SEPARATED BY A COMMON, ETC. The great thing about ...

SEPARATED BY A COMMON, ETC. The great thing about British newspapers is that I always have to look up words to figure out what the hell they're talking about. Bomb plot suspect sold poisoned burgers, says supergrass :

AN ISLAMIST terrorist sold poisoned burgers from a street-corner van and planned to contaminate beer at a football stadium, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.



The alleged extremist, one of seven on trial for plotting to blow up British targets, was also said to have suggested poisoning takeaway food and sabotaging BT.



The claim was made by an American supergrass said to have links to al-Qaeda, testifying against his alleged former accomplices.

I'm fairly familiar with a lot of British idiom, but hardly all of it, and so I was all WTF? Naturally, here is an explanation, and naturally cockney rhyming slang is involved.



American newspapers tick me off because they write as if written for idiots, with explanations in almost every article of the most common terms ("Congress, the elected legislature of the United States government," is a phrase that wouldn't surprise me in the least to see in a story).



British papers, on the other hand, are always full of last week's slang, and endless terms unique and specific to Britain, and they're never explained, because everyone knows what they mean (I remember a decade ago having to look up what the constantly referred-to "MORI" was, which was in every other news story).



Somewhere between these two methods is a happy method, but you probably have to drown in mid-Atlantic to find it.



Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5. It's all pants , I tell you, and I cock a snook at it.



(To point out the obvious, this has a lot of nice words.)

- Gary Farber [Amygdala]

Interesting observation regarding the two approaches. One expects its readers to be current on the latest neologisms, requiring a reactive approach from readers that are not in the know (i.e. look up the stupid word) whereas the US dumbs down the language so that a thrid grader can read it, remving most of the uniqueness of the writing as it removes nuance.   5:04:30 AM    

That settles that

In a tape obtained by SCOTUSblog, Justice Scalia Announces Opposition to Trials in Civil Courts for Alien Military Detainees :

in answer to one question from the audienceÖ, Justice Scalia expresses incredulity at the notion that detainees captured "on the battlefield" should receive a trial in civil courts. It is, he says, a "crazy idea." To a follow-up question about the Geneva Conventions and other human rights treaties, he responds with evident disdain: "What do they mean? They mean almost anything." The questioner then refers again to a hypothetical Guantanamo detainee, at which point Justice Scalia interjects: "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son. And I am not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy."



This coming Tuesday, the Court will hear arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case in which the questions include, among other things, whether a detainee held at Guantanamo can be tried for an alleged violation of war in the Pentagon's military tribunal instead of in a civilian court or by court-martial, and whether and to what extent the Geneva Conventions protect Guantanamo detainees.

I know Scalia doesn't like looking to other nations for guidance. I understand his argument and disagree.



Does he really want to go on record against Article 6: "all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby."



Scalia has recused himself in other situations when he's obviously prejudged the case, and Chief Justice Roberts heard the Hamdan case as an appellate court judge, so he recused himself already.

- Josh Rosenau [Thoughts from Kansas]

The problem with Scalia's rhetoric is that a large number of the prisoners at Gitmo and other prisons were not captured on the battlefield. They were turned over to the US by warlords for bounty money that we paid. Or swept up in generalized operations that targeted civilians too. With little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This Administration has known that many were innocent. One has even been killed by torture that almost everyone agrees was innocent. Scalia can be such a tool.  4:45:38 AM    

They Call the Wind M'Ry-ah. A Congresswoman called for hurricanes to be given African-American names. [New Urban Legends]

I love to hear about racists sending tings through email that get their butts fired. Nothing like forgetting that the internet is not a private conversation and that, while we often do, it never forgets.  4:31:50 AM    

Bush slashes into CDC bone and muscle.

We reported on this before (here and here), but now we now have more details in an analysis by the Campaign for Public Health (CPH), a CDC advocacy group that includes as senior advisors four former CDC Directors (William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher and Jeffrey Koplan) and a former Secretary of HHS (Louis Sullivan). Many were Republican appointees.

Under President George ("Keep Us Safe") Bush's budget request, CDC is going to take a big hit. CPH makes clear the cuts are deep and go to core CDC functions. The extent of the damage is concealed on paper where CDC appears flatlined, but there is a huge chunk in the budget earmarked specifically for bioterrorism and bird flu and a huge chunk of that goes to develop vaccines and purchase antivirals.

"Once these items are excluded, it becomes clear the administration's proposal drastically cuts the CDC," the organization said.

[CDC Director Dr. Julie] Gerberding acknowledged the budget cut during an appearance at a forum on government investment in research and development.

"That's correct," she said. "Obviously, it creates a challenge. We do what every family does when their budget is short. They have to really priortize and make sure that the investments they're making are accomplishing the most they can."

She added that the CDC was "working hard to be more effective with less, but I'm not going to pretend that it's not a challenge." (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

According to CPH (and its advisors would know), the current fiscal year is the first time in 25 years CDC's operational budget has been slashed. It was done by our "Promise them anything but give them Jack Abramoff" Republican congress.

The further cut anticipated by Bush's proposed federal budget for next year would mean "core programs at the CDC will be cut by more than 8 percent in just two years," the organization sai

Core programs at CDC include research on infectious and environmental diseases, health promotion, and studies on public health and occupational safety and health concerns.

At Tuesday's forum, Gerberding said the country "simply cannot sustain this lack of investment in effective [disease] prevention sciences."

So you read about it here. You might also have read it in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. But think how many more people would read about it if the CDC Director, Dr. Gerberding, would stand up and say, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

It might have miraculous effects, like restoring her reputation among her public health colleagues. Sure, Bush would fire her. So what? She would go out in a blaze of glory. And it's not like she's going to be living in a Kelvinator box on the street.

(h/t crofsblog)

By noemail@noemail.org (Revere). [Effect Measure]

It os for these short sighted plans that we will all be paying in the coming years. The CDC is a tremendous resoure but i guess it just did not put enough money into lobbyists and corrupt politicians. Much better to have a bridge to nowhere than a office to coordinate our fight against infectious disease. I guess rich Republicans don't get sick.  4:18:22 AM    

Bush's No Child Left Behind Forcing Schools To Cut Subjects Beyond Reading and Math....

Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students, eliminating it.

Schools from Vermont to California are increasing -- in some cases tripling -- the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks.

[The Huffington Post | Full News Feed]

So, only 2 'R's are being taught. The idea of testing in such a top-down approach is rife for unintended consequences. Since the idea of NCLB is to destroy the public school system so the people who send their kids to private school can get public money to pay for it, this news seems to fit right in Make public school education worthless and people will want to move. And another brick in the wall protecting the fearful from the masses, all to the detriment of what made America a great country.   4:11:36 AM    

Bay Area Earthquake Fault "Locked And Loaded And Ready To Fire At Any Time"....

New cracks appear in Elke DeMuynck's ceiling every few weeks, zigzagging across her living room, creeping toward the fireplace, veering down the wall. Month after month, year after year, she patches, paints and waits.

"It definitely lets you know your house is constantly shifting," DeMuynck said. So do the gate outside that swings uselessly 2 1/2 inches from its latch, the strange bulges in the street and the geology students who make pilgrimages to her cul-de-sac.

[The Huffington Post | Full News Feed]

It was alomst 100 years ago, April 18, 1906, when San Francisco was leveled by an earthquake. This one would take out the eastside of the Bay, through Berkeley. It could destroy 155,000 houses. Katrina destroyed about 220,000 in Louisiana. I wonder if we will hear about why should we rebuild houses on top of a fault-line, as we hear about rebuilding New Orleans?   4:06:40 AM    

500,000..

The number of immigration rights advocates who marched in downtown Los Angeles yesterday in favor of comprehensive, practical reform. “Wearing white shirts to symbolize peace, marchers chanted ‘Mexico!’ ‘USA!’ and ‘Si se puede,’ an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means ‘Yes, we can.’”

[Think Progress]

500,000 is the police estimate, too. Yet, if you go to Google right now, or the NYT or the Washington Post, there is no mention of it. Immigration reform has the possibility of catalyzing a lot of acton. Because now, 10-12 million people will be directly affected, and ANYONE who helps those 10 million will be affected. The Catholic Church is goingto fight. Will the Republicans have enough political savvy to change course?  3:45:01 AM