It pays to be pretty and telegenic: The stories of Lynch and Johnson

Ex-POW's Family Accuses Army Of Double Standard on Benefit (washingtonpost.com)

AUSTIN, Oct. 23 -- Shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, Army Spec. Shoshana Johnson returned home in the spring to a difficult convalescence that lacked the media fury and official hype that attended her friend and comrade in arms, Jessica Lynch.

Depressed, scarred, haunted by the trauma of her captivity and at times unable to sleep, Johnson walks with a limp and has difficulty standing for long, according to her parents.
And now that Johnson is on the verge of her discharge from the Army, insult is being added to her injury, they say. While Lynch was discharged as a private first class in August with an 80 percent disability benefit, Johnson, set to leave in the coming days, learned last week that she will receive a 30 percent disability benefit from the Army for her injuries.

The difference, which amounts to $600 or $700 a month in payments, has infuriated Johnson and her family. They have enlisted Jesse L. Jackson's help to make their case to the news media, accusing the Army of a double standard, insensitivity and racism. Lynch is white; Johnson is black.

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It certainly pays to be telegenic and pretty, being white probably helps some too. The story illustrates the interaction between our government, our institutions, and the political machine. If only there were a sense of shame in our modern culture ...

FOXNews.com - Exclusive Access -- I wonder why?

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - U.S. Forces Find Major Weapons Cache

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Nice work by US forces and Iraqi helpers. Interesting angle though is Fox's exclusive access. I've been wondering if Fox has signed on to Rumsfeld's propaganda project ...

Rumsfeld seems unfazed by leaking of his memo ...

With a Smile and a Joke, Rumsfeld Defends Iraq Memo

Pressed about the leak of a memo in which he questioned progress in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld brushed aside questions today with a wry smile, saying that defense secretaries were not instructed, upon taking office, to 'cage your brain and stop thinking.'

This week newspapers published the memo, which Mr. Rumsfeld had sent to senior staff members. In it, the defense secretary, known for his relentless focus on positive achievements in the war on terror, used tough and unsparing language.

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It is noteworthy that there is little speculation on who leaked the memo. I suspect the topic is avoided because Rumsfeld himself leaked the memo, or at least auhtorized the leak. It smells like a lateral move in his internecine warfare.

The last days of privacy: CAPPS II

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

Assuming that the airline is able to gather all 39 data points, under CAPPS-II they will be automatically reported to the TSA, which one might assume would compare the data to a terrorist profile. But before that happens, CAPPS-II uses the 39 data points to gather even more information about you from commercial and government databases. Some of this is confirming for accuracy the data already provided in the idea that a real terrorist would probably lie. Some of it is to dramatically expand the TSA's profile of you and me. To do this, they'll look at our credit reports, our credit cards and bank accounts. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, if available, they'll confirm our employment and income. They'll check immigration and look for outstanding warrants through Interpol and the FBI. And they'll compare this information to that of our traveling companions and to the information for all other passengers on that plane in the assumption that we might be working together while appearing to travel separately. Eventually, we'll be rated on a red, yellow, green scale, and those of us lucky enough to get the green light will find it remarkably easy to get on an airplane. This rating and perhaps other information about us, will be held not just at the TSA but also in the computers of the four major reservations systems.

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Predictable and inevitable. If it has to be done, there should a lot of resources bugeted for correcting errors, protecting use, setting up appeals, punishing misuse, etc. etc.

Does ANYONE imagine that Bush will handle this well? Does anyone trust them not to misuse this data? Will criticism of the Administration move one from a "green" to a "yellow" or "red" rating?

Better not get any traffic tickets ... if you want to fly ...

This is one of Cringely's best. He goes beyond the ugliness of CAPPS II and provides a concise outline of one approach to the new age of high tech terrorism. This approach assumes that terrorists will succeed, but that it's possible to mitigate the consequences of their success. So we really can't prevent people from getting weapons on a plane (or at least we don't want to pay what it would cost to prevent it), but we can prevent them from using the plane as a weapon -- by fortifying the cockpit door. (If one understands that much of our aviation security screening is really to reassure passengers rather than to increase security, then a lot of things make more sense.)

The US economy could boom again?

Ricardo Caballero of MIT believes that the U.S. was in the middle of a generation-long shift to a richer, higher capital-intensity growth path when the NASDAQ crash occurred--and that there is no reason to think that the United States cannot grow in this decade at the same boom-time rates at which it grew in the late 1990s:

FT.com Home US: ...the correct comparison instead is between the current capital-output ratio and the long-run equilibrium ratio under plausible conditions. If we follow the latter strategy, and assume that private saving remains at its (recent) historical levels, the conclusion is very different from that of the pessimists: the new equilibrium capital-output ratio should be about 1.6, well above the current 1.36. In other words, the 1990s boom still had energy when it was interrupted. What lies behind this jump in the long-run capital-output ratio? The accelerating decline in machinery prices, which is a consequence of technological progress in machinery-producing sectors. (Here I conservatively assume that the decrease returns to its historical trend, slower than that of the 1990s.)

But not everything looks so favourable. In the calculations above I assume that the sources of funding available during the 1990s remain in place. In particular, I assume that fiscal saving does not disappear and that external saving decreases only gradually. Are these assumptions warranted? If all goes well, the external side is less complicated than is generally thought. The $500bn in external financing that the US requires each year is a huge amount - but we are talking about the US at a time when the global alternatives are not very exciting or are too small to make a difference. Of course, the dollar may suffer turbulence in the medium run. This could happen if, for political reasons, the US keeps pressing China and other Asian economies to revalue their currencies; this would entail a fall in those countries' reserve accumulation, most of which is being invested in US government securities.

However, the real danger lies in the other source of funds: public savings. If the fiscal accounts - particularly for the medium and long term - are not improved, the whole benign equilibrium may collapse. In the capital output calculations above, I assumed balanced fiscal accounts. If we assume sustained fiscal deficits of 4-5 per cent of gross domestic product that are not compensated for by a one-for-one increase in private savings (which seldom happens), the new equilibrium capital-output ratio falls as low as 1.1. In this scenario, the pessimists are correct and the US has a large excess- capacity problem; the obvious corollary of this is a huge increase in the long-run interest rate.

The US economy is indeed a "tightly coiled spring", with plenty of growth potential - definitely enough for a very good second half of this year and beginning of next year, but also way beyond that. However, this opportunity will be squandered unless a much sounder fiscal path is credibly outlined soon.

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I actually thought this was a positive article when I first posted it; I thought I'd say something good for a change. It was only on rereading and editing that I noticed the mathematics assume Clintonomics. Instead, we have Dubyanomics -- massive deficits extending forever.

So even though Dubya didn't cause the collapse of the 90s boom, he may be responsible for a decade of meager growth. Sigh.

General Boykin: Leading the New Crusade?

The general and his divine mission - www.theage.com.au (LA Times)

...The Pentagon has given the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an evangelical army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence ...

... the former commander and 13-year veteran of the US Army's top-secret Delta Force is an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in uniform before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hate the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. And the enemy is a guy named Satan."

... Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, General Boykin told another audience: "I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol."

General Boykin has said of President George Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there."

... General Boykin has also said radical Muslims who resorted to terror were not representative of Islam. He has compared Islamic extremists to hooded Christians who terrorised blacks, Catholics, Jews and others from beneath the robes of the Ku Klux Klan.

...President Bush often uses religious language in his speeches, but he keeps references to God non-sectarian.

At one point, immediately after the September 11 attacks, Mr Bush said he wanted to lead a crusade against terrorism. But he quickly retracted the word when told that, to Muslim ears, it recalled the medieval Christian crusaders' brutal invasions of Islamic nations.

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The radical left has said the Iraq invastion was about oil, and Al Qaeda have (confusingly) said their war is against materialism and /or the Crusaders.

While I still don't think either group is quite correct, I'm forced to admit they seem to have a point. The huge investment in war fighting, combined with a perverse antagonism to energy conservation, is most compatible with the thesis that oil has a special place in Bush's heart. Point for the radical left. As for Al Qaeda ...

Last comments:

1. Bush does NOT keep references to God non-sectarian. There are other gods than those of Abraham (Hindu, native American, etc) and other religions than those of Abraham -- such as Buddhism, Hinduism, native American beliefs, etc. Bush has never said anything to indicate any particular respect or tolerance for the non-Abramic faiths, nor, for that matter, for agnostics, secular humanists, and atheists.

2. Boykin may legitimately separate Muslims into those who follow Osama and those follow Muhammed. If Satan is out there, one could make a case that Osama is in his camp. I'd love to learn more about what he says to evangelical groups.

3. I wonder if Boykin is a big reader of the "Left Behind" series. The influence of that series on a particular sort of susceptible mind has, I think, been underestimated.

Does a missing posting suggest Apple will deploy a multiuser GUI? (And overturn the computing world?)

Apple - Discussions - Welcome

I recently learned that a posting I'd just made to Apple's Discussions forum is gone. It wasn't a rude posting, indeed it wasn't even a critical posting. It was an advocacy posting, asking when Apple would make the big move towards a multiuser GUI and thin client wireless deployment.

Now it's possible some technical glitch took my message. However, I naturally prefer the more intriguing possibility. I prefer to to think my posting was deleted. Since it was (honestly) a quite polite posting (my iPhoto postings are far more critical and they persist), I wonder if it touched a nerve. Is something afoot?

Anyone who's used Microsoft's remote desktop client on a wireless iBook has to come away very impressed. Every copy of XP includes Microsoft's SINGLE user remote desktop server (a limited version of their Citrix-derived multiuser remote desktop), and there are free clients for every version of Windows and for the Mac. It works terribly well. Rather than buy the clumsy Mac version of Quicken to do my bookeeping on my iBook, I can use my upstairs XP box remotely. There's a bit of keystroke lag, due in part to the relatively slow iBook CPU, but it's far better than VNC.

For me, it's the best thing in my mixed OS home LAN since Gopher.

Microsoft could have made XP a multiuser GUI server; they've done it for years in their server platform. They were on the verge of deploying the next phase with the Mira project. They didn't. I can only guess the thought of demolishing Intel and Dell chastened even Microsoft. Their existing Citrix-derived multiuser GUI is good enough that many homes and small businesses would buy only one multimedia server, and then deploy thin clients using ARM or another embedded CPU Microsoft also, for very good reason, must have feared the impact on Office licenses. So they passed.

Apple could pull the trigger. They are stealthily making their X-Windows client more and more a part of OS X (it's needed for OpenOffice). They have Quartz, a beautiful framework for distributing video. The underlying OS is, of course, BSD Unix -- multiuser by nature. They have the perfect server in the dual CPU G5. They have the iBook, a great thin client that can also be used outside the home in detached mode. They have 802.11G working across the product line. Their sync technology is a very good fit, allowing local CPU to complement the server CPU in interesting ways. They bundle so much software they can manage the licensing hit, they have a mechanism for renting software (.Mac) that's already been shown to work (Apple Backup). They even have their old Remote Desktop code, though I suspect that may be of little value. They don't care if Dell and Intel both crater.

With a great solution for server and thin client already in hand, with the Apple slates rumored to be in development, with the multimedia genes to use the server for video and music distribution to the clients, with the .Mac platform, with little to lose and an empire to gain, the equation looks irresistible. Apple can't resist. They've got to make the jump Microsoft turned back from.

When Apple jumps, they will fly. Less than 5% of households can keep one Windows machine running smoothly, much less a network of Windows machines serving parents and schoolchildren alike. The value of a thin client approach is overwhelming. Microsoft has been teetering on the edge, but they're too big to make this kind of jump. Apple can do it.

john faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/

meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, Apple, OS X, X-Windows, multi-user GUI, remote desktop, home, wireless LAN, 802.11G, project Mira, thin client, iBook, slate, palmtop

Office of Propaganda active?

U.S. News: Wilson adds ammo to hit war credibility gap

Just as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's story that Bushies blew his CIA wife's cover to get back at his criticism of the war in Iraq was getting old, he has stumbled on new ammo to hit the administration's credibility. Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories. You know some tall tales, like the Pvt. Jessica Lynch story. But there's more, says Gardiner, a war gamer who has taught at the National War College. Like how defense officials said the first Iraqi unit marines encountered, the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, had surrendered four days before it actually did. And he says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers gave bad or deliberately incomplete info on several topics. Sure, propaganda has always been used in war to deceive and demoralize the enemy. But these guys went way overboard, Gardiner says. "Never before have so many stories been created to sell a war," he insists. "And they probably didn't need it."

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This sounds like Rumsfeld's pre-Iraq project, an enhanced propaganda office. I'd like to see journalists looking for a link to Fox TV. If Fox was colluding with an official office of propaganda that will make interesting reading.

Bottom line: This speculative story is consistent with this administration's known actions. The burden is on high quality media to be very skeptical about stories coming from Bush sources, and to confirm and validate every one. The burden on us readers is to subscribe to high quality media sources. The credibility of GWB II continues to find new lows.

And next ... Iran

Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al Qaeda (washingtonpost.com)

Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's oldest sons, has emerged in recent months as part of the upper echelon of the al Qaeda network, a small group of leaders that is managing the terrorist organization from Iran, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

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The story says that Saad and several other figures of interest are held and protected by an Iranian special services brigade near the Afghan border.

Since the Bush II credibility is so low, they'll take a while selling the next attack. This is a part of that planning.

Arnold, California and Disneyland

FRANK RICH, NTY: The Audio-Animatronic Candidate

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This is a wonderful essay, it captures a kind of horrified bemusement, the terrible fascination of watching an oddly comical train wreck with real people on board.

American is not in very good mental health these days.

Having lived through the Ventura administration, I hope California will not do too badly -- at least in the near term. Arnold may end up being an entertaining facade while his "advisors" make their backroom deals. True, it's not democracy, but maybe we're not ready for democracy any more.

Another lesson from Ventura is that the achilles heal of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a hypersensitivity to criticism. Jesse did a decent job vetoing some bad legislation, but even mild criticism set him back on his heels. I wonder if Arnold will show the same weakness.

Chile study of school vouchers: main effect is to segregate by academic abilities

Depressing News About Vouchers: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

Chang-Tai Hsieh and Miguel Urquiola are unable to find any signs that vouchers made a positive difference for education in Chile:
When Schools Compete, How Do They Compete? An Assessment of Chile's Nationwide School Voucher Program: In 1981, Chile introduced nationwide school choice by providing vouchers to any student wishing to attend private school. As a result, more than 1,000 private schools entered the market, and the private enrollment rate increased by 20 percentage points, with greater impacts in larger, more urban, and wealthier communities. We use this differential impact to measure the effects of unrestricted choice on educational outcomes. Using panel data for about 150 municipalities, we find no evidence that choice improved average educational outcomes as measured by test scores, repetition rates, and years of schooling. However, we find evidence that the voucher program led to increased sorting, as the best public school students left for the private sector.

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This is very important. There are few even half-decent studies of the impact of voucher programs. We know that the Texas data that was thought to support the Bush initiatives was in fact fraudulent, so this Chilean data has even greater weight.

The only effect seems to be a segregation of students by abilities. The public schools get the less able students, and probably all the special needs students.

This is very much what US educators have claimed would happen.

I'm not surprised that the students academic performance was little changed. There's very little data that any curricular change makes a great difference in the outcome for the average student.

Molly Ivins puts it all in one place

Welcome to the Autumn Irony Festival

I can't excerpt from this, the article is great from start to end. There are ironies in our government's misconduct even I had missed. The psychological health of the nation is not great.

Much Becomes Clear: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

Much Becomes Clear: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

The odds just reached 90% that the White House knows that Lewis Libby, Eliot Abrams, and Karl Rove are three of the N White House aides who tried to get reporters to print that Ambassador Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA operative.

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The giveaway was a botched denial by McClellan, who tried not to mislead without absolutely lying and got caught out.

Bush, of course, has already declared that the leaker won't be caught. He's also said he doesn't know who it is, but of course Bush is lying.

The Femara breast cancer study -- is it really such great news?

New Drug Regimen Greatly Cuts Risk of Recurring Breast Cancer

A new drug regimen can markedly reduce the chance that breast cancer will recur in postmenopausal women, a large international study has found. The results were so strongly, and surprisingly, positive that the investigators ended the study early and offered the drug to women taking a placebo.

The study involved 5,187 women at hundreds of medical centers in the United States, Canada and Europe. It asked what to do after they finish the recommended five-year course of tamoxifen, the standard treatment to prevent breast cancer recurrences.

Tamoxifen, which blocks the hormone estrogen, is remarkably effective in postmenopausal women whose cancers are fueled by the hormone, about 100,000 women each year. But women gain no additional benefits after they take tamoxifen for five years, and so doctors have told them to simply stop taking it then and hope for the best. They are better off for having taken it: the drug's effects last for years after it is stopped. But they are left vulnerable to a return of their cancer.

... The new study found that if women take a different drug, letrozole, sold by Novartis under the brand name Femara, after their five years of tamoxifen, they can cut that yearly risk nearly in half.

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The NYT article deemphasizes the big problem with stopping the study. Recently we found that Tamoxifen doesn't increase lifespans. It reduces the risk of breast cancer recurrence, but the benefits are offset by increases in other diseases. We expect that Femara does reduce cancer recurrence, but we won't now know if it really increases life expectancy or just shifts mortality.

The lessons of post-menopausal hormone replacement may have been missed. You need to look at all cause mortality.

The same problem, by the way, lurks over the statins -- a bazillion dollar industry. They reduce death due to heart disease, but other causes of death increase. For asymptomatic people without active heart disease they don't increase life expectancy.

Good news from Iraq: Return of power brightens Iraqis

USATODAY.com - Return of power brightens Iraqis

BAGHDAD — For the first time since Baghdad fell April 9, the capital city and most of the country have enjoyed four straight days without a significant outage.

Coalition officials are optimistic they can keep the lights on because sabotage and looting has dropped and electricity output is near prewar levels. Cooling temperatures have also helped.

'The power situation has not been this good since before the Kuwait war,' says security guard Majid Abdul Reza, 27. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

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People, like myself, who feel Rumsfeld et al managed the post-invasion incompetently, should know that one good things is pretty much guaranteed. Iraq is getting cooler. As the temperature drops a lot of things will get far better. This is a positive item that most of us remote from Iraq will tend to forget. I'm sure the people there never forget it.

BTW, the BA has a campaign of "positive news" from the office of propaganda. Hopefully this reporting is the truth, it's one of the curses of the BA that news sources nowadays must be looked at with extra care.