Is it Flashback Friday already?

PENTAGON'S WAR COSTS CHALLENGED ON THE HILL:
CBO CHIEF SAYS FIGURES MAY BE 'EXAGGERATED'
John E. Yang, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 1991

The Bush administration may have overstated cost estimates for the Persian Gulf War in its $15 billion supplemental spending request, Congressional Budget Office Director Robert D. Reischauer said yesterday. In documents supporting the request, the administration projected that the monthly price tag of U.S. operations in the region -- not including combat -- would be the same as for the most intense fighting in Vietnam, when measured in inflation-adjusted dollars, Reischauer told the House...

DISSENT: A VICTIM OF WAR
Published on February 28, 1991
Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe Staff

The country I walk through these last days of war is fully outfitted in its civilian uniform. Yellow ribbons hang like badges of belonging on everything from trees to storm doors to lapels. American flags line streets and mark homes as if on permanent dress parade.

Ambivalence has gone underground for the duration, and we are expected to respond with the unanimity of a trained troop. Those who doubt, those who cannot join the regimental cheering, have felt the chill wind of exclusion, a...

OFFICIAL REKINDLES IMAGE IN EMBERS OF CONTROVERSY:
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AIDE SAYS U.S. WANTS MINORITIES IN COLLEGE
Kenneth J. Cooper, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 1991

Last December, Michael L. Williams went from being an obscure official in the Education Department to a controversial national figure, thanks to a two-page letter that he signed as assistant secretary for civil rights. Suddenly, he became the black man who declared that college scholarships reserved for minority students violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This rare foray into policy-making by an assistant secretary brought unusual prominence to Williams, whose name was invoked among White House...

REPORT: N.E. LOST 250,000 JOBS IN '90 AGENCY SAYS MASS. DROP WORST SINCE THE 1930S
February 28, 1991
Diane E. Lewis, Boston Globe Staff

Employment figures released yesterday show that New England last year lost roughly a quarter of a million jobs -- the region's greatest drop since at least 1947.

In Massachusetts, the numbers were just as stunning: The state lost 125,700 jobs, or 4.1 percent. It was its greatest job loss for a single year, in both absolute and percentage terms, since state record-keeping began in the 1930s, according to the Department of Employment and Training...

GNP OFF 2% AT END OF 1990
February 28, 1991.
Associated Press

The US economy, lacking consumer appetite, shrank at an annual rate of 2 percent in the final quarter of 1990, the government said in a new -- and slightly upgraded -- post-mortem on the start of the first recession in eight years. The Commerce Department revised upward a notch its initial estimate of the gross national product from October through December. It reported last month that the GNP -- the nation's total output of goods and services and its broadest measure of economic health...

BILL IS PROMISED TO DERAIL US SHIFT OF HEALTH FUNDS
Boston Globe
February 28, 1991

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said yesterday he will try to stop a Bush administration plan to take $23.7 million away from community health centers to fund a new infant mortality program.

In a "dear colleague" letter sent to other lawmakers yesterday, Kennedy said if the administration proceeds with its plan, he will file an amendment to the appropriations bill to restore the funding to health centers.

Funds to combat infant mortality are urgently needed, Kennedy wrote, but they...

FERC TARGETED FOR ELIMINATION BY WHITE HOUSE
Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 1991

The Bush administration wants to abolish the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and assign its duties to the Energy Department.Vice President Quayle, head of the President's Council on Competitiveness, said in a White House statement to be released today that the move would "streamline regulation of natural gas and electricity generation. In particular, it will make it easier to develop natural gas as an important alternative to imported oil.

BOSTON COALITION TO ASSIST ARABS
February 28, 1991
Boston Globe Staff

Boston-area civil rights and civil liberties organizations yesterday announced formation of the Emergency Civil Rights Coalition in response to a rise in discrimination against Arab-Americans triggered by the war. The coalition will attempt to monitor reported harassment of Arabs and Arab- Americans by agencies such as the FBI and the...

THE PRESIDENT'S ADDICTION TO OIL IMPORTS:
HIGHER PRODUCTION CAN'T TAKE THE PLACE OF CONSERVATION, SUBSTITUTION AND NEW GAS TAXES.
Washington Post
Hobart Rowen
February 28, 1991

George Bush successfully shucked the "wimp" tag by aggressively going after Saddam Hussein. But Bush chickened out when presented with a golden opportunity to get the nation started on a meaningful energy policy. The philosphical underpinning of Bush's energy plan is all wrong. Speaker Tom Foley put it neatly: "It's much too much production and not nearly enough conservation." Having made that mistake, it's not surprising that Bush accepts the inevitability...

WELFARE ROLLS IN ILLINOIS LARGEST SINCE DEPRESSION
Chicago Tribune, Rob Karwath
Feb 28, 1991

Eleven percent of Illinoisans received some form of financial assistance from the state last month, and the number of welfare recipients was the largest since the Great Depression, officials said Wednesday.

The figures, included in a monthly report from the state Department of Public Aid, also show that the number of Illinois residents receiving welfare aid increased 12.7 percent in the last year...

OIL FIRE CLOUDS HIDE SUN, SPAWN A TOXIC RAIN
February 28, 1991
Associated Press

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Burning oilfields in Kuwait and Iraq spewed out dense, black clouds yesterday, blocking the sun over hundreds of miles of desert and dumping a greasy toxic rain on civilians, water supplies and crops.

Experts with oil firefighting firms in the United States have said it could take more than a year to extinguish all the fires. A report last month by the British Meteorological Office said fires burning that long would produce hundreds of thousands of tons of sulfur and...

'NEW-OLD' DOMESTIC PLAN PROMOTED BY PRESIDENT
Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 28, 1991

President Bush took a brief respite from Persian Gulf matters yesterday to promote a postwar domestic policy agenda with a pre-war flavor. Bush said his proposals emphasize "opportunity and choice," but he left the fine print -- and a likely controversy over civil rights legislation -- for later. Bush's speech yesterday morning contained no new proposals. But the attempt to package them under the banner of opportunity and choice cheered some conservatives who have fastened onto...

U.S. POSTWAR PLANS AIM TO AVOID A REPLAY
Chicago Tribune, Timothy J. McNulty and George de Lama
Feb 28, 1991

The Bush administration Wednesday stepped up its postwar planning for the Middle East, drafting a blueprint to prevent Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or any successor from ever threatening the Persian Gulf region again.

President Bush's announcement that Secretary of State James A. Baker III would travel to the Middle East next week signaled the start of an intensified U.S. effort to reshape the region...

And just to prove BushPere stroked the economic propaganda machine as well...

SIGNS POINT TO RECEDING RECESSION
Chicago Tribune
Feb 28, 1991

The economy's slide into a mild recession in the fourth quarter was cushioned by big trade gains and lean inventories, according to government figures released Wednesday, indicating that the economic downturn may prove short-lived.

The fresh figures in the revised gross national product report led the Commerce Department to estimate a 2 percent annual rate of decline in the fourth quarter, down from the...

Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel...

Dear Holy Father...Hope you don't mind if I forgo the Friday fish...

I am the first to admit cultural ignorance when it comes to fundamentalist Christianity. Like most Wabenaki Confederacy tribes, my family was overtly Catholic, a relic of early missionization by French Jesuits. Of course, the catechism of the "man-boy-bird" religion was also greatly "improved" by our own traditional values and beliefs. But the two sides seemed happy to accommodate the other's "quirks", and the marriage for us, like many other indigenous Catholicized peoples, has been a generally successful one.

While I don't agree with Rome's position on a number of feminist issues, I try not to confuse that stance with the Church's stance on human rights, including what it sees as life before birth. I don't happen to buy its view, but I believe it to be consistent. I also see various other positions the Church as taken since Vatican II which attempt to place the bettering of the human condition, not just the soul, as the crux of the Church's mission. Thus, the often progressive stands the Church takes regarding politics, education and the environment. And it was this Church in which my own mother (my non-Indian father was non-evangelical Protestant) raised me.

Thus, I don't comprehend the rationale behind fundamentalist Christian organizations promoting policies which may harm their own children as well as mine and every other on Earth. Case and point, here are excerpts from a recent article in Crosswalk:

When I first noticed the article while Googling the Children's Health Report yesterday, I saw it was picked up by other "Christian" news organizations. So what's the deal here? I recall a recent ad campaign entitled "What would Jesus drive?" Will these same groups start asking, "What kind of fish would Jesus eat?"

Priorities? What priorities?

Last week, Mr. Bush finally 'fessed up, and threw out a "ballpark" figure for his proposed war on Iraq:

Ousting Saddam Hussein could cost the United States $40 billion or much more if the war drags on, analysts say. And the aftermath could be even more expensive, with the price tag for rebuilding and securing Iraq potentially exceeding $100 billion.

For an analysis as to why this number is absurdly low, and what's left out of the equation, Kos shares his excellent insight.

But let's concede the $100 billion number. This week at the National Governors Association meetings, they also focused on money - the lack of it in state coffers, that is:

Most states are entering their third year of increasingly dire deficits. And the combined $30 billion deficits for fiscal 2003 are projected to hit a combined $80 billion next year, according to the NGA.

So this Administration is willing to spend $100 billion on a war, including bribes for a dozen countries, but cannot spare a dime of that for the states.

I just returned from the pediatrician's office. A wonderful doctor, but previously rather apolitical. She's not anymore, and can you guess the target of her newfound wrath? Thank you, Mr. Bush, for a new Democratic convert.

A leak-leak here, and a leak-leak there...

Alert the palace! The peasants are revolting!

Well, maybe not the peasants. But a couple of scientists over at the Environmental Protection Agency seem to be.

The agency, it appears, has developed a severe case of leaky tip syndrome. Information the Administration has done its damndest to delay, alter and perhaps even suppress in toto, has suddenly fallen into enemy hands. No, not Saddam or Al Qaeda's. Worse, from the Administration's point of view. Into California Senator Barbara Boxer's. And she's not happy with what she's learned.

Boxer Blasts Bush Administration For Withholding Report Detailing Environmental Risks To Children's Health.
February 25, 2003

Washington, DC: U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today expressed her outrage that the Bush Administration took so long to release a report on children's environmental health and called for swift action to protect children from environmental pollution. "I believe the only reason we are seeing this report today is that the report was leaked to a newspaper last week," said Senator Boxer. Published reports indicate that EPA was in the final stages of reviewing the study last June, but it was not released until today.

Actually, the story was leaked to two newspapers, the New York Times, and that bastion of leftist sympathy, the Wall Street Journal, which opened its piece,

Mercury Threat to Kids Rising, Unreleased EPA Report Warns
By JOHN J. FIALKA

WASHINGTON -- A report warning that emissions of mercury by coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources poses an increasing health danger to young children has been delayed for nine months, while the Bush administration struggles with how to handle an increasingly contentious environmental problem.

The Environmental Protection Agency report is to be released soon, officials said, after being subjected to an unusual level of scrutiny by a half-dozen other federal agencies -- including the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. But it isn't likely to settle the mercury question. Among pollutants the report studied, mercury is the only one for which levels aren't dropping.

The Times reporting, while generally more obsequious favorable to the Administration, did allow a curious tidbit to be slipped in by its unnamed EPA sources; the report, they stated, "does not have any policy, regulation or financing recommendations."

Typically, you don't hear government agencies announce that their reports are somewhat without teeth. But cut back to Senator Boxer for a moment. Yesterday's press release were not the first words on the subject from the Senator. Back in October, she requested EPA release the report, but was told it was tied up elsewhere. Boxer reproached the Administration in a press release,

"OMB requested the document from EPA in June even though it contains no policy, regulatory, or spending recommendations, and it has yet to be released."

Sound familiar? According to its mission statement,

OMB's predominant mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies. In helping to formulate the President's spending plans, OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities.

Sounds like OMB oversight is policy and funding. Which both Senator Boxer and the NYTimes' EPA source claimed were not covered by the Children's Health Report.

Senator Boxer asked that the report be made available to the public by November 15th. It never was. In letters to OMB Director Mitch Daniels and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Senator Boxer expressed further concern, "I question whether it is appropriate for a scientific document on children's health to be singled out by OMB for review by non-scientists. If the review results in major changes to the scientific findings, it will set a dangerous precedent that will have a chilling effect on legitimate scientific inquiries and policy analyses not just at EPA, but across all federal agencies."

EPA, playing the Administration's lapdog, continued to sit on the report for a total nine months. Then, last week, "sources" started leaking info. But it wasn't to just the media and politicians.

An autism advocacy group, SafeMinds, claims insider information regarding the release of the report. But they assert additional foul-play; "sources" claim the report released yesterday by the EPA is actually a revised second draft.

And while the Wall Street Journal implied that the Administration's questionable actions emanated from a desire to protect the utilities industry from criticism while Congress considered new changes to the Clean Air Act and its own Clear Skies initiatives, SafeMinds also saw former Eli Lilly executive Mitch Daniels' motives in play. In a press release published in the Boston Globe yesterday, SafeMinds openly questioned the Administration regarding data their "sources" say was removed from the report:

One of the obvious irregularities is the report's failure to mention thimerosal, a mercury based preservative developed by Eli Lilly decades ago and the subject of heated debate for its role in the current epidemic of learning disabilities and autism.

In July 2000, the National Academy of Sciences published an exhaustive review on the toxic effects of mercury that identified thimerosal as a source of mercury exposure in the U.S. But the new EPA report, referred to as the benchmark for government agencies to address the hazards of mercury, is dead silent on the issue. Parents are questioning how such a purportedly comprehensive report that clearly acknowledges concerns about mercury damage to the neurological development of fetuses, infants and children, can fail to mention the largest source of exposure to these vulnerable groups....

Sources say it was the mercury portion of the report that caused the most dispute and subsequent delay, and that the OMB, headed up by former Eli Lilly executive Mitch Daniels, and the OSTP made "numerous changes" to the already-edited second draft of the report. Just this month Congress repealed a provision quietly slipped into the Homeland Security Bill that granted legal protection to Lilly and vaccine-makers from thimerosal litigation. Late last year, the Department of Justice attempted to seal all documents related to thimerosal-autism claims in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. After ensuing controversy, the DOJ withdrew the motion.

The battle over thimerosal is far from over, even with the repeal of the provision in the Homeland Security Bill. Senator Frist, when acquiescing to the demands of moderate Senators to abide by promises made by former Majority Leader Trent Lott, negotiated a counter-agreement that the issue would be revisiting by the Senate within six months. In addition, there has been considerable noise by Republicans in Indiana regarding a return of favorite son Mitch Daniels to vie for the governor's office in 2004. That campaign would of course be much easier with the financial backing of Indiana-based Eli Lilly. That is, an Eli Lilly not facing potentially billions in lawsuits from the 30 million children injected with its mercury-based vaccine preservative.

I've been having problems posting all morning, so this is yet another test.

[update: everything except comments seem to be working...for now]

Caveat Emptor

Lawyers, consumer advocates and even our own mothers used to warn us to "read the fine print" before signing any contract. In America today, all you have to do is read the original report to know you're being sold down the increasingly-polluted river.

From the Administration's February 24th press release on "EPA Issues Second Report on Trends in Protecting Children's Health":

EPA remains concerned about children potentially exposed to mercury in the womb. About 8 percent of women of childbearing age in the United States have concentrations of mercury in their body at levels of potential concern. This is the first time that CDC reported information about mercury in women of child-bearing age, thus providing a snapshot of information about blood mercury levels for this report. As a result, it is not known if the levels have gone up or down from the past and the Agency plans to report trends in future reports. To reduce mercury releases, EPA has adopted a multi-media integrated approach. This includes reducing air emissions, limiting discharges to water, removing mercury from batteries and paint, and developing mercury emission control technologies. These efforts also include, under the Clean Air Act, cutting emissions by over 90 percent from two of the three largest categories of sources, municipal waste combustion and medical waste incineration.

Two out of three, eh? And what's the third?

But on page 62 of the actual EPA report, "America's Children and the Environment: Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses", we find the source of this soundbite:

People are exposed to methylmercury mainly through eating fish contaminated with methylmercury. Mercury that ends up in fish may originate as emissions to the air. Mercury released into the atmosphere can travel long distances on global air currents
and be deposited in areas far from its original source. The largest human-generated source of mercury emissions in the United States is the burning of coal. Other sources include the combustion of waste and industrial processes that use mercury.

According to a February 20th report in the Wall Street Journal, the latest available EPA figures on mercury emissions indicate that 33% come from coal-fired power plants; "municipal waste combustion and medical waste incineration" together account for less than 29% of the total.

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Throughout the day today, I'll be discussing this report, and a whole series of events surrounding its release, or should I say, quasi-much-delayed-once-or-twice-edited release. But its much too much to report in one post, so I'll break it up (throwing in some time to say, actually parent my seven-month old.) For a teaser, I'll drop the name Mitch Daniels. That should get the Lilly people back for a second day in a row.

Businessmen in Speedos?

This letter from my partner went out in the post this morning:

The Gas Man Cometh

Yesterday morning, our local jack-of-all-trades Northern Utilities guy dropped by to check on a meter problem. Taking the opportunity to hand him a check (always willing to forgo the hunt for stamps), we also chatted about the recent jump in prices. He's also the collection agent for the region, a job I hate seeing foisted upon such a decent fellow, but perhaps its a blessing for the consumer, as he's more of an advocate for our rights than the state PUC (Public Utilities Commission.) He lamented how the economy in Maine is definitely not retreating from recession, but in fact, as far as he can see, getting worse. And in such a climate (no pun intended), the skyrocketing cost of energy was sending residents over the brink. On his way back out into the cold, he noted that natural gas prices had increased again in Maine, 37% was the figure I think he used. It didn't surprise me at the time, as of course I've been tracking energy prices here for over a month now and that sounded right, maybe even a little lower than I remembered.

The shock came last evening as I was making dinner (on my gas-hungry Viking range) and listening to Marketplace. Of course my ear perked up when they opened a story with "natural gas prices jumped 39%". Steven Brancaccio then informed me and millions of other listeners that the staggering event took place over the course of one day.

Off went the stove; okay, so the pasta was a little extra al dente.

I looked for the story in print this morning, and it was even worse:

Natural Gas Prices to Top $10 Per Million BTU, a Special 63-Page Energy Report Indicates
Tuesday February 25, 9:15 am ET

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Natural gas prices are expected to top $10 per million BTUs as record high reserves are withdrawn from underground storage during this winter heating season, Energy Business Watch announced this morning. The record high gas price is one of the startling conclusions of a new report on the emerging natural gas crisis, entitled "A Cold Blast in Winter - A Special Report on the Impact of Winter Weather on Natural Gas Consumption, Storage and the Price for Natural Gas."

"Monday's 50% increase in the price of natural gas futures is just the tip of the iceberg," said Andrew Weissman, the principal author of the 63-page report issued in Washington, D.C. this morning. "We believe natural gas prices will break the $10 barrier before the end of this winter's heating season and remain at record high levels for several years."

The report on the emerging natural gas crisis was prepared jointly by Energy Ventures Group, L.L.C., Energy Business Watch's parent company based in Washington, D.C., and Foresight Weather, a weather forecasting service based in Boulder, Colorado, that uses its own proprietary, state-of-the art model to prepare detailed short-term, 30-day and 90-day weather forecasts....

The news was no better for oil prices (okay, so the news wasn't good for consumers - we know it was great for producers.)

NYMEX crude oil futures played near $37 a barrel at the opening Tuesday, fueled by soaring heating oil and natural gas amid more Arctic weather in the United States and as saber-rattling on Iraq continued.

And just minutes ago, this bucket of sunshine hit the news wires:

UPDATE - US Feb consumer confidence dives to near 10-yr low
Tuesday February 25, 10:43 am ET
By Andrea Ricci

NEW YORK, Feb 25 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer confidence fell sharply and unexpectedly in February to its lowest level since October 1993 as Americans fretted about the increasing threat of war with Iraq, weak stock markets and rising oil prices.

The Consumer Confidence Index fell to 64.0 in February from a downwardly revised 78.8 in January, the Conference Board, a private business research group, said in a release on Tuesday.

It was the third consecutive monthly decline.

While standing in my soon-to-be-not-so-warm kitchen, the nice gas man remarked that he now sits in his car for a few minutes so that customers with overdue balances can either gain their composure or head out the back door. Or rethink taking out the shotgun. The latter he's beginning to fear a little more each passing day under the Bush Recession Redux.

Passing the buck, not the bucks

When Harry Truman placed the now-famous placard on his desk in the Oval Office, "The Buck Stops Here", he meant more than just money. He was taking responsibility for the actions of his government. If there was some quibble any American had with any of his policies, he was the one to answer for them. As in the poker game from which the term derives its meaning, Truman was not about to "pass the buck"; not to Congress, not to another Administration, not to his allies or enemies. In his farewell speech in 1953, President Truman couldn't have made that point any clearer:

"The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job."

Every president since Truman has at one time or another appealed to the imagery of that desk placard. As recently as January, 2003, Mr. Bush, in his State of the Union Address:

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus, and clarity, and courage.

Its quite possible that Mr. Bush might haggle over the pronoun "we". Did he mean in fact mean he, himself, or his Administration? The federal government? The states or even the people of "this country"? The answer may in fact have become a tad more clear at the semi-annual meeting of the National Governors Association last weekend.

On a chilly early February morning (a Saturday, of course) the newspapers first carried, and I blogged, the story of yet another Bush "initiative" to further trample the most vulnerable in our society. This time, the Administration called for sweeping changes in Medicaid which would give states the ability reduce or eliminate benefits for millions of low-income elderly or disable individuals, including my own two autistic children.

Current federal law requires the states, with federal reimbursement, to provide medical coverage to all individuals whose incomes fall at or below the federal poverty level. It also allows states to use additional federal monies to provide medical care or other services to individuals whose incomes are above the poverty line, but who do not or cannot get coverage from private health insurance. Nearly two-thirds of Medicaid payments are attributed to these programs. Since most of the programs are tailored to state needs, they fall outside of the original intent of Medicaid, and therefore the states must request a "waiver" from the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement them. Historically, most such waivers have been granted. A possible downside for the states is that in order to retract the programs, an addition decision to have the waiver withdrawn must be approved by HHS as well.

Mr. Bush, under the guise of providing state's "flexibility" and cutting through all that bureaucratic red tape, has offered the governors the option of doing away with those pesky waivers. Instead, the states will each get a set amount of money, supposedly each according to its need, and after paying for mandated Medicaid benefits, can decide how to spend the remainder of the money, whether it be provide medical coverage for all children (as many states now attempt to do), early intervention services for developmentally delayed children, long-term nursing home care for the elderly or respite care for overwhelmed families. Or states could put the money instead to increasing payments to Medicaid providers. Whatever the states deem necessary, according to Mr. Bush. No strings attached.

No additional funds either. Unless you back the Administration's plan. Even then, its a "kinda, sorta" approach.

According an article in the Washington Post this morning:

In essence, the president is offering states an approach that would temporarily help them with their financial predicament without actually providing additional money. States that chose to take part would gain an extra $12.7 billion for the next seven years, but their subsidies would be cut by the same amount for the three years after that.

So just in time for Mr. Bush to finish up his hoped-for-planned-for second term, the states would once again feel the wrath of federal spending cuts. In double, actually, seeing that they have to repay the borrowed amount in half as much time.

The Administration is currently ramping up its re-election campaign, and has found that its not-so-compassionate policies on nearly everything which touches disadvantaged Americans may come back to bite it. So, rather than face up to such critical scrutiny, which it is rumored Mr. Bush petulantly abhors, its time to pass the buck. By forcing the states to make the tough choices regarding cutting vital medical and social services programs, he can absolve himself of the responsibility of their ultimate demise in the face of looming state budget deficits. Instead, the governors, including former-governor Bush's Republican peers, would be forced to run their own campaigns under the shroud of uncompassionate conservatism. But a noble sacrifice, right, for the standard-bearer of your party?

Fortunately, the governors seem skeptical and have asked for more details and input. Lets hope they get it.

The Return of the Native

Today I'm returning to my own little safe corner of normalcy. Of course, I'm not completely impervious to critique, as I do allow "comments", but with recent Haloscan hiccups, even those aren't much of a threat any longer. In case anyone missed me, I've spent much of the last two days over at the highly principled DailyKos, attempting to explain within the constrainment of commentary, the quibble certain Northeastern tribal entities have with a certain Democratic presidential candidate. No, don't bother heading over there, it really isn't worth continuously rehashing. Suffice it to say, though, its just one of the things in the lefty blogosphere which leaves me mentally exhausted and eventually disheartened.

I know it could provide me with the opportunity to provide a bit of a protocol manual for ethical lefties who may honestly not be familiar with American Indian hot-buttons, since it is still possible to live in the US and Canada (and obviously outside both countries) and have never met an Indian. Maybe tomorrow. Today, there's lots to blog about which is painful to all Americans, even all humanity.

Sunday Shorts

If you haven't done so yet, head on over to Ruminate This to get the scoop on Win Without War's Virtual March on Washington (February 26, 2003). Win Without War is headed up by my own former US Congressman (and Portland native) Tom Andrews. I keep arguing Maine's ahead of the curve.


I love Jim Capozzola. Really. If it weren't for the fact that I'm married with four kids...oh, and he lives 500 miles away...and, well, I've actually never "met" him...and so there are other "issues" which may impede any relationship...fine, details, details. Well, okay, I love Jim Capozzola's writing. Happy?

But lately I've been wondering if his longstanding feud with that measly-mouthed Ben Shapiro hadn't left him a little tired. Or maybe it was that eye-infection and losing his spectacles. Or perhaps his Muse had booked a well-deserved cruise to Grenada.

Well, she's back. With all her sisters. Maybe even a few cousins thrown in.

What, you're still here? Go. Now.

Just to prove I'm an equal-opportunity chider...

To whom it may concern (and you'll soon know who you are....well, that is, if you even read my little blog, which is a big "if" I concede.) Anyway, if you're intent on trying to woo the blogging universe with your accomplishments and political savvy, please take the time to make sure you have your facts straight. Now, I don't mean you need to have memorized the US Constitution or even know all the names of the US presidents and the dates of their terms. Well, maybe you should know the ones within your lifetime, particularly if you thought you were working for them. Case and point (all names and places changed to protect the...whatever...)

I was young and passionate about politics once, too. So, upon graduation I worked for the [strike] Democratic Party during the 1994 Primary Season as a "Staff" member. It was awful, full of long hours and insufferably arrogant, petty and stupid people. I thought I was going to help Clinton get elected and instead we ran the Democratic primary, communicated with all the precinct chairs, and coordinated with election judges. Sounds glamorous, eh?

Now, as a current Dem City Committee exec and former state level campaign staff for top of the ticket (twice), I could remind the party faithful that there is no such thing as glamour in a democracy - its like making sausage, not at all pretty, but the results are generally more appalling appealing than the process. But there is nothing more noble and appreciated than the GOTV staff, including the little old lady who sits in the polling place crossing out registered Dems as they vote, or the college student waving a sign, doing "visibility" on a busy corner on Election Day. In my first "senior staff" position, I spent every Wednesday through Friday for two months calling 152 registrars in the state to get new voter registration tallies. I spent three days a week rounding up as many staff to stand out on an overpass on I-84 on cold October mornings with our 10'x14' sign. The result? We were initially a "swing" state, but come election day, we cleaned up by 5pm. That's what grassroots campaigning is all about.

Oops, went off on a little tangent there.

Back to the original issue. I thought at first that the faux pas regarding the election season was just a typo. But the blogger in question graduated in 1993. My advice, unwelcome though it may be - get your basic stuff right, because if you don't, the Right will just flog you with it and question your credibility and every smart and right-on thing you have to say. Even if you're a Nobel Prize economist. Even if you're James Carville.

[edited typo, although it was pretty funny the other way.]

Did I miss something?

When did Glenn Reynolds start linking to self-proclaimed prostitutes regarding the integrity of anti-war feminists? Its a joke, right? Some kind of Jon Stewart-esque spoof?

Uh...guess my list was too restrictive

In my piece on wholesale prices below, I listed Saddam Hussein, El Nino, OPEC, Venezuela and Nigeria as factors which could get in the way of Bush keeping some semblance of control over skyrocketing oil prices.

I forgot to mention exploding barges carrying lots and lots of gasoline:

First and foremost, here's hoping the injured are okay.

The gods of the economy are definitely not smiling on Bush these days. I'd gloat if I wasn't feeling so sorry for the rest of us.

Yes, folks, its Flashback Friday for February 21, 1991

UNEASY WAIT GOES ON FOR IRAQI REPLY RESPONSE TO PLAN PROMISED 'SOON'; ALLIED TROOPS GEAR FOR GROUND WAR
February 21, 1991.
Michael Kranish and Mary Curtius, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- As a half-million allied soldiers made final preparations for a ground war, the fate of a Soviet peace proposal remained agonizingly unclear last night. Iraq said in a cryptic statement only that it would respond "soon" to Moscow's proposal, while the Bush administration said it would accept nothing less than unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait.

Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d said the coalition would not negotiate with Iraq, and he warned that the..

MEDIA 3 REPORTERS COMPLAIN ABOUT PRESS CURBS
February 21, 1991, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Three reporters told senators yesterday that the Pentagon is denying the public news about the gulf war in ways never thought necessary in previous major US conflicts.

The journalists, recently back from the Persian Gulf, were joined by former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite in complaining about the Defense Department's refusal to allow reporters to go freely among US forces and report what they see.

DOW DROPS 33 AS INFLATION JUMPS
Published on February 21, 1991.

Stocks posted double-digit losses on fears that a ground war is imminent in the Persian Gulf and on disturbing reports that US inflation jumped in January. Washington also reported that new home construction plunged 12.8 percent in December. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a loss of 33.17 points at 2899.01. Volume was active at 185.7 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Declining issues outpaced gainers 1,086 to 507. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for

BUSH ENERGY PLAN ASSAILED FOR FOCUSING ON PRODUCTION
February 21, 1991, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- President Bush unveiled his long-awaited national energy plan yesterday, saying it "strikes a sound and reasonable balance" without burdening the economy, but critics quickly criticized it for focusing on production over energy conservation.

One member of Congress called the blueprint "a back to the '50s" strategy to promote oil drilling, while another said it "falls far short" of what is needed to cut America's dependence on foreign

GREENSPAN: SLIDE MAY END SOON: FED CHIEF VOWS TO ACT IF SITUATION WORSENS
John M. Berry, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 21, 1991

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that the U.S. economy is still declining but that he believes falling interest rates, lower oil prices and improving consumer confidence mean the recession "will bottom out reasonably soon. Nevertheless, Greenspan cautioned the Senate Banking Committee that because of the war in the Persian Gulf and serious strains on the U.S. banking system, there is an "unusually high degree of uncertainty" about how the economy will ...

FLYNN, DINKINS ATTACK BUSH'S FUNDS SWITCH
February 21, 1991, Michael Rezendes, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- The nation's mayors, led by Boston Mayor Flynn and New York City Mayor David Dinkins, yesterday launched an attack on President Bush's proposal to transfer control of billions of dollars in federal funds from cities to states, saying the plan would further erode the ability of cities to care for poor people.

A VERY GENTLE ENERGY PLAN
February 21, 1991
EDITORIAL

WHILE THE BUSH administration's new energy strategy contains many useful ideas, it adds up to considerably less than a coherent and reliable policy. Published yesterday after a year and a half of work, it reflects the political handicaps under which it was written. A government has, basically, two effective ways to induce people to use energy more efficiently: there's taxation, and there's regulation. Since the administration opposes both as a matter of principle, it is reduced...

BRITAIN, FRANCE SEE ALLIED LAND OFFENSIVE IMMINENT
Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
February 21, 1991

France and Britain today said an allied land battle to free Kuwait was imminent in spite of the still-secret Soviet proposal for an Iraqi withdrawal, while an Italian official broke ranks with other members of the allied coalition by saying that the Soviet plan appeared to be "in line" with U.N. resolutions. French officials said Iraq had only until Thursday night to begin pulling out its troops, suggesting that the allied ground offensive might start then.

HILL DEMOCRATS MUTE CRITICISM OF BUSH ACTIONS
RELUCTANCE TO QUESTION PRESIDENT SAID TO BE A RESULT OF POLITICAL, HISTORICAL FACTORS
Tom Kenworthy, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 21, 1991
Democratic congressional leaders who five weeks ago led the opposition to going to war with Iraq have largely chosen to sit on the sidelines as President Bush dismissed a Soviet peace plan and moved toward a ground warThe almost total silence from Capitol Hill, as the Persian Gulf War reaches a pivotal juncture militarily and diplomatically, is the result of a number of political and historical factors, according to congressional sources...

Something to keep an eye on

Virginia Officials Investigating Deaths of 5 Children
By Maria Glod and R.H. Melton
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 21, 2003

Five young children have died of unknown causes in southeastern Virginia since Sunday, and the state has launched an investigation, Virginia Health Department officials said yesterday.

Four of the deaths occurred in the Tidewater area and one in Richmond, officials said. The children ranged in age from 2 to 7.

Officials said they have not found anything to indicate the deaths are linked. They said health professionals are interviewing the children's families and other people who came into contact with the children to determine whether there is any connection.

State health officials yesterday provided few details about the deaths but said several physicians and epidemiologists, as well as Virginia medical examiners, were assisting in the investigation. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also was notified yesterday.

"At a time when the nation is at a heightened state of alert, the Virginia Department of Health will take even more seriously our normal monitoring of illness and fatality," said Lisa Kaplowitz, the state's deputy commissioner for emergency preparedness and response.

Trina Lee, a health department spokeswoman, said the children all were experiencing respiratory problems. None had been hospitalized, but some were under a physician's care and some had been taking antibiotics. All the deaths were unexpected.

Lee said influenza and several other illnesses that affect respiratory functioning are being considered as possible causes.

In a statement, State Health Commissioner Robert B. Stroube said that preliminary investigation suggests "it is very unlikely that this is due to bioterrorism." Lee said that there was no indication that there is a link to terrorism but said that because many military personnel live in the area, health officials decided to broach the issue.

Now personally, I think there are many more possibilities other than bio-terrorism. But the deaths of five children, four of them in the same general vicinity, from some form of viral respiratory infection, should send huge red flags to epidemiologists. To put this event in context, there were a total of 15 deaths from pneumonia and influenza in the first 8 weeks of 2002 in Norfolk, Virginia. Mortality for both conditions overwhelmingly falls upon the elderly, at a rate of 80% of total pneumonia and influenza-related deaths. In fact, the total number of deaths from all causes in Norfolk for the 1-24 year old age group for the similar time period was also 15 cases.

Scientists for decades have been worried about an outbreak of influenza similar to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919. It is estimated that 675,000 Americans died, while worldwide, the mortality figure for the full pandemic is believed to stand somewhere between 30 to 40 million. I lost three great-grandparents to the outbreak, all in their 20s or 30s, which wasn't surprising, as the Spanish Flu overwhelmingly struck young people, not the usual elderly or immune-compromised.

I think that my point to all this is that in our BeReady (www.ready.gov) paranoia, we need to all remember Occam's Razor; "when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better." The story of the untimely deaths of five children from some form of respiratory ailment should be investigated and reported based upon its own merits, not one wrapped in plastic and duct-tape.

More bait and switch on the vaccine research front

MMR Vaccine Doesn't Cause 'Immune Overload': Study
Thu Feb 20,10:43 AM ET
By Merritt McKinney

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research may help ease the minds of parents concerned that a single vaccine that protects against the measles, mumps and rubella may be too much for a child's immune system to handle.

In a new study, children who received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine were not at increased risk of developing serious bacterial infections. In fact, there was some evidence that children given the triple vaccine had a lower-than-normal risk of serious bacterial infections.

"Parents who are seeking to have single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines for their children because of fears that the combined vaccine is putting too much stress on the immune system should be very reassured by this new evidence," the study's lead author, Dr. Elizabeth Miller, told Reuters Health.

Miller explained that some parents have been concerned that giving three vaccines in a single shot "may be too much for the immune system to cope with." Some parents prefer to have their children receive the three vaccines separately to protect against "immune overload," according to Miller, who is with the Public Health Laboratory Service in London.

Do you also know that the combined MMR vaccine doesn't increase the risk of cavities? Ingrown toenails? Mad cow disease?

While there may be a small subset of anti-MMR parents who are concerned about the possibilities of "immune system overload" (and this is not to cast aside their concerns), the most immediate issue regarding the MMR is the development of bowel disease with associated pervasive developmental disorders, also described as autistic entercolitis. According to Reuters:

All children in the study had developed a serious bacterial infection, such as bacterial meningitis and septicemia, within three months of receiving the MMR vaccine.

Now its been pretty well documented that meningitis is a rare side effect of the measles vaccine, whether in combination with the mumps and rubella vaccines or not. In fact, the study found no difference in the rates of children who received single dose or combined vaccines. But these infections are very, very rare.

Autism, on the other hand, has become much less rare (around 1:150 in some areas) and a not insignificant percent of autistics (<20%) have symptoms of bowel disease. A few researchers, including Drs. Wakefield and Bradstreet, have claimed to have found vaccine-strain measles virus in bowel biopsies and spinal fluid. They surmise that it may have something to do with the mumps portion of the vaccine interfering with the measles portion. It is this hypothesis which concerns the vast majority of parents clamoring for separate vaccines, not theories of "immune overload." Why not spend the research money on trying to replicate Wakefield et al.'s results?

Perhaps the last sentence in the article holds the key:

Wyeth Lederle, GlaxoSmithKline, Chiron and Baxter provided funding for the study.

[Update]: Ross over at the excellent med-saavy Bloviator links to a similar NYTimes article in which study critics cited the same concerns I did:

Dr. Marcel Kinsbroune, a pediatric neurologist who advises the National Vaccine Information Center, which considers some vaccines unsafe, conceded that the study showed that vaccinated children's immune systems do not collapse, but argued that "the serious allegations against M.M.R. have nothing to do with bacterial infections — they have to do with intestinal inflammation and autism."

"The smoking gun," he said, "is that measles vaccine is in the lining of your gut years later."

Indefinite just became definite. The econoholic drive is just too strong.

I'm still feeling kinda punky, but I couldn't let this one pass. Its really just too damn important.

First off: Iknewit, iknewit, iknewit! No, that is not an old Abenaki battle cry. That is the sound emanating from under the yard or so of snow (none of which has melted since it first fell in December) covering my home. It is in response to January's wholesale prices increase, just released this morning.

Iknewit, iknewit, iknewit! Translation: I knew it.

So what did I know and how did I know it? (Other than channeling Cassandra of Troy?) I knew wholesale prices had to jump this month, and I figured it would be a whopper. It was - 1-point-freaking-six percent (1.6%) Screw the BLS.gov website which only a week ago predicted an inflation increase of a 10th of a percent - maybe even deflation. There's no way that's going to happen now.

The answer to how did I know prices would jump is simple. That small fixation I have with energy prices.

As anyone who has followed my site for the past month must know, I've become interested (read: obsessed) with energy costs, and have actually convinced myself that the demise of this current Administration may come not from political malfeasance or military bungling, but higher gas and oil prices, particularly if El Nino and Saddam Hussein don't fully cooperate. (Okay, throw in the Saudis, Nigeria and white collar labor "leaders" in Venezuela.)

Why wouldn't American drivers just buck-up and do their patriotic duty, shovelling over a little more at the pump? Recent reports have shown that consumers are doing that, and blaming Shell and Mobil for pre-war price gouging and not the Administration for creating the market jitters. But its not only at the pump where a revolt might incubate. Heating oil and natural gas prices are up 50% or more over last year (and DOE October predictions, upon which economic growth models are predicated.) And SUV-gas guzzlers are not the only vehicles feeling the sting of higher pump prices; the vast majority of food and freight are "shipped" around this country in good ol' 18-wheelers. Up to 40% of the cost of fuel and consumer goods is distribution - if those costs increase dramatically, so do the prices in Target and Shop-and-Save. I honestly had a sense of foreboding as I did the weekly grocery shopping last week - there were almost no sales in my generally sale-happy market. I remember thinking as I wheeled my cart through the kid lunch snacks that some ominous economic shoe was about to drop.

So what? A quarter more per gallon at the pump, an extra hundred bucks to put heating oil in the tank, a dime more for Oreos. Won't Bush just finally ask us if we're not willing to sacrifice to defeat one of those evil axis guys? Yeah, maybe.

Problem is, Bush is also putting all his chips on the table of consumer spending. Even his so-called economic stimulus package argues that Americans will somehow spend their way out of recession. Today, he went as far as to use the only Democrat who supports his deficit-busting plan, Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. In Georgia, Miller "introduced the president to a suburban Atlanta audience as "our chief of common sense, who knows that the best and the fairest way to grow an economy is to simply not take the hard-earned money from the taxpayer in the first place.""

While Bush's tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy (lower and middle-class taxpayers will see little difference in their paychecks), inflation is a defacto tax on all. The extra money consumers are spending on energy prices, whether it be at the pump or grocery store, is money they won't be spending in the mall. The same goes for businesses. I reported a few weeks ago that Dow Chemical just cut a large chunk of jobs and lowered earnings expectations, primarily due to higher energy costs.

The uncertainty over when (and even at times "if") the war would begin has wreaked havoc on the economy - even the tarnished Chairman Greenspan concedes. Bush Sr. saw his rebounding economy slip back into recession during the summer of 1991, and even though it began to recover in months before the election, it certainly cost him his second term. A number of people have attributed Bush's small upsurge in poll numbers about ten days ago to Powell's speech. I personally think it had as much to do with the rosy unemployment numbers (fixed though they were) which came out around the same time. If Americans started feeling glum about a possible economic recovery, on top of the belt-tightening the increase in inflation is causing, how long before before the Administration decides to wag the war dog, hoping to both distract his penny-pinching constituents, and undermine intractable OPEC with oodles of freeflowing Iraq oil?

[note: I should also add that according to the afforemented article, "the number of U.S. workers filing first-time applications for unemployment benefits last week surged to a seven-week high, suggesting the ailing labor market relapsed after several weeks of improvement." Let's see how the Administration fudges the numbers to account for this one.]

[Update: Edited for typos wildly - guess I hit publish a bit too soon.]

Wampum is now on indefinite hiatus.

[Update: Okay, so I have a short attention span (SAS), or pissed-off capacity (POC). Thank you all for caring about me and the blog.]

Happy, happy, joy, joy

Okay, I can't contain myself. I found another American Indian blogger. I don't think they've gone very public about it, so I won't say who it is. But I'm just soooo excited.

Okay, back to regularly scheduled Progressive, generally white-bread, disability-advocacy blogging.

You have to give them credit for being original

This really came to my partner's mailbox this morning. Honest.

Should I forward it to Professor Reynolds? He's expressed some support for Gbagbo's interests in Ivory Coast in the past. Might be a suitable investment for his blogging dividends.

Outrage...Is that on today's agenda?

This morning, David Neiwert of Ornicus asks his readers, "Where's the outrage?"

Even though I list "Indian Issues" as one of the subjects this blog is supposed to address, I find I don't write on the subject half as much as I should. I think that fairly early on, I realized that most of my non-Indian readership probably doesn't have a clue as to how seeped in racism American culture truly is, and that fewer yet realize its more than a black-white issue. That's probably one reason I find myself drawn to reading Charlie Chan's Revenge (although I wish they'd post more - hey, who cares if you're in law school - I need my fix!)

Thus, I am not at all surprised that there is so little outrage over Congressman Coble's remarks on Japanese-American internment. Or Sue Myrick's portraying Arab-American convenience store entrepreneurs as Homeland Security risks. Or Shaquille O’Neal's anti-Chinese slurs (although there could be endless discourse on whether his remarks were in fact "racist", as race is a construct grounded in power relationships, and yadda, yadda, lots of anthropological babble on the subject....) Or the Indian Trust Fund case; can you imagine if billions of dollars of union money held in trust by the US government suddenly disappeared due to "poor accounting methods"? There would be rioting in the streets. Yet, how many of my readers actually know what I'm talking about, even though various Bush Administration officials, including the Secretary of the Interior and the #3 man at Justice, have been held in contempt, or otherwise sanctioned in regards to the case?

In fact, I was kinda-sorta shocked (though pleased) to read this passage by Neiwart,

For Asians, this scenario is all too familiar. It is common for slurs against them to go unremarked or to be merely shrugged off as unimportant. (Mind you, they’re not alone in this. Didn’t anyone else find it strangely hypocritical when, back in 1999, a white aide to Washington, D.C., Mayor David Howard was forced to resign for using the word “niggardly” -- this, in a city that steadfastly roots for a football team that uses an overt racial slur for its nickname?)

I voiced similar criticism of the double standard most recently in December:

But why is it that the media (and many Americans) view the hypocrisy of white children dressing up in feather headdresses and whooping around a campfire in the same terms as the Majority Senate Leader-elect's statements condoning segregation, and yet fail to see the problem with our political leaders attending Redskin, Chiefs or Indians ball games, cheering while the crowd does the "Tomahawk Chop" and "Chief Wahoo" prances around?

(I'll try and refrain from somewhat bitterly remarking that such criticisms only seem to get attention when they're voiced by the dominant culture...oops, too late.)

I'm more than thrilled that various lefty bloggers, such as Neiwart, IsThatLegal, TalkLeft and Atrios (among others), are refusing to let this issue die. And now it appears AP's continuing to press the story of Rep. Mike Honda's calls for GOP condemnation of Coble has led to various other outlets, even CNN, to finally decide the story may in fact have legs. Cynic that I am, however, I tend to think that unless Democrats and other minority groups, particularly African-Americans, get behind this, its going nowhere fast. Somehow I don't really see either group expending much energy or political capital for a "marginal" constituency. Of course, I see the Republicans spending even less.

I hope I'm wrong. And if I am, I guess its time to really sit down and start blogging the Trust Fund case.

{edit: determined that McCallum was in fact confirmed already}

Surfin' despite the weather

Visited weblogs.com for the first time (seems most of my regular blogrollees are snowed in or still asleep.) Found these bits and pieces:

From Lactose Incompetent:

Colin Powell, age 8, speaking to his mother:

COLIN
Can I have a cookie?

MOM
No.

COLIN
Can I have a cookie?

MOM
No.

COLIN
Can I have a cookie?

MOM
You can keep asking, but the answer's still going to be no. If you think I'm going to eventually say yes just to make you shut up and go away, you're wrong. Your friend George put you up to this, didn't he? I think he's a bad influence on you.

Wanna know the follow-up nearly fifty-years later? Click here.

On a more serious note, Deanna over at Brains Over Bombs tells us about her experience at Saturday's march in New York, and its not particularly pretty.

And here's a resource no good democrat (little "d") should be without: Votelaw -- Law and Politics: At the intersection of law and politics: Campaign finance, redistricting, election law and administration, and politicians in legal trouble. Doesn't hurt either that the website's host and I are in the same quadrant on the Political Compass.

And you thought warbloggers didn't support anti-interventionist protests...

If one placed their ear to the right side of the blogosphere this weekend, one could not but come away with the perception that the cherished American tradition of political protest, dating back beyond a few dozen Bostonians tossing tea into the harbor, was now an anathema to the Right, professed libertarians included. The sight of millions of men, women and children of all ages, from all walks of life, participating in loosely organized marches did nothing to relieve the warmongers of the notion that voicing opposition to war was akin to offering comfort to the enemy.

Strangely enough, only a few weeks earlier, warbloggers, in an obvious attempt to undermine the French position on Iraq, pointed to "spontaneous" protests against the French in Ivory Coast as evidence that the French were the epitome of hypocrisy. Their actions in Ivory Coast were "unilateralist" (they weren't), the protests were a legitimate reaction to French "meddling" in Ivoirian affairs, to the extent of forcing a peace plan on a the beloved, but besieged, president, Laurent Gbagbo.

Well, it turns out that the protests were not so "spontaneous" after all.

Ivory Coast Leader Said to Be Behind Anti-French Protests
By Emily Wax, Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 16, 2003

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Crouched in the steamy noon heat, the fish women sell their meaty snapper out of yellow buckets and whisper about how it all went down. Sitting on puffy armchairs deep inside their high-rise offices, the diplomats recount the same chain of events in the same hushed voices.

Everybody, it seems, knows why Ivorians poured into the streets to protest against a French-brokered deal to end this country's five-month civil war. According to foreign diplomats, intelligence sources, Ivorian analysts and people on the street, President Laurent Gbagbo, desperate to derail an agreement that would force him to share power with rebels and rivals, swung into action even before the deal was finalized on Jan. 24.

Telephone calls were made. Deals were struck. Pro-government student leaders handed out beer, cash and rice to thousands of out-of-work young men and gave them free bus rides to the city, according to participants. The result was a series of dramatic and violent anti-French demonstrations that raged through downtown Abidjan -- beginning the day after Gbagbo signed the accord and ending two weeks later, when he called on his countrymen to accept "the medicine" that the agreement prescribed.

As a result, Ivory Coast dangles between war and peace. Armed rebels still control half of the country, and representatives of the warring factions are engaged in fresh negotiations aimed at moving the peace process forward.

Gbagbo's actions, diplomats and analysts say, reflect not only his desire to maintain control, but a long practice of publicly endorsing agreements while privately ensuring that they are undermined. The cunning president has found a way to resist the peace pact and stay in power without actually saying no, artfully flicking a switch on when he wants a protest and off when it is time to appear cooperative, the sources say.

This is not the first time Gbagbo has manipulated members of his Bete tribe for purely political purposes. According to the WP,

"He's not sincere, and he's a very complex character who will do anything to stay in power," said Joachim Beugre, editor of 24 Hours, an independent newspaper in Abidjan, the commercial capital. "He says yes, and then does no. He does not care about the people he sent to the streets. He just uses them to keep his power."

Gbagbo has also been implicated in government-sponsored atrocities, including the deaths of thousands of civilians.

Human rights groups said yesterday they believed that government troops were responsible for most of the thousands of killings since September in the western Ivorian city of Man, where several mass graves have been found. Civilians have supported the claims of rebels from the Movement for Justice and Peace and the Ivorian Patriotic Movement for the Great West that most of the dead were targeted because they had foreign-sounding names.

The Ivoirian president is beginning to sound remarkably similar to another leader a few thousand miles away along the Euphrates.

The French have placed 3000 troops in Ivory Coast, initially to protect French and other foreign nationals, including 2000 American citizens. They have recently announced that they are also intervening to prevent government-sponsored attacks on civilians in areas where it is deemed sentiment for rebel forces runs high.

The warbloggers will start clamoring for American troops to join the French in preventing further massacres in Ivory Coast, right?

Thank you, Mr. Ridge!

Somehow, I expect this is the cry which can be heard from many a household from St. Louis to New York, as many residents in these cities, and all the states in between, get hammered by what we heah in Maine call simply...."weathah".

"A-yup...I he-ah there's some weathah a comin'."

"A-yup...bettah bring in some wood."

Of course, here in the Arctic, I mean, Northern New England, we are always prepared for the fictitious, I mean, serious warning which went out last week from the Department of Homeland Security. Stock three days food and water, flashlight and batteries, radio.... Now about the duct tape and plastic - they're always in the barn, the former for any emergency you can think of, the latter, for when your 200 year old maple comes down through the roof in the ice storm.

But you all didn't know that Mr. Ridge, the FBI and CIA were in fact warning you that Al Qaeda had discovered how to manipulate the weather. Seriously, would a dirty bomb shut down DC better than a foot (or two!) of snow? Lucky that 2 inches didn't fall on Atlanta - they'd be out of action for a week.

Of course, heah in Maine blizzard warnings are up for Tuesday - ho hum.

Just what are your goals again in Iraq, Mr. Bush?

Last night, as I was gloating at the measurable increase on the shrill meter in the right-wing blogosphere, I noticed Glenn Reynolds' linking to a site which purportedly espoused a campaign to "Support Democracy in Iraq". Noble cause, I thought, and one which I would argue the vast majority of anti-war advocates support as well. As soon as I determined that the website's plans for promoting "Democracy in Iraq" included a few megatons of US firepower and nearly two hundred thousand US and British troops, I filed the campaign away under "warblogger propaganda".

This morning, however, I retrieved that file after reading Kanan Makiya's editorial in the UK Observer, entitled, "Our hopes betrayed: How a US blueprint for post-Saddam government quashed the hopes of democratic Iraqis." Makiya's arguments are logical and compelling, his anguish over the Bush Administration's perfidy palpable.

[Kanan Makiya's bio can be found here. A longer piece on his vision for Iraq is here.]

The White House was outwardly vexed by Makiya's recent denunciation, and urged him not to publish the op-ed, contending it would be 'counter-productive'.

Another Observer report, while critical of Europe's anti-war movement, directs the lion's share of its acrimony on Colin Powell, the State Department and CIA. Iraqi National Congress chairman, Ahmad Chalabi, expected by many to become Iraq's democratic successor to Hussein, also decried Washington's proposals: "The vision of having US military officers three deep in every ministry is not workable."

The report continues,

I have railed time and again against the Bush Administration's war on Iraq. Not because I am a pacifist, as I support the just use of force, particularly to avert travesties such as genocide. I disavow the Bush war because, unlike the Iraqi, who have only direct knowledge of Bush Sr.'s perfidy after the first Gulf War, I believe this current Administration to be far more self-serving and treacherous. In many ways I pity Tony Blair, who seems to actually believe that an "allied" force, UN-sponsored or not, would be "liberating Iraq". Perhaps he is deluded in thinking he will have some control over the Bush chickenhawks, that words like "democracy" have actual meaning, more than being mere sops to the exiled Iraqi opposition.

One irony in all this is the complete dearth of discussion by the warbloggers on the Ankara meeting and its ensuing plans for riding rough-shod over the post-Saddam democracy movement. Where is the outrage? You'll find no mention of Makiya, Chalabi or even the Iraqi opposition on recent pages of Instapundit or any of his 40 blogroll links I surveyed (I couldn't do more - my head was pounding after encountering that aforementioned shrill level, which has, defying all imagination, only increased since yesterday.) Reynold's most recent post laments the atrocities which have occurred under Hussein's Ba'athist Party regime. Funny how he never addresses the Administration's plans to maintain the Ba'ath Party structure, with its Sunni-centricism intact. He even has the gall to suggest (via a link, of course) that the lack of war support is inherently racist, since its Arabs (sic) being repressed, and somehow they just accept that as the natural order of things. And yet, wouldn't the logic then continue that its racist to deny Iraqis a democratic form of government, and instead install American military and civilian leaders, because they haven't somehow proven themselves able to handle the "responsibilities", e.g., protecting Western economic and security interests, of democracy?

Its now clear that the warmonger's assertions of unity with the Iraqi people are as credible as those we heard from Osama bin Laden last week.

My own suggestion, if any of the Progressive powers (Annan, Congressional Democrats, etc.) are listening, is that, if you haven't done it already, this is the time to make that long overdue phone call to the Iraqi Opposition and see how you can help achieve the goal of a democratic Iraq, without hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.

Lilly-gate Resolved (for now)

I was wondering why some folks from Lilly were lurking around my site yesterday.

What a pretty picture

Antiwar Rallies Raise a Chorus Across Europe

LONDON, Feb. 15 — From the parks of London to the piazzas of Rome and the avenues of Berlin, hundreds of thousands of Europeans marched today to register opposition to war in Iraq in what was termed the Continent's biggest coordinated demonstration in a generation's memory.

With similar protests taking place in scores of cities around the world including New York, demonstrators streamed along London's Piccadilly past the statue of Eros, and along Whitehall close to 10 Downing Street, the residence of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's most committed ally in the effort to force President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to disarm.

My husband and eldest daughter leave soon to join the peace march here in Portland. Its only 6 degrees outside, so Kezzie, the boys and I are staying bundled up inside and cheering you all on from a distance.

From the Ministry of Economic Propaganda...

New industrial production numbers were released from the Federal Reserve this morning. As with last week's unemployment numbers, the New York Times immediately heralded the original AP news:

Industrial Production Jumps by 0.7%

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Industrial production roared back to life in January, rising by 0.7 percent, while businesses boosted inventories the month before -- a pair of promising signs for an ailing economy.

The latest snapshot of activity at the nation's factories, mines and utilities -- the sector of the economy hardest hit by the 2001 recession -- showed an impressive rebound.

Wow! Sounds like such great news, right? Further down, the story goes into a little more detail:

At factories, which account for most industrial output tracked by the Fed, production rose by a solid 0.5 percent in January, largely reflecting a boost in automobile production. That marked a big improvement over the 0.4 percent drop in factory output registered in December.

Production at gas and electric utilities jumped by 4 percent last month, compared with a 1.4 percent drop in December, as demand was stoked by colder weather.

At mines, however, production fell by 1.2 percent, more than reversing a 1 percent gain posted in December.

Have warning bells begun to go off for you yet? Yes, its time to head on over to the Federal Reserve's website for the real numbers:

Industrial production rose 0.7 percent in January. The increase more than reversed December's revised decline of 0.4 percent. At 111.1 percent of the 1997 average, output was 2.0 percent above its level in January 2002. Manufacturing output and output at utilities moved up noticeably, while mining output fell. Much of the gain in manufacturing output in January reflected an increase in the production of motor vehicles. Excluding motor vehicles and parts, manufacturing output ticked up 0.1 percent after having been unchanged in December. Capacity utilization for total industry increased to 75.7 percent, a rate 0.7 percentage point above that of January 2002 but 5.6 percentage points below its 1972-2002 average.

So take out all the automobiles (which we're not going to be able to afford to drive because of the skyrocketing price of gasoline) and manufacturing rose 0.1%. Oh, and those record cold temperatures - I'm sure we'll continue to see them in March and April, right? Yup, the economy is definitely "roaring" back. But wait, more small print.

The output of consumer goods rose 1.0 percent in January. Within consumer durables, most of the gain resulted from the higher output of automotive products. The production of nondurables, which moved up 0.5 percent, was led by a sharp increase in residential electricity and gas usage associated with a return to more normal temperatures in January from an unseasonably warm December. However, the output of automotive gasoline dropped after two months of sizable gains, and the production of nondurable non-energy consumer goods, which include food, chemicals, and clothing, remained sluggish.

The output of construction supplies was little changed in December and January. The production of business supplies climbed 0.9 percent in January, an increase that largely reflected a jump in energy output for commercial use. The index for defense and space equipment rose 1.6 percent last month and was 4.9 percent above its level in January 2002.

When did our press become the Administration's megaphone for this kind of propaganda?

Flashback Friday

As I was searching through US newspaper archives in my weekly endeavor to document how history is eerily repeating itself in regards to the two Bush Administrations, I found this one article and decided, this week, to go no further. At this point in the first Gulf War the US and its UN-sanctioned allies were four weeks into the campaign to "free Kuwait". The purported Allied mission was to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. There was no intent to "liberate" Iraq, no plan to capture or kill Hussein. Despite those modest goals and the use of supposed "smart technology", large civilian casualties occurred.

THE BOMBING IN BAGHDAD . . .
February 14, 1991
Boston Globe Editorial

With the precision bombing of a roof in Baghdad that turned out to cover a bunker being used as a bomb shelter, the US-led war against Iraq has entered a new phase. What the Bush administration has contended was a "surgical" military operation to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait has become, inadvertently but irrevocably, political. This moves the war onto perilous terrain.

At 4 a.m. yesterday, two bombs pierced 15 feet of reinforced concrete and burned to death about 500 civilians, mainly women and children, who had taken shelter from the 12-hour bombing raid going on outside. They reportedly hid there every night. Coupled with the bombings of two buses -- which killed 30 Jordanian refugees fleeing Kuwait and 30 Sudanese on the Baghdad-Amman highway -- the tragedy serves as a wake-up call for any who have nodded off in reveries of Nintendo war.

The targeters surely did not know they were hitting a major bomb shelter. They must have been convinced the target was a command center (which perhaps it was, as well).

Considering the extent of the US-led attack -- 65,000 missions in less than four weeks -- the Iraqi estimates of 6,000 to 7,000 civilian casualties to date actually sound moderate. The "high technology" of which President Bush boasts is obviously remarkable. The conscientiousness of pilots and bombardiers and their leaders in uniform seems exemplary.

The issue is not military competence but the disproportionate intensity of the military response chosen by US civilian leaders.

The extent and pace of the bombing -- which contributed to the Baghdad tragedy -- is only partly driven by the aim of freeing Kuwait or saving US lives in an invasion. The administration hastened to war on Jan. 16 not because of an artificial deadline for freeing Kuwait but because of an unstated agenda: to destroy Iraq as a military power and to inflict sufficient pain on the Iraqi people that they blame Saddam Hussein and rise up against him, or even kill him.

These aims explain the dearth of patience in the White House and the accelerated pounding of every Iraqi military target that can be found, and of the civilian infrastructure too.

Some Americans will try to brush this off. Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, "We do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our sanctity for human life." Yet even if US officials can displace responsibility in their own minds, the world will not. Opposition to the US-led policy will be galvanized, and it may be growing in the countries of the alliance.

Virtually the entire world rejected Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Many were prepared to stand against it. But what most expected was a proportionate response: economic siege, graduated and minimal violence. The more sweeping US aims were not widely shared.

It is urgent that the administration rethink its political as well as its military aims and look ahead.

Iraq's offensive and defensive capabilities have been enfeebled. Saddam Hussein has already lost his offensive capacity. Unless the attacks against him enshrine him as an Arab hero, he will be a much diminished tyrant in a much diminished country.

The extensive bombing that produced the horror in Baghdad should be curtailed. To the extent that Iraq still poses an offensive threat, launching Scud missiles and land attacks, those threats must be identified and destroyed. And since the objective of evicting Iraq from Kuwait has not yet been achieved, interdiction of supplies to troops in Kuwait should continue. But with a patient siege, the dreaded invasion of Kuwait, likely to be so costly to soldiers on both sides, need never take place.minimize human loss, military as well as civilian, on both sides.

I mentioned to my spouse last night that instead of Americans sending envelopes of rice to Bush, we should all send photos of our children. With any luck, seeing that half of the population disapproves of this war, we could get three million photos.

There are three million children in Baghdad. It was a 2000lb "smart bomb" which killed 17 Afghani civilians in a rural area this week. The Administration intends on lobbing 600-800 of these bombs at the capital city in the first two days.

This will be a massacre. Send photos, faxes, rice. Take to the streets. This is our country, our government. We will be held responsible.

Vive La France!

Yes, I'm biased, living in a bi-lingual Francophone household - although none of us are French, just happens that the Abenaki were first missionized by French Jesuits, and our remaining reserves (reservations) are in Quebec. But Atrios linked to a poor fromage importer under attack for selling French cheese! All because France, a sovereign country last time I checked, isn't going along with the Administration's war plans. Atrios suggests visiting the poor guy's shop and helping out. Some have noted the site may be down. If so, here are a bunch of other sites which are probably also suffering, as well as a few sites to help sharpen one's francophile image.

An intro to French cheese.
And a French wine guide.
Make dinner for your petit(e) chou.
Make a living making dinner for other people's petit(e) chou.
Read some news.
See some fine art.
Translate Atrios into French!

Go shopping!
France-Gourmet.com : Les meilleurs fromages de France, livrés en express partout dans le monde, depuis 1998! (The best of French cheese, delivered in express everywhere in the world, since 1998!)
French Discovery: Products made by small producers or processors located in beautiful rural France
Bacchus Cellars: L' achat facile de vins, champagne, spiritueux, cigares.
Au Chant du Coq - Produits du terroir provençal (Provencal products "from the land")
Bien Manger: the finest products from France and Italy.
Joli Vin: French wine importers
Wine Commune.com - obviously a good lefty site, with lots and lots of French wines
The French Wine Shop.com: Name says it all

More on my oil price fixation

A good read on the possibility of increasing oil prices spurring a double-dip recession:

Later in the article, the topic turned to the possibility of even higher prices:

Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst at Fahnestock, said everything hinges on the timing and severity of a war with Iraq. He believes that energy prices will likely remain where they are until the conflict begins, and said prices could spike further if there is any disruption to the oil supply. That could happen, for example, if Saddam Hussein destroys oil fields as he did during the Gulf War.

We've been assured by the military that as soon as US missiles begin to fly, troops with invade from their Kuwaiti staging grounds, and secure the oil fields.

However, a CNN article I cited in my last post also contained this interesting little tidbit, throwing in a wrinkle to these plans:

Large amounts of conventional explosives are being positioned possibly for detonation of oil fields in southern Iraq, although officials say they cannot confirm that this is Iraq's intent. When asked to describe the amount of explosives involved, one official quantifies it as "railroad cars" full of material.

CNN, in typical fashion, drops the ball on the story. Fortunately, other papers, such as the Montpelier Times-Argus, picked it up:

Military officials said they detected suspicious movements of explosives by rail and other means in recent days, and interpreted it as part of a strategy by President Saddam Hussein to create havoc in the opening moments of a war. Top U.S. commanders say their war plan includes measures to prevent or mitigate Iraqi sabotage and will not hinder their assault, but some senior officers have expressed doubts privately.

Of course, conservative economists argue that the Administration's ace-in-the-whole for all this is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The 570 million barrels, stored in massive salt caverns carved out of deposits which underlie most of the Texas and Louisiana coastline, are enough to last for at least 60 days of normal US consumption. If placed on the market, the reserve, at the current price of $35/barrel, could bring in $20 billion dollars for the government. I guess its time to hunker down and get a better handle on the ins-and-outs of the SPR.

Losing the peace

An article from yesterday's NYTimes found its way to my inbox this morning. It began,

My friend who sent the article, a former Army officer with 25+ years, also included this commentary:

"This should help win the hearts and minds of the people there. Currently most of the US effort there is in running combat operations against suspected Rebel locations and not rebuilding the country. US Forces have adopted a minimum risk profile in their operations with the primary goal of sustaining no casualties by shooting first and using massive aerial bombardments regardless what the risk is to the surrounding civilian population. We also are reducing our forces there (moving them to the next war zone) which puts further pressure on those remaining. Since there are minimal supporting forces our soldiers need to shoot first and ask questions later. As a result wherever American forces go in Afghanistan we are bringing death and destruction to unarmed civilians. The Afghan people are learning this lesson and will no longer support us in their country. We may have won the war in Afghanistan but we will lose the peace. But that's okay because our ADD/ADHD based foreign policy has moved on to other opportunities."

The Afghani news piece and my friend's commentary fed into a growing sense of foreboding as I watched the following news pattern unfold.

On Tuesday, the propaganda began:

Iraqi civilians being used as shields, Bush alleges

NASHVILLE -- President Bush on Monday accused Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of using Iraqi citizens as human shields by positioning his military forces among civilians.

Then yesterday, CNN reported:

U.S. intelligence: Iraq moves Scud launchers

U.S. intelligence tells CNN:

The move of launch equipment next to mosques and historic sites is viewed as an effort by Iraq to preserve its launchers from U.S. attack, and is another indicator that Iraq still has Scud missiles. The officials decline to specify the locations of the launch equipment, citing extreme sensitivity, but say the equipment would be a prime target for a U.S. attack.

This morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer planted this seed:

Another nightmare scenario is that renegade Iraqi officers, cornered by U.S. forces in a residential city neighborhood, might threaten to detonate a chemical or bio-war weapon - and might do so in a grisly suicide designed to make it appear as if the Americans were to blame for massive civilian casualties.

Both Bush and Blair have recently used rhetoric pre-emptively blaming Hussein for any loss of civilian life in the impending invasion. That is not overly surprising; what is disquieting is the media's complicity in setting the stage for the military's disavowal of responsibly for mass civilian casualties. Even in the case of the Afghani civilians purported killed, the US military is even now refuting the NYTime's story.

US denies Afghan civilian deaths
Thursday, 13 February, 2003, 12:55 GMT

The United States military says it is unaware of Afghan civilian casualties following raids by US planes against suspected militants.

Reports say at least 17 civilians, mainly women and children, have died in US bombing in remote Helmand Province since Sunday.

A US army spokesman said US aircraft had been operating in an unpopulated area and had fired at targets only after being shot at.

The Afghan Government said it had been unable to confirm the reports of civilian casualties.

But a spokesman for Helmand Province, Haji Wali, told Reuters news agency that local officials in the Baghran valley had reported civilians killed after receiving information from relatives.

On Tuesday, a BBC correspondent in Kandahar spoke to eyewitnesses who said 13 people had been killed after US bombing targeted a civilian area, not caves, in the valley.

I suspect we'll see more stories justifying the killing of Iraqi civilians, or setting up Saddam, the Republican Guard or even al Qaeda to take the blame for casualties of overzealous or indiscriminate US military plans. A little more mental novocaine for the American public, numbing its outrage against war-induced massacre.

Maine House also votes to oppose Iraqi invasion.

Mix one part campaign cash and two parts public panic...

So if a million Americans run out to Home Depot and buy duct tape and plastic sheeting, 3M, Tyco and Home Depot will have recouped their soft-money campaign contributions to Republicans for 2000-2002.

Senator Schumer calls on Bush Administration to release autism research

From the Senator's press release of February 10, 2003:

SCHUMER: FEDS SHOULD RELEASE PAPERS THAT MIGHT PROVE LINK BETWEEN VACCINE AND AUTISM

Thousands of Long Island children suffering from autism and number seems to be increasing; Major study needed to determine cause for increases in autism rates

Health and Human Services has recently sealed documents that might contain link between vaccine and neurological disorders such as Autism

Standing in the Center for Autism at North Shore-LIJ, US Senator Chuck Schumer today called on the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release papers that might show a link between the vaccine Thimerosal and autism. Although currently there is no proven link between the two, Schumer said the papers should be open to public scrutiny so parent of Autistic children can be see for themselves if any link exists. Furthermore, Schumer called for a major study into the causes of autism to help explain the sudden increase in autism cases.

"For too many parents, the struggle of raising an autistic child is a reality, and the number of these sad cases is increasing," Schumer said. "The government should be doing everything in its power to figure out why these numbers are rising and open up records to the public so these parents can start to understand what is actually going on. If the vaccine contributed to autism, parents should know, and if it did not, then the papers should be made public to reassure everyone."

According to recent studies, autism is around 10 times more prevalent today then it was in the 1980s. In fact, in 1996, over 3 children per 1,000 were diagnosed with mild to severe autism, while just ten years earlier, the number was about 4 in every 10,000. These rates translate into over 425,000 cases of autism nationwide.

More economic news, aka "sometimes I hate it when I'm right...."

On home heating oil prices:

Heating oil prices hit a 3-year high in Mass.
By Andrew Caffrey, Globe Staff, 2/11/2003

Driven by unusually frigid temperatures and fears that a war with Iraq will exacerbate already tight supplies, home heating oil prices in Massachusetts have hit a three-year high.

The average price in the state climbed to $1.75 a gallon in a weekly survey of dealers released yesterday by the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources, up 14 percent from $1.54 recorded a week ago. The highest price collected in the survey was $2 a gallon.

''We've seen price spikes in the past, but this one is drastic,'' said Chris Simonelli, co-owner of C. Simonelli & Sons, a retail oil supplier in Boston. ''Everytime we load'' the fuel trucks, he said, ''it seems they change the price.''

Consumers are bracing for the worst. In Roslindale, homeowner Theresa Tobin is due for another oil delivery soon, and she worries that the bill will be significantly higher than the $300 one she received at her last fill-up in mid-January, when the price was $1.60 a gallon. ''It was shocking to open up a $300 bill,'' said Tobin, a librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She said she doesn't remember previous bills going above $200. ''It's outrageous. My home heating bill has never been as high as this.'' (more)

And gas prices:

Gas Prices Soar With Talk Of War
Prices Soar To $2 In Some Parts Of State
February 11, 2003

The price of gasoline is hitting $2 a gallon in some parts of Florida these days.

The high price is for premium gas. The owner of one Gainesville-area convenience store says some people pull in, check the price and simply drive off.

Some gasoline wholesalers are saying they can see the price going to $2 for regular gas before long.

"Prices at the wholesale level have gone up almost every night," said one Gainesville wholesaler.

A strike by oil-industry workers in Venezuela, coupled with threat of war with Iraq, are blamed for the latest jump in gas prices. AAA says the average price of gas in Florida has risen 15 to 20 cents in the last two weeks.

Nationally, gasoline prices increased for the ninth straight week to an average of $1.60 a gallon for regular grades -- 50 cents a gallon higher than a year ago.

And Greenspan bolsters the Administration's "Let's Roll" plans for Iraq - from an economic viewpoint:

Greenspan Says Uncertainty Over Iraq War Is Economic Hurdle
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday that uncertainties about a war with Iraq represent the biggest cloud hanging over the nation's struggling economy.

Consumers have been keeping the economy going. But businesses -- worried about the war and other economic uncertainties -- have been reluctant to make big commitments in capital investment and hiring, forces restraining the recovery, Greenspan said in presenting the Fed's semi-annual economic report card to Congress.

``The intensification of geopolitical risks makes discerning the economic path ahead especially difficult,'' Greenspan said in prepared testimony to the Senate Banking Committee.

Greenspan said that if ``these uncertainties diminish considerably in the near term'' then businesses may boost their investment spending and help the economy. He called that ``our more probable expectation.''

More of Bush's War on the Poor

The Administration isn't even sneaking this stuff out on Fridays anymore. I guess the lack of sufficient outrage from the public has them emboldened.

Renters Receiving U.S. Aid to Pay More Under Budget Proposal

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The Bush administration is proposing to increase rents charged to thousands of poor people who receive federal housing aid.

The increase would be accomplished by changing three little words in federal law. The minimum rent for tenants, which is "not more than $50" a month under current law, would have to be "at least $50" a month under President Bush's plan.

In budget documents sent to Congress last week, the administration said the proposal was "intended to promote work" by people who live in federally subsidized housing.

I really don't get it. Did some poor kid beat up George on the playground? Steal his lunch money? Maybe his girlfriend? Just why do he and his goons hate the poor and disabled so very much?

Ugh, what a way to start the day.

Bush to abandon the income tax?

Being an econoholic, I don't know how I missed this one today. Thankfully Interesting Times (who gets added to the blogroll with this catch) was on the ball.

Add a few thousand IRS jobs to the unemployment rolls...

Reality Check

Fifteen years ago, while visiting a friend in Japan, we took the train down to Hiroshima. Its a rather quiet, modern city, at least in January. Of course, we went to the Peace Museum, which documents the events surrounding that fateful day in early August, 1945. The displays are heartrending, the human toll of war undeniable. But one of the most striking effects of the exhibit has more to do with that which is missing. There are no "before" photographs of life in Hiroshima. My friend and I together surmised that, for all the shock one feels at the viewing the horror following the atomic bomb blast, seeing it in contrast might be too much for anyone to handle and stay sane.

For a couple of weeks now we've been hammered until numb with the proposed US strategy termed "shock and awe". According to a CBS News interview with the strategy's developer, Harlan Ullman,

[T]he Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq. As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, this is more than number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War.

On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles.

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan.

This is where we need the reality check. Iraq is about 2/3rds the size of Texas, with about the same size population (21.3 million.) A quarter of the population, 5.8 million, live within Baghdad city limits. A little comparison shopping:

(I didn't include any of the 16 cities with urban populations larger than New York.) So Baghdad is somewhere between the size of New York City and Los Angeles, population-wise. New York without Brooklyn, or Manhattan four times over. Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, all rolled up into one.

The US and Great Britain dropped approximately 3000 tons of bombs in a two day period onto Dresden in February, 1945, killing an estimated 100,000 people, mostly women, children and old folks, mostly refugees from Eastern Europe.

"You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted," Ullman tells Martin.

There are 3 million children in Baghdad. 3,000,000. Three million.

"So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Ullman.

The estimated population of Hiroshima in 1945 was 350,000. Over 140,000 died immediately or within months, another 60,000 within a few years.

Yes, its definitely time for a reality check.

Maine, once again, leads rather than follows

Just in case you were wondering...

So who runs the DNS in Iraq?

Root-Zone Whois Information:

.iq - Iraq
Sponsoring Organization:
Alani Corp.
c/o InfoCom
630 International Parkway
Richardson, Texas 75081
United States

Administrative Contact:
Saud Alani
Alani Corporation
c/o InfoCom
630 International Parkway
Richardson, Texas 75081
United States
Email: alani@mynet.net
Voice: +964 1 556 4753
Fax: +1 972 644 8609

Technical Contact:
Bayan Elashi
InfoCom Corporation
630 International Parkway
Suit 100
Richardson, Texas 75081
United States
Email: bayan@infocomusa.com
Voice: +1 972 644 5363
Fax: +1 972 644 8609

My partner sent email to one of the above, and received a bounce. He surmised they'd probably been executed by the government...(of Texas)

Across the wires...

Been kind of a quiet Saturday across the lefty blogosphere. But a few apropos stories abound:

First votes...can wives be far behind?

Court Rules in Favor of Vote Swap Web Site

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday in favor of a Web site that enabled Gore and Nader voters to swap their votes in the 2000 presidential elections.

San Francisco resident Alan Porter set up a discussion forum, www.votexchange2000.com, two weeks before the 2000 election pitting George W. Bush against Vice President Al Gore and third-party candidate Ralph Nader.

That site and others allowed citizens to swap Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. A Nader supporter in a state with a closer contest would then pledge to vote for Gore in return. Swaps of votes for other candidates were also theoretically possible. (more)

"Old Europe" comes through ("Sorry, but that plan was, like, so yesterday, like, you know.." - Rummy)

Germany, France propose peaceful plan for Iraq disarmament

Germany and France have reportedly proposed a plan involving sending UN troops to Iraq, to prevent war in Iraq.

A spokesman for the German Government has confirmed that France and Germany are considering a plan together for a peaceful alternative means of disarming Iraq.

He did not go into details but his statement came after a report was released by the news magazine der Spiegel, which said the Franco German plan proposed sending UN troops to Iraq for one year to support a beefed up team of UN weapons inspectors. (more)

A new meaning for the term "frozen assets" (but, seriously, read the whole piece, its troubling...)

Soldiers preserve sperm as fear of new Gulf war grows

British soldiers are having their semen frozen in sperm banks before being sent to fight in a possible war against Iraq, the Sunday Herald has learned.

As the build-up to conflict in the Gulf intensifies, servicemen have been approaching fertility experts for advice on how to preserve their sperm in case they are killed or wounded .

It follows similar moves by US troops . So far, around 100 soldiers are known to have deposited semen specimens at clinics in America.

(snip)

The radical steps are being fueled by the threat of chemical and biological attacks by Iraq. But experts also say the experience of troops who became ill and infertile after fighting in the first Gulf war in 1991 is also leading to an increase in the number of soldiers planning to have sperm frozen.

The number of veterans' children born suffering rare deformities or potentially life-threatening illnesses since the end of the last Gulf conflict has risen dramatically.

More than 150 British children born to servicemen -- a four-fold increase since concerns about the health of veterans' offspring were first raised eight years ago -- are known to suffer health problems. Campaign groups have reports of children being born with missing limbs, no ears and no irises . Others have had internal complications, speech problems or display signs of autism. In the most serious cases the babies died . (more)

And don't even get me started on this one.... I grew up in Connecticut.. grumble..

Indian termination by Connecticut (with help by anti-Indian media)

Following a number of would-be exposes published in The Wall Street Journal and the constant direct attacks put forth by radio and TV personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, some Connecticut politicians are raising their anti-Indian ante. The blue-bloods in that state are unrelenting in wanting to shut down Indian gaming, which is nevertheless wildly popular and lucrative, both for the tribes and for the state.

There is a spate of Connecticut politicians apparently intent on generating a new termination movement against Native nations. They are as aggressive as they are single-minded, and as simple-minded as they are virulent. They don’t always agree on strategies, but are united in their intent to shut down as much Indian economic enterprise as possible, even though it is precisely Indian gaming that has kept Connecticut afloat for the past several years.(more)

When being validated as Cassandra sucks...

From last night's Washington Week, on the topic of Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council:

Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times: Of course the other audience was an American domestic audience because support for the idea of war with Iraq has been sagging... as it became more real, in effect.

Michael Duffy, TIME: Did he prop it up a little? Can we tell yet?

Doyle: Not really...not really. I think part of that was not enough people stayed home on a morning to watch a full hour of Security Council and I think we're not going to really be able to tell until we've gone through with a whole cycle of...dare I call it, "spin"...

Martha Raddatz, ABC News: But they're not going to stop talking about this. Colin Powell is not going to stop talking about this... George Bush is not going to stop talking about this. And the same thing you said, Doyle. There's every indication that something will happen before February 14th. We've heard all these deadlines, you know...Hans Blix comes back. Well, what the Administration is going to be watching is this weekend. The inspectors will be in Baghdad...the Iraqis will probably say, "Yes, you can let the U2s fly again." And they've been putting forth scientists without government minders. The US is going to watch that, and if they think Hans Blix is going to come back and say, "You know, they're doing a pretty good job now, those Iraqis.."

Gwen Ifill, Moderator: But how did Hans Blix and ElBaradei begin to get progressively tougher on this point?

Martha: They have been, and I think that kind of pressure is getting through to the Iraqis. The pressure from the US, with obvious buildup in the region, and from the inspectors. So the Iraqis have caved in a little bit on that and said, okay, the scientists, and maybe this weekend the U2s. So the US fears a bit that Hans Blix will go before on Friday and backtrack...

[note: Jeffrey Birnbaum then jumped in and changed the subject before Martha could reiterate that she feels the US will invade to preempt Blix from giving the Iraqis a good report card on February 14th.]

Maybe its time to change the banner to red for Valentine's day....

Couldn't resist.

[Update: Now back to our regularly-scheduled purple banner]

Hmmmm...

Unemployment Rate Falls in January

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 5.7 percent in January as businesses added 143,000 new jobs, a shot of good news for an ailing economy.

The increase in payroll jobs, mostly in the retail area, was the largest since November 2000, said Friday's Labor Department report. The overall rate dropped by 0.3 percentage point from the 6 percent rate in December that matched an 8-year high.

Good news, right? Read the small print:

Another factor contributing to the positive report was a change in the way the Labor Department compiles its survey of households, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate. Analysts included new questions about race and Hispanic ethnicity, added new job classifications and made other changes.

Labor Department officials said the changes likely had a small impact on compilation of the overall unemployment rate.

And from the Bureau of Labor Statistic's press release this morning:

About 1.6 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in January. These were people who wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers-- a subset of the marginally attached who were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them--was 449,000 in January.

That number was 398,000 in December, an increase of 50,000 in one month. And whereas the previous month's reports noted that the current numbers were unchanged from that same time the year before, the number of discouraged workers (thus not counted in the UE rate) in January 2002 was 319,000.

I'm sure that was one of those itty-bitty changes the Labor Department made. Anyone know of other ways they massaged the numbers?

[update:] I did a little more research and noticed this from previous months' reports:

About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in December, about the same number as a year earlier.

About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in November, about the same as a year earlier.

About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in October, little changed from a year earlier.

The number for January was a surprising 1.6 million. This means the Labor Department, in one month, shifted 200,000 workers off the books.

Seems to be a trend growing...

Dwight is now officially an econoholic. Koz too. And Tom. The Issues Guy as well.

We're going to have to get a bigger space for our meetings.

Strike two for McCallum

In the continuing farce known in Indian Country simply as the Trust Fund case, a federal judge ruled the Justice Department engaged in a cover-up involving the missing American Indian trust funds and that DOJ attorneys lied to the court.

McCallum has also been referred to a judicial disciplinary board for his role in violating a judge's ruling regarding contacting plaintiff's in the Trust Fund case.

According to the Associate Attorney General's website:

The Office of the Associate Attorney General advises and assists the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General in formulating and implementing Departmental policies and programs pertaining to a broad range of civil justice, federal and local law enforcement, and public safety matters. The Office oversees the following DOJ components: Antitrust Division, Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, Environment and Natural Resources Division, Tax Division, Office of Justice Programs, Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), Community Relations Service, Office of Dispute Resolution, Violence Against Women Office, Office of Information and Privacy, Executive Office of U.S. Trustees, and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

Sounds like McCallum is the perfect Bush choice to head the department.

Its Flashback Friday again

PER CAPITA COST OF GULF WAR PUT AT $1,072 OVER 4 YEARS
Associated Press, February 7, 1991

WASHINGTON -- The consumer group Public Citizen projected yesterday that the Persian Gulf war will cost each American up to $1,072 over four years. It urged Congress to adopt a tax package to pay the bill.

"If we decide that we want to declare war, we ought to pay for it," said Joan Claybrook, president of the private nonprofit organization.

"The first target ought to be a windfall profits tax on oil companies, whose profits averaged 300 percent higher at the end of 1990...

Will There Be Anything Left to Nuke? The U.S. is flattening every `strategic' target in Iraq, but talk of nuclear options persists.
The Los Angeles Times, Feb 7, 1991, Alexander Cockburn

The Gulf War has already gone nuclear to a certain degree. On Jan. 17, U.S. bombers attacked the nuclear research center at Tuwaitha, some 12 miles from central Baghdad. The assault, said Gen. Colin Powell, "finished" the facility.

Outside of [Bush]'s public relations team, which latched onto Iraq's nuclear potential when it began to show up in the polls as something that ...

FBI VIOLATED ORDER, MAGISTRATE SAYS
Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 7, 1991

The FBI violated a court order prohibiting terrorism probes of legitimate domestic groups when it investigated a group of Americans opposed to U.S. policy in Central America, a federal magistrate has decided...

US, ERNST & YOUNG STRIKE DEAL
February 7, 1991, Peter Hayhow, Globe Staff

THE ACCOUNTING FIRM Ernst & Young has tentatively agreed to pay the federal government more than $40 million because its predecessor firm allegedly did shoddy work for the failed Lincoln Savings & Loan, published reports said....

TOP HILL DEMOCRATS SPLIT OVER TAX STRATEGY
Helen Dewar, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 7, 1991

Senate and House Democratic leaders disagreed over tax strategy yesterday as Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) said he hoped to push for a Social Security payroll tax reduction while House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) expressed reservations about such a move. In formally unveiling the Senate Democrats' legislative agenda for the 102nd Congress, Mitchell reiterated his opposition to President Bush's call for a capital gains tax cut...

WALL STREET'S GOOD THOUGHTS BOOST THE DOW
February 7, 1991, Robert Lenzner, Globe Staff

NEW YORK -- Suddenly, Wall Street is living in a make-believe world again. Investors are ignoring the possibility of a long ground war in Kuwait, the continued deterioration of corporate balance sheets and the real estate fallout.

It is betting that low oil prices, low interest rates and plenty of pump priming by the Federal Reserve will pay off in a brief recession.

"Prospects are reasonably good that the recession we are now in will not be long lived...

Civic Leaders Push for New U.S. Budget Priorities Spending: Coalition that includes union members worries that defense spending will grow at expense of jobs, housing, education and health care.
The Los Angeles Times, Feb 7, 1991; Greg Krikorian

In a press conference outside the once-bustling Todd Shipyards in San Pedro, the coalition, organized by the Los Angeles chapter of Jobs with Peace, said that Pentagon budgets and Bush Administration policies must be challenged after two decades of Cold War spending on defense. Otherwise, they said, the nation's employment and education, housing and health care, will continue their slide toward a ...

BUSH SEES 'MILD AND BRIEF' RECESSION
PRESIDENT SKIPS OVER DIFFICULTIES IN N.Y. ECONOMIC PEP TALK
Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 7, 1991

President Bush offered the country an economic pep talk here tonight, predicting that the current recession would be "mild and brief" and adding that what is needed most now is "a boost in confidence." The president also said the Persian Gulf War would not put too much additional burden on the economy and suggested that a successful end to the war would help assure long-term economic growth here and around the world. "The road to real peace will be difficult --

Reliance on Imported Oil to Continue, Bush Cautions Energy: He warns that despite uncertainties of supply, `extreme measures' to end dependence on overseas sources would exact too great a price.
The Los Angeles Times, Feb 7, 1991; James Gerstenzang

President [Bush] Wednesday night sent his clearest signal to date that, despite the uncertainties of foreign oil supplies, the United States for the foreseeable future will be unable to meet its voracious energy appetite without overseas help.

Bush sought in his speech and a subsequent question-and-answer session to bolster the business community's confidence in the future of the American economy at a ...

[ed. note: added new headlines after accidently publishing prematurely]

No excuse....

Lisa has the scoop on a story which should have been run. Liberal media. Ya, right.

My growing Cassandra complex

Come, Hector, come, go back:
Thy wife hath dream'd; thy mother hath had visions;
Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself
Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt
To tell thee that this day is ominous:

Will Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

Yesterday, during a news piece on NPR, I cynically commented to my partner, "See, I said that would happen." What would happen, you ask? I don't particularly recall. Something to do with the economy, but its not really relevant. Thing is, its been happening a lot lately.

Now I'm no economic genius. If you'd asked me a couple of months ago, my answers would fall along the lines: Interest rates go down = good, unemployment goes up = bad.

Then I was kidnapped by the Ghost of Administrations Past, who took me on that whirlwind of a tour of recent US presidencies. Besides providing me with some prime blogging material, it led to some serious introspection, after which I came to the obvious conclusion that I was an economic ignoramus. So like a good wonk, I mean, scientist, I set about to remedy that shortcoming. That great popping sound you might have heard emanating from the frozen tundra of Maine - that wasn't the sound of icicles peeling off gutters, but of the rafts of lightbulbs shorting out over my head as reams of charts, graphs, theory, forecasts, and the like collided with the years of historical data and personal experiences already sitting in my brain's hard drive. That was when it began.

My partner wanted to buy a new laptop; all I could think of was hoarding canned goods and filling both 500 gallon tanks with heating oil. While other bloggers were postulating over the meaning of material breach and aluminum tubing, I was fixating on new jobless claims and gasoline prices. I found myself regularly haunting skippy and the few others actually blogging economic news. I reinstalled Excel and mastered colorful graphs forecasting Dubya's economic doom, and then upgraded on Blogspot so I could upload the graphics. My first scan of the NYTimes starts at the business section.

Hello. My name is Cassandra, and I'm an econoholic.

Bush (or maybe just Rove) knows its still the economy (stupid). He's lined up economic advisors around the world to tell the public that the US economy is on the rebound, that "Clinton's" recession is receding, and if you just pass his tax cut for the very wealthy, we'll have jobs, jobs, jobs. And the war? Don't worry about that - in fact, once we control Saddam's oil fields that pesky problem with tight OPEC supplies and high prices - its gonna go right away, and we'll have oil back at $20 a barrel. (Bush is banking on column "Best Case" here)

Problem is, although Bush has been able to keep the lapdog media in line, distracted from the fallout from the recession with the lure of warmongering for almost eighteen months, the depth of the human toll is finally beginning to pry the hands off the ears and eyes of the press. In only the past few days the coverage of poor economic news has increased exponentially. Growth has slowed to 0.7%, jobless claims are up, the stock market down 3%, gasoline up nearly 50%, and consumer confidence at a ten year low. Bush's job performance numbers, on a downward spiral for months, are finally newsworthy. The SOTU speech did not even yield an appropriate bump. The only bright blip on the Administration's radar was the positive public reception of Sec. Powell's UN performance.

In fact, I think it was received just well enough that it sealed the deal for war... but not in mid-March, but mid-February.

With growing anti-war sentiment throughout the country threatening to bleed-over into mainstream America (well, too late as the Maine Senate passed an anti-war resolution yesterday), the Administration needs to take full advantage of the newfound, but tenuous, trust a small majority have voiced after Powell's dog-and-vial show. Consumers, who have been holding the recent anemic recovery together, are beginning to sit out on the sidelines in droves. In a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll over the weekend, "nearly one-quarter of the more than 1,000 adults interviewed said they were cutting back on spending because of the Iraq war threat." Add to that more than half of households which have seen their heating costs increase by 50% this winter, eating into cash which could otherwise be spent on consumer goods. I don't think Bush can afford to wait another month to get oil prices low enough to keep tanks of his supporters SUVs filled for summer roadtrips. Don't think for a minute that he actually worries about Grandma freezing in Vermont.

Valentines and bombs in Baghdad, so sayth Cassandra.

Wonk Heaven

What a find! Well, maybe only for a research geek like me, but if you visit my site regularly, chances are you have wonkish tendencies as well.

DataBuffet.com. On today's menu:

US Chain Store Sales for January
US Jobless Claims for 2/1/2003
UK Monetary Policy Announcement for February
US Productivity and Costs for 2002Q4
US Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report for 1/31/2003

Updates on recent posts:

Ivory Coast

Think we'll see a retraction from Reynolds and his ilk regarding French "unilateralism" in Ivory Coast?

UN council backs Ivory Coast peacekeeping force

Don't hold your breath. (More here as well)

Energy Prices

Gasoline Drives Oil Price Jump Ahead of Powell Speech

NEW YORK (Reuters) - World oil prices rose almost a dollar on Tuesday as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to present the United Nations with the U.S. case for war with Middle East oil power Iraq.

I just called our oil company. Cash price up $.06/gallon since last filled two weeks ago. A look at the checkbook, and its now up $.40 since last March.

The Administration's War on the Poor Continues

Aid to Poor Faces More Scrutiny

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — President Bush's budget proposes new eligibility requirements that would make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain a range of government benefits, from tax credits to school lunches.

Portland joins the ranks.

I watched it happen live on Channel 2 (public access) last night. Portland City Council voted nearly unanimously (one dissenting vote) on an anti-war resolution Monday night, becoming one in a growing list of communities around the country to do so.

The resolution, sponsored by Councilor Karen Geraghty, calls on the Bush administration to give United Nation inspectors additional time and states its opposition to pre-emptive U.S. military action without UN authorization. An amendment offered on the floor by my own Councilor Jim Cohen, added wording supporting the efforts of the US troops whatever should occur over the next few months. Supporters of the resolution emphasized Maine's budget crisis and the threat of destabilization in the Middle East and spurring terrorist attack against the US and its allies.

The overwhelming majority of the comments from the public were in support of the resolution. Only three or four individuals spoke in opposition. And while there were the traditional peace activists voices (which of course one should never take for granted), what was striking was the diversity of the supporters as a whole. There were doctors, lawyers, teachers, business owners, labor leaders, parents. students and even a small child. Former immigrants, civil rights activists and veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Most poignant were the words of veterans from the first Gulf War. This small city of 64,000 individuals, the largest in Northern New England (if you don't count Nashua, which really is part of Massachusetts anyway) sent a message to Washington that its residents wanted a sane and rational foreign policy.

Let's hope the trend continues. Ask your city councilors to do the same. Have them join this growing list.


[note: While impending war wears heavily on most people's minds, I noted last night the level of anxiety over the economy was just as great. I don't think the Administration is going to get a lot of mileage out of a "short war", as Americans recognize that every day we're involved in a billion dollar-a-day conflict is less money to schools and social programs.]

Okay, so sports is not in the list of subjects on the subtitle...sue me

Sunday night we watched the game. Yesterday the headlines read:

UConn unanimous in replacing Duke at No. 1

Now, why a team with 58 straight wins was ever ranked #2 is beyond comprehension in the first place. But their solid trouncing of Duke, 77-65 (at one point the Husky lead was 28) put them back where they belonged, with 100% of the 44 first-place votes from the national media panel which determines all this stuff.

In case you think that this household is one of those who jumps on the winning bandwagon late in the game, let me set you straight. My partner, at our wedding reception seven years ago, snuck off to watch the Huskies play in the NCAA finals. Granted, he was a late convert, since as a Berkeley alum he really didn't understand the power of "the Force" until he moved east to join a matrilocal tribe. But his enthusiasm led me to overlook his earlier heathenish tendencies.

What was rather stunning about the game (besides the talent of the women on the court) was the commentary by the announcers on ESPN. Since I came in a little late, I don't know who exactly was calling the game, but ESPN had two personalities, as usual, the somewhat overbearing older male and a woman with much more of a clue, probably a former player herself. Halfway through the game, the latter began a long and impassioned speech on the merits of Title IX, and how the women playing that night wouldn't be there without it. I was enthralled. Of course, halfway through the male announcer must have gotten the word in his earpiece from higher-ups at ESPN, and he started speaking over her to essentially choke off her editorializing. Funny how political discourse is muzzled even in sports media these days.

My first foray into public political life began at age 14 when I was asked by a classmate to become the spokesperson for a Title IX suit she and a few other girls at my high school were bringing against the district. They wanted a soccer team, and although the boy's had three (freshman, junior varsity and varsity teams), the girls were denied even one. First they were offered a "club", and then when that was rejected (the girls wanted an intermural team), they were told they could play on the boy's freshman or junior varsity teams, "if they made the cut". The boy's teams at our high school were state champions. Only one girl, my good friend who asked me to speak for her, made the team, but was never allowed to play in a game. So they decided to use a newly discovered tool, Title IX. I remember it was an unusually balmy spring evening when the school board met. (How is it that I still remember that nearly 25 years later?) I stood before the board with a packed-to-the-rafters crowd in the elementary school's auditorium, and presented our case. We were denied. The next day, attorneys from the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union contacted us, and the suit was prepared and filed. That was it. We heard about the case sporadically, more from the press than the attorneys. When I was a senior in college, the state supreme court decided in our favor. That was 1986, two years after Grove City v. Bell, which had essentially made our case moot. But in 1988, overriding a Reagan veto, Congress reinforced the original law with the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which mandates that civil rights law applies to all operations of any school that gets federal funds, and my high school, which had added a girl's intermural soccer team a few years before due to overwhelming student demand, never mentioned its loss. And for me, at 24, I was now a veteran activist, my baptism under Title IX propelling me headlong into another worthy cause, the anti-nuclear movement under Reagan.

Its important to note that Title IX is not just about equal access to the basketball court or soccer field. When politicians speak about weakening Title IX rules, they are attempting to open the whole can of gender-equality-in-education worms. Its just another assault on affirmative action by the right, as women, like ethnic minorities, in their mind deserve no special treatment, no leveling of the playing field. Under this Administration, the battles we thought long over and won, may have to be refought again and again.

I'll go off and start coffee this morning with words of Shirley Ann Jackson who in 1999 became president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, my dad's alma mater. (Although RPI had been "co-educational" since the 1940s, my dad's graduating class in 1958 had 8 women.)

Oh, the irony of it all.

You know those few minutes before you fall asleep, when, like bloggers the world around, you think about just what you might want to blog on the next day. Well, last night, as a direct result of living in a bi-lingual household such that I often am left to find LeMonde pulled up on my browser by my Francophone partner, I thought to myself, I really have to blog on recent events in Côte d'Ivoire.

Of course when I awoke this morning, I found myself surfing first rather than writing. At my normal jaunt over to Eschaton, I noted Atrios' link to Tim Dunlop, who had excoriated Glenn Reynolds' off-the-cuff comments on the lack of French coverage of the Columbia loss, insinuating that they did it on purpose because they hate us. Reynolds' wrote:

ANOTHER UPDATE: It's a big deal in India, but not in France:

Just thought you might be interested in knowing that none of the major French channels (TF1, A2, FR3, M6) have, as of this moment, even bothered to interrupt programming to announce the Columbia news. I live in Switzerland and have been zapping back and forth between CNN, MSNBC, BBC and various Swiss, German and French channels. The French apparently haven't noticed yet (or don't care?)

Best regards from Lausanne,

James Wade

Hmm. That's representative, too.

(Insty later provides a half-hearted retraction by noting that some French papers and websites did pick up the story.)

Now, my first reaction when I read Reynolds' remarks was a big, no huge, "DUH!". France currently has 16,000 French citizens at risk in a country a thousand miles away which is going through a complete and utter meltdown. Not only "at risk", but who are presently TARGETS of mass rioting and violence. French troops had to take over the airport at the capital city of Abidjan to prevent a potential massacre of evacuating French nationals, many of whom were women and children. These people were taunted, physically struck, pelted with rocks and had their possessions ripped out of their hands by thousands of angry supporters of the president, Gbagbo, the same supporters who have been indicted in the beatings and murders of hundreds of poor African nationals working in Ivory Coast. So maybe the French are a tad distracted at the moment and while poignant, the loss of an American spacecraft and seven astronauts really might not be sufficient to warrant more than heartfelt condolences in the face of pending disaster elsewhere in Africa.

I was prepared to write off Reynolds' comments as carrying the weight of those of a spoiled child or ignorant clod, but then I stumbled back into the Insty archives of January 29th, when he expounded,

"FRANCE IS BLOWING IT IN ITS NEOCOLONIALIST UNILATERAL ACTION IN AFRICA:

Just when it was reveling, downstage-center, as a marquee player in international discussions on Iraq, France has collided with an African crisis that may more cruelly mark out the limited character of its diplomatic and practical powers.

This reality bites: A French-engineered peace agreement meant to bring to calm to the Ivory Coast after a months-long rebellion - signed here with the trappings of inviolability over the weekend in the presence of President Jacques Chirac and a handy phalanx of plumed Gardes Republicaines - has imploded.

This article is damning. The French military force is called "invisible," the word "neocolonialist" is used, and, most humiliating of all, it says that France was "outfoxed" in the diplomatic negotiations. The Ivory Coast, it suggests, indicates the limits of French power.

Check out the photo accompaning [sic] this article with signs calling Chirac a criminal and boosting the USA. And doesn't it figure that the French have their own Republican Guard.

What's really infuriating about Reynolds' conclusions is that its pretty clear that his understanding of the exceptionally complex Ivory Coast crisis, beyond the dozen or so paragraphs in the IHT and diatribes from other right-wingers on France's supposed "unilateralist intervention" (even though a dozen other African countries have sent troops into Ivory Coast, also at President Gbagbo's request), could probably fit into a thimble. Apparently he's not aware that the Ivory Coast and France have a military co-operation pact dating back to 1962, soon after Ivory Coast threw off French colonialism. Under that pact, France has maintained a military base with upwards of 600 troops (prior to the recent crisis.) The United States maintains similar military bases in countries around the world, including former colonial holdings or occupied lands. Would Reynolds consider it "unilateral intervention" into a foreign country's domestic policy if say, South Korea or Kuwait, dissolved into political chaos, and the troops in those bases were used to guarantee the safety of thousands of American nationals while they evacuated? Can one imagine his stance should the US face another civilian hostage situation like that in Iran twenty-five years ago? Its absolutely amazing that Reynolds bangs the war drums for the invasion of a sovereign country in order to liberate aluminum tubes, but cares not a whit for tens of thousands of civilians fleeing a country in the midst of a bloody civil war. Oh, by the way, Professor, some of those nationals the French forces are protecting are Americans (and English, Japanese, Egyptian, etc., etc., ad nauseam.)

Did I mention that the peace deal brokered by the French is supported by the Bush Administration? And that Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, has agreed to chair a summit of African leaders to enforce the Paris accords? And according to Reuters, some of the crowds for whom Reynolds seems to hold an certain affinity, chanted while calling for Bush's intervention , “We are xenophobes and so what,” referring to the anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner sentiment fomented by Gbagbo and much of the Abidjan political elite since the 2000 elections. That a mass grave of over 100 foreign workers was unearthed in December, victims of a government-sponsored massacre. Ivorian state television has since October opined that "the key to victory over the rebels is to expel all Burkinabe immigrants from Ivory Coast." As I mentioned previously, its a very complicated situation, too much so for this post, but a good synopsis can be found at the BBC's website on the Ivory Coast conflict.

Reynolds, of course, has no time for such trivial matters as facts. As he has admitted, most of his information is now sent to him, as in these two above-mentioned instances. He's certainly betting that the majority of readers have as much a clue as to the reality in West Africa as he does. The current riots only make a blip on Reynolds' radar in so much as they are useful for whipping up anti-French sentiment in response to France's intractability in a UN-approval-stamped Iraqi invasion. Its enough for him to suggest that the anti-French protests by supporters of Gbagbo should be used to discredit the all french foreign policy - or a least that which does not jibe with the Bush Administration's. Oh, and the pro-Bush sentiment expressed by the pro-Gbagbo protesters? Just icing on the cake.

But then, didn't Reynolds make a big deal recently about protesters and the company you keep.....?

Quote of the day:

"Instead of investing sufficiently to protect current Medicaid beneficiaries, [Bush] is 'permitting' states to kick some people off the rolls so others can come on. If that's not shortsighted, then shortsighted has no meaning."

Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), ranking member of the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles Medicaid

Of course, the news is released just in time for the weekend papers...

This is really just so damned depressing...

Medicaid Proposal Would Give States More Say on Costs
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — The Bush administration proposed fundamental changes in Medicaid today that would give states vast new power to reduce, eliminate or increase benefits for millions of low-income people, including many who are elderly or disabled.

The proposal, coming at a time when states face huge deficits, would do away with federal rules that now apply to one-third of all Medicaid recipients and two-thirds of all Medicaid spending.

Essentially, the states would no longer have to cover the disabled, elderly or pregnant women, unless they meet the exceedingly strict current poverty level Medicaid guidelines. Guess Bush wasn't able to get his way with restricting ER access for the poor, so he had to figure out another way to screw 'em.

(Note: One of the reasons this accounts for 2/3s of Medicaid spending is that the bulk of Medicaid "discretionary" expenses, as Bush now considers them, come from providing services for disabled children and adults. Thus, since autism is a neurological disease, all children can have many of their services covered under Medicaid, which is particularly important as most private insurers will not cover (or harshly limit) basic treatments and therapies. Since treatment can cost over $50,000/year, only wealthy parents will be able to afford these services, and many early interventions will slow down to a trickle if states deem the programs too expensive. This is, of course, not limited to individuals with autism. It will effect services for all the disabled, many of whom can no longer afford private insurance coverage. At a time when our national goals should be universal healthcare coverage, this is what we get from our purported leader.)

{Update} The Boston Globe gives a good basic synposis as to how the change will effect Medicaid funding:

The administration's plan would also alter the basic funding structure of the 38-year-old, $250 billion program. Now, every Medicaid dollar spent by the states is matched by the federal government at a rate that ranges from one federal dollar for every state dollar in the richest states to about $3.35 to $1 for the poorest states. There is no limit to the state outlay that Washington will match.

Under the Bush plan, funding for participating states would be limited. The federal payment would be determined by a formula that considered medical inflation. But during rough economic times, when unemployment rises and the number of people without health coverage increases, states could no longer increase their federal Medicaid payment by increasing their own spending.