Category — General

83.7 % …..

… of the total gross national debt of the USA was created during two periods of  Republican Presidency:

1981 – 1992            Ronald Reagan and George Bush I

2001 – present         George Bush II

No doubt much of it was in service of Gulf War I, and now Gulf War II.

——

There is more on Wirarchy but i cut it. i just find it interesting that the republicans are the debt creators here when they seem to have hold on the opposite rhetoric….

CBS – Content Banishment Syndicate. Advertising Age writes: Anti-Bush Ad Contest Submits Super Bowl Commercial. A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn't think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices. Have you seen the ad, the one that won MoveOn.org's contest? What possible standard or practice does it violate? Is our country stronger because… [Joho the Blog]

——-

if it doesn't pass it should be run on fox, they'll run nearly anything and given their apparent bias, it would be even more powerful.

Spend it like Bush.

National Debt. More on the U.S. national debt, from Al Martin Raw, the article “Scoreboard 2003″. Seems to be in the member area, but somebody sent me an e-mail copy.

The total national debt of the United States on a fully realized basis, inclusive of federal, state, county and local debt stood at a record $20.613 trillion (83.73% of said debt having been created from 1981-92 and from 2001 to present.) The total public and private indebtedness of the United States ended the year 2003 at $39.384 trillion. The total public and private assets of the United States ended the year 2003 at $26.134 trillion. Thus, the United States by the end of 2003 has a negative net worth of approximately $13 trillion. The total debt service of the United States ended the year 2003 at 309.4% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). These are numbers never before seen. This is a higher debt to gross domestic product ratio than any other country on earth, which still services its debt.

Doesn't sound good. I'd like to see some other sources on that, of course. The periods he's mentioning, 81-92 and 2001 to the present, where 83.73% of the debt were generated is when Reagan and the two Bushes have been presidents. [Ming the Mechanic]

Caveat Lector: Uninformed commentary follows…

If these figures are anywhere near true then we should all be worried. Worse still American spending is going to be painfully hard to decrease with President Bush continuing to borrowing to fund his pet projects like The Global War on Terror.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

News Classification System. From the creators of the OpenDirectory Project comes their new effort: a classifying news crawler : Topix.net. They've got some cool text processing that allows them to classify each story in terms of content and geographic location. Very cool ideas in agreggation! [MetaFilter]

—–

great stuff

The Trafficking of Women. Guardian Weekly | UK Trafficker Jailed for 10 years A former asylum seeker in the UK, who is now a UK citizen, has been handed a 10 year jail term for trafficking women to the UK for the purposes of… [Flailing in the Surf]

——-

it wasn't that long ago, maybe 98 or 99 that they prosecuted one of these cases in maryland. last year they were still working on the major albanian/italy trafficking and prostitution problem. the thing is that people are taking advantage of people here. prostitution if freely chosen is a valid choice for people, but when it is forced, then i have real problems, in fact, it is tantamount to slavery which to me should be punishable by hard labor for the enslavers. in short, we need to as a society ensure this doesn't happen anymore, so britain needs to prosecute the cases.

Stringing Along. Remember Cats Cradle? No, you literate devil you, not Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle. Cats Cradle the game – the two-player version of the activity more properly known as String Figures. As in those described in the Arctic String Figure Project – The Diamond [Bernie DeKoven's Blog o'Fun]

Now It's On!. The Tina/Lane Drive to Keep Everyone We Know From Ever Shopping At Wal-Mart is on. More to come…. [Eat Your Vegetables]

Will IPv6 conversion fail in the US?. Simson Garfinkel has a cautionary article about IPv6 in the latest issue of MIT's Technology Review: “The Net Effect.” He points out that while packet-level encryption will be the norm in IPv6, transmission through today's routers is likely to be… [InternetPolicy.net]

Got a science-y person in your life? Can't figure out a good gift? If you're willing to spend a bit (ie: the person is family, best friend, or partner) I'd highly recommend a subscription to New Scientist (www.newscientist.com). Sharp, challenging, endlessly interesting, and with good broad appeal to anyone who likes science, technology, and science issues. I finally got a subscription myself and must say it's one of the best purchases I've made this year. It's a weekly so it's always fresh news. [[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ]]

—–

I have to agree with this, NewScientist is one of my favorite reads of late. they give you the lowdown on what's happening in the front, and then give you nice articles in the back, then behind that i like the call the 'gossip section' also known as who else is trying to hire the scientists that you are trying to hire, thejob advertisement. which much like the job advertisements in the economist can be very enlightening if you are in certain circles or at least following certain circles.

Flat. I left the office, late last night, to find I had a flat tire.
In fact, I had two flat tires. One of the flat tires is less than a week old. [Mark Bernstein]