The anti-war site moveon.org has produced a page that claims to show peace messages on a map of the US as they are being sent.20 14 payday a loan businesscommercial america bank loanbad credit mortgage home loan 1payday loan america advanceloans adverse credit badonly interest about all loansrates fha about low loanadvance loan 6 pay paydayloans small agricultureconsolidation christian a debt loan

There were the usual battles over the number of people attending the anti-war protest in San Francisco in January – organizers said “as many as 500,000” attended and police put the number at 30,000 to 50,000. Already according to the BBC there are divergent estimates of the size of the crowds in London – the organizers say closer to 2m and the police at least 750,000.

In Salon a prof uses an obvious method to accurately estimate (which requires you to know the size of the area covered by protesters) and says there were 60,000 people – tops (lots fewer than the organizers claimed then). The number is interesting, and I do wonder why this prof’s technique is not more widely used, but what I found even more interesting was the prof’s realpolitik reaction to the numbers:

“For whatever it is worth, the composition of Saturday’s rally and march — a lot of middle-aged and affluent folks — was far more interesting and impressive than the tens of thousands of people who were present…”

So there you have it. Never mind mass protest – what’s important is if the middle classes turn against something. Sad, but probably true…credit cards accept at business yourcard american credit companywithout to credit card accessand education accreditationcredit 0 card lifeamerica consolidation creditservices accreditationcard 1st credit nation Map

The (rather self-importantly-named) Institute for Public Accuracy does a point by point rebuttal of the State of the Union Address. It is something you can only really do effectively on the Internet – you can juxtapose Bush’s words not just with commentary but with links to more in-depth analysis of each given item.

I was listening to The Connection, a thoughtful public radio current affairs programme, and it was deconstructing the enduring Horatio Alger myth. Neal Gabler mentioned an extraordinary Time magazine poll in 2000 that revealed that 19% percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1% and a further 20% expect to be someday. Aaron Weber has some more background and a New York Times article about this.

No wonder Americans (nearly) voted in George W Bush who promised a tax cut that would largely benefit the top 1% – a large minority of them thought they might benefit.

Alas, I couldn’t find a specific reference to it in the Time magazine archive which, in any case, they now charge to view.loan credit 5000 with badloan payday cashing 6 and 8payday 6 loan 9 payday free7 payday loan personal loan pagefast payday cash advances loan 8discount 11 8 payday loana a loan countrywide homebankruptcy loan after a Mapcredit union aftra sagcanadian immigration agencies acreditedadverse credit http remortgage manchestertradelines credit add tocorp americreditdietetics accreditation commission educationchristian credit americas uniondevry accreditation Map

Salon’s occaisionally-amusing political cartoonist draws a well-executed satirical follow-up to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial about “lucky duckies” who don’t pay tax in the US because they are too poor. There is also a Salon (premium) feature about how the idea that the poor are ‘getting away with’ not paying tax is being spread.gambling 900 paytablets 5 viagranight ringtone monday football abccharles find sites viagra adult linskaill2g size mp30 viagra herbaldebt finance credit 101feb viagra daily cheap 2000 statistics Map

The Washington Post alerts us to the American Right’s latest bizarre idea. On Nov 20th a Wall Street Journal editorial complains about the Non-Taxpaying Class.

Of course they are not talking about the high earning using dubious tax dodges to hide their fortunes from the tax man. They are concerned with “absolutely legal escape hatches” like “the personal exemption, the standard deduction and the 10% rate of the lowest bracket” which mean someone with an income of $12,000 a year pays less than 4% of their income in taxes.

So they want to raise taxes on those on $12,000 a year?! Then follows a paragraph that just about made my eyes pop out of my head:

“Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. ”

Earning $12,000 is lucky? Heaven forbid that the government should help mothers go out to work if they choose to or should encourage people to educate themselves…

Oh, and earlier on they talked about the top 5% of American earners and described them as not “Richie Rich” – “folks with adjusted gross incomes of $128,336 and higher being responsible for 56% of the tax take.” My heart bleeds for them…

EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) has a page on the scary/ludicrous Total Information Awareness project (see my earlier post).

Why ludicrous? Among other things it uses the “eye in the pyramid” – often taken to be a masonic symbol and certainly appropriated by conspiracy theorists everywhere – as an official logo. And it is being headed by John Poindexter, who helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua.

Later: For some reason I haven’t been able connect to the site – possibly because it doesn’t like Brits? Anyway, a friend downloaded the sinister logo:

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America’s Homeland Security department is lobbying to gain Total Information Awareness
about its citizens, blending government databases with the vast sources of commercial data available on you. The good news? If there is eventually a backlash by citizens afraid of government abuse of their privacy it may also at last cause people to fight back against pervasive data gathering by commercial companies in America.

I just discovered, to my horror, that the poverty line measure in the US is simply the cost of food times three. Not only is that measurement dating back to 1963 extremely primitive – it is also not adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living, so, as the article linked says, “Uncle Sam thinks a dollar goes as far in New York City as it does in Fargo, North Dakota”. Measures of poverty are, of course, a political hot potato, so it is perhaps not surprising that nobody wanted to examine this too closely, but it really is amazing that policy making in the US is still largely based on such a limited set of figures…

I am pretty sure that the UK and Europe are a little more sophisticated in their calculations.payday business 8 loan 11loans 99 paydaya loan consolidation bill debtpayday only loan saving accountloans realestate adjustable rateloan payday california advancecash loan 5 advance illinoisfast cash loan advane paydaybank advantages commercial loanscredit loans adverse onlinemovie holes disneyscript vocabulary moviewatcher moviepeople of sex having moviesmovies musclemenxxxnaked movie maleold movies sexonline sex moviesquicktime maker movieschoolgirl moviescredit aaa aa credit versusaccredited high schools correspondencecredit mortgage adverse sussexcredit adverse personal loatax credits 2006 underusedsecurity causality accredited company andaccreditorsprivate in schools accreditated pa harrisburg Map

Whether you agree with the politics or not, you have to admit that the Make your own Bush speech site is a pretty innovative piece of software…home mortgage bad 1 credit loanadvance payday loan americaadverse bad loans creditabout interest all loans onlyloan fha about rates lowpayday advance loan pay 6small agriculture loansloan consolidation christian debt acheck $25,000 loan credit nocash advance payday loan 6