Giuliani: Closer to Corrupt Criminal Kerik Than His Kids

For starters, I must give a hat tip to my good friend, thereisnospoon, for mentioning this frame on our BlogTalkRadio show, “Don’t Hijack My Thread!” when I was talking about how Rudy’s tremendous and consistent showing of bad judgment when it comes to who he aligns himself with and what his major decisions and actions are.

And for anyone who still can overlook his lack of “family values” when it comes to multiple marriages, or his (conflicting) views on a woman’s right to privacy in her personal and medical decisions, surely will at least be a bit disturbed by the fact that Guiliani is closer with the corrupt and indicted Bernard Kerik than he is with his own children. Whether this kills him in the primary battle or the general election, I think this is a simple and direct reminder of what the “strong on crime former Federal prosecutor” Rudolph Giuliani deems to be important when choosing his relationships.

 

There are so many things that are so very wrong with Rudy that it should be easy to articulate most of them in bite size pieces that would stick with the general or voting public. Generally, they all focus on Rudy’s incredible lack of good judgment and poor decision making on very important matters. Even more important, however, is the fact that his one major perceived strength – strong on crime and “national security” – can so very easily be knocked down by highlighting his close relationship with a corrupt police chief.

The purposeful distancing from his campaign by his own children leaves the door open to really stick in the side of the fundies or other republicans who claim “moral or family values” to be very important for their vote. there are some real good juicy tidbits of just how good a father Rudy is in this article from March:

Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with Andrew has grown strained and distant since his very public and bitter divorce from Andrew’s mother, Donna Hanover, and his marriage to Judith Nathan, according to Andrew and others familiar with the relationship.

—snip—

“There’s obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife,” the younger Mr. Giuliani said. “And we’re trying to figure that out. But as of right now it’s not working as well as we would like.”

Andrew Giuliani said he would not participate in his father’s campaign, saying his devotion to becoming a professional golfer within three years allows no time for distraction.

—snip—

Some campaign Web sites highlight pictures of candidates with family members, but Mr. Giuliani’s does not mention his children, though it includes photographs and mentions of Ms. Nathan.

—snip—

Mr. Giuliani once prided himself on attending all his children’s events and went to Andrew’s high school football games and Caroline’s plays. But he stopped at some point after his marriage to Ms. Nathan in 2003. He missed his son’s graduation, in 2005, and his daughter’s plays in the last 18 months, said people who attended those events.

Let’s be clear here – this is not a knock on his children, nor is it anything that will drag them into the spotlight. Frankly, it isn’t even ABOUT his children, really. The point here is that Rudy doesn’t even mention his children on his campaign website, and doesn’t even attend his children’s major life events

Now, let’s look at Rudy and his corrupt/indicted buddy Bernard Kerik. Well, for starters, the corrupt former Police Chief was CEO of Giuliani-Kerik LLC, an affiliate of Giuliani Partners LLC until his embarrassing nomination for Homeland Security Chief. The key here is that either Rudy truly did not know about the depth of corruption and illegal acts by his good friend (who he trusted as CEO of one of his companies, and nominated for the top Homeland Security position) and is therefore unfit for President due to having such poor judgment or he DID know about the depths of Kerik’s corruption and illegal acts, making him unfit for President based on knowingly associating himself so closely with corrupt criminals.

He was also a former driver for Giuliani and detective before becoming Rudy’s Police Chief. Now, say what you want about what a driver knows about his employer, but wasn’t the driver of another very famous and wanted man stuck at Gitmo because of his “connections” and had his case heard by the US Supreme Court?

And lest anyone think that even Guiliani is distancing himself from the corrupt and tax cheat Kerik, there is this little nugget from the LA Times article linked above:

Although Giuliani said last week that the two men had not talked recently, they were professionally and personally close. The former mayor is godfather to Kerik's daughter, and Kerik wrote in his autobiography that Giuliani had "made" him.

Press reports have indicated that before Kerik's appointment as police commissioner, a New York City official briefed Giuliani about Kerik's ties to a New Jersey waste disposal company that is at the heart of the federal indictment. Giuliani has not disputed those reports, but maintains he doesn't remember the briefings.

And yes, Rudy is defending Kerik, not distancing himself from him. Once again, if Rudy doesn’t remember briefings about Kerik’s ties to a company at the heart of a federal indictment, then doesn’t that cut right to the heart of his “experience and strength in law enforcement”? Either he didn’t remember those briefings – pretty damning briefings about one of his closest friends and professional partners – and isn’t really strong on crime and law enforcement or he DID remember those briefings and is a liar who is not strong on crime and law enforcement as he would then be covering up his knowledge of this information.

In either event, it is very telling and shows just what Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani finds important, and who he chooses to align himself closely with.

A corrupt tax cheating criminal over his own children. What strength against crime and corruption. And what a great dad – always being there for his children as they enter adulthood. A great model for his kids – showing them that he cares more about his corrupt buddies than he does about them.

 

Anglo Disease: Black Friday Blues

Now that the economy is heading south, worries are being increasingly expressed about the great unwinding, and one sees increasingly frantic attempts to rewrite the economic history of the past few years.

On the eve of the famous Black Friday, one of, or the busiest shopping day in the year, I’d like to point out a column written in the Financial Times, Europe’s main English language business paper, which attempts to spin current worries about the economy on a grand scale. As the author, John Plender, explicitly writes about the “Anglo economies”, I feel it is appropriate to incorporate that in my “Anglo Disease” series (see the links at the bottom for earlier instalments).

This was posted on DailyKos yesterday, but may be worth a read for those of you that have not seen it. It was originally posted on European Tribune.

Note: the column linked to above is by Martin Wolf (the FT’s chief economic editor) and is not the one I will comment below. It mostly notes that the US should expect a long period of lower than average growth (which, he states, may be worse than a sharp but short recession), and that overall growth will depend on the ability of other countries to boost their internal demand, a fairly uncontroversial statement. That column is interesting for the graphs it carries, and which show the size of the Great Loot I will discuss below, and which can be seen here.

So let’s have a look at John Plender’s column, The pitfalls of financial globalisation grow clearer, which was pointed out to me by Migeru over at the European Tribune.

:: ::


Conventional wisdom has it that globalisation and the spread of deregulation have been an economic boon for the English-speaking countries. Having run down their manufacturing as a percentage of gross domestic product in the 1980s and 1990s, the US and the UK have been less vulnerable to Chinese competition in this cycle than the big economies of continental Europe. And with disproportionately large financial sectors, these two countries have also enjoyed a financial windfall from the rise of China and other emerging markets.

A first note: globalisation and deregulation are presented as exogenous factors that we all have to live with, and not as an ideological model that has been imposed on all by its initiators … who happen to be the ruling elites of the US and the UK. Reagan anyone? Thatcher? Deregulation? Privatisation? The Big Bang?

All these policies were designed exclusively with the goals of investors in mind – ie a singleminded focus on return on capital and ever-increasing (and preferably untaxed) profits. They caused the growth of the financial sector everywhere, the dominance of economists and financial analysts in public discourse, the relentless focus on efficiency, “rightsizing”, flexibility and profitability, and the corresponding squeeze of manufacturing and other similarly old-fashioned activities.

This is not something that came out of nowhere and that London and New York, in a stroke of good luck, just happened to capture. It was made to happen. Trying to ignore or deny that underlying purpose shows incompetence or wilful dissimulation on a grand scale.


New York and London have played a central and lucrative role in recycling the glut of savings in Asia and in the petro-economies. Much financial innovation in wholesale markets was spurred by this phenomenon.

Ah, again, the savings glut theory (much publicized by Ben Bernanke before he took over the Fed) – which claims that the US is consuming more than it produces because emerging countries are not consuming enough, ie that it is providing a valuable service to the global economy. The reality, of course, is the exact opposite: the US is consuming more than it produces because it can get away with it, by borrowing increasing amounts of money from other countries, and making them manufacture (or dig up) stuff in exchange for IOUs denominated in the US’s own currency. And the widespread use of debt has been encouraged, let’s never forget it, to hide to Americans (other than a very small minority) the reality of their stagnating incomes by allowing them to continue on buying stuff.

Oh sure, the countries exporting to the US are happy to piggyback on that trend, and have benefitted to some extent from the transfer of manufacturing activity and the buid up of their own economy (as long as the cost to the environment is ignored, anyway), and they are doing all they can to not rock the boat. But they certainly did not originate it.


At the same time equity markets have thrived as profits have risen to a record share of gross domestic product. Among other things this reflects the greater exposure of corporations to global market discipline and the benign disinflationary impact of millions of Asians coming into the global workforce.

“benign disinflationary impact” = lower wages for Western workers, fewer perks and less protection for their jobs. This is not a bug, it’s a feature, and the very words used show that the goal is to hide what it means, and present the result (money going to profits rather than to workers) as a positive thing. Hey, profits are up and the stock markets are doing great – thus, says the subtext, the economy is doing just fine.

Again: “global market discipline” = the financial world imposing on other sectors the requirement for the kind of returns it manages to generate for itself by squeezing money today out of future activity. Manufacturing can only generate this by squeezing workers and other costs – which means polluting China rather than paying to follow our more stringent rules in the West.


Meanwhile, retail financial markets have hummed as cheap credit powered housing booms in the Anglo (and other) economies.

Again, this is an integral, vital part of the Anglo economic model: with wages squeezed, the only way to avoid those pesky voters to complain too loudly was to buy them off by offering them the possibility to continue on buying, via very real debt, underpinned to a large extent by (partly virtual) real estate appreciation. It was highly profitable for the financial world too: more business, and a general increase in the value of assets. When your livelihood depends on fees proportional to the value of things traded, it’s all good.


But as the suddenly crisis-prone financial sectors of the US and UK now confront a second round of tightening in the inter-bank market, it is worth asking whether this financial bias could be too much of a good thing.

There is a risk of exaggerating the economic impact of the debacle in asset-backed paper markets in relation to large and diverse financial sectors.

Yeah, because it’s not the whole model based on a gigantic one time squeeze of the middle classes that is flawed, it’s just a few excesses here and there that can be corrected. Right. Dream on, John.


Yet systemic trouble in finance can have wider indirect consequences. With housing markets going into reverse in both countries, there is every likelihood that households will rebuild very low savings ratios. The consequences for demand could be nasty. With a much less diversified economy than the US and much greater debt as a percentage of household wealth, the UK looks the more vulnerable. Sterling has a looming problem.

Nothing to squeeze left. It was a feature, John, not a bug.


In the longer run there is a risk that financial activity will be damped by rising inflation. While Chinese demand continues to put pressure on energy and raw material prices, it is no longer exerting such downward pressure on the price of global labour.

Nothing to squeeze left. Even that wonderfully extensible resource, Chinese labor, is coming to the end of its practical use. And that tells us more than anything what “inflation” means: anything that may cut into profits, and what “growth” means: increasing profits. Anything that lets things seep away from profits – to pay for regulation, to pay for wages, to pay for resources, is inflation – and evil. Inflation is the enemy of the Anglo model – it’s value not being captured and being wasted instead for useless purposes.


A more fundamental point is that China and other emerging market countries are unilaterally rolling back the high tide of liberalisation. Thanks to their rise, more of the world economy operates under mercantilist pegged exchange rate regimes.

This is such a disingenuous comment… the peg is precisely what allowed “inflation” to be avoided in the West, by keeping Chinese costs artificially low. In other circumstances, the investment boom in China, and its massive trade surplus should have caused its currency to appreciate, and its costs to increase. By preventing this, the Chinese authorities were fully complicit in the big squeeze and helped to make it last as long as it did.

The mercantilist exchange rate setting was, again, a feature, not a bug.


By investing their official reserves in developed world government debt, they reduce the cost of public sector borrowing, making a return of big government easier.

John, John, John. Did you not notice that it was the other way round? It’s the combination of massive new spending by the Republican US government (spending focused on the militaro-industrial complex, and pork, ie going to friends, not to plebeians), tax cuts (again, going to the rich) and lower Fed rates that created the bubble that caused the imbalances that in turn made foreigners such huge creditors of the US, got them to buy up US securities and bring long term interest rates down. It was called a virtuous circle while it lasted, but it was really wealth capture on a grand scale, transferring future tax payments by Americans to today’s wealthy. Whatever happens to today’s wealth (more junk, bigger, farther off McMansions, more fuel-wasting FUVs), the future debt will remain – unless, of course, in Bush’s final shafting of the world community, the dollar is left to crash, devaluing the claims on the US economy.

Either way, “big government” – the corrupt, wasteful, cronyism-prone, and ineffective kind favored by conservatives was at the heart of the loot – again, a feature, not a bug.


As co-conspirators with the US Federal Reserve in creating the credit bubble, the same countries have contributed to a boom and bust cycle in housing and finance which will lead to a political backlash, soon to be followed by cumbersome regulation.

Yeah, blame other countries (which, for the most part, were only trying to imitate the model endlessly peddled by US authorities and their trophy pundits). Fine. They are indeed complicit – a bit – for buying your scam.

And of course, when your scheme fails, as it is doing now (again, “bust” is a feature of “boom and bust”), go concern trolling about “cumbersome” regulation. When the adults have to come and clean up the mess, it is not called “cumbersome”, it is  called “saving your sorry irresponsible ass.” But make no mistake, we can expect the whiny calls from never discreditable hacks and supporting pundits for more liberalisation as the previous attempt was “insufficient” and “not given time to prove itself”.


Meanwhile, sovereign wealth funds are indirectly reversing the privatisation trend that began in the 1980s through a re-expansion of state ownership, but on a cross-border basis. That in turn will spawn an illiberal political reaction that will inhibit global capital flows.

Bwahahahaha. So the game should only be played by our kind of people, from New York and London, but not from elsewhere. Dirty foreigners can obviously not be trusted with so much money and should be prevented form doing things that might actually give them a say in how companies are run. Imagine that – people with money not focused only on short term profits! What a horrible crime.

Sadly, John, it is, again, a feature of the big loot, given how much of the wealth grab depends on borrowing money from, well, dirty foreigners, and handing them over financial assets – future claims on our economies. Did you really expect them not to want to be paid, or not to want to set terms when you comes asking for more?

Yes, the grand wealth capture plan was a one-time thing, and now the bill is due – both in the form of “inflation”, and in the form of claims on our real wealth. Of course, the goal was always to let the plebes bear that burden, but your loot has been so effective that the plebes cannot really be squeezed anymore – and that leaves you to talk to Messrs Putin, Abdullah, Hu et al…

Almost makes me sorry…


On the face of it, continental Europe ought now to be better placed to cope. Yet this is no time for schadenfreude. Two German banks that dabbled in subprime structured products have had to be rescued. The dabbling arose from an urgent need to raise returns in an over-politicised, over-regulated, but under-profitable German banking system.

You bet it’s time for schadenfreude. And it’s going to be for quite a while. Sure, you’ve managed to corrupt a big chunk of our elites and our financial systems, given how you’ve taken them over or coopted them, but the loot has not been as extensive, nor as successful, and given how you try to keep all the financial fun concentrated in the City and Wall Street, the rest of Europe still had to focus on other, actually wealth creating activities. And these will remain even as the financial world crashes down.


With globalisation, no economic model provides protection from the excesses of someone else’s model.

Excesses? what excesses? Are you admitting to anything, finally? Or are you just trying to get us to bail you out, once more? You’ve just picked our pockets ! Twice, given that you’ve also picked our future pockets already!


As conditions in the US mortgage market worsen next year, the waning ability of the US consumer to absorb the rest of the world’s goods will hurt everybody, including continental Europeans.

Again, for the past 2 years at least, the real economic locomotive of the world has been Europe – because wages are still growing over here, and there was no need to create funny money to spend.

Oh sure, European stock markets will crash along with Wall Street. But housing prices are unlikely to crash in places like Germany where they have stagnated for the past decade, or in France where banks are kept lending standards mostly in check, or even in Spain where the very real housing boom was underpinned by the very real catching up of Spain’s economy to the rest of Europe.


There is no question that smart, global finance has been a good thing.

Yeah, don’t ask questions, it might be painful to hear the answers.


Without the recycling of capital, excess savings in Asia would have been profoundly deflationary. Yet from today’s global vantage point, we have undoubtedly all had too much of this good thing. Whether it is ever possible to have just the right amount is another question.

Without the Anglo bubble, there would have been no need for the capture of Asian savings, and no hangover today.

Go into detox, John. Please.

:: ::

Previous “Anglo Disease” content:

Tabasco: Let The Fingerpointing Begin

Corruption, in addition to climate change, may have been responsible for the devastation caused by the Tabasco floods.  You’ll remember that floods in Tabasco last month, caused by up to 30 inches of rain, ruined all of the crops, stopped oil production, and caused one million people, about half the state’s population to be displaced.  About 70,000 people were in shelters in Villahermosa and another 20,000 were living on their roofs.  Indigenous people in the interior found themselves stuck on islands in the flood water.  And recently, it was reported that the entire state was being sprayed with insecticides to prevent an outbreak of dengue, a mosquito born disease similar to malaria.  280 people are still unaccounted for.

Today the AP, comparing the situation in Tabasco to Katrina, reported:

The government knew Mexico’s Gulf coast was a disaster in waiting long before three rivers surged out of their banks, flooding nearly every inch of the low-lying state of Tabasco and leaving more than 1 million homes under water.

But officials admit they never finished a $190 million levee project that was supposed to have been done by 2006 and would have held back much of the rising waters that flooded Tabasco at the end of October.

The tragedy was reminiscent of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, when levees failed and swamped much of New Orleans, forcing people to flee by wading through dirty waters. In Tabasco, days of relentless rain – not a hurricane – were to blame.

What exactly was the project that was supposed to prevent the disaster?

Both the state and federal government acknowledge Tabasco wasn’t prepared for unusually heavy rains that hit in October, even though a flood-control plan had been drawn up after flooding in 1999 left tens of thousands homeless and caused $375 million in damage.

In 2003, officials announced the Integral Project Against Flooding, which called for building 110 miles of levees and 120 miles of drainage canals along the Grijalva, Carrizal and Samaria rivers.

But state officials admit they never finished the levee project, 72 percent of which was funded by the federal government.

It’s not known what happened to the money earmarked for the project.

Let the fingerpointing begin.  Today, the WaPo reports that funds paid by Petroleos Mexicanos for flood prevention weren’t used for that:

From 1997 to 2001, at least $3 million was donated to build dikes, raise levees, and move poor residents from low-lying areas, according to analysts and independent investigators. But a crescendo of questions about whether the oil money was ever used for the intended projects is raising the possibility that corruption and incompetence might have played as much of a role in the tragedy as historically torrential rains.

The Saint Tomas Association, a nongovernmental organization, has said there was no evidence that two previous Tabasco governors – Manuel Andrade Diaz and Roberto Madrazo Pintado, who was a 2006 presidential candidate – spent the oil money on flood projects.

The group’s investigators say they have found proof that flood abatement money was used to pay contractors who never completed jobs, as well as to fill the gasoline tanks of private vehicles and to buy large quantities of cigarettes and pastries.

Mexican legislators have responded by launching investigations and by questioning whether the former governors may have used the funds in their political campaigns.

“Where’s the money?” Moises Dagdug, who represents Tabasco in the lower house of Mexico’s Congress, asked in an interview. “My personal perception is that it was not used well. Unfortunately, we have a lot of corruption in our country.”

Madrazo, who was governor from 1994 to 2000, and Andrade, who was governor from 2002 to 2006, have denied improperly using donations from the oil companies. In a written statement, Andrade said he had “absolutely nothing to be ashamed of” and pointed to the construction of 74 miles of levees and 62 miles of drainage systems.

But corruption has not been isolated as the cause of the disaster.  Incompetence and poor planning may have played a significant role.  AP reports:

Fingers also are being pointed at the Federal Electricity Commission.

Critics say it waited too long to let begin letting water out of a dam upstream, forcing workers to release a huge amount in a short time when the reservoir level surged. The agency also gave little warning to people downstream about the impending disaster, critics contend.

Some people also blame deforestation in Mexico’s highlands, saying that has lessened the ability of mountainous terrain to absorb heavy rainfall and reduce runoff into low-lying areas like Tabasco.

The initial disaster received little attention in the US traditional media.  The lingering effects of the flood and the attempts to sort out responsibility have received even less.  In part, that’s to be expected.  Interest in the US, except for certain communities, about what goes on south of the Big River is slight.  That’s why nobody should have been surprised when, recently, Vice President Cheney stated that Hugo Chavez was the president of Peru

Creating the War OF Terror

Larisa at-Largely reports:

Well, apparently (and again) we find out that the majority of the “terrorists” we are fighting “over there” are actually a our own allies, or as the terrorists call themselves, Our Allies in Iraq (OAI):

Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006.”

Ah, the House of Saud, with an ally such as this, who needs any enemies? They are, after all, our number one arms client, and so what if they dabble in murdering Americans, when multi-billion dollar contracts are on the table (where apparently impeachment [and Iraq occupation defunding] is not).

(italicized addition mine)

You’ve gotta feel for George Bush. Not enough people are buying his WOT fantasy, so as with any other BS product, he simply creates the problem to help him sell his solution.

And lives? Big deal. Lot’s more where they came from…

Thanks a lot, George.

This is George Walker Bush, and this is how he would like you to remember him:

This is the real legacy of George Walker Bush (portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders):

Eddie Ryan

Dawn Halfacker

Dusty Hill

Crystal Davis

Jake Schick

Jay Wilkerson

John Jones

Jon Bartlett

Mike Jernigan

Dexter Pitts

Terrel Dawes

Bryan Anderson

Oyoanna Allende

Ryan, Halfacker, Hill, Davis, Schick, Wilkerson, Jones, Bartlett, Jernigan, Pitts, Dawes, Anderson and Allende are real patriots, and true American heroes. How many more heroes like these have to suffer for the folly of George Walker Bush and his legacy?

Happy Thanksgiving, Nancy.

Pony Party, Black Friday

So, what are you doing today?

working?  shopping?  spending time with your family?

I’ve had a hectic week…and we’ve got an early appointment today…but I hope YOU are all sleeping in, so I don’t expect to see too many of you here today….which is as it should be…  ðŸ˜‰

Ponies don’t accept recommends…

~73v

Pat Buchanan Is An Effing Moron

I can say nothing else about the man.  He’s deficient in every mental faculty save the ability to write apparently “dog-whistle” columns celebrating the “good old days” when people were “free” to hang blacks from trees, beat gays to death and ensconce themselves in “Whites Only” clubs…



What….a….freaking….dolt….

Read some of his latest lunatic ramblings decrying the protection of gay’s jobs and employment;

What would the new law do? Make it a federal crime for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation terms, conditions or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.”

Hey, sounds like something any decent American would get behind, no pun intended, right?

Perish the thought, quoth Mr. Spew-Cannon;


The bill will also do something else – further restrict individual freedom and further criminalize personal conduct. It would tell an employer: You may not want to hire homosexuals, but you are no longer free not to. For if you fail or refuse to hire or promote a homosexual, we will punish you, fine you, shut you down, break you.

Get that?  In Pat Buchanan’s America, the idea of freedom means the freedom to fire an employee for being a bloody queer, or to refuse to promote an obviously deserving one because he wears mascara…or any other delicious discrimination of fags that Pat can bring to mind…oh, the injustice of this all…

Aside: Sometimes I can’t wait for America to slide right off the face of North America, when I listen to Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan or Rush Limbaugh for even ten seconds…

Continuing down the path of conservative enslavement, Pat whines that;


In this bill, we see the triumph of the counterculture of the 1960s in making its moral values the basis of law, even as Christians once shaped society when America was a Christian country. In pre-secular America, homosexual sodomy was a crime, not a “lifestyle.” The “lifestyle” view is now being enshrined in federal law.

Isn’t it funny how, even though the Founding Fathers explicitly drew a line between Church and State, that some Christians think the Constitution ranks just below the Bible as a religious document?  It gave man the freedom to enslave, kill fags, deny civil rights, as long as the States wrote the laws permitting it, apparently…I don’t know, I’ve given up trying to understand America’s schizophrenia when it comes to homosexuals and non-whites even being recognized as human beings…I’d expect this mentality in a 3rd World village, but in a modern, industrialized country whose very entertainment industry is rife with the same people “Decent Americans” claim to hate?

As I said, I give up…

But Pat has some golden nuggets left, still…

In the 1950s, there were men’s clubs and women’s clubs, WASP country clubs and law firms and Jewish country clubs and law firms. Black folks had their own restaurants, barber shops, movie theaters and churches.

We were a free country then. Did people use their freedom to discriminate? Undeniably. Did race discrimination need correcting? Undeniably. But in enlisting state power to end discrimination, we harnessed Leviathan.

Oh.My.Freaking.God…is the man serious?  “We were a free country then?”  Uh, to whom are you referring, Pat?  The 75% of people you wouldn’t allow to vote, if given the chance to write the laws, or the small group of monied WASPS you feel was given America as the “Promised Land” of discrimination, KKK rallies and witch-burnings?



Yes, Pat, I’m sure all Black Americans are just yearning to return to the days of the ’50’s…

You know, I promised I wouldn’t used bad language as TheManWithAPointthis man strains my honour to the breaking point…

If anyone wonders why I’m not blogging much, it’s because there really is no hope for America if trash like this is regarded as journalism.  If a man like this gets regular appearances on all the major “news” networks, I can only say that the “Camelot America” of JFK’s dreams isn’t just dead, its putrid corpse is rotting in the alley dumpster and the stench is making me sick…

What are you reading?

Just the usual list this week.  Suggestions for topics are welcome.

If you like to trade books, try BookMooch.

What are you reading?  is crossposted to daily Kos

Just finished:

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.  Yet more Discworld fun.  I didn’t like this one so much.  I tend to like the ones with a lot of fantasy less than the others, and this one has a lot of fantasy elements

the Difference Engine by Doron Swade.  Back in 1821 Charles Babbage invented and designed a computer.  But it never got built.  This book tells the story, and also the story of the author’s attempt to build that machine in the present day.  I found the parts about Babbage much more interesting than the parts about Swade.

Continuing with

Causality by Judea Pearl.  Fascinating but deep.

Intro to Probability Theory by Hoel, Port, and Stone.  A good text.

The Elements of Statistical Learning by Trevor Hastie and Robert Tibshirani.  An in-depth look at a wide range of statistical techniques.  Beautifully produced.

The Politics of Congressional Elections by Gary Jacobson

Just started

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett.  I had mostly forgotten this one, and it’s really good!  

Docudharma Times Friday Nov.23

This is an Open Thread: Hey don’t pull the string

Friday’s Headlines:Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request: Abortion foes’ strategy advances : D.B. Cooper, where are you?: Returnees Find a Capital Transformed

USA

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request

Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause:

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 23, 2007; Page A01

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Abortion foes’ strategy advances

An attempt to undermine Roe vs. Wade by amending constitutions to grant human status to embryos gains ground in several states.

By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 23, 2007

DENVER — Antiabortion activists in several states are promoting constitutional amendments that would define life as beginning at conception, which could effectively outlaw all abortions and some birth control methods.

The campaigns to grant “personhood” to fertilized eggs, giving them the same legal protections as human beings, come as the nation in January marks the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. During those three decades, abortion foes have succeeded in imposing a variety of restrictions, such as waiting periods and parental notification for minors. But there are still about 1.3 million abortions a year in the U.S.

D.B. Cooper, where are you?

Saturday is 36th anniversary of hijacker’s leap into legend

Little remains of D.B. Cooper, the man who hijacked a commercial airplane for $200,000 and leaped into the unknown from the plane’s back stairs 36 years ago.

But the bulk of what he did leave behind is in a decades-old cardboard box in the FBI office in downtown Seattle.

A boarding pass from the Nov. 24, 1971, Portland-to-Seattle fight bears the name Dan Cooper, handwritten in red ink and all capital letters.

Next to it are a few deteriorated bills and a pink parachute discarded after Cooper cut its strings to secure the money. A padded envelope protects his tie — a black JCPenney clip-on — from which authorities gained a partial DNA sample.

Middle East

Returnees Find a Capital Transformed

Security Is Better, But Freedoms Are Tempered by Fear

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, November 23, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 — Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.

Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq.

Bomb strikes Baghdad, killing 13

BAGHDAD – A bomb exploded in a pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi police said.

The blast occurred just before 9 a.m. at the al-Ghazl market, shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the animal stalls.

It was the first attack against the popular weekly bazaar since a U.S.-Iraqi security plan aimed at quelling spiraling violence began in mid-February, underscoring warnings by senior American commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq’s fragile security despite a downturn in violence.

Europe

Ex-top military men launch angry attack on Brown

LONDON (AFP) – Five former heads of the armed forces have fiercely criticised Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s treatment of the military, with one suggesting he treated them “with contempt” Friday.

The five former chiefs of the defence staff — Michael Boyce, Charles Guthrie, David Craig, Edwin Bramall and Peter Inge — launched the unusually personal attack during a debate in the House of Lords Thursday.

As lords, all five have the right to speak in Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber.

Boyce, who held the job between 2001 and 2003, said he was concerned that defence funding was not high enough to cope with current deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Turks in Christian murder trial

Five young men are due to go on trial in eastern Turkey, accused of killing three Christians earlier this year.

The Christians, who included a pastor and a German missionary, were stabbed repeatedly and had their throats cut.

The suspects, aged 19 and 20, were detained at the scene of the crime, a Protestant publishing house in Malatya.

Latin America

Cruise boat sinking off Argentina

Passengers and crew members are being rescued from a sinking cruise liner off Argentina’s coast.

The MV Explorer is reported to have hit an object in the Antarctic Ocean, near the South Shetland Islands.

Andy Cattrell, of the Falmouth Coastguard, said about 100 passengers and 54 crew members have been evacuated and are in lifeboats.

Brazil shock at woman’s jail rape

Authorities in Brazil are investigating reports that a young woman was left in a police cell with some 20 men for a month and repeatedly sexually abused.

The governor of the state of Para, where the reported case took place, has promised a full inquiry.

Governor Ana Julia Carepa said the age of the woman, put variously at 15 and 20, was irrelevant as she should not have been jailed with male prisoners.

Africa

South Africa looks to silence sceptics at World Cup draw

DURBAN, South Africa (AFP) – South Africa’s ability to stage the world’s most-widely watched sporting event will undergo intensive scrutiny on Sunday when it hosts the qualifying draw for the 2010 football World Cup.

Thousands of football administrators and journalists will be present in the eastern city of Durban, with hundreds of millions more watching on television, for an extravaganza designed to silence the sceptics.

Fears about the progress of stadium construction, finance, levels of crime and accommodation are all still simmering away but organisers are hoping that they will remain on the backburner for this weekend at least.

Asia

Blasts in three northern Indian cities kills 4

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – At least four people were killed in blasts near courts in three northern Indian cities on Friday in what a senior government official said were terrorist strikes.

Police said the blasts were reported from Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, all in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh. At least two people were killed in Varanasi and two in Faizabad.

“I believe it is the handiwork of groups who are trying to spread terror in our country,” junior Home Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told reporters.

‘Our town is a graveyard’

Human rights are in crisis in Sri Lanka as civilians continue to be caught in the crossfire of civil war. Both the government and the Tamil Tigers have been blamed for spates of killings and abductions, while mass displacement is creating a climate of fear in the east and north of the country. Jonathan Gorvett, a freelance journalist covering the conflict from Colombo, describes a visit to Trincomalee, a town ravaged by race riots.

By 5.30pm it is already getting gloomy in Trincomalee, as the afternoon thunderstorm brews up over the ocean, stirring up a wall of bitter black clouds. The monsoon rain releases suddenly, and in a street off Inner Harbour Road, an army patrol, helmeted, flack-jacketed, AKs at the ready, stands nervously under the slight cover of a ramshackle shop awning as the water hammers down.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

In 1992 I learned to speak my truths.  They were tentative at first, hardly more than notes about the reality of my life.  Later some of them became poems.  Still later, more poems were added to add the view of hindsight.  I’ve tried to arrange them into a cohesive whole.  Maybe it works.  Maybe it has more meaning this way.

The following poem was written approximately two months after my surgery and the break up of my year-long long-distance relationship.  It was my habit to write a new poem or essay for every performance.  I’m not totally sure what the occasion was for this one, but I’m pretty sure it was on campus at the University of Central Arkansas.

A Transition through Poetry XXV

Art Link

Song

I Sing a Song

I sing a song of sadness

Of broken dreams and fear

I sing a song of pain

Of hopelessness and gloom

I sing a song of changes

Of remembrance and rebirth

I sing a song of life

Of exploration and growth

I sing a song of gladness

Of discovery and wonder

I sing a song of joy

Of acceptance and peace

I sing a song

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–October, 1994

I know you have talent.  What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent.  I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook.  ðŸ™‚  

Let your talent bloom.  You can share it here.  Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.

Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making?  And be excellent to one another!

November 23, 1963

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‘Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot’

Remembering John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

If you wish, please share your thoughts about JFK, and related matters that come to mind.  

Room of Doom

I passed by that Room of Doom every day for two weeks when I was working at an odd job between classes.

It was a terrible place but when I first went by I had no reason to know the terror lurking within.

Parents brought their children to that room.  The children had received a death sentence that no lawyer could mitigate.  The children had received a diagnosis of juvenile leukemia.  There was no cure, not even a treatment.  All that waited for the children was an early painful death.

Parents could sit all day with a doomed child in that awful room hoping for a miracle and be told at the end of the day a doctor might be able to see the child the next day.  Volunteers for clinical trials were treated badly those days.  Not always so great today I suppose.

“We are going to cure that cancer,”  a doctor told me.  “This is not John Hopkins.  This is much better.”

Uh huh.

He did.  

He and many other doctors and scientists.  And many other hospitals.  Maybe even John Hopkins.

More than half of children with juvenile leukemia are cured today.

There are always headwinds that must be fought.  Obstructionists like Ralph Nader and Pfizer and Wall Street wolves and journalists and the FDA and liberals.

Liberals?

Strange is it not?  Yeah, liberals worry that Pfizer and Merck and Novartis might make too much money as they join arms with Pfizer and Merck and Novartis and the FDA to keep revolutionary new drug platforms out of the marketplace that might keep children and their parents and grandparents and relatives and friends from dying of terrible diseases.

Journalists spend lots of time talking about new killer drugs.  Not so much time talking about new life-saving drugs.

While Bill Gates was bragging at the U.N. on how his and Melinda’s billions had produced a wonderful new pill to cure brain rot (african sleeping sickness – the african form of trypanosomiasis), Jim Cramer’s Street.com was publishing a suggestion that trials in The Congo were a hoax.  The company that functioned as the commercialization arm of the university consortium developing the drug was undergoing a bear raid and was under fierce assault.  Many small stock traders claimed to be making millions shorting the stock along with the institutional types.  Recently your fine government listed the same company on a proscribed list of companies doing business in The Sudan.  The company is paying for clinical trials of their drug treating trypanosomiasis in Darfur.

That same pill was thought to maybe be able to treat up to a billion people or so with diseases ranging from malaria to a pneumonia (pneumocystis pneumonia) that attacks those with devastated immune systems – AIDS patients, transplant patients, the very elderly.  The trials with malaria haven’t gone as well as hoped but the drug may successfully treat pregnant women without harming their fetuses and be a mild prophylaxis for those traveling to malaria endemic regions.

There are folks that want to change things.  I was first attracted to Barack Obama for a little noticed bill he proposed that might direct the FDA to do some good rather than harm.  John Edwards has an idea.  Not sure it is not a disastrous idea but it deserves a hearing no matter how much Armando and his ilk hate John Edwards.  JE has a powerful personal incentive to want things to go well for drug research.  Her name is Elizabeth.  Shame on you, John.

Best,  Terry

The Stars Hollow Gazette- Updated!

You know, people who work on holidays are really performing a public service.

I like Thanksgiving because it’s time and a half and dead slow.  You’re sold out of milk anyway so you can basically just zone.

Black Friday is busy for the cashiers and more so for the floor sales people who have to answer all the questions.  Not so much in Stock where you were much more likely to get a call for boxes that were in short supply (and invariably stored in the big uncataloged pile behind the facade mirror with the unsorted hangers).

Your basic job is to deliver carts of merchandise between the loading dock and the sales floor storerooms.  You need to be able to read a routing card and sign off that the seal is unbroken and matches before the Department head accepts inventory control.  Someone has to do it.

The first place I worked, by the end of the season we were storing things on the roof and in two semi-trailers in the loading dock.  The second place the loading dock was in the basement of a ‘historic’ store.

The store was so historic in fact that I was practically the last one standing when they closed it, frantically doing inventory of some hideous green abstract floral sheets 100 years out of season we were looking to dump on a liquidator.

It all falls in the rounds.

Scene 5.VI.

The same.  Le Bret and Ragueneau.

LE BRET:  What madness!  Here?  I knew it well!

CYRANO:  (smiling and sitting up)  What now?

LE BRET:  He has brought his death by coming, Madame.

ROXANE:  God!  Ah, then! that faintness of a moment since. . .?

CYRANO:  Why, true!  It interrupted the ‘Gazette:’  . . . Saturday, twenty-sixth, at dinner-time,  Assassination of De Bergerac.

(He takes off his hat; they see his head bandaged.)

ROXANE:  What says he?  Cyrano!–His head all bound!  Ah, what has chanced?  How?–Who?  . . .

CYRANO:

‘To be struck down,

Pierced by sword i’ the heart, from a hero’s hand!’

That I had dreamed.  O mockery of Fate!

–Killed, I! of all men–in an ambuscade!

Struck from behind, and by a lackey’s hand!

‘Tis very well.  I am foiled, foiled in all,

Even in my death.

RAGUENEAU:  Ah, Monsieur!  . . .

CYRANO:  (holding out his hand to him)  Ragueneau, weep not so bitterly!  . . .  What do you now old comrade?

RAGUENEAU:  (amid his tears)  Trim the lights for Moliere’s stage.

CYRANO:  Moliere!

RAGUENEAU:  Yes; but I shall leave to-morrow.  I cannot bear it!  Yesterday, they played ‘Scapin’, I saw he’d thieved a scene from you!

LE BRET:  What! a whole scene?

RAGUENEAU:  Oh, yes, indeed, Monsieur.  The famous one, ‘Que Diable allait-il faire?’

LE BRET:  Moliere has stolen that?

CYRANO:  Tut!  He did well!

(to Ragueneau)

How went the scene?  It told–I think it told?

RAGUENEAU:  (sobbing)  Ah! how they laughed!

CYRANO:  Look you, it was my life to be the prompter every one forgets!

(To Roxane)

That night when ‘neath your window Christian spoke

–Under your balcony, you remember?  Well!

There was the allegory of my whole life:

I, in the shadow, at the ladder’s foot,

While others lightly mount to Love and Fame!

Just! very just!  Here on the threshold drear

Of death, I pay my tribute with the rest,

To Moliere’s genius,–Christian’s fair face!

(The chapel-bell chimes.  The nuns are seen passing down the alley at the back, to say their office)

Let them go pray, go pray, when the bell rings!

ROXANE:  (rising and calling)  Sister!  Sister!

CYRANO:  (holding her fast)  Call no one.  Leave me not.  When you come back, I should be gone for aye.

(The nuns have all entered the chapel.  The organ sounds)

I was somewhat fain for music–hark! ’tis come.

ROXANE:  Live, for I love you!

CYRANO:

No, In fairy tales

When to the ill-starred Prince the lady says

‘I love you!’ all his ugliness fades fast–

But I remain the same, up to the last!

ROXANE:  I have marred your life–I, I!

CYRANO:

You blessed my life!

Never on me had rested woman’s love.

My mother even could not find me fair:

I had no sister; and, when grown a man,

I feared the mistress who would mock at me.

But I have had your friendship–grace to you

A woman’s charm has passed across my path.

LE BRET:  (pointing to the moon, which is seen between the trees)  Your other lady-love is come.

CYRANO:  (smiling)  I see.

ROXANE:  I loved but once, yet twice I lose my love!

CYRANO:  Hark you, Le Bret!  I soon shall reach the moon.  To-night, alone, with no projectile’s aid!  . . .

LE BRET:  What are you saying?

CYRANO:  I tell you, it is there, there, that they send me for my Paradise.  There I shall find at last the souls I love in exile- Galileo, Socrates!

LE BRET:  (rebelliously)  No, no!  It is too clumsy, too unjust!  So great a heart!  So great a poet!  Die like this?  What, die?  . . .

CYRANO:  Hark to Le Bret, who scolds!

LE BRET:  (weeping)  Dear friend  . . .

CYRANO:   (starting up, his eyes wild)  What ho!  Cadets of Gascony!  The elemental mass–ah yes!  The hic. . .

LE BRET:  His science still–he raves!

CYRANO:  Copernicus  Said  . . .

ROXANE:  Oh!

CYRANO:

Mais que diable allait-il faire,

Mais que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?. . .

Philosopher, metaphysician,

Rhymer, brawler, and musician,

Famed for his lunar expedition,

And the unnumbered duels he fought,–

And lover also,–by interposition!–

Here lies Hercule Savinien

De Cyrano de Bergerac,

Who was everything, yet was naught.

I cry you pardon, but I may not stay;

See, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence!

(He has fallen back in his chair; the sobs of Roxane recall him to reality; he looks long at her, and, touching her veil)

I would not bid you mourn less faithfully

That good, brave Christian: I would only ask

That when my body shall be cold in clay

You wear those sable mourning weeds for two,

And mourn awhile for me, in mourning him.

ROXANE:  I swear it you!  . . .

CYRANO:  (shivering violently, then suddenly rising)  Not there! what, seated?–no!

(They spring toward him)

Let no one hold me up–

(He props himself against the tree)

Only the tree!

(Silence)

It comes.  E’en now my feet have turned to stone, my hands are gloved with lead!

(He stands erect)

But since Death comes, I meet him still afoot,

(He draws his sword)

And sword in hand!

LE BRET:  Cyrano!

ROXANE:  (half fainting)  Cyrano!

(All shrink back in terror.)

CYRANO:  Why, I well believe, he dares to mock my nose?  Ho!  Insolent!

(He raises his sword)

What say you?  It is useless?  Ay, I know

But who fights ever hoping for success?

I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest!

You there, who are you!–You are thousands!

Ah!

I know you now, old enemies of mine!

Falsehood!

(He strikes in air with his sword)

Have at you!  Ha! and Compromise!

Prejudice, Treachery!  . . .

(He strikes)

Surrender, I?

Parley?  No, never!  You too, Folly,–you?

I know that you will lay me low at last;

Let be!  Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!

(He makes passes in the air, and stops, breathless)

You strip from me the laurel and the rose!

Take all!  Despite you there is yet one thing

I hold against you all, and when, to-night,

I enter Christ’s fair courts, and, lowly bowed,

Sweep with doffed casque the heavens’ threshold blue,

One thing is left, that, void of stain or smutch,

I bear away despite you.

(He springs forward, his sword raised.  It falls from his hand.  He staggers, falls back into the arms of Le Bret and Ragueneau.)

ROXANE:  (bending and kissing his forehead)  ‘Tis?  . . .

CYRANO:  (opening his eyes, recognizing her, and smiling)  My white plume.

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