The Bush Beat

Newsday to Line Dolans' Bird Cage

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:05:08 -0500

Another paper falls to journalism know-nothings.

Jim Dolan makes Rupert Murdoch seem like Jesus H. Christ. And that's why Cablevision's apparently successful attempt to swallow up Newsday is making us gag.

Blessed with the huge cash flow of a monopoly cable company (thanks only to cities long ago giving up a public utility to private companies), the Dolan family has enough gelt to spend $650 million to buy the behemoth Long Island newspaper. For a while, it looked as though Murdoch was going to land the whale, but call me Ishmael if the Dolans didn't sink their hooks in deeper.

No matter that the Dolans (Jim's rich daddy is Chuck) have no experience in the news business — Cablevision's News 12 operation doesn't count. At least Murdoch knows the business. When he owned the Voice years ago, he was too smart to turn it into a right-wing rag. The Dolans will further blandify Newsday.

Wall Street's not exactly enthusiastic about the match, which makes about as much sense as the Dolan-owned New York Knicks spending a fortune to hire as coach Mike D'Antoni, who can't coach defense and inherits a roster ill-suited to his run-and-gun style.

Jim Dolan is the slack-jawed yokel who has screwed up the Knicks with his meddling into things he doesn't know about. His only experience with journalism is to squelch it. Colleagues have reminded me that the Knicks' policy toward reporters is unusually repressive and controlling.

When there's bad news brewing in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, Jim Dolan and crew make sure to clamp down hard to keep any of it from leaking out. Sure, every company does that, even newspaper companies, but the Knicks' operation is particularly harsh toward journalists.

Yes, these are the hard-hitting, courageous people we want running our newspapers.

You have to feel sorry for Newsday editor John Mancini (whom I used to work for at a now-defunct paper) and the other fine journalists who still have jobs there. That's because the Dolans' operations are relentlessly mediocre.

As a I said before, Wall Street's not particularly gung-ho. A story earlier this month in Newsday noted:

Louis Ureneck, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University, said bringing Newsday reporting into the mix at Cablevision's news channel certainly will add appeal, but he added, "The question is how do they monetize the strategy? Is there enough here to justify the kind of price they're offering?"

Wall Street doesn't appear to think so.

"The company needs to stick to its core business and not go out on entrepreneurial pursuits that are far away from its core expertise," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research in Manhattan.

David Joyce, who tracks Cablevision for Miller Taback & Co. in Manhattan, said he thinks Newsday is better-matched to Murdoch and his News Corp.

"Murdoch knows newspapers," Joyce said. "The Dolan family does not."

No matter. The newspaper business may be ailing, as its owners all over America keep moaning, but the New York Times pointed out yesterday that Newsday produced more than $80 million last year in profits on $500 million in revenue.

The Dolans will now have two cash cows, even if one of them is relatively sickly from eating too much newsprint.

The question is: What changed aging Chuck Dolan's mind? As Newsday's own Thomas Maier wrote Saturday:

Over the years, Charles Dolan, the billionaire founder of Cablevision Systems Corp., always seemed a bit coy when asked about the possibility that one day he might own Newsday.

"I have often thought it," Dolan told Newsday in 2006. "I thought it would be a wonderful thing to do, but I've also been smart enough not to try it."

Son Jim apparently isn't smart enough. But that's no surprise.

Assault and Batteries

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:18:33 -0500

High-tech horror: Widespread cell-phone violence against women in Iraq and the Congo.

The downside of the 21st century's high-tech age is lower than you can imagine: Cell phones and cell-phone technology are prime culprits in a growing epidemic of rape, beatings, and murder of women in the Congo and Iraq.

A war over "coltan," a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of cell phones and other electronic devices, has helped cause the ongoing tragedy of rape and murder by the millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC horrors far outstrip even Darfur as a tragedy, as I noted in June 2005.

Go to Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, the website of Czech-Canadian Katerina Cizek's documentary film series of that name, to read "Cell Phones Fuel Congo Conflict." . The series explains how the fight over coltan, only one of the treasures in the resources-rich Congo, is directly responsible for much of the savage war in which millions have died and hundreds of thousands, at the very least, have been raped and otherwise brutalized.

Eve Ensler, famous for the Vagina Monologues, is one of the few Westerners to latch onto the rampage against women in the Congo and try to publicize it. Incongruously, her monologue on the violence, gleaned from a trip there, can be found in Glamour. Here's the second paragraph of Ensler's in-your-face August 2007 article:

How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?

Meanwhile, in Iraq, cell phones as finished products are prime weapons — in a high-tech fashion — for brutalizing women.

Amanj Khalil, a young journalist for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, described on May 2 one recent incident in Iraq's northern Kurdish area:

Salma trusted her boyfriend enough to speak freely with him about romance, love and even sex.

But she has paid a high price for her candour. Salma, who asked that her real name be concealed because of the sensitivity of her story, is hiding in a women’s shelter in the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah, her body battered and bruised.

Her boyfriend recorded their intimate conversations on his phone and passed them onto her family through a friend when she refused to marry him. Salma’s body still bears the scars of her family’s response. The 28-year-old’s hand was fractured during one of the beatings from her brothers, father and uncles.

“They started to beat me without even letting me speak,” she said. “They beat me so severely that I fainted several times."

Salma's just one of many Iraqi women being brutalized in a high-tech way by lower-than-low scumbags.

It's worse in the Congo. Natural disasters, like the cyclone that ravaged Burma, are one thing. Manmade disasters are another. And no manmade disaster is as unnatural as what's going on in the DRC, surely the rape capital of the world.

Here's a grim fact: In the Congo, "vaginal destruction" has become an official term of medical art used by beleaguered doctors and nurses to describe war-related injuries.

Western governments and the mainstream press usually, but not always, ignore the DRC. (Certainly, Western corporations don't ignore it the country's rich natural resources.) So you have to go elsewhere to find out about the situation. Thanks to the Web, the upside of high-tech, you can.

One of the best pieces, and I've referred to it previously, is Sarah J. Coleman's June 2005 article on Beliefnet, "Congo's Conflict: Heart of Darkness." Her lede is worth repeating:

How do you measure the horror in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Add up all of the American deaths in every single war we've fought in since 1776, including World War II and the Civil War (1,540,665). Now add to that the estimated deaths from the recent tsunami (169,752 confirmed dead, 127,294 missing). Next, add to that the estimated death toll in the conflict in Darfur (400,000). Then, add to that the victims of genocide in Rwanda, one of the most horrific slaughters of the 20th century (937,000).

Add all of the deaths together — and you still have a smaller number than the 3.5 million people who have died in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1998.

The toll's up to an estimated 5 million now — that's the scope of the Holocaust. Read Stephen Lewis's April 12 speech at Ensler's V-Day Celebration in New Orleans.

Lewis really got down to it in September 2007, quoting from "The Shame of War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict," a March 2007 major report from IRIN, the U.N.'s excellent and free global news service:

“As a result of the systematic and exceptionally violent gang rape of thousands of Congolese women and girls, doctors in the DRC are now classifying vaginal destruction as a crime of combat. Many of the victims suffer from traumatic fistula — tissue tears in the vagina, bladder, and rectum.

Additional long-term medical complications for survivors may include uterine prolapse (the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond) and other serious injuries to the reproductive system, such as infertility, or complications associated with miscarriages and self-induced abortions. Rape victims are also at high-risk for sexually transmitted infections.”

I won't apologize for the graphic nature of this, because we need to face the unexpurgated facts.

The Congo violence is the biggest war tragedy, but of course it's far from the only manmade disaster. Among the many battlegrounds of violence against women is Kurdish Iraq. That northern region of Iraq has long been thought to be the most civilized area of the war-torn country (aside from the increasing number of skirmishes between Turkey and the Kurd separatists). But Salma's story is far from unique.

Here's the intrepid reporter Khalil again to give the broader view of cell-phone-induced violence in Iraq:

Mobile phones have become a new threat to young women’s safety in Iraq’s northern region, members of parliament and women’s rights campaigners warn.

Men are using them to take photos and record audio and video clips of women and girls who are breaking social codes by having sexually explicit conversations or intimate relations with their boyfriends. In many cases, the conversations and videos have been widely distributed, damaging women’s reputations and, in doing so, putting their lives at risk.

In 2007, nearly 350 women were the victims of violence in mobile-phone related cases, according to statistics compiled by women’s organisations and the Sulaimaniyah police directorate. In 2006, 170 cases were recorded.

However, experts believe that the actual number of incidents is much higher.

Can you hear me now?

May Day! May Day! Cold War Heating Up!

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:26:31 -0500

The Rooskies are rolling out the hardware once again.

Everybody's talking tough these days. Hillary threatens to nuke Iran and now Vladimir Putin is launching the kind of "Victory Day" parade on Red Square that hasn't been seen since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Here's how France 24's Nick Coleman described it today:

Fighter jets circled over Red Square on Monday as Russia prepared a huge patriotic display around this week's presidential inauguration, amid rising tension with pro-Western neighbour Georgia.

MiG fighter jets together with strategic bomber planes thundered over the capital in a rehearsal for traditional World War II commemorations on Friday featuring a show of military hardware unprecedented for the post-Soviet era.

Vlad the Paler may be stepping down as president, but he's still the prime minister, in every sense of the word. He ain't giving up anything.

He's rolling out the big guns, just like in the bad old days when thousands of missiles, troops, and weapons paraded in the square before the doddering conservatives who called themselves Communists.

Coleman's story goes on to note Putin's explanation of how the current display of planes, trained soldiers, and airplanes isn't anything other than peaceful:

The military parade is part of the dramatic backdrop to president-elect Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration on Wednesday, following Soviet-style May Day parades last week.

President Vladimir Putin, who is to step down after eight years but retain power in the prime minister's post, said the pumped up display was not intended as a threat.

"For the first time in many years heavy military equipment will be used. This is not sabre-rattling. We are not threatening anyone.... This is a demonstration of our growing defence capability," Putin said.

Everybody loves a parade. That's an order.

Goodnight, Iran

Mon, 05 May 2008 07:39:02 -0500

Hope I'm not jinxing anything, but here it is almost two weeks since Hillary Clinton threatened to nuke Iran, and both countries are still standing.

Hard to believe that Clinton's vow to exterminate Iran hasn't gotten more play. Everybody got exercised when Iran's crackpot leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was quoted as saying that he wanted to make Israel disappear.

Why not the same outrage about Hillary?

Even grammarians haven't taken her to task for saying that if Iran nuked Israel, she would attack Iran, adding, "We would be able to totally obliterate them." (See it here.)

"Obliterate": "to remove or destroy all traces of; do away with; destroy completely."

Clinton would go beyond that to "totally obliterate" Iran? Whew.

At least the Boston Globe has already made the comparison of Hillary to Dr. Strangelove.

The Globe made an important point:

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

Barack Obama's campaign got everything mixed up in its response to Hillary's nuke threat. Here's what Obama said:

"It's not the language that we need right now, and I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush."

Wrong. She's more like Dick Cheney.

In fact, she really is a lot like Cheney, except that he had more experience. To deal with energy problems, Cheney called in oil executives early in the Bush administration and met with them secretly and then refused to release info about those meetings.

That was no different from Hillary's decision early in the Clinton administration to call in health-care executives for private meetings. Hillary then refused to release info about those meetings.

In Hillary's case, she's threatening Iran because she clearly wants to nail down as much money from wealthy Jewish donors as she can in her fight with Obama.

Better for her to bomb in her campaign than to bomb anywhere else.

Going for Broke

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:21:34 -0500

The word is "recession," whether or not Bush will say the word, and we're in it.

George W. Bush's press conference the other day on the economy was really a hoot — his presence never promised us a Rose Garden performance that wouldn't be.

But for a change, this performance on April 29 was more notable for what Bush didn't — and wouldn't — say.

Here's one of the exchanges with a nameless reporter:

Reporter: Americans believe we are in a recession. What will it take for you to say those words, that we are in a recession?

Bush: Yes, thank you. I've answered the question on the words and terminologies. I will tell you that these are very difficult economic times — very difficult. And we'll let the economists define it for what it is. I would hope that those who worry about recession, slowdown, whatever you want to call it, make the tax cuts permanent as a way of helping to address this issue — because if you're somebody out there trying to plan your future and you're worried about the future and you think your taxes are going to go up, it's going to cause different behavioral patterns.

Bush managed to call the recession a "slow economy" and "difficult times," a "sour time," "tough for the American people."

The U.S. press is having the same problem coming to terms with the term. For years now, a civil war has been raging in Iraq and most of the U.S. press refused to call it that. Now we're in a recession, and the papers won't call it that. What are they waiting for? Walter Cronkite's pronouncement?

Overseas, there's no such namby-pambiness. AS an April 30 story in the Scotsman said:

Britain could follow America into a full-blown recession unless there is an urgent and aggressive cut in interest rates, a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee warned.

Peter MacMahon's piece went on to quote the guy, economist David Blanchflower, as saying:

"There has been no decoupling of the two economies: contagion is in the air. The US sneezed and the UK is rapidly catching a cold."

You'd better hope it just a cold.

Supreme Court to Americans: In Your Face!

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:39:43 -0500

6-3 opinion on photo-ID law opens door for more privacy intrusions

Monday's Supreme Court decision upholding a harshly restrictive photo-ID requirement for voting deals a severe blow to people who value privacy and individuality. That's all of us, by the way.

But it's future generations that will really pay the price, because they may grow up in a country whose governments and corporations will routinely track their movements, activities, likes, dislikes, opinions, resentments — just about everything they say or do.

Monday's 6-3 court decision upholds a misbegotten Indiana law requiring voters to present photo IDs.

But it opens the door wider for more sophisticated uses of photo IDs, such as facial biometrics for tracking your movements and buying habits. That's all in the near future, in part thanks to RFID tags (which I wrote about earlier in an item about Vegas casinos).

My take is that once photo IDs are going to required for voting (and many states will now try to pass laws modeled after Indiana's), the government and corporations will have all sorts of tools to play with. The court decision blesses such attempts because Indiana's law was particularly intrusive.

So go to the Electronic Privacy Information Center for info on the long-range danger of RFID chips implanted into drivers licenses.

We'll have no more privacy than cows with ID tags in their ears.

For now, the story is the Indiana law and the court ruling. Start your reading not with the decision but with these three paragraphs on the dissent, courtesy of Linda Greenhouse's story in the New York Times, which is a useful but typically establishmentarian take on this issue:

In a dissenting opinion, Justice David H. Souter said that for those on whom the law had an impact, the burden was “serious” and the state had failed to justify it. Like the Virginia poll tax the court struck down 42 years ago, he said, “the onus of the Indiana law is illegitimate just because it correlates with no state interest so well as it does with the object of deterring poorer residents from exercising the franchise.” The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Six states in addition to Indiana — Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Dakota — now require voters to provide photo identification before casting a ballot. Bills are pending in two dozen other states, although they are not likely to pass this year in more than a handful, due to short legislative sessions and Democratic opposition.

The Indiana law, adopted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2005 without a single Democratic vote, is regarded as the strictest in the country. It requires a voter to present a photograph as part of an unexpired document issued either by Indiana or the federal government, a requirement that in most cases can be satisfied only by a current driver’s license or a passport. The state’s motor vehicle agency provides a free photo ID card for people who do not drive, but obtaining it requires a “primary document” like an original birth certificate or a passport.

But that's all you need from here. Go to the this Jurist site, which tells the story quickly and has all the pertinent links for you curious ones out there.

Here's how Jurist lays it out:

The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday let stand Indiana's controversial voter identification statute, which requires voters to present photo identification as a prerequisite to voting. The decision comes in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, where the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the law in 2007, ruling that it does not put an undue burden on the right to vote and therefore does not violate the US Constitution.

Supporters of the law have said that voter identification can be used to deter voter fraud, but its critics have argued that the legislation makes it difficult for minorities, the elderly and the impoverished to participate in elections.

Click for the majority opinion and David Souter's dissent. You'll find other links at the Jurist link listed earlier.

EPIC filed its own brief against the Indiana law (for all the good it did), and so did Rick Hasen, whose Election Law blog archive on the topic is useful. (Hasen's brief is here.)

It's already tough enough to vote in this country. Why in the world do we have elections on Tuesdays, instead of the weekends, when so many other countries conduct votes? That's to keep the riff-raff — those who don't have the pull or the money to get time off from their bosses nor the education to know their options — from voting.

Democrats in Congress and various state legislatures will try to fight off attempts by those various states to enact laws similar to Indiana's. Supposedly, those laws won't be passed in time to affect this November's vote, but don't count on it.

We're devolving to the days of anti-democratic, racist gimmicks like the poll tax (read this 1948 piece by courageous Southern editor Hodding Carter — the father of Jimmy Carter's former flunky), and a photo ID for voting is just one more step toward a national ID. And that's one step closer to a national ID with RFID chips.

You will be tracked (assuming you're not already tracked).

McCain on Bush: 'A President Who Dares to Work for the Best'

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:18:31 -0500

Recalling a past outbreak of fete-in-mouth disease.

McCain gives Bush the Freedom Award in 2005.

Pols will say anything, especially at chicken-dinner affairs where they pat one another on the back in front of selected guests of their own ilk.

That must be the reason that John McCain gave George W. Bush something called the Freedom Award in 2005.

We're nearing the third anniversary of that barely noted annual event hosted by the International Republican Institute. (Laura Bush "won" it in 2006; other recipients include Dick and Lynne Cheney.)

You'll say that this is typical behavior by pols to give one another awards and make glowing speeches, so don't give much weight to such speeches. OK, fine, but it's still funny and somehow a little tragic to hear these pols log-rolling. My old guru, John Bremner, tried to pound into my head that "words convey ideas." So, these words by McCain mean at least a little something about our democratic process and its phony-baloney "civility."

The only time to pay attention is when the candidates (not their handlers or aides) are ripping into each other. "Dirty politics"? Bullshit. That's when you get down to what democracy is all about: lots of arguing, with, hopefully, some deals and compromises struck.

This chicken-dinner speech, though pretty humorous, may not reveal anything that's specific to John McCain, because every pol indulges in this kind of ass-kissing in selected venues. But McCain hasn't always been very good at checking the credentials of the asses he has kissed.

Back in Arizona, he pinned his tail to donkeys like financiopath Charles Keating and phony-war-hero Duke Tully (publisher of the state's largest paper). He stroked those two schmucks vigorously.

In the end, that's what McCain is really good at. When he's not losing his temper, he's a hail fellow well met, as I know from personal experience — he's a good guy to talk with, smart, lively, and great with the press, which will always cut him a break.

Anyway, back in May 2005, when this marvelous dinner took place in D.C., McCain was the president of the IRI, an org that sprung from the Cold War tool called the National Endowment for Democracy.

McCain gushed over Bush like a White House intern. And why not — they were at a GOP soiree, not in front of the general populace.

Read McCain's whole spiel (and Bush's reply in kind), if you want, but here are some excerpts of current presidential candidate McCain talking about current president Bush:

"George W. Bush is not just any president. He has become the world statesman; more than any other, he’s dedicated his presidency to securing the success of liberty abroad. …

"We have a president who dares to work for the best. He works to achieve a safer, freer, better world — a world in which governments are chosen, not imposed, a world where freedoms are embraced, not abridged, a world in which there is justice and opportunity for all, not rights and riches for some. …

"Years ago the President and I were once opponents. Now it is my privilege and honor to stand with him, in the great and noble work he has undertaken. Like all of you, and like all who believe in our good cause, I am indebted to and very proud of our honoree. It’s my great honor to present the 2005 Freedom Award to our President and my friend, George W. Bush."

It chokes you up, right?

Fear and Loathing in Tibet

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:09:42 -0500

It doesn't take a Dalai Lama to convince you of reincarnation. All it takes are pictures of the Dalai Lama.

I noted this gonzo/gyatso connection last October and can't resist adding to it now.

Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out in 2005, poor guy. It's his twin who arrived in Seattle early today as his homeland keeps shaking with riots.

The resemblance ends with the photos. The Dalai Lama is scheduled to lead a "five-day conference on compassion," as the AP says this morning.

As for Thompson? He tried to solve some problems with violence. For all you people fawning over his memory, he was not only a great writer (at least early in his career) but was also a woman-beater and sweetheart-mistreater.

Chips and Dip

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:24:34 -0500

Oops. Tommy Thompson had a money implant, not an RFID chip.

Earlier today, in an item about the creepy RFID chips, I wrote that erstwhile presidential candidate Tommy G. Thompson had had a chip implanted:

Former Bush health secretary Tommy Thompson had an RFID tag implanted a few years ago — the lap dog was named to the board of a company that makes them, so he was more than willing.

But Jason Denby, a Thompson aide at the law firm Akin Gump (where the former Wisconsin governor hangs his hat), writes to say:

I read your article online and felt I should clarify that former Secretary Thompson was never implanted with the chip. He made a statement at one point that he would, but only when his current medical professionals had the technology to utilize it.

He is also no longer a member of the board of the company.

Thanks, Jason, and sorry about that. Yes, Thompson vowed to get a chip but never did get one; I relied on an outdated story, so my error.

Thompson was indeed on the board of VeriChip, but he no longer is. Before he left, the company implanted a nice bundle of money in him. He didn't need no stinkin' chip to get that bundle, thanks in part to an inside deal the company had with Akin Gump.

This is yet another item in the unending catalog of top government officials whoring themselves out to the private sector and getting money and stock for doing nothing more than having connections.

Yes, I'm stating the obvious. So what? I previously noted Jerry Bremer's sweet deal with BlastGard, which sells reinforced wrap to protect Humvees from roadside bombs. That's just too rich, isn't it?

So, sorry for stating the obvious that, while most Americans are about to be engulfed by a recession or depression, people like Bremer and Thompson are making money for doing little but simply existing.

Regarding Thompson, SEC records on VeriChip's parent note that during 2006, the company paid $800,000 to Akin Gump as its legal counsel. The records go on:

Tommy G. Thompson, a partner with Akin Gump, was a member of VeriChip’s board of directors from July 2005 to March 8, 2007, and, as a result of his directorship services, as of December 31, 2007, holds fully vested options to purchase 55,556 shares of our common stock.

A subsequent SEC document filed earlier this year clarified things: VeriChip got a bill from Akin Gump for legal fees of $1.2 million during 2005 and 2006. As a result of his being a director for less than two years, he got fully vested options to purchase 100,000 shares of stock.

That's a nice deal, but maybe not as nice as the one he now has with Pure Bioscience, a California company that makes pesticides and disinfectants. Thompson is a board member of Pure.

SEC records filed in the past few weeks show that Pure inked a two-year consulting contract with Thompson. Very handy fellow for Pure — Thompson has deals as a board member and consultant. Under the consulting deal, Thompson was to be paid $12,500 a month and got an option to purchase 300,000 shares of that company's stock. But wait, there's more: Another consultant (and board member at the time), Michael Sitton, then transferred the rights to 700,000 options to Thompson. After the dust cleared, Thompson owned a cool million options.

Cool, yeah, but too hot to hang onto.

SEC insider-trading records — click here for Thompson's recent insider trades — show that, among other deals, Thompson bought 100,000 shares of Pure for 85 cents a share. That transaction was on January 15, 2008. Seven days later, he sold 20,000 shares of Pure for $5.28 cents a share. Nice going. He sold some more off during the next several weeks — all for more than $5 a share. These were "automatic" sales, so that somehow sanctifies them.

Thompson didn't need an RFID chip to home in on subsequent lucrative deals emanating from his catbird seats at Pure. On March 3, he exercised his options on 161,000 shares, paying $1 a share. Since then, he's been selling them off in dribs and drabs at prices ranging from $5 to $6 a share. Let's see: You buy a share for $1 and you sell it either the same day or within days for $5 or $6.

This is not shocking. This lazy-ass, money-for-nothing churning is business as usual on Wall Street. Too bad the news of it doesn't get hammered into our brains. We're the fools for not getting outraged.

Just to show that Thompson is no fool, on April 1 he sold 25,000 shares of Pure at $5.99 per share, making his proceeds $149,750. Not bad for a day's non-work.

What Happens in Vegas . . . Stays in Computers

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:31:12 -0500

Creepy privacy threat sure to get under your skin.

The RFID threat to privacy is spreading fast in Las Vegas casinos.

Read "RFID keeps tabs on Vegas bartenders and, soon enough, on you, too," a report by Patrick Thibodeau on Computerworld.

Don't count on vacationers complaining about these tags keeping track of their every move, desire, and need — they'll be having too much fun losing their money to care about it. But that acquiescence just means that this "radio-frequency ID" microchip assault is likely to spread faster into other parts of our culture.

Those records of your activities will stay on computers and will likely be marketed throughout the private sector. For sure, those records will be used by governments and law-enforcement, and they no doubt will be hacked, too.

The Bush regime, which has constantly pushed for wider use of RFID technology to track people instead of dogs and equipment, took a major step in January, as the AP reported back then:

Passport cards for Americans who travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean will be equipped with technology that allows information on the card to be read from a distance.

The technology was approved by the State Department and privacy advocates were quick to criticize the department for not doing more to protect information on the card, which can be used by U.S. citizens instead of a passport when traveling to other countries in the Western hemisphere. …

The administration wanted to begin requiring passports or passport cards in mid-2008, but Congress mandates that the rule not go into effect until summer 2009.

Lib senator Pat Leahy is one of those fighting against the RFID. Late last month, when Homeland Security issued new, stiffer passport rules, Leahy noted of the Bush regime's flunkies:

"There is no signal they will reconsider using problematic RFID technology that poses security and privacy concerns."

Former Bush health secretary Tommy Thompson had an RFID tag implanted a few years ago — the lap dog was named to the board of a company that makes them, so he was more than willing.

Read Stuart King's Computer Weekly column for more.

You think life's a bitch now? See Dan Newling's 2006 story in the Mail on Sunday (U.K.), "Britons 'could be microchipped like dogs in a decade.' "

Lawyer Death Match in Pakistan

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:37:06 -0500

What's happening in Pakistan would ordinarily be poetic justice, in a vigilante sort of way: Lawyers are killing other lawyers.

But any country in which gangs of lawyers are rioting in the streets and are ambulance-calling instead of ambulance-chasing is in trouble.

This Shakespearean drama just shows how Pakistan, the world's sixth most populous country, is breaking down. That's a scary situation in a country that's armed with nukes (thanks to North Korea) and fighter jets (thanks to the U.S.).

As Jurist (the must-read, Pittsburgh-based legal-news site) says:

Opposing groups of Pakistani lawyers clashed with each other in the city of Karachi Wednesday, prompting widespread rioting that led to at least seven deaths.

Lawyers supporting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf who gathered to protest the Tuesday lawyers' beating in Lahore of former Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afgan Niazi were confronted after their meeting by anti-Musharraf lawyers; fighting broke out near the city's main court complex which then spread to other areas. Most of the dead were killed when they were trapped in a nearby building containing some lawyers' offices that was set ablaze. A local bar association office was gutted.

Now I can think of some lawyers who need to be slapped up side the head — Alberto Gonzales comes to mind, and so does Cheney flunky David Addington — but this is ridiculous.

What if it spreads to New York City? We've got 23,000 members of the Bar right here. Think of the battles. Think of the lawsuits after the battles.

Praise Allah that our lawyers are too busy foreclosing on our mortgages and representing us against foreclosures to waste billable hours on rioting.

Government Website Caves on 'Abortion' Ban

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:46:13 -0500

The federal government appears to have reversed itself on the ban of the search term "abortion" in its huge reproductive-health database Popline.

A few hours ago, I noted the absurd blockage, the story of which was broken by bloggers (including Maud Newton) and also reported by Wired.

At the time I wrote, you could type the word "abortion" into the Popline database and get zero hits. Now, you get 536 hits — wait, now it's miraculously up to 730.

Hold on, now it's registering 1,087 hits. Popline's techs may be fiddling with the database to restore its ability to search for the word "abortion."

And why shouldn't you be able to search it? After all, USAID-funded Popline boasts that it's the world's largest clearinghouse for reproductive-health literature.

No word yet from Popline's Debbie Dickson on whether the ban was officially lifted just within the past couple of hours. But that's what seems to have happened.

I just now tried to search "abortion" on Popline and got 1,374 hits. It's a miracle of rebirth.

Government Bans the Word "Abortion"

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:58:46 -0500

Not content with trying to stop abortions, Bush regime flunkies have banished the word "abortion."

Type the word in the search engine for Popline, the huge database that the federal government bills as "your connection to the world's reproductive health issues." You get zero hits.

It's not a glitch. It's intentional.

Read about it on Maud Newton's excellent blog, and see the story that Wired posted a few hours ago.

Popline is funded by USAID, the highly politicized government agency that spreads money throughout the world, particularly in "developing" countries.

The Popline search engine considers "abortion" a "stop word," like the articles "a," "an," and so on. Maud Newton notes that stop words are "terms automatically omitted from searches under the assumption that they don’t add value or meaning."

After users of Popline noticed the sudden, unannounced change late last week, they queried Johns Hopkins people about it (the university runs the database). They professed ignorance until, as Newton notes, Debbie Dickson of Popline replied to a medical librarian with this:

Yes we did make a change in POPLINE. We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now. In addition to the terms you’re already using, you could try using ‘Fertility Control, Postconception’. This is the broader term to our ‘Abortion’ terms and most records have both in the keyword fields. Also, adding ‘unwanted w2 pregnancy’ in place of aborti*. We have a keyword Pregnancy, Unwanted and there are 2517 records with aborti* & unwanted w2 pregnancy.

I hope this helps.

It doesn't.

Dickson's response was on April Fool's Day, but this is no joke.

However, you can still search the words "1984" and "Orwell" on Popline and get hits. I guess those words still "add value or meaning."

Change is in the Air

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:54:34 -0500

But real money for those of us in the bottom 90 percent of incomes? Forget it.

If "change" is this presidential campaign's catchword, then let me ask: Can you spare any?

I'm not asking for myself, because I'm one of the lucky ones. But I am a member of the bottom 90 percent of Americans in income. In other words, I make less than $105,000 a year.

Income disparity in the U.S. is shocking not because it exists but because it's getting worse. How about some newly released factoids from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a serious and respectable D.C. think tank? From the CBPP's March 27 report by Aviva Aron-Dine on income concentration:

• Between 2005 and 2006, the average income (before taxes) of the top 1 percent of households increased by $73,000 (or 7 percent), after adjusting for inflation, while the average income of the bottom 90 percent of households increased by just $20 (or 0.1 percent). (In 2006, the top 1 percent of households were those with incomes above about $375,000.)

• 2006 marked the fourth straight year in which income gains at the top outpaced those among the rest of the population. Since 2002, the average income of the top 1 percent of households has risen 44 percent, or $335,000, after adjusting for inflation. The average income of the bottom 90 percent of households has risen about 3 percent, or about $1,000.

• The share of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 20.3 percent in 2006. Not since 1928, just before the Great Depression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation’s income. In 2000, at the peak of the 1990s boom, the top 1 percent received 19.3 percent of total income in the nation.

And let's get even more personal with these fun facts churned out the same day in another report by the CBPP's Aron-Dine:

New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data show that the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the very highest incomes pay only 18 percent of their income, on average, in federal individual income taxes. . . . While the incomes of those at the top have skyrocketed, their tax rates have fallen significantly, with the largest reductions occurring after the capital gains tax cuts of 1997 and 2003.

This ain't the America in which the baby-boom generation grew up. Today's economy, run to hell by the all-growed-up baby-boom generation, holds out little hope to today's whippersnapper. Just another reason not to trust people over 30. Or under 30, for that matter.

No Joy in Mudville

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:58:21 -0500

In D.C., a new baseball stadium opens amid the same old staggering poverty and inequality

Oh, they're so happy over on ESPN because of the Washington Nationals' new baseball stadium, which opened last night when George W. Bush threw up the first pitch.

The doofus POTUS was wild with his throw to Nats' manager Manny Acta. Strange, isn't it, that Bush's battery mate was Acta instead of the Nats' catcher, Paul Lo Duca. But the ex-Met is ensnared in the steroids scandal, so his PR quotient is below the Mendoza Line.

Funnier still was during the game itself, when Bush showed up in the broadcast booth to say of the steroids scandal, "I hope the players fix it." He didn't say "the commissioner" or "the owners." Only "the players."

The broadcast crew noted that Bush is a former baseball owner. But that's only technically true. Before he was even Texas governor, Bush was trotted out before the public as the "owner" of the Texas Rangers. But Tom Hicks was the real owner; Bush put up a minuscule amount of money but was only the front man for Hicks and the rest of the real ownership group so they could get a stadium and other parts of a sweet deal with Arlington, the home of the team. When the Rangers were later sold, Bush cashed in for a lot of dough.

Years later, Bush became Dick Cheney's front man, where he's been even more dangerous.

Too bad D.C. isn't making out as well as Bush. The new stadium was a point of contention when D.C. didn't even have a team and its luxury boxes were only a dream in the minds of politicians and lobbyists.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post kicked ass on that story in 2004, pointing out D.C. residents' terrible plight when the decision was finally made by Major League Baseball to put a team back in the U.S. capital.

As I noted at the time in "Playing Ball in D.C." [October 25, 2004]:

Baseball's execs have spread some money around, and they've probably quelled forever all threats from Congress to repeal baseball's fortunate exemption from antitrust laws now that they've placed a team in D.C., the former Montreal Expos. Just another toy for the congressmen to play with, starting next year. Think of their being entertained by corporations and their lobbyists in the new D.C. stadium's skyboxes.

Way down below them will be the average D.C. resident. The U.S. leads the world in wealth inequality, and the gap is continually widening. And income inequality in the District of Columbia is wider than in any other major U.S. city.

Yes, way down below them, if they could afford tickets in the cheap seats, will be the average D.C. resident. Bleacher bums? No. Just bums.

Since 2000, the gap between rich and poor has widened throughout the country. But D.C. was in terrible shape even during the Clinton years. From an analysis of census data by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute before Bush even took office:

The study found that the average income of the top fifth of DC’s households equaled $186,830 in 1999. This was 31 times higher than the average income of the bottom fifth of households—$6,126.

While Atlanta and Miami have income gaps similar to DC’s, income inequality is much less pronounced in most other cities. In the typical city in the analysis—which includes central cities of the nation’s 40 largest metro areas—the income of the top fifth of households is 18 times the income of the bottom fifth.

Well, maybe things are better since Bush became president. Yeah, right. Here's what the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute had to say last October:

Despite dramatic improvements in the District’s economy over the past decade, economic conditions have actually worsened for many residents, according to a new report by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

The study, entitled DC’s Two Economies: Many Residents Are Falling Behind Despite the City’s Revitalization — examines trends in employment, wages, income, and poverty. One of its most striking findings is that while the number of jobs in the District has grown every year since 1998, the percentage of African Americans who are employed has actually fallen, as has the employment rate among residents with no more than a high school diploma. For both groups, employment rates are near 30-year lows.

"It is surprising — and deeply troubling — that large numbers of DC residents are falling behind when so many of the city’s economic indicators are at their best levels in decades,” said Ed Lazere, executive director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. “The District’s well-known economic disparities are getting even worse."

And how about that earning gap between rich and poor?

The earnings gap between DC’s highest (top 20 percent) and lowest (bottom 20 percent) earners is at its widest level since 1979. Inflation-adjusted earnings have increased just 6 percent for low-wage workers in that period, while jumping 40 percent for workers at the top.

Trying to stem the out-of-control crime in poverty-stricken D.C., district officials enacted a strict gun law that the Supreme Court just got finished hearing arguments on. (See this L.A. Times editorial that lays out the arguments.)

Guns aren't the only problem of course. There's also butter. Only the pols and lobbyists can afford the high-priced spreads.

Meanwhile, even the baseball owners called the plan to finance the bonds for D.C.'s new stadium the sweetest sweetheart deal they'd ever seen.

The baseball owners and Congress were the ones playing ball. As of last night, the luxury boxes are now occupied by lobbyists and their lackey pols, while D.C.'s poor continue their everyday drudgery.

Wonder if there's a Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom in the joint?