A Look Askance

Why we can't win

2009-08-13T11:49:00.002-04:00

Newt will keep moving the football.
What Dems can't seem to learn is that no matter how many concessions the make, no matter how many market-based compromises they include in whatever bill, a party concerned more about power than governing will always have more incentive to kill that bill than any modifications to align it with their stated ideology can overcome. Just another reason we should be talking about single payer instead of this watered down crap.

Our Media

2008-10-07T12:19:00.001-04:00

I'd blog about the election, the financial crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or something else of great substance and import, but CNN says that there's another missing white woman, so I'll wait.

Bullshit

2008-09-22T00:26:00.004-04:00

I've been silent the last few days because the news around our financial meltdown and subsequent plans for recovery have blown away all the crap I was going to ruminate on before.

And boy is this a lot of news. We're being told that we need to fork over somewhere near a trillion dollars (that's $1,000,000,000,000.00) Further, we're told that unless we give this money to the treasury (which intends to give it all to Wall Street) without oversight or preconditions, we'll doom the economy and all our savings to certain ruin. Even further, we are not to encumber this gift with any provisions that might soften the blow to those outside Wall Street, like allowing bankruptcy judges to change the rules for those mortgagees who took out unsound loans. No, we are just to take it as written.

Eff. That.

There have been a lot of good things written recently about this USA PATRIOT Act for banks, this Authorization of Treasury Force. In the words or one anonymous lawmaker, it is a "blank check for $700 billion for those mother fuckers" who have given us the Iraq war, Katrina, and, yes, the current financial collapse. Robert Reich lays out the kinds of reforms that should be tacked on to any bailout. Krugman remains a useful skeptic.

And it looks like the Democrats are paying attention. Pelosi may actually have a spine. That's encouraging, but I think we need to dig a bit deeper.

This failure is not about some handful of mistakes made by a few bankers that somehow lead to catastrophic failure. This is about structural failure, about a systematic destruction of those safeguards meant to defend us from this kind of bullshit, traded for the wealth of a few. If there is anything that should come from this massive scandal, it should be the death of Conservative, Laissez-Faire economic ideology, the final evidence of the moral evil of Thatcherite deregulation. Obama has surprised me with his frontal assault on the Ownership Society lie, and it is now more than at any other time that this kind of challenge to the ideology of unadulterated Capitalism must be given voice. We kill this beast now or we live and die by it for who knows how many more decades.

Enough.

Branded

2008-09-10T19:03:00.003-04:00

Susan has an excellent post up about the true nature of the McCain-Palin campaign. Go read it.

On a side note, she links to a definition of maverick that actually surprised me:

mav·er·ick (māv'ər-ĭk, māv'rĭk)
n.
1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.

So, question is, who was the first one to brand McCain? I just know it definitely wasn't me.

Insane

2008-09-09T18:56:00.002-04:00

Bob Herbert ate his wheaties this morning:

The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.

Time to get proud, left-wing activists. This is our time to shine.

Hard Work

2008-09-08T18:13:00.002-04:00

David Sirota over at Open Left has an interesting, if longish post about the class-based value sets of the major parties and how that impacts the Democrats' designs on working-class votes this season. Go read it all.

Done with that? Good.

I think what this gets at that really irks me is that a lot of the rhetoric floating around lately seems to denigrate outright the accomplishments of working-class voters who haven't ascended to the mighty heights of presidential candidates. Namely, all this talk about how the Obamas' parents worked hard, and due to that hard work they ascribe their own opportunities and success.

First, yay to acknowledging parents' role in establishing their children's social status. Really, I don't see how we can have an honest discussion of privilege without recognizing the role that historical factors and inheritance have in shaping our experience of the world and our relative difficulties getting through it.

But what the f? Can we please cut out this "hard work" crap unless we're recognizing also the hard work of all those that, you know, don't get rich, can't send their kids to college, and don't become members of the political elite? Michelle Obama and Joe Biden and Barack Obama all had parents and guardians who worked damn hard to provide for their families, sure, but so to did millions of other US Americans who nonetheless could not, due to myriad structural factors, provide that same opportunity to their children. What are we saying to those people, when we ascribe the success and position of our leaders only to the false myth of a hard work meritocracy?

Return

2008-09-08T18:10:00.001-04:00

I'm back for election '08, since it seems I won't be able to shut up after all. Also, there seems to be a pretty interesting race going on for president, with some historical implications or something.

The Media love Obama

2008-07-26T23:25:00.003-04:00

Yes, they sure do. That's why, when McCain makes a tiny 3-market ad buy with the ludicrously cynical claim that Obama intentionally snubbed the troops during his international tour, opting instead to go to the gym, all the major news organizations ignore him entirely.

Or not.

CNN, not bothering to fact-check:

Sen. John McCain's campaign lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday for canceling a visit to an American military base in Germany on Thursday.

"The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform," retired Lt. Col. Joe Reypya, speaking on behalf of the McCain, said in a statement. "Barack Obama ... broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next."

And in a McCain ad that began airing Saturday, Obama is chided for making "time to go to the gym" instead of visiting with wounded troops.

Yep, I'm sure that ad is running nonstop on the networks. Best $10 the McCain campaign ever spent!

Fixing all our development problems

2008-06-20T13:27:00.004-04:00

As I see it, one of the most vexing impediments facing urban planners and sustainability advocates is our horrible built environment, structured as it has been for at least the last 50 years around the car. Hard to make walkable communities when the whole usable area is taken up by roads and suburban-density subdivisions. Residents of Greensburg, Kansas have found a solution:

Last May, an EF 5 tornado hit western Kansas. In Greensburg, the storm leveled every building, picked up cars and tossed them into rooftops, demolished the streets, left more than two-thirds of the town’s population homeless and killed 11 people.

... [T]he people of Greensburg decided not only to stay, rebuild and provide aid but also to take a revolutionary approach to doing so -- the environmentally sustainable way. City leaders saw their chance to change the city into a place where everyone would want to be, an environmentally sustainable place that would serve as an example for towns everywhere.

So, looks like all we have to do is encourage this global climate thing for a bit longer, wait for all of our creations to be ground to dust by tornadoes and floods, then start over. Hurrah!

Freedom of the Press

2008-05-29T15:48:00.002-04:00

Glenn Greenwald has a long but important post up about the absence of journalism in recent years:

The idea that journalists only convey statements from politicians rather than "create debates" is the classic Stenographic Model of "Journalism" -- "we just write down what people say. It's not our job to do anything else." Real reporting is about uncovering facts that the political elite try to conceal, not ones they willingly broadcast. It's about investigating and exposing -- not mindlessly amplifying -- the falsehoods and deceit of government claims. But our modern "journalists" (with some noble exceptions) don't do that not only because they can't do it, but also because they don't think it's their job. That's because, by definition, they're not journalists.

Go read the rest.

Men being idiots

2008-05-14T11:55:00.002-04:00

It's spring again, so expect the usual bump in catcalls and public perverts. CNN has an article, which, while largely fluff, does include a comments section ripe with prime idiocy.

The one upside is that the story led me to Holla Back NYC, a great example of collective blog action.

Delicious Irony

2008-03-08T15:20:00.003-05:00

Neighborhood blighted by overcrowding? In today's housing market, regulating that will likely yield abandoned homes. Thanks, subprime lending!

But on a new color-coded map created by the county to plot foreclosures in Fairfax from January 2007 though the end of last month, two bright orange spots dominate. Both also happen to be the focus of intensive efforts to curb overcrowding: the Springfield neighborhoods that include the Hanover Avenue house, and portions of Herndon. In Herndon's case, the regulatory push has been led by the town government, which has instituted multiple policies aimed at making the community less hospitable to illegal immigrants.

No hard numbers are available to quantify the correlation between overcrowding enforcement and foreclosures. But Supervisor Jeff C. McKay (D-Lee) said the evidence he has seen leaves him with little doubt. Owners unable to subsidize their mortgage payments with illegal numbers of occupants have been unable to keep their houses.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Chris Matthews is a tool

2008-01-12T15:54:00.001-05:00

And seems to be in 7th grade. Media Matters takes him on:

Chris Matthews has been treating female guests as sexual objects for years. He has been judging women -- senators, presidential candidates, the speaker of the House -- on their clothes and their voices and their appearance for years. He has been referring to women as "castrating" for years. He has been applying double standards to male and female candidates for years.

This is who Chris Matthews is. He is a man who thinks that men who support women politicians are "eunuchs."

He isn't going to stop unless you make him stop. Chris Matthews uses his voice to marginalize women. Use yours to tell MSNBC you've had enough.

There's a long list of transgressions in the linked article, and I'm sure it's only a partial one. Matthews is the sort of talking head i find most grating, not only because he's such a backwards idiot, but because he's so self-assured in his oppressive behavior. Time to give the good old boy the boot.

Irony

2007-09-04T20:29:00.001-04:00

All those mcmansions the suburbanites built seem not to keep the undesirables out, but actually, due to their outsized capacity, have become all the more attractive for many-person occupancy. How delicious.

technorati tags:development, mcmansion, ironic

Jambo sana

2007-08-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

Very hello from Kenya. I don't have much that makes sense to blog, especially in this forum since I haven't been paying attention to the non-local news. Yeah, Nairobi doesn't have a beltway, so it's weird to watch coverage of the happenings there and care about it, but it is the closest thing to political gossip that they show on the local TV. Party politics sound much more complicated when it isn't a two-party system, but I don't really have to understand much for conversation because all anyone here asks about is Kenyan homeboy Obama anyway.

I've escaped the noise and cold and dust and crime (ok, only some of the dust and crime) of Nairobi for the tropical beach paradise that is Mombasa. Our hotel is the best bargain around, perhaps because it is just past the back lot of the Nakumatt (think Walmart but with furniture and an attached mall). The beach is beautiful, and aside from the sunburn I'm sporting I have no complaints. Well, that's not quite true - internet here is universally slow, and the driving on the left thing is bound to kill me sometime as I fail to look in the right direction. But otherwise, hakuna matata.

Geek break

2007-07-02T20:08:00.000-04:00

Blogging this from an iphone, which prooves to be rather awkward. The keyboard has no carrots, so html would be difficult.

Lousy Democrats, doing what the people want

2007-06-18T14:13:00.001-04:00

James Gilmore in the Post:

I reject the Democrats' policy of an immediate withdrawal or a withdrawal on a timetable. Unfortunately, they are playing to the polls to obtain political advantage at home, to the detriment of the United States.

What exactly are the democratically elected representatives of a people supposed to do but respond to the pressures of the majority that placed them in office? Reacting to what the public seems to want is what politicians do, or they quickly cease to be employed as politicians. And it isn't like scheming Democratic politicians invented the idea of a withdrawal from Iraq - that's been a very popular sentiment for years now, and Democrats just finally wised up sooner than their Republican colleagues have. If Glimore's looking for a scapegoat for anti-war sentiment, he'll have to blame all the people who oppose it (or perhaps just the combination of empirical fact and reason) rather than some evil Democrats.

I think this is one of the more frustrating things about politics right now - we're told very often that we should oppose a policy not on its demerits, but because our partisan opposition supports it. Party platforms might be a quick guideline for which way you're likely to come down on an issue, but they shouldn't serve as evidence in reasoned debate of a policy's appropriateness.

technorati tags:Gilmore, democracy, Iraq

More stuff to fear

2007-06-12T09:50:00.001-04:00

CNN's top article right now is a scare piece about $2 "Cheese Heroine" aimed at teenagers. It's especially unsafe, and 21 people have died since 2005, says the article. Wow, 21. An Epidemic. Wonder how that compares to another story that's not on CNN's front page right now?

technorati tags:fear, drugs, cnn, journamalism

And the localblogging begins...

2007-06-12T02:41:00.001-04:00

Shooting tonight in Shaw, so the murder lamp is out, and of course I can't sleep. Whenever someone unloads some rounds, MPD likes to bringin its big generator-powered floodlamp to light up the block; problemsare that (a) it's a little late to do much good as a deterrant, and (b)it makes it impossible to sleep if you have either ears or eyes(honestly, I sleep fine after gunshots, it's just the damn light thatkeeps me awake).

If you want some background and sparse details, check out rocklobster's continually updated shaw crime watch. It also seems to be the place to go for loonie theories on the causesof gang violence. Deterioration of the family my ass. Plus, were thateven the root cause, I'm not sure parenting classes could compensatefor having to work two or three jobs to make rent. Looking for a realculprit? Out-of-control gentirfication housing prices are putting theeconomic pressures on parents that keep them disengaged from theirchidren's lives. If these kids' lack of parenting is to blame, it'sbecause gentrifiers (aka newcomers, aka Whitey McCracker) are willingto pay the insane prices for housing that keep those parents fromhaving time to raise their children.

technorati tags:shaw, violence, shooting, dc

Eschanomics

2007-05-31T00:04:00.001-04:00

Atrios has been on an econ kick lately. Not sure what's up with that.

technorati tags:Atrios, Economics

We'll stop your cola

2007-05-31T00:01:00.001-04:00

Interesting article in the Post about the diplomatic sparing over genocide in Darfur - aparently the ambasador of the Sudan is threatening our cola supply:

What's more, the good and peaceful leaders of Sudan were prepared to retaliate massively: They would cut off shipments of the emulsifier gum arabic, thereby depriving the world of cola.

"I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country," the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola.

A reporter asked if Sudan was threatening to "stop the export of gum arabic and bring down the Western world."

"I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this," Khartoum Karl warned anew, beckoning to the Coke bottle. "But I don't want to go that way.

It's been a while since I've heard of such retaliatory sanctions, at least as far as they don't relate to oil. Though I do know someone who will tell me that we're all suffering from a terrible dearth of North Korean cold noodle dishes.

technorati tags:Darfur, Sanctions, Coke, Sudan

Blogging

2007-05-28T14:27:00.001-04:00

Just realized that as I while away my time waiting for an AIM discussion to resume, I may as well return to the blog. I'm somewhat inspired by Interested Soldier's brief resumption, though I assume he's since been silenced again by the man.

Most of my friends have fled the district for different time zones, so I guess it will be up to me to hold down the fort until they return. My former housemate will also be abandoning his Shaw blog as he's headed back to the burbs, so I may have to take that mantle. It strikes me as important to offer some counterballance to the dominant blg discourse here, which focuses mostly on crime and racial tensions.

And while we're talking about discourse, yesterday I picked up a copy of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason. It has been calling my name ever since I read an excerpt in Time, but the clincher was finding out on Saturday that he delves more deeply into neuroscience in the book. Advancements in neurology have brought us to the brink of understanding that, as my brother puts it, social science is the real hard science. We've had numerous discussions about the physiology of the brain as it relates to socil behavior, and I wanted to see what Mr. Gore had to say. So far, it's pretty good. Check it out if you have the chance.

Moyers

2007-04-27T01:15:00.001-04:00

You need to watch this.

technorati tags:Media

Gentriblogging or blogifying?

2007-04-24T00:51:00.001-04:00

Outside In has a ranking of local-blogging activity, and my lovely neighborhood of Shaw comes in second. As Steven Berlin Johnson points out via Boing Boing, the list is made mostly of gentrifying areas.

What he doesn't mention is that, if the Shaw blogs are examplary of the rest, it's pretty much just the gentrifyers doing the blogging. I'd bet the anonymity of the blogosphere insulates these bloggers from the larger community discussion, allowing this minority to give voice to sentiments that might otherwise be shouted down as racist or unwelcome. Gentifying areas bring together lots of these interlopers, and at some point the critical mass makes for a viable blog community.

Or maybe they're just hipsters.

technorati tags:Shaw, Gentrification, Blogosphere

Kurt Vonnegut is dead

2007-04-12T00:18:00.001-04:00

So it goes.

The times has a good piece.

Sound noninvestment

2007-04-11T09:32:00.001-04:00

According to the Times, looks like I'm not an idiot for renting after all. And they've even got an infographic to show how much I'm not an idiot. You know, aside from the fact that I have a job ideally suited for telecommuting, yet live in one of the country's most expensive markets.

technorati tags:Housing

Pew interestingness calculator on the fritz, too

2007-04-05T14:29:00.001-04:00

Atrios links to Eric Boehlert's take on recent Pew nonsense:

I continue to be puzzled why the usually astute folks at the Pew Center for The People and the Press are pushing this angle that news consumers aren't interested in the unfolding AG purge story; a mini-meme that has spread throughout the Beltway. Last week, Media Matters detailed the flaws in the Pew narrative. Yet this week, Pew returned with this headline: Attorney Firings: Important but Not Interesting. There's no doubt people think the story's important to the country; a whopping 68 percent, according to Pew's own numbers. Yet the "not interesting" angle remains very thin. Again, Pew's most recent survey shows 20 percent of Americans are paying "very close" attention to the scandal. And although Pew reports it's "only" 20 percent, that 20 percent puts Purge-gate right on par with the percentage of people who were paying very close attention to the Janet Jackson Super Bowl controversy (February 2004), the murder of Laci Peterson (July 2003), the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton (January 1999), and the O.J. Simpson trial (July 1995).In fact, that 20 percent, in terms of real-time news consumer interest, puts Purge-gate ahead of the campaign examination of Bill Clinton's alleged extramarital affairs (March 1992), Paula Jones' sexual harassment accusations (May 1994), and the Whitewater investigation (July 1996). I don't recall much media chatter back then about how those sordid Clinton stories were "not interesting."

I think that this is an essential point to make - comparing interest levels to juicy scandal psuedonews, with which major media powerhouses love to fill airtime, is in my mind the best way to rebut any claims that people don't want to watch what's actually important. Just because the press is obsessed with boobies, doesn't mean that's the only thing that interests the rest of us.

technorati tags:Pew, Media, Journamalism

CNN newsworthiness calculator strikes again

2007-04-04T00:43:00.001-04:00

Events seem to be of importance inversely proportional to their distance from the CNN studios.

For example: yesterday, five coalition troops were killed in Iraq, two by small arms fire. Theirs is but one more part of the long tale of the tragedy of this war; the conflict has taken the lives of 3,517 Americans, countless Iraqis, and continues to have grave impact on the stability and security of this country and the world.

But what graces the top spot of CNN's main page, and has since the early afternoon? Why, a shooting in front of their offices! The story, destined for a Pulitzer I'm sure, is an opus of incredible journalism. I mean, the reporters had to work long and hard to find reliable sources - their friends and coworkers!

John Helton, a CNN.com producer, had a direct view of the gunman through glass doors. "I saw him coming down the escalator pulling her along, around the corner. He ran into the plant and that's when they started struggling," he said.

Riveting stuff. So what's this story that merits such incredible attention? Like most murders, it is likely a personal and private tragedy, but one that nonetheless bears little on the lives of most readers in any conceivable direct sense.

But it happened right in front of CNN, so we get to hear about it.

technorati tags:CNN, Media, Journamalism, Priorities

Geek break

2007-04-01T15:23:00.001-04:00

Having fun testing Flock, a web browser with blogging and flickr built in. The new version seems to have worked out some of the kinks of yesteryear's, but I haven't gotten too far into it yet.

technorati tags:GeekBreak, Browser

Fine.

2007-03-21T02:52:00.000-04:00

On silence

2007-03-12T15:13:00.000-04:00

I've been quiet recently, in part due to being crazy busy all the time, but also because the new blogger sucks. As someone with three google accounts (personal, work, and sorta-anonymous), this business of logging in and out depending on what services I need is a drag. Yahoo is about to make me switch my flickr account to a yahoo account (of which I have at least two) as well, which may make my activity in that space more limited as well. Note to Al Gore and other intertubes gods - account convergence is not a good thing for people with multiple spheres of online activity, especially those trying to have a little privacy.

Happy Hour

2007-02-14T13:42:00.000-05:00

Looks like we who work all have something to celebrate (scroll to the bottom):

In August 2005, I wrote a column about a recent National Labor Relations Board (Republican majority thereof) ruling that upheld the legality of a company's banning its employees from fraternizing off the job, citing as a woozy precedent a previous ruling that had banned hotel employees from fraternizing with guests. Earlier this month, the D.C Court of Appeals overturned that 2005 ruling -- reaffirming, broadly speaking, that the employer-employee relationship isn't that of a lord to a serf, and, more narrowly, that happy hour with your co-workers is your true-blue American right.

If anyone I work with wants to go out for a few drinks, I'm game.

News War

2007-02-12T00:40:00.000-05:00

Just spent some time watching online content from Frontline's newest series on the press in the age of subpoenas and bloggers. It starts tuesday at 9 pm, and looks worth the watch.

Webb shed combat boots, puts on ass-kicking boots

2007-01-24T00:30:00.000-05:00

Well, he didn't precisely say "class warfare." Not technically anyway.

Dataporn

2007-01-24T00:13:00.000-05:00

I'll get to the SotU in a bit, but first, check out the Times' newest chart - a searchable comparison of all of Bush's SotU speeches. It happens to be the coolest info-graphic I've seen in a while, and that's saying something.

A much needed crash

2007-01-16T11:29:00.000-05:00

The Times is reporting on falling condo prices in DC and elsewhere. The root of the problem may be our zany insistence that everything needs to be subject to investment:

Real estate experts say condos are more susceptible to booms and busts than single-family homes are because they attract more investors who do not intend to live in them and are easier to build than a new subdivision in many cities.

The fact that housing is a medium for speculation and the accrual of wealth, rather than construed only as a means of meeting basic human needs, is a problem. It leads to perverse incentives and strange occurrences, like the replacement of a DC hospital by upscale condos, while inadequate healthcare and lack of affordable housing are two of the biggest problems the district faces.

I'm just happy that the investors in said project are getting screwed by the same market forces that lead to the Columbia in the first place:

Take the owner trying to sell a spacious two-bedroom condo for $879,000 in the former Columbia Hospital for Women, which closed in 2002, in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington. In 2004, the investor was so confident that he would make a handsome resale profit that he told his agent, Thomas P. Murphy, he wanted to buy five condos. Mr. Murphy said he flatly told his client he would only assist him in purchasing one unit in any one building.

“He needs $890,000 to break even, but the offers are at $800,000 to $840,000,” Mr. Murphy said. “He does remember that I told him he was not getting five of them.”

Could he rent the condo? Yes, but that option is not appealing, either. Mr. Murphy estimates that the unit could rent for $4,000 a month, far short of the $6,800 a month the condo costs in mortgage interest, maintenance fees, insurance and taxes.

Why are we building anything that costs almost $7,000, or even $4,000, per month to live in? Whose interests, apart from the builders', does that serve?

Comedy Central goes viral

2007-01-12T23:12:00.000-05:00

Just saw my first CC embedded video. Check it:

Jobsus

2007-01-10T16:25:00.000-05:00

OMG APPL

2007-01-09T16:37:00.000-05:00

Now that blogger is back, I'm finally able to express my excitement for the new iPhone, due out in June. I don't know what has me most excited, full web browsing, multi-touch input, 160 dpi resolution, wifi-edge switching, or any of the other features packed into the insanely thin body, I just know that the sum of them will likely make me willing to shell out the requisite 500 bucks, plus whatever insane contract Cingular demands. Now the main question is how to get my current T637 to live long enough to last me.

Petraeus to the rescue?

2007-01-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

The Post has a story about Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is to be the next US commander in Iraq. From the article's description, he sounds like a pretty hardcore guy, doubtlessly necessary at this stage in the war. His work on the counterinsurgency manual is also promising, given the difficulty thus far that US forces have had in quelling the insurrection there. But the Post also alludes to criticism of Petraeus by others in the military, and says that he supports the troop surge idea. Anybody know what the deal is, and whether we should expect more from this general than those who led our failed Iraq endeavor in the past?

D-day

2007-01-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

Democrats take over today. Woot!

Molecular condom for microbicides

2007-01-03T20:47:00.000-05:00

This is a ways off, but looks good. Microbicides will make it possible for women (and hopefully receptive men, at some point) to protect themselves from AIDS without the knowledge or participation of their partners, a critical improvement in prevention in situations where women are disempowered from making sexual health decisions.

Patents hurt drug innovation

2006-12-21T08:49:00.000-05:00

So says the GAO. Apparently, drug development has not tracked very well to increases in development spending, especially for entirely new drugs. Pharmaceutical companies' ability to patent drugs which are very similar to existing drugs, but with minor or meaningless changes, has likely lessened their incentive to produce new and innovative drugs. The ACS Blog has more.

No more limit

2006-12-20T11:55:00.000-05:00

Flickr, thanks for the early holiday gift! Not sure why you haven't been trumpeting it a little more, but the removal of your upload limit for Pro accounts is pretty nice indeed.

Hope you're ready for a couple gigs of pics, though.

Cop-out of the year

2006-12-17T08:52:00.000-05:00

You are Time Magazine's person of the year. Yes, you. I know that unless you're Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, or Donald Rumsfeld (good job finding my blog, guys), this may come as some surprise, but Time didn't really think any of those people's faces would sell many magazines. The grand tradition of naming the most influential person in the world, for good or ill, died on September 11, as we all know, clearing the way for the feel good choice of Rudy Giuliani over Osama in 2001. Apparently also not big sellers are nerdy unknowns like Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tom Anderson, who despite your protestations, are probably at least marginally more responsible for the success of YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, the social networking sites which Time is ostensibly celebrating with this noble gesture. So congratulations, you, Time's sycophancy has elevated you to greatness.

Tis the season

2006-12-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

I've added a new item to the sidebar today - an appeal to give to Global Justice, the parent organization of the Student Global AIDS Campaign and several other student-led initiatives. It being the holiday season -- and for those of you paying lots of taxes, the deductible donation season -- I encourage you to make at least a small contribution to the organization's work. Even a $10 gift could mean a lot, as the badge is part of a contest sponsored in part by Yahoo, which will give $50,000 to the badge generating the most unique donors. So go ahead, be generous.

Metablog

2006-12-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

Checking my traffic reports just now, I found that despite my near-total neglect of this blog, it still receives a stream (or at least trickle) of traffic each day, thanks to google and my archive of almost 800 posts. The ads I placed as an experiment a while back don't bring in a lot of cash (a couple dollars a month, which I don't get until it mounts up to over $100), but I could imagine that turning into some real cash if I was to put in some effort towards (1) creating a shit-ton of fake blogs (2) figuring out how to post a bunch of plagiarized crap on them automatically (3) putting the ads in a place where someone might actually click them.

So I'm wondering if the secret to wealth is really skimming a little bit off of a large pool of people, or using that large pool of people to skim a lot off google?

Back to life for now...

GJ conference, finally

2006-12-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

Registration is, at long last, open.

Atrios in high form

2006-12-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

Atrios just reminded me of the sort of analysis that had me reading him in the first place:

to be clear I think raising the gax tas is a good idea. If I were the Decider I'd stick on $3/gallon, at least until the people took to the streets and burned down my presidential palace. But rather than focusing on "what's good for them whether they know it or not" kind of policies, it's important to focus on policies which reduce the need for people to use gas. The kinds of land use changes which might result from a huge increase in the gas tax would take years and years to happen. Sure, people would over the course of a few years switch to more fuel efficient vehicles. But the primary reason the tax would be unpopular is that most people don't have other options. Start by providing them.

I think posts of this ilk have been thinner in recent years, as the demands of the commenting hoards and blogger fame have both diluted and reduced his excellent posts. Good to see some solid application of reality to politics and economics again.

Another one

2006-12-04T09:37:00.000-05:00

Bolton is gone. Bush will accept his resignation at the expiration of his recess appointment, says the AP. Wonder which of his father's people Bush will fill the position with.

World AIDS Day

2006-12-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

Today is the day that the world pays attention to AIDS for a bit. 8500 people will succumb to the various ailments associated with AIDS, which will be followed by the same tomorrow and the day after, until we do something to stop it.

My friends at Advocates for Youth, CHANGE and other organizations already got on CNN for their For Whom the Bell Tolls event, which rings church bells for every HIV infection and AIDS death. The bells ring every 5 seconds.

Later today, hundreds of SGACers and others will meet at the White House to rally for a more comprehensive and scientifically sound approach to combating the pandemic, demanding funds for health workers, debt relief, and an end to abstinence-only sex education.

Regional Party

2006-11-15T12:05:00.000-05:00

Ooh, this is going to be great. With their heavy losses in the rest of the country, the power within the GOP is shifting further southward, dooming it to irrelevance as weirdo-values conservatives trump libertarians and pragmatists. Case in point: Trent Lott will return to the leadership as Senate minority whip.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was ousted as Senate majority leader four years ago because of racially insensitive remarks about America's segregationist past, was elected to his party's No. 2 spot in the chamber today by a single vote.

Anybody know whether it's the incoming Senators who vote? I'd guess that a GOP caucus with DeWine or Chaffee wouldn't have gone for a discredited racist.

Lame ducks not so lame

2006-11-10T09:56:00.000-05:00

Looks like the Senate won't be passing Bush's agenda, which includes domestic wiretapping and the confirmation of John Bolton, without a fight:

Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who was defeated in this week's election, said he would block Bolton's nomination.

Chafee, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that he did not believe Bolton's nomination would move forward without his support.

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy," the Rhode Island moderate told The Associated Press.

"And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against."

It's a shame the R next to Chafee's name got him defeated; he sounds like an OK guy after all. With this, maybe he has a political future once he switches parties.

The best day ever

2006-11-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

This is shaping up nicely. With Tester prevailing in Montana, we only have to wait for Allen to concede, which I hear is likely if the spread s more than half a percent. The departure of Rumsfeld is a welcome bonus for all our hard work. His kung-fu was strong, but our grassroots-style was stronger.

I'm happy that this obviates a protracted battle for his removal in which Democrats would be cast as pro-insurgency.

This is insane

2006-11-08T02:35:00.000-05:00

~~Keeping with my pledge to stay up until the control of congress is decided, I won't be sleeping until November 27th.~~ Getting lots of sleep. Thanks, Virginia voters.

Pareto fallacy

2006-11-07T13:17:00.000-05:00

You know, even though Atrios says it wouldn't really help if everyone knew more economics, his post compells me to learn more about economics. Funny.

GOTV

2006-11-07T13:04:00.000-05:00

I'm spending the day in Northern Virginia going door-to-door for Jim Webb. If you don't have access to a swing state or don't have a lot of time, you can still help out with home phone banking, either through the Webb campaign or via MoveOn's Call for Change.

Happy election day

2006-11-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

Go vote. Now.

Insanity

2006-11-06T01:12:00.000-05:00

This, friends, is the craziest set of numbers I've seen from Ohio since the final reported returns in 2004. Lets hope Diebold doesn't screw it for us.

Time for Rumsfeld to go

2006-11-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

So says the Army Times (via CNN).

DHHS: adults should be abstinent too

2006-11-05T15:40:00.000-05:00

A recent clarification of the Department of Health and Human Services abstinence-only program will provide funding for states to extend such programs to adults as old as 29. The target, says the department's spokesperson, is the high proportion of unwed mothers in that age group:

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.

"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,' " Horn said. "The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence."

Hmm. That may be true. But, given that the National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse, I'm thinking an abstinence-only message will be a bit less than 100% effective in preventing all those births.

What's really going on here, though? Why does the government feel compelled to fight the unwed birthrate? Is it really out of control?

Well, unwed fertility is on the rise, but it turns out that it isn't necessarily the result of more premarital sex:

Since 1969, however, shotgun marriage has gradually disappeared (see table 1). For whites, in particular, the shotgun marriage rate began its decline at almost the same time as the reproductive technology shock. And the disappearance of shotgun marriages has contributed heavily to the rise in the out-of-wedlock birth rate for both white and black women. In fact, about 75 percent of the increase in the white out-of-wedlock first-birth rate, and about 60 percent of the black increase, between 1965 and 1990 is directly attributable to the decline in shotgun marriages. If the shotgun marriage rate had remained steady from 1965 to 1990, white out-of-wedlock births would have risen only 25 percent as much as they have. Black out-of-wedlock births would have increased only 40 percent as much.

It seems that the marriage rate is what's really more to blame here. But I guess that's not as attractive a problem as dirty, dirty sex.

Happy

2006-10-25T01:18:00.000-04:00

Finally on its way.

Nano-targetted advertising

2006-10-24T15:36:00.000-04:00

I was just thinking about this kind of thing (via slashdot); it reminds me of the ads in the Metro for attack helicopters, clearly meant for only a few people in the Pentagon and Armed Services Committee staff. I think we'll see a lot more of this, but targeted at the more obscure decision-makers who will only be sussed out of the masses due to our retreating online privacy.

Google the vote

2006-10-24T14:58:00.000-04:00

Not sure where to vote? Looks like Google Earth will help you:

Last night, Google released some new layer changes for Google Earth. The "Register to Vote" layer added a short while ago has been changed to the "2006 US Election Guide" and includes two sub-layers: "US Election Guide" (click on the placemarks for useful voting information), and "US Congressional Districts" (which shows the borders of those districts). These layers are NOT turned on by default, but the information is more useful.

Oh god

2006-10-23T01:27:00.000-04:00

I think i just ran out of internet.

Trouble for Senator Clinton

2006-10-22T17:54:00.000-04:00

Looks like Mark Warner's decision to bow out of the presidential race before it began won't end up leaving it wide open for Clinton. The newfound gap at the center may entice Obama into the mix, according to the Post.

Doonesbury

2006-10-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

The Post has a great look at Garry Trudeau and his recent work on injured vets. It's worth the read, though it's considerably long.

Funny, though, that there's no mention of his other project.

WaPo wrap-up

2006-10-20T01:05:00.000-04:00

Some interesting news in the Post over the past few:

Japan, doing the only realistic thing given their own taste of atomic death, have ruled out becoming a nuclear power, despite the Bush administration's failure to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Kansas, in surely the only possible development that could confound me more than the state's opposition to evolution, seems to be swinging Democratic with the help of a good number of switchers. It'll be interesting to see whether the Dems can cobble together a lasting moderate coalition there.

Web 2.1 has arrived, with a wave of sites using the vast participation of crowds to suss out the ~~lucky~~ clever few. An intriguing idea, but once the crowd starts buying the stock picks of the geniuses, won't we need to have another round to figure out to which geniuses we should listen?

Finally, Harold Meyerson waxes prophetic about the legislation to be passed by the upcoming Democratic Congress. I just wish something here in the blogosphere were made of wood, that I might knock on it.

Ohio shenanigans

2006-10-20T00:17:00.000-04:00

At first I thought it insane that we find ourselves three weeks from the election and Ted Strickland's elegibility to vote, and therefore to serve in elected office, is suddenly in question. Then I remembered that he faces Ken Blackwell, among the most cynical and power-hungry politicians of our day, who has more hubris than a Greek tragedy.

Blackwell denies involvement, of course, which only makes sense; he's obviously too busy ~~accusing Strickland of being gay~~ faulting Strickland for not protecting children.

Meanwhile, TV stations are busy pulling slanderous ads from the GOP, which erroneously claim that Sherrod Brown perpetrated criminal tax evasion:

WKRC-TV in Cincinnati said it dropped the ad, which aired Wednesday, after being advised by its lawyers that the ad was inaccurate. The Brown campaign said its lawyers were assured that television stations WSTR in Cincinnati and WSYX and WTTE in Columbus, owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, pulled the ad on Thursday. Barry Faber, Sinclair vice president and general counsel, declined to comment.

For those who haven't been paying attention, Sinclair are the folks who refused to air a Nightline segment in 2004 on which the names of Iraq war casualties were read, and who threatened to preempt prime-time programming to show an anti-Kerry propaganda piece as news just days before the election. Classy folks.

Also consistently classy is Mike DeWine:

The DeWine campaign had to alter a previous ad when it was discovered that it contained doctored images of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

And I though Ohio was going to be boring this year.

My new hobby

2006-10-19T12:46:00.000-04:00

Hey, the editors are doing it.

House of cards

2006-10-09T01:31:00.000-04:00

Just how many in the GOP are involved in this whole Foley thing? Add Kolbe to the list.

Turning of the tide

2006-10-09T01:23:00.000-04:00

Time's got a few fine things to say about the GOP prospects this fall:

Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left.

And it just gets better from there.

I really hope this country can see what a sham the Republican revolution has become, even if the revelation has to come in the form of a sleazy sex scandal/media orgy. It's time our more conservative neighbors wake up and see what has transpired over these last 12 years.

I hope that when their time comes, Democrats can exhibit better form, at least for a reasonable amount of time (hey, no one's perfect, least of all politicians). I know a lot of folks that have put in maximum effort to turn this thing around, and the promises of progressive action better get delivered upon.

Oh those Brits

2006-10-09T01:05:00.000-04:00

Just watched a spot of political speech from our former masters across the pond. In front of an assembly of loyal party members, David Cameron, who I understand is the leader of the Conservative Party, got to talking about marriage. Predictably, he's for it. Thing is, he went into more detail, and it seems he feels the value of marriage stems not from religion or tradition, but a public decree of commitment and selflessness. Then he got around to really blowing my mind - he elaborated that the inherent value in marriage is present whether the union is between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and a man, and that he's proud that the party supported civil unions.

Um, where can we get conservatives like this?

Buck passing

2006-10-04T01:15:00.000-04:00

Hmm. Republican congressman sends sexually explicit emails and instant messages to minors vaguely under his authority, a situation which is hidden by his party superiors. Who or what do we blame? Not Dennis Hastert, of course, but booze and priests! Oh, what fun.

Ze break

2006-10-03T20:05:00.000-04:00

How to VideoBlog

23 years that almost never were

2006-09-26T23:50:00.000-04:00

It seems that many of us owe a great deal to Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who on this day in 1983 trusted his intuition more than his radar, thus averting nuclear catastrophe. We ought think about the peril in which we place the world by our political decisions, that we might not need another Stanislav Petrov to guard against accidental annihilation.

Econ homework

2006-09-26T14:58:00.000-04:00

Question: given that the equilibrium price and quantity of AIDS drugs does not meet the needed quantity for universal access to treatment, what's the best way to distort the market to deliver essential medicines to the world?

Note: the price elasticity of the need curve for AIDS drugs is zero, while the quantity of need is constantly increasing over time.

It may also be necessary to take into account the effects of patent monopolies.

Saving Africa

2006-09-26T12:51:00.000-04:00

It always strikes me just how many people seem incapable of grasping the concept of satire.

Moral outrages with which I am currently complicit

2006-09-24T17:54:00.000-04:00

by virtue of my material participation in, financial support of, or failure to stop them, in no particular order:

US torture of prisoners in the Great War on Terror
Continuing US military presence in Iraq
The AIDS pandemic
The structures of international debt and the IMF
No Child Left Behind
Global climate change
Displacement of the urban poor to ill-resourced suburbs
Brain drain from the rust belt, and its continued descent into political insanity
Normative gender roles
Racism
~~Postmodern vampires~~ Free trade agreements

Good thing we're all so sick and homeless

2006-09-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

If not for Americans' willingness to pay loads of money to treat their various ailments and house themselves, the US economy would be in a dismal state, according to BusinessWeek:

...the very real problems with the health-care system mask a simple fact: Without it the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago.

Sure, housing has been a bonanza for homebuilders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. Together they have added more than 900,000 jobs since 2001. But the pressures of globalization and new technology have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market: Factories are still closing, retailers are shrinking, and the finance and insurance sector, outside of real estate lending and health insurers, has generated few additional jobs.

So, if not for healthcare and home-building, we'd have no more jobs than we did in 2001. Great - I can't wait for the housing bubble to burst and our too-expensive medical system to price itself out of affordability. That's going to be so much fun.

Why people still come here

2006-09-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

It's been two weeks since my last post here, so what keeps people coming back? Mostly google searches, it seems:

06 Sep, Wed, 11:36:29 Google: facebook stockholders nsa
07 Sep, Thu, 12:35:33 Google: "West End Guide" Washington, D.C.
07 Sep, Thu, 20:59:20 Google: sgac devil dogs
09 Sep, Sat, 07:17:54 Google: "tradition family property" racist
09 Sep, Sat, 19:56:39 Google: tHE INTERNET IS A ASERIES OF TUBES
09 Sep, Sat, 22:28:40 Google: c-span buttar
11 Sep, Mon, 15:14:50 Google: pot webcomics
11 Sep, Mon, 18:50:04 Google: alookaskance
12 Sep, Tue, 12:45:16 Google: ny pics
13 Sep, Wed, 20:07:15 Google: How much is standford tuition for 2006
15 Sep, Fri, 14:28:32 Google: Katania council washington
16 Sep, Sat, 18:52:18 Google: metro map superimposed on google map of dc
17 Sep, Sun, 10:11:09 Google: stephen r. Kappes
18 Sep, Mon, 12:45:12 Google: "mazadek"
19 Sep, Tue, 01:19:45 Google: lewie anderson labor

Most of those visitors were surely disappointed, though I suppose my writings about Ted Stevens, bagpipe-playing conservatives, and the DCist Google Maps API implementation helped some people. One user even seemed to be looking for me; why, given my apparent disinterest in posting, I'm not sure.

Facebook on the campaign trail

2006-09-05T18:26:00.000-04:00

Looks like college students are in for a more engaged future as we ramp up for the 2006 election cycle. Facebook has an all-new political campaign tool, with which candidates can post profiles and issue groups can create, well, issue groups.

For instance, check out Evan Bayh's profile.

Notice that candidates can join Election 2006 groups to show off their issue interests, just as any other use can. Their profiles are also open to comments and picture links, posing some real options for issue advocates to get involved, perhaps engaging in some online birddogging until a candidate joins their group. It's not like getting a campaign promise, but probably a good way to get your issue out there to the candidate's supporters.

I see lots of interesting things ahead.

Pain

2006-09-05T02:23:00.000-04:00

This map of median income change, 1999 to 2005, scares the crap out of me:

Disturbing trends

2006-09-05T01:34:00.000-04:00

The BBC has an interesting set of graphs up about the greater fallout of 9/11. The fourth tab, which shows the direct relationship between 9/11 and hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims, is quite troubling.

Quite nefarious

2006-09-01T01:33:00.000-04:00

Josh Marshall is a stitch:

The idea here is that absent the US military, we would be handing Iraq over to some nefarious -- and, admittedly, it would be quite nefarious -- coalition of Baathists, Iranians, and al-Qaedists, presumably joined by Dr. Evil and the Cobra Commander.

I think we're all caught in an episode of G. I. George: A Real American Hero®.

Amazing television

2006-08-31T02:53:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's some combination of the advanced hour or the heat in this room, but by god I think this is the finest segment of news I've seen in our day. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann takes on Donald Rumsfeld in epic fashion:

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of America?

That was the merest taste. Just go watch it.

Geek break

2006-08-31T02:35:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting development.

Time to change your lightbulb

2006-08-29T17:07:00.000-04:00

Looks like I need to make a trip to the hardware store. From Fast Company:

If every one of 110 million American households bought just one [compact fluorescent] bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

SGAC in the News

2006-08-28T18:31:00.000-04:00

Helping out with TAC's Global Day of Action.

AIDS 2006

2006-08-15T11:22:00.000-04:00

I'm in Toronto for the International AIDS Conference, along with 20 SGACers. Things are crazy busy, so I won't have much time to post here. Please read the SGAC IAC Blog instead.

For now, here's a little bit of what we're doing:

The only reason

2006-08-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

Krauthammer, on how the Lamont victory will destroy ~~America~~ the Democrats:

Apart from the Carter success of 1976 -- an idiosyncratic post-Watergate accident -- the "blame America first" Democrats were not even competitive on foreign policy for the rest of the Cold War. It was not until the very disappearance of the Soviet Union that the American citizenry would once again trust a Democrat with the White House.

Yeah, that had to be it. Couldn't have been voters' short-term interest in tax breaks, huge geographic shifts in population into the south, racist reaction to civil rights legislation bringing party realignment, or anything else. Nope, voters decide on foreign policy alone. Also, everybody frickin' loved Viet Nam.

al-Qaeda survives

2006-08-11T10:21:00.000-04:00

Well, a day before an international flight, it's good to know that the recently foiled attacks are likely the work of an al-Qaeda network still in operation. Thanks, Bush administration, for focusing on what really threatens us.

Albatros

2006-08-10T11:47:00.000-04:00

With Lamont's primary victory in Connecticut, it's clear that this election cycle will be affected, if not dominated, by the big, stinking issue of Iraq so neatly hung around the GOP's neck by President Bush. I think we're beginning to see the truth in that predicament in places like Ohio, where polls continue to show anti-war Sherrod Brown ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine. There are plenty of other problems Republicans will face because o Bush, since they've done such a fine job owning him for the last 6 years, but I think the war will remain at the forefront of our political discourse through November. Of course, Bush could always manage to screw something else up worse before then. Anybody remember last August?

Geek break

2006-08-07T12:33:00.000-04:00

I'll be busy for the next hour or so.

Astroturf alert

2006-08-07T00:55:00.000-04:00

Slashdotters are discussing the latest propaganda:

That work of art was created, apparently, by a PR firm used by both the GOP and Exxon. Hmm. Should we be more upset that someone is attempting to manipulate the public through YouTube, or that we're supposed to be convinced by such a lump of crap?

Hello again

2006-08-02T17:25:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back from a random absence, which was isolated to the online world, I'm afraid - real life did not afford me any special vacation. Some observations about this wonderful world as I return:

Atrios is still bonkers about the Lamont/Lieberman race.

Student Trade Justice Campaign finally has a new website (which represents some improvement over their last.

The suspense is unbearable.

There is more, but I am characteristically out of time.

NY pics are up

2006-08-02T16:16:00.000-04:00

A series of tubes

2006-07-28T01:52:00.000-04:00

Ted Stevens.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Yeah, I realize it's growing a bit stale, but still worth remembering.

Also, is this not the best argument for term limits? Or even upper age limits?

Repeated mistakes

2006-07-28T01:41:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to blog this facinating series over at the Post. Not much time now but for sleep, so I'll just link to it.

Media memory is all short-term

2006-07-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

Lou Dobbs seems to think we're forgetting something:

As our airwaves fill with images and sounds of exploding Hezbollah rockets and Israeli bombs, this seven-day conflict has completely displaced from our view another war in which 10 Americans and more than 300 Iraqis have died during the same week. And it is a conflict now of more than three years duration that has claimed almost 15,000 lives so far this year alone.