Month: June 2007

Republicans Piss Away Hispanic vote.

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Truth be told, I tend toward the restrictive side to immigration, but it’s not over concern about Hispanics.

I’m more concerned with potentially importing anti-Semitic Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, or Estonian skinheads than I am about someone from Latin America, and I’m not too concerned about them.

I’m not that concerned about the above either. When people come to America, they tend to leave a lot of that behind, which is a good thing.

I’m concerned about immigration being used to depress wages, and it is used that way with H1b and L-1 visas, and the repeated suggestions about slave labor guest workers, who would constitute a permanent underclass.

I also agree with Paul Krugman’s assessment that a large underclass creates a breeding ground for right wing politics.

That being said, there are clearly is both a right wing and a left wing position on expanded immigration (cheap labor and empatyh respectively) and on more restricted immigration (racism and wages respectively).

Personally, I favor a bounty program for illegals who rat out employers.

That being said, the Republican anti-immigration side is clearly racist, and it shows to the newly minted Americans.

New mood from new citizens

Latino immigrants in South Florida who have traditionally registered with the GOP have felt alienated by the party, critics say.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
June 16, 2007

MIAMI BEACH — As a Cuban who fled Fidel Castro’s communist rule for a new life in the U.S., Julio Izquierdo would seem a natural Republican voter — a sure bet to adopt the same political lineage that has long guided most of his countrymen who resettled in South Florida.

But moments after taking his oath this week to become a U.S. citizen and registering to vote, the grocery store employee said he felt no such allegiances.

“I don’t know whether Bush is a Democrat or a Republican, but whatever he is, I’m voting the other way,” Izquierdo, 20, said Thursday as he waited for a taxi after a mass naturalization ceremony at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Izquierdo said he did not like President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war and was miffed at politicians, most of them Republican, who seem to dislike immigrants.

That sentiment, expressed by several of the 6,000 new citizens who took their oaths Thursday in group ceremonies that take place regularly in immigrant-heavy cities nationwide, underscored the troubled environment facing the GOP in the buildup to next year’s presidential election.

Surveys show that among Latino voters — a bloc Bush had hoped to woo into the Republican camp — negative views about the party are growing amid a bitter debate over immigration policy.

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Whiskey Fire: What Ther Said!

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What Thers says:

Buzzards and Dreadful Crows

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This is all my balls. Ezra Klein is perfectly right to judge people writing on foreign policy primarily on their stances towards real world issues. A discussion of “underlying beliefs or theories” in this context is absurd, given the horror of the Iraq debacle. If your “underlying beliefs or theories” made you stick your dick in the blender, even “reluctantly,” and you haven’t thoroughly reassessed these concepts, I frankly don’t want to hear your advice about what to do with the weed whacker.

The essay is crazy. The guy thinks the primary debate about foreign policy is between “pacifists” and “militarists” — as if the primary reason anyone opposed the war in Iraq was from a position of committed pacifism. Well, maybe a small minority did, and good for them. But most of us opposed the war in Iraq because it was obviously a stupid fucking idea. The administration was clearly spouting bullshit about why it was necessary and how much it would cost in money and lives.

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Dan Froomkin Nails it on Torture

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Froomkin’s analysis is clear, concise, and to the point.

The full article by Seymour Hersh is horrifying.

They all knew they were torturing, and they directed and actively encouraged it.

Impeach Dick Cheney today, impeach George W. Bush tomorrow.

Dan Froomkin – New Questions About Abu Ghraib

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, June 18, 2007; 2:12 PM

A New Yorker article is raising uncomfortable questions for the White House about what President Bush knew about the horrific abuse at Abu Ghraib, when he knew it — and whether he and his top lieutenants bear more responsibility for it than they have acknowledged.

The shocking news and appalling photographs chronicling the sadistic torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. personnel first emerged in April 2004, deeply damaging America’s reputation, particularly in the Arab world. Bush responded by expressing disgust at the behavior of a small number of people who, he said, were acting on their own. He said those responsible would be held accountable. And he said he had not seen the photographs before they were made public.

But according to Seymour M. Hersh’ s blockbuster story in the New Yorker, Bush was told about the abuse Abu Ghraib long before the photographs went public, failed to respond appropriately — and may indeed have recognized what happened at Abu Ghraib as the predictable result of administration policy rather than the random act of a few bad apples.

Hersh’s story is based on interviews with Antonio M. Taguba, the former two-star general who submitted a scathing (and career-killing) secret report about Abu Ghraib in March 2004. Hersh also concludes that then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew more than he admitted and that the abuses were in some cases similar to treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But from a White House perspective, the most significant aspect of Hersh’s story is that it threatens to associate Bush with a sordid chapter of the Iraq war from which he has managed to remain largely disconnected by pointing fingers down the chain of command. Hersh’s report raises the possibility that those truly responsible for Abu Ghraib have never been held accountable.

Here’s Hersh talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday: “The question you have to ask about the president is this: No matter when he learned — and certainly he learned before it became public — and no matter how detailed it was, is there any evidence that the president of the United States said to Rumsfeld, ‘What’s going on there, Don? Let’s get an investigation going.’

“Did he do anything? Did he ask for a — did he want to have the generals come in and talk to him about it? Did he want to change the rules? Did he want to improve the conditions?

“BLITZER: And what’s the answer?

“HERSH: Nada. He did nothing. . . .

“BLITZER: Here’s the White House response. We asked the White House for a response to your article: ‘The president addressed this fully. He first saw the pictures on TV and he was upset by them. He called for the investigation to go forward. He found the actions abhorrent and urged the Defense Department to get to the bottom of the matter.’

“HERSH: It’s not when they saw the photographs. It’s when they learned how serious it was. They were told in memos what the photographs showed.”

….

Of note is the statement by Taguba that he was Forbidden to invistigate higher ups.

Surprise. Making US Attournies Political Hit Men Will Be Used Against Them in Court

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These morons have added yet Another hurdle for prosecutors pursuing corruption in particular, and white collar crime (notice the wage and hour case?) in general.

I’m wondering if this wasn’t on some level intended. After all, protecting rich white guys is a Republican priority.

U.S. attorneys fallout seeps into courts

Defense lawyers in different cases are raising new questions about government prosecutors and potential political biases.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
June 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — For months, the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales have taken political heat for the purge of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Now the fallout is starting to hit the department in federal courtrooms around the country.

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors.

Missouri lawyers have invoked the controversy in challenging last year’s indictment of a company owned by a prominent Democrat, on suspicion of violating federal wage and hour laws. The indictment, which came two months after the owner announced that she was running for political office, was obtained by a Republican U.S. attorney who also has been criticized because he charged workers for a left-leaning political group on the eve of the 2006 midterm election.

A lawyer in a child pornography case recently defended his client at a federal trial in Minnesota in part by questioning the motives of the Republican U.S. attorney, who has come under scrutiny in the congressional investigation into the prosecutor purge.

Lawyers for a former county official in Delaware who has been accused of corruption asked a judge in early May to allow them to subpoena the Justice Department and White House for documents to see whether political motives factored into charges being brought against the official. They cited the brewing controversy inside the Beltway.

“Those revelations dramatically reinforce the reasons to believe that considerations beyond mere law enforcement are behind this prosecution,” the lawyers wrote.

The defendant, a once up-and-coming Democrat, was being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney in Wilmington, a Republican appointee.

…

But Democrats say there is evidence that the dismissals were part of a Bush administration effort to affect investigations in public corruption and voting cases that would assist Republicans. The probe has also shown that politics may have played a role in the hiring of some career Justice employees, in possible violation of federal law.

The controversy has drained morale from U.S. attorney offices around the country. And now, legal experts and former Justice Department officials say, it is casting a shadow over the integrity of the department and its corps of career prosecutors in court.

There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.

“It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago,” said Daniel J. French, a former U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y. “It has a tremendously corrosive effect.”

Defense lawyers in political corruption cases often argue to juries that the prosecution was motivated by politics, especially when the prosecutor happens to be of a different political party than the defendant.

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Porn mag ed sacked for inadequate smut

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£50k a year? That’s almost $100K US. I’d be willing to edit a “Lad Mag” for that.

My wife might object though.

Of more interest is that even in “Free Market” Britain, there are more worker protections than in the US.

Porn mag ed sacked for inadequate smut

Men Only ‘artistic differences’ kerfuffle
By Lester Haines → More by this author
Published Tuesday 12th June 2007 16:18 GMT
Why Businesses need Business Continuity – Free whitepaperMobile computing: Opportunities and risk – Free whitepaper

The former editor of Men Only has won an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal after being shown the door for refusing requests to use younger models and “bigger and more graphic photos”, The Evening Standard reports.

Pierre Perrone, 49, fell out with owner Paul Raymond’s nephew, Mark Quinn, over the former’s decision to target the grumble mag at “discerning older gentlemen”. Perrone took the helm in 2004, when the publication’s circulation was in free-fall, pressured by net smut, hardcore imports, and “competition from lifestyle magazines such as FHM and GQ”.

He explained to the tribunal he “believed the title had become tired and he had tried to target the more discerning market, using slightly older models”. Quinn was unimpressed, and “repeatedly ordered him to replace the chosen models with younger-looking women” while offering “more explicit” content.

As a result, Mr Perrone said these “artistic differences led to him being demoted, then axed in a sham redundancy” from his £50k a year post. Paul Raymond Publications asserted that he’d been canned because of falling sales and was “genuinely redundant”.

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Sssh! Quiet SBJ design is almost ready-18/06/2007-Paris-Flight Daily News

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Potentially interesting, but I don’t expect to see the demand to justify full development.

Sssh! Quiet SBJ design is almost ready

Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI) says preliminary design of its Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST) is essentially complete, but work on development plans continues as the company seeks financial and production partners for the low-boom business jet.

“There will be more refinement of the design in Phase 2 that will allow Phase 3 systems development to begin in earnest in 2009,” says SAI chief executive Michael Paulson.

…

Nigeria: Gunmen occupy oil installation

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We are at or near peak oil, and even minor disturbances can cause major spikes in prices.

We are in for a bumpy ride.

Nigeria: Gunmen occupy oil installation

une 18, 2007: 09:18 AM EST

Jun. 18, 2007 (AFX International Focus) —

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) – Unidentified gunmen have occupied an oil pipeline switching center in Nigeria and are preventing local workers and security forces from leaving, company officials said Monday.

Some two dozen Nigerian workers and soldiers are being held after the attack Sunday on a flowstation in southern Bayelsa state, Italian energy giant Eni Spa (NYSE:E) said in a statement. No injuries were reported, it said.

The company statement didn’t say if crude output had been curtailed and a spokesman in Nigeria had no information on the attack. Government officials weren’t immediately available for comment. Eni operates in Nigeria through its Agip subsidiary.

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Picture: Saab Gripen fires first IRIS-T air-to-air missile-18/06/2007-London-Flightglobal.com

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Everything I’ve read about the new Sidewinder, the AIM-9X implies that it’s hot stuff.

The seeker may be very good, but it has a 5″ diameter missile body, and is competing against missiles with 6″ missile bodies, like the IRIS-T, ASRAAM, Python 5, and Vympel R-73 (AA-11 Archer).

It has to have inferior kinematics to these missiles.

Picture: Saab Gripen fires first IRIS-T air-to-air
By Craig Hoyle

Saab conducted the first test firing of a Diehl BGT Defence IRIS-T short-range air-to-air missile from a Gripen fighter over Sweden’s Vidsel test range on 12 June, during the 6,000th test flight of a JAS39.

Involving high-speed weapon release from a JAS39B test aircraft flying at around 2,000ft (610m), the unguided test was “a complete success”, says Saab test pilot Fredrik Müchler.

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Our Interconnected World

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So there I was, at work, sitting on the toilet, and my cell phone rings.

It’s Natalie’s friend, Samantha. I believe that I had Natalie call her on our cell phone to say that we were going to be late, and she called back to my phone.

While I am taking a dump.

A show of hands please about our connected society:

How many of you would like to line our bathrooms with tin-foil to block cell phones?

How about movie theaters?

How many have begun to consider tinfoil hats?

Anti-Hacking Laws Put Security at Risk

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This does not protect companies. Openness is the route to computer security. Security through obscurity is a sham.

Anti-hacking laws ‘can hobble net security’

Good Samaritans discouraged by threat of prosecution
By Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus
Published Monday 18th June 2007 09:52 GMT
Mobile computing: Opportunities and risk – Free whitepaper

Jeremiah Grossman has long stopped looking for vulnerabilities in specific websites, and even if he suspects a site to have a critical flaw that could be compromised by an attacker, he’s decided to keep quiet.

The silence weighs heavily on the web security researcher. While ideally he would like to find flaws, and help companies eliminate them, the act of discovering a vulnerability in any site on the internet almost always entails gaining unauthorised access to someone else’s server – a crime that prosecutors have been all too willing to pursue.

“I have long since curtailed my research,” said Grossman, who serves as the chief technology officer for website security firm WhiteHat Security. “Any web security researcher that has been around long enough will notice vulnerabilities without doing anything. When that happens, I don’t tell anyone, rather than risk reputational damage to myself and my company.”

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Technical Pranks

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Stuff like this is why The Register is on my link list.

It’s kind of like Mad Magazine for tech nerds.

Fancy some hot buttered storage?
Bringing new meaning to pop-ups
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Monday 18th June 2007 12:00 GMT

Competition It is a Monday, and we’re all looking at another five days of miserable toil before the glory of the weekend beckons once more. We can’t do much about that, but how’s this for a way to ease the pain of a new week?

Reg reader Alan Howlett sent us word of a very silly tech prank, and we’ve decided to turn it into a competition. As you read on, keep in mind that there will be a test at the end.

Over to Alan:

I bought a Synology DS-207 Network-Attached-Storage (NAS) device and it arrived yesterday. I have set it up as the primary file server for my office and am totally in love with it. It’s fantastic- it does nearly everything our Windows 2000 Server PC did…

Yes, yes. you like your new shiny bit of kit. Enough eulogising, and on with the story, please…

Is it a toaster? Is it a NAS? Too many questions…

It does, however, look like a toaster and I have been informally calling it “the toaster” in the office.

Anyway, I had also bought an actual toaster that arrived on the same day. The real toaster has some slots on the top, and the synology has lights, but apart from that they are very similar.

…..

Here’s the test: can you do any better? In a Jackass-meets-BOFH style contest, we want to see photographic evidence of silly stuff like this.
…..

You can kind of see where this is going.

Consumer sentiment weakest in 10 months

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Gas prices are not going down. Credit is tightening.

Inflation is consistently understated.

This is sanity entering the American psyche.

Consumer sentiment sinks to 10-month low

June index fell more-than-expected 83.7 on higher gasoline prices.
June 15 2007: 11:05 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) — U.S. consumer sentiment dropped unexpectedly sharply in June to its weakest in 10 months, as high gasoline prices dampened consumers’ mood.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said the preliminary reading on the June consumer sentiment index showed a decline to 83.7 from 88.3 at the end of May.

The decline was much sharper than predicted by economists, who had forecast a median reading of 88.0 in a Reuters poll.

The decline was “hardly surprising,” the survey said, however, noting that U.S. gasoline prices have topped $3 per gallon for six straight weeks.

The Conventional Realtor is Disappearing

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There are an awful lot of people who decided to become realtors. The bust will wipe a lot of them out, and many of the rest will be taken out by cheaper web based services.

At 6% on a $200,000 house, you can just hire a lawyer to draw up the paper work and do a title search 3 or 4 times.

It’s going to go fee for service.

Old realtors vs. young Web threat

The Internet can make home sellers more self-sufficient, but is it really time for your real estate agent to look for a new line of work?
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
June 13 2007: 4:21 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — If there’s a lesson to be learned from the Internet, it’s that old business models can’t rely on past results – just ask your neighborhood travel agent.

Like stock brokerages, travel agencies have watched their customers migrate to do-it-yourself sites like Orbitz and eTrade because of easy service and low charges.

But what about real estate? Agents collect sizeable commissions for what looks like little effort. And now, for-sale-by-owner Web sites promise to eliminate the middleman and put more money in your pocket. So are realtors worried they’re going to be replaced by masses of home sellers infected with the D.I.Y. spirit?

“Selling without using a real estate agent is like representing yourself in court,” said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors.

No. There is now Zillow, title searches are increasingly being done online, and people increasingly realize that the realtor has an interest in juicing the price of the home, so buyers are less interested in those services.

What the Other Matthew Said

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I couldn’t agree more.

I can’t speak for Mr. Yglesias, but in my case, it’s always Matthew, not Matt. Matt is my step-brother.

Matthew Yglesias:

This is a somewhat delicate issue to raise, but the war in Iraq seems to have spawned a wholly abusive use of the term ‘terrorist.’ The battle came about because ‘Coalition aircraft were called in to strafe fighters who attacked Coalition troops in Amarah and Majjar al-Kabir, two Shiite cities in the Mayson province bordering Iran, the military said.’ Surely, though, people who use force against soldiers are paradigmatic examples of people who aren’t terrorists — with terrorism being defined by the use of force against civilians.

Antioch College to Close

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My Mom and Dad went Antioch College, and met there. My older brother went there too, and I seriously considered going there, but opted instead for Hampshire College. I transferred to UMass when I realized that I wanted to be an engineer.

Where the Arts Were Too Liberal

By MICHAEL GOLDFARB

London

THIS is an obituary for a great American institution whose death was announced this week. After 155 years, Antioch College is closing.

Established in 1852 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, by the kind of free-thinking Christian group found only in the United States, Antioch College was egalitarian in the best tradition of American liberalism. The college’s motto, not in Latin or Greek but plain English, was coined by Horace Mann, its first president: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

For most of its history the institution lived up to that calling. It was one of the first coeducational colleges in the United States, and at a time when slavery was being practiced 70 miles to the south of its campus, it was one of the first colleges not to make a person’s race a factor in admission. It was also the first to appoint a woman as a full professor. All this happened before Lincoln became president.

Later Antioch would incorporate pragmatism, that most native of American philosophies, into its curriculum, balancing a student’s experience of learning inside the ivory tower with regular jobs off campus in the “real” world.

Yet it was in the high tide of liberal activism that the college lost its way. I know this firsthand, because I entered Antioch in the fall of 1968, just when the tide was nearing its peak. So much of the history of 1968 reflects an America in crisis, but if you were young and idealistic it was a time of unparalleled excitement. The 2,000 students at Antioch, living in a picture-pretty American village, provided a laboratory for various social experiments of the time.

With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the college increased African-American enrollment to 25 percent in 1968, from virtually nil in previous years. The new students were recruited from the inner city. At around the same time, Antioch created coeducational residence halls, with no adult supervision. Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll became the rule, as you might imagine, and there was enormous peer pressure to be involved in all of them. No member of the faculty or administration, and certainly none of the students, could guess what these sudden changes would mean. They were simply embraced in the spirit of the time.

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Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity

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I have a personal stake in this, my son, Charlie has Aspergers, which is either mild Autism, or a condition on the Autism spectrum with is less severe.

Let me be clear. I do not rule out that there may be environmental factors, but there is no connection it inoculations.

When Thimerisol was dropped, there was no change in the increase of Autism cases, there have been multiple mechanisms, and they have All been debunked.

The doctor who made the original claim has been so dishonest that he has had his ticket pulled at the hospital he was working at.

The connection to vaccinations is bullsh$#. Period, full stop.

Furthermore, by allowing junk science to pollute public health debates, it has created a vast reservoir of the unvaccinated, who serve to undermine herd immunity, leading to epidemics in some areas.

These people are endangering not only their children, but the communities in which they live.

BTW, in Charlie’s case, my wife, a trained special ed professional saw signs of something on the Autism spectrum about ONE WEEK after he was born.

Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity
By JANE GROSS and STEPHANIE STROM
Published: June 18, 2007

A year after their grandson Christian received a diagnosis of autism in 2004, Bob Wright, then chairman of NBC/Universal, and his wife, Suzanne, founded Autism Speaks, a mega-charity dedicated to curing the dreaded neurological disorder that affects one of every 150 children in America today.

The Wrights’ venture was also an effort to end the internecine warfare in the world of autism — where some are convinced that the disorder is genetic and best treated with intensive therapy, and others blame preservatives in vaccinations and swear by supplements and diet to cleanse the body of heavy metals.

With its high-powered board, world-class scientific advisers and celebrity fund-raisers like Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Simon, the charity was a powerful voice, especially in Washington. It also made strides toward its goal of unity by merging with three existing autism organizations and raising millions of dollars for research into all potential causes and treatments. The Wrights call it the “big tent” approach.

But now the fissures in the autism community have made their way into the Wright family, where father and daughter are not speaking after a public battle over themes familiar to thousands of families with autistic children.

The Wrights’ daughter, Katie, the mother of Christian, says her parents have not given enough support to the people who believe, as she does, that the environment — specifically a synthetic mercury preservative in vaccines — is to blame. No major scientific studies have linked pediatric vaccination and autism, but many parents and their advocates persist, and a federal “vaccine court” is now reviewing nearly 4,000 such claims.

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Ad Nags at it Again.

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Oh God! Ad Nags is at it again.

It seems to be endemic at the top of the Journalism food chain, like the NY Times, that any populism must be either political opportunism, or insanity.

They are over paid, and not generally threatened with outsourcing to India. We really need to change that. They are too fat and happy to cover the news honestly.

For John Edwards, he chooses opportunism, despite the fact that Edwards has been talking about this since before his LAST run for prez.

Asswipe.

Staking His Campaign on Iowa, Edwards Makes a Populist Pitch to the Left

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TIPTON, Iowa, June 16 — Four years ago — facing what seemed to be a certain defeat in the Iowa Democratic caucuses — John Edwards recast his presidential campaign with weeks to go before the vote, unveiling an emotionally powerful speech about poverty that he delivered relentlessly across the state. Mr. Edwards came within a few thousand votes of victory. To this day, he tells associates he would have won with another week.

This year, Mr. Edwards has picked up where he left off in 2004. He visited 14 places in Iowa in the course of three days this weekend, an itinerary reflecting just how much he has settled on this state as the place where his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination will rise or fall.

Mr. Edwards’s latest trip here offered evidence of just how much he studied the lessons of his Iowa defeat last time, though he would prefer to view it as a near victory. It also suggests the extent to which the rhythms of Iowa Democratic politics have shaped Mr. Edwards’s decidedly different candidacy this time around.

This time, he is a candidate of the left in a state marked by a strong antiwar and liberal streak, filling a vacancy created as Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have campaigned from the center. Mr. Edwards has shown a new eagerness to draw contrasts with his opponents on issues like the war in Iraq and health care, in no small part motivated by his struggle not to get lost in a field of big names. And he has gone from the boyish, easygoing one-time senator from North Carolina to a candidate displaying an urgently engaging manner as likely to seize as to charm an audience, an approach that appears to be particularly effective in the close-quarter meetings that fill his days here.

Beyond that, Mr. Edwards is seeking to quell one line of criticism of him from 2004: that he was inexperienced and intellectually light. At every opportunity, he fairly leaps to offer a detailed response to a question, intended as much to provide a contrast to other candidates as to address any concerns about his own depth.

“Here’s what I think,” Mr. Edwards proclaimed repeatedly as he answered a welter of questions throughout the day, an introductory phrase that signaled a lengthy discussion on his opposition to the war in Iraq, his call for national health care or his view of terrorism.

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USAF Looking at Alternative Fuels

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The problem is that the likely sources of fuel.

Air Force Hopes to Cut Oil’s Role in Fuel

By DON PHILLIPS
Published: June 18, 2007

The United States Air Force has decided to push development of a new type of fuel to power its bombers and fighters, mixing conventional jet fuel with fuels from nonpetroleum sources that could eventually limit military dependence on imported oil.

The decision will open a contest between fuel refiners and other companies to produce a jet fuel composed of no more than 50 percent petroleum. The plan is to be announced at the Paris Air Show by the secretary of the Air Force, Michael W. Wynne; the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Marion C. Blakey; and other American officials.

“The goal is to certify the entire fleet by 2010 with a 50-50 mix,” said Paul Bollinger, an Air Force official who is working on a shift to synthetic fuels.”

…

Today’s most popular alternative fuel, made from corn, is not suitable for use in aviation. “Corn doesn’t have the B.T.U.’s for jet fuel,” Mr. Bollinger said, referring to the British thermal unit, a measure of energy. Richard L. Altman, executive director of an industrywide group called the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative, said fuels would most likely be developed in three phases, beginning with a focus on creating liquid fuels from nonrenewable resources like coal and natural gas.

Natural gas’s greatest utility is that it can be piped to point of use with very low losses, and coal liquification releases more C02 than burning it to generate electricity.

Ny Times Article on Teacher Merit Pay

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My comments will be in line.

Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers

By SAM DILLON

MINNEAPOLIS — For years, the unionized teaching profession opposed few ideas more vehemently than merit pay, but those objections appear to be eroding as school districts in dozens of states experiment with plans that compensate teachers partly based on classroom performance.

…..

Minnesota’s $86 million teacher professionalization and merit pay initiative has spread to dozens of the state’s school districts, and it got a lift this month when teachers voted overwhelmingly to expand it in Minneapolis. A major reason it is prospering, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said in an interview, is that union leaders helped develop and sell it to teachers.

“As a Republican governor, I could say, ‘Thou shalt do this,’ and the unions would say, ‘Thou shalt go jump in the lake,’ ” Mr. Pawlenty said. “But here they partnered with us.”

…

“It’s looking like there’s a critical mass,” Professor Odden said. The movement to experiment with teacher pay, he added, “is still not ubiquitous, but it’s developing momentum.”

Some plans still run into strong opposition from teachers and their unions, as in Texas and Florida this year, where skeptical teachers rejected proposals from school districts. An incentive-pay proposal by Chancellor Joel I. Klein of the New York City public schools has stalled, with city officials and the teachers’ union blaming each other.

….

Merit pay, or compensating teachers for classroom performance rather than their years on the job and coursework completed, found some support in the 1980s among policy makers and school administrators, who saw it as a way to encourage good teachers to work harder and to weed out the bad ones. But teachers saw it as a gimmick used by principals to reward cronies based on favoritism.

And this is the crux of the matter. Teacher’s unions are so strident and aggressive because principals have no adult supervision.

I have experienced this with my own children, where a principal, either directly, or through coddling one fo their toadies, have cost the district with NO negative consequences.

The Department of Education is encouraging schools and districts to try merit pay. [Last week it awarded 18 new federal grants, building on 16 others distributed last November. That makes a total of $80 million that the Bush administration has given to schools and districts in 19 states that have incentive pay plans.] ……

This action has NOTHING to do with education, and EVERYTHING to do with politics.

Simply put, there is no Bush admin policy apparatus. Everything is political gain, and this is an attempt to weaken teacher’s unions.

The positions of the two national teachers’ unions diverge on merit pay. The National Education Association, the larger of the two, has adopted a resolution that labels merit pay, or any other pay system based on an evaluation of teachers’ performance, as “inappropriate.”

The American Federation of Teachers says it opposes plans that allow administrators alone to decide which teachers get extra money or that pay individual teachers based solely on how students perform on standardized test scores, which they consider unreliable. But it encourages efforts to raise teaching quality and has endorsed arrangements that reward teams of teachers whose students show outstanding achievement growth.

This is beacuse the NEA has delusions of grandeur, and see their labor union as secondary to their status as a “professional organization”.

Left tempers Sarkozy’s poll win – CNN.com

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We’ve just found out what his mandate was. It was that he not be his opponent.

Left tempers Sarkozy’s poll win – CNN.com

PARIS, France (Reuters) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy won a solid parliamentary majority for political and economic reforms on Monday but voters soured the right’s celebrations by not giving a forecast landslide and rejecting a top minister.

Final official results gave 52-year-old Sarkozy a power base of 345 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, well below the crushing 470-seat majority predicted in some pre-poll estimates. Votes appeared to have been lost over a sales tax rise.

Despite the setbacks, Sarkozy has the legislative muscle to press ahead with reforms designed to make France’s economy more competitive by loosing rigid labor laws, trimming fat from the public service, cutting taxes and restoring full employment.

He has vowed to shake up the euro zone’s second-largest economy and boost annual growth. The economy grew 2.1 percent in 2006 against an average 2.7 percent in the euro zone. Unemployment is estimated to be at least 8.3 percent.

It should be noted that the EU nations have more accurate reporting of both GDP and unemployment, so this is rather close to US numbers.

Sarkozy, who had been set to complete his government line-up by naming some junior ministers, faced an unexpected reshuffle after his government number two Alain Juppe lost in his Bordeaux stamping ground and promptly announced he would quit.

Sunday’s elections left Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and its allies with fewer than the 359 seats they had enjoyed in the outgoing legislature, while the Socialists and their allies increased their haul to 207 from 149.

The French voters just told Sarkosy, “Not so fast”. The fact that one of his junior ministers lost is interesting too, though I’m not versed in French politics.