The photo has nothing to do with the fact that Tom Allen and Susan Collins debate, this evening at the WCSH studio in Portland, and tomorrow evening at the Hannaford Hall on the USM campus in Portland. It simply beautiful, and compared to the McCaine/Palin mess, and the Hate Hillary mess before it, politics in Maine is a thing of ... unsurpassed lack of ugliness.

Susan will have a chance to make the case that the existing for-profit health insurance regime is the better choice for limiting access to medical care, and that the well documented wastage in paper handling and the "responsible party" chase are better than Medicare for everyone. She also has the chance to make the case that the wealthy really have the better plan for the economy, that the energy industry remains the better choice for the custodian of energy policy, and that things are going swimmingly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I wish I could be present. If Susan Collins can make the case that she is the better choice for middle class and small businesses and swing the independent and persuadable margins of both parties it will be a rhetorical triumph on par with Richard Nixon's "I have a plan" device.

Here's the link to the Act Blue page to support Tom.

Posted by EBW at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recall, he and about 150 other "voluntary mowers" prevented a Monsato contaminated plot of "corn" from going to tassel. A couple of acres.

Posted by EBW at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The list of Talibans who were in the reconcilliation talks in Mecca last month is interesting, no, amazing.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a respected intellectual, the former ambassador from the Taliban government to Islamabad, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, the former foreign minister of the Taliban government, Mullah Shahidi responsible for media for the Taliban government.

Also present, several "mullahs from the interior", a representative from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who's group Hezb-e-Islami, carried out the operation on French forces on August 18th, and a quartet from the Choura of Quetta.

Also present was Asif Zardari, so it was a meeting with serious Saudi/Pakistani presence, in addition to the Karzai and his (armed) critics participants.

Gleaned from the pages of Le Monde.

Posted by EBW at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mohammed Haafid, a regular contributor to Al-Hesbah, an "forum affiliated with Al-Qaeda", has published a rare (for Al-Hesbah) commentary on the US election. Mr. Haafid writes that John McCain will "continue the ruinous course of his predecessor, Bush" in the pursuit of war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also writes that attacks against American interests before the election will help push the vote in favor of the Republican camp. "That pushes the Americans to vote deliberately for McCain so that they can avenge themselves on Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda will succeed in exhausting the United States."

(from Le Monde, citing SITE Intelligence Group, and Adam Rasiman, an analyst at SITE.)

It is rather odd we haven't heard from OBL this cycle.

Posted by EBW at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The AP/IHT coverage of the Palin event in Bangor is ... très away. A guy with a NRA cap dancing to the sound track from a decade old Tom Cruise flight flick passes as political coverage.

Yes. There are people like this in Maine, but fairly seriously unglued people dance, barefoot and in their underwear, or in coveralls and boots, to Tom Cruise doing "Old Time Rock and Roll" or "Danger Zone", on either side of the dial. Mainers just aren't that ... bizzare.

Posted by EBW at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Colonel Lawrence Morris announced that he's not pursuing charges against Binyam Mohammed and four other people currently held at Gitmo.

Posted by EBW at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I walked over the dune to watch sunrise over the Atlantic, and did dishes as the sunset into Pimlico Sound.

Between, Ulan Bator in Mongolia re: IETF in Minneapolis, via skype, cities and policy mail to Beijing, a _light_ morning of back and forth doing Cairo planning (Stockholm/Dortmund/Geneva/Barcelona), Arabic Script and IDNAbis mail to write, editing a messages catalog for scripts going into the IDN test in the IANA root, cvsup & build on my Portland rack o'bsd boxen, some security work, posting and mailing out the .blog idea. Mercifully, no more reading myself blind checking Unicode errors in the "American Scripts". Instead, I took Jonah back to the sea where he enjoyed the waves to their fullest, joined by Sam, while Grace and Kezzie built sandcastles.

A day in balance.

Posted by EBW at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That's 1,400 people looking at their last high-tech paycheck for a while.

Posted by EBW at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a few days ICANN will publish the "Draft Applicant Guidebook for New gTLDs". The announcement was posted on the 16th that the six-module guide will be out for public comment in the next fortnight [two weeks in American English], so by the end of this month.

In those six modules will be the final (but not the final-final) rules of the game for people like me. And it occurred to me that not only do we benefit the blogosphere (y!sktp!) blogtopia (y!sctp!), first of course, by simply blogging, but also by holding the Koufax Awards (in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and yes, in 2008, before MB turns into a law school mushroom), for the left-hand side of the US-centric (but not US-only) political blogging dial.

We could also drop an application, a competitive application, for ".blog" into the ICANN new gTLD hopper.

Here are the rules of the game. First, it has to be useful. Not yet-another-chase-Verisign's-pot-o'gold thang. There's never a shortage of those bogons, in every ICANN new gTLD round, and oddly enough, none have actually caught and killed the leprechaun.

Second, it costs some money. Some for the application, some for ICANN (and we don't know that number yet, it was $45,000 in 2000), and some for the first year of operation until the money bloggers pay for their blog's names covers expenses. I really do have the numbers, and they are well within the ballpark. Nothing heroic is required. Think of it as a normal House race budget. Without the TV buys.

Third, the "where does the money go" question needs an answer. Regardless of the corporate form, a Mozilla-style trust, a non-profit, ... the question needs an answer. My answer is feed the registry first, and plow what is left over back into whatever made the need real in the first place, so profits back to "blogging", whatever that may be, from year to year. Funding better tech, legal defense, etc.

Finally, in the rules of the ICANN new gTLD game, proposals with a community win over those with none, and you can all be sure that somewhere some .com bubble: next generation speculator is planning to grab ".blog", line up investors, and milk it for all it is worth and then some.

I can do pro-bono, but it has to for something real, something the Koufax community wants.

Ideas:

1. URLs anchored in .blog can be trusted not to be blog-spam, because we can prevent junk registrations (they'll stay in .com and .biz and .cn and ... .junk), so the MT and WP and ... add-on coding community can write better filters and better community mesh tools
   
   
2. the relationship between blogger and Google won't be so ... exploitive. Google can continue to pollute the known .com universe with pay-per-click empty page monitization schemes, but ad buys into the .blog space won't be one-sided, as they are today. This won't affect the non-predatory ad networks, only the ones that put profit (theirs) ahead of content (yours).
   
   
3. Currently the .com price is on the order of $6/yr. It could be a lot lower (Verisign's investors need our millions times six), and this also has the effect of promoting "free" or "below cost" hosting schemes, which recover their cost by exploiting privacy and unpriced/unpaid ads, and promote names bound to providers.
   
   
4. Each new business model, facebook, twitter, ... takes off under a private, not a common name, and while that benefits the competitive business model, all hoping to be the next Google, divides and re-divides and re-re-divides writers and readers.
   
   
5. We're new media ants. We've built some pretty cool stuff. That's not likely to stop any time soon.
   
   
6. We can drop the hammer on aggregators and other content thieves.
   
   
7. ...
   
   

Comments are the canonical place to place comments.

Posted by EBW at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I wouldn't know it from the US press, but Asharq Al-Awsat reported that last month Afghan government representatives met Taliban leaders in Mecca. Hamid Karzai's conditions for talks with the Taliban are that they accept his government's constitution and are not involved with Al-Qaeda.

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki isn't particularly partial to Euro-American negotiation with the Taliban.

I'm amused that the term of art for the Afghan Talibans is now tending towards "militias". Eventually we'll think about Afghanistan as rationally as we think about Lebanon. With something other than a local shopping and vacation export industry.

Posted by EBW at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Date: October 18, 2008
From: Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel, San Francisco
Subject: U.S. Supreme Court developments concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row

U.S. Supreme Court There are new developments in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on Pennsylvania's death row, that are the most significant and deadly since his 1981 arrest. The prosecution has advised the Supreme Court that it is seeking reversal of the federal decision which ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Earlier I made an appearance in the court on our ongoing effort to win an entirely new jury trial on the issue of innocence, so that Mumia can be freed.

We are now at the crossroads of the case. This is a life and death struggle in the fight for Mumia’s freedom. His life hangs in the balance. The following are details as to what has been occurring in the Supreme Court.

Abu-Jamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08A299 On October 3, I filed in the Supreme Court a Motion for Extension of Time To File Petition for Writ of Certiorari. Justice David H. Souter granted the motion on October 9. The Petition is now due on December 19, 2008.

The issues I will be presenting on behalf of Mumia include racism in jury selection and the prosecutor’s misrepresentations to the jury during the guilt phase of the 1982 trial. These were denied last spring by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008). The court was split 2-1 on the racism question.

The prosecution’s use of racism in selecting the jury is a strong issue because of the powerful dissenting opinion by Judge Thomas L. Ambro. In voting that relief should be granted, he wrote that “[e]xcluding even a single person from a jury because of race violates the Equal Protection Clause of our Constitution” and concluded that “everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his or her peers.”

A major problem we have encountered is that Mumia’s previous lawyers neither developed essential evidence nor raised some issues of constitutional significance. Such failings are inexcusable. For example his attorneys during the period 1994-2001, failed to even get the racial composition of the panel from which the jury was selected. They had the jurors’ names and addresses, and could have gone out and obtained this information in a day. Once the case went up on appeal it was too late to introduce this crucial evidence which would have established beyond question that African-Americans were underrepresented on the jury panel and that the prosecution used discriminatory racial practices in jury selection. Justice Ambro pointed out in his dissent that this deficiency should not serve as a basis to deny relief in view of the other evidence we have of prosecutorial racism. Another issue concerning the judge's racism and prejudice at trial was doomed from the start because it was not even presented by the previous lawyers. Rather, they only argued that the judge was unfair 13 years later at a 1995 evidentiary hearing. It was an incompetent mistake that waived this strong issue. Sadly, Mumia is bound by the errors of those lawyers.

Beard v. Abu-Jamal, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08A315 The Philadelphia District Attorney is seeking reversal of the federal court decision which granted a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Their intent is to see Mumia executed. That was announced in an extension motion filed in the Supreme Court. The court ordered on October 14 that the government petition must be filed by November 19, 2008. We will then submit briefing in opposition to the death penalty arguments.

Abu-Jamal v. Pennsylvania, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-5456 In a ruling not related to the present litigation, the Supreme Court on October 6 issued an order denying the petition we had filed seeking review of a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. That concerned the denial of a new trial based upon the fact that the prosecution persuaded witnesses to lie in order to obtain a conviction and death judgment against my client. This arises from adverse rulings by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The District Attorney successfully argued that Mumia’s previous lawyers had failed to raise the misconduct issues in a timely manner. Even though this evidence of fraud is not before the Supreme Court, I will certainly be able to use it at a new jury trial.

Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense Due to the developments in the Supreme Court, the legal defense for Mumia is in dire need of funds. The legal costs will likely reach $100,000. To help, please make your checks payable to the “National Lawyers Guild Foundation” (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). These donations to Mumia’s defense are tax deductible, and should be mailed to:

Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012

Conclusion More activism and support is needed in the campaign to free Mumia from the death penalty and prison. It is an affront to civilized standards and international law that he remains in prison and on death row. We must have hope and fight for justice.

Yours very truly,

Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117

Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
RobertRBryan@aol.com

Posted by EBW at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I looked over the NREL's 20% plan and I wondered just what had been thrown away this month in the Bush/Obama bailout. Turbines run about 100k, so roughly 700,000 were lost to not do anything curative or substantial, other than ensure Democrats look better than Republicans, in Congressional and the national campaigns.

Three quarters of a million state of the art wind turbines.

Posted by EBW at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via Suburban Guerrilla, an interview with Anna Schwartz.

Posted by EBW at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Smith Cogeneration Management, Inc, of Oklahoma City, OK., was incorporated in 1986. It's SIC #Code:8741. According to data provided to Dunn and Bradstreet, the estimated annual sales:$730,000 with an estimated headcount of 12, presided over by Donald Smith.

This was the corporate entity which formed Quoddy Bay LNG, also an Oklahoma corporation, and just reading their FERC filings makes me giggle at the unreality of it. A dozen guys making three quarters of a million per year in sales were going to find the capital to do a LNG buildout at Pleasant Point and run 36" pipe out to Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, and pay M&N; to add an additional 300 miles of pipeline.

The FERC declined the joke today.

I'm glad we're not that close to the Passamaquoddies. They could have done just as well themselves and not been skinned on the margins.

Posted by EBW at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We call this "Abenaki Castle", but it has another name. Half an hour ago a "senior administration official" (that would be Secretary Poulson) announced a meeting.

Posted by EBW at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're in Ocracoke, just south of Hatteras, being pyrates and feeding mosquitos.

Posted by EBW at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This, includes this:

Note the lack of trailing ASCII junk. That's the point of getting our scripts into the ICANN IDN test. The texts read "http://example.test". Exercise left to the reader: Generalize.

Posted by EBW at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In Cairo I'm finally going to have scheduled ICANN minutes to speak about Indigenous Intellectual Property, the set of issues lacking from ICANN's original WIPO-2 IP framework. Finally. It was just last Spring (of 1999) that Bob Gough and I put this effort together.

[Goodness, I'd not yet walked out of Nokia Research, trying to get Nokia interested in name spaces for mobile devices and physical location as a network semantic -- a fancy way of saying that I wanted to buy tax-free in the 20 minutes it took me to get from Maine to Massachusetts. Now both are no-thinkums and the GeoPriv activity in the IETF is almost ten years old.]

The context is new generic top-level domains, if for cultural and linguistic purposes, what are the ways to make the senior rights of cultural custodians and language users prevail over the claims of corporations that have expropriated (stolen) words and built mass marketing around those stolen words? Who wins? The CNO+UKB+ECN or Chrysler, LLC? Who gets "Cherokee"?

Similar issues arise for cities as top level domains, where we're innovating this time around. Does the Times Corporation "own" all references to Times Square? Does whoever owns the Chrysler Building (unlikely to actually be a CAFE avoiding, muscle car, SUV and heavy pickup truck, auto manufacturer) also own all common spatial references that are relative to the Chrysler Building?

Rinse and repeat for regional top level domains, where we, and others, are innovating this time around. Which government (in Africa) can prevent the regional .africa registry from using geographic identifiers? Who "owns" the Nile or the Sahara? Naturally, there are governments ready to assert the obvious.

Anyway, the point isn't that I get to speak at ICANN, I do that all the time. The point is that with the Intellectual Property Constituency observing, I and others are going to be articulating the IP policies that are going to be in applications for linguistic and cultural, municipal, and regional applications, which will change ICANN's IP "law", relative to both trademark and government claims of priority.

As if that weren't enough fun, I've spent the past two days ruining my eyes reading Cree and writing Cherokee, with the goals of (a) once again preventing a standards body from banning Cherokee, and (b) being certain that "finals" (which is where the Y-Cree vs Th-Cree ... fun begins) aren't affected by a "labels MUST NOT (begin|end) with combining characters" rule, which is to say, the w-dot and dot-w problem plus the generalized finals problems, all made harder by Unicode having used the Canadian Government's "Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics" project, for which I kick myself, having been present at the point of error and having thought it a very, very good thing (tm). All the Dene characters (several variants), the Inuktitut characters, the Cree characters (more variants), the Siksika characters (oki kokona!), plus some Ojibberish, are all smushed together into a glyph catalog in UCAS (now Unicode), making reading the standard reference for any specific language absurdly difficult.

You are in a maze of twisty passages that all look alike. This is what the Unicoders did to Chinese, on a significantly larger scale, with "Han Unification". Perhaps printer vendors are inherently evil, how else to explain their indifference to text-as-characters, not puddles of fungible glyphs, to be compressed so that dingbats and other bits of dreck will fit into factory installed ROM? They managed a 21% reduction in memory necessary to put Cree et al fonts on printers. Odd people to have handed over all human language to. Mercifully, that cabal will be brewing over a fire in California the week we actually struggle over IDN policy in Cairo. Competing clans of Neanderthals.

This bus stops at Minneapolis a week after the Cairo meeting, and there is a strong dependency as ICANN "consumes" a revised "International Domain Name (in Applications)" standard, and the IETF IDNAbis WG may, eventually, produce yet another work of profound brokenness.

I thank my stars I'm not responsible for Korean, as that's the whipping boy of the moment. In 2003 the Chinese were the people the standards bus ran over, and carefully backed up to run over a second time.

13A0..13F4 ; PVALID # CHEROKEE LETTER A..CHEROKEE LETTER YV

1401..166C ; PVALID # CANADIAN SYLLABICS E..CANADIAN SYLLABICS CAR
166D..166E ; DISALLOWED # CANADIAN SYLLABICS CHI SIGN..CANADIAN SYLLAB
166F..1676 ; PVALID # CANADIAN SYLLABICS QAI..CANADIAN SYLLABICS N

I can't express how absurd it is to have to scan over lines and lines of texts in all Northern languages in all scripts and writing conventions, to ensure that one code point has the associated semantics correctly defined, and that a rule intended to cure a defect in the Unicode algorithm for "dot" as a sentence terminator when "dot" is used as in infixed label separator in domain names, at least does no harm to Cree and other languages' writers and their readers who use syllabic rather than roman characters. If I hadn't killed Christianity I'm sure my reward would be "in heaven". The obverse is obvious.

Writing in Cherokee is hampered by the fact that the Unicode notion of the script isn't the CNO's notion of the script, and every time I write "do", instead of a "V" I see a lambda. That's a bother, and I suspect there are others.

The wayback machine found this bit of old cree-l at nisto for me:

Date: 7 Jul 1997 14:58:34 -0400
From: Eric Brunner <(suppressed)@opengroup.org>
Subject: Re: Making computers that work in Cree

Posted by EBW at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oliver Hirschbiegel's film, for which we have Oliver Stone's W, has been recycled over at YouTube to tell the last days of Fortis. Wicked popular in Liberated Europe, probably not so much in Occupied America.

Posted by EBW at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A pod of dolphins, perhaps 10 animals. And after several kilos of shells collected and brought to show-me show-me before going into the carry-bag, a lump on the beach. A horseshoe crab, direct from 445 million years ago. We watched it move back down into the water and Gracie did stand-up biology to Sam and Kezzie. I'm not sure what Jonah made of it. He would have picked it up, and I really should have let him.

Posted by EBW at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When De Gaulle came to Quebec, it was to tear off a piece of Canada. Times have changed, and after Reagan, and Bush, and Bush the size of the bite has changed.

Sarko has come for Canada. All of it.

The really important question is not what to do about Canada leaving NAFTA and joining the EU, its how can we in Maine can join Europe too.

Posted by EBW at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Le Monde has a series of images, unfortunately in flash, showing the global economies. In green are those nations with a rate of growth equal to or greater than the average for 2003-2008, pink those with a negative rate, relative to the average, and red those with a 20% or greater negative growth rate.

In 2006 there is some red -- Saudi Arabia, Chad, Algeria, Zaire, and a sprinkling of smaller African states, and the pink bits are Brazil, Venezuela, another sprinkling of African states, Mongolia, and South East Asia to Oz.

In 2007 the US goes red, turning Mexico pink, the reds and the pinks in Africa swap a bit, and South East Asia and Oz go green.

In 2008 the US and the world goes pink, except for Canada, which goes red, and most of South America and North Africa and Central Africa, which green.

The forecast for 2009 is a red world, China and West Asia are pink, with green only in North Africa and Central Africa and some scattered isolates elsewhere.

Sorry no link, flash is evil.

Posted by EBW at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

He was appointed to the USSC on August 3rd, 1994.

In 1994 Obama had not yet run for any elective office in Illinois.

The whole "litmus test" segment of the debate was a debacle Obama could have defused simply by pointing out that he didn't vote for, or against, Stephen Gerald Breyer, and getting USSC facts straight really is important.

Posted by EBW at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At least for the charge of planning a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack on some imaginary bit of the US -- the sea coast of Iowa perhaps, or the mountains of Florida. His torturers tried out lots of scenarios, and the "dirty bomb" scenario was the one their political masters found did the best with the focus groups.

By dropping the charges based upon torture, the USG hopes to avoid ever having to actually having to produce evidence that it has used torture to fabricate perpetrators and criminal intent.

Only four more months until regime change.

Posted by EBW at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two women, Elín Sigfúsdóttir and Birna Einarsdóttir, are set to become chief executives of New Landsbanki and New Glitnir respectively.

Meanwhile, in Obama Retail Political Koolaid Land, the drones are still going on about how clean the campaign has been, well, their campaign has been.

As nice as the margins look now, we'd still be doing a lot better up-ticket and down, with Hilary and Obama, with the strident, partisan political policy message about saving an economy pillaged by those guys.

Posted by EBW at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was a good call, improved as my co-workers managed to mention ever-so-casually, no,with considerable hilarity, by the fact that I was unable to figure out how to unmute the Mac Book's audio, and was able to listen only (and type like mad in the associated chat channel) to the weekly call I hold. We concluded the technical discussion of an important project and I typed in the final text and the message "champagne!"

Wrapping up I checked the markets. The up-swing in the Dow was already over. No "black Monday" and a total of 1.5 trading days "up" was all the European and American incumbent regimes had managed. And in France, the key to the European plan, the Socialists and the Greens were abstaining on the vote to approve, and the Communists were voting against. Not enough pubic return on an "investment" in the private banks.

Nope. Not enough. Just two weeks ago Paulson was messaging that if he didn't get his $700,000,000,000 there would be a 2nd Great Depression by Monday. Ignoring the comedy of McCain's heroic flight to Washington (did he toy with dice before crossing the Potomac?) and real news this morning is that a (singular) member of the Governing Board of the Fed, Janet Yellen, used the "r" word in Palo Alto a couple of hours after I sent "Champagne!" to my co-workers.

The truth-to-fiction density is way too low. About this point two cycles ago the Dems in Congress, then a minority party, voted against the worst bits of NCLB, and made it a bi-partisan thing. The conventional wisdom was that when the Dems were back in the majority the whole NCLB nightmare could be unwound. Well, its taken a bit longer than the CW of that moment envisioned, and California's evasion tactic of doing 3% per year the first years, followed by ballon payments of 14% per year, in the fond hope that the note would never be called, is now bearing its toxic, bipartisan fruit.

The financial deal cut now, rob the public now, with similar expectations that we can unrob ourselves later, may be just as fictive.

It would be a whole lot nicer to point at NCLB and say that only a couple of Dems voted for that insane package of profound ignorance and anti-learning, and vote it, and the Bush Wars, into history in January. How will Dems sell a better plan post-January? "We didn't want to lose the general election, we didn't trust the independents to vote against being robbed with a pen, so we signed on to No Banker Left Behind, and now we can do serious, necessary, and unpopular (with the R and U demographic) stuff."

Posted by EBW at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikki of Democratic Gain writes what she thinks is a funny:

After months of 80 hour weeks and no days off, you vow to NEVER work Field again...and after a week in the 'normal' world, you send your resume out and start it all over again.

In the top-three DCCC campaign MB staffed the field organization for in central Ohio, the FD was very drunk more nights than not, and he and the CM and the CD, two ODP guys who knew each other in DemClub, and who otherwise didn't bring a lot of campaign experience to the campaign, did shooters and "strategy" more nights than not, into the wee hours.

So there was no organization, and genuine vols and paid field workers showed up mornings, on the dot, to not get trained by those boozers, and not have call sheets, and not have the basic tools to do their jobs, right down to not having their walking lists for doing doors and their call lists for phone canvas. Tremendous waste repeated 6.5 days a week for 12+ hours/day is simply a whole lot of wasting goin' on.

You'd think that a pay-me-to-list-jobs board for campaigns would celebrate competence, not "... you fall asleep at the wheel driving to a campaign event".

Posted by EBW at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MB was kind enough to pick up a copy of Mearsheimer and Walt's book-length work. I'm in heaven. "The Plan" of keeping it to read while on travel (from Hatteras to Cairo, and return) is of course doomed. I managed to read the entire Harry Potter opus (then extant, v1-v5) while trailing Jonah as he explored the shores of Lake Superior on his trike, so its beach reading for those hours when he's treating himself to sand play.

Also on the read-before-burning list is Juan Cole's Napoleon's Egypt. To read before getting to Cairo.

Posted by EBW at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is not particularly edifying. Moroccan army units have intercepted groups of people walking through the mined frontier (recall, the US vs USSR proxy war between Morocco (US client) and Algeria (USSR client) for the bit of Spanish colonial history called "Western Sahara") and has transported some (from Mali and Senegal, the most numerous) to air evac points, and has turned around the remainder and told them to "walk back to Mauritania" ... through the mined area.

Because of the .eh (no, not a Canadian joke, the "country code" for Western Sahara, a bit of over-ripe fruit Algeria and Morocco still bat at) fiasco at the IANA, I know more about this than is decent.

Posted by EBW at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah and I were Indigenous Today. I got him into his trunks and a swim shirt ("tribal surf") and we crossed the dunes to the sea. Yesterday's scary seas (I eventually ordered the boogie boards in and restricted Gracie, Sam and Kezzie to wading and splashing and building sand castles in coils) were calm, and the boy enjoyed the full embrace of the sea. Every few minutes I'd wave him up current, back to the center of the bar and away from the escape channel, and other than that, we'd the beach to ourselves.

He is still the spiting image of the boy on the cover of Time a couple of years ago, the fingers and the head tilted to see something otherwise difficult to perceive are all it takes to make the diagnosis. A lot of smiles and singing the lyrics to Arthur as wave after wave gave him the beating he craved, until, at last, cooled in the early November Central Atlantic, we walked back to our camp.

I hope you all had a good ID as well.

Posted by EBW at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by EBW at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Outstanding!

Posted by EBW at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A medida que se acerca la fecha de las elecciones presidenciales, los dos candidatos a la Casa Blanca intensifican sus campañas para captar al mayor número de votantes. Este domingo, el demócrata Barack Obama, al que la mayoría de las encuestas conceden una holgada ventaja sobre John McCain, ha hecho campaña en la localidad Holland en Ohio, un estado en el los republicanos han ganado en las dos últimas elecciones. Obama ha cambiado en esta ocasión los mítines y los actos de partido por una visita a las casas de un barrio de la localidad para pedir a los ciudadanos que le voten el 4 de noviembre. Muchos de los vecinos no pudieron disimular su sorpresa al abrir la puerta y encontrase con el candidato demócrata, en persona, pidiéndoles su voto.

It really should be easier than going to papers in Spain to find a picture of Senator Obama doing doors. Pity doing doors is news now. It should have happened in Ohio two weeks before early voting began, first in the Columbus zip code that is purged every year, and then in every colorable CD in the state.

Posted by EBW at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow starts with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, the Lloyds-TSB deal being toast, going under, and 6 hours before the western European markets open, the futures markets are down 10%.

The photo was taken yesterday, when two Spanish freighters were lost, without loss of life.

Posted by EBW at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I think we've found the Homeland Security Vital Fluids Aspiration and Anti-Coagulants Test Range. According to the (exsanguinated) locals, its the worst in a decade. On the up-side, the mosquito density is less than 1 per cubic centimeter of air, so the atmosphere isn't completely saturated, and further atmospheric mosquito uptake is possible. Water isn't lacking either. The adjectives "torrential" and "stair rods" came to mind, in the few moments when thought surfaced from the hammering.

A box turtle came to visit. A cute little female about 4 inches long. Catch and release. Crabs. Popping out of holes and running wicked fast and popping back into holes. A northern racer drew a black line through camp and did something I've never seen in any serpent -- it raised its head up nearly a foot to look at the noisy simians. Another first, a kingfisher sighted flying parallel to shore, out in what I think of as the Pelican's Highway, but not bothering to surf like every religious pelican.

Jonah had a hard time getting to sleep, and even asked for sleepy medicine (melatonin, or benedryl), but he and I still ended up doing a couple of hours out in the truck until he was calm enough to sleep in my lap, at which point we came back in and slipped into bed. We've been out of trailer now for two months, between Columbus and Avon, and its an adaption to go back to $10/day rent and all the constraints that follow.

Posted by EBW at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Slightly unfair, but generally, is it?

Posted by EBW at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The right and the socialists voted down both proposals.

Posted by EBW at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MB turned to me and asked "Was that a good answer?" I answered "No."

A good answer would start like the answer to a question about Kurds in Iraq. Somewhere in the scope of the statement and the recitation of capability and intent would be "Kurdistan", a non-state occupied by Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Iraq, and the relationships, variably based upon power projected by the state, and consent based upon advantage.

There is a reason why the Autonomous Areas are Autonomous, and there is the history of the integration of Baluchistan into British India, and the division of the Pashtun region into Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani state, the Punjabi state, is obsessed with the extent of the state's writ. The Punjabi political classes, civil and military, pursue a policy towards the non-Punjabi political classes that ranges from assassination to military occupation, and from time to time, political compromise. Whatever the United States thinks it is doing in the Pashtun and Baluchi and Sindi ares of Pakistan, hunting OBL, eastern containment of Iran, or naval facilities for regional logistics, it is "in" the center-periphery, the Punjabi-non-Punjabi balance of forces, and usually uncritically aligned with the Punjabi political classes, civil and military.

For US goals to be implemented, that is, no "safe havens", pervasive "strike anywhere, strike anytime" has to be as real as the military selling the solution claim, and maintained indefinitely, or the safety of the havens eliminated by the local forces. The "blow up Mullah Omar to get Bin Ladin" approach has been tried, and both are still capable quasi-state actors. We haven't tried "build up Mullah Omar to get Bin Ladin", which the Punjabi elites don't want India or the US or Iran or Russia to try, for any minor Mullah Omar equivalent, in its "Pakistan".

At some point, the US has to be for local government by means other then foreign forces, in particular Punjabi forces constituting Pashtun government. The US has to get out of being "pro-Karachi" (and being "pro-Tel Aviv") and get pro-progress, and not tilt the local balances of forces to temporary, unstable, non-federated, non-negotiated, dominance-by-firepower solutions.

So no, Senator Obama doesn't have "it" yet, under his plan, the US will continue to send money to Punjabi state to continue its attempt to reduce non-Punjabi autonomy within the fractions of the non-Punjabi states -- Baluchistan and the Pashtun-i-stans (note the plural, some are in "Afghanistan").

Which subordinates whatever the US goals are to the hegemony of the Punjabi elites.

Posted by EBW at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Belgian health care now includes dental care in the package.

Free, to age 18.

Posted by EBW at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

ALASKA ETHICS PROBE REPORT: GOV. SARAH PALIN UNLAWFULLY ABUSED HER AUTHORITY

Inappropriate pressure. Just what the Cheney Profile requires.

Posted by EBW at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I called Grace over from putting jam on a toasted muffin and said "Sit down. Watch. It's history." That it was the Rehnquist Appointee was not material. That he was momentarily lucid, or not, I didn't care. I wanted her to see the thing, to be able to remember, without filtering, mine or anyone else's, the thing.

Posted by EBW at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The AT&T; branded copy at MIT's cutely named "New York Talk Exchange" (is it crashing too?) is as follows:

World Within New York shows how different neighborhoods reach out to the rest of the world via the AT&T; telephone network. The city is divided into a grid of 2-kilometer square pixels where each pixel is colored according to the regions of the world wherein the top connecting cities are located. The widths of the color bars represent the proportion of world regions in contact with each neighborhood. Encoded within each pixel is also a list of the world cities that account for 70% of the communications with that particular area of New York.

No mention of intercept, "legal" or otherwise, but this, not pillow talk between consenting US nationals in South West Asia, is what ABC could be reporting. After all, the ABC brand isn't compromised by coverage of the AT&T; brand.

If you can't see the NYTE logo at the upper right, click on the permalink, the color-to-country legend is not to be missed.

Posted by EBW at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Saleh Al-Ogaïdi was engaged with a vehicle mounted munition. He was one of 32 members elected from the Sadrist movement. Collateral blast effect, seven other persons killed.

Posted by EBW at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ABC is running a multi-pager on SatPhone intercepts against targets in the Green Zone and elsewhere, and predictably the ABC's coverage centers on things like phone sex between consenting US national adults, rather than a tentative timing cross correlation between things that went wrong and resources spent on getting "intelligence" on phone sex.

A background read is Steve Peacock's piece on his blog.

Wicked dumb priorities, not to mention compromising the IRC and MSF and others, which is worse than dumb, we need them not just now, for this pissing contest, but as on going institutions, independent of the best, and the worst, US politics.

Posted by EBW at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was an interesting hour yesterday, watching the Alister Darling (nice tie), the present Chancellor of the Excheqeur, explain that government was going to take an equity stake in the institutions after all.

The idea will make it across the pond in a day or two.

Posted by EBW at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If so, please drop me a line. Its an application I used briefly a decade ago and I've been asked to give a talk using it on something I think of as progressive policy. Basically, I want to be able to have bullet points or ordinary text, beginner ppt stuff, with some urban transport maps as a transparent background. The version of ppt I have is the 2008 version for the Mac.

Thanks in advance!

Posted by EBW at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

That's who in knows Senator McCain is more hat than horse, more like the boy from Kenebunkport and Crawford in talk and non-accomplishment than unlike him.

I'd no idea until today that his current wife is deranged, in some place stranger than usual for First Ladies, somewhere proximal to Joe McCarthy's HUAC, with even fewer rules.

What has me puzzled is the number of Op-Eds in the Indian press that argue for engagement in the American political process, and argue for neutrality, or disinterest or non-identification with Party. We, Mary Beth and I, had effect in the 2004 primary, we organized Howard Dean's defeat, not in the early, non-Indian primaries, but in Oklahoma, Washington, where 3rd place finishes finished the candidate with an anti-Abenaki record.

We didn't gamble on winning a delegate or two in South Dakota. We didn't mistake a candidate coming to a reservation for a photo-op, for the earned media, for the national coverage, the ordinary execution of politics, as having local policy consequence in the future.

I don't know what the early decision ballet will be in the next cycle. I thought I did two years ago when three of us, painfully, worked out the DraftGore2008.org political strategy, but I obviously didn't anticipate the collapse to the front of the schedule, and the long tail of essentially meaningless evenly accumulating contests, including primary contests in red states.

I don't think its useful to wait for the accident of party and primary to bring a deciding contest to Indian Country. I also don't think its particularly useful to bargain between parties, at least not during the general. To bargain between the parties means we Indians are not part of a "we" that includes non-Indian Hispanics, and non-Indian Asians, and non-Indian Africans, that we face the English without allies, without the descendents of others enslaved.

Locally it is a balance of local elites, but nationally the contest is a compromise of complexes, and the long struggle has been to keep the locus of conflict as far away, as compromised by competing claims, as Rome, or the Courts of the European Crowns. New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Ottowa are the best we've done, but this is still vastly better than submitting to local state and provincial elites, uncomplicated by the complexity of treaties with other capitals.

To work with effect, we have to find where our means have effect. Its in the early contests, off-cycle and on, and its not where the Op-Eds in the Indian press are currently pointing.

And John McCain just contained the disclosure of the Abramoff set of clients, he could have made a difference any time in the past decade, and just used the Select Committee on Indian Affairs as dressage. A mere prop.

Posted by EBW at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by EBW at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is actually the best thing I've read as a Sec Def Gates quote. I don't care what his present opinion of Mullah Omar is, nor to I particularly care if he has reason to think some of the losers of the pre-2001 balance of forces that composed the government the United States went to war with in October 2001 are now winners -- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami and Jalaluddin Haqqani's group in Waziristan.

This is the closest any member of the Bush Regime has come to the policy envelope articulated by Gen. Wesley Clark.

Sec. Def. Gates is about a week behind NWFP Governor Owais Ghani, which is reasonable for public statements.

Posted by EBW at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Before the market opened in New York I watched Governor Palin in Florida. I thought the market would fall below 10,000 at open, it took 30 minutes. In Germany Hypo went under while I watched the sunrise, and I spent 90 minutes on the phone, late afternoon, CET, with my co-workers on technical subjects unrelated to the market, though we are affected by the Euro to Dollar rate, as our income is mostly in Dollars, and our expenses mostly in Euros. Iceland will default. Fortis, nationalized only at the beginning of the weekend was split and 75% of the portion held by Belgium was just acquired by BNP Paribas, making it the largest bank in the Euro zone. Germany, Erie and Denmark have guaranteed all bank deposits.

So Governor Palin said some stuff, I expect she didn't make the financial pages.

Posted by EBW at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received this from Dave Johnson, who, if I recall correctly, started blogging the same month as I did, six years ago. He's working the Election Protection Wiki, and asks for assistance to spread the word. From their press release:

CMD Launches The Election Protection Wiki A Dynamic Website Helps Safeguard America's Right to Vote

Contact:
Conor Kenny, Managing Editor, Election Protect Wiki
Phone: (202} 277-6427; Email: conor@sourcewatch.org

The non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has launched a unique website to help safeguard the fairness and integrity of US elections, using the power of citizen journalism. The Election Protect Wiki is now online at http://www.EPWiki.org . It enables citizens, journalists and government officials to actively monitor the electoral process in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CMD and its community of volunteer editors will continue to improve, expand and update the EP Wiki beyond the upcoming November 4th election.

The EP Wiki is part of CMD's award-winning SourceWatch website and operates on wiki software which allows anyone who registers on the website to participate in creating and updating articles. SourceWatch contains in-depth articles on every member of (and most candidates for) the US Congress at http://www.Congresspedia.org . CMD employs both professional and volunteer editors who work together online to ensure articles are accurate, fully documented and fair.

Recent presidential elections were marred by controversies and disputes. Scores of individuals and organizations have been working to investigate and reform US elections, issuing reports and information on topics such as electronic voting machines, voter suppression campaigns and student voting rights. However, this information is spread across many different websites, news sources and databases. The Election Protection Wiki seeks to provide a single web portal for accessing this disparate information. Its information is non-partisan and factual; anyone of any political persuasion will be able to access and use it to protect every American's right to vote.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of stealing Indian rights, use red tape:

They gave us 60 days to object to the changes. The notice to remove “improperly included property” arrived after an oil lease had been signed and a well site had been staked on the land - where the Fort Berthold Reservation and the entire region are in the throes of an oil boom.

My sister called to tell me about the letter, since she was the only person who received a copy from a probate judge in the Office of Hearing Appeals in Billings. With a stroke of pure luck, I was going to be at Fort Berthold the next day. It would give me time to check into the matter at the local Bureau of Indian Affairs agency office. It turned out, I needed all 60 days.

Now, though, the Interior Department plans to shorten probate-related deadlines to even quicker 30- and 15-day time frames. That includes review periods for improperly included property, appraisals, rehearing petitions, rehearing decisions, purchase options and summary probate decisions.

...

I've been thumbing through the pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, titles 25 and 43, dense volumes that guide executive departments and federal agencies in governing the lives of millions of Native people.

The regulations aren't easy to understand.

Anyone who understood existing regulations should be braced for sweeping procedural changes. “Twenty-five CFR worked for a long time; to change it that dramatically, a lot of individuals don't know what changes are about to be made,” said Helen Sanders, an original allotted landowner on the Quinalt Reservation in Washington. “You can't react to something you haven't seen.”

Comment periods were extended at least twice, said Liz Appel of the Interior Department's Office of Regulatory Management. The new regulations should be given final approval by Nov. 1, she said. They will then be posted on the Federal Register.

It wasn't easy to make the department's current 60-day deadline. It took more than 30 days just to get estate documents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs office at Fort Berthold.

Death by a thousand paper cuts.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My LSATing is complete, my applications are on their way, and I've left the Kilroy campaign (for reasons which will be disclosed after Election Day). So it's time to return to our regularly scheduled blogging. It'll be relatively light, as I still have a backlog on .nai work, but I hope to get back up to speed, and give Eric a well deserved breather.

And for the record, yes, I am voting for Obama, despite his many blemmies.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today when the Dow drops below 10,000.

Just after 10 am. I'll try and get the precise time.

Posted by EBW at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First degree murder charges brought in a federal court against John Graham for the execution of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash were dismissed on Friday. The reason for the dismissal was simple. While Mr. Graham is a member of the Southern Tutchone First Nation, and Ms. Pictou-Aquash was a member of the Indian Brook First Nation, neither belonged to an Indian Tribe recognized by the United States, therefore, while the crime originated on the Pine Ridge, jurisdiction lies with the State of South Dakota.

No "full faith and credit". To make a colorable claim to federal jurisdiction for the killing of an indian by another indian from a nexus in indian country, in the universe created by Bill Rehnquist, the US Attorney has had to file a new complaint, arguing that both Graham and Pictou-Aquash were affiliated with the Olgala Lakota Sioux tribe as AIM members, and as an alternate jurisdictional theory, that Pictou-Aquash had married an enrolled Lakota member in a traditional ceremony, and therefore became "an Indian". If the US can't claim that either Mr. Graham or Ms. Pictou-Aqquash are "Indians", then the US, Bill Rehnquist's US, can't prosecute the murder.

While comedic, the import is that protection from political violence targeting Indians is conditional, and that political violence against Indians who are members of tribes terminated by the United States, or not currently recognized by the United States, will not be provided by the United States. Crimes against Indians other than members of Federally Recognized Indian Tribes are left to the states.

In effect, the bounty period for members of "extinct" tribes lives on, with Federal protections, such as they are, waived for Indians not members of currently recognized tribes.

Note well Indians north and south of the US, and east of Alaska. Cross the line and your "Indian" is "killed", while your "man" or "woman" is "saved".

Bill didn't just invent rape tourism, he invented semi-permiable mental membranes that let "Mexicans" and "Canadians" cross the border, but kills "Indians" on contact. From the crypt he's managed to nullify the Jay Treaty.

Posted by EBW at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Secretary of Lieberman's Mess mentioned he envisions a defensive system that "would literally, like an anti-aircraft weapon, shoot down an attack before it hits its target." Unfortunately, he wasn't referring to coastal batteries ready to target shoals of irksome jellyfish, but something to do with the innertubes. The intellectual wreckage is here -- CNN Junk Tech: Homeland Security seeks cyber counterattack system

An NANOG contributor wrote my first reaction to Chertoff's statement is that the antiaircraft barrage already exists, is called Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3, which is sufficiently fanatical on my machine that its uninstaller committed suicide.

Naturally, the Secretary of Lieberman's Mess did not mention the fact that 9 out of 8 computers in the Microsoft monopoly market zone have been, are, or will be, attack assets of anyone who decides to use them.

Posted by EBW at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tina Fey is so good at doing Palin that it is possible people will vote to prolong her routine ... first as Vice President Goober "Gams" Cheney, then as President Evita Aw Shucks II, well into the 'teens.

She's pretty much a gift from doG to the professional comedians, like LBJ's face to the political cartoonists.

Posted by EBW at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

According to the Agence France Press, two Blackhawk UH-60 helicopters collided while landing at Adhamiyah (north of Baghdad). At least one Iraqi soldier was killed and two American soldiers, as well as two Iraqi solders were wounded. There were combat operations in the area, but the collision is not attributed to hostile fire.

Posted by EBW at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maine voters approved Dirigo in 2003, and the program provides health insurance to about 18,000 people, some of whom are on Medicaid. Because it was implemented in phases, we were already on travel when the phase that would have benefited us (health insurance via Wampumpeag, our business), and the coverage for Sam and Jonah arises from Section 5090 of the MaineCare Eligibility Manual ("Katie Beckett"), so we're not beneficiaries of Dirigo, just advocates for it. The annual budget for Dirigo runs to $48 million.

The state legislature approved taxes on beer, wine, soda and flavored drinks would add 16 cents to a six-pack of beer and 11 cents to a liter of soda, and a $4/gal tax on syrup used to make soda. In response, the beverage distributors and retailers, together with the permanent anti-tax business lobby collected signatures to put this on the ballot:

Do you want to reject the parts of a new law that change the method of funding Maine's Dirigo Health Program through charging health insurance companies a fixed fee on paid claims and adding taxes to malt liquor, wine and soft drinks?

Interestingly, the "Yes" campaign (beverage distributors and retailers, together with the permanent anti-tax business lobby) is messaging the "No" position in part as a rejection of a regressive tax policy. Newell Augur, who chairs "Fed up with Taxes", said

This is literally, absolutely the worst time to ask Mainers to pay more for everyday items."

On the "No" side the message is framed as a sin tax, Gordon Smith of the Maine Medical Association writes:

Increased pennies on beer, wine and sugared drinks is a much fairer way to fund health coverage than the current funding.

I suppose I should call these guys and ask. I plan on voting "No" on Question 1, though I wish the legislature had distinguished between micro-breweries, and mega-breweries. Still, a good beer, not just 3.2% plus industrial grade flavoring and water, is worthy of its hire, and if it weren't for carbonation, no one but insects with a weakness for treacle would drink darkened corn syrup.

Posted by EBW at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Seventy men died when the Grunion sank near Kiska in the Aleutians. The Pacific Fleet lost 52 submarines and more than 3,500 sailors in the Pacific War. The hull is lying at a depth of about 3,200 feet. The can I did my ASW tour in the central Pacific was built four years after the Grunion was lost.

Posted by EBW at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A military command and control target appears to have been engaged with a vehicle mounted munition, and early reports are six dead, four wounded.

Update: Seven dead and the blast equivalent of 20 kg of TNT. Wounded medivac'd by to military hospitals in Russia.

Update: Ivan Petrik was among the dead. He was the Chief of Staff of Russian forces in Ossetia. The number of wounded is now seven also. The detonation adjacent to the office of Colonel Petrik appears to have been incidental to the seizure of civilian vehicles found containing weapons, and simply unfortunate rather than a planned. If so, the necessity to inflict measured, proportionate cost on Georgian military or state targets is absent. Source: Kommersant.

Update: The dead now number eleven, eight of whom were Russian military peacekeepers, including the Chief of Staff, Colonel Petrik. The Georgian theory of the event is that the Russians blew up their own GHQ to provide an excuse not to execute a movement order and exit South Ossetia.

Posted by EBW at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Its been a quarter century, Dukakus/Bentsen, Clinton/Gore, Clinton/Gore, Gore/Lieberman, Kerry/Edwards, and Obama/Biden, since a woman has been selected by the nominee for his running mate. Governor Palin's debate with Senator Biden was historic, and long after everyone else has moved on, women working in electoral politics will be watching reruns to review the nuances of camera, framing, dress, face, leg, podium and person to see how a woman, noise of politics, party and policy ignored, performed in the top-end of the visual media theater against the standard, a man.

Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton's name was not mentioned once, by either of the three performers (the moderator too is a performer, though the role of interviewing men in politics has been open to women in journalism for some time). I suppose all three had their reasons to think no question, and no response, and no independent point, could be usefully advanced containing a reference to a woman who accumulated 18 million votes earlier this year in early contests within a political party represented on the stage by a man.

Governor Palin's vision for herself in the Senate, 2009 through 2113 was interesting, though coming after the disaster of the Cheney Vice-Presidency, particularly the claim of joint executive-legislative branch status of the office following a series of claims for the expansion of powers of a unitary executive, her view of her self may be lost in the quasi-constitutional journamalisms. Does she want to speak from the well of the Senate on some issue of the day? Does she hope for a Senate in which tied votes are more frequent? Does she want to be the equal to her predecessors, Vice President Cheney and Vice President Gore, and be more than an observer to the workings of the West Wing and the Cabinet?

Then there is the 2011 question. If Senator McCain is elected, and he declines to campaign for the nomination of his party, as he has said he would, will she compete, with the advantages of the incumbency, for her party's nomination? Was the subject of elected succession as the head of party mentioned by either Governor Palin or Senator McCain, when they came to the agreement that has produced the McCain/Palin ticket in 2004? Has Senator McCain offered to support, as the incumbent president, his vice-president, prior to the deciding early contests for their party's nomination, in 2011?

Senator Biden could have mentioned his 2015 ambitions, presumably retirement in 2017, and made the absence of a reasonable question stand in place of an answer not offered. I have a hard time envisioning a long-term planner like Senator McCain, or a young and ambitious Governor, ignoring the subject of "what next" and agreeing just to get through the month of October and a few days of November, and then making long-term commitments.

Posted by EBW at 07:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Senator McCain's campaign is moving staff to the 2nd CD, in the fond hope that he can pick up one electoral vote there. I don't think they noticed that Representative Michaud voted agains the bailout that Senator McCain has so closely identified his campaign with. They're not going to help Senator Collins either by bringing the Wall Street Welfare Act to the other Maine.

What a gift!

Posted by EBW at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Klick on!

Posted by EBW at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Angela Merkel chats with Dimitri Medvedev. How much longer will the Atlantic Alliance last? Will future historians write that the Rehnquist Regime managed to lose not just a series of wars, like the Indo-China wars a generation earlier, but the dollar as the currency standard and the alignment of Europe? Angela Merkel is freer than any Mitteleuropa head of state since the Kaisers (Wilhelm and Joseph), to treat with any. I look at my watch and it reads "Pre-1914".

Posted by EBW at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko sold Mikheil Nikolozis dze Saakashvili almost half of the Ukraine's inventory of Buk-M1 medium range, and 200 Strela and IGLA man-portable air defence missiles, as well as some T-72 main battle tanks and 122 mm multiple-launch rocket systems. The former is a serious concern for figuring out who Yushchenko really is, as sending half the Ukraine's medium range air defense off to start a hot war is indicative of risk taking, capabilities and intentions. The later interests me because someone sent me assertions that the Russians were using MLRS on Georgian civilians. I don't think MLRS have any use at all, but knowing that the Georgians sought and bought an inventory of BM-21s is worth knowing. I know I saw them used in footage from the days when the Georgians were conducting offensive operations.

So, Yushchenko's Ukraine in NATO? Sure, if you're looking for someone who has already started a war with Russia, he'll do just fine. And I don't even want to go back to thinking about Air-Land and RoRos and all the old problems and solutions.

Apropos of nothing I found out why I was in the USANORTHCOM media conga line. They use a service and my name popped up. Maybe they'll take a question. Maybe not. I sent them one.

Posted by EBW at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This just dropped into my inbox.

UNITED STATES NORTHERN COMMAND
Media Release

DIRECTORATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, HEADQUARTERS, NORTHERN COMMAND,
250 VANDENBERG, STE B016, PETERSON AFB, CO 80914-3808 PHONE: (719) 554-6889 DSN: 692-6889

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 30, 2008
Northern Command gains dedicated response force

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo -- For the first time in its existence, Northern Command is gaining a dedicated force to respond to potential chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) incidents in the homeland.

"We are now building the first of three CBRNE Consequence Management Forces," said USNORTHCOM Commander Gen Gene Renuart "On the first of October, we'll have an organized force, a trained force, an equipped force, a force that has adequate command and control and is on quick response 48 hours to head off to a large-scale nuclear, chemical, biological event that might require Department of Defense support."

The CBRNE Consequence Management Force, or CCMRF, is a team of about 4,700 joint personnel that would deploy as the Department of Defense's initial response force for a CBRNE incident Its capabilities include search and rescue, decontamination, medical, aviation, communications and logistical support.

Each CCMRF will be composed of three functional task forces ask Force Operations, Task Force Medical and Task Force Aviation that have their own individual operational focus and set of mission skills. Depending on the different mission requirements and the incident commander's priorities, Task Force Operations, Task Force Medical and Task Force Aviation units would have varying roles and responsibilities based upon the type of catastrophe and the size of the geographical area. In USNORTHCOM's first CCMRF, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, assigned at Fort Stewart, Ga, will form the core unit of Task Force Operations.

Although CCMRFs are a joint force comprised of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, the first CCMRF will fall under the operational control of USNORTHCOM's Joint Force Land Component Command, Army North, located in San Antonio, Texas, Joint Task Force Civil Support, USNORTHCOM's subordinate command in Fort Monroe, Va=2E, would serve as the operational headquarters and work closely with state and local officials and first responders.

"Army North has done an outstanding job anticipating the needs of our federal, state and local partners, and training the CCMRF to be prepared to respond when called upon," said Army Col Michael Boatner, USNORTHCOM future operations division chief.

"We're excited about obtaining a ready and capable team that we can quickly activate and deploy as part of a federal response package when responding in the aftermath of catastrophic events", Boatner said, "This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives, relieving suffering and meeting the needs of communities affected by weapons of mass destruction attacks, accidents or even natural disasters.

USNORTHCOM is the joint combatant command formed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to provide homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities.
- 30 -

I think I'll order The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877-1945, by Clayton Laurie and Ronald Cole, and read the Revised Statutes of 1874, specifically S.R. 5297, 5298, 5299 and 5300. This was an interesting period, for Indians, for Cavalry, and for the Congress.

Posted by EBW at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While the children played in the post-hurricane waves I watch and was surprised to see a ray leap out of water, then another, and another, and another. Some close inshore, some at the outer breakers. I've no idea why rays attempt flight, but they do.

Posted by EBW at 05:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I know more about Iraq, and Pakistan, than some. I also know more about Federal Indian Law than some. Autism too, and hey, math. So all the barrage of pseudo-heavy-duty questions about foreign affairs seems wicked belabored, and sexist to boot. The candidate has a record, good, bad or indifferent, and areas of expertise that offer better insight into the candidate's ability to perform the job interviewed for than questions about things the candidate shouldn't have put paid time to think about until weeks ago.

What are the basic contours of the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act? How does Federal Indian Law issues under that Act differ, or are made unique to Alaska and the Act, from the general run of Federal Indian Law? What are the lessons that the United States can draw after decades of experience from modern Settlement Acts, the things to seek, and to avoid, in the implementation of similar Acts such as Maine's two Settlement Acts, and the drafting of similar Acts for other states such as North Carolina?

What are the basic contours of the Alaskan oil and gas industry? Where is production, where is distribution? How much goes to eastern Pacific coast ports, how much to western Pacific coast ports? What are the basic factors that are required to know to function as the executive of a energy exporting state?

What are the legal and regulatory issues for the Alaskan fisheries? Where are the salmon stocks headed?

Dumb questions get dumb responses, because few candidates will simply plow over a field of weeds and use the earned media opportunity to say something coherent and not stupidly partisan or uselessly reactionary to wicked dumb pre-positioned rhetorical devices.

OK, so I'd pay money to see Joe Biden take Berkeley's old math orals in algebra, analysis, geometry or logic, or try to keep up one end of a conversation about Federal indian Law, but that's not because I care about his place in the spectrum of sexual diffeomorphisms or his gender preference. Just a twisted kind of payback for partitioning Iraq and racist and sexist manditory minimums for drugs and for being MBNA's tool (along with Maine's ever gracious Senators).

Posted by EBW at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When you're working field, things like this are what make, or break, a competitive campaign's run. Voting the assisteds, the precints that are purged each cycle, striking the early voters off the persuasion and final walking lists, ... there's an art to it, and voting starts tomorrow in Ohio.

Posted by EBW at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The bill is here. 110 pages in pdf format of the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008".

Section 109, Conflicts of interest, does not propose, as a matter of policy, preference for administration and execution which is inherently non-conflicted (public sector, academic, etc.).

Allen, Yes.

Michaud, No.

Yes, there are two Maines, and in each, the same analysis leads to a distinct conclusion.

Posted by EBW at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Citigroup acquired Wachovia overnight.

The European Common Bank is trying to stabilize the market at mid-day (European).

La BCE injecte 120 milliards d'euros sur les marchés
La Banque centrale européenne a alloué, lundi 29 septembre, 120 milliards d'euros aux banques de la zone euro dans le cadre d'une opération spéciale visant à soulager les tensions sur les marchés monétaires. (AFP)

Posted by EBW at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The outages list is reporting that house.gov is non-responsive. The $1.2T mercedes bill apparently has quite a few readers.

Posted by EBW at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every time we're in the vicinity Jonah wants to see The West Wing, well, actually he say's "[D]wight's House", but he really enjoys watching West Wing at bed time over the past three years of living vagrantly with us and puts the disks in his player for personal showings and repeats and repeats and ... well, he's autistic so that works for him. Its nice that some of the dialog comes back to us.

h/t Avadon.

Posted by EBW at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The main point made for socializing the bank failures is that "main street" borrows money for payroll, and therefore the bank failures will cause pay businesses which borrow against booked orders or assets or ... to ... and come back empty handed from the bank.

Why? That part of the story is a simple message, but if borrowing requires public money, why go through a series of margin taking private institutions? Why isn't the US the lender? We do have some experience in failures of infrastructure, and if FEMA is still a Bush/Brown mess, we have other choices, even staying within the government captured by the "no government is best" tax loophole mafia. States too, particularly progressive states, and municipalities where there are large payrolls in otherwise "no government is best" states, may take the place of the current set of payday lenders to businesses.

To the simple message that ends " ... and come back empty handed from the bank" we add, "comma, but fortunately we still have government, so the city, state, or national government made the loan, and middle class life went on, uninterrupted by the collapse of perpetrators of the sub-prime mortgage fraud."

If that doens't fill the pay envelope companies that borrow can issue script of their own, After all, it isn't their business that is failing, its their end of the corporate payroll borrowing system that failed, and that failure is, in theory, temporary, so they can issue script.

This isn't an isolated problem, at least not in the offered, and so far unproved, narrative, but there really are a lot of alternatives, assuming the offered narrative proves more true than false, to try before mass cannibalism and zombies start to stalk the streets. Cooperation doesn't get much play in the corporate, for-profit media, but it did us well in Maine during the Ice Storm. Assets, from wood in my neighbor's basement, to space heaters and fuel, moved around, and few were very cold for very long, even though the event, from the freeze to the day CMP and out of state crews restored downed lines lasted for weeks in central Maine, and many weeks in Washington County.

When our economy failed we first got food stamps, then a Maine issued EBT card. There's nothing wrong with simply expanding this, issuing cards at the work sites where payroll envelopes are handed out, and letting the existing system work for the working and the non-working poor and the morally distant from necessity (except when banks can't lend money till payday, and even then) working middle class. We learned that "social solidarity" is a fake if it is just for other people.

The Cooperation is a choice too.

The simple message can also end " ... and come back empty handed from the bank, so they put their heads together and worked with what was at hand, issued EBTs and reconciled local borrower scripts through the state for food and non-food payments. Its an experiment and it works."

Posted by EBW at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Serguei Lavrov's proposed a pan-European Summit to explore a proposal to create a new system for the collective security in Europe.

Maybe he was watching last night's farce and he'd like to exploit the dumbness of all three pretenders to the Office of the Presidency, none of who can be bothered to pick up the NATO kitty by the tail and figure out its sex or utility.

Posted by EBW at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

John McCain is making hay our of Barak Obama's willingness to meet with anyone, without precondition.

So what could "our guy" talk with "their guy" about?

Suppose its President to President. It would be useful to ask Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about the politiical structure of the Islamic State, how it differs from the United States and other republican forms of government, and the remaining constitutional monarchies, in that the head of state is not the President, and the head of state is not a figure head, but the senior member of the executive branch of the Islamic Republic. Given the years of discussion of uranium enrichment and whether the intended yield is LEU (fuel) or HEU (weapon), a frank and open discussion of the chain of custody and the command and control of hypothetical nuclear weapons would be healthy.

Not knowing where actual launch authority, or launch capability resides, from year to year, with the Pakistani nuclear weapons inventory, is one of the more interesting features of that nuclear weapons state. In Iran, assuming the common American assumption of intent, who gives the order to fire? To whom? How? With what safeguards? Try to imagine not knowing how the Soviet, or modernly, the Russian launch authority and recall capability operate, and having no "red line" ... where do you end up other than pre-emptive first strike, or the slightly more humane mass launch on warning without recall?

Doesn't, at the very least, their guy need a tutorial from our guy on how to peacefully co-exist with other guys (and from time to time a gal or two) who already have weapons and who have figured out how not to get killed (yet) by them? Part of our heartfelt sentiment about proliferation is that we wish we, and the Sovs, hadn't, that they don't actually do much other than cost a wicked big heap of money and make diplomacy difficult.

If that's too hard how about clearing up the difference between "widest point" and "deepest channel", since that has been the source of serious difference between Iran and Iraq for most of the past century, and boating is a presidential passion, from time to time.

Suppose its Head of State to Head of State. It would be useful to ask Ali Khamenei how he determined that nuclear weapons are contrary to religion, and whether the test lies within the pre-Islamic revealed texts of the Tawrat, Zabur and the Injil, the Torah, the Book of Psalms, and the Four Christian Gospels, respectively, or is unique to the Qur'an.

Given the age of Ali Khamenei, it woud be useful to ask him also about how he was chosen to succeed Ruhollah Khomeini, and the changes to the composition of the Assembly of Experts due to the most recent elections. Does he think it likely that he will be succeeded by a mujtahid (independent jurist) such as Mohammad Khatami, by a taqlid (follower) such as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani or Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, or by some other person, perhaps a Marja Taqlid (a source of imitation) such as Ali Husaini Sistani, who happens to be in Iraq?

It would also be useful to understand his understanding of the Shi'a theory of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority)" the basis for theocratic political rule by Islamic jurists.

There is so much our guy and their guy, whom ever either may be, to talk about, without precondition, that it's a shame the Likudniks call it treason. But they have their reasons.

One thing that it would probably be difficult to talk about, but good to get off our collective chest, is why crap like House Concurrent Resolution 362 keeps getting within a dog's breakfast of getting passed and sent on to the fool in the Oval.

Posted by EBW at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I think Senator Obama lost last night's debate. I think he lost, not because of what he said, but because of what he didn't say.

He didn't say limiting executive compensation was a fig leaf, and that if a billion in graft would result in a net savings, it was a bargin, but that he intends to ask his Justice Department to prosecute and where pleas or convictions obtain, to fine and fine heavily every single person at any level of management responsibility, and where executive conduct met the plain intent of the Statute of Frauds, to jail the guilty.

He didn't say that granting new authority to the Secretary of the Treasury was an absurd capitulation of the Legislative Branch's Constitutional responsibility for oversight of the Executive Branch and the place to start was holding hearings to determine if any federal agency failed to properly carry out its responsibilities and impeaching the officials, if any, who played any role in facilitating any of this mess. When that is done, then extending, changing, or reducing the responsibilities of the Department of the Treasury may be properly considered.

He didn't say that "saving the firms" really was just the "summer homes in Aspen and The Hamptons" version of Survivor, and that while the TV versions of "vote them off the island" are cheap to produce and yield amusing distraction for millions, the trillion dollar knock-off for the seven-figures demographic was not happening. He didn't talk about how to go about nationalizing or dissolving the failed firms with all the assets going back into the US Treasury, how a second Resolution Trust Corporation would work.

He didn't say that the marginal tax rate before Reagan, and the regulatory regime the financial services sector was subject to, before Reagan, were close and obvious policy goals that we should see and steer towards, through all the fog and bombast of the corrupt enablers of the greatest generation of swindlers and cheats.

He didn't say Phil Gramm had a role in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, otherwise known as the Enron loophole, and in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. He didn't say that Switzerland has an extradition treaty with the US, and Switzerland too has laws against fraud.

He didn't say that James K. Galbraith & William K. Black and Bernie Sanders and Nouriel Roubini each have proposals, and discuss the pros and cons of each, and leave Senator McCain to either attempt to keep up, or fall back on his not terribly relevant record, without mentioning the Keating Five prosecutions for the S&L; failures

MB thinks he won last night's debate. Maybe so, but he didn't put anything nourishing on the table, and millions of decided, and undecided voters will try and chew over what they heard and saw, and try to find the defining differences between the two parties on the question of the day, and they don't even have "I understand one, I don't understand the other" clarity. Just two men mumbling over how much to give away, unable to act as if our lives mattered at all.

Most of the paras above were mined from Avadon's morning post. She's several time zones ahead of me (in general).

Posted by EBW at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A week and a day ago I paused crossing a street in Geneva, taking a break from a meeting about Europe centered banking to get fresh air and walk to the local Starbucks, and I paused. It was a Clarisa Dalloway moment. I wanted to see things clearly and remember them, because the exchange in Moscow was shut down, and AIG was going to fail in days, and ... this, I realized, was a moment to remember. Where I was, what I was doing, what I was thinking, how I thought the world worked. Because soon these beliefs would be ... curious or correct.

Neither one was particularly useful on Pakistan. Both seem to think Pakistan is a state, not an ongoing project that may, or may not, revert to prior outcomes. It was like listening to Wes Clark fobbing off the Tribal Area policing problem to the Saudis because ... they were just as foreign as we are. But McCain was dumber about things Obama was dumb about.

Neither one was particularly useful on Iran. We should talk to Dinner Jacket, not becuase he's a threat, but because he's an economic populist, and we should talk to ... well, Khomeini is dead, so Khamenei, and Khatami and Rafsanjani and Larijani and ... because it is the beginning of the presidential election cycle and anything less is daft. But McCain was again dumber about things Obama was dumb about.

Neither one was particularly useful on Russia. What is the freaking point of NATO? Who in their right minds wants a suburb of Moscow in a mutual defense pact with a suburb of Brussels? I swan, WW3 will begin because treaty obligations require Moscow to use nukes to defend Wallons from attacks by Flemish on over choice of language in playgrounds in the communes of Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde. We've got two guys who are wicked dumb about Europe.

Posted by EBW at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A week and a day ago I paused crossing a street in Geneva, taking a break from a meeting about Europe centered banking to get fresh air and walk to the local Starbucks, and I paused. It was a Clarisa Dalloway moment. I wanted to see things clearly and remember them, because the exchange in Moscow was shut down, and AIG was going to fail in days, and ... this, I realized, was a moment to remember. Where I was, what I was doing, what I was thinking, how I thought the world worked. Because soon these beliefs would be ... curious or correct.

I would have liked to hear Obama say we're going to let the courts work things out among the collapsing creditors. I'd have liked him to offer the Treasury as the pay-day lendor patrie (from parens patrie for those who've been in family court, local government as the last responsible parent), rather than some pre-failed lender using Treasure assets. I'd have like to have heard a clear vision, and I suppose the clear vision I heard was that there is no clear vision.

I kept thinking of gilded guillotines ...

Neither one was particularly useful on Pakistan. Both seem to think Pakistan is a state, not an ongoing project that may, or may not, revert to prior outcomes. It was like listening to Wes Clark fobbing off the Tribal Area policing problem to the Saudis because ... they were just as foreign as we are. But McCain was dumber about things Obama was dumb about.

Neither one was particularly useful on Iran. We should talk to Dinner Jacket, not becuase he's a threat, but because he's an economic populist, and we should talk to ... well, Khomeini is dead, so Khamenei, and Khatami and Rafsanjani and Larijani and ... because it is the beginning of the presidential election cycle and anything less is daft. But McCain was again dumber about things Obama was dumb about.

Neither one was particularly useful on Russia. What is the freaking point of NATO? Who in their right minds wants a suburb of Moscow in a mutual defense pact with a suburb of Brussels? I swan, WW3 will begin because treaty obligations require Moscow to use nukes to defend Wallons from attacks by Flemish over choice of language by children in playgrounds in the communes of Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde. We've got two guys who are wicked dumb about Europe. One is teachable, the other not.

I so miss Hilary Clinton, not her lame early primary campaign, but her thinking on her feet, her smarter, many wrongnesses.

Posted by EBW at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Al Gore at the Clinton Global Initiative this morning.

The current economic crisis was triggered of course by the sudden collapse of an assumption. The so-called subprime mortgages were many of them without collateral -- that people weren't expected to pay back. The assumption was that if you lumped them together and securitize them, and magically that is going to remove the risk ... That assumption just went splat, and things began to unravel. And now in the midst of this frenetic effort to find a bailout, many are saying we should have prevented this. We should have realized that the short-term greed was overcoming a clear vision of what the risk was. Well, now is the time to prevent a much worse catastrophe, because the world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets, based on the assumption that it is perfectly alright to put 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours.

Since we met here last year, the world has lost ground in the climate crisis. This is a rout -- we're losing badly. The water supply is partly held in the ice packs of the mountains and the glaciers. They're disappearing. Haiti was ravaged by four different hurricanes, and of course the devastation came after the environment had been devastated with all the trees had been cut down. There are still people in Galveston waiting for food, for water, and medicine. A half a million people were evacuated from their homes in California because of record fires. The University of Tel Aviv just published research showing that for every one degree of warming, there will be a 10 percent increase in lightning strikes all over this planet, with drier vegetation in a warmer world and more dead vegetation because beetles are no longer held back by frost.

The fires are out of control on every front -- the strength of the storm, the depth of the drought, the movement of tropical diseases into areas that never experienced them before. This is the result of a dysfunctional, insane global system that we have to change. For the first time in all of human history, we as a species have to make a decision. If we make the right decision ... the answer to the economic crisis can truly provide an opportunity to make the right kinds of change.

...

We should stop burning coal without sequestering the CO2. The coal and oil companies have spent in the United States alone half a billion dollars in the first 8 months of this year promoting the lie that there is such a thing as "clean coal." "Clean coal" is like "healthy cigarettes" -- it does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was canceled. How many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.

...

Today the U.S. Congress is talking about energy. They are, without debate and without a single hearing, preparing to lift the moratorium on the development of oil shale, which would vastly multiply the amount of CO2 from every gallon of gasoline. This is utter insanity, and it demonstrates that the wealth and power and influence of the entrenched carbon lobby, that twists policy and puts out illusory impressions, is overwhelming the free debate. We need to stop this.

...

I believe that for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that there's no risk from the global climate crisis represents a form of stock fraud, because they are misrepresenting a material fact. If you're a carbon company and you're going out there and trying to convince people to buy your stock and that the climate crisis isn't that big a deal, and you're superstitiously giving money to these phony think-tanks that go out and try to gin up phony arguments while the entire scientific community has put out five unanimous reports in the past years practically screaming from the rooftops about how we need to solve this -- if you're a carbon company doing this, in my opinion you're guilty of a form of stock fraud, and I hope the state attorneys general around the country will try to take some action on that.

...

And if you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what's being done now, I believe we've reached the stage where it's time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants that do not have sequestration.

Posted by EBW at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn't expect "panic" or "recession", and the whole i-can-read thing was like our idiot was p0wnd by someone with diction and complete sentences. Tres odd.

And McCain's lost the election. He was way up in Ohio, and now he's down by a MOE. If his numbers keep falling at this rate Florida will get competitive by this time next week.

Posted by EBW at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The WSJ writes The bold McCain statement ... I simply can't imagine (shortage of hallucinigens) what the WSJ is going to do with NBC's Kelly O'Donnell's copy, that McCain's staffers claim there is [no] political calculation in [suspending the McCain Campaign and avoiding a debate] and say without action the country could slide into a Depression by Monday and added "we'll see 12 percent unemployment" if action is not completed..

I think I'll buy tomorrow's WSJ and snip out the heirloom copy. Monday's Journal will have to announce the depression of course, or Tuesday's, and if the 12 percent comes out of the financial class, where's the downside?

Darn. I just realized I'm at the wicked pointy end of the Outer Banks, and while there are towns yet at the extrema, further away than we are, the nearest newstand likely to carry the Journal is ... Newport News or Norfolk or ... more than a hundred miles away. A collector's investment lost.

Posted by EBW at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another humdinger from Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog.

... I guess what we're sayin is, we will never blow up this particular country, that we are standing in right now, in this particular way, ever again."
"Unless there's a real good reason," says Giblets.

Posted by EBW at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We can only wait and see where he, and his advisors, come down on the fundamentals. I do wish he wasn't wasting everyone's time doing prep on how not to get caught by some foreign/militarism policy chestnut and was working on the only thing that matters -- the economy.

Update: The Rehnquist Appointee is going on the boob tube at 9pm. I'm going to sip out of a drink with an umbrella every time he says something that reminds me of the vote that only Barbara Lee saw through. I should be looped before the the commercial break.

Posted by EBW at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mr. King is not the most gifted interviewer in television. A bunch of time wasted on predictable staged "gotchas" and the opportunity for philosophical discourse wasted.

I have to remind myself, there's a reason why King and CNN don't bring in someone like Cole to do the interview (not that Juan is "the best Iran scholar" at hand, but he's a well-known person, not a cypher), and that's because King, and CNN, have interests other than enlightenment, interests that always take priority -- the interest in keeping Larry in the spotlight, of keeping CNN's properties CNN's.

CNN employee interviews head of state on events affecting CNN's ratings.

Not a word about the candidates for president -- those still possible from the last cycle, and those possible who were not in the last cycle.

Posted by EBW at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I couldn't help but notice that the story framing during the 4pm NPR show assumed that the Poulson/Berneke romance with unbridled power and budget was a sure thing, and that the interview Senator was invited to justify his "skepticism".

Of course, he wasn't bright enough to ask where the "neutral reporter voice" found its optimism and start from the position that he wasn't pessimistic, he was being realistic, while Poulson, Berneke, and an infinite number of pro-administration pundits were enjoying a reality very different from the common, shared, doesn't-come-from-a-bottle kind of reality, a reality with lots of numbers and some pretty well-known properties of addition and subtraction and books that do, sooner rather than later, tend towards balance, not extravagance.

You can call the NPR Ombuds critter at (202) 513-3245 and share a view on the utility of public funded "reporting" being advocacy for the administration.

Don't forget, NPR supported the Iraq war in 2003, MediaMatters tracking has the Right-Left split of airtime for experts at 2-to-1 in favor of the conservatives, and as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, NPR is biased toward ideological power and the status quo.

So they're sold on the idea of $700,000,000,000.00 going unconditionally to socialize bad debt, bad risk, and bad men.

Posted by EBW at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dennis writes:

Protecting the public interest in any economic "bailout"

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt "de-leverages."

Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration's growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff?

This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class.

The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.

This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.
In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.
I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:

1. Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
2. Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
3. Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down:
a) resignations of management
b) givebacks of executive compensation packages
c) limitations on executive compensation
d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
4. Demands for transparencey
a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down
b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
5. An equity position for the taxpayers
a) some form of ownership of assets
6. Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
7. A sunset clause on the legislation
8. Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
9. A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
10. A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts

And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.

These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.

Posted by EBW at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I hope the tempo on this issue slows, I want to collect the responses of the Maine delegation to the question of what are their thoughts on Secretary Paulson's plan, as they know it. Naturally people's views on something complex may change over time, and statements are subject to modification.

Rep. Tom Allen, 1st CD -- called, question left with staffer. (202) 225-6116 (WDC), 774-5019 (Portland), 283-8054 (Saco)

Rep. Michael Michaud, 2nd CD -- called, question left with staffer. No position at this time. (202) 225-6306 (WDC), 942-6935 (Bangor), 782-3704 (Lewiston), 764-1036 (Presque Isle), 873-5713 (Waterville)

Sen. Olympia Snowe -- called, question left with staffer. No position at this time. (202) 224-5344 toll-free (800) 432-1599

Sen. Susan Collins -- called, question answered by staffer. Has called for hearings, wants Congress to stay in session over the weekend. [EBW: so she's already on the "decide in haste" side of the issue.] Statement coming by email RSN. (202) 224-2523, no toll-free.

Of the non-incumbents running in the current cycle, I'm only interested in Chellie Pingree's statement, as she'll be in the 111th Congress after Tom either moves up to replace Susan, or returns to private life.

The choices seem to be tight credit and job loss, particularly for the financial industry in New York, and hyperinflation. My businesses revenues are dollar denominated, and most of our expenses (other than my salery and payments to Verisign and ICANN) are euro denominated, so a crashing dollar is not in our best interest.

I suppose if the dollar falls far enough, and that really depends on how much US debt gets dumped, we can have a shoe and shirt manufacturing base in Maine again. What protectionism couldn't maintain against the NAFTA and WTO models of economic integration, a manufacturing base, the dollar closer in value to a peso or a yuan is what Goldman-Sachs is willing to risk, so long as no great fortune is harmed. An odd way to restart the economy, but there are already "falling dollar benefits United Widgets" stories in the press, I saw them in Ohio just weeks ago.

So what are Maine's delegation's preferences? Shoes, shirts and services, à la Caribbean, then further "away", sweat shops, or auctioneers finding the true value of junk paper.

Here's 14 Questions for Paulson and Bernake, worth more than 2 minutes and 20 seconds of everyone's time.

Update: Paulson and Bernake are trying to stampede Congress. Its the usual "objectively pro-Saddam and WMD" thing, only the economy is the barb on whip.

Posted by EBW at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My first call of the day, at 9:00 am, was to Congressman Tom Allen's Washington office to request that Tom vote against the $700 billion bank bailout.

What was your first call of the day?

Afterthought. If Senator Obama utters a word about anything else, war, peace, the price of tea in china, or any of the infinite inventory of dumb crap his, and the McCain squad of intellectual jellyfish have been heaving over the transom in an attempt to keep afloat in mounting seas of ridicule, if he doesn't thank Jim Lehrer for each in a series of interesting, but lesser questions, and deliver an undistracted by interruption series three minute vignettes on what's wrong with the Goldman-Sachs plan to save Goldman-Sachs, he'll be missing the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to lecture, as an academic running for high political office, on the fundamental problem facing the polity. Al has shown that it can be done, and back in the Bush debates in the '00 cycle, showed that the election can be lost by following the debate script.

We know the stuff Senator Clinton is made of, it would be nice if instead of talking about, ever so carefully, what stuff Senator Obama is made of, his campaign demonstrated it.

Unless Jim Lehrer is likely to come up with something more important than granting unprecedented powers and budget to a Bush appointee's unreflected plan of the week to save wealthy people by robbing everyone else, like an invasion fleet from Mars or worse.

Posted by EBW at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the review from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.The show of course, is playing everywhere.

The three candidates vying to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad faced intensive questioning Monday on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East and Israel, at the third debate in Minnesota's Third Congressional District race.

Each sought to distinguish his position on how best to deal with the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons and on Arab-Israeli relations.

Republican Erik Paulsen, a seven-term member of the state House and its former majority leader, faces DFLer Ashwin Madia, an attorney and Iraq war veteran, and Independence Party candidate David Dillon, a family business owner. Madia and Dillon are first-time office-seekers.

The debate, held at Bet Shalom Congregation in Minnetonka and coordinated by the Jewish Community Relations Council, was attended by several hundred people.

Iran and issues related to the Middle East were the first topics of discussion. Paulsen characterized Iran as "a serious threat" and, as he has in the past, criticized Madia for statements the DFLer has made that Paulsen said did not sufficiently recognize the threat. Paulsen said that no strategy should be taken off the table but that economic sanctions should be explored first.

"Iran is a threat, not only to Israel, it's a threat to the United States and it's the most important threat globally," Paulsen said.

Calling Iran "a menace that needs to be dealt with," Madia said the United States should defer to Israel on the threat Iran poses to Israel, but he also advocated using "every tool in our toolbox" before exploring a military option.

"As a Marine, when someone says threat, you attack. I'm not there yet," Madia said.

Dillon said that diplomatic talks have not worked and that it is time to demand divestiture and other economic sanctions with a country "that has been doing a land-office business with other countries."

That's a serious failing in a person with a pulse. An accidental collision between two nuclear inventories of 5,000 weapons each has been a public policy issue since Kennedy vs Khrushchev in 1962 (inventories then: 27,297 to 3,332). Its not a fun thing to think about, it is easier to live with by consigning it to the "I forgot" part of the mind, but so are April 15th, non-elective trips to hospital, and funeral etiquette for the dead. Someone has to think about these things, and it's expected that people wanting to write legislation and conduct oversight would be willing to think about the unthinkable, at least once, if called upon by necessity. Making "I don't need to think about" silos, runways, and subs, not to mention the deployed anti-ship and multi-mission thermonuclear weapons systems, of both red and blue players, and the assets of the other eight nuclear weapons states, a campaign message is peculiar. Unfortunately, it plays well enough in electoral politics, the local rag could not be bothered to notice that there's about 10,000 more nukes ticking down to use-or-lose than the imaginary one that drives the NeoCons wild.

Democrat Ashwin Madia's "not there yet", and that's refreshingly honest, but the paper of record gave the Republican more words and more prominence within the piece, as well as framing the issue uncritically as a shoot-don't-shoot weaponization choice, not within the larger context of the NPT, and the puzzle of how, if at all, to fuel reactors designed to produce heat for steam for electrical power generation, and what to do with the global inventory of highly enriched uranium, and also plutonium.

Independent Party David Dillon appears to be simply wasting space. Divestitures and sanctions ... why? For what reason? To what end? What policy end does he hope to accomplish, other than reduce the ties that bind west Asian economies and states together? A war by economic means with Iran will help secure the ends of the Bush Regime in Iraq how???

Anyway, that's the If I Ran Iran Show, as performed at the Bet Shalom Congregation in Minnetonka and coordinated by the Jewish Community Relations Council, which like most retail political outlets, places a very low standard for public discourse about war and peace in the Middle East. If the performance of the show is different in a theater near you, drop me a line.

Posted by EBW at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The IEPREP Working Group's charter originally included more than just figuring out how, assuming some administrative requirement, to seize unpolicied network resources for higher, policied ends. The use case was disaster response, and we started work with one of the three items on the wishlist being:

Access and transport for database and information distribution applications relevant to managing the crisis. One example of this is the I am Alive (IAA) system that can be used by people in a disaster zone to register the fact that they are alive so that their friends and family can check on their health.

The WG produced RFCs 3487, 3689, 3690, 4190, 4375, and 4958, all dealing with router and voip issues, that is, creating the mechanisms for ranking resources and allocating by ranking, but nothing for the "I Am Alive" system. That was the one thing I thought was more important than dumping local yocals and their silly chatter off the net so that General Halftrack could save the world.

I thought, since we had this thing we'd written for domain name registration, which just happened to have this irritating (in the sense of enabling automated harvesting of email addresses for sale within the gray-to-black spam marketplace) mechanism for creating WHOIS data, and having written it so that just about any linux laptop could be configured to run the client end of the protocol in less time than it takes to write this post, that we were close to having an "I Am Alive" system.

The problem was, the router weenies wanted to re-solve the problem shown to be wicked difficult in the RSVP work in the prior decade, the scaling of connection state necessary to reserve resources, and the WG drifted off into the then-new Real Time area of the IETF, cause that was a cool problem to solve and few of the VoIP people lived through the RSVP effort.

Anyway, we still don't have a global, or a national, or a state, or a city, or a tribal, or a ... application where people, the ones that don't need network in an emergency, at least not as much as General Halftrack does, can beacon after some mass casualty event that they are still among the quick. After the Katerina landfall and a group of people were working around the dysfunctional FEMA to provide wireless access and backhaul to what was left of the wireline infrastructure, it was apparent that (a) people really do need network after a disaster, to find housing and more, and (b) an IAA beaconing system would have revealed the magnitude of those not causing an IAA registration much more quickly than FEMA allowed. The game of keeping the number of corpses caused by Brownie and other RNC morons under the number of corpses caused by Mohamed Atta and his gang of 18 suicides could have been brought to an earlier conclusion.

The rumors coming out of the Ike landfall area are disquieting. Nothing really has changed since Katerina, and the provisioning data for an IAA system could include more (or "later") data than simply "insert name alive at some-time and some-place", it could include looking for who and needing what and going to where and ... data -- and it could be someplace a little less inobvious than somewhere in the maze of which government's and which relief organization's dotted namespaces.

I'm in the name space business, and I'm writing applications for new top level domains, and I'm sure that my company, which is about as goodie two shoes as there is in the internet, can operate a .sos, we operate several top level domains already and expect to operate more, after all, we're not unskilled or unclued, so I'll write the application. We don't yet know what the ICANN fee will be, it was $50k per in the last round, and the figure could be much higher in the coming round, now scheduled for 2Q2009, but that's just "ask for" money -- when we ask for it, people will give it. The alternative is leaving the body count in FEMA's hands, and that's hardly a win in the Grover Norquist drown-government-in-a-bathtub moral universe. At least not for those still alive in the disaster area.

.sos -- a top level domain for I Am Alive (IAA) applications.

Posted by EBW at 02:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah settled in beside me to watch television, and the clicker was flaky so we had a few minutes of Fox were we learned that many fine people were protesting against Ahmadinejad in New York.

So I hopped over to the JPost for what the correct thinking is. The JPost credits these -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs -- but not the AIPAC, with organizing today's little media blip.

Its election season in Iran, and I'll bet next years membership cost in the American Mathematical Society that in the US/IL press, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be demonized for something he didn't say, but rather quoted, on Qods Day, and Mohammad Khatami will be lionized for saying ... the same thing, not quoting an older icon, and not on Qods Day. I still prefer Khatami, but the degree of dumbness about Dinner Jacket is about as bad as hating Elvis because of his open shirt and dancing while singing are immoral.

Posted by EBW at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I watched the sun sink into water. If there is less cloud cover this morning I'll watch the sun rise out of water. Its a good place to pause, I've got a spec to finish, code to write, projects to review, several architectures -- link, address and route; dns; and service -- to write, before another set of back-to-backs -- ICANN @ Cairo, with Paris either before or after, and the IETF @ Minneapolis.

The children are happy, the blue crabs are wicked crabby, and birds and fish of kinds fill the reflected seas and skies. Tomorrow I'll take the kids to the beach and we can splash about and see what the surf fishers have -- when we where here last we got hands on doing catch and release of a very large ray.

And heating season has started in Maine. Conroy's is $3.359/gal. The led at the Bangor Daily News is "The cost of heating a home this winter is expected to be higher than at any time in recent memory." An odd way of saying more Mainers will be colder and hungrier and sick and dead this winter than any since Hoover. Something worth reading is a blog on windpower in the Gulf of Maine and beyond.

Posted by EBW at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was in Geneva on March 10th when the New York Times broke the story. My friend asked me if this (and this is probably the only area of life where American Exceptionalism is warrented) was simply morality at the service of politics and I hesitated. I paused. I thought. Then I replied as we crossed a street that there was something wrong with the disclosure arising from the FBI, and that, even for non-Indians, the FBI was, and remains, primarily a political force, not a law enforcement institution.

In March, only Northern Rock was known to be dead. Bear Stearns was alive. IndyMac was alive. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were alive. AIG was alive. The bank failure list was exotic and ... remote.

h/t susie.

Posted by EBW at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)