into a California sunset in September 2002, when I saw a strange contrail rapidly heading west into the sunset. First time I ever saw such a thing: a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile heading from Vandenburg Air Force Base to Kwajalein Atoll, many thousands of miles away in the Pacific.

The missile was many hundreds of miles away, but with good visibility in the gloaming, it was possible to see the rocket stage. The contrail changed from dense smoke into a translucent glimmering perfect cone, as the upper stages of the missile ripped into the mesosphere. It was gorgeous and scary at the same time.

When I hear "Clocks", I sense nuclear annihilation is near and my time on this Earth is over.

Mobs Rush In....

Death Valley?:

Record rains have remade Death Valley this spring into a showplace of desert golds, brown-eyed evening primroses, gravel ghosts and desert stars.

It is also a place where fistfights have broken out among customers waiting in long lines at gas pumps. Heavy traffic along a 50-mile stretch of two-lane road at the southern end of the park has left gaping potholes and crumbling pavement.

..."We're being hammered; we can't catch our breath," said Terry Baldino, the park's assistant chief of interpretation. "I'm encouraging our staff to get away from it all on weekends," he said, adding that some "are going to Las Vegas, others are hiding at home."

Normally, Baldino said, there might be 4,000 visitors roaming the park's stark geological wonders this time of year. "Last Saturday," he said, "we had 14,000 people come through the front door of the park's central headquarters." Even that figure accounts for only a fraction of the influx since not all park visitors go to the headquarters.

"There's so many people here right now, I dread going to get the mail," said Death Valley resident Ruth Shandor. "Makes you think we need street lights."

...In a scene wavering between tense and surreal, the line at the women's restroom in the park's main visitor center was 15-deep Tuesday.

The center itself was packed tight with people jostling to buy field guides to wildflowers, or to ask rangers for directions to "flower hot spots." Some just wanted to express their frustration with the crowds and even the flowers at their feet.

"I had one person come up and say, `I'm sick of yellow. Where can I go to see different colors?' " recalled Lori Spoelhof, one of two rangers brought in on an emergency basis from Yellowstone National Park to lead "flower walks."

...At Stove Pipe Wells, about 17 miles to the north of Furnace Creek, maintenance workers were being dispatched to keep the peace at a gas station that has run out of fuel several times in recent weeks.

...As of March 30, Death Valley had received 6.3 inches of rain since July, the most in the 94 years in which records have been kept. Rainfall averages less than two inches a year here. During some years, there is no rain at all.

This season's rains included a destructive storm in August that killed two people and washed out park roads. The latest moisture came on Sunday, when the park best known as the hottest, driest place in North America was pelted with rain and hail.

Signs abound that Death Valley's wettest season in recorded history may be nearing an end. In recent weeks, vast carpets of flowers have been battered by fierce winds and rising temperatures.

An enormous rain-filled lake that only two weeks ago was a novel gathering place for kayakers has evaporated to a depth of only a few inches.

"Eventually, the flowers will disappear, the crowds will diminish and we'll pick up the pieces," Blacker said. "Then, in the fall, we'll start watching the rain totals. If they get way up there again, I guarantee we'll be better prepared."

Science!

Mickey Kaus and others makes an excellent point regarding the Terri Schiavo case. Shouldn't liberals and Democrats be pro-feeding tube?:

What's a sounder basis for ambitious liberal affirmative government--a) an optimistic desire for often-expensive government action to preserve and extend life or b) a resigned, fatalistic willingness to delegate life-ending decisions to private citizens? If the answer is a), shouldn't left-wingers be pro-tubists? NPR's "bias legend" Nina Totenberg was ridiculed for saying, on Inside Washington, that:

"if we really believed in an unmitigated, uncurbed in any way culture of life, we would be having universal health care."

But it seems to me that Totenberg has pointed in exactly the direction the Democrats should have been heading on the Schiavo issue. Has their political and moral sense been so twisted by the hard dogma of "abortion rights" (and disdain for fundamentalist Christians) that they don't see this? ... "More chances at life for all citizens, whatever their status or station"--that's still more of a Democratic slogan than a Republican one.

The trouble is that Americans have learned the libertarian, live-and-let-live philosophy only too well. We are also pretty procedure-oriented too, especially with regard to the courts. Which is usually good, but not always. Few people want to intervene in the Schiavo case: it's private. We don't trust the Religious Right. And we've all been taken by surprise by the issue: we weren't prepared for it and haven't thought it through.

But mostly I think liberals just don't believe an optimistic technology-oriented approach would work in this case. Terri's cerebral cortex is mush. Would stem cells help? Doubtful. Maybe we are just too educated for our own good! Liberalism is an optimistic faith. Blithe ignorance about our chances for success may be better in this case than bitter knowledge!

Nanny Knows Best

Not often that I promote libertarian Web Sites, but this one is nice. We all love Olde England, but everyone chafes under overweening governmental restrictions. A sample:

It is reported that the Greater Manchester Police are adopting an Orwellian approach to the word “township”; they are banning it from being used in the force.

Seemingly it was adopted, around a year ago, to describe sub divisions within the Manchester police force. Quite how “township” is indicative of sub divisions I don’t know.

Notwithstanding that, Chief Inspector Jeff McMahon has issued a memo banning the word; on the grounds that, because of its associations with apartheid, it is racist.

As from now, all memos and signs with the word “township” will be replaced by the equally undescriptive word “partnership”.

The costs of removing signs, and reprinting letterheads, has not been disclosed; doubtless an enquiry as to the cost, using the new Freedom of Information Act, could be made.

Any such enquiry could of course be deemed to be a frivolous waste of Nanny’s time!I wonder if the good people of Manchester feel any safer, now that they are being policed by “partnerships” instead of “townships”?

Taken Aback

He narrowed his eyes, stared at me, and apropos of seemingly nothing said, "hasn't that brain-dead woman from Florida died yet?" Surprised, I said "that's my mother you're talking about!" Interesting exchange, just for the shock value. But it made me wonder if people nationwide are losing their patience with this entire mess, and are responding, not with sympathy, not with anger, but with utter disdain.

The 2005/06 DMTC Season - Take Two!

Cabaret
Into the Woods
Joseph...
Titanic
Wizard of Oz
Oklahoma!

Vindicating Michael Moore

These flights go beyond what Michael Moore alleged in Fahrenheit 9/11. What else don't we know that someday we'll be told?

The F.B.I. records show, for instance, that prominent Saudi citizens left the United States on several flights that had not been previously disclosed in public accounts, including a chartered flight from Providence, R.I., on Sept. 14, 2001, that included at least one member of the Saudi royal family, and three flights from Las Vegas between Sept. 19 and Sept. 24, also carrying members of the Saudi royal family. The government began reopening airspace on Sept. 13, but many flights remained grounded for days afterward.

The three Las Vegas flights, with a total of more than 100 passengers, ferried members of the Saudi royal family and staff members who had been staying at Caesar's Palace and the Four Seasons hotels. The group had tried unsuccessfully to charter flights back to Saudi Arabia between Sept. 13 and Sept. 17 because they said they feared for their safety as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. documents say.
....

The documents also show that F.B.I. officials were clearly riled by public speculation stirred by news media accounts of the Saudi flights. They were particularly bothered by a lengthy article in the October 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, which included charges that the bureau considered unfair and led to an internal F.B.I. investigation that the agency named "Vanitybom." Internal F.B.I. correspondence during the review was addressed to "fellow Vanitybom victims."

When All You've Got Is a Hammer....

The Penitentes are now most active on the farthest frontiers of what used to be the Spanish Empire (Philippines; New Mexico; rural Mexico). These areas tend to have the most conservative and observant Catholics. The practice used to be widespread, but no more. Today, the Shiites have all these guys beat for such bloody displays of religiosity.

Pop Music Lyrics

Lyrics so stupid I choked with laughter (Lil Flip's 'Sunshine'):

I need a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets
That know how to cook cause a nigga like to eat
Spaghetti, shrimp and steak and I'll adore you
I'll treat you like milk, I'll do nothing but spoil you

Awesome lyrics: (from Kylie's 'Crying Game'):

One day soon I’m gonna tell the moon
About the crying game
And if he knows, maybe he’ll explain
Why there are heartaches, why there are tears
And what to do to stop feeling blue
When love disappears

Michael Boskin, Conservative Economist and Giant Brain

Today's Wall Street Journal features a column by Michael Boskin, conservative Stanford economist and senior fellow at the *(giant sucking sound)* Hoover Institution. Mr. Boskin has decided to throw his giant brain into the Social Security melee.

Nothing works like icons to stir the emotions! Boskin wouldn't be such a giant brain if he wasn't aware of the importance of atmosphere. Boskin equates President Bush's and Clinton's proposals (even though they had diametrically different approaches - Clinton is still alive, and I'm sure he wouldn't like getting dragged into the argument this way). Boskin quotes JFK. He has a nice picture of a thoughtful Daniel Patrick Moynihan. 'Where, oh where, is today's Patrick Moynihan?', Boskin wails. It's time to 'modernize' Social Security and every year we wait, the harder it gets. If we don't start now, when, oh when, will we get our private accounts? (Note to Boskin: why not a picture of FDR?)

Well, if Boskin really wants a private account, he could always open an IRA. Anyone can. We already have suitable 'add-on' accounts. But, I forget, this is all about 'carve-out', isn't it. It's about gutting Social Security and getting people to surrender their guaranteed benefits for a cheap whirl on the Wall Street merry-go-round.

Boskin idolizes the young. He states:

Many younger workers say they expect the system to be bankrupt and gone by the time they retire.

Boskin knows these young people are right. Young people are his god - he sees them every day at Stanford, and he knows how smart they are. But young people make mistakes. Many young people think they won't live to be 40, boring statistics to the contrary be damned. Why should these feckless young people be right on Social Security's prospects?

Boskin uses the straw man of reactionary Democrats who want to extend the current benefit formula indefinitely into the future. Most Democrats are willing to tinker with the formula if it helps long-term solvency, however. People like Boskin are not interested in long-term solvency, because they plan to destroy Social Security in the short-term. To Boskin, tinkering with formulas is like sweeping the floor of a cottage perched on top of Mt. St. Helens: boring and pointless.

Boskin likes everything and anything, except shoring up Social Security. Boskin likes Robert C. Pozen's ratchet idea. Boskin also likes borrowing. Boskin contrasts good borrowing (automatically equated to private sector needs) and bad borrowing (automatically equated to government needs, which he likens to a party), failing to notice that these distinctions are not borne out in practice - borrowing is borrowing, and can be good or bad, depending on context:

Many critics of individual accounts denounce the idea of borrowing to finance them. While I share concerns about large deficits in prosperous peacetime, there is a fundamental difference between borrowing to finance individual accounts and borrowing to fund government current consumption. The individual accounts acquire real assets. So, while there is borrowing by the government on the one hand, it finances investment in real assets on the other, like borrowing to buy a home, not to throw a party. Is there really such an aversion to private capital that only government spending counts?

No aversion to private capital, Mr. Big Brain, as long as the interest gets paid on all that borrowed money! Plus, a lot of government spending serves as an investment in society's future. Don't you just love all his evasions? Plus, Boskin is off-message: it's not prosperous peacetime, we are war with the terrorists! Aren't we?

One trouble with privatization is that the new system has to work on $1+ trillion of borrowed money in order to avoid cutting current benefits. That scale of borrowing might damage the economy, and the money has to be repaid - with interest. It's no panacea! In comparison, pay-as-you-go Social Security is cheap.

Boskin reverts to scare tactics: act now, or you get benefit cuts, tax increases, social dislocations, high interest rates, hives, herpes, locusts, pestilence, obesity, and gas. Sorry, Michael Medulla, none of this works for Americans. We are not scared of the future. We are an optimistic folk. Even if the baby boom generation retires, a few, hardy young people will be left behind in the ruins of our empty cities from which to repopulate the country again (maybe add a few hard-working immigrants as well).

Boskin refers to the Bush plan as if everyone knows what it is, but clever guy that Bush is, he has yet to reveal it, in the form of proposed legislation. It's like poker! Bush now wants Democrats to reveal their plan, but the Democratic plan has been in plain sight for decades: preserve Social Security much as it is. It's not like poker, it's more like a game of 'pull my finger.' Democrats should walk away from this game on the midway of democracy, and involve themselves elsewhere. Leave the sad freak from Texas alone with his finger outstretched.

Poor George Bush - he's misjudged this game's odds! Wasting away all that precious political capital from the 2004 election - for nothing! Like the blackjack dealers at Cache Creek Indian Bingo and Casino say about other dealers who play blackjack: "they work for free!"

Preserve Social Security, ever-so lofty and cerebral Michael Boskin, and everything else will fall into place. Social Security is not a bad program. Social insurance preserves social stability, and makes possible the crazy-ass markets that brains like you idolize so much. Turn your attention to health care costs instead, which are truly running wild, rather than Social Security, which is probably the best-run part of the entire Rube-Goldberg Republican-dominated federal government.

Easter Malice

This is the other Lota-Burger than the one I visited in Gallup, NM over last New Year's holiday. Still, really ugly. Not a homeless guy either....

GALLUP — A trail of blood that stains the pavement along Dairy Drive serves as an eerie reminder of Sunday's dragging of a Gallup man for more than a mile.

Fausto Arellano, 32, was bound by the ankles, strapped to a pick-up truck and dragged for at least a mile before he was abandoned in the Lot-A-Burger east parking lot at about 4 a.m. Easter morning.

She Can Dish It Out

But Ann Coulter has problems taking it:

"Could 10 of the largest College Republicans start walking up and down the aisles and start removing anyone shouting?" Coulter asked. "Otherwise, this lecture is over."

Burglar

George Bush hasn't given up on Social Security just yet. It's been hard to miss the Wall Street Journal's Golden Boy, Robert C. Pozen, and his 'Progressive' solution to Social Security's problems, appearing on NPR's 'All Things Considered,' and even getting a solid boost from George W. Bush himself.

Pozen's irreversible ratchet mechanism for forcing the rich and their money out of the Social Security system would not only weaken the system directly, but also indirectly, by converting Social Security into a welfare program and therefore into a big fat juicy target for future race-and-class-based Republican attacks. Bush will try all sorts of subterfuges to break Democratic resistance.

If the front door is locked, try the side window!

Oops!

Guess DMTC can't do 'Little Shop of Horrors' after all! (maybe 'Cabaret' instead...)

Physics Songs

This site was featured in the Wall Street Journal last week. Takes me right back to high school!

The Hooke and Newton Song:

Optional
Intro:
Doo Doo, Dooo Doo, Doo Doodle-oo Dooo Doo
Doo Doo, Dooo Doo, Doo Doodle-oo Doo

Chorus:
Hooke on the left, Newton on the right
Gives you an equation that’s really outta sight!
Short and sweet, full of hidden delight
And the spring goes up and down, and down
And the spring goes up and down.

Hooke and Newton were rivals in their day,
But partners for eternity is how they’ll have to stay!
Minus kx equals ma,
And the spring goes up and down, and down
And the spring goes up and down.

Repeat Chorus
twice.

Words, Chords, & Intro. by Walter Smith 7-01
Tune from the PBS program “Dragontales”

Should Liberals Be Paranoid Regarding Terri Schiavo?

There is an interesting essay at Smirking Chimp by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst warning progressives of imminent doom regarding the Terry Schiavo case. In her view, the emotional, quasi-fascist framing of the standoff regarding the feeding tube is likely to provoke a Kristallknacht-like response from the Religious Right.

It's a good idea that liberals and progressives be a bit paranoid these days. Even paranoids have enemies, as the old saw goes. Is Whitehurst overreacting, as the people commenting on her essay seem to think, or is she on to something?

Whitehurst writes:

Never underestimate the power of repeated imagery. The videotape of Ms. Schiavo is becoming firmly planted in the American mind, just as the 9/11 bombings became engrained through repeated viewings of the same footage. Functioning somewhat like brainwashing, the repeated exposure to stress-provoking imagery arouses negative feelings such as fear, powerlessness, horror, anxiety, pity or anger. Such "vicarious trauma" burdens viewers, who handle it in one of two ways: numbing/avoidance/minimization or agitation/obsession/exaggeration. Those who are becoming "numbed out" to the images of Ms. Schiavo's real-time starvation-a gruesome reality-TV event for which none of us were prepared-will either avoid the news, crack jokes, or minimize the significance of her dying ("they say starvation doesn't hurt" or "people die all the time-get over it!"). But the many Americans who are growing increasingly distressed (with accompanying feelings of powerlessness) are likely to undergo a personal transformation wherein their more moderate views are discarded and they begin to identify with angry, extremist persons or groups.

In 1995, when Newt Gingrich and the House Republican leadership shut down the federal government, the Radical Right took an aggressive approach. There was one significant overreaction, though - stark damage: Timothy McVeigh and conspirator(s) destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. People recoiled at the violence, however, and the Republicans lost public support. Bill Clinton prevailed over the Gingrich, and by 1999 Gingrich was forced out of the House leadership and Congress altogether.

Whitehurst continues:

Progressives have been conspicuously silent regarding the family's suffering, and most won't even consider her parents' claims that Terri might not want to be starved to death, even in her present condition. The radical right, however, is busy endearing itself to the public-all those millions of average Joes who get all their news from TV, and are watching Terri's withering little body, sad face, desperate parents and the conservative leaders lending them sympathy and support. For the viewing public, I'm afraid it's Michael Schiavo, the man who's forcing his will on Terri and her family, who's speaking for us, and for liberal/progressive values. Come election time, the masses will remember who's who. If we don't speak up and speak up now, here's the equation that millions of voters will remember at the polling booth, just as the Bush administration hopes: Sympathetic to dying woman and her family=Conservatives. Unsympathetic to dying woman and her family=Liberals.

Well, is Whitehurst right? My judgement on this issue may be impaired because I don't watch enough TV, and so I may be missing people's emotional overreaction. I took a little heart in the story on Drudge yesterday that the evangelicals may turn on Jeb Bush instead:

"If Gov. Bush wants to be the man that his brother is, he needs to step up to the plate like President Bush did when the United Nations told him not to go into Iraq," Randall Terry, a protest organizer, said of the governor. "Be a man. Put politics aside."

Michelle Cottle at TNR suggests that Democrats keep their distance from the issue, not only because the politicians are playing with fire, and it's hard to say who is going to be burned, but also because Michael Schiavo may have mixed motives. Fortunately, the national Democratic leadership is unwilling to whip their troops into line. Presenting an amorphous target to the Republicans may be the best policy. My thought is that the Religious Right has alienated a lot of people with their willingness to dispense with the Constitution. Progressives should remain paranoid though - Whitehurst may end up looking like a prophet once this is all through.

Lop-Eared

Folding a T-Shirt

Wow! Isn't the Internet great! I've never been able to figure out an efficient way to do this. It's like an experiment in topology that always goes bad. Like a chemical experiment that always explodes. I need to study this more...

Liberal Hypocrisy?

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund accuses liberals of hypocrisy in opposing federal intervention in the Schiavo case, but supporting it in the case of Elian Gonzalez:

But liberals have gotten off easy for some of the somersaulting arguments they have made on behalf of judicial independence and states' rights to justify their position that Terri Schiavo should not be saved. Many made the opposite arguments in the Elian Gonzalez case.

I'm one liberal who opposed federal intervention in both cases, so I find the accusations of hypocrisy to be annoying. In the Elian Gonzalez case, however, federal intervention was more understandable, since under our system of government, immigration matters are supposed to fall under federal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Elian had family members here who could care for him, and the U.S. had long had a policy for allowing Cuban refugees to settle here. It seemed an aggressive federal overreach to send Elian back to live under a tyranny, even if his father wanted him back.

In the Schiavo matter, the precise hook for federal intervention remains unclear, which is probably why federal courts have refused to intervene. Where have the Florida state courts failed in their duty, exactly?

Supposed conservatives have no trouble trying to demolish our system of government in order to make petty Culture War points. Why doesn't the Wall Street Journal focus on conservative hypocrisy instead? Liberal hypocrisy seems pretty wan these days, at least when compared to the amazing antics of Frist and DeLay. When DeLay was in Michael Schiavo's place, deciding whether to continue medical care for his injured dad, DeLay decided to pull the plug. DeLay's family protests that the situations were different, that DeLay's dad had no hope for recovery. I'm sure Michael Schiavo would answer: EXACTLY!

Scientific American Snark

Scientific American takes their April Fool's jokes seriously.....

Despite my support for Evolution, I think Scientific American should be a little more humble. There has been collateral damage in their war against the Creationists.

Remember when Scientific American refused to hire Forrest Mims III as their "Amateur Scientist" columnist? The job was his, well and justly earned, until they found out that he was a Creationist. Even though his responsibilities would rarely, if ever, intrude into biology, ideological dissonance could not be tolerated.

As an agnostic liberal evolutionist, I nevertheless feel an injustice was done. It's time we liberals expressed a little of that tolerance we like to brag about.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now!

From Deborah:

RIP, James Callaghan

British Prime Minister, 1976-1979.