MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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The 'Numbers guy'

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That would be Carl Bialik, who examines the way numbers are used and abused in a blog at the Wall Street Journal, crunches the numbers post-Pennsylvania.

He does not in this post reach a earth-shattering conclusion different from conventional wisdom but it’s still an enjoyable read, especially when you consider he’s dealing in numbers.

The numbers do not favor Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cause. Unless you change the rules and make them all favor her. Even then, they bring only close enough for an almost tie.

(Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) Barack Obama on his campaign plane Wednesday.

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on a flight to Washington on Tuesday.

Her argument to the Superdelegates then, argument which she voiced in Pennsylvania, would be that she is best suited for the general election because Sen. Barack Obama is simply the kind of candidate Democrats nominate only to see them lose ignominiously in the general election.

So, overturn the results so far and give the nomination to her, even if she is trailing by all the measures by which you determine the party nominee.

She, for instance, is saying that results from caucuses should not count because they skew to Mr. Obama’s strength, which is organizing. I consider myself a political junkie and this is the first time I’ve heard this argument against the caucuses.

There’s a certain part of me that appreciates HRC’s win-at-all-cost mentality. For once, I don’t want to be virtuous. I want to see Democrats give Republicans a dose (maybe even more than that) of their own medicine.

I don’t know what Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, has to say about anything. I know he believes war is a good thing, that people need to get second jobs to deal with the declining economy and the credit crisis, and that he and the money bags he married are sitting on a mountain of wealth.

A debate between the Democratic Party nominee, Clinton or Obama, and this corrupt and unprincipled man should be a no-contest. HRC is a fighter. She’s more than demonstrated that? But, can she guarantee a win?

No. And, is it too much to want some grace and intelligence and brilliance, all of which Obama possesses in abundance (which Clinton does too, except for the grace part) in your nominee? And when you consider Obama already leads in the number of votes and delegates and by any other measure you want to use, why overturn that?

April 24, 2008
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'The Name of the Air'

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a poem by W.S. Merwin

It could be like that then the beloved

old dog finding it harder and harder

to breathe and understanding but coming

to ask whether there is something that can

be done about it coming again to

ask and then standing there without asking

April 24, 2008
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A New York Times editorial

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April 23, 2008
Editorial

The Low Road to Victory

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”

By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.

No matter what the high-priced political operatives (from both camps) may think, it is not a disadvantage that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton share many of the same essential values and sensible policy prescriptions. It is their strength, and they are doing their best to make voters forget it. And if they think that only Democrats are paying attention to this spectacle, they’re wrong.

After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.

It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.

April 24, 2008
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'Digital Natives'

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Peter Elliott, writing in the Wall Street Journal Europe, heralds a wondrous future of mobile communications and computing that would make up for the failure of the 3G mobile platform to catch on. Called 4G, this new platform will correct a lot of the errors of 3G as well as toast your bread and butter it for you, too.

It enables true broadband through a mobile connection and will be much better at connecting to the Internet. Surfing the Web on your mobile device will be much like doing it now from a desktop computer with a standard two megabyte broadband connection.

There are two different 4G technologies, WiMAX and the next-generation 3G, LTE, which could be used to offer these services. Their technical capabilities are comparable but they are backed by different companies. Among vendors, Intel and Motorola support WiMAX while Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson are pushing LTE. This division is no disadvantage. The competition will drive speed, innovation and value for the customer.

The second set of players are mobile network operators. Those who have already spent billions in 3G are likely to champion the related LTE technology. It would be not quite as expensive as building a WiMAX system from scratch and their technicians would be more familiar with the system. And, most importantly, the operators are under pressure from those mobile phone manufacturers who are backing LTE.

And, of course, there’s always the profit motive:

As the mobile telecoms’ voice markets reach maturity, 4G, unlike 3G, could provide a strong source of new revenues. One side effect is that 4G will change the market’s dynamics, encouraging other players – content providers such as Google, iTunes, YouTube, movie companies, etc. – to enter the market.

This, though, would also pose major challenges for the current mobile operators: Are they going to become “dumb pipes” that just carry traffic for “dumb prices,” or will the consumer lose out as operators may try to protect revenues by controlling the available content?

Much of the demand will likely be just for raw Internet access for which operators could only charge a relatively low, flat fee. In order to increase revenue streams, they’ll probably try to sell a whole package of services and applications, such as music downloads and e-mail. It’ll be much like a fight between traditional and low-cost airlines. Chances are, many customers will do without the peanuts and go for the raw Internet access. This fine balancing act is not only going to determine the success of the technology, but the make-up of the whole industry.

The other market dynamic is financing. Thanks to the subprime fallout, many Western banks are simply not in a position to provide – and most certainly underwrite – the large sums necessary for the new technology. It would cost at least £1 billion ($1.99 billion) to build a U.K.-wide 4G network, and that’s without the IT systems, manpower, marketing etc. Plus, there are the costs for the spectrum. This summer, the British government will auction the spectrum for 4G technology. It’s unlikely that it will make as much money as the last time around, when five operators paid about £4 billion each for the 3G spectrum. This time, the whole auction will probably generate not more than £1 billion.

In addition, banks have become more cautious about the industry. A Dresdner Kleinwort executive told us at a recent seminar that “most investment or credit committees have reviewed business plans underpinned by technologies that have subsequently failed to deliver.” This has led to “a degree of skepticism,” he said.

However, Western banks are not the only option. The Middle East and Asian economies can help finance this technology and seem willing to embrace its potential. The Kuwait Finance House, for example, backed one of the first nationwide WiMAX network operators, Mena Telecom, in Bahrain.

Even though this technology is not going to generate revenues overnight, mobile operators need to be prepared for 4G’s potential benefits. However, they must not take the 3G approach to demand management, which was simply “build it and they’ll come.” History has shown us that this is a fallacy.

For me, the practical side of this development is that I know now that I won’t be buying the next generation iPhone, which is this gizmo’s belated entry into the 3G sphere, when Apple finally releases it later this year. I will know there’s something better on the horizon. Why waste time (and a prince’s ransom) on this already obsolete gadget?

April 24, 2008
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Millions in Hunger

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Food Crisis Is Depicted As ‘Silent Tsunami’
Sharp Price Hikes Leave Many Millions in Hunger

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 23, 2008; A01

LONDON, April 22 — More than 100 million people are being driven deeper into poverty by a “silent tsunami” of sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food official said Tuesday.

“This is the new face of hunger — the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are,” Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), said at a London news conference. “The world’s misery index is rising.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hosting Sheeran and other private and government experts at his 10 Downing Street offices, said the growing food crisis has pushed prices to their highest levels since 1945 and rivals the current global financial turmoil as a threat to world stability.

“Hunger is a moral challenge to each one of us as global citizens, but it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of poor nations around the world,” Brown said, adding that 25,000 people a day are dying of conditions linked to hunger.

“With one child dying every five seconds from hunger-related causes, the time to act is now,” Brown said, pledging $60 million in emergency aid to help the WFP feed the poor in Africa and Asia, where in some nations the prices of many food staples have doubled in the past six months.

Brown said the “vast” food crisis was threatening to reverse years of progress to create stronger middle classes around the world and lift millions of people out of poverty.

Prices for basic food supplies such as rice, wheat and corn have skyrocketed in recent months, driven by a complex set of factors including sharply rising fuel prices, droughts in key food-producing countries, ballooning demand in emerging nations such as China and India, and the diversion of some crops to produce biofuels.

Sheeran noted that the United States, which she said provides half of the world’s food assistance, has pledged $200 million in emergency food aid and that Congress was considering an additional appropriation.

Holding up the kind of plastic cup that the WFP uses to feed millions of children, Sheeran told reporters that the price of a metric ton of rice in parts of Asia had risen from $460 to $1,000 in less than two months.

“People are simply being priced out of food markets,” she said.

The WFP has budgeted $2.9 billion this year — all from donor nations — to conduct its feeding programs around the world, including large efforts in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and other nations that could not otherwise feed themselves.

Sheeran said soaring prices mean that the WFP needs an additional $755 million to meet its needs. That “food gap” jumped from $500 million just two months ago as prices keep rising, she said.

“We hope we have reached a plateau, but this is a rapidly evolving situation,” she said, adding that the WFP was urgently seeking contributions to make up the difference as the situation becomes more dire in poor countries such as Bangladesh and Afghanistan that are heavily dependent on imported food.

Sheeran said the WFP’s main focus was on the “ultra-poor,” those who earn less than 50 cents a day. She said rising food prices meant millions of people earning less than $2 a day were giving up health care and education. Those living on less than $1 a day were giving up meat and vegetables, and those living on less than 50 cents were facing increasingly desperate hunger.

Hunger and anger have led to violence recently in Haiti, where food riots this month resulted in several deaths, as well as Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia and Senegal. Argentina’s attempt to control rising prices led to a strike by producers.

The WFP is already being forced to cut back on school feeding programs that serve 20 million children, Sheeran said. Without more emergency funding, she said, a feeding program in Cambodia would be eliminated and programs in places such as Kenya and Tajikistan would be cut in half.

“These are heartbreaking decisions to have to make,” Sheeran said. “We need all the help we can get from the governments of the world who can afford to do so.”

Sheeran said rising fuel and fertilizer prices were adding to the misery. She said she recently returned from a trip to Kenya’s Rift Valley, where the cost of fertilizer has climbed 135 percent since December.

That increase, along with rising prices for seed and diesel, led farmers to plant only one-third the crops they planted last year — a pattern being repeated around the world, she said.

“Farmers have no access to credit, so when prices go up, they can’t afford to plant,” she said, urging governments, particularly in developing nations, to invest more in programs to support domestic agriculture.

“I think much of the world is waking up to the fact that food doesn’t spontaneously show up on grocery store shelves,” she said.

In some parts of the world, Sheeran said, the WFP needs to provide food to people who have none. In other countries, she said, food is plentiful but prices have risen so much that people cannot afford it. She said the WFP is considering programs in those countries to provide cash assistance or emergency food vouchers.

Food experts have said such programs could help lower domestic food prices without hurting local farmers — the kind of balance Sheeran said WFP officials are trying to strike as they deal with a crisis that has different faces in different parts of the world.

The increasing use of crops to produce biofuels has been criticized as contributing to food shortages. While Britain and the European Union have called for greater use of biofuels, Brown said Tuesday that “we need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment.”

“If our U.K. review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in E.U. biofuels targets,” he said.

Rising Prices, Rising Anger

Wednesday, April 23, 2008; A13

Surging food and fuel prices have sparked protests in many countries. Here are some key events this year:

Cameroon

At least 24 people were killed during protests that erupted in February and were linked to rising living costs. In response, the government raised state salaries and suspended customs duties on basic foodstuffs.

Mozambique

At least six people died in February in unrest over high fuel prices and living costs. The government agreed to cut the price of diesel fuel for minibus taxis.

Peru

Farmers, upset by rising fertilizer costs and seeking debt relief, blocked key rail and road links in February.

Ivory Coast

Police fired tear gas in Abidjan last month to disperse demonstrators angry over steep price increases.

Burkina Faso

Unions called a general strike earlier this month over soaring costs of food and fuel that had triggered riots in February. The government extended a suspension of import duties on staple foods.

South Africa

Thousands of members of the national labor federation marched through Johannesburg earlier this month to protest higher food and electricity prices.

Haiti

Protests over high rice prices brought down the prime minister April 12. At least six people were killed in two weeks of riots and demonstrations in the poorest country in the Americas.

SOURCE: Reuters

April 23, 2008
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Another case of substance abuse

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I cannot explain why this New York Times story got under my skin so.

The Times basically celebrated flash over substance in choosing to focus on John King of CNN and his giant computer board that has dominated the cable news network’s coverage of the elections this year. The fact is that CNN is not using the teleprompter to deepen its coverage of the elections.

Measuring nearly seven and a half feet diagonally, the screen, along with its database, seems more suited to a commander moving troops around a battlefield, which is no accident. David Bohrman, who oversees CNN’s political coverage, fell in love with the monitor after seeing it at a military intelligence trade show last year. (Mr. Bohrman refused to say how much CNN had paid for the device, which is made by a company called Perceptive Pixel.)

Asked about his new toy on a recent morning at CNN’s New York City headquarters as his fingers darted from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Erie in a dry run of the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday night, Mr. King said the technology enabled him to turn back the clock as much as move it forward. For more than a decade before joining CNN in 1997, Mr. King was a reporter for The Associated Press, and election nights usually found him systematically telephoning precincts to collect their tallies.

“I’m in TV 10 years, but in my head and heart, I’m still an old wire guy, a grunt,” Mr. King said. “You can use this new technology to look at politics the old-fashioned way, which is: who’s finding their people and turning them out?”

And yet Mr. King said that his touch screen allows him to present data in ways far more dazzling and compelling than in his days tapping out election results in A.P. bureaus in Providence, R.I., and later Washington, or even in his early years at CNN. The technology has also helped him solve a problem with which he has occasionally wrestled in his career at CNN: adapting his just-the-facts-ma’am approach to a visual medium.

This is ridiculous. CNN does not have more reporters out in the field to deepen its coverage of the elections. Its staff is not out talking to people in Erie, PA, for instance. Most of the staff, as a matter of fact, are sitting behind desks in the studio, either as analysts, or as producers. The CNN coverage is a lot of lips flapping, adding up to a vapid picture of what is taking place.

No matter how fast Mr. King talks into the camera, or snaps his finger across a screen to enlarge a map, what this new highfalutin machine masks too often in primary after primary and caucus after caucus is the lack of real news to report by CNN, especially in the early hours after the polls close.

Then the Times allowed King to say this without challenge:

“Nothing against white guys, but I’m a white guy talking in a box,” he said, stripping his broadcast performance to its essence. “If all I’m doing is saying, ‘6 percent, 8 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent,’ there’s that glaze-over factor at home. You’ve lost them.”

“The wonder of this,” he said a moment later, gesturing toward what is essentially a giant Etch-a-Sketch, “is that you can show it. You can make the math accessible.”

Since when has being a “white guy” disadvantaged anyone in any way from working in broadcast journalism? This was a ridiculous, stupid, vacuous statement that was just dropped in there and the Times just let it go without challenging its validity.

The Times compounded this ridiculousness by bringing in some story about Mr. King’s wedding to a CNN colleague. Why did the Times spend such valuable news space enhancing Mr. King’s celebrity?

April 22, 2008
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Living and dying on these Jersey streets

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IRVINGTON, N.J. — Dolores Timmons watched as the woman who lived across the street paced the sidewalk for a good half hour under a scorching August heat, back and forth across the length of her front yard as if encased by invisible walls. They lived in similar brick and wood-frame homes here on a busy working-class block of 18th Avenue off the Garden State Parkway, but they had never spoken.

Another neighbor told Mrs. Timmons that the woman, Shalga Hightower, was mourning her 20-year-old daughter, one of three college students who had been shot dead in a Newark schoolyard a few days earlier. Mrs. Timmons walked across the street to introduce herself and offer condolences, bringing her grandson, Gary Farrar Jr., who was just a year older and also in college, studying graphic design at Rutgers.
Soon the two women struck up a neighborly acquaintanceship, making small talk when they ran into each other or waving from their stoops.
Mrs. Timmons, 64, had lived on the block for 24 years, and she occupied the first floor of her two-family house; upstairs were Gary and his parents, Gary Sr., a landscaper, and Betty Farrar, a nurse. Ms. Hightower, 47, a home-health aide supervisor, moved there last June with her three children; Iofemi, the oldest, was about to enter Delaware State University when she was killed.

Iofemi Hightower and Gary Farrar Jr., lived on the same street. Hightower was to enroll in Delaware State – oldest of three children.Shot and killed August, 2007 by strangers while chilling in a schoolyard with friends. Farrar, an only child, graduated from Rutgers. Shot and killed April 20, 2008 – in a driveby on his street (by a stranger) while walking friends to their car.

As the months passed, Mrs. Timmons noticed how Ms. Hightower would often wear a memorial T-shirt stamped with her daughter’s picture.
“When Iofemi died, I remember thinking how fortunate I was that my grandson was in college, away from these crazy streets out here,” Mrs. Timmons said on Monday. “But then he graduated and came back home and now he’s dead, too.”

For the families who live on this hilly stretch of 18th Avenue between Grove Street and Eastern Parkway, where Irvington juts into Newark, Ms. Hightower’s killing last summer — six suspects have been arrested — brought the violence that surrounds them frighteningly close. Losing Mr. Farrar barely nine months later —just four months after he had graduated from Rutgers and returned home — was something beyond.

* * *

“We made our sacrifices and just raised our son the best way that we could,” Mr. Farrar said on Monday.

Iofemi Hightower worked for Continental Airlines in Newark and planned to study business at Delaware State. Mr. Farrar had a degree in graphic design from Rutgers and was a waiter in Montclair as he pursued a job in his field. They were, by all accounts, exceptions — “good kids who stayed out of trouble and had hopes and dreams for the future,” as Mrs. Timmons put it.

Mr. Farrar, she said, recently bought a navy three-button suit to wear on job interviews. Now, she said, his parents plan to bury him in it.

Read The New York Times for the rest of this heartbreaking story

April 22, 2008
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