. . . most people would consider securing "abundance and liberty for all," ending poverty and achieving racial justice, a pretty good day's work. For LBJ it was, astoundingly, "just the beginning."

all live however we want, constrained only by the need to choose a “lifestyle” that does not interfere with anyone else's living the way he wants to live

The social critic inside every liberal cannot resist berating other people's unsatisfactory lifestyles . . . . Fifty years ago this scorn was directed at suburban split-levels. Today the target is evangelical churches. Meanwhile, the social worker inside every liberal cannot resist treating these unfortunate lifestyle choices as problems to be solved.

to leave home without a destination, convinced that the very idea of a destination is arbitrary and false, is to embark on a "journey" that will be no different from just wandering around.

In the new privatized low-tax minimal-services society the Republicans are striving to lay on us, public transportation will offer no pleasure whatsoever. The bus will be for losers and dopes . . . full of angry and sullen people who have lost hope that their kids can rise in the world and have a better life, which is the hope that makes it possible for me to turn to you and say something about the weather []]. . .

In Republican America, you will not enjoy public life, period. The public library . . . will become a waiting room for desperate and broken people, the alkies, the whacked-out, the unemployables . . . the public schools will become holding tanks for children whose parents were too unresourceful to find good schools for them . . . politics will be so ugly and rancid that decent people will avoid expressing an opinion for fear of being screeched at and hectored and spat on. [Homegrown Democrat more…]

• Girls have greater verbal aptitudes and college emphasizes those. So does high school, so guys have less success in school and develop less interest in pursuing those kinds of activities in college.
  
• The gender gap favoring women showed up first among blacks (1980 vs. 1994 for the general population); the disincentives probably fall more heavily on black males
  
• While overall, education correlates to higher life-time earnings, guys have opportunities to make a good living, doing things they are good at (e.g., in the skilled construction and service trades). Girls are far less likely to be interested in jobs involving using tools, smelly and noisy things (don’t get me going on babies), and muscling stuff around. That’s a bonus for the guys; it’s a much more congenial environment when there are not a lot of nattering, whiney women around.
  
• And the greater earnings data don’t support the conclusion that college is the cause. People get paid more for doing more valuable tasks. The correlation with education may simply be the result of credentialism. Employers can get people with degrees to do certain jobs, so they use the degree as a screening factor, as a proxy or substitute for thing they really want to know but which are hard to measure.
  
• College standards have dropped in the past two generations. Women get degrees and associate degrees so they can be admin assistants rather than secretaries.
  That a degree is really necessary for a lot of jobs where it is the norm needs to be proven. Especially when college freshmen and sophomores are often covering material that high school seniors covered a couple of generations ago.
  

About 42 percent of women in [the 25-34] age cohort have a college degree . . . compared with less than 36 percent of men. According to the Census Bureau report, this gender gap in higher education did not exist 10 years ago.

J'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridency, obtuseness, or mendacity.

Harvard Chief Sends Roses to Fainting Female Prof
by Scott Ott
(2005-01-18) -- Harvard University President Lawrence Summers today sent a dozen roses to MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins after she nearly fainted last week during Mr. Summers' remarks about potential biological differences between the sexes which might explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Ms. Hopkins told The New York Times, "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe."

I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he presented that point because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a lot of women who work that hard.

Here’s how it works. On the day of the inauguration, find the nearest person to you who voted for the President. Once you get their attention, start holding your breath until you turn blue and pass out.

See, that’ll reinforce your “blue” image while showing them that you possess the sort of political maturity it takes to stage a protest that gets results!

And when the paramedics get there to check on you, you can tell them just how horrible things are for them since Bush isn’t giving them any Homeland Security money. They’ll appreciate that.

• Under the leadership aegis of UNSNoRF Undersecretary Ralfke Bjarnerubbel, the executive steering committee has voted on a draft resolution to create coordination protocols between interagency observers.
• UNKGooBR and UNsNOT task force staff have organized response evaluation schemas for situational aid coordination, and assessed hotel minibar inventories.

J'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridency, obtuseness, or mendacity.

Really? You're still flogging the "declining economy" horse? We have men at war, so there should be no celebrations, anywhere? We are helping people rebuild their lives after a horrific tsunami, and so we should not have anything joyful of our own? . . . etc.

H’mmm, let's see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Something with its own inexhaustible power supply?

Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?

Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?

Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?

Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?

Well "Franz", us peasants in America call that kind of ship an "Aircraft Carrier". We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that's right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share.

is in a financial downturn. There are a variety of factors at play, but the move away from MSM and toward Internet-based news sources is clearly playing a role. That shift is not entirely driven by ideological issues, but disaffection with the paper’s liberal bias is helping to push erstwhile subscribers toward alternative outlets on the Web. . . .
The Times is now geared toward a national readership among the scattered and largely liberal educated elite. That means the paper lacks the critical mass in any one location–even New York City–to allow for targeted local advertising. The Times gained a lot of subscribers when it went national, but it also lost a huge number of subscribers in New York City. Net readership is still up, but the hit in NYC was a big one, and clearly cut into ad revenues

As the public turns to alternative and more conservative outlets, the mainstream media’s audience grows more liberal. . . . the readership of the Times is now much more liberal than it used to be. That puts even more pressure on NYT to keep its news coverage tilting left. In time, the paper may even proudly tout its liberal slant.
The more fully media bias is exposed, the more readers desert MSM, and the more liberal the remaining MSM audience becomes. This is why CBS has not done more to admit its political leanings, or to show regret for its treatment of the bloggers. Those kind of admissions would imply a determination to change. But CBS doesn’t want to change–and can’t change–if it’s going to hold on to its own increasingly liberal audience.

So what were these cruel and degrading practices? For one, providing a detainee an incentive for cooperation—such as a cigarette or, especially favored in Cuba, a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich or a Twinkie unless specifically approved by the secretary of defense. In other words, if an interrogator had learned that Usama bin Ladin’s accountant loved Cadbury chocolate, and intended to enter the interrogation booth armed with a Dairy Milk Wafer to extract the name of a Saudi financier, he needed to “specifically determine that military necessity requires” the use of the Dairy Milk Wafer and send an alert to Secretary Rumsfeld that chocolate was to be deployed against an al-Qaida operative.

For a dose of straight thinking from a Catholic perspective, you are also encouraged to pay a visit to Logomachon.

• King Hussein of Jordan told a CIA contact that calling the NGO mujihadin “murderers” or “terrorists” could backfire because “there is a little bit of me in them and a little bit of them in me”. This from the man whose father killed thousands of “Palestinians” and drove the rest (more than a million) out of his country.
• There are radical Muslims in the US who strongly support the jihadists. They are a minority but dominate the community.
• ”Moderate” Muslims in the United States decline to speak out, not only because of fear of violent reprisals from radicals, but because they would be ostracized by the Islamic community .
• When NPR’s Cox asked what to do about the way the Bush administration’s policies were driving moderates toward radical positions, the reporters confounded the liberal shibboleth by saying that in fact the reverse is happening. Muslims who had a romantic sympathy with the jihad pose are disassociating themselves from the terrorist reality. That is what they call “moving toward the moderate position”.

According to The Washington Post, Staples has cravenly given in to a radical left movement to silence dissenting opinion. In doing so, they have also shown a dangerous lack of understanding of the blogosphere and the internet age.

Their editorials are almost universally liberal (and often very offensive). Furthermore, their news coverage itself is frequently slanted, always to the left. Are your advertising principles anti-controversial, anti-conservative, or are you just cowards? Given what I have seen, I must conclude both of the latter.

You have lost a customer in myself, my family, and my company. I suspect that as word gets out, many others will likewise decide to spend their money at stores less willing to cave in to campaigns orchestrated to suppress dissent.

J'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridency, obtuseness, or mendacity.

President Bush announced yesterday a tenfold increase in emergency aid to stricken areas of Asia, bringing the federal government's commitment to $350 million, and he said the United States would probably add more resources as the scope of what he called an "epic disaster" became clearer.

The action came after mounting criticism that Bush, who stayed at his ranch all week and spoke publicly about the disaster once, had reacted too slowly.--Phila. Inquirer 1 Jan 05

is make a needs assessment and not just grasp at numbers or think we're in some kind of an auction house where every day somebody has to top someone else. . .

It's not just a matter of money; it's a matter of being able to distribute supplies.