Muslim Boy Conquers Fear of Hate Crimes in Children's Book --- http://www.prweb.com/releases/Muslimamerican/childrensbook/prweb423693.htm
Jensen Comment
The innocents are the tear-jerking victims of excessive reactions to media lies and incitements by extremists at both ends of the hate spectrum.

The Connecticut race and Republican spinmeisters will be troublesome for Democrats. But the growing public awareness provides Democrats the opportunity to reshape our party to help America meet the challenges ahead. For Republicans, it signals the end of using patriotism to cover up for persistent failures to deal effectively with pressing national security issues.
Wesley K. Clark, "A Judgment on Iraq, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115517305852131715.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Jensen Comment
The problem is that both political parties lack leadership to truly "meet the challenges ahead." The GOP will attempt to turn any terror tragedy into political gain, and the cut-and-run Democrats are poised to to turn Iraq over to Iran in a single-issue election influenced by an electorate that is influenced by highly biased worldwide media. What's also clear is that a biased media is very much to blame for U.S./U.K. flagellation, encouraging terrorists, and minimizing our victories in reconstructing Iraq (see below).

Biased Media Update
The latest offense by the Washington Post is another example of news manufacturing concocting stories in contravention of facts. Here's the letter Gen. Bill McCoy - who's in charge of construction projects in Iraq -- sent to the Washington Post on Sunday. They haven't printed it yet. Will they ever?
Jed Babbin, "A General Fed Up With The MSM, "RCP Blog," August 8, 2006 --- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/blog/2006/08/a_general_fed_up_with_the_msm.html

Sunday, 06 August 2006
From Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy Jr.
To the Editor of the Washington Post

After spending almost three days traveling with and being interviewed by one of the co-writers of a very poorly written article ("Much Undone in Rebuilding Iraq, Audit says", Washington Post, August 2, 2006), I'm astounded at how distorted a good story can become and what agenda drives a paper to see only the bad side to the reconstruction effort here in Iraq. Instead of distorting the facts, let's get to the truth.

There is no flailing reconstruction effort in Iraq. The United States has rightfully invested $20 billion in Iraq's reconstruction - in the opinion of many here, we should do more. This massive undertaking is part of a wider strategy for success in Iraq that involves the establishment of a democratic government, the development of professional Iraqi security forces, and the restoration of basic essential services and facilities to promote the sustained economic development of this new country.

Yes, this reconstruction effort has been challenged occasionally by security, poor materials, poor construction program management practices, and in some cases poor performance by contractors for a variety of reasons. The Department of State and Defense professionals over here, many of them civilian volunteers, and the Iraqi associates who risk their lives every day to have a future that approximates what America has today, continuously see the challenges and develop and implement solutions. This is a core part of managing construction anywhere in the world and, while somewhat more complex here, it is successfully being accomplished. Have we been guilty of poor planning and mismanagement? The answer to that is, at times, yes. But professionals constantly strive to overcome challenges that arise and we are succeeding and making Iraq better every day!

The heart of the article rests on several old statements by the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction which infer these are recent or recurring problems. The SIGIR knows that, in fact, program management, construction quality, progress, and accountability have all improved significantly since the early days of the effort some three years ago. Yet, the reporters' "project problems" comments infer that these are recent issues. Such actions inflame public opinion in the United States and create resentment by the very people so many conscientious Americans over here are trying to help here in Iraq and worse, embolden our very enemies.

When I arrived here a year ago we planned to complete 3,200 reconstruction projects. Today we are focusing on the completion of 3,700 projects. We've started 3,500 of those projects and completed almost 2,800...and work is continuing! This is not a failure to meet our commitment to the Iraqi people as the article states. In some cases we are not executing the same projects - we have changed to meet new priorities of three government changes in Iraq since our arrival - but in all cases, rest assured, these projects will be completed. We discussed this at length with the reporter...and he was taking notes and recording our conversations.

We told the reporter that, while 141 health clinic construction projects were taken away from a U.S. contractor who failed to perform, they were re-awarded to Iraqi contractors who are already demonstrating progress, have improved quality and shown their great desire to work with the United States to help Iraq improve ... and they are doing so phenomenally!

We did talk to the reporter about on electricity. Three-quarters of Iraq gets twice as much electricity today as they did before the war. Furthermore, we are working with the Minister of Electricity to improve the situation in Baghdad daily and have doubled the hours of power from four to eight in the capitol in the last six months in spite of the fact that demand is markedly increased with Iraqis' new ability to buy personal electrical products.

What is truly amazing to me is that we took the reporter to the Nasiriyah prison project and, while it is true that we terminated the prime U.S. contractor for failure to perform, the Iraqi sub-contractor continues to work there (now directly for us) and his progress and quality have improved significantly ... and he saw that! We are not turning unfinished work over to the Iraqis as he stated in his article; we are fulfilling the U.S. commitment to the people of Iraq and using Iraqis to do it!

The reporter didn't tell you about the hundreds of dedicated military and civilian professionals he saw over here working to make Iraq better, or the Iraqis who come to work every day at their own peril because they believe in what we, and they, are accomplishing together.

He failed to tell you about Aseel or Salah who worked for the Corps of Engineers since we arrived in 2003, because they wanted to make their country like ours, but who were recently brutally murdered in the streets because they worked for the Americans.

He never wrote about the Water Treatment Plant he visited that will provide fresh potable water to over half a million people in southern Iraq in just two more months, or the one in northern Iraq that is providing water for the 330,000 citizens of Irbil.

He never told folks back home about the thousands of children that are now in 800 new or rebuilt schools, or about oil production now being back to pre-war levels and getting better everyday, or raw sewage being taken out of the streets and put back in the pipes where it belongs, or about the thousands of miles of new roads, or post offices, police stations or courthouses or... well, he just left a great deal out now, didn't he?

Why?

Perhaps it's because some in the press don't want the American people to know the truth and prefer instead to only report the negative aspects of the news because "it sells papers."

We deserve better from those who claim the protection of the Constitution we are fighting to support and defend.

America, don't give up. You are doing much better over here than all too many of your press will tell you. If you are tired of fighting for freedom and democracy for those who so strongly long for the country we have, then think of the alternatives for a moment. Iraq will be better for our efforts and so will the world. And you are making it happen. Be proud and keep supporting this vital effort. It is the most important thing America can do.

Thank you. I invite you and your staff to come over at any time to get the facts. I took a risk with Mr. Mosher and obviously got what I consider to be a very unbalanced representation of what he saw, personally. But I still believe in general in the press and will always be open to helping you tell a balanced story.

Essayons! Deliverance!

Maj. Gen. Bill McCoy
Commanding General Gulf Region Division U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Multi-National Force-Iraq

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Video of Photo (Media) Fraud Lebanon --- http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
(Video includes fakes published by Associated Press, Reuters, U.S. News, and The New York Times)

And today, the Jew-hating bigot of the moment is unquestionably a man of the press himself ostensibly unbiased Robert Novak. In every generation there arises a radical new anti-Semite who uses the pulpit of the popular media to explain (in the most dramatic and seductive terms) how the current world crisis can be explained in just three words: "It's the Jews."
Jackie Mason, Jewish World Review, August 11, 2006 --- http://jewishworldreview.com/0806/mason081106.php3 
Jensen Comment
Hollywood's Mel Gibson is milk toast in comparison with columnist Robert Novak. Born Jewish, Novak lost his faith in college and converted to Catholicism in 1998 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Novak

Question
Why is the media so biased against Israel and U.S. successes in rebuilding Iraq?

August 11, 2006 message from Dick Wolff

An LGF reader who worked for Associated Press TV News sent me the following article explaining how APTN works, and suggesting a reason why their coverage of the Middle East is so overwhelmingly biased against Israel:

Dick

Disproportionately Negative Coverage of Israel

Anything involving Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab states for showing to their viewers. Could this be the reason why Israel receives such a disproportionate amount of particularly negative coverage especially and increasingly ever since the early 1970’s? HonestReporting ( http://honestreporting.com/ ) is usually unable to decide which is most biased: AP or BBC. As the BBC is often using APTN footage, the difference is minor. A significant twist to what is seen, concerns what is not seen. Footage such as the Palestinian mob joyfully lynching two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000 is held by APTN’s library: any attempt to license this film for reshow is carefully vetted. Requests for the use of “sensitive clips” are referred directly to the Library director. This is not the case with clips that paint Israel in a bad light. Likewise, the re-showing of Palestinian celebrations on 9/11 is considered “sensitive”.

The way in which raw footage such as APTN’s is compiled into a news report and sent round the world has also been analyzed. The Second Draft ( http://www.seconddraft.org/ ) gives a comprehensive view of how editing can make all the difference. APTN is the gatekeeper that sits between you and the actual event. You will never see what the editors at APTN see before they compile your evening news. What do you think is cut out?

The Wrap-Up

Was this organization set up with this in-built bias on purpose? Is there some way that the expensive payments made by Gulf state governments form part of a deliberate attempt to skew the media?

In “Islam and Dhimmitude” (2002) by Bat Ye’or on p294-296 she recounts how decisions were taken in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to try to put across an anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist message. Successive conferences resolved to contribute vast sums “to universities, centers for Islamic studies, international communications agencies, and private and governmental organizations in order to win over world opinion.” (p296).

The messages from these conferences stressed an addition to the more familiar violent jihad: they also emphasized the importance of jihad by the written and spoken word—what we would recognize as classic propaganda. Without question APTN’s interesting business model represents a concrete example of an ongoing financial “contribution” to an important communication agency promoting a pro-Arab bias.

Continued in article

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George Will said this: "Elections have brought the Muslim Brotherhood into government in Egypt. Elections turned Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories. . . . It could be that there are moments when sampling and empowering the popular will is going to empower extremism." And Time claims, "[E]lections [in the Middle East] are producing governments more hospitable to extremism, not less. Exhibit A was the election of Hamas . . ."
Peter Wehner, "Democracy an Its Discontents Birth pangs of freedom in the Middle East," The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008771

Give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a pulpit and no prizes for guessing how he will use it. So it was no surprise to see the Iranian President take advantage of a visit to Malaysia last week to champion the Jewish state's destruction once again. Peace can come to the Middle East "only when there will be no Israel there," Mr. Ahmadinejad declared . . . "The question of having a dialogue with Tel Aviv does not arise," Malaysia's Mr. Abdullah responded over the weekend. Even as much of the Middle East has opened diplomatic relations with their long-time adversary in recent years, Malaysia and Indonesia -- which both refuse to countenance any kind of formal ties with Israel -- still side with the Islamic hard-liners on this point. Both countries offered last week to send peacekeepers to join any new United Nations force in Lebanon. But now that their leaders have shown themselves so willing to look the other way as Mr. Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's destruction, it will be difficult to trust their forces not to do likewise as Hezbollah uses its rockets to seek to accomplish that goal.
"As It Spreads Hatred in Asia," The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006 --- Click Here


Mike Wallace lands an exclusive and rare interview with the president of Iran. In the wide-ranging interview, the Iranian leader comments on President Bush’s foreign policy, the lack of relations between Iran and the U.S., Hezbollah, Lebanon and Iraq. Robert Anderson is the producer --- Click Here

Jensen Comment
Mike Wallace never had control of this interview at any point in the double length segment of CBS Sixty Minutes aired on August 13, 2006. President Ahmadinejad, a college professor with a doctoral degree in engineering, never deviated from his controlling script and simply ignored any of Mike's sensitive questions such as:

• Do your really mean Zionists be literally "wiped off the face of the earth"?
• Why the Holocaust truly an "overblown fairytale"?
  See Iran's Holocaust cartoon exhibition ---
  http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6332204D-7694-40B2-B134-06ADB6A47CD3.htm
• Why is Iran "supplying insurgents in Iraq with roadside bombs"?   

Ahmadinejad's prepared script was predictable --- Zionists (meaning Jews) have no legitimate right to reside anywhere in the Middle East; the U.S. is the world's immoral oppressor; the U.N. and European nations are puppets controlled by the U.S., and terrorism is a legitimate weapon of Islamic fundamentalism. Because Ahmadinejad's "advisors" were obviously nearby and made their presence repeatedly known during the interview, I was continually reminded of Baghdad Bob, although in fairness Ahmadinejad is more articulate, intelligent, educated, and dangerous than Baghdad Bob whose collected quotations are at http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/baghdad_bob.htm

There may be something of Iran's social principle of "taarof" in Ahmadinejad's more extreme comments. I will take up the topic of taarof in the forthcoming August 20 edition of Tidbits. Clearly Ahmadinejad's comments are widely off the mark regarding the U.N. (which usually votes against the U.S. on anything except motherhood and apple pie) and Europe (which has a hostile media on matters related to the U.S. and almost always opposes U.S. readiness to fight terrorists with force).

In reaction to Ahmadinejad's comments on the Holocaust, the United States Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning his "harmful, destructive, and anti-Semitic statements." and "hate and animosity toward all Jewish people of the world" --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
Iran's Holocaust cartoon exhibition ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6332204D-7694-40B2-B134-06ADB6A47CD3.htm

Probably the Most Important Point Ignored by the Anti-Israel Media Five Years After 9/11
Even if there were no Israel, these people would still hate us as an embodiment of everything they consider unholy. . . . The disappearance of Israel would do nothing to prevent such [9/11-styled] attacks.
Norman Podhoretz in the New York Post as quoted by James Taranto and Ira Stoll, The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2001
Jensen Comment
What Islamic fundamentalists consider the most "unholy" is the attraction of Western lifestyle, capitalist globalization, fashion, media/network freedom, and equal rights for women --- unholy trends deemed far greater threats to Islam than Zionists. Islamic spokespersons are now, for political purposes in 2006, trying to blame terrorism on U.S./U.K. support of Israel, but accusations from true Al Quieda terrorists themselves repeatedly extend well beyond Israel and U.S. presence in Iraq. Al Quieda to date directed most of its attacks against Western influence in Saudi Arabia and other Moslem nations that are not forcefully resisting creeping Westernism within their own borders. Al Quieda terrorists targeted Bali and Saudi Arabia and African sites where few, if any, Zionists were the main targets. Islamic terrorists are not targeting Zionists in India. They're targeting Western-styled economic successes in India (India has more Moslem citizens than either Pakistan or Iran).

Here is what we want to do in the wake of the arrests in Britain. We want to understand as much as possible about what terrorists were planning. To talk about airport security and how to make it better. To find out what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther. It would be a blessed moment in modern American history if we could do that without turning this into a political game plan.
Editorial, "The London Plot," The New York Times, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/opinion/11fri1.html
Jensen Comment
"To find out what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther." Yeah right! See the WSJ editorial below.

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
"'Mass Murder' Foiled A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose," The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008785
What Britain can teach America about counterterrorism ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008794

Many Jews are in my position -- the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protestors -- instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes. However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.
Thane Rosenbaurm, "Red State Jews," by , The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2006; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115508199528130506.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Also see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5630339
Also see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5627457

From NPR
Jewish Americans Share Israel's Pain --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5630339

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"Liberal McCarthyism," by Lanny J. Davis, The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006; Page A10 --- Click Here

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing -- in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years -- with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage -- I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman: • "Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby" (by "rim," posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

• On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

• "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

• "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

One Sunday morning on C-Span I debated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on the Lieberman versus Lamont race. Afterwards I received a series of emails -- many of them in ALL CAPS (which often suggests the hyper-frenetic state of these extremist haters) -- that were of the same stripe as the blog posts, and filled with the same level of personal hate.

Continued in article

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To every Democratic Senator and Congressman who continues to back Bush's War, allow me to inform you that your days in elective office are now numbered. Myself and tens of millions of citizens are going to work hard to actively remove you from any position of power. If you don't believe us, give Joe a call.
Michael Moore, "It's All About Who You Sleep With" --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=197

Right-wing Jew fooled no one this time. Wednesday, August 09, 2006 -- Voters in Connecticut reject three-term Sen. Lieberman for a political newcomer in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Americans who are sick of this lying right-wing punk in the White House and his damn supporters gased Bush's Jew at the polls. God in heaven, it is my prayer that You will punish these ungrateful, omnipotent fools so harshly that even those like myself, who despise the ground they walk on, will feel sorry for them.
Bob Miller, "The Kiss of Death, Out2.com, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.out2.com/
Jensen Comment
Apart from the repulsive wording typical of many extremist writers about Senator Lieberman, it's strange that Miller would call Lieberman a "right-wing Jew." Jews are seldom right-wing, and Senator Lieberman is one of the more liberal members of the Senate, especially in terms of support for poverty and other social programs. The Democratic Primary outcome in Connecticut illustrates how one-issue platforms are misleading when appealing for votes. Lieberman may possibly be re-elected as an independent since Democrats only comprise about a third of the voters in Connecticut where half the voters are "independents" and the remainder are either Republicans or Don't-Cares. Fiscal conservatives are hoping Lieberman drops out of the race for re-election since his seniority in the Senate gives him greater power to push for liberal spending.

Lieberman is possibly the least libertarian member of the United States Senate: An infinite-state liberal who always found ways to oppose Social Security reform . . . questions the Republicans' apparent strategy of doubling down on support for the Iraq war, and wonders who will take Lieberman's place as the Senate's killjoy in chief.
Tim Cavanaugh, "Adios, Vinegar Joe A gleeful obituary for a loathsome politician, Reason Magazine, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.reason.com/hod/tc080906.shtml 

Democratic Party embraces Ned Lamont, it must also embrace his antiwar message: It proved a winning strategy for Connecticut, and will be for the mid-term elections.
Editors, "Lamont Wins," The Nation, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/editors
Jensen Comment
It should be footnoted that "it proved a winning strategy" for 52% of registered democrats in Connecticut where registered democrats comprise about one third of the voting populace.  The remainder of this populace will have a voice in November.
Murtha's re-election bid in Pennsylvania is also an antiwar test ---
http://www.house.gov/murtha/
http://www.bootmurtha.com/MurthaUpdates/AUG2006/08-12-06.htm
The activist liberal media like The Nation, however, is more uncomfortable with Murtha's support for increased funding of a formidable U.S. military.

But let's not overstate the blogs' role in this (defeat of Lieberman). They get both credit and blame for driving the Democrats to an antiwar platform. But there was never any real resistance from the party elders. The people atop the party provided the energy and intellectual content to the last famous antiwar movement, against Vietnam. Events like the massive protests in Washington and elsewhere between 1969 and 1971 were in part about events in Vietnam, but there was also a huge amount of narcissistic self-indulgence in the movement. People joined in the expectation of being around an "event" -- part rock concert, part street theater, the rush of being part of a morally unblemished belief system. Sort of like the Web. This politics produced two major candidacies -- Eugene McCarthy's challenge to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and George McGovern's to Richard Nixon in 1972. Both got blown out.
Daniel Henninger, "Democrats Knifed Lieberman on Eve Of Airliner Plot," The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2006; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115525798214832893.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Old Hippies Have Their Day --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/oldhippie.htm 
(If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.)
In the aftermath of the (Connecticut) primary, Democrats settled on the idea that Lieberman fell because of his support for the Iraq war. This was technically true, in the same way that a 95-year-old man might technically be said to die from pneumonia; there were, to say the least, underlying causes. The war was a galvanizing issue, but Lieberman's loss was just the first major victory for a larger grass-roots movement. While that movement is identified with young, online activists, it is populated largely by exasperated and ideologically disappointed baby boomers. These are the liberals who quietly seethed as Bill Clinton worked with Republicans to reform welfare and pass free-trade agreements. After the ''stolen'' election of 2000 and the subsequent loss of House and Senate seats in 2004, these Democrats felt duped. If triangulation wasn't a winning strategy, they asked, why were they ever asked to tolerate it in the first place? The Web gave them a place to share their frustrations, and Howard Dean gave them an icon. Iraq has energized these older lapsed liberals; for a generation that got into politics marching against Vietnam, an antiwar movement is comfortable space. But it was the yearning for a more confrontational brand of opposition on all fronts, for something resembling the black-and-white moral choices of the 1960's, that more broadly animated Lamont's insurgency. Connecticut's primary showdown (which now appears to be headed for a sequel in November) marked an emphatic repudiation not just of the war but also of Clinton's ''third way'' governing philosophy - a philosophy not unlike the Republican ethos of ''compromise'' and ''pragmatism'' that so infuriated Reagan conservatives.
Matt Bai, "What Are the Lieberman Foes For?" The New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2006 --- Click Here

In the mid-20th century the core constituencies of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties stood foursquare for America's prosecution of World War II and the Cold War. Today, as the Connecticut results suggest, it's different. The core constituency of the Republican Party stands foursquare for America's prosecution of the global struggle against Islamofascist terrorism -- and solidly on the side of Israel in its struggle against the same forces. The core constituency of the Democratic Party wants to stand aside from the global struggle -- and, as the presence of (anti-Israel leaders) Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at Mr. Lamont's side on election night suggests, is not necessarily on the side of Israel. It's not your father's Democratic Party.
Michael Barone, "Primary Colors, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115515847647431384.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan --- FactCheck.org --- http://www.factcheck.org/

The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.
Celia Green as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-06-28-06.htm

Asked to define "truthiness," [Comedy Central's Stephen] Colbert tells [CBS Sixty Minute's interviewer Morley] Safer, "Truthiness is what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support." --- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553506.shtml

This is what makes Colbert's "truthiness" a perfect word for postmodernism and its postpositive critical theory:

In particular, a dominant trend in critical theory was the rejection of the concept of objectivity as something that rests on a more or less naive epistemology: a simple belief that “facts” exist in some pristine state untouched by “theory.” To avoid being naive, the dutiful student learned to insist that, after all, all facts come to us embedded in various assumptions about the world. Hence (ta da!) “objectivity” exists only within an agreed-upon framework. It is relative to that framework. So it isn’t really objective....
Scott McLemee, "The Power of Postpositive Thinking," , Inside Higher Ed, August 2, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/02/mclemee 

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"Who Needs Harvard? Competition for the Ivies is as fierce as ever, but kids who look beyond the famous schools may be the smartest applicants of all,"  by Nancy Gibbs and Nathan Ghornburgh, Time Magazine Cover Story (Complete with a cover photo of lots of green ivy), August 21, 2006 --- Click Here

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Academe is Just Not Cool
Time Magazine's selections for "The 50 Coolest Websites" ---
http://www.time.com/time/2006/50coolest/index.html?internalid=AOT_h_08-13-2006_50_coolest_webs

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Those phony emails pretending to be from banks and PayPal

"Revealing Fraud in E-Mail Addresses," by J.D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/technology/10askk.html

Q. I get a ton of e-mail messages purporting to be from banks and Web sites that are obviously not from those institutions even though the return address looks real. Is there a way to find out where these messages actually came from?

A. Although you probably won’t be able to trace the fraudulent message directly back to its human sender, you can usually poke around inside the message’s full header field to see where it might have come from electronically. Check your particular e-mail program’s settings for displaying “full” or “long” message headers — in Outlook Express, for example, you can see the full header by right-clicking on a message in your mailbox window, selecting Properties and clicking the Details button.

The full header shows the path that message took across the Internet from sender to recipient. Even if the return address is forged with something like admin@irs.gov, if you look closely, odds are you’ll see other addresses in the “Received:” lines in the header that give some indication of the message’s origin. A detailed explanation of how to read e-mail headers is at spamlinks.net/track-trace-headers.htm.

If you receive spam that solicits your personal information, the consumer safety site OnGuardOnline.gov suggests forwarding it to the bank or institution used in the forged address and to spam@uce.gov.

Bob Jensen's threads on spam blocking are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#Spam

Bob Jensen's threads on ID theft are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#IdentityTheft

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Few Working Couples Are Happy Says University of Minnesota Sociologist

"Study: Few working couples happy," PhysOrg, August 12, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74568891.html

A Minnesota researcher says middle-class couples are struggling to balance work and family in jobs designed for the days when men were the breadwinners.

Phyllis Moen, who holds a chair in sociology at the University of Minnesota, tracked 1,060 couples. She found that only one in six qualified as super couples -- with both partners reporting a good quality of life -- while more than half reported that neither was getting much enjoyment out of life.

Moen said couples are "stretched thin by 'work-friendly' jobs."

She presented her paper -- "Dual-Earner Middle-Class Time Convoys, Ecologies, and Life-Course 'Fit': Super Couples or Couples Stretched Thin?" -- at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting.

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Military Spending Fraud on an Unfathomable Scale
Of course, people have been decrying Pentagon waste and inefficiency for decades. But things have got significantly worse over the past five years, because Congress and the Bush Administration have thrown so much money at the Defense Department so fast. Studies of corporate behavior show that when companies are flush with cash they are more likely to make acquisitions that reduce their over-all value. The defense industry today, in fact, is much like Silicon Valley in the late nineties—when you give lots of money to an industry with no audits and no supervision, people lose discipline. They spend on bad ideas, gild every surface, and cheat. Is it really a surprise that billions of dollars meant for private contractors in Iraq seems to have been stolen?
James Surowiecki, "Unsafe at Any Price," The New Yorker, August 8, 2006 --- http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060807ta_talk_surowiecki

Question
Could there possibly be fraud in U.S. Government accounting?

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found. The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion. The report by the inspector general’s office does not give a full accounting of all projects financed by the agency’s $1.4 billion budget, but cites several examples.
"Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects," by James Glanz, The New York Times, July 29, 2006 --- Click Here

Bob Jensen's updates on fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

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Create your own Web applications with ease using this free Zoho Creater software

August 7, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Is this a MS Access-killer-app?

http://www.zohocreator.com/

"This free Web-based software handled the job -- but without the bells and whistles of Access that had baffled Mr Hughes. And since the program stored his data on the Web, his colleagues could tap into it easily with a browser. "To me it was like a godsend" says Mr. Hughes, operations manager at SoluChem. "
Robert A. Guth, The Wall Street Journal Online --- http://www.zohocreator.com/

Exclusive benefits of Zoho Creator  --- http://www.zohocreator.com/

	Create Apps from scratch Create your web application in minutes, not days. It's just a few clicks away.			Create Apps from spreadsheet Import your spreadsheet to create web application automatically.
	Browse, Copy & Customize Browse public applications. See something you like? Copy and customize to your needs.			No coding required Create web application without coding. You don't need to have HTML or PHP skills .
	Embed Forms/Views in website Embed Forms and Views easily into your website and blog.			Share your App Share your app with other users or keep it private among your friends, colleagues and clients.

 

Zoho Creator helps you to easily create personal and business web applications on your own by structuring and presenting your data in a lot of interesting and useful ways. You can view the data as a table, calendar or just as a summary. In addition to just viewing your data in many ways, you might also want to perform one or more of the following:

• Perform an action when a row is added successfully or detect when someone adds a row to a form. For example, you might want to receive email notifications as and when a row is added. Learn more

• Perform an action when a row is updated. For example, in the case of a bug tracker, you might want to receive email notifications whenever the status of the issue gets modified. Learn more

• Validate the form data before persisting it.

• Add a row only if it satisfies a certain criteria and reject the other entries. For example, in a recruitment application, accept only those applicants who have more than two years of experience. Learn more

• Define formulas for calculations. For example, assume a student database has marks obtained by students in all the subjects and you want to display the total and average marks also. Learn more

• Create complex filters in views. Learn more 

 With Zoho Creator, you don't have to write code to build a simple data collection and viewing application like a Contacts list. But, scripting will be indispensable for building a full fledged application with complex logic, for example, Library Manager.

Jensen Comment
Although this is not course management software, it can be used for authoring presentation lessons by instructors.

Bob Jensen's summaries of course authoring and course management software are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Also see Bob Jensen's summary authoring software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

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"Students Getting Sticker Shock from Textbook Prices," AccountingWeb, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102424

Students entering college in 2006 can expect to pay more than $500 for textbooks for their first semester courses, a huge outlay of cash for many who have already taken out student loans to pay for tuition and fees. University of Connecticut freshman Ben March returned to UConn’s Co-op bookstore for an accounting textbook last February, after having already spent $400 on other textbooks. The book cost $101. “I was trying not to buy it, but I ended up needing it," March said, according to boston.com. “The prices are depressing, but you really don’t have a choice.”

Full-time students in a four-year public college paid $898 for books in 2003-2004, equal to 26 percent of the cost of tuition and fees, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued in 2005. Congress is looking at the problem, and Virginia and California have passed legislation, but these measures have had little impact on student costs so far.

Faculty members are now being asked by state legislatures to consider pricing in their selection of textbooks and study materials. Is it necessary, for example, for an introductory accounting course to use the latest edition of a text that comes from the publisher bundled with a CD-ROM and study aids, which jack up the price?

New editions, which now come out every three or four years, cost students up to 45 percent more, the Washington Post says. The most popular accounting textbooks have been through many editions, and changes from the previous editions may be limited to the use of color and graphics. Accounting, by Warren, Reeves and Fess, published by South-Western Press, is now in its 22nd edition.

Publishing companies market their wares directly to professors at regional and national meetings of groups like the American Accounting Association, where professors sign up to receive complimentary copies of new textbooks. Large sales teams from companies like McGraw-Hill, publisher of Principles of Financial Accounting, 18th edition, and Prentice-Hall, publisher of Introduction to Financial Accounting, 9th edition, attend the national meetings.

A survey conducted by the California Student Public Interest Research Group reported that faculty members in all disciplines at Stanford University said that the replacement of old editions by new ones was “rarely” or “never” justified. But many continued to order them for their classes anyway, according to the American Intelligence Wire. Eighty-seven percent of faculty surveyed in the entire California system favored publishing new information in the form of paperbound supplements.

A Textbook Task Force at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU), recommended not buying new editions or bundled products, but faculty peers did not endorse these proposals. The faculty senate, while acknowledging that textbook pricing was a persistent problem, did not agree with the Task Force’s opposition to bundling or to new editions, saying that educators in the professions use evidence-based materials and needed to consider the requirements of professional licensing.

The senate found that providing “faculty and students with more comprehensive, current pricing information in a timely, easily-accessible fashion is not only critical, but the most practical first step to take.” The WCSU task force recommendations and responses are published on the university’s Web site.

In fields like accounting, where older editions might work in introductory courses, professors have individual goals for more advanced courses, and texts should include current law, research or cases, instructors say. The text should be considered an investment, a reference that the student will want to keep. Additional resources may also prove a good investment for many students.

Publishers determine wholesale prices for textbooks, and college bookstores determine the final price for the book. The average mark-up college bookstores add to new books is 33 percent, and the mark-up for used books is 50 percent, Bruce Hildebrand, executive director at the Association for American Publisher says, according to MSNBC.

Peg Godwin, manager of the University of Idaho’s Bookstore, told the university newspaper, the Argonaut, that it is hard to break even. “If we buy 100 books, we have to sell 80 books just to pay for those books and then we have to sell another four or five books to pay for the freight on them. And then we have to pay all our salaries, and salaries run around 12 to 13 percent, so we have to sell those last three books.”

Most college bookstores have textbook buyback programs, but with new editions coming out so frequently, there are not many books stores can accept for resale. University of Texas Co-op President, George H. Mitchell, says that UT students buy an average of 40 percent used books, much higher that the national average of 25 percent, the Financial Times reports. The process is successful in Texas, says Jennifer Libertowsky, spokeswoman with the National Association of College Stores, because instructors provide lists of books that will be used in classes well in advance of the buying period.

Students are finding that purchasing online provides substantial savings on both new and used books, the Washington Post says. Popular sites, in addition to Amazon.com, include www.campusbookswap.com, which allows students to buy and sell used books directly, and www.textbookx.com.

And like other products, some textbooks are cheaper in Canada. In some cases savings can equal 90 percent of the U.S. retail price, the Post says, although AccountingWeb found prices for accounting textbooks were only slightly lower than U.S. prices. Shipping time is estimated to be three to six weeks. Buyers can go to www.amazon.ca.

But shop early or pay full price. As of August 1st, Amazon had only one new copy of Principles of Financial Accounting by Wild, Larson and Chiapetta, (Chapters 1-17) now in its 18th edition and selling for $113. McGraw-Hill does not list their price for the book. There were only four new copies of Introduction to Financial Accounting by Horngren, Sundem, Elliott and Philbrick available on Amazon for $106.70. The book lists on the Prentice-Hall Web site at $149.50 and costs $165 with Peachtree software.

And the most successful textbook in history, according to Amazon, Warren, Reeves and Fess’s Accounting, published by South-Western Publishing in a number of different formats, is also nearly sold out. Amazon says they have more copies of all of these books on order.

Bob Jensen's threads on oligopoly publisher frauds are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals

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Question
How do good readers differ from bad readers?

"Metaphors We Read By," by Laurence Musgrove, Inside Higher Ed, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/04/musgrove

As I continued to examine these drawings, especially those including imaginative representations of reading, I began to investigate the various ways reading is analogized and to make a list of these metaphors.

Here is a sample of 20 from my ever-expanding collection.

• 1. Reading is grafting, and the reader connects new text to another text read.
• 2. Reading is dancing, and the reader follows the lead and steps of the text, including its rhythm, music, lyric, genre, and flow.
• 3. Reading is sorting, and the reader puts knowledge and experience and dramatic elements of text into categories.
• 4. Reading is surveying, and the reader examines the territory of the book, its surface, size, structure, scope, distinguishing features, divisions, boundaries, etc.
• 5. Reading is integrating, and the reader incorporates new knowledge into other knowledge; blending and kneading together.
• 6. Reading is counting, and the reader is concerned with the number of pages in the text or how many pages are left until they can escape the text (also envision the image of a prisoner marking off days on calendar).
• 7. Reading is soaking up, and the reader absorbs the text like a sponge.
• 8. Reading is a vehicle, and the reader travels to another place.
• 9. Reading is eating, and the reader consumes and is nourished (or poisoned) by the text.
• 10. Reading is a mirror, and the reader sees reflection in text.
• 11. Reading is a machine, and the reader feeds the text through a mechanical process.
• 12. Reading is a transaction, and the reader and text exchange value: the reader receives knowledge and experience, the text receives meaning, and the newly produced response is the receipt or proof of the transaction.
• 13. Reading is exercise, and the reader gains intellectual agility and strength.
• 14. Reading is mining, and the reader digs into the text for answers.
• 15. Reading is a good investment, and the reader’s efforts pay off.
• 16. Reading is planting, and the reader receives seeds of knowledge that grow into new understanding.
• 17. Reading is unwrapping, and the reader opens the text to reveal a hidden message.
• 18. Reading is translating, and the reader moves the meaning from one language to another.
• 19. Reading is a friend, and the reader enjoys the companionship of the text.
• 20. Reading is wrestling, and the reader struggles with the text.

In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson write, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” In addition, they argue that these metaphorically-determinate conceptual frameworks are unconsciously meta-cognitive; that is, we reason and engage automatically without understanding the powerful metaphors shaping our interactions with each other and the world around us.

Thus, metaphorical concepts also impact students’ relationships with texts. My research so far suggests that many students have not developed adequate reading habits because they bring with them incapacitating conceptions or analogies of reading. They see it as torture or a lullaby. They also assign human agency to the text. They blame it for being hard to understand, when in fact they lack the understanding to engage the text successfully.

Rather than positioning themselves to become the reader the text wants them to be — to go out and find the knowledge the text assumes the reader already owns — students lash out at the unresponsive novel, poem, play, essay, or textbook chapter. They also sometimes see reading assignments as lifeless information to be transferred from one place to another (like the student described in the anecdote above copying highlighted words from one book to another), or as Paulo Freire analogizes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, they see knowledge as temporary commodities to be banked in their memories until withdrawn by an instructor at test time.

But these faulty conceptions of reading didn’t magically appear out of thin air. Students learned them, and many certainly learned them one way or another, implicitly or explicitly, in school. That so many of our students have come to hate reading (and writing, of course, too) is a cultural disgrace. Therefore, we need specific counter-cultural methods of instruction to adequately respond to the inappropriate metaphors of reading students bring to the classroom.

For my part, I want to discover which of my students have, knowingly or not, embraced these self-defeating notions of reading and then provide them the means to replace those conceptual roadblocks with more effective and empowering metaphors.

I also propose that professors across the curriculum actively identify and more effectively deploy metaphors of reading. In other words, rather than assume our students already know what it means to read in their disciplines, we should reflect on the kinds of reading we expect our students to practice, examine the metaphorical concepts at the heart of those reading strategies, and then present those metaphors in the classroom.

Continued in article

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"Brain imaging identifies best memorization strategies," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73843946.html

Exploring exactly why some individuals' memory skills are better than others has led researchers at Washington University in St. Louis to study the brain basis of learning strategies that healthy young adults select to help them memorize a series of objects. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers uncovered brain regions specifically correlated with the diverse strategies that subjects adopt. 

Brenda Kirchhoff, research associate in psychology in the University's School of Arts and Sciences, conducted this study in the then-Washington University lab of Randy L. Buckner, now a professor of psychology at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Their findings have been published in the July 20, 2006, issue of Neuron. (Kirchhoff is the article's first author and Buckner is senior author.)

"Randy and I were interested in exploring individual differences in memory — why some people are better at learning new information than others," said Kirchhoff. "Our main goal was to determine the learning strategies that people use and their relationship to memory performance. Secondly, we wanted to know if individual differences in learning strategies were associated with individual differences in brain activity.

Continued in article

Also see "Researchers find new learning strategy," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73843691.html

Also see "Novelty aids learning," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73834337.html

Exposure to new experiences improves memory, according to research by UCL psychologists and medical doctors that could hold major implications for the treatment of memory problems. The study, published in Neuron on 3 August, concludes that introducing completely new facts when learning, significantly improves memory performance.

Researchers have long suspected that the human brain is particularly attracted to new information and that this might be important for learning. They are now a step closer to understanding why.

A region in the midbrain (substantia nigra/ventral tegmental), which is responsible for regulating our motivation and reward-processing, responds better to novelty than to the familiar. This system also regulates levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, and could aid learning. This link between memory, novelty, motivation and reward could help patients with memory problems.

Dr Emrah Düzel, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “We hope that these findings will have an impact on behavioural treatments for patients with poor memory. Current practice by behavioural psychologists aims to improve memory through repeatedly exposing a person to information – just as we do when we revise for an exam. This study shows that revising is more effective if you mix new facts in with the old. You actually learn better, even though your brain is also tied up with new information.

“It is a well-known fact amongst scientists that the midbrain region regulates our levels of motivation and our ability to predict rewards by releasing dopamine in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain. We have now shown that novelty activates this brain area. We believe that experiencing novelty might, in itself, have an impact on our dopamine levels. Our next project will be to test the role of dopamine in learning. These findings could have implications for drug development.”

Subjects took part in a series of tests. The first experiment assessed whether the brain prefers novel stimuli over familiar stimuli even when the familiar images are made significant because they are either rare or depict emotionally negative content. Subjects were shown images of indoor and outdoor scenes and faces, while their brain activity was analysed using an fMRI scanner. Some images rarely popped up and some were emotionally negative, such as an angry face or a car accident. Even the rare and emotional images did not activate the midbrain. It responded only to new images.

The second experiment, using fMRI, made some of the images more or less familiar to test how this relativity affected brain activity. It did not – only completely new images produced activity in the midbrain area.

Dr Düzel said: “We thought that less familiar information would stand out as being significant when mixed with well-learnt, very familiar information and so activate the midbrain region just as strongly as absolutely new information. That was not the case. Only completely new things cause strong activity in the midbrain area.”

Separate behavioural experiments were also conducted without the use of a scanner to test the subjects’ memory. Their memory of the novel, familiar and very familiar images they had studied was tested after 20 minutes and then a day later. Subjects performed best in these tests when new information was combined with familiar information during learning. After a 20 minute delay, subjects’ memory for slightly familiar information was boosted by 19 per cent if it had been mixed with new facts during learning sessions.

Dr Düzel said: “When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine.”

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Monetary policy resulting in a weak dollar is the culprit for high oil prices

"The Elephant in the Barrel," by Bret Swanson, The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115534012451133869.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Nigerian pipeline explosions, Chinese demand, Arab angst, Venezuelan volatility, peak oil and a Putin premium: These are the usual explanations for high petroleum prices. But our discussion of the "energy crisis" has ignored the elephant in the barrel -- monetary policy. Today, high oil prices are the backdrop for Middle Eastern chaos and calls for bad energy policy. It was much the same in the 1970s, when high prices yielded similar violence against our fellow man and against economics. This is no coincidence. A weak dollar is the culprit, now as then.

When the Yom Kippur war was launched in October 1973, the price of oil had been rising for two years. For decades, oil's price had been remarkably stable, like the prices of most other goods. But in 1971 Richard Nixon broke the dollar's links both to gold and to key foreign currencies. Bretton Woods -- and the dollar -- collapsed, and a decade-long inflation began.

By July 1973, gold had deviated from its long-time price of $35 per ounce and soared to $120. Oil also responded quickly to dollar weakness and doubled in price by the early autumn. The Mideast nations complained that the Western oil companies were accumulating massive "windfall profits." Having negotiated agreements in the previous environment of price stability, the Arabs and Persians were stuck with much lower prices and royalty payments. You know the rest of the decade's news: embargoes, gas lines, inflation, wage and price controls, hostages.

* * *

Today, commodity prices across the board, from coffee to carbon fiber, remain near 25-year highs. High oil prices are not a unique phenomenon, but just another commodity whose price is determined primarily by the value of the dollar. Expensive oil isn't exclusively a monetary event, of course: Risk and demand matter, too. But in comparing oil to other commodities, especially gold, we find that elevated risk and demand explains only $10-$15 of the higher oil price; $30 of the price is explained by a weak, inflationary dollar. The entity most responsible for expensive oil is thus the Fed.

For more evidence of the centrality of the dollar's value, consider what happened to oil just a few years ago. In 1998 the price of crude plunged to $10 per barrel. At the time, China had been growing at 10% per year for 20 years, the U.S. economy was growing fast at 4%, and the Middle East was typically if not maximally volatile, with Saddam testing the U.N. inspection process and the U.S. sending Tomahawks back his way. Demand and geopolitical volatility were fairly high in 1998, and ominous "peak oil" theories had been around for a while; yet oil was just a seventh of today's price. Other commodity prices were also at multidecade lows, with gold sinking below $275 per ounce (versus today's $640). The common factor was a superstrong currency -- a severe shortage of dollars. This deflation roiled world markets and bankrupted many companies and nations with dollar debts: Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Argentina.

The deflationary dollar sent a struggling but oil-rich Russia over the edge into default. Russia today supposedly has some magical power to set world prices, yet in 1998 oil was $60 less expensive, and a desperate Russia was helpless to achieve higher prices. Even after 9/11 and the take-down of the Taliban, oil still traded at $20 per barrel. Adjusted for inflation, this was the price of oil in 1970 -- and in 1960, and 1950.

Then the Fed started making inflationary mistakes. Alan Greenspan's liquidity injections after 9/11 had mercifully relieved the deflation of 1997 to 2001, but the Fed overdid it. By leaving interest rates at 1% for far too long in 2003-04 and then raising interest rates far too slowly through 2006 -- even though the economy and commodity prices had long since recovered -- the Fed weakened the dollar and juiced oil prices. The Fed can make these mistakes because it watches old data like the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) deflator, possibly the most backward-looking of all price indicators. It can take five years or more before Fed actions find their way through the web of global commerce and contracts and finally show up in the PCE deflator. The dollar weakening of 1985-86, for example, did not cause a peak in measured inflation until 1990. By then the damage was done.

People say oil supply-lines are "tight," but that's what happens with all goods in an inflationary environment. Buyers buy before prices further rise. Monetary velocity -- the turnover of currency -- takes off. It looks like there are "shortages," but in fact there is only a shortage at the old price. The opposite happens with a strong, or deflationary, dollar. As currency becomes more valuable, buyers hold on to the money, waiting for cheaper prices later. Velocity plummets. The apparent result is "gluts" of goods. Markets and supply-lines appear "loose."

Because dollar weakness hits commodities first but eventually filters through every product, service and asset in the world economy, high oil prices won't yield as much real wealth to suppliers tomorrow as today. The prices of things they can buy with oil money will have risen as well. Rogue oil nations will thus not enjoy as much of an increase in power as it might appear today. Alternative fuel sources and schemes, supposedly now in play because of high oil prices, also become less economically feasible if most of the increased oil price is due to dollar devaluation. Moreover, if the Fed gets control of the dollar, the price of oil could fall substantially. It is these periods of transition, where the value of the currency is changing fast, but before price changes filter through all commerce and contracts, when financial and political disruptions often take place.

A third oil flashpoint dominates our thinking. We are told there is a race to secure scarce resources, a zero-sum struggle that points to an inevitable clash between the U.S. and China. But there is no inherent shortage of oil. One tiny shale formation right in America's backyard -- the 1,200 square mile Piceance Basin of western Colorado -- contains a trillion barrels, more than all the proven reserves in the world. Vast open spaces across the globe remain unexplored or untapped. None of this is to say we don't need more energy from more diverse sources. We do, and we should encourage the entrepreneurial pursuit of a range of new technologies. But basing our energy policies on a misunderstanding of why the oil price is so high could severely jeopardize our economy and international security.

Mr. Swanson is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

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Question
What's wrong with "earmarked" research funding?

"K Street and Colleges," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/09/earmarks

Four million dollars goes a long way at Glenville State College. It may seem unlikely that the tiny West Virginia institution would see that much federal money in a single spending bill, but that’s about what Glenville got in the 2006 appropriations legislation for science and other programs.

That was just one of dozens of earmarks in the bill, and one of several that set aside more than $1 million for institutions from Mississippi and West Virginia, homes of the Republican chairman and the ranking Democrat, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Whether earmarks — funds that a member of Congress directs to recipients without the peer-review process that federal agencies use to dole out most research funds — are dangerously and increasingly undermining peer review, or simply a way that legislators can look out for constituents, depends on who’s talking.

The question, however, has been put into greater relief for higher education officials in the wake of a letter from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) asking 111 institutions (a list is available here) to send him information on all of the money they have received from earmarks since 2000, and whether they have considered paying lobbyists to help secure the earmarks.

The letter from Coburn, a vocal opponent of earmarks, has been interpreted by some experts as an attempt to find examples of wasteful earmarks that might be used to combat the practice of earmarking — often derided as “pork-barrel spending” — altogether. John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said that the senator is particularly interested in finding out whether there’s a “pay to play” system that forces colleges to waste money by “spending extravagantly” on lobbyists.

Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that AAAS’s position is that peer review is the “highest quality way to allocate funds,” he said, “but we recognize that there are many different ways to allocate funds.”

Koizumi added that some federal objectives, such as building research capacity in geographical areas wihout huge research infrastructures, may not have the possibility of getting funded through a competitive grant process.

The Glenville State money, for example, was for science laboratories, equipment and programs, according to the legislation.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at

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Coffins Made of Heavy Steel
(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks. At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets. About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.
Israel National News, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109793

Since the beginning of the operation, Israel has scored some impressive successes. In addition to the long-range rockets that have been wiped out, the IDF has also destroyed Hizbullah's elite units, and killed close to 500 other gunmen. The operations of Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) in Baalbek, and of Shayetet 13 (Navy Commandos) in Tyre, were also impressive, demonstrating the IDF's long-arm capabilities. But alongside the success, the high-ranking officer admitted, it was difficult to ignore the difficulty Israel was having in defeating Hizbullah on the ground inside southern Lebanon. As of Thursday morning, 82 soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the operation. It was also difficult, he said, to ignore Israel's overall failure to stop the Katyusha rocket attacks, still close to 200 a day.
Yaakov Katz, "Security and Defense: Extended standstill," Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2006 --- Click Here

Ask senior officers about Israel's achievements in this war, and you will get an answer that usually includes the words "restored deterrence."

For six years - these officers will explain - Israel allowed Hizbullah to build up a formidable force on the other side of the border. The quiet along the north - they will assert - was deceptive; it was Israel that was scared of Hizbullah - not the other way around, not the way it used to be following Israel's wars of the past.

Continued in article

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Critics call the Deleting Online Predators Act an election-year stunt that could do lasting damage to youth culture and education.

"The Moral Panic over Social-Networking Sites," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, August 8, 2006 ---http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17266&ch=infotech

The social-networking site MySpace has 95 million registered users. If it were a country, it would be the 12th largest in the world (ranking between Mexico and the Philippines). But under a bill designed to combat sexual predators on the Internet, MySpace and similar sites would become countries that young people can't visit -- at least not using computers at schools or libraries.

The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in May by Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), was passed by a vote of 410 to 15 on July 26. It requires, with few exemptions, that facilities receiving federal aid block minors from accessing commercial social-networking sites and chat rooms, where they might encounter adults seeking sexual contact.

The bill has now moved on to the Senate. Critics from the worlds of educational technology and media studies say they're alarmed that the legislation has advanced this far. They warn that it would do little to stop sexual predators, but would deprive youth from poor areas of their only access to the online communities that are an increasingly critical part of teen culture. To these critics, the act is an election-year stunt designed to make any member of Congress who opposes it look "soft" on sexual predators.

It's a "monumentally ill-considered piece of legislation" that "by any rational measure" should never have left the House, says Henry Jenkins, professor of literature and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. Jenkins believes the act plays on parents' lack of understanding, and their resulting fears, about their kids' activities on the Internet. "But the price of standing up to that fear may be too high for liberal Democrats," he says.

If the Senate approves a similar bill and the legislation reaches President Bush's desk, the price to young people will be even higher, say Jenkins and other critics. "If it would actually prevent predation, I would be fine with it," says Danah Boyd, a PhD candidate in the School of Information Management Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who is considered one of the leading scholarly authorities on social-networking sites. "But it's not going to help at all. Out of 300,000