I moved house a week before Christmas (bravery or madness - you decide) and only got my internet access back yesterday.  Cold turkey for me on more than one front this festive season!  So sorry it's late, but I wish you all the best for this New Year.

I'm hoping that we will be hearing more good news from New Jersey soon and common sense will prevail bringing the end to the death penalty in that state.

Utterly disgusting, both the man and his lies.

And the rethugs are in a full-on love-fest with each other in their mutual @$$kissing society.

They are already complaining that dems campaigned on "bipartisanship", but that their actions "since taking over" doesn't bear that out. After ONE DAY.

"Historically, economics was about thinking. It began with people who were approaching things from    a philosophical and historical sense of thought, and simply added economic ideas into that. But, what you've seen over the past quarter century, in university after university is the gradual decapitation of economic thinkers. The University of Toronto, for example, was a great center of economic historians. Today, I dont think theres one left. This is the place that produced people like Harold Innis. The great tyhinkers asking "How does it all work? Where are we going? What does it mean? There isnt one left. They wre replaced by proliferation microeconomists; people sitting in front of their computers, churning out numbers. The whole thing has been turned upside down. This generation of enormous amounts of numbers is thought to be the basis for how you produce truth,
whereas it is in fact "garbage in, garbage out" plus or minus equations. So we have a real problem."

IAF [Israeli Air Force] pilots had been carrying out special training in Gibraltar and three flight paths to target sites in Iran had already been mapped out.

The plan, according to the paper, is for Israel to use bunker-busting bombs to drill `tunnels" through thickly reinforced steel and concrete shields at the Natanz plant, and then drop relatively small tactical nuclear bombs into the actual facility, destroying it.

Conventional bombs will be used on two of the country's other sites - at Isfahan and Arak.

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad's assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

From our map we can see that within 48 hours, fallout would cover much of Iran, most of Afghanistan and spread on into Pakistan and India. Fallout from the use of a burrowing weapon such as the B61-11 would be worse than from a surface or airburst weapon, due to the extra radioactive dust and debris ejected from the blast site. In the immediate area of the two attacks, our calculations show that within 48 hours, an estimated 2.6 million people would die.
...
Over 1,000,000 people would suffer immediate injuries including thermal and flash burns, radiation sickness, broken limbs, lacerations, blindness, crush injuries, burst eardrums and other traumas. In the wider region, over 10.5 million people would be exposed to significant radiation from fallout.....

President Bush is to announce this week that up to 30,000 extra troops will be thrown into the battle for Baghdad.
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The final shape of Bush's new strategy began to emerge yesterday in a series of leaks and statements in Washington and Baghdad ahead of his announcement, expected on Tuesday.
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Bush's apparent determination to send extra troops, rather than set a timetable for withdrawal, represents a rejection of the Iraq Study Group report, which said US policy was not working and urged talks with two of Iraq's neighbours, Iran and Syria. It also sets the stage for a major battle between a House and Senate newly under Democratic control, put into power largely because of US voters' misgivings over his conduct of the war.

Wonkette  has it nicely summarized, though the original article in the Paraguayan paper has been disappeared.  Is it true?  It was reported in papers in Brazil and Argentina as well.

Oh, and both the Moonie and Bush land is located at what Paraguay's drug czar called an "enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades." And it sits atop the one of the world's largest fresh-water aquifers.

Also:

Paraguay, of course, has been a recent source of alarm to the region for its allowance of its tri-border territory to become a US military beachhead. Now, with the reports of the Bush purchase of an "ecological reserve" alongside Moon's, we have good reason to suspect that US national security has again been seconded to the Bush family business.

I wonder why this hasn't been mentioned by the US media?  They weren't averse to "reporting" any kind of speculation about our last president.

Jondee continues to make veiled references to racism as he recently did in the thread on David Brooks.

He's for "the common man" the way Jacksonians who quote Klansman and not Jackson, are. It's a fantasy to succor the vanity of others and to hide oneself behind.

What he refers to is a long ago comment that I am a fan of Jackson, and think that this article by Walter Russell Mead covers many principles of Jackson.

Jondee's continual references to "Klansman" comes from the following passage which is first of all a framing of a question. The question being, could the flood of the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century over whelm the native americans' culture.

"As Hiram W. Evans, the surprisingly articulate Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote in 1926, the old stock American of his time had become a stranger in large parts of the land his fathers gave him. Moreover, he is a most unwelcome stranger, one much spit upon, and one to whom even the right to have his own opinions and to work for his own interests is now denied with jeers and revilings. `We must Americanize the Americans,' a distinguished immigrant said recently.

I find Jondee's comments absurd on the face of them. Mead first of all insults Klansman Evans by noting that he is "surprisingly articulate," and by extension the author notes he has found Evans previous positions/beliefs/comments to be of low quality.

But even if you disagree with that, when did saying someone did something well meant that you agreed with him? Hitler gave rousing speeches that stirred the German people is a true statement. It doesn't mean that the writer agrees with Hitler. The messenger is not the message.

Mead continues framing his question and his point.

Protestantism itself was losing its edge. The modernist critique of traditional Biblical readings found acceptance in one mainline denomination after another; ..... The new mainline Protestantism was a tolerant, even a namby-pamby, religion.

The old nativist spirit, anti-immigrant, anti-modern art and apparently anti-twentieth century, still had some bite--Ku Klux crosses flamed across the Midwest as well as the South during the 1920s--but it all looked like the death throes of an outdated idea. There weren't many mourners: much of H.L. Mencken's career was based on exposing the limitations and mocking the death of what we are calling Jacksonian America.

Most progressive, right thinking intellectuals in mid-century America believed that the future of American populism lay in a social democratic movement based on urban immigrants. ......they believed was the wave of the future; they celebrated unions and other strange, European ideas in down home country twangs so that, in the bitter words of Hiram Evans, "There is a steady flood of alien ideas being spread over the country, always carefully disguised as American."

Mead has framed the question. Could American Jacksonian values survive?

What came next surprised almost everyone. The tables turned, and Evans' Americans "americanized" the immigrants rather than the other way around.

The American culture prevailed over the "old country" and Evans' belief' was thoroughly and totally rejected. The Klan was rejected and marginalized. Mead continues his point.

In what is still a largely unheralded triumph of the melting pot, Northern immigrants gradually assimilated the values of Jacksonian individualism. Each generation of new Americans was less "social" and more individualistic than the preceding one. American Catholics, once among the world's most orthodox, remained Catholic in religious allegiance but were increasingly individualistic in terms of psychology and behavior ("I respect the Pope, but I have to follow my own conscience"). Ties to the countries of emigration steadily weakened, and the tendency to marry outside the group strengthened.

The question we now have in front of us is if this culture can survive the huge influx of immigrants, mostly illegal. I can't answer that question, but believe that we can if we can just slow it down long enough to provide a barrier between the "old  country culture'  and the American culture. I doubt that any of is will live long enough to see the answer.

Now you know what Jondee is always referring to.

Three police officers from different departments are in varying degrees of trouble following a dispute rooted in the blue code -- the age-old tradition of cops covering for one another.

One is an Allegheny County officer, Tobias Yuhouse, charged with drunken driving on New Year's morning in Versailles, after which police said he was "belligerent and profane."

Another is his relative, veteran Wilkinsburg Officer Doug Yuhouse, accused of making threats on a recorded line and in person against the arresting officer.

The third is Versailles Patrolman Fred Hill, who initially tried to let the county officer go as a courtesy to a colleague in blue.

Now the jobs of the Yuhouses could be in jeopardy and Officer Hill is likely to face some kind of discipline.

It was a dark, dreary New Year's Eve overnight shift, prime hunting for cops looking for DWI collars:

Officer Hill said he was on patrol when he saw a car driving in the middle of Walnut Avenue at 3:07 a.m.

He "... pulled it over."

When he approached the car, he said in his report, "I smelled an overwhelming odor of alcohol." He said Officer Yuhouse had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and was "immediately profane and hostile."

Officer Hill said Officer Yuhouse demanded to know why he was pulled over and said he was a county police officer, showing his police identification to Officer Hill and a McKeesport officer who was assisting him.

Bad move, that.  One is not supposed to use his police status for special treatment.  But, now, ingratitude makes a bad situation worse:

When Officer Hill said he would arrange for the officer to get a ride home and not charge him, he said Officer Yuhouse "continued to be very belligerent" and complained that he was always being "harassed" by police and "always being pulled over."

...

But when Officer Yuhouse continued to be belligerent, he said, he decided to place him under arrest and administer field sobriety tests. When Officer Yuhouse refused to cooperate, according to the report, Officer Hill and Officer Vahaly handcuffed him and put him in a Versailles patrol car.

"Defendant was yelling and banging his head off the partition," Officer Hill wrote.

Amateur.  He forgot the code of the perps he busts - make a show outside the car, so all the street characters watching can see you take no crap from cops.  But, once inside the car, just sit there and stew.  Busting one's head on the car is for punks and poseurs.  Real bad guys know it only leads to more charges and a headache (beyond the hangover).

Fer instance: I had a neighbor once who, drunk, started such a commotion in his apartment that passers-by in the street called the cops.  He tried to walk out past the cops going upstairs and, when they demanded ID, refused and then told the cops he was going out and didn't care:  "so arrest me".

Cops rarely refuse such an invitation, and this was not one of those occasions.  They wrestled him into the car where he managed to kick out a window on a rear door, adding a property damage charge to the rest, and making his later plea more difficult to reach.  Meeting his lawyer (the neighbor was charged with assaulting me, of all things), I had the opportunity to help him prepare for his cross of me:  "ask me if I was in fear of injury or assault", I said.  He did, and I answered:  "nahh.  I knew I could take him sober, and he was drunk anyway."  Smiles all around....

Back to Pittsburgh;  this drunken cop had relatives:  

Officer Hill said he later was advised by his dispatcher that Doug Yuhouse, whom he said was Tobias' brother, had called dispatch to threaten him.

In the recorded call, he said Doug Yuhouse told him to meet him on the Boston Bridge, where he planned to retrieve his brother's keys, "and that I better bring somebody with me."

When the officers met later in a Dollar General parking lot, according to the report, Doug Yuhouse approached Officer Hill with clenched fists, pointed at him and said, "You'll be sorry, [expletive]." Several other officers were present in uniform when that happened.

Another amateur bad guy:  making threats before an audience of cops.  Just plain stupid, if you ask me.

Said the police chief: "If it was you, would you have gotten the same courtesy?"

Snow in Seattle, 70F in New York City.

Apparently El Nino is back again and thanks to the jetsream the US is getting both extremes depending on where you live.

Umran Javed 27, of Birmingham, was also convicted of stirring up racial hatred by a jury at the Old Bailey

(Makes me wonder: Would there have been a conviction if a white protester had called for the bombing of brown people?)

The Crown Prosecution Service's Sue Hemming said she was mindful of the rights to free speech when considering cases such as this.

"However, when we examined the content of Mr Javed's speech it was explicit that there was direct encouragement to those present and those watching via the media to commit acts of murder against the Danish and Americans."

She said the law was also clear that free speech "should not be misused to insult, abuse or threaten people in such a way that it will stir up racial hatred".

He then stuffed the urinal in a rucksack and left the pub making sure he wiped his fingerprints off the door as he went.

But his exploits were caught on CCTV and after reviewing the tape landlord Alan Dreja handed it over to police.

Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 -- In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

"No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed," President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. "They turned him into a martyr."
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"God damn America and its spies," a banner across one major Beirut thoroughfare read. "Our condolences to the nation for the assassination of Saddam, and victory to the Iraqi resistance."

By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past.
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Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November.
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"The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time," said Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. "The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too."

Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al Ghad, said, "The last image for many was of Saddam taken out of a hole. That has all changed now."
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"Prepare the gun that will avenge Saddam," a poem published in a Saudi newspaper warned. "The criminal who signed the execution order without valid reason cheated us on our celebration day. How beautiful it will be when the bullet goes through the heart of him who betrayed Arabism."