aftershock03

PA in the WSJ

2006-09-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

PA Politics

In “Wal-Mart to launch campaign urging its U.S. works to vote,” by Kris Hudson (9/20), we find these sentences, “In a press release announcing the effort, Wal-mart notes that it employs ‘a significant number of associates in states that play pivotal roles in national elections.’ Those include 94, 163 Wal-Mart employees in Florida; 49, 724 in Ohio, 47,904 in Pennsylvania; 17,273 in Iowa; and 7,993 in New Hampshire.”

In “The web-video factor,” by Peter Grant (9/21), we find this, “While no statistics are available on political videos on the Web, clearly the number is mushrooming. Debates of Senate races in most of the toss-up states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, and Virginia, have started to show up on Web sites of TV stations and on shows like NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.” There is a quote from a Penn professor and a mention of Comcast carrying candidate statements or debates.

PA Businesses

Mention of Brian Tierney, et. al.’s recent purchase of the Philadelphia newspapers in “Tribune faces pressure to sell Los Angeles paper,” by Sarah Ellison (9/18).

Pennsylvania features prominently in “Shaking up the lineup: In minor-league affiliations, musical chairs has replaced baseball as game of the week,” by Russell Adams (9/20), the Phillies farm team’s moved from Scranton / Wilkes Barre (the Red Barons) to Allentown (with a year in between in Ontario). Scranton is looking at the possibility of having the Yankees farm team.

“Philadelphia Fed posts sharp drop in factory gauge,” by Rafael Gerena-Morales and Michael S. Derby (9/22) discusses a new report by the local fed. Extra bonus points for the region as noted here, “The Philadelphia fed report is widely viewed as a proxy for national manufacturing trends, and as such its decline raises questions about the health of the broader factory sector.”

The Philly Fed also features in “Investors finally break from calm; Dow drops 79.96,” by Michael Hudson and Serena Ng (9/22). Note: “Though it covers a narrow slice of the economy, the Philadelphia Fed index sometimes grabs the attention of investors because it is one of the earliest reads available on monthly economic activity.”

Other PA

In the special section on Top Business Schools (9/20), the business schools at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, and the University of Pittsburgh show up somewhere in the rankings. In an article on specialized masters degrees (“Is less enough” by Ronald Alsop), there is a mention of Lehigh University’s recent master’s of health and biopharmaceutical economics.

Where have you been all my life? "Brampton" she responded...

2006-07-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

CONFLUENTS As rivers seek the sea. Much more deep than they, So my soul seeks thee Far away: As running rivers moan On their course alone, So I moan Left alone. As the delicate rose To the sun’s sweet strength Doth himself unclose, Breadth and length; So spreads my heart to thee Unveiled utterly. I to thee Utterly. As morning dew exhales Sunwards pure and free, So my spirit fails After thee: As dew leaves not a trace On the green earth’s face; I, no trace On thy face. Its goal the river knows, Dewdrops find a way, Sunlight cheers the rose In his day: Shall I, lone sorrow past, Find thee at the last? Sorrow past, Thee at last? ~ C. Rossetti

POSTED IN: _Poetry_

Human Capitol: Muslims and Mexicans Left Behind

2006-07-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Part I: Mexico vs. Japan

Chance posted on the difference between Japan and Mexico and questioned why Mexico, with abundant natural resources is a second world country while Japan is a first world country. His premise that Japan invested in human capitol i.e. education and advanced technical skills, while Mexico relies on exploiting its resources and maintaining a divide on developing its citizenry.

Mexico's economic system is based on exploitation of resources and labor. When Mexico signed the NAFTA deal they made they didn't have to comply with safety and worker rights regulations. They knew that American corporations were out to scrape the bottom of the barrel and Mexico provided those barrels. The problem is that they never took into account other merging markets and they never took the opportunity to develop its workforce with more education and advanced technical skills.

So when China emerged and the new "go to guy" for cheap labor, Mexico now found itself not only competing with a country that had cheaper labor, but also had a more educated workforce.

There are dozens of factories on the American/Mexico borders that closed because of China. What does Mexico do now; they export their uneducated workforce to the US. They maintain a political structure that ensures poverty for most of their citizenry. The world is advancing and I believe Mexico is fast becoming a 'tweener': Lower that second world but not yet a third world.

Part II: Muslim’s Intellectual Genocide

Notwithstanding Muslims incoherent hatred for Jews and all things western, they have an issue that goes far beyond extremist and the bastardized version of Islam they teach. Many Muslim nations do not comprehend that progress requires the development of human capitol. Afghanistan depends on the export of opium for survival. Because they choose to stunt the development of half its citizenry (women) and insist on living under tribal rule, they have ensured third world status for themselves.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are essentially third world nations with riches from oil. However, both countries still maintain and rigid and oppressive interpretation of Islam that hinders the development of large segments of their population. They fuel the extremist they direct their rage outward so that the existence of Israel and American influence is the cause of all of their grief.

The power brokers of Islam do themselves an the followers Islam a disservice by perpetuating the myth that Western culture is the reason for their condition. There are many Muslims living in America, practicing their faith and still thriving in a society that believes that ultimately, the responsibility of one’s soul rest with the individual, not the state. No state, culture, religion or philosophy can survive when part of its premise is an never-ending state of war.

Part III: The destruction of Islam

And this leads to my though of Americans calling for the annihilation of all practicing Muslims. Better yet, the following is comment I left on Bushwhack’s blog regarding this very issue.

I have a question. There is an estimated 2.8 million practicing Muslims in this country. Los Angles has the largest Iranian population of any city after Tehran. If you really believe that Islam and anyone practicing it should be consider the enemy and wiped from the face of the earth, then why don't I see Americans ridding this country of the Muslims that are easily accessible.

There are Mosques everywhere in Los Angeles. You could all arm yourselves and come on down to Los Angeles - just go over to Beverly Hills because that's where they shop - and you could pick off at least a 100 before the police even intervened.

Don't get me wrong, I there are some serious cultural issues with Muslims and I actually address them in today's post. But talk like this reminds me of what's going on in Uganda.

There are men there that believe in the total destruction of other tribe. But rather than do it themselves, they kidnap teenagers and force them to commit the massacre. The same concept here, we talk and encourage and hope that Israel and US soldiers take no mercy and kill at will and without mercy - while we sit comfortably knowing we'll never have to actually participate in the carnage. So I'll believe this is more than talk when I see you guys get up and take back west Los Angeles, with the corpse of Muslim men, women in children on display down Wilshire Blvd.

Final Thought

Whether by economic or religious means, the exploitation of the human condition is a tragedy that is now coming home to roost on the American psyche. Although the genocidal mentality I cannot condone, there is a justifiable reason for concern. We are in a perpetual state of philosophical and economic warfare. The failure on our part is not recognizing that at times, we are will participants.

American corporation exploit labor conditions around the world and our only response is to the stock price and price tag. We support repressive regimes for our economic interest and fund ‘the enemy of our enemy’ even when the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.

It is a crazy world and nothing is easy. But Americans seem stuck on one phrase ‘The world changed after 9/11.’ It makes for a nice bumper sticker but it doesn’t come close to the reality that the world did not change at all after 9/11. No, America was forced to remove its rose colored glasses and forced to deal with the ugliness of reality.

The Los Angeles Times tries to defend itself

2006-07-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

Patterico has been doing great work on exposing the media, particularly his paper, the Los Angeles Times, and how they are revealing classified information on how we're fighting terrorists. Today, he has the editor's excuses for revealing the news on how we track money going to terrorist organizations. Check out his site for the latest.

Hope Still Out There for Journalism

2006-07-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

This Op-Ed piece ran in the LA Times on Sunday, July 16, 2006.

Breaking News

Shrinking circulation! Fact-checking goofs! Partisan reporting! Despite the scare headlines, journalism's sob story may still have a happy ending.

William Powers, William Powers is the media critic for National Journal.

July 16, 2006

AS YOU'VE PROBABLY noticed, American journalism is going through a rough patch. At the old establishment outlets, circulation and audience numbers are sliding. Newspapers now routinely run shock-horror headlines about themselves, sob-sister tales of shrinking profit margins, rampant job cuts and the exodus of classified ads to Craigslist. In television, the news is just as bleak: The first week in July was "the least-watched week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks," according to the Associated Press.

But the media's crisis isn't just financial. A long string of professional scandals — everything from plagiarism to fabrication — have shredded the public standing of the news business, along with its self-image. Twenty years ago, journalism was a revered, downright glamorous calling. Watergate still lingered in the collective memory with its image of reporters as dashing, heroic truth-seekers. Network anchors strode the Earth as gods.

Today, reporters shuttle in and out courtrooms where their own work is under investigation. The most talked-about journalists of the day are not so much the ones who reveal corruption as those who are accused of misdeeds themselves: the Judith Millers, Jayson Blairs and Dan Rathers. In the latest round of nastiness, several leading newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, have been denounced for publishing stories about a secret government counter-terrorism program. President Bush called the stories "disgraceful," and one congressman has suggested that perhaps the New York Times should be prosecuted under the federal Espionage Act. In Washington, words we tend to associate with the 1950s — "treason" and "traitor" — are back with a vengeance, and they're being hurled at journalists.

The media's image has arguably hit a new low, though one hesitates to say that about a business for which fresh nadirs have become a way of life. The point is, how did we get here? And is there any hope of redemption? If you listen to the media's ideological critics, the fault lies entirely with the journalists themselves. The left believes that the mainstream outlets are gutless wonders, patsies for the White House. The right says those same outlets are rotten with liberal bias, determined to undermine everything this administration says and does.

Of course, these arguments can't both be true at the same time, but that's beside the point. For ideologues of both stripes, the media are just cannon fodder, a bottomless source of evidence that the other side is taking over the world. For such hopeless Manicheans, it will ever be thus. But if you really want to understand the media's predicament, you have to look beyond ideology.

These problems are all rooted not in substance but structure. We are living through a time of dramatic flux in the world of information. Familiar hierarchies that defined the news business for generations are being dismantled and rearranged before our eyes. In the second half of the 20th century, the news business was dominated by three powerful television networks and a handful of important newspapers. It was a nice world in many ways — profitable, predictable, easy to comprehend and navigate. More important, it was the only world we knew. For minds shaped by that era, my mind and probably yours, those institutions were almost indistinguishable from the news. Then, poof, in what felt like an instant (though it was more like a decade), they were gone. Particularly crucial are two tectonic shifts. First, the media marketplace has become more competitive. Technology has unleased a breathtaking profusion of new media outlets — cable, blogs, satellite radio, podcasts. Every few months a new option seems to arrive; the latest is YouTube.com, the red-hot website on which people post their own videos. As a result, the familiar old outlets no longer have the huge guaranteed audiences they used to take for granted, or the influence and profit margins that went along with them. What once was unthinkable has come to pass: the powers that be are no longer the only game in town. They are vulnerable.The second shift is transparency. Thanks partly to technology, and partly to all this competition, news outlets have been forced to open up the sanctum, to reveal how news is stitched together and to answer for their mistakes. The wall that separated (and protected) the media from their audience has become porous. Remember when the letters page was the only way of talking back to the media? Journalists are now on the griddle all the time. Watching them squirm has become a kind of national sport, NASCAR for the brainy set.

Just a decade ago, media scandals were rare things. Now they are everyday occurrences. This isn't happening because news outlets are making more mistakes than they made in the past. If anything, they've become more careful about their work because they know the whole world is fact-checking every sentence, waiting to catch a goof. And when they goof, it gets out, big time.

This is not always pretty. The changes have created a fractious news environment, rife with tension and conflict for journalists and their audiences. But if you step back for a moment and take the long view, it's hard to argue that it's inferior to the landscape we left behind.

Predictability is nice, and the forced togetherness of the mass outlets — everyone in front of the screen, consuming the same product at the same hour — lent society a certain cohesion. But it was an artificial cohesion. Glance back at the journalism of the late 20th century sometime; it's already begun to feel strangely homogenous and too perfect, like the facade of Main Street at Disneyland.

The messy, complicated media of this moment look a lot more like the culture they are supposed to reflect. Increased competition offers consumers more voices and perspectives on the news — and blogs permit them to participate in defining it.

Yes, the grand old giants are in decline, but that's a terrible thing only if you believe that they deserved the extraordinary sway they held over the news for so long. If those old outlets continue to offer strong, reliable journalism — a craft that's not as easy as it looks — they will survive. And if they fail, others will rise up to replace them. The new marketplace punishes errors, but it also rewards those who get it right. Increased scrutiny and skepticism will make the media stronger, not weaker. Some journalists are worried that the profession is dying, but this is classic newsroom alarmism. As long as there is a popular hunger for truth — a constant of human society, last I checked — there will be work for people who want to dig it up. Witness the best of the bloggers, who have not only proved themselves adept fact-checkers but become tip sheets for the mainstream media. The dinosaur media have even started hiring them. As for the new transparency, it's simply forcing us scribes to do what other powerful people have always had to do in this country: defend and answer for our actions. Ten years ago, the editor of the New York Times, certainly one of the most influential members of our society, was unknown to most Americans. Today, he's on television and the websites, justifying a bold story he decided to publish against the government's wishes, a story many Americans apparently feel shouldn't have been published. It's a brutal fight, but a meaningful one that is forcing us all to confront the role of the media in the age of terrorism. In a democracy, I don't see how anyone can call this bad news.

Dave MArkland meets the Gunney

2006-07-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

The man who comes out on Mail call was at the Fort Macarthur Artillery days. Lee Ermey was there and David Markland got to take a picture with him. Pretty cool.

Dave MArkland meets the Gunney

2006-07-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

The man who comes out on Mail call was at the Fort Macarthur Artillery days. Lee Ermey was there and David Markland got to take a picture with him. Pretty cool.

Joe Lieberman is No Democrat

2006-07-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

Another letter to the Los Angeles Times, in response to their editorial in support of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman Thursday. The Times decried opposition to Lieberman on grounds that it is ideologically driven and similar to Republican rejection of liberals under their "big tent".

Editor: Leiberman has always looked out for Number One. In 2000, he held on to his Senate seat while running as the Democrats' VP candidate. If he had won, the Reublican governor of Connecticut would have replaced him with a Republican.

Now, instead of gracefully bowing out if he loses the primary, he intends to split the Democratic Party and very likely hand his Senate seat over to a Republican. Any thinking Democrat rejects Joe Lieberman.

2006-05-08T21:17:00.000-07:00

Lakers to aim higher next season

By JOHN NADEL
AP SPORTS WRITER

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- The Phil & Kobe reunion worked out well, with no apparent glitches. And outside of an ugly finish, so did the Los Angeles Lakers' season.

As for the future, Lakers fans probably shouldn't expect much roster shuffling or a championship contender very soon. The hope is, a title shot isn't too far away.

"We were all about getting to the playoffs and make some noise in the playoffs. We met our goal," coach Phil Jackson said Monday during a break from conducting exit interviews with his players.

The Lakers went 45-37 for an 11-game improvement over the previous season, and took a 3-1 lead over the Phoenix Suns before losing the last three games to be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

"We're pleased. We maintained from day one that was achievable," general manager Mitch Kupchak said of a return to the postseason.

But Game 7 was ugly from start to finish - a 121-90 victory by the Suns.

"They're holding themselves responsible," Jackson said of his players. "I have to make them let go of that. The first four games were pretty good."

And the last three weren't.

"We think our future is very bright," Kupchak said. "The good news, really, is this team is together. You cannot predict a major change.

"This is not a stellar year where you're going to see eight to 10 stellar free agents available. We're in the exact same boat as 25 or 26 other teams are in. We have a big window two years from now."

That that might be when something big happens in free agency that makes the Lakers viable championship contenders.

"I wouldn't discount it a year or two down the road. I'm not prepared to say that, although I think that's a possibility," Kupchak said of returning to elite status.

Added Jackson: "Usually you have to go two or three rounds of the playoffs before you can compete for a championship. "We have some core ingredients that are pretty good."

The Lakers have three legitimate big men in Chris Mihm, Kwame Brown and Andrew Bynum. Bryant is a superstar and Lamar Odom is an All-Star caliber player.

The biggest question mark is in the backcourt. Bryant's 35.4-point average was the NBA's best in 19 years, but the youth and inexperience of starter Smush Parker and top reserve Sasha Vujacic hurt the Lakers against the Suns.

"The question is, are we good enough at that position? Are we experienced enough? Both of them made strides this season," Jackson said. "We don't believe we have to have a superstar come in for us to advance (in the playoffs). We know we have enough physical talent, we have enough size, we have enough expertise to compete."

Kupchak said he didn't anticipate a major trade this offseason, but did acknowledge a possible need for an upgrade in the backcourt.

The Lakers, well over the salary cap, have only three unrestricted free agents on their roster - veterans Devean George and Jimmy Jackson and rookie Devin Green. George was a key reserve on this team.

"He's probably the one challenge we have during the offseason," Kupchak said. "Basically, the core of this team is intact."

George said he was going to explore free agency.

"I just let them know that I enjoyed being here and I'm open to coming back," he said.

Jackson, who coached the Lakers to three championships in five years, returned this season after a year off. He wrote a book slamming Bryant while he was gone, so there was intrigue upon his return. When training camp started, all eyes were in the record-setting coach and his star player. But no problems surfaced.

"We worked together really well this season," Jackson said. "It was remarkable, from Hawaii on. I think at first, it was like, `How's this going to work?' He really took to the offense, where he was going to play in it. It was a remarkable year for him."

Jackson said Bryant did an especially good job with leadership.

"Kobe was a lot more personable for us this year, was great as a leader," teammate Brian Cook said. "A lot of people did a lot of growing up. Everybody got along from the standpoint of off the court - just a great group of guys."

Bryant said he believes the Lakers grew up.

"When you go through a season like we went through and a playoff series like we went through, those are big steps in our development process," he said. "When we come back next season, you'll see a team that executes better, understands better, is better in pressure situations, is just mature."

Los Angeles

2006-02-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

Like most areas of California, Los Angeles is subject to earthquakes, due to its proximity to the San Andreas Fault, as well as to the smaller San Jacinto and Banning faults in southern California. The most recent major earthquake was the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which was centered in the northern San Fernando Valley. Coming less than two years after the L.A. riots, the Northridge earthquake was an emotional shock to Southern Californians, and caused physical damage totalling billions of dollars. Other major earthquakes in the Los Angeles area include the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, and the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Nevertheless, most earthquakes are relatively minor. Many Angelenos feel one or two minor earthquakes per year, which do little or no damage. Imperceptible quakes are detected by Seismometers on a daily basis.