Filtered news 8/30
RKing
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
-- Bob Dylan
National Security budget priorities. Chart from The National Priorities Project. David Stephenson’s Homeland Security Blog:
It’s hard to get an accurate estimate because the [cost of occupying Iraq] mounts so rapidly every minute. Can’t help wondering how much farther along the [Gulf Coast] rebuilding would be, how much more could be spent to improve public education, insure the 43 million Americans without health insurance, ad nauseum. Great legacy you’re leaving, George.
The difference, one assumes, is that Crocker and Petraeus won't be mentioning the part about how it's all fake. Then whatever they say, Bush will further exaggerate three or four notches, while Dick Cheney goes for five or six and Condoleezza Rice keeps her reasonable rep by leaving it at one or two notches of additional misleadingness. I'm excited. Have I mentioned that Bush wants $50 billion more dollars and that maybe all this cash we've been throwing away on Iraq had instead funding productive investments (be they public or private sector) wages might be going up instead of down?
As both a map enthusiast and a non-fan of agricultural subsidies, I really liked this graphic. Each red dot represents the address of a recipient of federal farm subsidies. The big red dots represent people getting over $250,000 a year. Given that this is clearly a map of Manhattan, one can safely assume that that these people are not struggling family farmers. It's a neat illustration of an out-of-whack system. It comes to me via Yuval Levin who has the right position on the issue, but naturally glosses it with a misleading partisan spin:
The farm bill passed by House Democrats in July would continue giving millionaires farm subsidies (setting the income threshold for payments at $1 million a year, and keeping loopholes in place that allow some making much more to qualify). The Bush administration has proposed sharply reducing the income threshold to $200,000 a year and ending many of those loopholes.
The real story with farm legislation, of course, is that bad policy comes from a bipartisan group of farm-state legislators. Back when the Republicans were in the majority and the congress passed a bad farm bill, he was all for it. Now that it's a Democratic congress, he's posturing as in favor of sounder policy. But the real dynamics aren't partisan or even ideological -- it's bipartisan sausage-making at its finest.
Experts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace or working longer hours. Average wages for men and women actually declined for the third consecutive year.
Italics mine. Among full-time workers, income declined 1.1% for men and 1.2% for women. And — this will come as a shock, so be sure you're sitting down — incomes decreased a bit at the low end and increased a bit at the high end, causing the Gini index of income inequality to go up yet again. But it wasn't a statistically significant increase, so no need to worry. Except that these statistically insignificant annual changes do add up:
The Gini index has increased 1.7 percent since 2002 (0.462) and 3.3 percent over the past 10 years (from 0.455 to 0.470). There have not been any statistically significant annual changes in the Gini index over the past 10 years.
This is some economic expansion we're having, isn't it? It's really kicked the market economy into high gear. Bonus Kaus bashing here. When are you going to teach this punk a lesson, Mickey?
The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high.
Experts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace or working longer hours. Average wages for men and women actually declined for the third consecutive year.
The NYT then added this gem:
Some Republicans seized on the new data as evidence that Bush administration policies had been good for people’s pocketbooks.
Seriously, it’s as if Republicans are trying to appear foolish and out of touch. People are working more for less and the GOP responds to the news by saying, “See? I told you we knew what we were doing.”
Bush Visits That Part of the World When my wife was in school in Louisiana, she had a teacher who began a sentence one day with, "When you leave Louisiana and go to America . . ." Now, Louisiana has long been different from the rest of the country, its French and Spanish colonial roots long pre-dating Anglo influence. In south Louisiana in particular, where the geographic isolation of bayou country was not penetrated until the commercialization of oil and gas deposits well into the 20th century, the Anglo influence not only came late but often came as unwelcome.
So there is precedent for Louisiana to consider itself a land apart, but I'm not sure there is any precedent for a President of the United States to refer to contiguous U.S. territory as if it were a foreign land in quite the same way President Bush did yesterday while visiting New Orleans on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall there:
"[T]he taxpayers and people from all around the country have got to understand the people of this part of the world really do appreciate the fact that the American citizens are supportive of the recovery effort.""I come telling the folks in this part of the world that we still understand there's problems and we're still engaged."
"We care deeply about the folks in this part of the world."
He might as well have been talking to tsunami survivors in Indonesia.
New Surge Meme: Gas to $9 Is this outside their area of expertise? Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV) just got back from Iraq and he says that Petraeus, Crocker and the chieftains of the Iraqi government told him not only that there would be genocide if the US left but that gas prices would go to $8 or $9 a gallon.
The Nevada Republican, who returned Tuesday from his fourth trip to Iraq, met with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Iraqi Deputy President Tariq al-Hashimi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh."To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave," Porter said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas.
Is it Petraeus or Crocker who's got the oil price analysis portfolio? Someone remind me.
Josh focused on the oddity of Petraeus and Crocker suddenly becoming commodity market analysts, but one really has to wonder how Iran and al-Qaeda are supposed to simultaneously seize control of Iraq.
Quick! Start a new charity! Linda Chavez: Craig persecuted for being Republican.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Gov. Rick Perry accepted a parole board recommendation Thursday to spare condemned inmate Kenneth Foster, the getaway driver in a 1996 murder who had been scheduled for execution within hours.
The sentence had drawn protests from death penalty opponents because Foster wasn't the actual shooter.
Foster was convicted of murder and sentence to death under Texas' law of parties, which makes non-triggermen equally accountable for a crime. Another condemned man was executed under the same statute earlier this year.
While Perry questioned Texas law in extending clemency, Foster's execution actually rested on relatively solid legal grounds. The problem was always moral, and turned on the question of intent. It was never firmly established that Foster intended for the robbery victim to be killed, which meant that he could have been executed for a crime he didn't want and couldn't control (he was several feet away from the actual triggerman).
Even worse, his original conviction was based on another party's understanding of the intent:
Steen testified that he "understood what was probably fixing to go down" when Brown got out of the car -- a statement widely considered to have secured Foster's 1997 conviction. In 2003, Steen recanted that, saying he only had believed a murder might occur after seeing Brown and LaHood arguing.
Foster's case would have been a serious miscarriage of justice, but still not as egregious as that of Troy Davis, who was convicted largely because of recanted testimony, which remains on appeal. Davis could still die this year. I don't understand the appeal to bloodthirstiness and Authority in these death-penalty states, but at least Texas got this one right.
Who wants to bet that if Foster's case had come before then-Gov. Bush and Alberto Gonzalez, he'd be dead by now?
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, I Beat Up a Gay Guy for Hitting on Me My pal Steve Clemons is guest-blogging at Andrew Sullivan's site this week. And he has a post about this astounding admission/boast of Tucker Carlson's that he bashed, literally bashed, a gay man who hit on him in a public bathroom.
Carlson beat up a man? A fully grown man? Please. Tucker Carlson could be beaten into submission with nothing more than a heavy thought.
Entertainment: Sticking directly to the script (police report) of Senator Craig’s public restroom encounter with an undercover police officer, Keith re-enacts (in classic “Dragnet” style) what transpired that fateful day back in June. 
Download (994) | Play (1394) 
Download (415) | Play (830) Let this clip go down in comedy/news history.
You decide: tin hat conspiracy or warning signs of another 9/11?
Local Troops Deploy To Nation's Capital Link Excerpt:
Members of the 1st Battalion 265 Air Defense Artillery have mobilized and are on
a plane headed first to Ft. Bliss, then for federal active duty in the capital region.
The troops will be deployed for a year.
Urgent False Flag Terror Warning Link Excerpt:
Massive evidence has come to our attention which shows that the allies of Cheney are determined
to manufacture a new 9/11 terror incident, and/or a new Gulf of Tonkin war provocation over the
coming weeks and months. Such events would be used as a pretext for launching a war against Iran, quite possibly with nuclear weapons, and for imposing a regime of martial law here in the United States.
We Are Going to Get Hit Again Link Excerpt:
Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have
enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level, says Vice Admiral (ret.)
John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center.
Mystery trader bets market will crash Link Excerpt:
An anonymous investor has placed a bet on an index of Europe's top 50 stocks falling by a third
by the end of September, as world equity markets plunged for a third day and volatility hit a three-year high.
$4.5B bet on catastrophe within 4 weeks Link Excerpt:
The two sales are being referred to by market traders as "bin Laden trades" because
only an event on the scale of 9-11 could make these short-sell options valuable.
The buyer can only make money if the market drops 30%-50% within the next four weeks.
If the market does not drop, the buyer stands to lose over $1 billion just for engaging in these contracts!
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