Asian food; American breakfast food... you can get anything you want. Excepting Alice. Though this place
is only a few blocks from us, we tried it for the first time a week ago. The food is OK at best and the
service is painfully slow, but the sense of a community family restaurant is hard to beat on a lazy Sunday
morning. This picture was taken last Sunday.
The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep information obtained
"unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign
intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious
bodily harm.
And they provide for compelling telecommunications companies and e-mail providers to cooperate with
investigations while protecting them from being sued by their subscribers. The legal protection would be
applied retroactively to those companies that cooperated with the government after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.
...
Meanwhile, in Hell, the shade of J. Edgar Hoover just smiled...
I've moved this note into a post and extended it because it may be a while before I have DSL service
again. Here is my original note and an update:
About 4:00pm CT Friday, my broadband connection went down while I was surfing. Despite repeated
efforts, and all the usual tricks, I haven't managed to raise it again. I am posting this on a dialup,
and I do not know when I'll have the broadband again. Until then, there probably won't be a lot of
blogging.
UPDATE: I contacted AT&T and found that there are problems
throughout my region. They are working on it, but the estimated time to repair is 10:00pm CT.
Do not expect any new blog posts of any size until I regain the DSL connection. I will dial in from
time to time to check comments.
"And thank [me] for choosing AT&T Internet Service," said the tech in Mumbai. Right... as if I
had a choice.
UPDATE 2: It's about 10:30pm CT, and like GeeDubya, I seem to have hit the
trifecta. Stella's DSL is working; mine is still not (or else my modem and/or router are flaky). Worse,
the desktop machine has a serious hardware problem, either the hard drive or maybe the power supply.
To top it off, this laptop is picky about what phone line you plug the dialup modem into. I'm heading
over to Stella's to join her in celebrating her presentation tonight to her professional association;
it went quite well... and I need something cheerful to think about for a while. Tomorrow will probably
be spent in shopping for a new desktop computer, absent a miracle that brings this one back to life.
Fortunately, my backups are almost completely current, so it could be worse. I'll blog when I can;
thanks for your patience.
UPDATE 3: It's about 11:30pm CT. The DSL came back on about 10 minutes after
I finished uploading the last update over a dialup. The desktop computer was booting past the hardware
error message, but acting awfully funky; I'm not turning it on again until I'm ready to start transferring
data off of it. With luck, that will be Saturday or Sunday. That's not how I planned to spend the weekend,
but the cosmos didn't ask me about my preferences in the matter. For a day or two, I'll probably comment
more than I'll blog. Bear with me.
(Aside to Pekka: I always, always recycle defunct or obsolete computer equipment in an environmentally
sound manner, and unfortunately I've had a lot of practice.)
Don't bother mentioning the phrase "constitutional monarchy" around Queen Tabitha: she rules all, as
far as the eye can see, and her rule is absolute. Fortunately, she's a benevolent ruler, and even more
fortunately, she can be bribed with treats.
Rahm Emanuel, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, is not someone I frequently find myself aligned
with, but this time is an exception.
Emanuel's memo
to House Democrats outlines Democratic policy positions on the Iraq war, provides talking points, and
most important of all, serves as a pep talk about the strength of the Democratic position in
preparation for negotiations with Bush on the budget bill. I probably don't see nearly as much room
for compromise as Emanuel does, but I now have reason to hope that the most conservative among us...
and I believe Emanuel is in that category... will not give away the store. Time will tell.
(Yes, I know: the post subject is not original with me. If I recall correctly, someone actually wrote
and performed that parody at some national Democratic event.)
First, please read Tula Connell's well-researched and thoroughly documented post,
We Make It and They Take It,
on the growing disconnect between American workers' productivity... not only the highest in the world,
but steadily increasing since the end of W.W. II... and American workers' wages... which rose in
parallel to productivity until about 1980, then flattened and remain flat to the present day. Connell
attributes the disconnect in part to increasing CEO compensation, and gives many examples.
Next, please glance back at my post on matters of race and education a few days ago, titled
Not a Coincidence. Note that the downward trend in actual integration of
our public schools began on or slightly after 1980, and continues to the most recent data available.
As 1980 is the turning point in both trends, one might rightly take them as evidence that the
so-called Reagan Revolution was good only for America's wealthiest white citizens... and bad for all
the rest of us. The practically sainted Mr. Reagan wrought more or less permanent changes to our
society and our economy, changes that leave you and me worse off, now and for the foreseeable future.
For all the benefits of Mr. Clinton's budget-balancing, he was unable to do anything else for the
long-term plight of the American worker. And we all know what has happened since Mr. Bush took
office... he broke the bank and picked our pockets for the benefit of his wealthy cronies
and promoted significant reversals of hard-won civil rights victories.
As Harry Truman often said (and there is no single standard version of this quote), if you want to
live like a Republican, you'd better vote for the Democrats. How many decades of evidence do Americans
need to lead them to understand the truth of Harry's proverb?
What other platitudes and deeply stupid slogans will the Bushists hurl at us
now?
BAGHDAD (AP) - A bomb exploded in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart
of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers and
wounding 10 other people.
The blast in the parliament building came hours after a suicide truck bomb blew up a major bridge in
Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and
witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.
The bomb in parliament went off in a cafeteria while several lawmakers were eating lunch, media
reports said. In addition to the two dead, state television said at least 10 people were wounded.
After the blast, security guards sealed the building and no one - including lawmakers - was allowed to
enter or leave.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said no Americans were hurt in the blast.
The bombing came amid the two-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad, which has sought to restore
stability in the capital so that the government of Iraq can take key political steps by June 30 or
face a withdrawal of American support.
...
Yes, Bush's surge is indeed working... just not for the U.S., not for our troops, not for the Iraqi
parliament.
Bush owns this war. Bush owns this bombing inside the Green Zone. Now might be a good time for us to
deliver to him everything he owns.
What? am I proposing to politicize this horrible event? Well, do you have any better ideas how we can
end this godforsaken horror and begin the process of bringing our troops home?
Yesterday, the Pentagon
extended tours
for all active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by half a Friedman Unit. Think about what that
does to individual soldiers, who are, as Bush seems always to forget, human beings. Think of what it
does to their families. So much for the notion of "surge": as
Bryan points out,
this is an escalation, pure and simple.
Only Congress has the power to put an end to this. Congressional Democrats: we sent you there to do
that. Now it's time.
DNA tests reveal that I am the father of Anna Nicole's baby.
Oh, wait... wrong story. Actually, I have some
even better news:
Dark Chocolate, But Not Tea, Takes a Bite Out of Blood Pressure
By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, April 9, 2007; 12:00 AM
MONDAY, April 9 (HealthDay News) -- Cocoa-rich products such as dark chocolate may help lower high
blood pressure, but tea won't do much, according to a new survey of the medical literature by German
researchers.
...
Wouldn't you prefer to find chocolate is a beneficial product, rather than tea? I know I would...
nothing against tea, you understand:
...
Although the thought of chocolate as a health food has captured public attention, not much research on
the issue has been done, said a team from the University Hospital of Cologne.
Their report covered exactly 10 studies on cocoa with a total of 173 participants and five tea studies
with 343 participants.
...
I would think that resolving 10 different methodologies would be a bigger issue than having only 173
participants. But whatever... the results MUST be true, right? Of course, there are some
cautionary words; there always are... no unmitigated good news is allowed in our era:
...
He leavened his support of chocolate with a bit of caution.
"Based on our analysis, regular consumption of polyphenol-rich cocoa products like dark chocolate may
be considered a part of a blood pressure-lowering diet, provided there is no total gain in calorie
intake," Taubert said. "However, in the studies we reviewed, the blood pressure results occurred with
cocoa doses above the habitual intake and were observed only in the setting of short-term
interventions."
...
Oh, is that all? 'Scuse me while I perform a short-term intervention...
Our Democratic presidential candidates seem finally to have
learned
that there is no such thing as a good encounter with Fox News:
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) yesterday joined former North Carolina
senator John Edwards (D) in deciding to skip a debate scheduled for September that Fox News is
co-sponsoring with the Congressional Black Caucus.
Liberal activists, particularly the online group Moveon.org, have called for Democratic presidential
candidates not to participate in debates by Fox, which they say is biased against Democrats. Clinton
campaign aides said she would participate only in the six events sanctioned by the Democratic National
Committee and two other events she had already agreed to. Several candidates, including Edwards, last
month withdrew from a debate that Fox was co-hosting with the Nevada Democratic Party and would have
taken place in August in Reno.
...
Whether or not MoveOn is your cup of tea... it isn't mine... and whatever the motivations of these
three big-name candidates... different for each one, I surmise... this is the only proper response.
Fox has every right to spew GOP talking points 24-by-7, to report blatant falsehoods about Democrats
and to attempt to set up (phrase chosen deliberately) candidates for events they perceive as
benefiting their own political agenda. The First Amendment protects their right to lie their fucking
asses off in a political context. But they may not simultaneously insist on being taken seriously as a
news source, or whine when Democrats refuse to participate in their own on-air demolition. Kudos to
Edwards, Clinton and Obama for their decision to "just say no to Faux."
A note about Congressional Black Caucus sponsorship: all three candidates have agreed to participate
in a debate in January jointly sponsored by the Caucus and CNN. A few Caucus members are not happy;
they seem not yet to have realized that it does make a difference which network you climb in bed with.
CNN is no paragon of virtue, but let's face it: Fox News is uniquely hostile to the interests of
Democrats, and there is nothing to be gained by granting them access. Unless Fox miraculously decides
to begin delivering news instead of thinly disguised Republ[ic]an propaganda, deliberate dirty tricks
and malicious lies, they can continue to make shit up without Democratic help.
Afterthought: here's a tally for the benefit of Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wade. This post contains
one occurrence of "fucking," not including this item,
one occurrence of "shit," not including this item,
a lot of unrepentant incivility toward Fox News and the GOP.
On top of that, the comment rules do not conform to your notions of propriety. Too fucking bad.
Oh, I guess I'd better report that; please correct the first item to read "two occurrences..."
A couple of days ago, I was perusing the paper edition of Southern Poverty Law Center's publication for
teachers at all levels, which is called
Teaching Tolerance.
In an editor's note titled
Then and Now: Will the Supreme Court outlaw purposeful integration of our schools?,
a discussion of the Bush Supreme Court's likely approaches to cases from Kentucky and Washington state in
which white parents sued local school districts for taking race into account in admissions policy,
presumably to achieve some degree of integration in schools. The question is whether the current Supreme
Court will ignore the late Justice Blackmun's maxim, "To get beyond racism, we must first take account of
race," and force a return to de facto segregation based on some misbegotten concept of rights of
racial equality that ends up preserving the highly unequal... and separate... status quo. An associated
graph (which I manually scanned from Page 7 of the print publication; it is regrettably not present in the
online edition) caught my attention; it indicates how dramatically actual integration of schools has
declined from a peak in about 1978 to a low in about 2000 (the last year in which data appear to be
available):
This is distressing enough, and the cause is hard to pin down. It may reflect the Reagan effect on the
Supreme Court, or it may be an interaction of many smaller and more local factors as people who never
wanted to see integration in the first place managed to prevail in lower courts in so-called reverse
discrimination suits. I don't know, and I don't have the resources to find out.
The real question is what happens next. A day or so after I ran across the editorial in Teaching
Tolerance, I happened upon a post by the always estimable R. Neal of
Facing South,
the blog of the Institute for Southern Studies, titled
Politicizing civil rights enforcement.
Neal examines in great detail the replacement of, and/or overriding of decisions by, the career
employees of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division... the so-called "Shadow Civil Rights
Division" ... as revealed in investigations by the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. The short version: the Civil Rights Division has
scarcely pursued any significant civil rights cases since Mr. Bush's restructuring to involve political
appointees in the decision of what cases to take (they often overrule professional staff recommendations)
and, moreover, those same upper-level political appointees now dominate the hiring and firing process
of career staff, using their unprecedented power to stock the division with "loyal Bushies" instead of
experienced civil rights attorneys.
So we have two trends here. In the first, white people and people of color increasingly attend different
schools, as de facto segregation returns to the educational system. In the second, the Bush
administration's sadly misnamed Justice Department is gutting the Civil Rights Division that in decades
past would have given people deprived of their civil right to an equal education... remember, Brown v.
Board in 1954 ruled that separate is inherently unequal, and everything I've ever read and experienced
leads me to affirm the truth of that... an opportunity to rectify the injustice.
From the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; ...
For me, it really IS that simple.
A couple of notes are probably in order. First, as far as I know, every state in the Union has a
similar passage in its fundamental document. Second, courts have always interpreted "Congress" broadly
to mean any governmental body from any branch; e.g., Houston Independent School District can no more
establish a religion than the U.S. Congress can.
The statement by many Christianist leaders that America is a Christian nation, or a Judeo-Christian
nation, is wrong on its face. From its founding, America has been a religiously pluralistic nation,
premeditatedly so. The fact that many colonists fled England for religious reasons, founding
communities rooted in their own religions, necessitated a firm commitment to religious freedom and
diversity in any Union including all those communities and colonies. Anything less would have gone
asunder in very short order. The First Amendment's establishment clause and free exercise clause are a
binding force in our nation today as surely as they were in the late Eighteenth Century.
That means that fundamentalist evangelical Christians, like it or not, must put up with people like me.
And with unabashed atheists such as
PZ Myers,
bless him.
Exactly who or what does the blessing of PZ is left as an exercise for the reader. It is not true,
but might as well be, that UU's like me begin their prayers with, "To Whom it may concern." If there
is such an entity as that "Whom," and I'm sure the
UUA
has formed a committee to study the matter, that is the consciousness which, in my humble opinion,
blesses PZ Myers. And if you, like Myers, have concluded there is no such magic being, that's fine
with me too. This is America, after all. For me, borrowing a line from Peter Schickele's
Missa Hilarious,
"Credo in at most unum Deum." Your mileage may vary. The point is this: as an
American, you owe PZ and me your tolerance, whatever you may think of our beliefs or lack of
same.
Tolerance, including religious tolerance, is at the core of America's strength, and indeed its
survival as a nation. The attempt by a seemingly endless procession of repulsive right-wing religious
radicals to install the tenets of their particular religion, or class of religions, into the fabric
of American government, is offensive to our most deeply held principles. And if those attempts are
ever successful, they will spell the end of America.
For me, it really IS that simple.
This post is part of a blogswarm called Blog Against Theocracy. I learned of the project via Tengrain
and other bloggers at
Mock, Paper, Scissors.
Start at the linked post and work your way forward in time for a dozen or so perspectives on the
matter. I chose not to use the official emblem of the blogswarm, a Statue of Liberty holding a cross,
superscribed with the universal "not" sign, because I saw no need to involve the symbol of any
particular religion. Theocracy is always bad, no matter how virtuous... or how pernicious... the
religion that establishes it.
There is an especially noteworthy post on the subject from a civil law perspective (which I am not
qualified to evaluate), with some science-related commentary (which needs an occasional tweak), by
KarenMcl of Peripetia;
I recommend it to you. And the inimitable and admirable
PZ Myers
posts, not on the pure science, but on a societal context perspective, examining how scientists might
better convey their messages to a well-meaning public assaulted by many contrary messages. Damn, I
wish I were as good as he is!
I was awakened far too early on Easter morning by the child of Stella's upstairs neighbor, a kid who
purports to play the piano. The kid is not completely untalented in the fingers department, but plays
only very fast pieces (and not very many of them at that), and has absolutely no discipline when it
comes to rhythm. All of that is forgivable (if unfortunate); cranking it up before the typical Sunday
morning rising time is not. And this is not the first time. But it is the first time Stella visited
the neighbor to talk about it. I was not present for the conversation that ensued, but it was
ineffective at achieving the goal of getting the kid to wait a little later to crank up the pianistic
buzz saw.
I confirmed for Stella that the practicing continued (and I use the term "practicing" loosely). She
headed back upstairs; I followed her. This second conversation took place through a closed door (I
do not know about the first one). Again, Stella had no success in conveying the unacceptability of
waking people early on Sunday morning (let alone on a holiday).
I am not proud of what I did next; I am simply not as polite as Stella, and I am a bear when rudely
awakened. The neighbor gave no ground; the time was "daytime" as she saw it, and that was that. To my
credit... scant credit, I admit... I neither employed nor threatened violence, nor uttered profanities
nor obscenities. I simply engaged in the old tradition of "reading the riot act," mentioning
apartment rules and city ordinances that the neighbor's kid's behavior infracted, and suggested that
as little as I wished to do so, I might call the apartment management and/or the police. The neighbor
still gave me an earful of angry words, including an opinion that there were "too many rules" ... but
the piano-playing soon ceased.
I hate stuff like that. I've been a musician all my life, and was a professional musician for about 30
years. I've always sympathized with musicians facing the choice of disturbing the neighbors or
forsaking much-needed practice. But I have always understood that, quite literally, "one (wo)man's
ceiling is another (wo)man's floor." The only correct answer to a complaint about one's live music is,
"Sorry; I'll stop for now, and we can talk later about practice times that work for both of us." The
alternative we received today... essentially "{Cheney} you; we're going to keep making a racket
anytime we want..." simply doesn't wash.
I'm not sure why this made it onto the blog, except as a sort of apology for not posting earlier
today. Being roughly awakened after too little sleep has put me off my stride all day long. I have
several posts in mind; I'll put them up as time and energy... and peace and quiet... allow.
This is next to the recycling center we use most often. I never drive past this sign...
... that I don't misread it as "ARMPIT HOSPITAL". As far as I know, this little clinic has
nothing to do with Texas A&M University, though it's possible the staff veterinarians trained
there. In any case, my misreading is in no way intended to disparage either that fine institution
(many relatives and friends are Aggies) or the clinic, about which I know nothing.
(HaloScan seems to be a dead armadillo with tire tracks across it at the moment. Good luck.)
Somehow, Ronald Reagan's signature phrase seems to apply to Dick Cheney's latest rant. Victim of
uncontrollable delusions, or self-serving liar? (Cheney, I mean, though I suppose you could take it
either way.) Cheney is ranting about an alleged prewar Iraq-al-Qaeda connection again, this time to
Rush Limbaugh's audience. Here's
Dan Froomkin:
...
Cheney told Limbaugh that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading al-Qaeda operations in Iraq before the U.S.
invasion in March 2003.
"[A]fter we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there
before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even
arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's
the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence
between Shia and Sunni. This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said. "And as I say, they were
present before we invaded Iraq." (Think Progress has the audio clip.)
But Cheney's narrative is wrong from beginning to end. For instance, Zarqawi was not an al-Qaeda
member until after the war. Rather, intelligence sources now agree, he was the leader of an
unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents. And although he
worked hard to inflame sectarian violence after the invasion, he certainly didn't start it.
As it happens, just in case anyone needed more evidence of the spuriousness of Cheney's views,
yesterday also marked the release of yet another report confirming that that al-Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein's government were not working together before the invasion.
The report also further documents how Cheney willfully ignored reliable intelligence in favor of
broadcasting invented assertions emerging from a rogue Defense Department office -- a habit he
apparently has yet to break.
...
Read the article for more about the latest report proving Cheney a liar, a fool or a nut-case...
or perhaps all of the above.
Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter
and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.
Much of the nation west of the Mississippi River is likely to get drier because of the buildup of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but the greatest effect will be felt in already arid areas on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. By the end of the century, the climate researchers predict, annual
rainfall in that region will have decline by a worrisome 10 to 20 percent.
A similar drying-out of the "subtropical" belt above and below the equator will hit the Mediterranean
region and parts of Africa, South America and South Asia, the report said, as the overall warming of
the oceans and surface air transforms basic wind and precipitation patterns around the Earth.
The prediction of a drier Southwest was made by 16 of 19 climate computer models assembled for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific effort to assess the impact of
global warming, which is releasing a new report today. The drought results were analyzed separately in
a paper published online yesterday by the journal Science, which also predicted that regions outside
the drying belt will get more rain.
...
But don't worry... Mr. Bush and other global warming deniers will already have been raptured by the
time that happens. He's already arranged for Tim LaHaye to write the official documentary of the
event, to be called Nobody Important Left Behind. Meanwhile, the first of the prophesied
warning signs has occurred:
a virus (sort of) for your iPod.
And NYC's AIDS prevention program may soon be engaged in
cutbacks
of a different kind. To top off everything, now you have to think twice before you
feed Bowser a dog biscuit.
Lovely morning, isn't it?
A print on the wall of a Greek restaurant, taken on our Galveston anniversary trip:
Detail
This painting proves it: After the artist has had enough retsina, a Greek tabby looks pretty much like
any other tabby... though perhaps a tiny bit fuzzier.
UPDATE: As I look at this print, I wonder if the original is itself a
photo rather than a painting. What do you think?
With Senate on break, Bush appoints officials
The three, including a contentious regulatory director, most likely would not have been approved by lawmakers.
By Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writer
April 5, 2007
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday appointed as his top regulatory official a conservative
academic who has written that markets do a better job of regulating than the government does and that
it is more cost-effective for people who are sensitive to pollution to stay indoors on smoggy days
than for government to order polluters to clean up their emissions.
As director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of
Management and Budget, Susan E. Dudley will have an opportunity to change or block all regulations
proposed by government agencies.
...
Thanks a lot, Ms. Dudley, from one of those people who sometimes have to stay indoors on smoggy days.
When I get the opportunity to return the favor, I'll shove toxic chemicals up your nose, too.
Every effort should be made to overturn this and other "interim" appointments by Bush: the interim
provision was never intended to provide presidents with a means of bypassing Senate confirmation at
will.
The always scrappy Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Gonzo's Worst Nightmare) simply
will not let up:
Waxman Requests RNC Emails
By Paul Kiel - April 4, 2007, 12:41 PM
The House's chief sleuth, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-
CA), continues to press the administration and the Republican National Committee.
Today, in a letter to the RNC's chairman, he asked for emails "that relate to the use of federal
agencies and federal resources for partisan political purposes."
It's just the latest move in Waxman's investigation into the use of RNC email addresses by White House
personnel, a practice that some charge violates the Presidential Records Act. Last week, Waxman asked
the RNC not to destroy any such emails and asked White House counsel Fred Fielding what the
administration's email policies were.
...
This is about the administration's use of email addresses at the by now infamous gwb43.com domain,
which apparently belongs to the RNC. I am not a lawyer, but it looks as if one of two things happened:
either Rove & Co. used the White House and absorbed salary in the form of taxpayers' dollars while
emailing about purely political matters, or else they conducted government business using
nongovernment email facilities as a means of avoiding the legally required archiving of such
materials.
So, Karl... which kind of crook are you?
NOTE: I am experimenting with using different software to post the YDD.
If something goes awry and things look strange, please forgive the bother; I'll get it right soon
enough.
Short version: it isn't permitted here. If you have something nasty to say, get your own damned blog.
They're free, you know.
If anyone unclear on the concept is still undeterred, please understand the rules:
"Trolling" means whatever I say it means. If I don't like you, you're gone. No second chances;
no debate.
No one except me has the right to abuse another commenter. This site may not be the picture of
civility, but gratuitous name-calling directed at me or at the regulars is grounds for immediate
banning.
Trolls will be banned, of course, but they are in addition subject to one of two other approaches:
Disemvoweling (™Teresa): removing of all vowels from a troll's post
Trexing (™TRex): completely rewriting the troll's post from, shall we say, a different perspective
If you really want to embarrass yourself, go ahead, but do not expect to participate beyond your first
infraction.
Via
Avedon,
we have a
Salon article
(watch a brief ad to get the site pass) that explains:
Is this the end of organic coffee?
Thanks to a recent hush-hush USDA ruling, your clean-conscience, fair-trade, organic latte may soon be a thing of the past.
By Samuel Fromartz
April 3, 2007 | Enjoy your organic coffee now, while it's hot -- because it may not be around for
long.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly released a ruling that alarmed organic
certifiers and groups who work with third-world farmers. The decision tightens organic certification
requirements to such a degree that it could sharply curtail the ability of small grower co-ops to
produce organic coffee -- not to mention organic bananas, cocoa, sugar and even spices. Kimberly
Easson, director of strategic relationships for TransFair USA, the fair trade certification group,
puts it bluntly: "This ruling could wipe out the organic coffee market in the U.S."
...
Read the details, which are less than straightforward; the ruling stems from actual violations of
organic practice by some growers, to which the USDA responded by draconian, costly changes in the
inspection rules for all growers. The bottom line is straightforward enough: this USDA ruling may do
more than obliterate the U.S. organic coffee market for small farmers; it may actually drive some of
them, from economic necessity, to destroy their shade-grown organic farms in favor of "conventional"
farms with chemical herbicides and pesticides:
In the end, though, even the rise of plantations may not be enough to keep certified organic coffee in
American mugs. The U.S. market for the brew is growing 40 percent a year, but organic coffee -- unlike
bananas -- is impractical to farm on a large scale. It's too labor-intensive, because the plants grow
under a shade canopy on steep hills and must be harvested and weeded by hand. So farmers seeking
higher income may make the switch to non-organic methods, tearing out native shade trees and relying
on herbicides and pesticides to boost bean yields. Growers who can't afford to make that jump may
continue to farm organically and forgo certification, selling at the lower conventional price and
hoping for the best.
Has anyone forgotten... the USDA, for example... that one cannot farm coffee in the U.S., that we are
utterly dependent on our neighbors to the south for the substance to which almost all of us are
shamelessly addicted? And a related question: does Mr. Bush really want to face two or three hundred
million Americans who are frustrated because his USDA is interfering with their ability to obtain
their daily dose in a responsible manner?
Greg Sargent of TPM's
The Horse's Mouth
quotes CNN talking head Suzanne Malveaux:
And, Nancy Pelosi in Syria and in the crosshairs of Vice President Cheney. Is she on her way to
becoming the most controversial speaker yet?
Speaker Pelosi is "in the crosshairs of Vice President Cheney"? Considering Cheney's
history,
that may be the safest place to be. On the other hand, if he's not aiming at you, watch out...
We all know the role the venerable public library plays in sustaining our free society. We know how
important it is to keep it well-supplied with funds for books and periodicals, adequate and
well-trained staff, internet connections and equipment, and of course branches that are open as many
hours as the public wants to use it. We all know that, don't we?
Maybe. Maybe not. Tom Englehardt presents writer, retired librarian and library administrator
Chris Ward
on the role of public libraries as part of the support system for chronically homeless people.
It is a fragile, frequently ineffective and far from ideal system at best, forcing libraries into a
role for which they were never intended and are not typically well-suited. But often enough it's what
we've got these days.
Rather than my attempting (probably not very successfully) to pick out passages, why don't you just
read the whole thing; it's not all that long. One warning: recall how Sherlock Holmes used to declare
a puzzling case to be a "three-pipe problem"? Well, this is a three-hankie problem. If the sternest
reader among you doesn't at least get a lump in the throat, I'll be very surprised. You have been
warned.
(I now understand better the problem the Houston Public Library is trying to address with its
draconian rules. And I still
disapprove of their approach. Read what library administrator Chris Ward has to say, and see what you
think.)
'Very Active' Hurricane Season Predicted:
Seventeen named storms, and a 74 percent probability that a major hurricane will hit the U.S.
coast. Just pray it's not 2005 all over again.
French train sets rail record 357.2 mph:
Now you can be run out of town on a rail at a much greater speed. This train almost... but not
quite... beat the Japanese mag-lev train record, using oversized wheels and higher voltage on the
lines. Sigh... so much for my memories of a leisurely train ride through the European countryside!
Speaking of Shakesville, be sure to read LitBrit's post,
Meat Or Its Match? Consumers Want And Deserve Labels,
about the FDA's forthcoming likely decision to allow the sale of food (meat or milk) from cloned
animals... WITHOUT labels designating the source.
This is, of course, a sop thrown to the FrankenFood industry (sorry; I'm not objective about this).
However you may feel about food products taken from cloned animals (with their frequent and
so far unexplained developmental defects), shouldn't you at least have the choice to consume those
products or not? If, as the industry claims, the foods are truly indistinguishable at the molecular
level from the corresponding foods taken from natural sources, why should an educated American public
not come to understand that, and consume cloned and noncloned foods without preference anyway? Why
take away their choice?
For those nut-cases among us (and yes, I am one such) who think there is no way the industry
can make that statement of equivalence with any confidence of its truth over the long run, shouldn't
we be allowed to avoid eating cloned products? After all, we're allowed to drink fat-free milk (thanks
to a label), eat produce grown without chemical pesticides (thanks to a label), and eat 100%
whole-grain breads (thanks to a label). We are allowed to do so, or not, at our own discretion, for no
better reason than that we think those characteristics confer some advantage to us as consumers... no
scientific proof is required of their superiority, only consumers' desire to control their own intake.
The meaning of all those labels is under federal regulatory control. Why should cloned foods not be
similarly labeled? There is no rationale for making such an exception; there is only political
pressure applied through money, money and more money.
LitBrit has extensive information and a few useful links. Sen Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Rep. Rosa
DeLauro (D-CT) have a bill that would require such labels. Please go take a look.
Remember, you are what you eat!
(Apologies, but only scant apologies, to University of Texas fans for the post subject.)
UPDATE: there's a heck of a good discussion developing on the comment
thread.
Shakesville
is the new, improved version of
Shakespeare's Sister...
now with the new non-secret ingredient Mustang Bobby™! Please adjust your blogrolls
accordingly. My first impressions of the new site are very positive indeed.
(Just to be clear about it: Mustang Bobby will also continue blogging at
Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
I stood within sight of this store for several minutes today while I waited for Stella. I can assure
you: the store did not take one single step, and it most certainly never left this continent.
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page.
Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article.
Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least:
HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives
in a spirit of charity than the constant omissions of a
government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
- FDR
I belong to the Democratic Party wing of the Democratic Party.
- Paul Wellstone
I am a Democrat without prefix, without suffix, and without apology.
- Sam Rayburn
