Title Goes Here(tm)

Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

we've had this many folks visit so far:

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

archives:

01 Aug 2006

01 Jul 2006

01 Jun 2006

Older Archives 2003-2006

Achtung! Das machine ist nicht fur gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dumkopfen, das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in der pockets, relaxen und watchen der blinkenlights.

links:
Tom Paine
The Nation
Think Progress
Bush or Chimp?
Landover Baptist Church
The White House
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass
Project for the New American Century
Project for the Old American Century
Project for the New American Empire
All Hat, No Cattle
Unfairly Balanced
Buck Fush

U.K. court denies gay Canadian marriage

Ruling focuses on procreation

LONDON (Associated Press) -Two university professors failed Monday in a court bid seeking British recognition their same-sex marriage, arguing their human rights had been violated by laws that recognized the union only as a civil partnership.

Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger wed in Vancouver, Canada, in 2003, and had asked London's High Court for legal recognition of the marriage in Britain.

In a ruling, Mark Potter, president of the High Court's Family Division, said there was a "long-standing definition and acceptance" that the term marriage referred to a relationship between a man and a woman, primarily designed for producing and rearing children.

"To accord a same-sex relationship the title and status of marriage would be to fly in the face of the (European) Convention (on Human Rights) as well as to fail to recognize physical reality," Potter said.

However, Potter said lasting single-sex relationships were "in no way inferior" to mixed-sex relationships.

Wilkinson and Kitzinger had argued that their relationship was like that of any other married couple and that by calling it a civil partnership, Britain had violated their human rights.

Potter said he believed people across England and Europe respected the concept of marriage and believed it is an important means of protecting the traditional family unit.

Can you believe this shit? The GOP is perfectly willing to give poorest a pittance more, IF we give the very wealthiest billions for free! And, they cleverly make it so that if this outrageous measure does not pass, it is the Democrats' fault! These repuglican ratfucks eat their young, I swear...

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House approves minimum wage increase

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Republicans muscled the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House early Saturday after pairing it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.

Combining the two issues provoked protests from Democrats and was sure to cause problems in the Senate, where the minimum wage initiative was likely to die at the hands of Democrats opposed to the costly estate tax cuts. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week.

Still, GOP leaders saw combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting permanent cuts to the estate tax, a top GOP priority fueled by intense lobbying by farmers, small business owners and super-wealthy families such as the Waltons, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune.

"This is the best shot we've got; we're going to take it," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. The unusual packaging also soothed conservatives angry about raising the minimum wage over opposition by GOP business allies.

The House passed the bill 230-180 before leaving for a five-week recess.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed Democrats would kill the hybrid bill, along with its 10-year, $300 billion-plus cost.

"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."

Republicans countered that Democrats opposed the bill to keep the issue alive for the November elections.

But Republicans also reveled in putting moderate Democrats in the uncomfortable position of voting against both the minimum wage increase and the estate tax cut — and an accompanying bipartisan package of popular tax breaks, including a research and development credit for businesses and deductions for college tuition and state sales taxes.

The GOP package would increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years.

Under current law, the estate tax is phased out completely by 2010, but jumps back to 55 percent on estates larger than $1 million in 2011.

The bill passed Saturday would exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to rise to 20 percent. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30 percent by 2015.

The maneuver was aimed at defusing the minimum wage increase as a campaign issue for Democrats while using the popularity of the increase to achieve the Republican Party's longtime goal of permanently cutting estate taxes.

That left Democrats fuming.

"Just think of what it is to have a bill that says to minimum wage workers, 'We'll raise your minimum wage but only if we can give an estate tax cut to the 7,500 wealthiest families in America,'" said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Besides the 10-year, $268 billion cut to the estate tax, the measure contains $38 billion in other tax cuts that enjoy widespread backing, such as the research-and-development tax credit.

As part of the plan, Congress would also pass a bill shoring up the U.S. pension system. That bill easily passed the House Friday night and seemed more likely to succeed in the Senate than the minimum wage-estate tax plan.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was a driving force behind the plan, overruling Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who wanted to couple the business tax breaks with the pension overhaul bill.

The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said the move by GOP leaders — who actually oppose the minimum wage increase — was a cynical exercise to give political cover to GOP moderates while ensuring the wage increase does not become law.

"They want on the one hand to appear to be doing something and on the other make sure that it doesn't happen," Hoyer said.

Republicans countered that it was only fair to business interests opposed to the wage to reward them with estate tax relief and other tax cuts. And they said adding the estate tax was the only way to get their Senate GOP counterparts — who rejected a minimum wage increase just last month — to vote for it.

"The Republicans in the Senate have twice defeated this," said Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. "You know what? If the Senate wants the estate tax and the (tax cut) extenders, they've to give us the minimum wage. That's how it's going to become law."

LaTourette organized a drive by almost 50 rank-and-file Republican lawmakers to persuade House leaders to schedule the wage measure for debate. Democrats have been hammering away on the minimum wage issue and have public opinion behind them.

It was during the campaign year of 1996 that Congress last voted to increase the minimum wage. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage makes $10,700, which is below the poverty line for workers with families.

Inflation has eroded the minimum wage's buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years. Lawmakers have won cost-of-living wage increases totaling about $35,000 for themselves over the last 10 years.

GOP lawmakers feared being pounded with 30-second campaign ads over the August recess that would tie Congress' upcoming $3,300 pay increase with Republicans' refusal to raise the minimum wage.

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The bill is H.R. 5970

On the Net:

Iranian leader bans usage of foreign words

TEHRAN, Iran, Associated Press - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Homeland contracts oversight deemed poor

[Some of more than 10,000 mobile homes are shown stored at the Hope, Ark., airport instead of housing Katrina victims. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)]

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The Homeland Security Department spent $34 billion in its first two years on private contracts that were poorly managed or included significant waste or abuse, a congressional report concluded Thursday.

Faulty airport screening machines, unused mobile homes for hurricane victims and lavish employee office space — complete with seven kitchens, a gym and fancy artwork — were among 32 contracts on which Homeland Security overspent, the report found.

"The cumulative costs to the taxpayer are enormous," concluded the report, which was prepared for Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who head the House Government Reform Committee.

The House report was a comprehensive study of more than 350 earlier-reported government audits and investigations of Homeland Security contracts between 2003, when the department was created, and 2005.

Still, the broad look found that Homeland Security's procurement spending ballooned from $3.5 billion, on 14,000 contracts, to $10 billion for 63,000 contracts during the two-year period. The report also concluded that half of what the department spent on contracts in 2005 was awarded without full and open competition — creating potential waste and mismanagement.

Over the two-year period, spending on noncompetitive contracts jumped from $655 million to $5.5 billion, the report concluded.

Questionable contracts highlighted in the report included:

_$1.2 billion to install and maintain luggage screening equipment at commercial airports that had a high false alarm rate.

_$915 million on nearly 26,000 mobile homes and trailers to house hurricane victims and relief workers — none of which could be sent to disaster zones in Louisiana and Mississippi because of prohibitions on their use in flood plains.

-$19 million for Transportation Security Administration office space for 140 employees that includes 12 conference rooms, seven kitchens, a fitness center, and $500,000 worth of artwork and decorative items.

Homeland Security chief procurement officer Elaine Duke told the House Government Reform Committee that part of the problem stemmed from a lack of department officers to oversee the contracts. In 2004, congressional investigators concluded that each procurement employee was responsible for overseeing an average of $101 million worth of contracts.

"Balancing the appropriate number of DHS contracting officials with the growth of DHS contracting requirements has been a challenge," Duke said in written testimony to the committee.

China's air pollution reaches U.S. skies

MOUNT TAMALPAIS STATE PARK, Calif., Associated Press - On a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Steven Cliff collects evidence of an industrial revolution taking place thousands of miles away.

The tiny, airborne particles Cliff gathers at an air monitoring station just north of San Francisco drifted over the ocean from coal-fired power plants, smelters, dust storms and diesel trucks in China and other Asian countries.

Researchers say the environmental impact of China's breakneck economic growth is being felt well beyond its borders. They worry that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the U.S. could see a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns.

"We're going to see increased particulate pollution from the expansion of China for the foreseeable future," said Cliff, a research engineer at the University of California, Davis.

He has monitoring stations on Mount Tamalpais, Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe, and Mount Lassen in far Northern California. Those sites see little pollution from local sources, and the composition of the dust particles matches that of the Gobi Desert and other Asian sites, Cliff said.

About a third of the Asian pollution is dust, which is increasing due to drought and deforestation, Cliff said. The rest is composed of sulfur, soot and trace metals from the burning of coal, diesel and other fossil fuels.

Cliff is studying whether transported particulate matter could affect climate by trapping heat, reflecting light or changing rainfall patterns.

Most air pollution in U.S. cities is generated locally, but that could change if citizens in China, India and other developing nations adopt American-style consumption patterns, researchers say.

"If they started driving cars and using electricity at the rate in the developed world, the amount of pollution they generate will increase many, many times," said Tony Van Curen, a UC Davis researcher who works with Cliff.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.

Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said he has detected ozone, carbon monoxide, mercury and particulate matter from Asia at monitoring sites on Mount Bachelor in Oregon and Cheeka Peak in Washington state.

"There is some amount of the pollution in the air we breathe coming from halfway around the world," Jaffe said. "There ultimately is no 'away.' There is no place where you can put away your pollution anymore."

China's environmental problems are severe and getting worse. Nearly 30 years of relentless industrial expansion has fouled the country's rivers, lakes, forests, farmland and skies.

The World Bank estimates that 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China, and air pollution is blamed for about 400,000 premature deaths there each year.

Coal-fired power plants supply two-thirds of China's energy and are its biggest source of air pollution. Already the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, China on average builds a new coal-fired power plant every week.

Meanwhile, car ownership is soaring as the country's economy grows about 10 percent a year, contributing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

If current trends continue, China will surpass the U.S. as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the next decade, said Barbara Finamore, who heads the Natural Resources Defense Council's China Clean Energy program, which is helping the country boost its energy efficiency.

"China's staggering economic growth is an environmental time bomb that, unless defused, threatens to convulse the entire planet regardless of progress in all other nations," Finamore said.

Even Chinese environmental officials warn that pollution levels could quadruple over the next 15 years if the country doesn't curb energy use and emissions. Beijing plans to spend $162 billion on environmental cleanup over the next five years, but the scale of the country's pollution problems is immense.

"When you look at China's population growth and industrial growth, it's hard to imagine how air quality could improve in the near future," said Ruby Leung, a researcher at the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., which collaborates with Chinese government scientists on atmospheric research.

Earlier this year, Leung and her colleagues published a study that found particulate pollution has darkened China's skies over the past 50 years by absorbing and deflecting the sun's rays.

China's pollution also regularly dirties the air in neighboring South Korea and Japan, but until recently researchers didn't think it had much effect on North America.

U.S. scientists have recently found that Asian pollution is consistently transported across the Pacific on air currents. It can take anywhere from five days to two weeks for particles to cross the ocean.

Some scientists predict that global warming could change those circulation patterns, either speeding or slowing the transport of pollutants from Asia.

China's environmental challenges are daunting, but the country is taking action to reduce its energy use and air pollution, said NRDC's Finamore. Beijing has set ambitious goals for increasing energy efficiency, fuel economy standards and use of renewable power sources such as wind and solar, she said.

"There are tremendous opportunities for China to slow the amount of pollution it pumps in the air," Finamore said.

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Wondering why you always feel like crap?

Study: Water contaminant can cause cancer

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Growing scientific evidence suggests the most widespread industrial contaminant in drinking water — a solvent used in adhesives, paint and spot removers — can cause cancer in people.

The National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday that a lot more is known about the cancer risks and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene than there was five years ago when the

Environmental Protection Agency took steps to regulate it more strictly.

"Armed with the results from the NAS review, EPA will aggressively move forward" on a new risk assessment of TCE, spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said Thursday. "EPA will determine whether or not to address the drinking water standard once the risk assessment is complete."

TCE, which is also widely used to remove grease from metal parts in airplanes and to clean fuel lines at missile sites, is known to cause cancer in some laboratory animals. EPA was blocked from elevating its assessment of the chemical's risks in people by the Defense Department, Energy Department and

NASA, all of which have sites polluted with it.

TCE is a colorless liquid that evaporates at room temperatures and has a somewhat sweet odor and taste. It is one of the most common pollutants found in the air, soil and water at U.S. military bases. Until the mid-1970s, it also was used as a surgical anesthetic.

It also has been found at about 60 percent of the nation's worst contaminated sites in the Superfund cleanup program, the academy said.

Its 379-page report recommends that EPA revise its assessment of TCE's risks using "currently available data" so no more time is wasted.

That's a step that could lead to stricter regulations. EPA currently requires limiting TCE to no more than 5 parts per billion parts of drinking water. A stricter regulation could, in turn, force the government to require more thorough cleanups at military and other sites.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., said the report should prompt the government to move faster in cleaning up TCE contamination like that found in his home state and nationally.

"It is no longer acceptable for the government and local polluters to claim that health risks associated with TCE are simply scientific theory when we know that they are compelling scientific fact," said Hinchey, who is on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the environment.

A committee of academy experts said "a large body of epidemiologic data is available" on TCE showing the chemical is a possible cause of kidney cancer, reproductive and developmental damage, impaired neurological function and autoimmune disease.

"The committee found that the evidence on carcinogenic risk and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene has strengthened since 2001," the report said. "Hundreds of waste sites are contaminated with trichloroethylene, and it is well documented that individuals in many communities are exposed to the chemical, with associated health risks."

In 2001, EPA issued a draft document saying the risks of TCE causing cancer in humans were higher than previously thought. But that pronouncement was dropped after other federal agencies accused EPA of inflating the risks.

To mediate the issue, the Bush administration asked the academy to study the issue.

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On the Net:

Utilities give warming skeptic big bucks

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.

Pat Michaels — Virginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute — told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association of Sedalia, Colo., gave Michaels $100,000 and started the fund-raising drive, said Stanley Lewandowski, IREA's general manager. He said one company planned to give $50,000 and a third plans to give Michaels money next year.

"We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists," Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to launch a counterattack on "alarmist" scientists and specifically Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Michaels and Lewandowski are open about the money and see no problem with it. Some top scientists and environmental advocates call it a clear conflict of interest. Others view it as the type of lobbying that goes along with many divisive issues.

"These people are just spitting into the wind," said John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "The fact is that the drumbeat of science and people's perspectives are in line that the climate is changing."

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington advocacy group, said: "This is a classic case of industry buying science to back up its anti-environmental agenda."

Donald Kennedy, an environmental scientist who is former president of Stanford University and current editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Science, said skeptics such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers.

"I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," he said. He said donations to skeptics amounts to "trying to get a political message across."

Michaels is best known for his newspaper opinion columns and books, including "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media." However, he also writes research articles published in scientific journals.

In 1998, Michaels blasted NASA scientist James Hansen, accusing the godfather of global warming science of being way off on his key 1988 prediction of warming over the next 10 years. But Hansen and other scientists said Michaels misrepresented the facts by cherry-picking the worst (and least likely) of three possible outcomes Hansen presented to Congress. The temperature rise that Hansen said was most likely to happen back then was actually slightly lower than what has occurred.

Michaels has been quoted by major newspapers more than 150 times in the past two years, according to a Lexis-Nexis database search. He and Lewandowski told The Associated Press that their side of global warming isn't getting out and that the donations resulted from a speech Michaels gave to the Western Business Roundtable last fall. Michaels said the money will help pay his staff.

Holdren, a Harvard environmental science and technology professor, said skeptics such as Michaels "have had attention all out of proportion to the merits of their arguments."

"Last I heard, anybody can ask a scientific question," said Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It is a very spirited discussion that requires technical response and expertise."

Other scientific fields, such as medicine, are more careful about potential conflicts of interests than the energy, environmental and chemical fields, where it doesn't raise much of an eyebrow, said Penn State University bioethicist Arthur Caplan.

Earlier this month, the Journal of the American Medical Association announced a crackdown on researchers who do not disclose drug company ties related to their research. Yet days later, the journal's editor said she had been misled because the authors of a new study had not revealed industry money they got that posed a conflict.

Three top climate scientists said they don't accept money from private groups. The same goes for the Web site realclimate.org, which has long criticized Michaels. "We don't get any money; we do this in our free time," said Realclimate.org contributor Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean physics scientist at Potsdam University in Germany.

Lewandowski, who said he believes global warming is real just not as big a problem as scientists claim, acknowledged this is a special interest issue. He said the bigger concern is his 130,000 customers, who want to keep rates low, so coal-dependent utilities need to prevent any taxes or programs that penalize fossil fuel use. He said his effort is more aimed at stopping carbon dioxide emission taxes and limits from Congress, something he believes won't happen during the Bush administration.

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On the net:

• Pat Michaels' Cato Institute Web site: http://www.cato.org/people/michaels.html

See, I sold my house in Lauderdale for nearly triple what I bought it for a few years before, at the height of the bubble buying frenzy last year (it was slammed by Hurricane Wilma the day after closing, but tough shit I'm keeping the money). Now I'm just kicking back in a nice rental in California, waiting for the absurdly overpriced local market to tank even more than it has so far... and when it does, *boom, baby!* I'm gonna buy me a nice little ranch in the pricey local hills:

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Sales Slow for Homes New and Old

New York Times - Selling a new home is getting harder and harder: just ask the builders who are being forced these days to entice potential buyers with expensive inducements like free swimming pools and fancy kitchen cabinets.

A homeowner in Chappaqua, N.Y., is trying to sell his property just as the national market for homes is starting to favor buyers. Sales for existing homes fell in June for the third consecutive month.

[Related: Existing Home Sales Report (pdf)]

At the same time, the torrid pace in the existing-home market is slackening, as prices are leveling off and properties are staying on the market a lot longer than they used to.

Adding it all together, a variety of experts now say, the housing industry appears to be moving from a boom to something that is starting to look a lot like a bust.

“Housing has had a great five-year run,” said Edward Yardeni, chief investment strategist for Oak Associates, a money management firm in Akron, Ohio, and a longtime bull on the economy. While he still does not expect a housing downturn to damage the overall economy severely, he predicts that the housing industry itself is entering a longer decline.

“Instead of being a seller’s market,” he said, “it became a buyer’s market. And once the psychology changes, it could take a while to reverse. Buyers recognize there’s no need to rush out to buy a home.”

The latest housing data, released yesterday by the National Association of Realtors, made clear that a significant slowdown is under way. It showed that the sales pace for existing homes fell for a third straight month in June — the ninth monthly decline since hitting a record last June.

On a seasonally adjusted annual basis, the rate of existing-home sales dropped to 6.6 million, down from 6.7 million in May and well below the record 7.3 million pace reported last June. The number of existing homes still on the market, meanwhile, grew to a record of 3.725 million units, representing a 6.8-month supply at the June selling pace, up from 6.4 months in May.

The shift of the upper hand from seller to buyer is showing up in home prices. Last month, the national median price rose to $231,000, less than 1 percent higher than in June 2005. That was the smallest year-over-year increase in more than 11 years.

Builders are losing their grasp on the new-home market, which is why so many of them have responded by being more aggressive in their use of promotions to sell homes. A check by the National Association of Home Builders of 369 builders across the country found that 75 percent are currently including add-ons like pools or garages at no additional cost when they sell a home. That compares with 50 percent a year ago.

A handful of builders reported offering free vacations. None did last July.

Builders are also helping buyers finance their homes. The survey found that 33 percent of builders are currently absorbing financing points on mortgages, which allows homeowners to pay lower monthly rates. Only 18 percent reported doing so a year ago.

When people were lining up to buy, “the only thing they had to complain about last year was getting enough material, labor and land,” said Michael Carliner, an economist with the home builders association. But now, he added, “things are slowing down.”

The home builders association reported last week that builder confidence had fallen to its lowest level in 14 years.

Mike Wainwright, a realtor with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Mesa, Ariz., says that each time he walks into the sales office of a new housing development, the incentives seem to change.

“It varies from week to week,” he said. “Sometimes it’ll be a pool or $25,000 or even more than $50,000.” He said he has seen cars, kitchen cabinets and flooring thrown in free. Regionally, the slowdown in sales of existing homes last month was most pronounced in the South. The Northeast also fell, while sales in the Midwest and the West held steady compared with May.

One consequence of the slowing housing market, economists and real estate experts said, is a strengthening of the rental property market. With interest rates rising, buying a home is becoming less affordable to more and more Americans. That gives landlords improved pricing power that home sellers now lack.

“A lot of the people that wanted to make a jump to their own home are waiting,” Mark Obrinsky, chief economist for the National Multi Housing Council, a trade group for the apartment rental business. “This year is going to be a much better year than we’ve seen for quite a few years.”

The housing council is predicting the biggest net increase in apartment rentals this year since 2000, Mr. Obrinsky said.

With a growing number of potential buyers moving into rental units or holding onto the homes they own, builders across the country are canceling or delaying housing developments. From Las Vegas to Dallas to Washington, some developers now report abandoning condo projects because sales are not meeting expectations.

Earlier this month, D. R. Horton, the nation’s largest home builder, said it would build fewer homes this year than it initially predicted. It also sharply cut its earnings guidance for the year by 30 percent, citing growing inventories of unsold homes and the increased use of incentives as part of the reason.

And Kenneth Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America, said he thought more projects would be canceled as demand falls.

“Certainly more projects will be scrubbed,” he said. “The risk is too great that they’re going to wind up paying more for the project and collecting less.”

No easy fix for emergency rooms, experts say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lack of staff, space and equipment hobbles the U.S. emergency medical system and almost no steps have been taken to improve things despite numerous warnings, emergency room professionals told Congress on Wednesday.

But emergency room physicians and members of Congress alike were at a loss about what to do to fix a system that almost everyone agrees is at a breaking point.

"It isn't too clear and that is because what is required is so big," Dr. Rick Blum, an emergency room doctor from West Virginia who is president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said in an interview.

"These are really problems of the healthcare system overall. Our health care delivery system is flawed." he added. "There is no band-aid for this. What is required is major surgery."

A subcommittee of the House of Representatives

Homeland Security Committee held the hearing to ask if there was anything the federal government could do to address the problems raised by three Institute of Medicine reports issued in June that found severe problems in emergency rooms and other emergency medical services.

The reports found, for instance, that emergency medical services got only 4 percent of Department of Homeland Security first responder funding in 2002 and 2003.

The Institute committee also found that between 1993 and 2003 the number of emergency department visits grew by 26 percent, while the total number of emergency departments declined by 425 -- with 198,000 fewer beds.

"The message here is that the safety net is fraying," said Dr. Steven Krug, a Chicago emergency room doctor who testified on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

So what happens if pandemic influenza comes, or someone sets off a biological weapon, or giant earthquakes or hurricanes hit?

"We are neither prepared nor capable of responding," Washington Republican Rep. Dave Reichert, chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Preparedness, Science and Technology, told the hearing.

Hospitals that were flooded out and even destroyed when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last August made headlines, but little has been done to help address the problem of what to do with the sick and frail in an emergency, Blum said.

"I can tell you without qualification that the emergency care system in this country in general ... is worse today than it was last year and if we don't change things by next year it will be worse than today," Blum told the hearing.

For instance, Blum said, he and colleagues were unable to go and pitch in for two weeks or so to relieve overworked emergency room doctors in New Orleans.

"I wanted to go help for a while. but the politics and bureaucracy of it was simply more than could be done," he said.

Emergency rooms are overfilled even on a quiet day because of the way doctors are paid, Blum noted.

"One of the side effects of managed care is that primary care practitioners are very, very tightly scheduled," he said. So outside of office hours, what should be a routine office visit is sent to the emergency room, he said.

How many quarters in a row does this make where oil companies are making record-breaking profits and bleating that they "can't do anything" about the rising price of gas? Lying motherfuckers.

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Sparks fly as ExxonMobil profit tops 10 billion dollars

NEW YORK (AFP) - Surging oil prices helped drive quarterly profits for US energy giant ExxonMobil to 10.36 billion dollars, the latest in a string of mammoth earnings reports that have drawn fire for the industry.

The second-quarter profit was up 36 percent from a year ago and approached the company's all-time record profit of 10.71 billion dollars at the end of last year, the biggest for any company.

Stoked by skyrocketing crude-oil prices, ExxonMobil's net profit in the quarter to June came to 1.72 dollars per share. That handily beat Wall Street forecasts for an earnings figure of 1.64 dollars.

Total revenues in the three months rose 11.8 percent from the same quarter of 2005 to 99 billion dollars.

In Congress, Democratic lawmakers said the sky-high profits reflected misplaced policies by the administration of President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, who are both former oil executives.

"Americans are paying near-record gas prices, oil companies are reaping billions in profits, but the response from the Oil Men in the White House and the Republicans in Congress has been billions for Big Oil and a backhand to the American people," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said.

The soaring profits of ExxonMobil and other oil groups have generated fierce criticism about the industry profiting from consumer misery, prompting some US lawmakers to call for a "windfall" profits tax.

The oil industry has countered by saying its profit margins are lower than many other sectors, and that much of the earnings are reinvested in new production.

ExxonMobil said it continued its "active investment program" in the second quarter, spending 4.9 billion dollars on capital and exploration projects. It also distributed 7.9 billion dollars to shareholders in the second quarter through dividends and share purchases.

ConocoPhillips, the number three US oil and gas firm, on Wednesday said its second-quarter net profit jumped 65 percent from a year ago to 5.2 billion dollars, buoyed by record petroleum prices.

Chevron, the second-largest US oil group, was to report its profit on Friday.

Globally, Anglo-Dutch energy group Royal Dutch Shell has reported a net profit of 6.314 billion dollars. Britain's BP said earlier this week profits rose 22 percent to 6.118 billion dollars.

"BP used to stand for British Petroleum, now it just stands for Bloated Profits," US Representative Ed Markey said after the BP release.

On Thursday, Markey added, "While American families get tipped upside down and have their savings shaken out of their pockets at the gas pump, the Bush-Cheney team devises even more ways to line Big Oil's pockets."

The California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights said sky-high fuel prices had nothing to do with oft-cited factors such as Middle East unrest or instability in Nigeria.

"Refining profits at this level are pure greed and the real explanation for outrageous prices at the pump," said the FTCR's Judy Dugan.

Kimberly DuBord, analyst at the research firm Briefing.com, said meanwhile that ExxonMobil and other energy firms remain a good investment.

"The three largest oil and gas producers in the world generated profits of nearly 23 billion dollars in the second quarter," she said, noting that ExxonMobil is now generating one billion dollars each day in revenues.

"The profit growth of the supermajors is tremendous and the interim results continue to exceed expectations," she said.

ExxonMobil shares faded after early gains and closed down 0.2 percent at 66.47 dollars.

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Exxon Mobil 2Q profit jumps 36 percent

DALLAS, Associated Press - Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the April-June period, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices and the growing global appetite for fuel helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record. Its shares briefly rose to a new high.

"We continue to see demand growth year over year," Henry Hubble, Exxon's vice president of investor relations told analysts. "We're selling everything we can make."

And as long as oil prices continue to climb, look for more record quarters, said Fadel Gheit, analyst for Oppenheimer & Co.

"The rising tide lifts all boats, including the biggest of them all. Unless there is a price collapse of oil, you will see the second half of the year best its first half," Gheit said.

Exxon Mobil's report comes as many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas — increasing the likelihood of further political backlash in Washington.

But the company isn't alone. Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Thursday that second-quarter earnings jumped 40 percent to $7.32 billion as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico.

Other oil companies reported big numbers for the quarter this week as well. BP PLC reported its quarterly profit rose 30 percent to $7.3 billion and ConocoPhillips said its earnings rose 65 percent to $5.18 billion. Chevron Corp. will round the field of five majors when it reports its second-quarter performance Friday.

These five were expected to earn an estimated $33.6 billion, or a 32 percent boost, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Already the first four have reported earning $30.16 billion.

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company by market capitalization, said earnings amounted to $1.72 per share in the second quarter compared with a profit of $7.64 billion, or $1.20 per share, a year ago.

The results topped Wall Street expectations but came in behind Exxon Mobil's record profit of $10.71 billion set in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected the company to earn $1.64 per share.

Revenue rose to $99.03 billion from $88.57 billion in the prior-year quarter. That was short of Exxon Mobil's record third-quarter revenue of $100.72 billion — which also stands as record revenue generated by any U.S. public company ever in a single quarter.

Its shares rose 54 cents to $67.14 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange after reaching a new all-time high of $67.65 earlier in the session.

Exxon Mobil said it spent $4.9 billion on capital and exploration projects during the quarter, up 8 percent from a year ago, while distributing $7.9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Congress has been urging the big oil companies to put more of their profits toward boosting the supply of energy for consumers.

Hubble told analysts that Exxon will boost this kind of spending from the previously stated $19 billion by another $1 billion this year. He attributed the additional investment to increased drilling moreso that rising costs.

He offered no guidance for 2007 or years thereafter, however.

The company made more in all parts of its business.

By segment, exploration and production earnings rose sharply to $7.13 billion, up $2.23 billion from the second quarter of last year, a reflection of higher crude and natural gas prices. Production increased 6 percent from a year ago and 9 percent if the impact of divestments and entitlements are excluded.

The company's refining and marketing segment reported a $264 million earnings increase to $2.48 billion, the result of soaring fuel prices, which offset reduced output at its refineries and, as a result, fewer gallons of gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel being sold.

Exxon's chemical business saw earnings rise $26 million to $840 million.

The company said its average sale price for crude oil in the U.S. during the quarter was $63.84 a barrel, compared to $45.85 a year earlier. Internationally, however, Exxon said the average sale price for oil was $65.12 compared to $47.55 a year ago.

Exxon also sold natural gas in the U.S. for $6.39 per 1,000 cubic feet, compared to $6.45 during the same period a year ago. Non-U.S. sales for natural gas however, rose from $5.25 a year ago to $6.67 per 1,000 cubic feet.

___

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Shell 2Q profit up 40 pct. on oil prices

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Associated Press - Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's second-largest oil company, said Thursday its second-quarter earnings jumped 40 percent as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico.

Net profit rose to $7.32 billion from $5.24 billion a year earlier. Sales rose less than 1 percent to $83.1 billion from $82.6 billion.

Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer said in a statement the earnings were "underpinned by overall good operational performance and not simply high energy prices."

Still, the main reason for the increase was higher oil prices, with earnings at Shell's oil exploration and production arm leaping to $4 billion from $2.75 billion, despite an 8 percent drop in production to 3.25 million barrels a day.

Prices for benchmark North Sea Brent crude averaged $69.51 a barrel in the quarter, compared with $51.65 a barrel a year earlier.

That was in line with other major oil companies reporting results this week. BP PLC said its second-quarter profit rose 30 percent to $7.3 billion, while ConocoPhillips reported a 65 percent increase to $5.18 billion. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is due to report its earnings later Thursday.

Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said it was "good news" that Shell had beaten forecasts, in contrast to BP.

"But going forward, high oil prices will not continue to mask" if Shell's management makes mistakes, he said.

Shell said that excluding the damage caused by militant attacks on its operations in Nigeria and the fallout from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf of Mexico, production would have been flat.

Shell is missing around 180,000 barrels per day in Nigeria because of recent attacks, and said Thursday it couldn't confidently predict when production will resume.

Van der Veer said that despite a pipeline rupture this week, possibly due to an attack by militants, the company has no intention of scaling back operations in the West African nation. "We are not afraid to invest in Nigeria," he said.

The Niger Delta region has been the scene of frequent disputes for years between oil companies and communities that demand a greater share of the wealth of Africa's largest crude producer. At least 31 expatriate workers have been held hostage by a variety of militant groups so far this year.

Shell's results Thursday beat earnings estimates compiled by Dow Jones, which had predicted a 17 percent rise in earnings, helped by strong refining margins. Shares rose 2.5 percent to 28.05 euros ($35.43) in Amsterdam trading.

At Shell's second-biggest division, which refines oil and sells it to consumers at the pump, profits increased 13 percent to $3.02 billion.

"Higher earnings due to stronger refining margins particularly in the United States, and increased trading profits from a positive trading environment were partially offset by the impact of lower retail marketing margins and reduced refinery utilization mainly in Europe," Shell said.

Shell's 2004-2005 accounting scandal, in which it was forced to repeatedly reduce the size of its proven oil reserves, continued to affect the company's earnings and prospects.

The company said Thursday it had reserved $500 million in the second quarter to pay shareholder class action lawsuits.

Shell has also been spending heavily to restore reserves, planning investments of $19 billion in 2006, and $21 billion in 2007, most of it in exploration and production.

But in 2005, the company pumped more oil than it added to proven reserves, and in Shell's 2005 annual report those reserves stood at around 11.5 billion barrels.

With Thursday's earnings, Shell said it has added "at least" 48 billion barrels of oil to unproven reserves via acquisitions in Canada in the first half of 2006, at a combined cost of some $2.6 billion.

In a conference call, Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser repeated that the company has a "fair prospect" to replace as much as it pumps between 2004-2008 as a whole.

"But we will not be shy to delay projects or even cancel projects because of the economic situation, cost inflation, and delay the recognition of proved reserves if that is the best economic outcome" for the company, he said.

While production in 2006 has been below analysts' expectations, he repeated that Shell's production is expected to rise to 3.5 million to 3.7 million barrels per day in 2007.

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Some stuff I ran across on the web that I posted years ago in an old blog that is supposed to be deleted but is still, in the Internet's infinite collective wisdom, still floating around...:

Friday, April 12, 2002

tell me more, sister mary

I grew up in a very strong orthodox roman catholic family and society in latin america (catholic school, 4 hour mass in latin, chapel each day, novena every night blah bla blah). The church was everywhere, everything. There was no escaping the church in any aspect of life.

Here is what I saw people doing and believing all around me, at all levels:

There is god the faddah, one dude. There is jeebus the son, another dude. There is holy spirit, we're not real sure what all that is but hey its hanging around everywhere like smog. There's mary, we like her 'coz she's a nice understanding mama not a mean harsh papa who we have to Fear. There's a load of saints, and they're real holy and all, but they're more like lootenants and captains instead of generals like mary and jeebus. And there's satan, and you need to be real scared of him, 'coz he's everywhere waiting to trip you up and snag you off to hell, and the only one powerful enough to defeat satan is god the faddah, although jeebus can hold him at bay and mary can call out the cavalry for you. mary magdalene was a slut, we don't talk about her much.

You can worship any one of these you like, although you're encouraged to worship some more than others. Mary is a universal favorite (anyone who says that catholics don't 'worship' mary clearly has never witnessed a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Guadalupe, with supplicants crawling literally on their knees over broken glass to get there).

This is what hundreds of millions of people farking believe, how they live their lives, how they relate to each other, this is the reality of roman catholicsim in most of the world, to most catholics. They don't question this, not ever - it is a given. Any paradox inherent in the concept of the trinity is chalked up to 'holy mystery requiring faith'.

The vatican might say the faith is not polytheistic, but the actual practice by the masses tells a much different story. People are what make a religion, not esoteric pronouncements by an annointed few. It's what the people understand and believe that affects the world. In practice, catholicsim is very much polytheistic.

_________________

God the faddah = all powerful scary dude (Thou Shalt Fear the Lord Thy God)

Mary the muddah = talks to papa for you, lets you hide behind her skirts

The vast majority of all christians (of all flavors) fundementally believe the basic impressions of their religion they received as children, and never bother to go beyond that to examine and question for themselves the tenets of their faith (congrats to those of you who did).

If you see through a child's eyes, a lot of craziness in religion makes sense. Why ask mary to pray for you? Because momma is nice and will try to protect you, while daddy is big and scary and is just looking for an excuse to whomp the crap outta you.

_________________

Quote:

So wait are Catholics taught that God isn't nice.

No, god (as a whole) is supposed to be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-merciful. It's just that the whole "wrath of god" bit gets played up a lot more in terms of god the faddah, while the merciful and forgviness stuff falls to mary and jeebus, hence their ability to 'intercede on your behalf'. If god the faddah weren't such a wrathful vengeful dude, there would be no need for intercession, would there?

It's all pretty psychotic, very mutiple-personality-disorder. Most catholics just take it all at face value, and treat each 'persona' as a seperate entity while mouthing the 'holy mystery' company credo, otherwise it would be all just too confusing and result in many suggestions that god could benefit from a good shrink.

_________________

I can tell you why as a general rule I'm a religious contrarian, if that helps.

There has been no definitive way to tell what god really is, nothing we can all agree on in a fairly uniform manner, like 'the sky is blue'. There is no 'reasonable man rule' for defining god.

In the absence of (positive) methodology for proof of what god "is", I have to rely on (negative) methodology for proof of what god "is not". Some of the best tools I have to ascertain what "is not" (a much simpler yet more time-consuming burden of proof than what "is") is critical thought and healthy skepticsm. So far, nothing I have ever seen or heard or thought or in anyway experienced that connects with the concept "god" has convinced me that anything but sorrow ultimately comes from feeling confident (having faith) that anyone has god sussed out.

Note I'm not talking about the existance of god, but rather that thinking we know what god is definitively all about is where we get into big trouble (religion versus spirituality). The concept of god is so much bigger than our collectively puny brains could possibly dream of comprehending, that one has to laugh at our insignificant struggles to make sense of it all. It tortures us so, as a species - this manic need to dip into the well of all knowledge and fish out the key to the garden.

When someone says "god is like so - looks like this acts like that works this way, and if you don't get that then you're just an uneducated savage who does not understand the deeper mysteries", well sir, that's just such unmitigated hubris that I gotta call bullshit on them.

1:55 PM

Thursday, March 21, 2002

hi, you've reached god. I can't come to the phone right now...

"science" and "religion" do not reconcile. However, "science" and "god" are an excellent fit the minute you toss "religion" out of the mix.

I think the problem is that too many of us are walking around thinking we have the definitive answer to "what is god", and of course, when someone else's answer to that questions differs, which it will, we have to make them wrong in order to validate our own view, because humans are juvenile idiots that way.

What really frosts my shorts is that ANYONE is arrogant enough to think they have a real handle on god, even a tiny one. I mean, we're talking about the Big Kahuna here, the Head Cheese, the Grand Poobah - beyond time, space, dimension, and thought, everything you can imagine and everything you can't, everywhere and nowhere all at once. To believe we can define something so totally beyond our realm of perception is the height of hubris.

Do you think god actually cares what you think of god? Look around you in the world, everyone claims to have the real deal! 6 billion people, and each of them is convinced they have the answer. They are all right, and all wrong, all at the same time.

All you folks who swing to the christ theme and all the variations thereof, all you have is the tiniest little peek at god. All you cats who howl at the moon and allah, ditto, a tiny piece only. Hindus, jews, shinto, zoroasts, bahai, etc etc all of you ditto ditto. All of you , stop this "we have the true scoop on god" jazz, 'coz you don't. And that includes atheists, claiming there is no god. That's only a tiny piece too, so shaddapayouface.

We all here, every single one of us, knows what is right and what is wrong, we don't need a book or a speech or a flag to tell us the difference. I guarantee if a real martian landed on the white house lawn tomorrow, none of this bullshit would matter anymore, we would be instantly and solidly galvanized as a single species - all sexualities, all colors, all religions, all kinds of music, etc etc.

We always fear what we don't understand - we take it personally and have a fear/anger response, it's part of our emotionally stunted development to date, we have yet to outgrow it. And our usual reaction when we are frightened is to kill the thing that scares us. So, kill the queers, kill the muslims, kill the christians, kill the opera singers, it's all the same neanderthal noise.

7:52 PM

Californians expect another sweltering day

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Associated Press - The California heat wave blamed for deaths and blackouts simmered into an 11th day Wednesday as residents waited for a promised temperature drop to end their misery.

State and local authorities reported at least 56 possible heat-related deaths, and utility officials kept up their calls for energy conservation as air conditioners sucked in record levels of electricity. Hundreds of dairy cows have died.

An hour before sunrise, the temperature had already hit 84 degrees at the Central Valley city of Bakersfield, where the mercury peaked Tuesday at 111, the National Weather Service said.

The weather service predicted temperatures around the state would be lower by several degrees — but that would still leave the temperature well above 100 in many areas. A slow cooling trend was expected to continue through the week.

Stephanie McCorkle, spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, which manages the power grid, said the ISO did not anticipate declaring another power emergency Wednesday.

The power supply remained adequate Tuesday, but that didn't stop blackouts throughout the state as transformers exploded under the strain of the record demand and the heat.

The state's power consumption peaked Tuesday afternoon at 49,762 megawatts, shy of the record 50,270 megawatts set Monday. The total number of California residents who have lost electricity at some point during the heat wave topped 1.5 million.

"This is a historic heat wave," Undersecretary for Energy Affairs Joe Desmond said, noting that it was the first time in 57 years that both northern and southern California — an area stretching nearly 900 miles — has experienced simultaneous, extended heat waves.

In Fresno, where temperatures topped 110 degrees for a fourth straight day Tuesday, people on lunch breaks crowded a shaded, outdoor eating area of Mariscos Colima, a seafood and taco haunt.

"It's too hot to cook," said Celia Cisneros, 31, enjoying shrimp cocktails and iced fruit drinks with her two children. "We wanted something refreshing. Nobody wants hot food on a hot day."

In Los Angeles, about 26,000 people were in the dark Tuesday night after hundreds of transformers blew, said Carol Tucker, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Water and Power. "We have enough power to meet the demand, it's the equipment that can't handle it," Tucker said.

Extreme heat in the San Joaquin Valley hit dairy farms hard, killing hundreds of cows.

Milk production in California, the nation's No. 1 dairy state, was down by as much as 15 percent because of the heat, according to the California Farm Bureau.

The heat also pumped up the political debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Angelides said he would build more power plants, appoint an energy czar to improve energy efficiency and maintain a 15 percent power reserve. A Schwarzenegger campaign spokesman dismissed Angelides' energy plan as a "push for bigger, more expensive government."

Elsewhere, 103,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity in the St. Louis area, where two massive storms last week knocked out power to more than half a million homes and businesses. Ameren Corp. had said it expected electricity to be restored to everyone by Wednesday.

"I am going to take a cool shower, turn on the air conditioning and watch some TV," Miltina Burnett, of Wellston, said after her electricity came back on Tuesday.

In New York, a blackout that had kept tens of thousands of people without air conditioning through the hottest days of the year ended early Wednesday after nine days of rotting food and sweltering homes.

Scientists Predict Bigger Gulf 'Dead Zone' This Year

LiveScience.com - A dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico created by lack of oxygen will be larger than normal this year, scientists predicted today.

The dead zone is an area where oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in water at or near the bottom of the sea. It occurs every summer.

It is caused by nutrients from fertilizers, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, that flow in from rivers. The nutrients stimulate algal growth, which settles to the bottom and decays, consuming oxygen faster than it can be replenished from the surface.

Researchers expect the dead zone this summer to cover 6,700 square miles, an area half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the zone has averaged 4,800 square miles.

The prediction, based on nutrient runoffs, was made by a team of scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.

The zone is also called a hypoxic zone, and it can kill fish and other creatures.

"We are anticipating a larger hypoxic zone this summer because the nitrate loading this May, a critical month influencing the size of the area, is higher than last year," said LSU researcher Eugene Turner.

This is complete bullshit, and I hope she sues the crap outta these assholes. Any adult will have done something that is "innapropriate for 2-to-5 year olds" at some point! Especially working actors. And how, pray tell, are 2 to 5 year olds going to get their hands on these subversive videos to begin with? This is rigtht-wing BULLSHIT.

PBS kids' show host fired for video

Melanie Martinez, who plays Melanie the baby sitter, laughs during taping as she sits with Star the puppet, on the studio set for 'The Good Night Show,' in this May 3, 2006 file photo in Paulsboro, N.J. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

NEW YORK, Associated Press - The PBS Kids Sprout network has fired the host of "The Good Night Show" after learning she had appeared in videos called "Technical Virgin."

The host, Melanie Martinez, had alerted network officials about one of the videos late last week and she was immediately taken off the air.

"PBS Kids Sprout has determined that the dialogue in this video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host and may undermine her character's credibility with our audience," said Sandy Wax, network president.

Airing for three hours each evening, "The Good Night Show" airs soothing stories and cartoons designed to get an audience of 2-to-5-year-olds ready for bed. Each night, Martinez guides a puppet character into dreamland. Martinez is a stage actress and mother of a toddler.

In the two "Technical Virgin" videos — made before she landed the children's show job — she spoofs PSAs about how young women can keep their virginity.

That will fix these assholes. Anyone found guilty of sexual assault on anyone will be publicly flogged in the town square. End of conversation.

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Peru confronts escalating violence against women

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Marlin Mata has awakened from a coma she suffered after throwing herself from a moving bus to escape two men trying to rape her, but Peru is still deep in the nightmare of spiraling violence against women.

More than half of all Peruvian women over the age of 15 say they have suffered sexual or physical violence by men during their lifetime -- one of the world's highest rates.

"I want justice for my sister. We can't let this kind of thing happen again and again," said Judith Mata, standing next to Marlin, 21, who still bears a bite mark in her bruised cheek from the recent attack.

Sexual violence against women in Peru is now so bad that Peru's President-elect Alan Garcia, who takes office on Friday, made it one of his central campaign issues and has vowed to tackle the problem and give women a greater say in government.

Male frustration at high unemployment in Peru despite the country' unprecedented economic growth since 2002 and a corrupt justice system that rarely makes convictions are exacerbating violence against women in an already macho society.

"The violence is a direct consequence of poverty," Peru's Women's Minister Ana Maria Romero told Reuters.

According to the United Nations, Peru is one of the most dangerous places for women in Latin America, a region that had the world's highest number of sexual assaults last year.

Cases like Mata's are reported almost daily basis by the local tabloid media, with incidents ranging from rape to murder.

"Jealous Man Strangles Wife!" and "Man Kills Wife After She Asked For Divorce!" are just two of the hundreds of headlines compiled in a study by Amnesty International and Peruvian organization Flora Tristan, which works to protect women.

The study found that more than 300 women have been killed by men committing sexual violence in Peru since 2003, even in cases when victims asked for police protection.

CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

Some 51 percent of women in Lima and 69 percent of women in the southern Andean city of Cuzco said they have been victims of sexual or physical violence, the study added.

Indeed, the level of violence surges dramatically in Peru's impoverished rural areas.

In the southern Huancavelica province where 90 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, the rate of sexual and physical violence against women is ranked as one of the world's worst in a recent study by the

World Health Organization.

Half of Peru's 13 million workers are underemployed, meaning they are forced into badly paid positions below their qualifications.

That stress of not having a decent job is unleashed onto female partners. More than 60 percent of women who reported being victims of domestic violence in Peru consider the economic crisis at home as the main trigger of violence, according to Amnesty International.

But according to the WHO study, violence against women in Peru is worse than in countries with lower economic development such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh or Namibia.

That is partly because of a corrupt judicial system and because violence against women has become almost the norm in Peruvian society.

"Violence against women is part of our culture and the judicial system is no help," said Doris Blas, a lawyer representing Mata and a member of Lima-based foundation Manuela Ramos, which works to uphold women's rights.

'WERE YOU DRESSING SEXY?'

In rape cases, the responsibility of the crime falls on the victim's shoulders in Peru, as police and judges require women to prove their innocence before prosecuting the aggressor.

"Were you dressing sexy? Why you were walking alone so late at night?," are the kind of questions raped women face when they file a report with the police, says Carolina Ruiz, a lawyer at Flora Tristan.

Government doctors are also unwilling to confirm that a woman has been raped to avoid participation in often tedious judicial processes that can last more than two years.

"In most of the cases, doctors decline to issue a certificate of rape, arguing the woman has previously had sexual relations," Ruiz said.

The few women who do go forward and try to convict a rapist often end up dropping the charges because the legal proceedings are so tortuous, Ruiz added.

Nevertheless, faced with the rise of violent crimes against women, many in Peruvian society have begun to demand tougher laws and punishments for rapists. The result has so far been an increase in prison sentences for sexual abusers, which in the case of rapists who prey on young girls can mean up to life in prison.

But in practice, the new laws and even the presence of more women in public life has not made much impact.

"Just a tiny proportion of those men responsible for sexual violence have been sentenced," the office of Peru's ombudswoman Beatriz Merino said in a recent report.

Even in cases where authorities succeeded in doing their job to stop the violence, impunity seems to triumph.

That ratfuck Mugabe is copying King George's tactics against his country's people. Love the joke about the guy in line.

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Zimbabwe eyes plan to spy on citizens

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Associated Press - Times are hard and getting harder in Zimbabwe, where people too proud to cry about hunger, joblessness and misrule could soon find it too dangerous to joke about them.

Parliament plans to debate proposals next month to empower the secret police to eavesdrop on mail, e-mail and phones without any court approval.

The government denies any sinister intent, saying it is putting its anti-terrorism legislation in line with international practice. But Zimbabwe is not on the front lines of the war on terror, and government agents could use the proposed powers to monitor the communications of the political opposition, journalists and human rights activists who are critical of President Robert Mugabe.

Secret police and intelligence agents could violate attorney-client privilege, track financial transactions and negotiations, and eavesdrop on anyone's private life. Anytime a Zimbabwean visits a Web site, makes a deal or tells a joke, Big Brother could be listening or watching.

Internet and cell phone service providers would, at their own expense, have to provide the government with equipment to sort and intercept communications.

The aim "is to monitor and block communications for political reasons and to use information they get to persecute opponents," said Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, a group critical of repressive laws and actions of Mugabe's government.

Telephoned from neighboring South Africa, he said: "It is part and parcel of the process of controlling dissent and stifling democratic debate."

South Africa has quietly adopted a similar law, with the important difference that a court must approve any interception. In Zimbabwe, that authority would rest solely with Mugabe's minister of transport and communications.

A package of other security and media laws has done away with freedom of press and speech. People cannot protest against the government or hold political gatherings without prior police approval. Clergymen have been arrested for holding unauthorized prayer vigils.

To a government which has arrested people for insulting the president, joking about him is no laughing matter. It's a felony. It is also illegal to say or write something that can "falsely" bring the government into disrepute.

"Jokes about Mugabe are a crime," Jim Holland, the chief executive of Mango, a Zimbabwean Internet service provider, said in a telephone interview. "But people send these jokes all the time on cell phones or e-mails."

In one of them, a policeman asks a motorist for a donation toward the ransom demanded by terrorists who have abducted Mugabe and threatened to douse him with gasoline and set him alight. The motorists asks what other people are giving and is told, two or three gallons.

In another, a man tired of waiting in line at a closed gasoline station announces he's off to State House to shoot the president. He returns a short time later complaining that the line there was even longer.

Holland believes the proposed law will have a chilling effect on such humor but that the real dangers lie in the government's ability to target legitimate opponents and monitor sensitive business and financial communications.

"It is troubling in a country like this with its record on corruption that the government could monitor financial transactions or even internal communications ahead of a company making a tender offer," Holland said.

He said in early discussions of the bill a man who would be involved in any government monitoring effort told a gathering there was no cause for concern because the proposed law was only a threat "to criminals and human rights activists."

There is a chance that opponents will manage to block the bill, arguing that it is unworkable and could further undermine the faltering economy. The opponents also draw some hope from the fact that Mugabe is not personally pushing the bill. But all agree the chance is slim.

That leaves the courts, but lawyers here note the government has packed them with friendly judges, and simply ignored rulings it dislikes.

These assclowns just get more and more annoying. Although I don't see how any right-wing nuthouse propaganda machine that pays complete dickheads like Bill O'Reilley and Sean Hannity gazillions can be more annoying...

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Watch your back when Fox News wishes well

Keith Olbermann wears Bill O'Reilly mask at TV execs meeting

NEW YORK, Associated Press - If someone at Fox News Channel wishes you well, watch your back. The seemingly benign sentiment is a creative signature of Fox's public relations, usually accompanied by a kneecapping. It's something like a kiss from a Mafia don.

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was the latest to visit the wishing well. When The New York Times recently asked Fox its opinion of Olbermann, who has repeatedly used Bill O'Reilly as a pinata on his nightly news countdown, spokeswoman Irena Briganti replied:

"Because of his personal demons, Keith has imploded everywhere he's worked. From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O'Reilly and all things Fox, it's obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith's recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion."

Have a nice day, Keith!

Plainly, public relations is a contact sport at Fox News Channel — with, as Fox PR chief Brian Lewis explains, a sense of mischief sprinkled in.

"Has there ever been a more disingenuous phrase in the corporate handbook, or the PR handbook, than `we wish him well'?" asked Lewis. "`Earnings have fallen in the last eight quarters and we wish Joe well as he leaves the company to pursue other interests.' We know what they mean, so we just thought we'd have some fun and point out the hypocrisy of the term."

The list of people to get Fox News Channel's best wishes in print lengthens all the time. Here are some others:

_Ted Turner. The CNN founder called Fox a "propaganda voice" of the Bush administration and compared its popularity to Adolf Hitler's rise in Germany before World War II. Briganti: "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network and now his mind. We wish him well."

_Tim Russert. A journalist asked the NBC Washington bureau chief whether Fox would get better treatment from the White House with Tony Snow as press secretary and he replied, "no more than they get right now." Fox's Paul Schur shot back: "Tim's sour grapes are obvious here, but at least he's not using his father as a prop to sell books this time around. That said, we wish him well on his latest self-promotion tour."

_George Clooney. Fox News branched out to Hollywood after the actor criticized O'Reilly. "We are disappointed that George has chosen to hurt Mr. O'Reilly's family in order to promote his movie," Schur said. "But it's obvious he needs publicity considering his recent string of failures. We wish him well in his struggle to regain relevancy."

_MSNBC correspondent David Shuster. After leaving a job at Fox, Shuster said that critical reporting on the Bush administration wouldn't have been welcomed at his former employer. Briganti came back with: "We can understand David's disappointment in being let go by Fox News Channel, but he's too young to be so bitter. We wish him well in getting his career back on track."

_Jonathan Klein. On the day the CNN U.S. president was hired, Briganti offered: "We wish CNN well in their annual executive shuffle." She later stuck the knife in further with: "We wish Jon well in his battle for second place with MSNBC."

Fox has essentially changed the language in the TV industry with its wishing well, turning a pleasantry into "take a hike."

Or worse.

The wishing well opened at Fox in the late 1990s. Look further back in the archives and you'll find examples of where the network wished someone well and actually appeared to mean it.

Whatever name is attached to it, a wish-well is generally a team effort by Fox's PR staff, Lewis said. Fox News chief Roger Ailes even contributed the memorable "his mind" line to the Turner kiss-off.

Each line is a counter-punch, Lewis noted. Fox doesn't "go nuclear" unless provoked. And he doesn't want the lines to lose impact by overdoing it.

"Not every attack on us deserves a response," he said. "It could be no response. That's a strategy. It could be mild, medium or spicy, depending on what our needs are."

Olbermann doesn't find the whole thing particularly amusing. He may be the most frequent target, and he enshrined Briganti in his "worst person in the world" feature for the latest attack.

"I've heard it all before and each time she's said it the ratings go up 25 percent in the ensuing year, so I'm encouraging her to say it as much as possible," Olbermann said. "They're just without humor and without understanding of the impact of their words. It's like O'Reilly. Every time he opens his mouth, I get more viewers."

He believes more people are laughing at Fox than with them.

"If they're going to come out and say these things, I'd much prefer the old muskrat line, whatever they said about Paula, then these attempts to sugarcoat these things," he said.

It was a raccoon, actually.

The reference is to one of Ailes' most famous quotes after Paula Zahn left Fox for CNN. He dismissed Zahn's ratings increases while at Fox as a reflection of the network's overall growth by saying, "I could have put a dead raccoon on the air this year and got a better rating than last year."

Ocean 'Gummy Bears' Fight Global Warming

LiveScience.com - Swarms of lowly thumb-sized ocean creatures that often resemble chains of transparent Gummy Bears play a critical role in transporting a greenhouse gas deep into the deep sea, scientists report.

The semi-transparent barrel-shaped creatures, called salps, emerge by the billions in groups that occupy as much as 38,600 square miles of the sea surface (about the size of the state of Indiana), Laurence Madin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution wrote in a newly published study.

Madin and his colleagues have now estimated that "hotspots" of salps could spell a dead-end for carbon, transporting tons of it daily from the ocean surface to the deep sea and preventing it from re-entering the atmosphere and contributing again to the greenhouse effect and possibly to global warming.

In and out

Scientists have long known that ocean water and marine creatures absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, much of which results from the fossil fuels we burn.

Tiny marine plants called phytoplankton extract the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide to build their skeletons and shells. Larger ocean animals then eat the phytoplankton. When the animals die or defecate, the carbon dissolves back into the oceans.

Salps are among the larger creatures that eat phytoplankton, consuming up to 74 percent of them from the surface water in a day. The salps then defecate, and their sinking pellets transport up to 4,000 tons of carbon daily to deeper water.

"Salps swim, feed and produce waste continuously," said Madin, who headed up the study recently published in the journal Deep Sea Research. "They take small packages of carbon and make them into big packages that sink fast."

[In a separate study, giant ocean "snot balls" were found to use a different method to same end.]

Round trip

Salps move through water by drawing water in one end and propelling it out the other, sort of like jet propulsion.

Madin and his colleagues at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science have stalked a species of salps, Salpa aspera, along the Eastern Seaboard on at least four occasions over the past 30 or so years. They collected salps with trawling nets and by hand while scuba diving and found that this species can form dense swarms that last for months. With video and other lab methods, they were able to estimate the size of swarms, their feeding rate, their defecation rate and their impact on the local population of phytoplankton.

Previous research showed that these salps swim to dark, deep ocean recesses by day, usually around 2,000 to 2,600 feet deep, and back up to the surface at night—something called vertical migration.

"At the surface, salps can feed on phytoplankton," Madin said. "They may swim down in the day to avoid predators or damaging sunlight."

Surfacing at night allows them to come together for reproduction and multiply quickly when food is abundant, he said.

Deep deposits

The result is that salps release fecal pellets in deep water, where few animals consume them, making them efficient transporters of carbon away from the atmosphere.

Salp pellets can sink even more than half a mile per day. And when they die, salp bodies take carbon down with them, sink rapidly up to a quarter mile a day.

Different species of salps have also been documented in recurring dense swarms in waters off Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, the southeastern United States, the Western Mediterranean Sea, the eastern North Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

Warmer waters disrupt Pacific food chain

FARALLON NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Calif. , Associated Press - On these craggy, remote islands west of San Francisco, the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States throbs with life. Seagulls swarm so thick that visitors must yell to be heard above their cries. Pelicans glide.

But the steep decline of one bird species for the second straight year has rekindled scientists' fears that global warming could be undermining the coastal food supply, threatening not just the Farallones but entire marine ecosystems.

Tiny Cassin's auklets live much of their lives on the open ocean. But in spring, these gray-and-white relatives of the puffin venture to isolated Pacific outposts like the Farallones to dig deep burrows and lay their eggs.

Adult auklets usually feed their chicks with krill, the minuscule shrimp-like crustaceans that anchor the ocean's complex food web.

But not this year. Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin's auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year's "unprecedented" breeding failure, according to Russ Bradley, a seabird biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory who monitors the birds on the islands.

Scientists blame changes in West Coast climate patterns for a delay in the seasonal upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean's depths for the second year in a row. Weak winds and faltering currents have left the Gulf of the Farallones without krill, on which Cassin's auklets and a variety of other seabirds, fish and mammals depend for food.

"The seas are warmer. And the number of krill being produced is lower," said Bradley as he held a Cassin's auklet chick, the only one from a study of 400 nests he expected to survive.

"Normally we would have hundreds," he said.

The failure of last year's Pacific upwelling killed seabirds from California to British Columbia. Scientists had hoped the change was just a natural temperature fluctuation in what is known as the California Current.

But the return of higher ocean temperatures and scarce food resources this year has scientists wondering whether last year's erratic weather was not a fluke but the emergence of a troubling trend.

"How many years in a row do you see this before you start raising your eyebrows?" said Frank Schwing, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Pacific Grove.

Climatologists describe global warming as a worldwide rise in temperatures caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses thought to trap heat in the atmosphere. Predictions of global warming's effects include rising sea levels, fiercer storms, more wildfires and warmer oceans.

Without long-term data, scientists have so far found it difficult to make direct links between specific natural events and global warming.

But the Farallones present a special case. Researchers have kept Cassin's auklet counts there every day since 1967. Never before have they seen such a drop-off in numbers. That decline comes as California ocean temperatures hover three to five degrees above average.

"One of the things that the climate models predict is that we're going to have unpredictable weather, extreme weather, that the whole seasonal cycle of events will not be what we expect," said Bill Peterson, a NOAA oceanographer in Newport, Ore. "We aren't seeing normal patterns."

Perhaps nowhere is this ecological disruption felt more than here on the Farallones, a 200-acre island chain often described as California's Galapagos. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps the national wildlife refuge closed to visitors except for a small group of scientists and volunteers who live there year-round.

The krill-dependent whales and salmon that inhabit the surrounding waters have not appeared to suffer from the changes in food supply. But during a visit to the islands this summer, scientists pointed to other species feeling the consequences.

The absence of krill has led to a collapse of the juvenile rockfish population. This is the main food source for young of the common murre, a bird that resembles a flying penguin. Though the murre has made a dramatic comeback recently, with about 200,000 adults nesting on the islands this year, nearly three-quarters of murres breeding this year are not expected to raise chicks that survive.

"At this point it's way too late in the season for the birds to initiate another attempt at breeding," said Peter Warzybok, a Farallones-based biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. "They'll just have to wait around for next year and hope that it's better."

Significant drops in murre and Cassin's auklet numbers occurred during the El Nino years of 1983 and 1992, when warmer Pacific waters near the equator upset weather patterns worldwide.

A January conference of more than 40 climatologists, oceanographers, and wildlife biologists issued a report describing last year's altered coastal climate as El Nino-like conditions in a non-El Nino year. Some researchers have given the new climate shift its own name: "El Coyote."

The report said a "ridge" of winter air blocking winds from the Gulf of Alaska lingered more than two months longer than normal in 2005, which delayed the upwelling until well past the birds' breeding seasons.

"It's not just a local effect," Schwing said. "It's related to global-scale changes in atmospheric circulation."

But it could take researchers another decade to determine whether global warming caused those changes. Some climatologists warn against drawing overly broad conclusions from only two years of unusual weather.

Definitive results are "not around the corner," said Nick Bond, a research meteorologist the University of Washington who has studied the upwelling's failure.

"We just don't know how much the deck is stacked" by the effects of global climate change, Bond said. "It's hard to tell from just a deal or two."

But whatever the cause, the ecological outcome if the trend continues is already clear, according to scientists.

The Cassin's auklet is unlikely to adapt to the sudden loss of its main food source. And other animals could follow, Schwing said.

Spanish firm claims it can make oil from plankton

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish company claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.

Vehicle tests are some time away because the company, Bio Fuel Systems, has not yet tried refining the dark green coloured crude oil phytoplankton turn into, a spokesman said.

Bio Fuel Systems is a wholly Spanish firm, formed this year in eastern Spain after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante.

"Bio Fuel Systems has developed a process that converts energy, based on three elements: solar energy, photosynthesis and an electromagnetic field," it said in a press dossier.

"That process allows us to obtain biopetroleum, equivalent to that of fossil origin."

Phytoplankton, like other plants, absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. Scientists have examined the possibility of stimulating growth of the single cell plants as a means of reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

CO2, liberated by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, is widely held responsible for global warming.

Bio Fuel Systems said its new fuel would reduce CO2, was free of other contaminants like sulphur dioxide and would be cheaper than fossil oil is now.

"Our system of bioconversion is about 400 times more productive than any other plant-based system producing oil or ethanol," it said, referring to currently available biofuels made from plants like maize or oilseeds.

This Isn't World War III

The war in Lebanon is a limited, local conflict.

By Shmuel Rosner, Slate

As the bombs keep pounding Beirut, and Israeli soldiers take on the dangerous job of entering enemy territory on foot, and foreign citizens—Americans included—keep leaving the area, it's time for the world to calm down.

Yes, war is a terrible thing, but this one—contrary to the grandiose prognostications of Armageddon-obsessed pundits—will not bring about World War III or the end of the West or the defeat of extremist Islamism. It is now clear that the war in Lebanon is a limited, contained war, with modest goals and rational expectations. The war that has just started between Ethiopia and Somalia could be more vicious and could exact a greater toll of human lives, but it will probably get scant attention.

In the coming days—unless there are some extraordinary developments or a humanitarian crisis—the world will get somewhat bored with it. I think for the moment Israelis already have, though that could change because of the call-up of thousands of reservists and the massive ground operation. The number of minutes dedicated to TV war coverage is already declining, and next week, if they don't change their minds again, the major stations will go back to airing more standard summer programming and less news.

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The Israeli government, backed by the United States, thinks some good can come out of this conflict—both for Israel and for Lebanon, if the Lebanese government cares to listen. At this point, we don't know if there is a real opportunity to get rid of Hezbollah once and for all or if the conflict will leave them a more humbled, risk-averse terror organization. And of course, there's always the possibility that they will not change at all, that Israel will fail. However things turn out, this will not be a world-changing event, but rather, another episode in the long slog called the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel concluded that its actions of the past couple of years—the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, the restraint it adopted along the northern border—sent the wrong message to its enemies. A message of weakness. And Israel's leaders decided that it is time to turn this around and recoup some of the respect it has lost—to deter the enemy from acting against it without fear of the possible consequences. Amir Oren writes in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz today that Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz strongly believes in a decisive escalation of conflicts so as to "avoid wars of attrition that are more convenient for the Arab side." So, this war will not take more than another couple of days or maybe a week or two.

The strategic benefit for Israel will be first and foremost the rehabilitation of its deterrence power. Whatever other gains emerge depends more on the decisiveness of the United States, and maybe France, to use this conflict as an agent of change for Lebanon itself.

In his book The White House Years, Henry Kissinger wrote critically about the now-forgotten Rogers Plan for Middle East peace, opening with this statement: "Like a gambler on a losing streak, the advocates of an active American role wanted only to increase the stake." This can also be said—though not necessarily critically—about the Bush administration and its involvement in this round of fighting. Losing battles in the war for democracy all over the Arab world, it wants to increase the stakes in Lebanon to use it as an example.

However, some other characteristics of this war are intriguing and worthy of further debate. We already know that the new phase of the Middle East conflict is more threatening than previous ones, because it is fought against religious fanatics, but this was just as true six months ago as it is now. What's more interesting in the war against Hezbollah—and this is something experts will probably dwell on in the coming years—is that it bears many of the characteristics of a new Cold War: two regional powers—Israel and Iran—conducting a war by proxy.

A couple of years down the road, when Iran gets its coveted nukes, this could be the new face of the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli conflict will only be fought through terror organizations and in no-man's land—since fighting it out in a more direct way could bring doom and destruction on an unprecedented scale. "Today's Lebanon," writes Jim Hoagland in this morning's Washington Post, "is a meeting place for the poisons and hatreds that six decades of conflict have spawned in its own citizens and its neighbors." And if that doesn't change, the country that became "Israel's Vietnam" in the psychological sense—a cursed place in which a generation of young Israelis lost their lives for nothing—can also become the Vietnam of the Middle East's new Cold War: the place in which two nuclear powers exchange hostilities on the backs of the local population.

This evolution is already visible, even as the current war is still in the making: Just as Iran used Hezbollah to conduct war against Israel in Lebanon, Israel has also refrained from attacking the so-called "root cause" of the conflict, namely Syria and Iran, and has chosen to limit itself to a war against the messenger, Hezbollah. Some experts think this was the wrong decision—and they might have a point. A couple of days ago, the Hudson Institute's Meyrav Wurmser wrote in the National Review that Israel's response "is misdirected. Lebanon is not the right address for reprisal. Syria is. … Israel ought not let its adversaries define the battleground. Rather, it ought to carry the battle to them."

Gateway to Nowhere?

The evidence that pot doesn't lead to heroin.

By Ryan Grim, Slate.com

Heroin. Earlier this month, professor Yasmin Hurd of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine released a study showing that rats exposed to the main ingredient in marijuana during their adolescence showed a greater sensitivity to heroin as adults. The wire lit up with articles announcing confirmation for the "gateway theory"—the claim that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.

It's a theory that has long seemed to make intuitive sense, but remained unproven. The federal government's last National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted in 2004, counted about 97 million Americans who have tried marijuana, compared to 3 million who have tried heroin (166,000 had used it in the previous month). That's not much of a rush through the gateway. And a number of studies have demonstrated that your chances of becoming an addict are higher if addiction runs in your family, or if heroin is readily available in your community, or if you're a risk-taker. These factors can account for the total number of heroin addicts, which could make the gateway theory superfluous.

On close inspection, Hurd's research, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, doesn't show otherwise. For the most part, it's a blow to the gateway theory. To be sure, Hurd found that rats who got high on pot as adolescents used more heroin once they were addicted. But she found no evidence that they were more likely to become addicted than the rats in the control group who'd never been exposed to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuana's main ingredient.

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Hurd began with two groups of rats. The first was administered THC every three days during their early adolescence (beginning at 28 days old) to approximate the sporadic marijuana use of American teens. The second group was given no drugs. Then, at mid-adolescence (56 days), both groups began a heroin regime. Hurd started by giving the rats a low dose of the harder drug. None of them got hooked. So, she doubled the fix. Each cage was equipped with an active and an inactive bar. Depressing the active bar when a white light was on gave the rats a hit of heroin; if they hit the bar regularly, that indicated addiction. Rats in both groups hit the active bar at least twice as often as they did the inactive one, which means they became addicted at roughly the same rate.

The difference between the groups came post-addiction: For the first 15 heroin sessions, both sets used generally equal amounts of heroin. Then the control rats leveled off. But the pot rats kept taking more of the drug, leveling off at about a 25 percent higher dosage. This increased use was evidence of their greater sensitivity to heroin.

Hurd says that because the marijuana-exposed rats demonstrated this heightened sensitivity, she expected them to be more motivated in pursuing the drug. But they weren't. The control rats paced their cages and repeatedly pressed the active bars even when the light indicating availability wasn't on. The pot rats, on the other hand, figured out that the heroin was available only at certain times, and that pacing and tapping the bar incessantly wasn't worth the trouble. When heroin was available, the marijuana rats took more of it. But when it wasn't, they chilled in the corner.

Extrapolate the study to human behavior, Hurd says, and it suggests that teenagers who smoke pot are no more likely than other kids to become addicted to heroin. (Her study doesn't speak to whether they'd be more likely to try the drug.) If teens do get hooked on the hard drug, though, they may develop a stronger addiction.

Hurd's results come on the heels of another marijuana finding that's not what the drug's opponents want to hear. Donald Tashkin, a UCLA medical with funding from the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, looked at more than 1,200 people with cancers typically associated with cigarette smoking and a control group of more than 1,000 people without cancer. To his surprise, he found no link between marijuana and increased risk of cancer, even among the heaviest pot smokers. The results of Tashkin's study, the largest of its kind that's been done, will soon appear in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarker and Prevention.

There are a couple of plausible explanations for Tashkin's finding. Research finds that smoking less than a pack of cigarettes a day leads to only a slightly higher cancer risk than not smoking at all. It's two packs a day that triggers a much higher risk. Two packs is the equivalent of 10 joints—more marijuana than almost anyone smokes. Tashkin speculates that the risk threshold for pot might be too high to measure in the United States. "One would have to repeat the study in a society such as Jamaica," he says.

Another possibility, according to Tashkin, is that marijuana's cancer-fighting elements and its carcinogens counteract each other. Animal studies have shown that THC has an inhibitory effect on a number of cancers. Marijuana also contains dozens of active cannabinoids, several of which have been shown to block cancer cell growth.

Finally, it seems, Iran has overplayed its hand

by Youssef Ibrahim in USA Today

The attempt by Hezbollah and Hamas to drag the whole Arab world into their war with Israel in the past two weeks has drawn flak in the form of Arab public opinion that neither militant jihadist organizations anticipated.

Speaking in an unusually blunt tone, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain openly rejected what they described as unilateral "adventurism," telling both groups that they are on their own vis-à-vis Israel. More important, indications are surfacing that a long-silent Arab majority has had enough of being hijacked by extremists in its midst.

In a meeting of its 22 foreign ministers Saturday in Cairo, the League of Arab States did not mince words. "Behavior undertaken by some groups in apparent safeguarding of Arab interests does in fact harm those interests, allowing Israel and other parties from outside the Arab world (read

Iran) to wreak havoc with the security and safety of all Arab countries."

The outburst has been long coming, building up ever since the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution, which poured political militancy into the red-hot religious rivalries between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Iran championed the oppressed Shiites as well as repressed revolutionaries in the Arab world. It also has lent a hand to jihadist Islamic fundamentalists, launching savage wars against their governments and societies in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia since the early 1980s:

• Algeria's slow-burning civil war against ferocious armed Islamic groups has claimed more than 110,000 civilian deaths since 1992.

• In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda terrorists have bombed civilian and oil facilities, killing Saudis and foreigners indiscriminately.

• In Egypt, these extremists have killed secular writers and government officials, burned churches and hounded the Christian minority of nearly 8 million.

Long before targeting the World Trade Center's towers and subways in London and Madrid, jihadists have been relentless in their march to Islamize the Arab world.

The latest outburst in Gaza and Lebanon was particularly alarming to the Sunni Muslim public, as it so transparently bears the imprints of Iran and its Shiite mullahs. This is disconcerting because the Persian nemesis is historically viewed in the region as a neighbor with imperialist ambitions. In pushing its immediate proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, to engage Israel now, Iran reached ever further to set the Arab world's agenda of war and peace by advancing its own agenda to confront the West, Israel included. To be sure, Syria acts as Iran's Sunni agent in the Arab world, supplying access to Iranian arms and material and feeding the cycle of violence. It is working hand-in-glove to accommodate Iran's regional strategy.

For centuries, Sunnis dominated the Muslim world. That began to change in 1979, when the Iranian Shiite mullahs' revolution led to an astonishing ascent of what King Abdullah of Jordan last year decried as a menacing "Shiite crescent" rising above the Sunni Muslim Arab world. Similar alarm was voiced by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and indeed by Saudi Arabia, the mother of all Sunni regimes. In

Iraq, the two sects are engaged in a bloody massacre of one another.

What frightens the Arabs is that Iran has an impressive network already in place to do its deeds. Even before the United States conveniently dispensed with Iraq - which was the major bulwark against Persians - Iran had planted seeds throughout the region. Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s as Iran's private militia in Lebanon. Shiites loyal to Iran were dispensed to Iraq. And assorted jihadists spread to Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia.

At first, the Iranian motive was self-defense of its young revolution, but by the 1990s its ambitions graduated to regional hegemony. The election last year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president signaled Phase 2 of the Iranian march, further alarming normally placid Arab majorities who appear to be silent no more.

The collective resistance spoken by Arab presidents, emirs and kings at the highest levels is echoed below among ordinary people. In Lebanon, for instance, it is evident that the people in the streets are blaming Israel, of course, but also Hezbollah for today's crisis.

Ironically, Hamas and Hezbollah's provocation of Israel, coupled with the Jewish state's retaliation, might have opened a new chapter in the greater Middle East discourse - but not the one these groups anticipated. Perhaps the time has come in which war for war's sake might not just bring condemnation from the world at large, but from the Arab world as well.

THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Role In Going To War: Wolfowitz said the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil money for pay for the reconstruction, and that Gen. Eric Shinseki’s estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed was “wildly off the mark.” [Washington Post, 12/8/05]

Where He Is Now: Bush promoted Wolfowitz to head the World Bank in March 2005. [Washington Post, 3/17/05]

Key Quote: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” [Wolfowitz, 3/27/03]

DOUGLAS FEITH

Role In Going To War: As Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Feith spearheaded two secretive groups at the Pentagon — the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans — that were instrumental in drawing up documents that explained the supposed ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. The groups were “created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true.” Colin Powell referred to Feith’s operation as the Gestapo. In Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, former CentCom Commander Gen. Tommy Franks called Feith the “f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” [LAT, 1/27/05; NYT, 4/28/04; New Yorker, 5/12/03; Plan of Attack, p.281]

Where He Is Now: Feith voluntarily resigned from the Defense Department shortly after Bush’s reelection. He is co-chairman of a project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to write an academic book on how to fight terrorism. Feith’s secretive groups at the Pentagon are under investigation by the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee for intelligence failures. [Washington Post, 1/27/05, 11/18/05; Washington Times, 3/3/06]

Key Quote: “I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is — we did it right. What I am saying is it’s an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible.” [Washington Post, 7/13/05]

STEPHEN HADLEY

Role In Going To War: As then-Deputy National Security Advisor, Hadley disregarded memos from the CIA and a personal phone call from Director George Tenet warning that references to Iraq’s pursuit of uranium be dropped from Bush’s speeches. The false information ended up in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. [Washington Post, 7/23/03]

Where He Is Now: On January 26, 2005, Stephen Hadley was promoted to National Security Advisor. [White House bio]

Key Quote: “I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. … And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.” [Hadley, 7/22/03]

RICHARD PERLE

Role In Going To War: Richard Perle, the so-called “Prince of Darkness,” was the chairman of Defense Policy Board during the run-up to the Iraq war. He suggested Iraq had a hand in 9-11. In 1996, he authored “Clean Break,” a paper that was co-signed by Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others that argued for regime change in Iraq. Shortly after the war began, Perle resigned from the Board because he came under fire for having relationships with businesses that stood to profit from the war. [Guardian, 9/3/02, 3/28/03; AFP, 8/9/02]

Where He Is Now: Currently, Perle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he specializes in national security and defense issues. He has been investigated for ethical violations concerning war profiteering and other conflicts of interest. [Washington Post, 9/1/04]

Key Quote: “And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [Perle, 9/22/03]

ELLIOT ABRAMS

Role In Going To War: Abrams was one of the defendants in the Iran-Contra Affair, and he pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress. He was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs during Bush’s first term, where he served as Bush’s chief advisor on the Middle East. His name surfaced as part of the investigation into who leaked the name of a undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. [Washington Post, 5/27/03, 2/3/05]

Where He Is Now: Abrams was promoted to deputy national security adviser in February of 2005. [Slate, 2/17/05]

Key Quote: “We recognize that military action in Iraq, if necessary, will have adverse humanitarian consequences. We have been planning over the last several months, across all relevant agencies, to limit any such consequences and provide relief quickly.” [CNN, 2/25/03]

DAVID WURMSER

Role In Going To War: At the time of the war, Wurmser was a special assistant to John Bolton in the State Department. Wurmser has long advocated the belief that both Syria and Iraq represented threats to the stability of the Middle East. In early 2001, Wurmser had issued a call for air strikes against Iraq and Syria. Along with Perle, he is considered a main author of “Clean Break.” [Asia Times, 4/17/03; Guardian, 9/3/02]

Where He Is Now: Wurmser was promoted to Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs; he is in charge of coordinating Middle East strategy. His name has been associated with the Plame Affair and with an FBI investigation into the passing of classified information to Chalabi and AIPAC. [Raw Story, 10/19/05; Washington Post, 9/4/04]

Key Quote: “Syria, Iran, Iraq, the PLO and Sudan are playing a skillful game, but have consistently worked to undermine US interests and influence in the region for years, and certainly will continue to do so now, even if they momentarily, out of fear, seem more forthcoming.” [Washington Post, 9/24/01]

ANDREW NATSIOS

Role In Going To War: Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Natsios, then the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, went on Nightline and claimed that the U.S. contribution to the rebuilding of Iraq would be just $1.7 billion. When it became quickly apparent that Natsios’ prediction would fall woefully short of reality, the government came under fire for scrubbing his comments from the USAID Web site. [Washington Post, 12/18/03; ABC News, 4/23/03]

Where He Is Now: Natsios stepped down as the head of USAID in January and is currently teaching at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh’s School of Foreign Service as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and Advisor on International Development. [AP, 2/20/06; Georgetown, 12/2/05]

Key Quote: “[T]he American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.” [Nightline, 4/23/03]

DAN BARTLETT

Role In Going To War: Dan Bartlett was the White House Communications Director at the time of the war and was a mouthpiece in hyping the Iraq threat. Bartlett was also a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG). The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]

Where He Is Now: Bartlett was promoted to Counselor to the President on January 5, 2005, and is responsible for the formulation of policy and implementation of the President’s agenda. [White House]

Key Quote: “President Bush understands that the need to disarm Saddam Hussein is necessary. He has made that case to the United Nations Security Council. He’s made that case to the United States Congress. The entire world rallied behind this resolution that gives him one last chance. He has that chance, but time is running out.” [CNN, 1/26/03]

MITCH DANIELS

Role In Going To War: Mitch Daniels was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from January 2001 through June of 2003. In this capacity, he was responsible for releasing the initial budget estimates for the Iraq War which he pegged at $50 to $60 billion. The estimated cost of the war, including the full economic ramifications, is approaching $1 trillion. [MSNBC, 3/17/06]

Where He Is Now: In 2004, Daniels was elected Governor of Indiana. [USA Today, 11/3/04]

Key Quote: Mitch Daniels had said the war would be an “affordable endeavor” and rejected an estimate by the chief White House economic adviser that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion as “very, very high.” [Christian Science Monitor, 1/10/06]

GEORGE TENET

Role In Going To War: As CIA Director, Tenet was responsible for gathering information on Iraq and the potential threat posted by Saddam Hussein. According to author Bob Woodward, Tenet told President Bush before the war that there was a “slam dunk case” that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Tenet remained publicly silent while the Bush administration made pre-war statements on Iraq’s supposed nuclear program and ties to al Qaeda that were contrary to the CIA’s judgments. Tenet issued a statement in July 2003, drafted by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, taking responsibility for Bush’s false statements in his State of the Union address. [CNN, 4/19/04; NYT, 7/22/05]

Where He Is Now: Tenet voluntarily resigned from the administration on June 3, 2004. He was later awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. [Washington Post, 6/3/04]

Key Quote: “It’s a slam dunk case.” [CNN, 4/19/04]

COLIN POWELL

Role In Going To War: Despite stating in Feb. 2001 that Saddam had not developed “any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction,” Powell made the case in front of the United Nations for a United States-led invasion of Iraq, stating that, “There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.” [Powell, 2/5/03; Powell, 2/24/01]

Where He Is Now: Shortly after Bush won reelection in 2004, Powell resigned from the administration. Powell now sits on numerous corporate boards. He is poised to succeed Henry Kissinger in May as Chairman of the Eisenhower Fellowship Program at the City College of New York. In September 2005, Powell said of his U.N. speech that it was a “blot” on his record. He went on to say, “It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.” [ABC News, 9/9/05]

Key Quote: “‘You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,’ he told the president. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.’ Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.” [Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack]

DONALD RUMSFELD

Role In Going To War: Prior to the war, Rumsfeld repeatedly suggested the war in Iraq would be short and swift. He said, “The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” He also said, “It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” [Rumsfeld, 11/14/02; USA Today, 4/1/03]

Where He Is Now: Despite increased calls for his resignation, Donald Rumsfeld continues to be the most vocal supporter of staying the course in Iraq. Recently, he claimed that an early U.S. pullout would be the equivalent of leaving Germany in the hands of Nazis. [Bill Kristol, Washington Post, 12/15/04; Reuters, 3/19/06]

Key Quote: “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” [CNN, 12/9/04]

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

Role In Going To War: As National Security Adviser, Rice disregarded at least two CIA memos and a personal phone call from Director George Tenet stating that the evidence behind Iraq’s supposed uranium acquisition was weak. She urged the necessity of war because “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” [Washington Post, 7/27/03; CNN, 9/8/02]

Where She Is Now: In December of 2004, Condoleezza Rice was promoted to Secretary of State and is being widely-mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. [ABC News, 11/16/04]

Key Quote: “We did not know at the time – maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency – but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken.” [Meet the Press, 6/8/03]

DICK CHENEY

Role In Going To War: Among a host of false pre-war statements, Cheney claimed that Iraq may have had a role in 9/11, stating that it was “pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials. Cheney also claimed that Saddam was “in fact reconstituting his nuclear program” and that the U.S. would be “greeted as liberators.” [Meet the Press, 12/9/01, 3/16/03]

Where He Is Now: Cheney earned another four years in power when Bush won re-election in 2004. Despite recent calls from conservatives calling for him to be replaced, Cheney has said, “I’ve now been elected to a second term; I’ll serve out my term.” [CBS Face the Nation, 3/19/06]

Key Quote: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” [Larry King Live, 6/20/05]

GEORGE W. BUSH

Role In Going To War: Emphasizing Saddam Hussein’s supposed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, supposed ties to al Qaeda, and supposed nuclear weapons program, Bush led the effort to build public support for an invasion of Iraq. [State of the Union, 1/28/03]

Where He Is Now: In November 2004, Bush won re-election. Since that time, popular support for the war and the President have reached a low point. [Washington Post, 3/7/06]

Key Quote: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” [Bush, 10/7/02]

Where Have All the Architects of War Gone?

by Arianna Huffington Tue Jul 18, 2006

In his terrific post on the hornets' nest we've kicked open in the Middle East, Gary Hart makes the point that as the fighting spreads, we have seen precious little of "the nation's wisemen, those neoconservative idealists who saw the great American empire imposing democracy on the Middle East at the point of a bayonet."

And, indeed, in the wall-to-wall coverage of the latest Middle East carnage -- and the analysis of said carnage -- the neocon architects who brought us the invasion of Iraq and the promise that it would bring democracy and stability to the region have been notably absent from the discussion.

Where have you gone Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, et al? A nation turns it anxious eyes to you.

In the run up to Shock and Awe, these guys were all over the place, singing from the same song book, letting us know that the fall of Saddam would bring good things throughout the Middle East. With their every pronouncement, you could hear the sound of Arab dominoes falling.

The neocon fantasy was summed up by Dick Cheney, a charter member of the Project for a New American Century brigade, in August 2002: "Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region: extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad, moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israel/Palestinian peace process would be enhanced."

Wolfowitz was just as optimistic, predicting the invasion of Iraq "will be an act that will bring more stability to the region." According to pre-war Wolfie, "With Saddam Hussein out of the picture, it'll be a much better atmosphere for peace."

Same with Doug Feith, who assured us that a democratic Iraq would be "inspirational for people throughout the Middle East to try to increase the amount of freedom that they have." He also suggested that success in Iraq "would be impressive and influential" and allow others in the region to look at the Iraqi example and say, "'If the Iraqis can have these benefits, perhaps we can get some of these benefits for our own people.'" And he was confident that the ousting of Saddam would "influence the thinking of other states about how advisable it is for them to continue to provide safe harbor or other types of support to terrorist organizations." (Maybe Tommy Franks knew what he was talking about when he called Feith the "stupidest guy on the face of the earth.")

As for Richard Perle, six months after the fall of Saddam (and months into the insurgency), the so-called Prince of Darkness was still seeing nothing but blue skies: "I think others in the region will look at Iraq and say, 'Why can't we rid ourselves of a regime that's rather similar in some ways to the Iraqi regime?' So the precedential effect of liberating Iraq may assist in bringing about democratic reform elsewhere."

It hasn't exactly turned out that way, has it? The extremists are as committed to jihad as ever, the Israel/Palestinian peace process has been declared officially dead and buried by the Arab League, "democratic reforms" in the region have led to the rise of fundamentalists in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, and the legitimization of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iraq has indeed proved "inspirational" -- to al Qaeda and its fellow jihadists.

Could the wise men's crystal balls have been any cloudier?

But an admission that they were wrong -- or a stirring defense of why, despite all appearances, they were actually right -- has been harder to come by than a Y chromosome at a Melissa Etheridge concert.

In his post, Gary Hart wrote, "Democracy does not work without accountability." But no one is holding these guys accountable. Especially not the media -- which the neocon shills used so effectively when selling the country on the wider benefits of war in Iraq.

The cable and Sunday shows -- where so much prewar misinformation was disseminated -- need to haul in the war triumphalists and ask them to account for the gulf between their rosy predictions and the bloody reality.

It would be interesting to see how they would react. Would they belatedly go the way of Francis Fukuyama and disavow their notions of war in Iraq leading to peace in the region or would they pull a Bill Kristol and use the current upheaval as the perfect justification for expanding the war in Iraq to Iran and Syria?

When last we heard from Perle, back in June, he was using the Washington Post to wag his finger at Bush -- dreaming of the next war, the one in Iran, and clearly not feeling any obligation to explain the sectarian chaos that's become of the current one in Iraq.

Wolfowitz has been hard at work at the World Bank, posing as the Second Coming of Mother Teresa and doing all he can to whitewash his past. His official World Bank bio extols the role he played in "the successful liberation of Kuwait" but expunges any mention of his role in the failed occupation of Iraq or his forecast that the people there would "greet us as liberators."

For his part, Feith has retreated to the halls of academia, landing a job at Georgetown's school of Foreign Service, where he will teach a course on the Bush administration's antiterrorism policy. Supply your own syllabus-related punchline (here's Jesus' General's). Feith's last TV appearance was in August 2005, on Geraldo, right before leaving his post as Undersecretary of Defense. He clearly owes the nation an update.

Gonzales: Bush blocked eavesdropping probe

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that

President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans' international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.

At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.

"It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" asked Specter, R-Pa.

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales told the committee hearing, during which he was strongly criticized on a range of national security issues by Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), the panel's senior Democrat.

Last week, under a deal with Specter, Bush agreed conditionally to a court review of his antiterror eavesdropping operations.

When the program was disclosed in December, it outraged Democrats and civil libertarians who said Bush overstepped his authority.

Bush's 2001 directive authorized the National Security Agency to monitor — without court warrants — the international communications of people on U.S. soil when terrorism is suspected. The administration initially resisted efforts to write a new law, contending that no legal changes were needed. But after months of pressure, officials have grown more open to legislation.

Under the deal with Specter, the president agreed to support a bill that could submit the program to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a constitutional review.

The Ugly Truth: Our President is an Imbecile

by Cenk Uygur, Huffington Post

You know it, I know it and the American people know it. But everyone is afraid to say it. They say it privately, but people are afraid of saying it publicly because you will be branded as a liberal, elite, intellectual snob. But believe me, you don't have to be an intellectual to see how painfully stupid our president is.

Just look at the conversation he is having with world leaders at the G-8 summit. Mikes picked up the causal talk between the world leaders. Forget that Bush appears to have three sandwiches in his mouth while talking. Forget that he calls out to the Prime Minister of Britain as if he is Flounder in "Animal House." Forget that he uses profanity. I don't give a shit about those things.

I thought it was ridiculous that people made fun of George H. W, Bush for vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister. What was he going to do? He had to puke, so he puked. It happens to the best of us, and more importantly, has nothing to do with his intelligence or how capable he is as a leader.

But his son's verbal vomit does have a lot to do with his ability to lead this country and the world. What I found to be the most damning is the least quoted part of Bush's comments. As you read this transcript, remember that this is not a small child talking, but the President of the United States of America:

possibly Chinese President Hu Jintao, a guest at the summit. Bush: "Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home?

Bush: "This is your neighborhood. It doesn't take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?"

Reply is inaudible.

Bush: "Eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country."

At this point, the president seems to bring someone else into the conversation.

Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home."

He turns his attention to a server.

Bush: "No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke."

He turns back to whomever he was talking with.

Bush: "It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China."

Russia's big and so is China??????? This guys sounds like a third grader. Do you know anyone who would have a conversation like this with their neighbor, let alone a business associate, let alone a world leader? Who's proud to know that Russia is big and so is China?

Can anyone now credibly claim that Bush is secretly working on a master plan behind the scenes and that he's just playing cowboy for the cameras? I hope the master plan doesn't involve figuring out how long it takes to get to China.

If someone is this ignorant, they're usually embarrassed and try not to talk much. But this guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is. This sounds like a conversation you might have with a child, a mentally challenged child. Johnny, do you know how big Russia is? How about China?

This would all be unfortunate if George was your dentist, or worse yet, your accountant. But he is the leader of the free world. This man makes life or death decisions every day. If you say you're not scared about that, you're lying.

Would you let him do the books for your business? Would you trust your company in his hands for eight years? (No matter how Republican you are, you know you just said no to that question.) Would you trust him to be your kids' guidance counselor and take his advice seriously? If your kids were in the Army and he was their field commander, would you feel good about putting their lives in his hands?

Come on, no one is crazy enough to say yes to that. Yet, he has all of our lives in his hands. The emperor has no clothes. The emperor has no clothes. It's about time someone in the mainstream media said it.

In the old empires, there would be a lot of marriages between the royal families. And from time to time, these inter-family marriages would produce a mentally challenged son who would inherit the throne. This would set the empire back for hundreds of years. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying. Russia is big and so is China.

The Democrats for a long time have felt embarrassed about pointing out the obvious. The emperor has no brain. This is what I can't understand about the Democrats, they're always playing patty cakes while the Republicans are ripping their face off.

John Kerry should have stood at the lectern during the debates and pointed to

George Bush and said, "The leader of this country has to be the best and the brightest. If any of you think that he is the best and the brightest America has to offer, go ahead and vote for him!"

The theory is that people would be turned off by that. The theory assumes that people are also idiots and they love their cohorts. That is simply not true. Everyone understands that they have a friend they'd like to go fishing with and a friend they can trust to look after their affairs - and they're not necessarily the same guy. And that your fishing buddy might not be a great choice for President of the United States of America.

Kerry should have embarrassed Bush, made people feel sorry for him. It would have hurt in the short run and given him a temporary downward blip in the numbers, but in the end, when people went into that voting booth, they would have felt pity for Bush - in that scenario, Kerry wins easily. Nobody votes for someone they pity.

Minister becomes force on 'religious left'

NEW YORK, Associated Press - The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr. stands rigidly above the heads of prophets carved into the pulpit of Riverside Church. He begins his sermon calmly, enunciating every syllable, urging listeners to give up blame as their Lenten sacrifice.

Lately, within his liberal Manhattan congregation, he has been hearing a lot of ire against Republicans and fundamentalists.

"In times of war and intense conflict, the natural impulse is to demonize the adversary," he says in a soft, resonant voice. "Sometimes, we say, when we see a political drift away from democracy, 'it's those right-wing fundamentalists, they are the devil of the season.'"

Stop blaming them, he says. Work for change.

___

This is the way Forbes preaches. He starts out slow — low key. He is mindful of his congregation in this bastion of the establishment, aware of the discomfort they might feel with the energetic preaching style he has inherited from generations of Forbes pastors.

But then, "At some point, I cut loose and forget all about it," he says.

He is a man with feet in two worlds. He now preaches in a cathedral-sized church built by the Rockefellers, and there he has become a leading — and influential — voice for religious progressives. Most recently, he has used that pulpit to campaign against the Iraq war and for causes ranging from gay rights to environmentalism.

He has emerged as a key figure in a movement to rally religious liberals and challenge evangelical Christians to reconsider issues of poverty and social justice, an effort to shape the debate of the 2006 elections much as the religious right did two years ago.

But he is also the product of a conservative, evangelical upbringing in country churches in the Deep South in the 1940s. He is the son of a Pentecostal preacher in Raleigh, N.C.; his grandfather and grandmother also preached, as did three uncles and an aunt.

In the summertime, his grandfather would take the young boy with him to country churches near a tobacco farm where he worked.

Once, his grandfather related the story of how Mary told Joseph that they needed to find a place she could give birth. Grandaddy stepped down from the pulpit holding his belly beneath his black robe and became Mary.

"He was saying 'Joseph, I'm hurting. I'm hurting,'" Forbes remembers. "And I was scared to death that the baby was going to fall out from under my grandfather's robe, and the water would break right there. He made it that real."

___

Later in his sermon, Forbes analyzes a literal reading of the Bible. Did Jesus actually meet the devil in the wilderness as Matthew and Mark wrote?

"Do we read these accounts as literal descriptions of Jesus being baptized, coming out of the water, having the dove of the spirit light on his shoulder and then being driven into the wilderness?" he asks.

At 70, he is thin and spry, with a slightly graying mustache. His robes are multicolored, like the long cloth that hangs down from the raised pulpit.

Gradually, he becomes more animated — shaking, rubbing his hands audibly into the microphone, mocking the literal reading of the text.

"And 'long come the devil. And the devil, obviously with the red underwear and the pitchfork and the long tail says to him ..."

___

As a youth, Jim Forbes didn't want to be a minister. He wanted to be a doctor.

"I didn't want to be poor and I didn't want people running my life like they did my father's," he says.

But three years into his premed studies at Howard University, he felt a pull to the ministry. He bargained with God.

"I said to him, 'Listen I really want to be a doctor and if you let me be a doctor, instead of calling me to the ministry, I'll be a religious doctor.'" he remembers.

As proof he would go to a hospital and pray for patients he didn't know. "See, Lord, I'll be like Albert Schweitzer," he would say.

The summer after his junior year he went to a revival given by the Rev. Aquilla Lawson, a friend of his father. Lawson told of the prophet Isaiah's vision of God, sitting on a throne. In the Lord's presence, Isaiah felt unworthy. "Woe is me for I am undone," he says.

Forbes, too, felt undone.

He went home and put on a record of Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 4 in F Minor." In the rhythms and notes, he thought he heard a message: "Jim Forbes, don't you know I have called you?"

As the music grew more violent, more bombastic, he heard this: "I really mean this brother."

And so, after leaving Howard University, he applied to the seminary.

At Duke University, he was told they did not accept blacks. He went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City, one of the most influential — and liberal — religious institutions of the day.

It was a radical departure for a young man from an evangelical background to encounter biblical criticism and to study theories about contradictions of the text.

After graduating, he returned to North Carolina to a church near his birthplace. Could he reconcile his liberal education with his Pentecostal background?

The thorniest problem was that Jim Forbes couldn't speak in tongues. As a child, the congregations of his family's Pentecostal churches would fall into trance-like states and utter incomprehensible sounds they believed were divinely inspired languages.

But as an adult preacher, he didn't know how to do it himself.

"I'm the young theologian and I haven't even spoken in tongues, so they say 'I don't think so,'" Forbes remembers. "How could he give us the blessing, if he doesn't have the blessing?"

___

Forbes is struggling for words. His voice is cracking. He says he is hesitating because what he is about to say might sound blasphemous.

"But here goes," he says. "The story is not about Satan the devil out there. It's about JESUS, Mary's baby, BORN IN BETHLEHEM, going through an actual, honest to goodness struggle."

Jesus' struggle was not out there, he tells them.

"Noooh sirrrr," a man answers from a pew.

He continues, quivering.

"The struggle was_ DARE I SAY IT?_ the struggle was in himself as to how he was going to live his life. Please don't use this to say, uh oh, the boy's done lost it now cause he's saying that the devil was in Jesus. I am saying whatever the devil is, when experienced in temptation, it's not external to the person going through the experience."

___

In the early '60s, Forbes was swept up in the civil rights movement and began attending sit-ins. Martin Luther King Jr. influenced him deeply, both as an activist and a speaker.

"He had a unique ability to take a powerful image from the Bible and weave it into contemporary relevance," Forbes says. "He was the master. I don't even try to run in his league."

On April 4, 1967, King came out against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church. His sermon, "Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence," tied the war to social injustices in America.

"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit," King said. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Forbes says he was listening to the radio one day when he learned of King's death, exactly one year to the day after the Riverside sermon.

"I said, 'Martin, you shall not have died in vain. I intend with my life to extend what you have brought us," he remembers.

___

"The issue is for each one of us during Lent to sharpen our awareness that rather than our enemy, rather than Saddam Hussein, rather than the Republicans, rather than the Democrats, rather than the fundis, rather than the liberals, it's not out there," Forbes tells the congregation. "NO NO NO! It's in ourselves."

___

His formal education, his belief in the power of reason, made it increasingly difficult for him to continue as a Pentecostal. In 1973 he left his ministry to study at an interfaith seminary that brought together Jews, Catholics and Protestants. In 1976, a year after receiving his doctorate in ministry, he returned to teach at Union Seminary.

The next year, Riverside Church, adjacent to the seminary, appointed a new senior minister who Forbes says influenced him greatly.

William Sloane Coffin was already a leading religious voice against the Vietnam War and began using Riverside's outsized pulpit to campaign against nuclear proliferation, poverty, and environmental degradation.

When Forbes became senior minister in 1989, he was inspired by Coffin's legacy. And he has expanded on that legacy.

"He's unique in that he comes with charismatic, Pentecostal background and flavors it with a liberal passion for justice," says Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman and now general secretary of the progressive National Council of Churches. He rates Forbes as one of the 10 best preachers in the country, serving at one of its most prominent churches.

Forbes believes that the religious right has mobilized a large segment of Christians through touchstone issues like abortion, intelligent design and gay marriage. But he also thinks that with their close reading of the Christ's teachings, evangelicals and fundamentalists can be persuaded to focus on poverty.

They're receptive, he insists: After the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, some evangelicals, previously skeptical, were more receptive to efforts to reverse global warming and help the poor.

A full transformation, he says, will only happen if progressives take to the airwaves and raise their profile. Accordingly, Forbes has become more outspoken and active. In 2004 he joined other religious progressives on a bus tour through several swing states to make poverty a greater issue in the elections.

This year, he is part of an effort to recruit and train preachers to answer conservatives in the media. On July 22, Forbes will begin hosting a weekly radio show called "The Time is Now," on Air America, which he says will offer a "countervailing voice to the religious right."

All the while, the Riverside Church has become a rallying point for anti-war activists as Forbes has led interfaith services for peace. Often, he echoes the speech King gave in 1968.

But always, his sermons are those of a man caught between two worlds. Once he preached in English to people who expected him to talk in tongues; now, he now brings the vibrant cadences of evangelism to Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"My psychiatrist, if I had one, would say that this is a continuing motif in my existence," he says.

___

The devil in Jim wars with the spirit in Jim, he tells the congregation. He builds to a final crescendo.

"This is a new dynamic that I will be working with, because I think I have spent most of my life thinking that God is up there watching what I do. NO! YES! ... The truth is that God is the creator. God is the first cause, the unmoved mover, but more importantly, God is in us," he tells them. "GOD IS IN YOU!"

Defending it from what, again?

What you don't know can hurt you

By Nat Hentoff Thu Jul 13, 6:53 AM ET

One day years ago, interviewing the usually cheerful Justice William Brennan in his Supreme Court chambers, I found him troubled. "Liberty," he said, "is a fragile thing. The Framers knew that. How can we bring the words of the Bill of Rights off the page into the lives of students?"

Were he still here, that paladin of individual liberties would have been even more troubled reading the words of retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor on this page: "Public schools have pretty much stopped teaching government, civics and American history. ... I truly don't know how long we can survive as a strong nation if our younger citizens don't understand the nature of our government. ... That is something you have to learn. It just isn't handed down in the genetic pool."

Add Sen. Lamar Alexander (news, bio, voting record), R-Tenn., who is trying to get his American History Achievement Act - to test the degree of knowledge in schools - through Congress. He points out that half the states don't require a course in U.S. government.

A few years ago, I supported the City University of New York's decision mandating the teaching of American history on all its campuses. I was denounced by several department heads for "jingoism." They insisted "world history" be taught instead.

What students believe

Not surprisingly, a Knight Foundation national survey last year of more than 100,000 high school students on "The Future of the First Amendment" found that 73% either had no opinion or said they took the First Amendment for granted, whatever that meant. Moreover, 36% believed that before publishing, newspapers must first get government approval.

As for this nation's adults, in an American Bar Association poll last summer, a little more than half of those surveyed were able to name the three branches of our government. Fewer than half had any idea what "the separation of powers" means.

Since congressional oversight of this president's powers has been lame - and more of our federal courts are yielding to the administration's invoking of "state secrets" to dismiss cases critical of expanding presidential powers - even fewer Americans will know that the Framers insisted on the separation of powers.

In April, Michael Greco, president of the American Bar Association, warned - without hyperbole - that "many Americans do not even know the basics of how their government works, and that is a long-term threat to our democracy. ... When people do not understand their rights, it's easy for others to take those rights away." And those who would take those rights away are not just our external enemies.

But the Constitution still lives - as an increasing number of organizations are educating school boards and principals across the country in effectively teaching the roots of Americanism:

• The Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, for example, provides programs and curriculums for elementary and secondary school students - and their teachers - in Chicago and across the USA. This foundation participates in the annual Youth for Justice National Teach-In, a program in which middle and high school students learn about our American democracy. Its associate director, Nisan Chavkin, said a lively discussion took place during a Chicago teach-in on the Second Amendment and gun control. Special education students led a debate with their peers from regular classes - a useful example of creative teaching.

• The Bill of Rights Institute, in Arlington, Va., has reached teachers across the country with constitutional seminars - I've spoken at one; week-long summer institutes for teachers; and instructional materials and lesson plans, including original sources, posters and the like, that make American history come alive.

• The Illinois First Amendment Center, based in Springfield, has an active national reach and provides curriculum guides from kindergarten to college. The chairman is John Foreman, who, in his day job, is publisher of The News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill. He tells me: "Our materials have been requested by schools in all 50 states, something we never expected."

A call for 'renewal'

When I speak at schools, telling stories of how this country got the Bill of Rights and what it has taken to keep those individual liberties, I quote Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy: "The Constitution needs renewal and understanding each generation, or it's not going to last."

And then I tell the students one of the consequences if it doesn't last, invoking George Orwell: "If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."

I also suggest the students get a paperback copy of Mr. Orwell's chilling, increasingly contemporary novel, 1984.

We had no business whatsoever going into Iraq. Hussain may have been a complete asshole, but at least his people had peace and stability and weren't killing each other in the streets. Now their infrastructure is shot to hell, hundreds of thousands of their civilians are dead, there's anarchy in the streets and the party has cost us almost a trillion US dollars and over 2500 soldier's lives. And for what? The whole world hates us, the locals are killing each other, and Halliburton is bloated with profit.

It's all completely corrupt bullshit.

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Guns galore as anarchy stalks Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Seif has never fired a gun. He wouldn't know how one worked, he says. But that did not stop him buying both a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle last month.

In Baghdad, it can seem everyone these days is armed, a mark of violence that is ever more anarchic and prompting efforts by the government, U.S. military, and even militia leaders, to curb rogue gunmen, especially among majority Shi'ites, who threaten what the prime minister has called the "last chance" for peace.

Terrified by the thought of being caught up in the sort of street violence seen in several Baghdad neighborhoods in the past week, when dozens of people have been gunned down by squads of militants, Seif typifies Baghdad's spreading gun culture.

"I honestly don't know if I am ever going to use my guns," he said, showing how he keeps them at the ready in his car. "But it certainly makes me feel better these days.

"Why shouldn't I buy a weapon. Everyone else has one," said the 26-year-old, who works for a foreign company.

"It's very easy to get them," he added -- one of his friends keeps rocket-propelled grenades in his car for longer journeys.

A month-old security clampdown that has flooded the streets of Baghdad with 50,000 Iraqi troops and police has thwarted some violence, but gun and bomb attacks have persisted this week.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said this week that sectarian bloodletting between Shi'ites and the formerly dominant Sunni minority of Saddam Hussein was now a greater threat to Iraq than the three-year-old Sunni insurgency against the security forces.

The top U.S. military commander shed some of Washington's usual reticence about sectarian labeling on Wednesday by saying Shi'ite militia "death squads" were behind much of the violence in the capital that has left scores dead this past week.

Some observers fear that a third, even more intractable, phase of the conflict has been reached, beyond insurgency and beyond even combat between organized armed groups: "What we're now seeing has no shape whatever," a Western diplomat said.

"It's just everyone fighting everyone. Anarchy."

GUN RAMPAGE

While there are tens of thousands of newly U.S.-trained troops and police on the streets, there are certainly hundreds of thousands of automatic weapons in the hands of Baghdad's 7 million people, like Seif, so the potentially bloody consequences of anarchy are clear to all.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told parliament that his plan for national reconciliation was a "last chance" to halt a slide into an even grimmer unknown than Iraq is already experiencing.

With Sunni leaders, and U.S. officials, raising loud alarm over incidents like Sunday's rampage by militia gunmen through the Jihad neighborhood of Sunni west Baghdad that left over 40 dead, Maliki and his fellow Shi'ite Islamist leaders appear to be trying to hold back violent extremists in their own camp.

Many Sunnis blame the Mehdi Army of young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for running death squads, particularly since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine at Samarra in February. Several of its local leaders have been captured in recent U.S.-Iraqi raids.

"There are rogue members of the Mehdi Army who are launching attacks on their own," a senior Shi'ite politician said.

"The Sunnis have complained a lot and those raids are aimed at putting them out of business," he added. "It is not good for anyone to have such people on the loose, not even the Sadrists.

"The Americans are after certain named people only."

Having stayed silent when U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed into his Sadr City stronghold a week ago in search of a local warlord linked to the Mehdi Army, Sadr gave a lengthy interview on state television on Wednesday to urge peace and reconciliation.

On Thursday, the U.S. military released one of his top aides and two dozen other followers after holding them for two years.

"Some Mehdi Army people are accused of killing Sunni extremists," said another senior politician in Maliki's mainstream Islamist bloc, the United Alliance.

"The Americans say they have their names and are after them. The idea is to improve security and make sure these people, who are no longer obeying Mehdi Army commanders, are made inactive."

William Patey, ambassador for U.S. ally Britain in Iraq, said the pressure was on for Sunni and Shi'ite leaders to come together against the chaos: "Political leaders need to look beyond their sectarian interests," he told Reuters.

"Tit-for-tat does not get you anywhere."

Japanese gadget records, replicates odor

TOKYO, Associated Press - People stopping to smell the roses can now take that sweet floral fragrance home with them or even send it to a faraway grandmother thanks to a new gadget in Japan that records and replicates the world's odors.

The new device, developed by scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, analyzes smells through 15 sensors, records the odor's recipe in digital format and then reproduces the scent by mixing 96 chemicals and vaporizing the result.

Creator Takamichi Nakamoto says the technology will have applications in food and fragrance industries where companies want to replicate odors. But it could also be a boon for the digital world, allowing smells can be recorded in one place — by sensors in a mobile phone, for instance — and transmitted to appreciative noses halfway around the world.

It could also aid online shoppers by letting people check out perfumes or flowers before they buy.

"The sensitivity of the human nose is very good," Nakamoto said. "But to some extent we can replicate the performance."

Nakamoto says his machine, in the works since 1999, is the most advance of its kind in the world, though a similar project is also underway at Keio University, also in Japan.

But so far, the machine is too big to be portable — it measures about the 1 meter by 3 feet by 2 feet.

Still, the breakthrough follows on the heels of a Japanese smellovision project that synchronized smells to movie scenes. That odorous endeveor was undertaken by NTT Communications Corp. and emitted smells from under seats in two movie theaters to accompany parts of the film "The New World," a Hollywood adventure film.

Nakamoto's smell recorder has successfully recreated a range of fruit smells, including oranges, apples, bananas and lemons, but can be reprogrammed to produce almost any odor — from old fish to gasoline, he said.

Making the 15 sensor chips, which pick up aromas and convert them to a digital formula, was the hardest part, Nakamoto added.

But the unit's large size is also limitation because the 96 odor-forming chemicals are contained in separate glass bottles. A more compact version, which includes only the sensors, can record smells but must be hooked up to the blender to regenerate them.

"We also want extend the range of smells, and then we can think about commercializing the system," Nakamoto said.

Hold your applause: Deficit dip is but a drop in bucket

USA Today, Wed Jul 12

Great news! This year's budget deficit won't be $427 billion as forecast in February but $333 billion.

President Bush touted ...

Oops, wait a minute. Those numbers are from last July's White House press release. Let's start again.

Great news! This year's budget deficit won't be $423 billion as forecast in February but $296 billion. President Bush touted this on Tuesday as evidence that his fiscal policies are working.

Forgive us if we don't break out the party hats. It is hard to get excited about an abysmally large deficit in the range of $300 billion that is somewhat less gargantuan than earlier predicted.

Even accepting the administration's assurances that it does not purposefully overestimate the numbers in a Wall Street-like game of beating expectations, this habitual mid-year crowing masks the seriousness of the nation's bleak fiscal outlook.

The government faces a severe financial crunch as the baby-boom generation prepares to retire. Runaway health costs and the swelling number of people collecting government benefits are the chief contributors to what the Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress, estimates to be a long-term government shortfall of $46 trillion.

In that light, the most urgent question is not whether this year's deficit is $400 billion or $300 billion, but what the administration and members of Congress are doing to head off the much larger deficits on the horizon.

The answer is: Precious little. Members of both parties willfully ignore these problems and downplay their significance. The Bush administration, meanwhile, makes matters worse by overplaying the significance of its annual budget numbers.

A $296 billion deficit this year would be only slightly better than last year's deficit, which came in at $318 billion. It would, of course, be much worse than the surpluses Bush inherited. And its true size is masked by the $172 billion Social Security surplus. Take that away, and the deficit is $468 billion, or more than $4,000 per household.

There is, to be sure, some modestly good news in the budget numbers. So far, the new Medicare drug benefit hasn't been as costly as anticipated. And tax receipts from companies and wealthy individuals have surged.

But frankly we don't see much reason to gloat. That only diverts attention from the serious financial issues that the nation faces and its leaders duck.

U.S. will give detainees Geneva rights

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The Bush administration, called to account by Congress after the Supreme Court blocked military tribunals, said Tuesday all detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President Bush. That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

The policy, described in a memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, appears to change the administration's earlier insistence that the detainees are not prisoners of war and thus not subject to the Geneva protections.

The memo instructs recipients to ensure that all Defense Department policies, practices and directives comply with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions governing the humane treatment of prisoners.

"You will ensure that all DOD personnel adhere to these standards," England wrote.

Word of the Bush administration's new stance came as the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings Tuesday on the politically charged issue of how detainees should be tried.

"We're not going to give the Department of Defense a blank check," Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee chairman, told the hearing.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's top Democrat, said "kangaroo court procedures" must be changed and any military commissions "should not be set up as a sham. They should be consistent with a high standard of American justice, worth protecting."

The Senate is expected to take up legislation addressing the legal rights of suspected terrorists after the August recess — timing that would push the issue squarely into the election season.

Guantanamo has been a flash point for both U.S. and international debate over the treatment of detainees without trial and over allegations of torture, denied by U.S. officials. Even U.S. allies in the war on terrorism have criticized the facility and process.

The camp came under worldwide condemnation after it opened more than four years ago, when pictures showed prisoners kneeling, shackled and being herded into wire cages. It intensified with reports of heavy-handed interrogations, hunger strikes and suicides.

Snow insisted that all U.S. detainees have been treated humanely. Still, he said, "We want to get it right."

"It's not really a reversal of policy," Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision "complex."

Steven Bradbury, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate hearing that the Bush administration would abide by the Supreme Court's ruling that a provision of the Geneva Conventions applies.

But he acknowledged that the provision — which requires humane treatment of captured combatants and requires trials with judicial guarantees "recognized as indispensable by civilized people" — is ambiguous and would be hard to interpret.

"The application of common Article 3 will create a degree of uncertainty for those who fight to defend us from terrorist attack," Bradbury said.

Snow said efforts to spell out more clearly the rights of detainees does not change the president's determination to work with Congress to enable the administration to proceed with the military tribunals, or commissions. The goal is "to find a way to properly do this in a way consistent with national security," Snow said.

Snow said that the instruction manuals used by the Department of Defense already comply with the humane-treatment provisions of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. They are currently being updated to reflect legislation passed by Congress and sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to more expressly rule out torture.

"The administration intends to work with Congress," Snow said.

"We want to fulfill the mandates of justice, making sure we find a way properly to try people who have been plucked off the battlefields who are not combatants in the traditional sense," he said.

"The Supreme Court pretty much said it's over to you guys (the administration and Congress) to figure out how to do this. And that is where this is headed."

Under questioning from the committee, Daniel Dell'Orto, principal deputy general counsel at the

Pentagon, said he believes the current treatment of detainees — as well as the existing tribunal process — already complies with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

"The memo that went out, it doesn't indicate a shift in policy," he said. "It just announces the decision of the court."

How you spend your days is how you live your life.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you wake in morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there, I did not die...

-Anonymous

My best friend in the world died today. We will bury him on Friday.

Preteen mag accused of military pitching

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - Parents and teachers are complaining that the latest issue of a popular magazine for preteens amounts to little more than an early recruitment pitch for the Army.

Cobblestone magazine, which is put out by Carus Publishing in Peterborough, is aimed at children ages 9-14 and is distributed nationwide to schools and libraries. Its latest issue features a cover photo of a soldier in Iraq clutching a machine gun and articles on what it's like to go through boot camp, a rundown of the Army's "awesome arsenal" and a detailed description of Army career opportunities.

Most controversial has been a set of classroom guides that accompany the magazine, which suggest teachers invite a soldier, Army recruiter or veteran to speak to their classes and ask students whether they might want to join the Army someday.

One of the teaching guides — written by Mary Lawson, a teacher in Saint Cloud., Fla. — suggests having students write essays pretending they are going to join the Army: "Have them decide which career they feel they would qualify for and write a paper to persuade a recruiter why that should be the career."

"Some of the teachers were like, 'Holy cow, look at this,'" said Francis Lunney, a sixth-grade English teacher in Hudson, Mass., who quickly called the publishing company to complain. He told The Boston Globe that the guides looked exactly like the official recruiting material distributed at high schools.

The dozen or so similar complaints come at a time when the military, struggling to meet recruitment goals, has become more aggressive in trying to attract young people. But Cobblestone's editors insist the idea for the special issue was theirs alone, though they received permission to use Army photos.

Managing editor Lou Waryncia said the magazine did not intend to recruit for the Army but will consider future issues in light of the criticism, which has been greater than for any previous issue. Though previous issues have dealt with the Civil War and other military conflicts, the recent one is somewhat of a departure in that the Army was a focus by itself.

"We planned to do this well over two years ago," he said. "It just happened to come out at a time when the country's feelings are in a certain place" about the war in Iraq.

Virginia Schumacher, a retired teacher and manager at the History Center in Ithaca, N.Y., wrote one of the classroom guides. She defended the magazine, saying joining the military is a career option for any child.

"That doesn't suggest that they should or should not," she said. "In that magazine, I felt they gave a wonderful portrayal of jobs that are not what everyone thinks of when they think of the Army. It was not meant to offend anyone."

Cobblestone, which has a paid circulation of 30,000, is one of a family of award-winning children's magazines published by Carus. It was started by two teachers in 1979 to promote reading and history and grew into six magazines that cover American history, geography, world cultures, world history, science and space, general studies and reading.

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N.M. community severely limits water use

LAS VEGAS, N.M., Associated Press - The drought in this community is now so severe that water isn't provided with restaurant meals unless a diner requests it, and then it's served in a paper cup. Car washes operate only two days each week.

The hotel pools are empty, and long-term guests must ask if they want linens changed more than once every four days.

"I sleep, eat and drink with worries about how we're going to get through this," said Richard Trujillo, the city's utilities administrator. "When it hasn't snowed or rained, people will want to know, 'What are you doing to solve this?' "

As in much of the Southwest, the high desert lands of New Mexico are locked in another drought cycle this summer, with wildfires raging in tinder-dry forests. According to the National Weather Service, statewide precipitation for May was 36 percent of the normal amount — the seventh straight excessively dry month.

Santa Fe has received only 1.2 inches of precipitation during the seven-month period since November, the lowest in 133 years of record keeping. The 0.41 inches in Albuquerque is the lowest in 114 years of data.

And in Las Vegas, a community along the eastern edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the 60-month data show precipitation 18.71 inches below normal, according to Charlie Liles, meteorologist in charge of the Weather Service in Albuquerque.

"That's essentially a year's precipitation over a five-year period," Liles said.

As a result, Las Vegas has imposed some of New Mexico's most restrictive water rules. Outdoor watering has been banned since last fall, leaving lawns withering in once-lush neighborhoods.

Deborah Martinez, who has lived for 42 years in the stately Victorian home where she grew up, gave up her vegetable garden this year. Where her grass hasn't yellowed, it has blown away, and the morning glories that once grew on her fence are history.

She and her husband, William, can only watch as the roses and vines adorning their porch wither. They've even begun to share their bath water.

"We'd rather have survival water," Mrs. Martinez said as the two sat on a porch swing. "It's OK if everything dies, as long as we don't."

Las Vegas relies almost entirely on surface water. Melting snowpack and rainfall collects to form the Gallinas River, and 98 percent of the water for the town's 18,000 residents is stored in two reservoirs in the mountains above town. The river then trickles through the meadows of Las Vegas, barely ankle-deep and a few yards wide this summer.

"Through the '70s and '80s, you'd usually see spring runoff last into June," Trujillo recalled. "By the middle of July, we'd get into the monsoon season. There was always enough water. It was like clockwork."

But the clock seems broken. It wasn't a snowy winter this year. And as months pass without rain, city reserves have dropped to 50 percent of capacity — enough to last only into September unless monsoonal rains sweep across New Mexico as they usually do in July and August.

Liles said forecasting models suggest precipitation should be close to average in July and August, meaning the late-summer downpours may be coming.

But he offered a word of caution: The most recent years for poor snowpack in New Mexico were 2000 and 2002 — close together over the 56-year study span. Liles wonders whether those years might indicate a trend toward deepening drought.

Despite the water restrictions, Trujillo said there have been few complaints. Residents are consuming about 1.3 million gallons daily, compared with 2.8 million gallons during normal usage last year.

N.Korea says to bolster deterrent against US

(right) Resident North Korean lunatic Kim Jong-Il

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea accused the United States of preparing for a nuclear war in the Korean peninsula and said it would bolster its own deterrent in response.

It was the first time North Korea referred so specifically to building up its deterrent -- the usual way of referring to its nuclear programme -- since a crisis began over its suspected plans to test-fire a long-range missile.

A statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday condemned as provocative a U.S. decision to deploy an updated version of its U-2 spy plane in

South Korea.

It quoted a spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland as saying the United States was driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

"This grave situation once again goes to prove that peace has been preserved on the peninsula so far entirely thanks to the (Democratic People's Republic of Korea's) DPRK's strong war deterrent.

"Now that the U.S. is set to ignite a nuclear war for the purpose of disturbing peace and stability on the peninsula by force, the DPRK is compelled to bolster up its deterrent for self-defense," he said.

Roots of human family tree are shallow

Associated Press - Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia — Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He — or she — did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die.

Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth — the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.

That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ.

"It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors — who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence.

But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived.

With the help of a statistician, a computer scientist and a supercomputer, Olson has calculated just how interconnected the human family tree is. You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years — and probably on the low side of that range — to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant.

Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther — about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago — everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors. In other words, every person who was alive at that time is either an ancestor to all 6 billion people living today, or their line died out and they have no remaining descendants.

That revelation is "especially startling," statistician Jotun Hein of England's Oxford University wrote in a commentary on the research published by the journal Nature.

"Had you entered any village on Earth in around 3,000 B.C., the first person you would have met would probably be your ancestor," Hein marveled.

It also means that all of us have ancestors of every color and creed. Every Palestinian suicide bomber has Jews in his past. Every Sunni Muslim in

Iraq is descended from at least one Shiite. And every Klansman's family has African roots.

How can this be?

It's simple math. Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations — 16, 32, 64, 128 — and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.

It's nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you've got a million ancestors. By the 13th you've got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century — just 40 generations ago — the number tops a trillion.

But wait. How could anybody — much less everybody — alive today have had a trillion ancestors living during the 9th century?

The answer is, they didn't. Imagine there was a man living 1,200 years ago whose daughter was your mother's 36th great-grandmother, and whose son was your father's 36th great-grandfather. That would put him on two branches on your family tree, one on your mother's side and one on your father's.

In fact, most of the people who lived 1,200 years ago appear not twice, but thousands of times on our family trees, because there were only 200 million people on Earth back then. Simple division — a trillion divided by 200 million — shows that on average each person back then would appear 5,000 times on the family tree of every single individual living today.

But things are never average. Many of the people who were alive in the year 800 never had children; they don't appear on anybody's family tree. Meanwhile, more prolific members of society would show up many more than 5,000 times on a lot of people's trees.

Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree.

But don't stop there; keep going back. As the number of potential ancestors dwindles and the number of branches explodes there comes a time when every single person on Earth is an ancestor to all of us, except the ones who never had children or whose lines eventually died out.

And it wasn't all that long ago. When you walk through an exhibit of Ancient Egyptian art from the time of the pyramids, everything there was very likely created by one of your ancestors — every statue, every hieroglyph, every gold necklace. If there is a mummy lying in the center of the room, that person was almost certainly your ancestor, too.

It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right.

"No matter the languages we speak or the color of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who labored to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu," Olson and his colleagues wrote in the journal Nature.

How can they be so sure?

Seven years ago one of Olson's colleagues, a Yale University statistician named Joseph Chang, started thinking about how to estimate when the last common ancestor of everybody on Earth today lived. In a paper published by the journal "Advances in Applied Probability," Chang showed that there is a mathematical relationship between the size of a population and the number of generations back to a common ancestor. Plugging the planet's current population into his equation, he came up with just over 32 generations, or about 900 years.

Chang knew that answer was wrong because it relied on some common, but inaccurate, assumptions that population geneticists often use to simplify difficult mathematical problems.

For example, his analysis pretended that Earth's population has always been what it is today. It also assumed that individuals choose their mates randomly. And each generation had to reproduce all at once.

Chang's calculations essentially treated the world like one big meet market where any given guy was equally likely to pair up with any woman, whether she lived in the next village or halfway around the world. Chang was fully aware of the inaccuracy — people have to select their partners from the pool of individuals they have actually met, unless they are entering into an arranged marriage. But even then, they are much more likely to mate with partners who live nearby. And that means that geography can't be ignored if you are going to determine the relatedness of the world's population.

A few years later Chang was contacted by Olson, who had started thinking about the world's interrelatedness while writing his book. They started corresponding by e-mail, and soon included in their deliberations Douglas Rohde, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist and computer expert who now works for Google.

The researchers knew they would have to account for geography to get a better picture of how the family tree converges as it reaches deeper into the past. They decided to build a massive computer simulation that would essentially re-enact the history of humanity as people were born, moved from one place to another, reproduced and died.

Rohde created a program that put an initial population on a map of the world at some date in the past, ranging from 7,000 to 20,000 years ago. Then the program allowed those initial inhabitants to go about their business. He allowed them to expand in number according to accepted estimates of past population growth, but had to cap the expansion at 55 million people due to computing limitations. Although unrealistic in some respects — 55 million is a lot less than the 6.5 billion people who actually live on Earth today — he found through trial and error that the limitation did not significantly change the outcome with regard to common ancestry.

The model also had to allow for migration based on what historians, anthropologists and archaeologists know about how frequently past populations moved both within and between continents. Rohde, Chang and Olson chose a range of migration rates, from a low level where almost nobody left their native home to a much higher one where up to 20 percent of the population reproduced in a town other than the one where they were born, and one person in 400 moved to a foreign country.

Allowing very little migration, Rohde's simulation produced a date of about 5,000 B.C. for humanity's most recent common ancestor. Assuming a higher, but still realistic, migration rate produced a shockingly recent date of around 1 A.D.

Some people even suspect that the most recent common ancestor could have lived later than that.

"A number of people have written to me making the argument that the simulations were too conservative," Rohde said.

Migration is the key. When a people have offspring far from their birthplaces, they essentially introduce their entire family lines into their adopted populations, giving their immediate offspring and all who come after them a set of ancestors from far away.

People tend to think of preindustrial societies as places where this sort of thing rarely happened, where virtually everyone lived and died within a few miles of the place where they were born. But history is full of examples that belie that notion.

Take Alexander the Great, who conquered every country between Greece and northern India, siring two sons along the way by Persian mothers. Consider Prince Abd Al-Rahman, son of a Syrian father and a Berber mother, who escaped Damascus after the overthrow of his family's dynasty and started a new one in Spain. The Vikings, the Mongols, and the Huns all traveled thousands of miles to burn, pillage and — most pertinent to genealogical considerations — rape more settled populations.

More peaceful people moved around as well. During the Middle Ages, the Gypsies traveled in stages from northern India to Europe. In the New World, the Navaho moved from western Canada to their current home in the American Southwest. People from East Asia fanned out into the South Pacific Islands, and Eskimos frequently traveled back and forth across the Bering Sea from Siberia to Alaska.

"These genealogical networks, as they start spreading out they really have the ability to get virtually everywhere," Olson said.

Though people like to think of culture, language and religion as barriers between groups, history is full of religious conversions, intermarriages, illegitimate births and adoptions across those lines. Some historical times and places were especially active melting pots — medieval Spain, ancient Rome and the Egypt of the pharaohs, for example.

"And the thing is, you only need one," said Mark Humphrys, an amateur anthropologist and professor of computer science at Dublin City University.