October 2003 Archives

It's difficult to keep secrets these days, isn't it? Especially if you're a media outlet and the secret relates to a trendy news story. So it should have come as a surprise to no one that Globe has published the name and picture of Kobe Bryant's accuser. I had actually expected it to come out sooner.

The Globe staff went the extra mile in justifying their publication:

Globe editors Jim Lynch and Candace Trunzo defended their decision, saying, "It was appropriate to give our readers the whole story." They declined to comment further.

Of course. Without that picture, checkout-line jurors across America would have been unable to cast their deciding vote in this momentous trial. But now, thanks to Globe, we can rule on Kobe's guilt. What a public service.

Michael Williams hosts the Second Annual Spherewide Short Story Symposium--Halloween Edition.

then we'd know God is punishing recall voters. But since he's a Republican, I'm not sure who's to blame.

This morning C-PAN's Washington Journal featured Ed Schultz, a progressive Fargo, North Dakota radio talk show host whose program is about to be syndicated nationally by Jones Radio.

I don't know the ins and outs of the radio syndication business, but what are the odds his show will be popping up amongst the < sarcasm>diverse< /sarcasm> political spectrum that is Knoxville talk radio? One percent? Two percent?

[For those of you unfamiliar with this market, it's the kind of place where they broadcast taped editions of the conservative favorites they're unable to run at their live times because of conflicts with yet other conservative shows.]

I guess if I ever want a change of pace I'll have to shell out for satellite radio.

A just-released report by The Center for Public Integrity entitled "Windfalls of War" examines the give and take relationship between politically-connected corporations and the U.S. government war machine: corporations contribute campaign funds to office seekers (most notably the Bush/Cheney ticket) and in return get lucrative government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq:

More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. Those companies donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush�a little over $500,000�than to any other politician over the last dozen years, the Center found.

This stems not only from the money link between contractors and politicians, but is also due to the revolving door between the public and private sector:

Nearly 60 percent of the companies had employees or board members who either served in or had close ties to the executive branch for Republican and Democratic administrations, for members of Congress of both parties, or at the highest levels of the military.
. . .
The Center's investigation focused on the three agencies that awarded most of the Iraq and Afghanistan contracts in 2002 and 2003�the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It found that nearly every one of the 10 largest contracts awarded for Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies employing former high-ranking government officials or individuals with close ties to those agencies or Congress.

On its face, this raises plenty of suspicions. But it gets even worse. The contract-awarding process has been so disorganized that apparently no one knows what's going on:

The results of the Center's six-month investigation provide the most comprehensive list to date of American contractors in the two nations that were attacked in Washington's war on terror. Based on the findings, it did not appear that any one government agency knew the total number of contractors or what they were doing. Congressional sources said they hoped such a full picture would emerge from the General Accounting Office, which has begun investigating the postwar contracting process amid allegations of fraud and cronyism.
. . .
Because of inconsistent and scarce information, the total value of contracts awarded for reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan may be greater than what is publicly known. The Center found that there was no uniformity across the government in how contract values were reported. For example, the amount listed for an individual contract either represented only what had been paid to date on a multiyear contract, or a minimum and maximum dollar range of the contract, or, in some instances, a single figure, without any specification as to whether it represented a first payment, a first-year total, or a multiyear total. In some instances, the Center could determine nothing about what a particular contract cost or entailed because neither the company nor the government agency responsible for it would divulge that information.

This all reeks the stench of tax dollar waste. Accordingly, General Accounting Office investigations are underway:

GAO sources told the Center that the agency is conducting two separate probes of contracts awarded for work in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first covers all civilian contracts for Iraq reconstruction involving appropriated funds and stemmed from requests by two Democratic congressmen, who complained of cronyism in the contracting process. That report is expected to be completed in late 2003 or early 2004. A second probe involves a handful of multibillion-dollar, multiyear military contracts that cover work in both countries. The primary focus of that probe will be the Army's LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) contract held by Kellogg, Brown & Root and one held by Johnson Controls Co., which created Readiness Management Support LC to manage AFCAP, the Air Force Contract Augmentation Program. GAO officials estimate the second probe will take about a year to complete.

Given the political connections in play here, one might rightly be skeptical that these will get to the bottom of this matter.

A second solar storm hit earth Thursday. One effect of these flares is an increased level of geomagnetic activity, which produces the northern lights.

I'm probably a night or two late to be doing this, but I just made a trek to the Resonance space observatory (the front yard) and looked for northern lights. No sign of any, though with all the surrounding city lights I might not have seen them anyway.

Did anyone in Volunteer land happen to see any northern lights this week?

For what it's worth, I gather that this NOAA site provides data indicating where viewers are likely to see the aurora. But if you're like me, you may find the information a bit confusing at first glance.

I shouldn't poke too much fun at this. It's for a good cause and I'm not presently in marathon-running shape. But if nothing else, the site name is a bit comical.

I looked at the Diddy training log and it seems to me that he doesn't have enough training recorded to prepare for a marathon. Just speculating on that--I'm a recreational jogger and have never trained for a marathon myself.

Exhibit A on why it's not a good idea to get rumors "news" from Internet message boards.

CNET reports that Gator adware/spyware is changing its name to Claria.

Via Slashdot.

I'm not sure how much to make of former Fox News Channel producer Charlie Reina's letter without further evidence corroborating his claims, but it is an interesting read:

The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")

Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First of all, it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a large extent, "Roger's Revenge" - against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are non-union, with no protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss.
. . .
[t]he roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.

The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq became a constant subject of The Memo. But along with the obvious - information on who is where and what they'll be covering - there have been subtle hints as to the tone of the anchors' copy. For instance, from the March 20th memo: "There is something utterly incomprehensible about Kofi Annan's remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are 'with the Iraqi people.' One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought." Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only "food for thought," but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General's remarks as "utterly incomprehensible"?

The sad truth is, such subtlety is often all it takes to send Fox's newsroom personnel into action - or inaction, as the case may be. One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be "whining" about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital.

These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.

I wonder how much of the Memo is fed directly from the RNC.

Via Eschaton.

My SoCal friend, who I mentioned earlier, has apparently survived the California fires unscathed. But a fire did get close enough to his duplex to prompt him to prepare for evacuation.

This lead him to pose an interesting question: If you only had a few minutes to pack your belongings, what would you take?

Good question--one I haven't given much thought to. I heard that in some instances California evacuees had as little as 10 minutes warning to flee. Presumably, they knew in advance that they might have to leave, but in a worst-case scenario you might not. So it's good to plan accordingly.

If I had 10 minutes to flee the house, I would ideally grab items along the following priorities:

1. Cat.


2. Important personal documents (e.g., birth certificate).
   
   
3. Family photo collection.


4. Financial documents (e.g., bank statements).
   
   
5. Trumpet.


6. Cash.


7. Personal computer files.


8. Research documents.
   


9. Work-related computer files.
   


10. Work-related documents.


11. Clothing.
    

As I said, this is an ideal list. Because as it stands now I couldn't even find all these things in 10 minutes, much less get them out the door. Nonetheless this is an important question to contemplate and plan for, because you never know when disaster might strike.

Apparently real estate investor John Reed is being sued over negative comments he made on fellow real estate guru Russ Whitney's Building Wealth program.

Les Jones has the details.

A usefull rule of thumb to use when assessing claims made by those in this industry: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

. . . is up at a moveable beast.

In honor of Mr. Looking Out for Us, whose tactics this move emulates, here's the ridiculous item of the day:

Donald Luskin had an attorney send a letter to Atrios threatening to take legal action if the latter doesn't remove some allegedly libelous posts and comments from his website. Apparently, Luskin has yet to identify the offending comments; he wants all comments removed.

Suffice it to say this kind of maneuver, even if unsuccessful, has a chilling effect on the blogosphere.

There's already a fair level of commentary up on this, and, I'm sure, plenty more to come.

Perhaps the Bureau of Engraving and Printing should have been making commercials for automated payment machines:

As colorful new $20 bills circulate around the nation, more consumers are finding out that the notes do not work on automated payment machines like those found in self-service checkout counters at grocery stores.

The first calls started coming into the U.S. Treasury Department Bureau of Engraving and Printing two days ago, frustrating government officials who had worked to overcome the vending machine problems that followed the 1998 redesign of the bill.

This time the problem seems to plague mostly automated payment machines � a relatively recent arrival in the industry, the bureau said.
. . .
[M]ore than a year before the new bills were put into circulation, the bureau reached out to the vending machine industry, transit authorities and the gambling industry to help them get ready for the new bills, [spokeswoman for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Dawn] Haley said.

Vending machine manufacturers received test decks of currency to try out on their software and hardware.

But nobody thought about the automated payment machines until the first calls started coming in to the bureau after the new currency was put into circulation.

Ooops.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in killing President Kennedy? ABC News says "yes," and is scheduled to air a special presenting the evidence:

ABC News has conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Kennedy assassination, complete with a computer-generated reconstruction, which irrefutably confirms that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the network said Monday.

A two-hour special on the event is scheduled to air Nov. 20, two days before the 40th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's killing.

"It leaves no room for doubt," said Tom Yellin, executive producer of the special, narrated by Peter Jennings. He called the results of ABC's study "enormously powerful. It's irrefutable."

ABC is going to have to cover a lot of ground in two hours to remove all grounds for doubt, because several questions regarding the Warren Commission report continue to linger.

Via Up for Anything.

Resonance status: no reported cable T.V., computer, or Internet outages.

Atmospheric conditions: mostly sunny; temperatures in the mid 60s; nothing spotted falling from the sky.

Assessment: we seem to be weathering things okay so far.

It's on the way:

A spectacular solar blast headed for Earth, the third-largest recorded, threatens satellites and communications worldwide, astronomers say. Expected at about noon ET today, the blast poses no direct threat to people, as Earth's magnetic field shields the planet's surface from most solar activity.

In the event that Resonance is knocked off the air, seek shelter and check back later. Hopefully I'll be able to restore regular programming shortly.

Shocking:

Q Mr. President, if I may take you back to May 1st when you stood on the USS Lincoln under a huge banner that said, "Mission Accomplished." At that time you declared major combat operations were over, but since that time there have been over 1,000 wounded, many of them amputees who are recovering at Walter Reed, 217 killed in action since that date. Will you acknowledge now that you were premature in making those remarks?

THE PRESIDENT: Nora, I think you ought to look at my speech. I said, Iraq is a dangerous place and we've still got hard work to do, there's still more to be done. And we had just come off a very successful military operation. I was there to thank the troops.

The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way. But my statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there was a lot of dangerous work. And it's proved to be right, it is dangerous in Iraq.

Okay, the Lincoln crew may have physically hung the sign, but that isn't the real question here. The issue is whether the White House endorsed the misleading (or flat-out wrong) message during the staged event.

Reportedly, the White House arranged for "a private vendor to produce the sign." Moreover, according to this article (via Daily Kos), the White House deliberately schemed to incorporate the banner in the photo op address:

The most elaborate � and criticized � White House event so far was Bush�s speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that [White House communications staffer Scott] Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Bush landed in a flight suit and made his early-evening speech.
.
Media strategists noted afterward that Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated colors over Bush�s right shoulder and the ��Mission Accomplished�� banner placed to capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image-makers call ��magic-hour light,�� which cast a golden glow on Bush.

It's kind of funny that Bush is trying to deflect blame now, almost six months after the fact. At the time no one at the White House attempted to revise set the record straight.

Why? Because then they wanted to take credit for the message, and now they don't.

Interesting things are coming from Washington these days.

All the blog reading you wanted, and then some:

• Carnival of the Vanities @ Who Censored Blogger Rabbit?

• Carnival Of The Capitalists @ The Noble Pundit.

• Bonfire of the Vanities @ Wizbang.

Mohammed Odeh Rehaief, who the military credits with providing some assistance in the rescue of famed war hostage Jessica Lynch, visited the latter's hometown on Monday. Unfortunately, Lynch was "unavailable" to see him:

"She has a lot of commitments of time, in terms of rehabilitation. . . . She works very hard at getting better," said attorney Stephen Goodwin, Lynch's spokesman. "She hopes to see him in the future. She's very appreciative for the role he played in her rescue."

Yeah, either that or she's too busy working on her $1 million book and setting up other media engagements. It really takes a lot out of you being a celebrity rehabilitating these days.

Yesterday I wrote on a suspicious change to the robots.txt file at the White House website.

According to 2600 NEWS, this change may merely have been an innocent oversight which occurred as the White House was modifying the website template.

2600 NEWS seems satisfied with the explanation, so I'll take their word on it. I certainly don't have the technical expertise to argue otherwise.

Via The Dead Parrot Society.

I'm a little behind the curve here, but on Sunday I came across the newly-issued $20 bill for the first time.

Like others, I question the justification for the awareness campaign to promote it, which reportedly is costing $32 million. I don't have a problem with the displays in banks and low cost informational materials of that ilk. But I think the more-expensive T.V. advertising is unnecessary. The new design isn't that much different. Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere, you can probably figure out what's going on.

Moreover, as Rob Walker adds, "[T]he bottom line is that pretty much anyone who wants to participate in buying or selling things is going to have a strong motivation for accepting the new $20 bill. That motivation is: You have no choice. Here, finally, is a product that truly sells itself."

Here's a brief update on a court order I wrote on earlier, in which the judge ordered a Mexican-American father to speak to his child in English or face visitation restrictions.

MSNBC:

[A]fter Amador [the father] spoke out about it during a Catholic Charities protest forum Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union in Nebraska threatened legal action, a state senator filed a complaint with a state judicial review committee and a columnist for the Omaha World-Herald opined the judge�s decision shows that �racism is alive and having its brutish way in Omaha.�

�This decision is really ripe for a challenge, because it goes against the law, in my opinion,� said Legal Aid Society attorney Christopher Ho. He cited a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Nebraska law that forbade teaching German in public schools.

Hopefully the judge's discriminatory and unwarranted order will be invalidated soon, one way or another.

Is being (or playing) a dimwitted blonde a marketing boon? This USA Today article suggests that it is for Jessica Simpson:

Simpson is the latest in the "proud" dumb-blonde tradition: She joins such icons as Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Suzanne Somers' Chrissy on Three's Company and Anna Nicole Smith. Carol Channing made a career out of playing a dumb blonde. "I didn't have to be bright," she said in an interview in Ladies Home Journal in 1955 "All I had to do was be blonde."

It's working for Simpson. Last week she met with execs from Chicken of the Sea, who are courting her as a new spokesblonde. The just-wrapped 10-week run of Newlyweds was such a reality-TV hit � the show follows Simpson, 23, and her husband, Nick Lachey, 29 � that a new season started taping Sunday.

The article notes that "men have long equated blondes and dimwittedness with sexiness." True, though as a male I've never completely understood why. Sure the dumb blonde thing is cute and fun for a while, but it quickly gets old.

As I see things, brains enhance beauty. But maybe that's just me.

According to the Financial Times, the outing of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative was as more a shot across the bow of the intelligence community rather than an individualized retaliation at Joseph Wilson:

Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."

The leak was a way to "demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular".

He said that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb.

While the intelligence agencies believe their mission is to provide accurate analysis to the president to aid policy decisions, in the case of Iraq "we had policies that were already adopted and they were looking for those selective pieces of intelligence that would support the policy", Mr Cannistraro said.

Strong words from a man who served on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration.

Since the beginning, I've suspected this Plame episode was part of a larger intelligence battle. Had the White House merely wanted to retaliate Wilson for his role in the Yellowcake controversy, they could have done so directly. But they wanted to intimidate potential whistle blowers: stay in line with the government policy--or else. So that's why they struck Plame--they wanted to highlight the vulnerability of intelligence agents.

This story hasn't got much buzz recently, while the Department of Justice ramps up its leak investigation. But I suspect we're going to hear more intelligence people talking to the media if we don't get answers from the DOJ soon.

I'm wandering into dangerous technical territory. But from what I gather here and here, the White House website recently changed its robots.txt file to disallow external search engine robots, such as Google's, from indexing files in its Iraq-related directories.

Users can still pull up these web pages using the internal White House site search, but this change makes it harder for web surfers to pull up past White House pronouncements on Iraq using the most popular search engines.

Why might the administration be doing this? Jesse Berney:

It's easy enough to understand the reasoning if you look at past White House actions. Earlier this year, the White House revised pages on its website claiming that "combat" was over in Iraq, changing them to say "major combat."

One of the reasons some alert readers noticed the change � and were able to prove it � was that Google had archived the pages before the change occurred. Now that all of the White House pages about Iraq are no longer archived by Google, such historical revisionism will be harder to catch.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation. After all, this White House hardly has a track record in openness, disclosure, and accountability.

Via Calpundit.

It's not a good time for many people:

"California Fires Kill 13, Destroy Homes"

To add insult to injury, authorities suspect arsonists are responsible for this mess.

Long-time Resonance associate B, currently stationed in San Bernardino County, writes:

Waterman Canyon Fire is the one in the story that's obliterated our visibility today. S and I are packing bags getting ready to evacuate if necessary. Hopefully not an issue since it's over 10miles away, but very unnerving nonetheless to walk outside and have soot flying in our eyes. Trying to pack the important papers and a few important belongings away.

Pray for our communities,

B

Let's hope the winds change and firefighters can get things under control soon.

UPDATE: Here's a satellite image of the wildfire area.

The "long, hard slog" continues:

"Strong Explosion Rocks Central Baghdad"

According to reports, there was a series of least three explosions at or around 8:30 a.m. local time. I'm not sure how many there have been in the past 24 hours.

From the archives:

"Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who's a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he's written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

Vice-President Dick Cheney
"Meet the Press"
March 16, 2003

Errr, some of the time:

President Bush is a man of steely discipline, but it appears the commander in chief has not gained complete mastery over his sweet tooth.

In a new book by author Stephen Mansfield, "The Faith of George W. Bush," the following passage appears on page 173: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president."

Seldom reported -- and apparently little observed. When the White House sent out the shared "pool report" of Bush's roundtable interview with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Australia, it became apparent that the president had fallen off the candy wagon.

"And he was relaxed. Very relaxed," was the description. "As a reporter began to ask about the Middle East . . . Mr. Bush popped a butterscotch Lifesaver in his mouth. He smacked the candy as he said: 'Middle East, that's right.' "

I wonder what kind of tasties they may have had aborad the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Via Eschaton.

American intelligence success stories continue to flood in from Iraq. This on the missile attack on Baghdad's Al Rashid Hotel, which killed a U.S. soldier and wounded 17 people:

One official said that the military had specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special precautions had been taken.
. . .
[A] senior military official said, "We knew this was coming." The official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, declined to give details, but said several precautionary security measures could have been taken, including moving Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation out of the hotel, increasing the security alert and increasing patrols around the hotel. None of those things happened, he said.

Sounds like security and organizational coordination is in top form over there.

In fairness, I should note that Paul Bremer has ordered a "full investigation" into the matter, not that it will make much difference for one American now.

Frankly, I don't understand why these dubious government contracts with Halliburton haven't come under wider media scrutiny.

Today's Washington Post has an article on quick, inexpensive tweaks to ease traffic congestion. Some ideas, taken directly from the story:

• Fixing confusing road signs that cause motorists to swerve from lane to lane;

• Making intersections safer for pedestrians so people will feel more comfortable walking instead of driving;

• Crack down on double-parked vehicles that create bottlenecks;

• Remind highway drivers that the left lane is for passing;

• Make it easier for commuters to work at least some days from home;

• Eliminate more street parking on busy thoroughfares during rush hours;

• Retime signals to keep vehicles moving from one green light to the next;

• Add a lane to intersections that back up from cars waiting to turn;

• Fill gaps in sidewalks and bike paths so people can avoid driving a half-mile to the grocery store;

• Invest in longer-lasting pavements so that roads are ripped up less often;

• Having a public education campaign to teach drivers how to keep traffic moving while they merge.

Knoxville doesn't have traffic on a scale remotely close to the nightmare around Washington, D.C. But we do have traffic issues. And, as in metro Washington, the debate on how to address the problem has been dominated by the political clout of those supporting massive highway projects. That's unfortunate, because some of these ideas are viable remedies to ease local commuter pain.

Take, for instance, the last point: an education program to teach drivers how to keep traffic moving. I don't know how effective that would be in practice, but in theory it's a great idea. It really frustrates me every time I get bogged down in traffic crawl only to discover that the apparent cause for the slowdown was a vehicle parked on the side of the road. Why?

Granted, none of the above ideas will ultimately solve the ills of increased traffic volume. But they will help. And they're being drowned out by the clamor of check-writing lobbyists.

According to the TDOT website, there is one good project in the pipeline. Knoxville is slated to have 73 closed circuit television cameras installed along the interstate next spring, which I presume will be part of a webcam system similar to Nashville's. This won't make the traffic tie-ups more enjoyable, but it will make them easier to avoid.

Reading this story on a recently-released study, you're almost left with the impression that two-year olds do their own grocery shopping:

"Study: Toddlers Have Poor Eating Habits"

Even before their second birthday, many American children are developing the same bad eating habits that plague the nation's adults--too much fat, sugar and salt and too few fruits and vegetables.

A new study of more than 3,000 youngsters found significant numbers of infants and toddlers are downing french fries, pizza, candy and soda.

Children aged 1 to 2 years require about 950 calories per day, but the study found that the median intake for that age group is 1,220 calories, � an excess of nearly 30 percent. For those 7 months to 11 months old, the daily caloric surplus was about 20 percent.

Of course "many American children are developing the same bad eating habits that plague the nation's adults" because the adults are establishing the toddlers eating habits, and not the other way around. Anyway, this is more evidence that the American trend toward obesity will continue for the foreseeable future.

I don't plan to watch any of this rehashed Elizabeth Smart stuff on T.V., though I might catch a random snippet while channel surfing. So I'm not interested in the details of this purported fight over the story. Still, this article caught my eye.

Based on past coverage, we can easily accept this:

An unseemly clash for control has erupted among the three major U.S. television networks, Oprah Winfrey and a leading publisher over competing plans to tell the sensational tale of teenage kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart.

But how about this?

The various media outlets have all pledged to treat her story with restraint and dignity. After all, the object of their attention is a 16-year-old girl from Utah who police say was sexually assaulted during nine months in captivity at the hands of a homeless street preacher and his wife.

(Emphasis added.)

Ha! "Restraint and dignity"? Why start now?

I don't understand the public fascination that's driving the demand for this programming. But it's out there. Just glad I have a remote control and lots of channels.

I'm special.

Ed Gillespie, Chairman of the Republican National Committee knew I needed entertainment. So, "in the interest of public affairs," he sent me an e-mail featuring "Democrat Debate Bingo" and a special message.

What a guy. Someone should return the favor:

Ed Gillespie, Chairman, RNC

ChairmanEdGillespie@rnc.org

Yesterday afternoon I took an excursion to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to catch the fall foliage. It was a good day for such a jaunt: it was sunny a majority of the day, the temperature was seasonable, and the traffic wasn't too bad.

I know there's a nostalgic human tendency to romanticize memories of childhood sights and sounds, and I'm trying to make this comparison accordingly. But it sure seems to me that autumn colors in the late 70's and 80's were generally more iridescent and vivid than they have been the past several years. This season it appears many of the leaves are simply drying up and blowing off without much of a visual change. Sure, there are scattered trees garnished with muted fall highlights, but very few of them are ablaze in brilliant color.

The highlight of the trip was a hike up Chimney Tops, one of the park's more popular hiking destinations. Although I've done that trail several times, it's probably been eight years since my last trip. Moreover, yesterday was the first time I've made the trek in the fall. So the hike had a unique feel to it.

The walk up the mountain was a bit taxing, but the atmosphere was quite relaxing. The ridge sheltered the path from the winds, so the woods stood undisturbed. Only the occasional passing hiker and squawking squirrel interrupted the serene silence.

That all changed at the top of the mountain. Even before I reached the crest, I could hear the breeze rustling through a thousand trees. The trail briefly follows the wooded ridge. Then suddenly, rising up in front of you, looms the rocky bald spire of the Chimney Tops.

I initially attempted to climb directly up the inclined, rocky face of the first pinnacle, as I recall doing a number of years ago. But half way up I determined that might not be the easiest route. I stopped to catch my breath and have a look around. I was wearing a tee shirt at the time, and the steady, chilled wind convinced me it was time to break my packed sweatshirt.

After further examining the nearby rock surface, I concluded that it probably wouldn't be difficult for a properly equipped rock climber to continue my present course. But since neither condition held true for me, I backtracked the 50 feet I had climbed and followed a little path which skirted to the right of the rock facade. This lead to a smaller rock face which was much more manageable to climb--it had footholds to grab.

In no time I reached the top. The sign at the trailhead which reads, "The view is worth the climb," is no exaggeration--it is. From the summit one has an unobstructed, 360-degree panoramic view of the valley deep below and the surrounding mountains. The east and southern views are dominated by a single mountain wall. To the west and north, one can see multiple ranges of mountains. And if you look closely through one gap you can see into the distant lowlands of the Tennessee Valley.

Almost directly below you could see cars creeping along Highway 441. Since many leaves had already fallen, you can see more of the road than during the summer. It's notable how slow vehicles appeared to be traveling. But that's exactly the feeling that these awesome ageless peaks evoke; they reduce human significance and accomplishment to a negligible level.

Far overhead circled a small flock of birds. They must have been 1,000 or 2,000 feet above my 4,700 foot elevation. I'm not sure why they fly so high, but they must be one hell of a view up there.

I waited on a protruding rock for at least ten minutes, hoping for the sun to break through the overhead clouds. Its warmth rays would certainly have been welcome, but the primary reason I wanted was so I could get a better picture of the rocks forming the neighboring chimney. The clouds teased me several times, thinning enough so I could make out the sun's location, but they refused to part. At one point the mountain to the east was almost completely bathed in sunlight. But it didn't reach me. And judging from the movement of the clouds, I calculated it would be while before the sun would illuminate on my perch.

By now the chill was starting to get to me. My nose had been running for some time. I noticed that if I blew at just the right angle, I could see my breath. A quick watch check revealed it was time to be moving on, so I reluctantly left my vantage point and climbed down the rocks.

As you might expect, the trip descending the path much quicker than the one up. My party had already headed down the mountain, so I decided to shorten my time even further by jogging, as the rocky path allowed. I was proud of myself for making the two mile descent in just over 30 minutes (counting two photo stops), but today my leg muscles argue running might not have been that great of an idea.

The past several years, I've intentionally avoid going through Pigeon Forge. But on the way home curiosity prompted me to return by that route, since I hadn't driven it in a couple years. What a touristy mess! For those who haven't been there in the past 15 years, the town primarily consists of a several mile strip where the highway is lined with a solid mass of motels, restaurants, manufacturer outlets, antique shops, amusement outfits, and music theaters. Thankfully, I don't have to travel that stretch on a regular basis, for at its worst that traffic might unravel me.

I returned to the familiar road construction barrels of Knoxville just as the sun slipped behind the horizon. Traffic pressed my rear as I slowed at the construction site speed zone. The hurried city interstate traffic had a distinctively different feel than the park sight-seers and the leisurely tourist flow of Pigeon Forge. After a short, autumn mountain retreat, I had arrived back in the hurried friction of urban America.

• "Fox News Declares Bush Winner of 2004 Election" (via Mad Kane).

• The Onion:

  Limbaugh Says Drug Addiction A Remnant Of Clinton Administration
  
  WEST PALM BEACH, FL—Frankly discussing his addiction to painkillers, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience Monday that his abuse of OxyContin was a "remnant of the anything-goes ideology of the Clinton Administration." "Friends, all I can say is 'I told you so,'" said Limbaugh, from an undisclosed drug-treatment facility. "Were it not for Bill Clinton's loose policies on drug offenders and his rampant immorality, I would not have found myself in this predicament." Limbaugh added that he's staying at a rehab center created by the tax-and-spend liberals.

Gregg Easterbrook: "Does Affluence Fuel Spirituality?"

Matthew 19:23-24 N.I.V.:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Hmmm, I wonder which authority to side with on this question.

• Eric Berlin host this week's Carnival of the Vanities.

• Wizbang offers the Bonfire of the Vanities.

• Billmon presents statistical evidence of growing income inequality in America.

• Donald Sensing writes on the compatibility of science with Islam.

If I'm not mistaken, weblogs hosted by Hosting Matters are down for the second time in the past few days. The company isn't exactly setting a reliability benchmark this week.

For what it's worth, this website is hosting by Total Choice Hosting. I'm aware of a couple short outages during the past month, but in general I've enjoyed pretty good service so far. And it's relatively inexpensive. So check it out if you're looking for a hosting company.

I usually don't watch the local news. But last night I had the T.V. on ABC watching the end of Monday Night Football. And since I wanted to find out the weather forecast, I just left it there.

I was a bit startled as the anchor breathlessly dove in with the lead story: Authorities are investigating a possible "terrorist attack" on a water supply affecting hundreds of people camping in the Cherokee National Forest.

"Wow," I thought, "this must be a huge story." Have biological agents been found? From Iraq? Are people being rushed to the hospital? Have any died?

The answer is "no," to all of the above. The dramatic potential terrorist attack in this case turns out to be someone who "jammed rocks and sticks into the reservoir" which supplies the campground.

I call that kind of thing "vandalism." But given the media's need to hype things up for ratings, I guess people throwing rocks into the water must now be viewed as possible terrorists.

You may or may not agree with PETA's political agenda, but I don't think you can fault PETA's effectiveness in attracting attention to its causes. At least not this one.

Perhaps the defendant has courtroom skills I'm unaware of, but I'm guessing this is a bad idea:

Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad won a surprise request Monday to represent himself at trial and he delivered a rambling opening statement in which he spoke about the meaning of truth.

Elsewhere, we have yet another ten commandments case underway (via How Appealing). This part amuses me:

Jon Graham, worship pastor of Barrow's Bethlehem First Baptist Church, said there are no plans for organized support today. But he said his church is encouraging aid for the Barrow legal defense.

"We are trying to raise $250,000," he said. "We're not there, but we have got a lot of folks saying they're thinking about it, praying and deciding how to give."

Think about this solely from an economics standpoint. Let's assume you're someone who has a burden that people read or learn about the ten commandments. Let's say further than you had a $250,000 budget to advance your cause. How would you do it?

I could be wrong, but I'd say you won't get the most bang for your buck using all that money to see that a plaque gets hung in a courthouse somewhere. Imagine, instead, that you use it instead to mail a nice brochure out to people in the county. If you did a mailing at $1 per address, you could reach 250,000 households. Which I suspect is a lot more people than would see any display in the courthouse for a long, long time.

But then this really isn't about teaching people about the ten commandments, is it? It's about a religious political agenda. And therein is the problem.

Got $29.99 to invest? How about purchasing real estate . . . on the moon?

Yes, it's hard to believe, but thanks to the fine folks at the Lunar Embassy, your dream of owning a lunar acre can come true.

For this low price, will you receive: (1) a deed for your tract; (2) a moon map to locate it; (3) a registration card (registration is key step which will enable you to participate in up-coming Moon elections); and (4) mineral rights to your land (in case oil or some mineral is discovered there).

Not pursuaded yet?

The Moon is a symbol of hope, romance, achievement, wonder, and mysticism. There is nothing more symbolic and romantic on Earth one can give to a loved one. When you buy property on the Moon, please enjoy it, because that is what this really is all about. You can look into the night sky and say, "I own a piece of that"!

Don't wait. Join the "over 2,000.000+ people" (sales figure precisely measured to 1/1,000th of a person) who could be your neighbors on the moon--if only there was a way to get there. Satisfaction with your moon acre is guaranteed or your money back.

Via spam.

So says U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, following up on his July comment that the U.S. economy was "coiled like a spring." That's a nice line for the economic cheerleaders, though I suspect most job seekers have yet to feel a bounce from the alleged uncoiling.

But the comments Snow made which will draw the greatest attention are those regarding U.S. interest rates:

AMERICAN interest rates are set to rise over the next few months, one of President Bush�s most senior officials told The Times this weekend.

However, far from being a dampener on the economy, John Snow, the US Treasury Secretary, said that Washington would welcome such a move because it would underline the strength of the country�s growth prospects.
. . .
Asked about the impact of such rapid growth on interest rates, Mr Snow said: �Interest rates are the price of capital. As profits increase, there is going to be a need for a capital-rationing process.

�I�d be frustrated and concerned if there were not some upward movement (in rates).� He rejected the widely held view on Wall Street, that the Fed never raises interest rates before a presidential election. �It is amazing how you get this sort of mythology without any factual backing,� he said.

The article states that Snow "refrained from discussing monetary decisions, which are left to the Federal Reserve Board." But the article is somewhat ambiguous on whether Snow was speaking merely about the direction of interest rates, or also about monetary policy. If the outlook was on the latter, says Brad DeLong, it's misguided for three reasons:

(1) The Federal Reserve might not follow the prediction, leaving the forecaster out on a limb;

(2) If the forecast turns out to be true, it appears as if the Fed isn't truly independent and may be succuming to political pressure; and

(3) The comments might undermine current Fed policy.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the bond market, which has already experienced tremendously volatility over the past several months.

"Woman Sentenced for Intercepting E-Mail":

A judge sentenced an Arizona woman to 60 days home detention for intercepting her husband's ex-wife's e-mail, saying the penalty is a warning to others who might be tempted to do the same.
. . .
Lee pleaded guilty in March and admitted accessing at least 215 e-mails sent last year to her husband's ex-wife, Duongladde Ramsay. Officials said she fraudulently obtained the user name and password information for Ramsay's e-mail account.

The judge considered, but ultimately opted to not sentence Lee to jail time because she has young children to care for at home.

How far back does one have to go to reach what is considered ancient history? One hundred years? Five hundred? One thousand?

If you're talking about the World-Wide Web, it's more like five years. And because it's made of computer files, rather than bricks or parchment, much of it simply vanishes over time as it is replaced by newer files.

Or does it?

If you do a little digging through the Internet Archive, you can find archived versions of stored websites going back to 1996.

So take a nastalgic trip "wayback" to the 90's. And remember cyberspace as it was back in the good old days.

UPDATE: This site really does store interesting stuff. I've uncovered a real blast from the past: my old website from the UT era. Let's hope that that gem is being saved for perpetuity.

MSNBC.com must be pretty proud of itself for this story:

The civilian Blackhawk helicopters deployed in January to help defend the skies over the nation�s capital are on round-the-clock coverage in the wake of an MSNBC.com story that described how the choppers were only providing partial coverage.

If you happen to miss the credit in the story's first sentence, you have three more chances to pick up it in the next three paragraphs.

The funny part is that if you manage to make it to the end of the piece--the writing makes that feat a real chore--you find out that the entire program might not be a very effective security measure:

But some question whether the Blackhawks are needed at all. At the very least, questions about administration of the ADIZ [(Washington) Air Defense Identification Zone] are giving rise to questions about the entire air security complex that has grown up around the capital area.
. . .
"I�m not denying that someone could do some damage with a [general aviation] airplane," [Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association spokesperson Warren] Morningstar said. "But is the potential for that damage and the potential for that risk so great as to require all the procedures that we�ve put into place right now in the Washington area? We�re not convinced that it is," he said.

Oh well, no reason to let those details get in the way of a self-inflicted pat on the back, is there?

There's been quite a bit of recent chatter on whether or not the person(s) who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative will be caught by government investigators.

The easiest way to find out who leaked the information would simply be to ask Robert Novak and the other journalists, if any, who disclosed it to them.

Undoubtedly, any journalist so ordered would assert that he or she did not have to disclose the source because it's protected by a First Amendment "reporter's privilege." That is, the First Amendment interest in aggressive news gathering and dissemination justifies granting reporters the right to keep news sources confidential.

Would a claim of reporter's privilege hold up in the Plame investigation? A ruling by the D.C. District Court earlier this month suggests that it would not. In Dr. Wen Ho Lee v. U.S. Department of Justice the court ruled that Dr. Lee could depose several journalists in order to find out who leaked personal information to them from his Department of Energy files.

Lee is not completely analogous to the Plame situation. But because the latter is a criminal, rather than a civil investigation, an even stronger case might be made that the privilege should be rejected.

Of course the journalists might simply refuse to divulge their sources, regardless of a court order to testify. But the government might Constitutionally have the authority to order such testimony, if it so chooses.

Via The Spy Game.

A couple days ago Kevin Drum asked if we are approaching "the end of work." A subpart to that question might be: Are we approaching the end of manufacturing jobs?

America's ongoing manufacturing employment decline has been largely attributed to advances in technology and foreign competition. But according to a recent report, the trimming of factory payrolls has been a worldwide phenomenon. Even more striking are the job numbers from China, which due to its large trade surplus with America, has been branded a key contributor to American job loss:

According to the analysis, between 1995 and 2002 roughly 22 million jobs were lost globally, a decline of 11 percent. Two million U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost in that period, matching the 11 percent drop. Manufacturing employment in the 17 largest economies other than China fell a little more than 7 percent, to 89 million in 2002 from 96 million in 1995. In contrast, China's fell a whopping 15 percent in the period, to 83 million in 2002 from 98 million in 1995.

I was surprised to China has lost that many jobs, given the competitive advantages it has with a cheap currency and a low wage workforce.

What's the prognosis for manufacturing employment? Not good, says economist Joseph Carson:

"Merely lowering operating costs is not enough for businesses to survive today. Enormous gains in technology have raised the bar on global competitiveness, punishing firms with outmoded facilities regardless of their location," the report continues. "The giant sucking sound being heard today is not just in the U.S., but across the globe.

"We don't see the pressure stopping anytime soon."

Via HobbsOnline A.M.

. . . to Say Uncle, whose "boys can swim."

From Musings of a Philosophical Scrivener:

Up in Heaven, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and Napoleon are looking down on events in Iraq.

Alexander says, "Wow, if I had just one of Bush's armored divisions, I would definitely have conquered India."

Frederick the Great states, "Surely if I only had a few squadrons of Bush's air force I would have won the Seven Years War decisively in a matter of weeks."

There is a long pause as three continue to watch events. Then Napoleon speaks, "And if I only had that Fox News, no one would have ever known that I lost the Russia campaign."

Via Democratic Veteran.

Fletch at A Smoky Mountain Journal has some great photography of fall in the Smokies [dial-up alert: a longish download].

Not only has Fletch compiled some nice pictures, but he's also found the WMDs! I think he should get a cut from the Iraq arms inspector's budget.

Does it seem like you're paying too much at the pump? Sometimes it feels that way here, where gas has recently been in the $1.40-$1.50/gallon range. But it turns out things could be worse. I could be the U.S. government, purchasing gas from a friendly Halliburton station in Iraq:

A Democratic lawmaker yesterday accused Halliburton, the Texas oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, of overcharging the US government for gasoline the firm imports into Iraq.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has a contract with the US Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild Iraq's oil sector, which has included importing gasoline products in short supply to the oil-rich nation.

"Millions of Americans want to help Iraqis but they don't want to be fleeced [by Halliburton]," Representative Henry Waxman of California said at a news conference.

Waxman said Army documents showed that as of Sept. 18, the United States had paid Halliburton $300 million to import about 190 million gallons of gasoline into Iraq. Halliburton charged an average price of $1.59 per gallon, excluding the company's fee of 2 percent to 7 percent, said Waxman.

He said the average wholesale cost of gasoline during that period in the Middle East was about 71 cents a gallon, a figure an oil industry source told Reuters was accurate. That meant Halliburton was charging more than 90 cents a gallon to transport fuel into Iraq from Kuwait.

"When we checked with independent experts to see if this fee was reasonable, they were stunned," said Waxman, saying a reasonable transport cost would be 10 to 25 cents per gallon.

Taking the price at the high end of the range, that works out to be a $0.65/gallon Halliburton surcharge. But hey, I'm sure the service is extra good. Or the former CEO benefits are good. Or something.

Via No More Mister Nice Blog.

On Monday, Rep. George Nethercutt had this to say (via Talking Points Memo):

"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

"It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."

Afterward, Nethercutt reportedly added that "he did not want any more soldiers to be killed"--a good qualifier to add as you're seeking elective office.

Nethercutt is but one of the pro-Iraq war proponents who have engaged in a recent campaign, lead by President Bush, to blame the media for America's faltering support for our Iraq policy:

In one of the television interviews, Bush vented some pique at major television stations and big-city newspapers for focusing as he saw it on the negative.

He referred to such media as a "filter" that he says has given short shrift to what he sees as the administration's accomplishments in Iraq.

"Sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people," Bush told Hearst-Argyle Television, which owns local affiliate stations from coast to coast in the United States.

The crux of this type of complaint against the media is that there are too many bad stories about Iraq, and not enough good ones.

Most people will agree that the media should be presenting a balanced picture of developments in Iraq. And that probably entails more "success" stories on the progress of rebuilding. A primary reason we don't see more of those now is basic economics--the American public isn't very interested in the physical rebuilding of Iraq. Any network that runs extended segments on the restoration of Iraq's power grid is embarking on a ratings free fall.

As for the supposed overemphasis on bad news, is this criticism fair? The negative coverage has had two main themes: American casualties and the cost of occupation/rebuilding. Reporting on government spending has long been a media staple. Although war proponents may object to the questioning of spending on this narrow issue, it's not going to go away--people are always interested in where taxpayer money goes.

What about the casualty coverage? Has that been overblown? I don't think so. As one news analyst recently asked: on which page of the paper should the story of an American being killed go? Page 1 or page 17? I think the answer to that is pretty clear. The Bush administration may want to downplay the shedding of American blood, but it's going to remain in the spotlight.

In short, Bush et al. complain about the filter, and there may something to that. But there are institutional reasons which account for the coverage we see. As much as the administration may not like it, we're going to continue seeing more of the negative than the positive from Iraq.

Looks like not too many people want to mess with the smallpox virus:

Less than a year after President Bush announced a smallpox vaccination plan to protect Americans in the event of a terrorist attack, a fraction of the expected number of health workers have been immunized and the much ballyhooed program is dead in the water.

Federal health officials say they're not ready to declare the program dead, but they readily acknowledge it's ailing.

"The fact is, it's ceased," says Ray Strikas of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "not that anyone's issued an edict to say stop."

The smallpox vaccination program was a central part of the Bush administration's plan to protect the nation against bioterrorist threats in the wake of 9/11.

Predictably, administrators are trying to put a rosy spin on the program's limited acceptance:

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says the plan has accomplished what it set out to do. "We are pleased that the program has inoculated enough first responders and health care workers that could respond should there be an outbreak of smallpox," he says.

But the number of people vaccinated is far less than health officials planned for:

States initially told the CDC that they expected to administer 450,000 doses to health workers who would form response teams ready to care for patients infected with the deadly virus. Though the CDC has shipped 291,400 doses, at last count, 38,549 people had been vaccinated.

The risks of the smallpox vaccine have been fairly-widely known. But I suspect the response rate would have been much higher had we had another domestic terrorist attack since 9/11.

In the grand scheme of things, 38,000 doesn't seem like a whole lot of health care workers. Hopefully we won't have an outbreak which makes it an issue.

. . . is up at Les Jones Blog.

Another example of how absolute rules sometimes lead to absurd results.

Via Jennifer's History and Stuff.

To The Barricades! writes on a strange court ruling where a father is being ordered to speak English as a condition of his visitation rights.

It is important for all Americans to learn English. If a parent is affirmatively preventing his or her child from learning English, one might argue that court intervention is justified on the grounds that it's in the child's best interest.

But according to the story, that doesn't appear to be the case here. The daughter at issue doesn't even know Spanish--her father claims he's trying to teach it to her. Interestingly, the judge is allowing this limited usage, but insists that the father primarily speak English.

How is this order in the child's best interest? Can't she learn both languages, speaking Spanish with her father and English everywhere else? I don't know all the facts in this case, but on its face I fail to see how the judge's imposition into the parent/child relationship is warranted.

. . . is up at Priorities & Frivolities.

For more fun, see this week's Bonfire of the Vanities.

What do you usually think about when you are driving? If you're like me, most of the time you probably think about things unrelated to your transit. When I do dwell on my drive, I usually think about:

(1) The time: I'm often running late;

(2) My speed: I don't want to get a ticket;

(3) Traffic lights: I hate stop lights and often try to time my arrival so I don't have to come to a complete stop at them;

(4) Other drivers: Sometimes it gets a bit scary out there;

(5) Gridlock: On those bad days--why are all these vehicles not moving?

One thing I rarely contemplate is the structural condition of the roads/bridges I'm driving on. But according to a recently-released report by the American Society of Civil Engineers, perhaps I should.

Last month the ASCE released a follow up progress report on its 2001 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, in which it assess the conditions of 12 infrastructure categories, including bridges and roads.

The 2001 Report didn't paint a pretty picture of America's infrastructure. The grades were:

Roads [D+]
Bridges [C]
Transit [C-]
Aviation [D]
Schools [D-]
Drinking Water [D]
Wastewater [D]
Dams [D]
Solid Waste [C+]
Hazardous Waste [D+]
Navigable Waterways [D+]
Energy [D+]

For purposes of the report, a grade of "C" is considered "Mediocre" and a "D" is considered "poor."

Because insufficient time has elapsed to make substantial changes on these large-scale items, the 2003 update does not assign new grades; instead, it offers a current trend assessment. Unfortunately, there's not much headway to report. In each category, the 2003 trend is either "no progress" or "declining."

What's holding progress back? For one thing, the cost of making needed improvements:

In 2001, the estimated cost for infrastructure renewal was $1.3 trillion over a five-year period. Today, that cost has risen to $1.6 trillion over a five-year period.

It will take a multi-tiered effort to overcome this:

[S]olutions to repair our crumbling infrastructure can be addressed through a renewed partnership between citizens, the private sector, and local, state and federal governments, reauthorization of TEA-21, and passage of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act can provide critical funding to repair our transportation and water infrastructure.

The ASCE website also includes individual state reports. For example, the Tennessee report indicates that:

• 24% of Tennessee's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition;

• 43% of Tennessee's urban freeways are congested;

• Driving on roads in need of repair costs Tennessee motorists $505 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs--$121 per motorist;

• Vehicle travel on Tennessee's highways increased by 43% from 1991 to 2001. Tennessee's population grew by 18% between 1990 and 2001;

• The state must invest $1.4 billion over the next 20 years to repair its aging drinking water treatment and distribution systems.

Then there's this nugget:

Tennessee's top-notch roads have been built at the expense of mass transit alternatives with little regard for environmental concerns, a new state report concludes. The result: more congestion, longer commutes and dirtier air. State law requires a long-range plan and that it be updated every two years, which has not happened since 1994. Former Gov. Don Sundquist, who was in office from 1995 until earlier this year, said the idea that mass transit would solve the state's air-quality problem was "a lot of pie-in-the-sky stuff. There's not enough money anywhere to build mass transit systems in the state." TDOT has a $1.5 billion budget. The state has spent less than 1% of available flexible federal funds on alternatives that could help relieve congestion and improve air quality. Vehicle miles traveled in Tennessee have more than tripled in the past three decades. Nashville commuters spent 44 hours sitting in traffic in 2000, compared with 27 hours in 1994. (The Tennessean, 7/25/03)

Congestion? Longer commutes? Dirtier air? Here in Tennessee? < /sarcasm>

Large public works projects like roads and sewer systems are expensive. Consequently, politicians often attempt to delay needed upgrades until the need becomes painfully obvious. It's incumbent on the public to maintain pressure on the government to keep system capacity up with demand. If not, we'll experience inconvenience, headaches, and perhaps even tragedy.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was right; we can expect "untidiness" in Iraq. Especially given that anti-American forces there have had unfettered access to weapons which they are now using to attack American soldiers:

The two most recent suicide bombings here and virtually every other attack on American soldiers and Iraqis were carried out with explosives and mat�riel taken from Saddam Hussein's former weapons dumps, which are much larger than previously estimated and remain, for the most part, unguarded by American troops, allied officials said Monday.

The problem of uncounted and unguarded weapons sites is considerably greater than has previously been stated, a senior allied official said.

The American military now says that Iraq's army had nearly one million tons of weapons and ammunition, which is half again as much as the 650,000 tons that Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Persian Gulf region, estimated only two weeks ago.

In separate interviews, the officials, civilian and military and from different countries, expressed concern about the potential of attackers with access to the weapons dumps to nurture violence and insecurity.

Yes, those explosives can make quite a little mess, can't they?

Tom Gevaert examines how Bill O'Reilly couldn't take what he often dishes out during a recent "Fresh Air" interview.

Meanwhile, The Hamster catches another factually-challanged segment on the "No Spin Zone."

Stephen Roach provides interesting economic analysis.

On growth in China:

The US -- and especially the American consumer -- remains as dominant as ever in providing the major impetus to the demand side of the global economy. But China is now emerging as a powerful force shaping the supply side of the equation. By our estimates, Chinese economic growth accounted for 17.5% of total world GDP growth in 2002, more than four times its 4% share in the global economy (at market exchange rates).

If anything, China�s global impact appears to have increased in 2003. In the first eight months of 2003, industrial output surged 16.5% above the comparable period of 2002 -- well in excess of the 12.6% increase in 2002. Particularly notable has been the outward orientation of China�s vigor -- not just export growth of 32.5% in the first eight months of this year but import gains of 40.6% over the same period; in fact, this year�s surge in Chinese imports looks like it will surpass the 37% increase in 2000 -- heretofore the fastest annual increase of the past decade. Such an import-led growth dynamic is at the heart of China�s increasingly robust linkages to other nations in its supply chain. Of particular importance in this regard is the Chinese-led growth impetus to the Japanese economy. In the first half of this year, our estimates suggest that China�s imports accounted for 83% of Japan�s growth in goods exports -- a key factor behind what appears to be yet another cyclical upturn in the long stagnant Japanese economy. Moreover, in the first half of this year, Chinese import growth also accounted for fully 92% of Taiwan�s export growth, 35% of Korea�s and even 24% of the increase in US goods exports. Courtesy of this Chinese-led impetus to global economic growth, a one-engine world is now starting to look increasingly as if it now has a two-engine growth dynamic.

On a possible slowdown in U.S. economic growth:

Notwithstanding impressive vigor in both the US and Chinese economies, there is good reason to be suspicious of its staying power. In the case of the US, a significant portion of the current growth spurt appears to have borrowed from the future. At least, that�s the verdict that can be taken from what we estimate to have been close to a 25% annualized growth in durable goods consumption in the two middle quarters of 2003 -- the sharpest back-to-back quarterly gains in this category since the early 1970s. With consumer durables now having risen to what we estimate is a record 11.4% share of real GDP in 3Q03, nearly two full percentage points above the 9.5% portion prevailing at the onset of the last recession in early 2001, there�s little reason to believe that the recent surge represents a recouping of long-deferred, or pent-up, demand. Instead, it was probably more of an artificial boost reflecting the impacts of the recent tax cut, aggressive vehicles sales incentives, and the lagged effects of yet another surge of home mortgage refinancing activity. Inasmuch as durables are long-lasting items that are purchased at infrequent intervals, I would conclude that the spending burst of mid-2003 undoubtedly borrowed from gains that would have otherwise occurred in subsequent quarters.

That could be a big deal for the US growth outlook. Surging expenditures on consumer durables accounted for about 2.0 percentage points of annualized real GDP growth, alone, over the past two quarters. To the extent that such an impetus did not reflect the fundamentals of pent-up demand, a payback of like magnitude would not be surprising. Historical experience does, in fact, tell us that�s the norm after any spike in durables spending -- let alone the excessive one of the past two quarters. Since 1960, there have been 16 instances of excessive growth in durable goods consumption (defined as an annualized growth contribution exceeding 1.5 percentage points of real GDP) that contributed, on average, 2.2 percentage points of annualized real GDP growth; in the two quarters that followed, the growth contribution slowed dramatically, on average, to just 0.1 percentage point. To the extent such a payback is likely after the current spending burst, it could act as a sharp depressant on overall demand growth in subsequent quarters. That development, in the context of a lingering jobless recovery, could raise serious questions about the staying power of America�s current cyclical resurgence.

Which, of course, could have political ramifications:

There�s a certain irony in such a possibility. Eager to jump-start the US economy prior to the upcoming presidential election, the Bush Administration focused on front-loaded tax cuts that were designed to have maximum impact in 2004. �Spring-loaded� was the term used by Treasury Secretary John Snow to describe the growth potential of these measures. Well, the White House may have gotten more than it bargained for. The risk, in my view, is that the policy induced stimulus occurred sooner than expected in 2003 -- leaving the US economy having to face the �air-pocket� of a payback in early 2004. Needless to say, that would come during a period of maximum vulnerability insofar as the election cycle is concerned.

Bad timing for Bush, eh?

Via Brad DeLong.

Resonance agrees with Barry's take regarding some of commentary on Rush Limbaugh's woes. I've seen some fairly unsavory remarks myself. Granted, Limbaugh is an over-the-top hypocrite. But one need not stoop to his level to make a point.

Beware of women drivers.

Yesterday, I made a rare family reunion appearance and saw people which, for the most part, I hadn't seen in 5, 10, or even 20 years.

Inevitably, one of the things you first notice when seeing middle-aged people after that kind of an absence is how different (i.e., how much OLDER) they look.

The amazing part is that while everyone else's appearance has changed, mine has remained pretty much the same, right?

Women's golf doesn't get much media attention, especially this time of year. So you may have missed LPGA veteran Jan Stephenson's enlightened comments on the effects of "Asians" on the LPGA Tour:

"Their lack of emotion, their refusal to speak English when they can speak English. They rarely speak," said the Australian golfer in the November issue of Golf magazine.

"This is probably going to get me in trouble, but the Asians are killing our tour," said Stephenson.

"We have two-day pro-ams where people are paying a lot of money to play with us, and they (Asians) say hello and goodbye," Stephenson said.
. . .
"Our tour is predominantly international and the majority are Asian. They've taken it over."

Every time you hear an entire ethnic group of people referred to as if it's an individual, look out--a racist statement is probably ahead. The odds of this approach 100% when used in conjunction with the phrase "taking X over." Here the key word being "they," as if all Asians are working with singular purpose--to kill the tour.

It's unclear from the story where Ms. Stephenson, who has made controversial remarks before, intended to go with this. Does she simply want to ban Asians from the LPGA? Or set a racial quota on the top money winners? That's not going to sell.

The alternative is for Ms. Stephenson to go out and recruit even better non-Asian players who will stem the tide of the so-called Asian Invasion. But what are the odds of that? The Asians are "taking over" because they're better players. And Ms. Stephenson needs to change her worldview accordingly.

President Bush on the virtues of free trade:

Along with economic progress, open trade also helps build democracies and spreads freedom as it reinforces the spirit of liberty by spurring economic and legal reforms. When we promote open trade, we promote both economic and political freedom. Societies that open to commerce will one day open to liberty.

And on the added imperative to have free trade with poor nations:

You know, I am -- I can't wait to make the case, along with Tony Blair, about the need for the world trade in freedom. And for those who want to shut down trade, I say this to them as clearly as I can: You're hurting poor countries. For those who kind of use this opportunity to say the world should become isolationist, they're condemning those who are poor to poverty. And we don't accept it. We don't accept it.

Which, of course, explains our new trade-promoting policy with that rich industrial giant Cuba:

The new measures announced include:

• Strictly enforcing an existing US law forbidding Americans from travelling to Cuba for pleasure


• Cracking down on illegal money transfers


• Imposing controls of shipments to the island


• Aggressive campaign to inform Cubans of safer routes to reach the United States


• Increasing the number of Cuban immigrants in the U.S.


• More US radio, television, satellite and internet broadcasts to break the "information embargo" Mr Castro had imposed on his people

Be that as it may, work on some of these measures is already well underway. Resonance has learned that U.S. officials are in the final stages of drafting a flier to be air dropped over Cuba entitled: "Eighteen Simple Safety Checks to Prepare Your Amphibious Vehicle for International Travel."

Stay tuned for more updates.

Damn Foreigner has moved:

http://www.damnforeigner.com/

The Economist weighs in on the increase in corporate executive pay:

The highest-profile cases of excessive pay, unfortunately, are not isolated exceptions. Bosses' pay has moved inexorably upwards, especially in America. In 1980, the average pay for the CEOs of America's biggest companies was about 40 times that of the average production worker. In 1990, it was about 85 times. Now this ratio is thought to be about 400. Profits of big firms fell last year and shares are still well down on their record high, but the average remuneration of the heads of America's companies rose by over 6%.

What accounts for this? Overly-optimistic expectations are one factor:

The pay-setting process is characterised by what has come to be known as the Lake Wobegon effect, after the novel �Lake Wobegon Days� by Garrison Keillor. All Lake Wobegon's children are said to be �above average�. Most boards appointing a new chief executive will seek the advice of a pay consultant, who will tell them the going rate. The trouble is, no board wants to pay the average for the job. The above-average candidate which directors have just selected as CEO, they invariably reason, deserves more. And so bosses' pay spirals upwards.

Can this madness be stopped? Yes, says The Economist, by the shareholders:

If shareholders want to break this mould they need to be far more diligent. Greater transparency about executives' pay will undoubtedly help, and moves in that direction in both America and Europe are to be welcomed. And yet shareholders must also exercise more say in choosing genuinely independent directors to select and monitor the CEO. Few public companies today in either America or Europe have a majority of independent directors. This week, America's Securities and Exchange Commission took steps in the right direction by proposing an increase in the power of shareholders to nominate and appoint directors. Once they have these powers, shareholders should make use of them.

Sounds good in theory, but in practice it's a different matter.

This past Monday I attended a lecture by securities attorney John Latham. One of the interesting points he made was that given the rise in shareholder lawsuits and increased liability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, people may now be more wary of serving on the boards of multiple corporations. I'm not sure if this development will make it easier for shareholders will elect "independent" directors, but it may have some impact on corporate boards.

From the Resonance Asian News Division:

• A Goldman Sachs study predicts the economic output of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will surpass that of the G6 (G7-Canada) within 40 years.

• Some of this growth will come at the expense of America jobs, if Intel chairman Andy Grove is correct. Grove warns

that India's software and technology-service job market could grow larger than the same market in the United States by 2010, because America continues to send work overseas at an alarming rate.
. . .

The two key drivers of the U.S. economy the last 20 years -- tech and services -- could face a fate similar to that of the U.S. steel industry, which had 90% of the world's market share before falling to 10% and never recovering, Grove points out. In a more recent example, the nation's 90% share of the world's computer chip market fell to 50% in the 1980s after Japan took advantage of weaknesses in U.S. strategy. Today, most computer chip manufacturing remains overseas.

Buttressing his argument, Grove reminded that the U.S. economy is improving, but the tech job market is not, as hundreds of thousands of jobs have gone to other countries the past two years, and millions are expected to exodus during the next 10. One in 10 jobs at U.S. information technology vendors is expected to move offshore by next year, according to the Gartner Group and the Post.

• In China, excitement is mounting for the country's first manned space expedition.

Eugene Volokh blogs on this letter sent to Senator Feinstein urging her to strengthen laws against some types of assault weapons. For some reason Professor Volokh leads his post with "National Organization for Women wants to ban about half of all handguns," even though NOW was one of 40 or so groups to sign it. I guess NOW gets more of a rise out of readers than New Mexico Voices for Children.

Anyway, I was scanning the list when I came across an organization I'm unfamiliar with: the American Association of Suicidology. Unfortunately, their web site is presently down, so I can't get any further than what Google offers. Apparently, as the name suggests, it's a group that "promotes suicide prevention and a better understanding of suicidal people."

Presumably this organization is involved in a gun issue because guns are used in suicides. But what about this legislation? Even if they are successful, is prohibiting assualt weapons really going to have a notable impact on the number of suicides? To one contemplating suicide, does it make a tremendous difference which type of gun he or she may have available? Is there a class of people who will attempt suicide only if they get their hands on an "assault" weapon? Could the availability of a semiautomatic versus a non-semiautomatic weapon be the dispositive factor in a number of self-inflicted deaths?

I doubt it.

Even as the stench from the priest scandals lingers, word comes of another Catholic sex-related outrage:

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to the HIV virus.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

I understand the church's opposition to birth control, but can't they promote that belief on moral grounds. Do they need to make dubious scientific claims?

The [World Health] organisation says "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90%. There may be breakage or slippage of condoms - but not, the WHO says, holes through which the virus can pass.

In some African areas as many as 20% of the people have the HIV virus, and unprotected sex can be deadly. Therefore, can't the church at least be scientifically honest and not offer counsel which may unnecessarily risk human life?

Via Lean Left.

From one government propaganda outfit to another:

Almost all of the bureaucrats at the [Iraqi] information ministry have done very nicely for themselves since the war. The government minders who spent their days reporting to the intelligence services on foreign reporters or doing their best to obstruct their work have gone on to well-paid jobs - for the same foreign news organisations they once hounded.

The second-in-command at the information ministry, who spent his days reading the reports the minders wrote about visiting foreign journalists, has been employed by Fox News.

It's nice when you can move from one job to another, yet maintain a familiar work environment.

Kevin Drum translates GOPspeak in the Texas Republican Party platform.

One of the interesting aspects of the media's coverage of national political party conventions is how much of it is devoted to speeches and cosmetic issues, and how little of it is devoted to what the party powers really want to accomplish.

You see a number of the GOP's objectives at CalPundit; it's not a pretty sight.

. . . to its new home:

When the Liberty Bell begins its slow journey at dawn Thursday, it will be moving from Market Street to a new home only 100 yards away in the new Liberty Bell Center.
. . .
"It's moving a few hundred feet geographically," said Gary Nash, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, "and a few hundred miles conceptually."

The move is part of a continuing $300 million redesign of Independence Mall, under way for more than a decade. The Gateway Visitor Center at Sixth and Market and the National Constitution Center on Arch Street, also part of the redesign, have been completed.

I visited the new Independence Visitor Centor last summer and it's really nice. I imagine a visit to the Mall would be even better now.

I'm not aware that Tennessee has a state pledge of allegiance. If this is a representative example of how they go, that's probably a good thing.

As if the pledge itself weren't bad enough, Texas schoolchildren are apparently required to recite it daily. Yikes.

From MichaelSavage.Com:

Arnold Kennedy Wins!

In a surprising return from his grave, JFK was spliced onto Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The victory celebration was a return to Camelot. No prominent Republicans were introduced nor mentioned; only the Shrivers and Kennedys. This leads this observer to think Arnold Kennedy is a front man for the old line establishment Democrat Party USA, sent in to wrest the Democrat Party back from the brink of disaster.

Davis and Bustamante had hijacked the mainstream Democrat Party and ran it over the cliff. Internal Power struggle resulted in victory for old line mainline Democrats in Republican clothing. Only time will tell, but this observer believes Arnold will not enact any measures to stop the flood of illegal aliens, the outflow of business, and the penetration of deviancy into our schools.

Tune Into the Savage Nation over the coming weeks and months to find out.

One of the many strange twists of California's Re-Decision 2003 was how readily some of the "conservative" mouthpieces jumped on board the Schwarzenegger bandwagon once he entered the race.

If a candidate with Schwarzenegger's exact same policy positions had run as a Democrat in any other race, these same talking heads would be bashing his liberalism at every turn. I imagine if you line up Schwarzenegger's positions and compare them with those of President Clinton, you'd see a lot of common ground--and they've both got matching women issues to boot!

But because Schwarzenegger was an electable Republican, none of that stuff mattered. The violence Schwarzenegger promoted in Hollywood movies? No big deal. Pro-choice policy? So what. Special rights for homosexual couples? Whatever. Pro-gun control? Yawn. Groping allegations? Enough already.

What a difference party affiliation can make.

For all the talk of corporate profits, productivity growth, and higher capital spending, we have yet to see signs of an economic recovery in the job market.

We're now 22 months out from the technical end of the last recession. Over the past 50 years, the average growth in number of nonfarm payrolls (jobs) during a comparable period is 5.2%. The change during the current "recovery": -0.9%.

Over the past year I've listened to many "experts" try to make sense of what's going on in the economy. I'm still waiting for a good explanation.

South Knox Bubba has letters from a few of what I presume are many national guard reservists in Iraq who are unsatisfied with the way they've been treated lately.

Extended deployments in a distant, hostile envirnoment under dubious circumstances aren't sitting too well with some volunteers.

. . . is up at Dancing with Dogs.

The U.S. "strong dollar" policy continues to work its magic:

The dollar faced renewed downward pressure on Tuesday, falling to fresh three-year lows against the yen and within sight of record lows against the euro, amid mounting concern over the scale of the US current account deficit.

Economists believe stronger US growth will not prevent the slide in the dollar, since it would lead to a further widening of the current account deficit, expected to reach $570bn this year.

The dollar dropped below Y110 for the first time in three years, prompting market reports that a subsequent rally was the result of further intervention by the Bank of Japan.

The dollar also hit a seven-year low against the Canadian dollar.

While this trend may provide a short-term boon for U.S. exporters, it can't be sustained indefinitely. At some point, foreign intervention won't cover for America's growing trade and governmental deficits. And then we're going to have problems on both sides of the oceans.

What kind of music might you be hearing more of in restaurants?

Classical :

Researchers found that classical music, often associated with affluence, was the most successful in encouraging people to part with their cash, with diners spending more than �24 ($40) a head.

But when the music was Britney Spears, diners spent less than �22 ($36.75) a head, they found.

With no background music, spending fell to around �21 ($35).

Now if they can only determine which type of classical music makes patrons feel least overweight. . . .

Be careful what you publicly wish for:

Kendel Ehrlich, wife of the state's Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, had been criticizing what she views as the entertainment industry's negative influence on youth, during a domestic violence prevention conference last week in the city of Frederick.

"Really, if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would," Ehrlich laughingly told the audience, accusing the 21-year-old Grammy Award-nominated singer of exaggerating the importance of sex for young girls.

Shoot Britney?

My.

I thought this race-driven eyesore would fade away into Internet obscurity. But apparently not.

CalPundit notes that President Bush's new campaign weblog links to his I'm-compassionate-because-I mingle-with-black-people photo album. Guess they're pretty proud of their photo ops.

It's looking more and more like the rock band Hell on Earth's claim that they would feature a suicide of a terminally ill person at a concert and broadcast it over the Internet was a hoax.

The only thing clear at this point is that the webcast of the a suicide did not take place, because the site was attacked and/or overwhelmed by traffic. (The site was reportedly being bombarded with 800 hits per second, which suggests a lot of people are comfortable watching that kind of thing.)

As for the other details, there's been conflicting reports as to whether or not:

there was an actual concert on Saturday;

there was a suicide Saturday in conjunction with the concert; and

if there will be another concert next week, possibly including a suicide.

This confusion casts suspicion on the story. The entire episode smells of a ploy to generate media buzz.

Billy Tourtelot, the group's leader, claimed that the suicide had been planned in accordance with the victim's wishes to promote the cause of assisted suicide. A public spectacle like this would have done just the opposite. So hopefully this whole thing was just a bluff.

An article in Saturday's Philadelphia Inquirer details some good news in Kirkuk, Iraq. For one thing, American soldiers are mingling quite freely with the natives:

Yet even as they were hunting enemies, commanders in Kirkuk also did something unheard of in most of the rest of Iraq: They assigned soldiers to live in houses in the city. Three rifle companies of paratroopers live in former Baathist-owned mansions.

The houses are fortified with sandbags and concertina wire, but they are within shouting distance of neighbors, who regularly bring meals. At C Company's house the other day, soldiers played soccer with an Iraqi police team (the Iraqis won, 1-0) and then hosted a barbecue.

The 173d has seen its share of hostilities, in part because it also patrols Sunni Arab towns south of Kirkuk. Last week, in a rare attack in Kirkuk itself, the brigade lost its second soldier killed in action - two others were wounded - when a convoy was ambushed by guerrillas firing rocket-propelled grenades.

Still, soldiers of the 173d regularly eat and shop in local establishments and interact with residents.

By and large that's good. The thing I wonder about though is the safety of the troops. Given all the attacks on Americans, I think we've been fortunate that the deadly attacks "only" claim one or two victims at a time. I'm a bit surprised that we haven't seen a larger-scale suicide attack which kills five, ten, or, heaven forbid, dozens (see Beirut).

I had imagined that troops were quartered in heavily fortified compounds, but that's not the case. Commanders are engaged in a balancing act weighing security versus accessibility. In Iraq, being more open sometimes improves effectiveness:

"[T]the risk brings rewards, said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, who commands the Second Battalion, 503d Infantry, which lives in the city. Soldiers know their neighborhoods intimately and regularly get good tips about potential problems.
. . .
"I just don't understand how you could hold yourself out as doing nation-building and not live among the people," Caraccilo said.

Let's hope success doesn't cause the soldiers to get too comfy and let their guard down. It only takes one deranged bomber to do a lot of harm.

It seemed like another normal day. Hanadi, an attractive, 29-year-old lawyer set out like on Saturday like any other day. Only she didn't go to the office this day. She went to the restaurant instead. And blew herself up, killing 19 people.

Why? Because she had witnessed Israeli troops kill her brother and cousin in June.

Regardless of how much high-browed rhetoric politicans offer on freedom and the end of terror, will there ever be any peace so long as violence remains public policy and revenge controls the human heart?

I received a handout which lists a few interesting statistics on poverty in Knoxville/Knox County.  I'm unsure of the source, but have no reason to doubt them:

• 12.3% of county residents live below the poverty level (for a family of four defined as an income of $18,100 or less).

• 21% of city residents live in poverty.

• 19.9% of county children live in poverty.

• 13.3% of country elderly live in poverty.

• 36.4% of employed county residents make less than $9.50/hour (the "livable" wage in this community).

• Of those living in poverty, the largest demographic group are adult females (36.5% of the total).

It's unfortunate that so many people are struggling, particularly since that includes one out of five children.  Unfortunately, with the employment market as it is, I don't see much improvement in these numbers anytime soon.

This New York Times story examines how the Bush administration overstated the capacity of the Iraqi oil fields to generate sufficient revenue to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq:

Bush administration officials announced earlier this year that Iraq's oil revenues would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year, which added to the impression that the aftermath of the war would place a minimal burden on the United States. Mr. Bremer now estimates that Iraq's total oil revenues from the last half of 2003 to 2005 will amount to $35 billion, running at a rate of about $14 billion a year.

These claims came despite the existence of a specially-commissioned "book-length report" by the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group "that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent."

Exaggerated claims in the face of contrary pre-war intelligence. Does that sound familiar?

With respect to locating weapons of mass destruction, intelligence analysts had clear challenges which lent a little leeway to debate their findings. The components for biological weapons, for example, are small and can be easily transported. So there was a little room to argue their conclusions one way or the other.

But what grounds are there to ignore intelligence on Iraq's oil capacity? Did the Bush administration think Saddam ran a systematic program to conceal the decrepit condition of his oil wells and pipelines? That Saddam erected false derricks to deceive the world into thinking he was producing more oil? The true condition of Iraq's oil industry should have been ascertainable for those who wanted to get at the truth.

The more of this type thing I read, the more I'm convinced that the Bush administration's pre-war rhetoric was crafted primarily to sell a war, not to present an honest picture of the reality of things in Iraq.

Brian Flemming lays out the extensive chronology of President Bush's efforts to uncover who leaked Valerie Plum's identity to the media.

Via Billmon.

Another suicide bombing:

At least 19 people were killed yesterday when a woman walked into a beachfront restaurant crowded with families in Haifa, on Israel's north coast, and detonated explosives strapped to her body. Among the dead were at least three children.

And the familiar response:

Israeli gunships have fired at least two missiles at Palestinian targets in Gaza City and several more at a refugee camp. There is no word of any casualties but two houses were damaged.

The air strikes came hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber from the West Bank blew herself up in a crowded restaurant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing at least 19 and wounding up to 55 others.

I'm pretty sure I understand the motives and targeting of the suicide bombers--they just look for soft targets where they can render maximum physical and psychological damage.

But what of these Israeli strikes? What's behind their targeting? They are categorically described as retaliatory strikes, but retaliation against who? Surely the Israelis cannot, in the span of a few hours, identify and locate the players directly responsible for the immediate bombing. So how do they single out the people they target? Do they have a list of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members which they check off whenever they want to retaliate for a bombing? If that's the case it seems they might not wait until another attack to move against the suspected militants.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the right of privacy extends to blood samples:

A federal appeals court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a 2000 law that requires federal prisoners or those on supervised release to give blood samples for the FBI's DNA databank.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the first federal appeals court to address the federal DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act, said requiring convicts to give blood for a criminal database is a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches.

On its face, this appears to be a good ruling. Although this kind of issue hasn't gotten much media play, it's growing increasingly important as our ability to gather and store data from human tissue continues to grow.

Several months ago quite a few men in Louisiana submitted DNA samples in conjunction with an ongoing murderer investigation. After a suspect was caught, there was a dispute as to whether the government could keep these samples. Does anyone know how or if that controversy has been resolved?

Via Say Uncle.

The Knoxville News Sentinel has an article on Rush Limbaughtomy's coverage of Limbaugh's fall from ESPN:

Rush Limbaugh's verbal fumble is proving to be an online touchdown for Knoxville resident Barry Bozeman.

Bozeman, 57, operates a parody weblog on the Internet about the controversial commentator.

And you can probably guess Bozeman's political persuasion by the name of his Web page - rushlimbaughtomy.blogspot.com.

In generally conservative East Tennessee, it may come as a surprise that Knoxville is home to a "Dittohead Recovery Zone," as Bozeman calls his page. "I'm really just interested in hacking them off," Bozeman said Thursday of Limbaugh followers, the self-described Dittoheads.

Some good publicity. But Barry, where did this come from?

"One of the biggest problems with liberals is we are too tolerant," he said.

Isn't that one of the hallmarks of being liberal?

FYI, any media members wanting to run exclusive stories on this weblog can contact me at the e-mail address in the upper right corner!

First, the groping accusations, now this:

ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.

Asked who his heroes are, he answered, "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

He is quoted as saying he wished he could have an experience, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say.

That last sentiment isn't a mindset I like to see in potential government leaders.

I'm no Schwarzenegger supporter, but the timing of the release of these stories on the eve of the election is suspicious--it's almost as if by design.

On the other hand, the abbreviated nature of this campaign season really helps Schwarzenegger, as he's able to maintain considerable support on name recognition alone by avoiding the pitfalls and scrutiny of a long campaign. So I guess it cuts both ways.

Whatever the case, I'll be happy when the recall circus is over. The unending coverage is growing wearisome.

This type of headline presents a possible explanation into why Senator Bob Graham's presidential campaign never got anywhere:

Graham Tells Colleague He's Out, but Campaign Aides Says He Remains in Race for President.

It always helps to be on the same page.

Nothing against Graham, but it's time to start whittling down the field and this looks to be the first step. A debate among ten people isn't a helpful exercise in trying to sort through the field.

Graham's support numbers are so small that this, if true, won't prove to be a notable boost to any of the remaining contenders.

UPDATE: This story says Graham is still in and merely rethinking his strategy and staff composition. As confused as things appear there, that's probably a good idea

Rex Blog

Straight White Guy

Welcome.

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls of all ages.

I present to you a snapshot of life in the Volunteer Blogosphere:

• Newsrack Blog 


• "Virtues of their own? Eugene Genovese and the Slaveholding South"

A long post about a review by Eugene Genovese of "America's God", Genovese's own career, strict constructionism, and 19th century Christian doctrines about slavery.

• "CIA Request for Wilson Leak Investigation: What Took So Long?"

Maybe a weak case? I don't know. But if the case isn't weak, let the chips fall where they may, of course.

• Sugarfused


• "Cuffed"

My participation in raising money for the American Heart Association.

• Shots Across The Bow

• "Another Daughter"

Another daughter post.

• Journal of GMontag

• "Italian Blackout Has Ties to US Blackout"

The blackout across Italy yesterday shares a common theme with the recent USA blackout: the French.

• "The Great Blackout Picture Hoax"

The image at john.hoke.org looks a little fishy. The "blackout area" is darker than the Atlantic Ocean to the East. I'd expect it to look more like the dark parts of thinly-settled Canada, to the North.

• Big Stupid Tommy

• "The Dog Show"
  

My thoughts on my first Dog Show, which I attended with friends this past weekend.

• Missives Anonymous

• "Owl Accident"

Despite my emotional trauma, a lot of people have been getting a kick out of my hitting-an-owl-with-my-car experience.

• Say Uncle

• "Gun Article from across the Pond"

A report on the number of guns in Africa

• "Heart to Heart"

A frightening and sobering physical experience.

• Dingbust

• "Limbaugh's on the List"

A post about Rush Limbaugh--and the list I've started with his name.

• Rebel Yell

• "Vacation Bits and Pieces"

I'm trying to get back into the swing after a vacation . . . this post is preparatory to the "Vacation Sum-Up" that is coming in a few days. I am also in the process of changing jobs. And I care nothing for J-Lo, whoever she is . . . I don't think I'd recognize her picture.

• Up For Anything

• "Rush to Judgment"

Rush Limbaugh chose the wrong target for his first attempt at social commentary on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. For a man who claims to be right 98.6%, it won't be difficult for me to prove how wrong he really is.

• "The Hypocrites, the Coward and the Panderers"

A follow up to my first Rush Limbaugh post (following Limbaugh's resignation).

• Damn Foreigner

• "The Fake Candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger"

Arnold is using his celebrity to exempt himself from scrutiny en route to becoming governor.

• Rush Limbaughtomy

• "Rush Limbo Mumbo Jumbo plays the Race Card"

Will Rush go the way of Jimmy the Greek Snyder and Al Campanis for his racial remarks about Donovan McNabb on Sunday's ESPN NFL Countdown?

• "Limbaugh Resigns"

A Rush Update.

• South Knox Bubba

• "The Numbers Are In. . . ."

Notes on the Knoxville election results.

• Wandering Hillbilly

• "life of buddy don, chaptur 58: rondayvu with the fat chicks"

tiz a story set in the summer of 1976, a simpler time when cb radios were the craze. its called "rondayvu with the fat chicks."

• Les Jones Blog

• "Tennessee Handgun Carry Permits, Part 1

A look at the process of obtaining a handgun carry permit in Tennessee.

• Hypotheses Non Fingo

• "Isabel Update"

The Chincoteague ponies survived Isabel without any human intervention, but the coast of the Carolinas was changed forever.

• "Conservatives in Academia"

Conservative professors in the humanities often have to deal with a heavily left-leaning environment, but that's not necessarily the case for us in the physical sciences. Still, you'll find a dominance of overt liberals at some research institutions like NASA, while conservatives stay in the closet.

• Hatamaran

• "Bad Western Night . . ."

Hatamaran dreams of John Wayne's new CD, but her husband out-does her by dreaming of being the grand marshal of the liquor hall at the Best Western. She ends her daily diatribe with a rant on health insurance.

• Mr. Mike's Rumpus Room O' Science

• "The Living Wage Comes To Memphis" (Permalink may not work).

Observations on an effort to increase the minimum wage for some workers in Memphis

• Damn Art Diary

• "Penis the Hutt"

A discussion of the sexual undertones of Jabba the Hutt's court in "Return of the Jedi." Includes some original artwork.

• Granny Rant

• "Mother's of American GIs Still Mailing Packages, but the Contents Differ Wildly from Previous Conflicts"

Some are sick of Bush, some are sick of lies, some are sick of the awesome amount of money they want from our pockets. . . . Granny is sick of the Pentagon and the U. S. Military abusing our troops.

• One Hand Clapping

• "How to Tell Whether the Iraqi WMD-Smuggling Story is Legit: Kuwaitis Intercept Iraqi WMD Smuggling--If Legit, This is a Major Development. If."

Report: Kuwait has intercepted chemical and bio-weapons being smuggled from Iraq to Europe. How administration officials respond to the report will signal the story's legitimacy, even if the initial responses say nothing substantial.

• Life in Queen Medb's Castle

• "Boonie Hats and Chocolate"

Beginning the adventures of our vacation. . . .

• A Moveable Beast

• "Fall Cleaning"

About a Joni Mitchell song, time, and Hefty contractor-grade trash bags.

• agroves

• "Before"

Pre-Knoxville election predictions which were mostly within 1 to 2 points of the final tally.

• "After"

Post-election commentary

• HobbsOnline

• "I Really Am Apolitical in All of This"

Deconstructs former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's claim to be "apolitical" on the issue of going to war with Iraq. Extensive links to evidence that Wilson is, in fact, a highly partisan left-wing anti-war attack dog.

• "The 'Apolitical' Ambassador at the Heart of the Plame Affair"

A follow-up to the first post about the "apolitical" Joe Wilson, with extensive transcribed excerpts of a speech he gave in which he outlines a truly wingnut conspiracy theory alleging the Bush administration will start another war in 2004 to help Bush get re-elected. Links to the audio of the speech.

• "Should the Journalists Talk?"

A discussion of whether the six reporters who know the identity of the alleged leaker who "outed" the allegedly covert CIA agent should reveal the name of the leaker--and why a weird mix of "journalism ethics" and media rivalry will play a role in deciding when and how the reporters tell what they know.

• "Do Journalistic 'Ethics' Require Protecting a Criminal?"

A follow up to "Should the Journalists Talk?" in which I suggest that the reporters should voluntarily reveal the name of the leaker sooner than later, in order to spare the nation from a prolonged scandal probe, and because it is ludicrous to assert that journalism ethics require or allow journalists to harbor felons.

• "Media Bias On Display in Iraq Coverage"

Focuses on NYT Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns' explosive charges about competitors cozying up to Saddam. Lots of links.

Thanks to everyone who participated. The next Volunteer Tailgate Party will be hosted at Les Jones Blog.

No small irony here:

The home telephone numbers of 11 top executives of the Direct Marketing Association - which has waged a bitter court battle to kill a federal no-call list - are on the new registry, which would make them off-limits to those annoying sales calls.

The Courant found the DMA employees, and top executives from two large telemarketing companies, among the 50 million numbers on the Federal Trade Commission's anti-telemarketing do-not-call list.

The DMA executives, some of whom admit they signed up to protect their own privacy, did so even as their organization waged a legal campaign to prevent federal regulators from blocking telemarketers' calls to millions of other Americans.

Ha! You'd think when caught, the executives would simply fess up, but at least one simply dug his hole even deeper:

Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's chief spokesman during the recent court battles, confirmed that his home number is on the FTC's list. But he insisted that he did not register, and he said he does not believe that his wife signed up either.

"Somebody is obviously trying to embarrass me," Cerasale said. "This is one of the reasons we've been against the Internet sign-up. Anybody could put your number on the list. I don't know if the FTC has controls on this."

Hours after Cerasale spoke to The Courant, a different DMA spokesman called the paper with another explanation.

Louis Mastria said some telemarketing industry insiders have put their home numbers on the list as an experiment, so they can judge for themselves whether it makes any "perceptible difference" in the number of sales calls they receive.

Right.

It doesn't bode well for an industry when it's own leaders implicitly concede that it's practices are annoying.

Yesterday Bill Haslam was elected Knoxville's new mayor over Madeline Rogero by a relatively close 15,370 to 13,684 margin. The victory came in no small part thanks to this:

As of Sept. 15, Haslam had raised $578,571 - nearly four times the $155,700 Rogero raised. About half his contributions came from well-heeled business leaders and their families, while the other half came from more than 2,000 donors who gave smaller amounts.

For his part, Haslam gives credit to his grassroots campaign, which knocked down many Knoxvillian doors. By my calculations, Haslam received 0.77 votes for each alleged door his campaign struck. I have no door knocking data to assess whether that's a good ratio or not.

Haslam says, "It's Knoxville's time." Let's hope so. There's a lot of untapped potential here.

As for me, I'll be looking forward to those new bikeways.

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