Suppose you went …and spoke with [long list of European Romatic intellectual figures, including Hugo, de Staël, Schlegel, Goethe, Coleridge, Byron] Suppose you had spoken to these persons. You would have found that their ideal of life was approximately of the following kind. The values to which they attached the highest importance were such values as integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one’s life to some inner light, dedication to an ideal for which it is worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living and dying. You would have found that they were not primarily interested in knowledge, or in the advancement of science, not interested in political power, not interested in happiness, not interested, above all, in adjustment to life, in finding your place in society, in living at peace with your government, even loyalty to your king, or your republic. You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it. The very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind of a man who is willing to sacrifice a great deal for principles or some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, because he believes in it – this attitude was relatively new. What people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was. No matter what it was: that is the important thing. (pp 8 – 9)

I think that Osama's methods are rational. He wanted to provoke the United States, destabilize the Middle east and especially Saudi Arabia, and rouse his sympathizers. (I don't think that his attack on the WTC was symbolic in a futile sense. The symbolism was appealing to the people he was trying to rouse; and in fact the WTC is very substantially meaningful, since it was a communication and control center and what he was fighting against was an international order dominated by the US from places like the WTC, rather than a flesh and blood nation.)

Continuing an analysis developed over many years, Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of this slaughter. Not merely the reality of death, but a sacrificial death that challenges the whole system. Where the past revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle of real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge, which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated, vulnerable West.

I don't think it was because of American foreign policy. There is a passage in one of the Conrad short stories of the East Indies where the savage finds himself with his hands bare in the world, and he lets out a howl of anger. I think that, in its essence, is what is happening. The world is getting more and more out of reach of simple people who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion, which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out of reach.

Jake Blues: No, I didn't. Honest. I ran out of gas! I had a flat tire! I didn't have enough money for cab fare! My tux didn't come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!"

Over the past two decades, the burden of funding state services has shifted from corporate to personal income taxpayers. The personal income tax is forecast to provide 48.9 percent of state General Fund revenues in 2003-04, up from 34.8 percent in 1980-81. Corporate tax receipts are expected to provide 9.2 percent of General Fund revenues in 2003-04, down from 14.4 percent in 1980-81. New, increased, and expanded corporate tax breaks are responsible for the decline in the share of state revenues provided by the corporate income tax. Tax reductions enacted between 1998 and 2002 alone will reduce 2002-03 revenues by $4.6 billion.

Nobody knows how those wealthy taxpayers would react to such an increase. If they stayed in California, and didn't change their behavior, the state treasury and those who rely on it for services would be better off. And certainly a tax increase of a few thousand dollars on someone making a half-million a year would seem unlikely to drive them from the state. But if the increase prompted just a few thousand of the wealthiest taxpayers to flee California, then the revenue decline it would cause could make the past year's drop seem mild. The truth is you could put thousands of laborers to work at good wages and probably not compensate for the lost income tax from one departed millionaire. Even if it worked as intended, raising taxes on the wealthy would push California out on a fiscal limb that everyone already knows is weak. Had the higher rates been law during the late 1990s, the revenue growth the state experienced would have been even greater. And the decline, when it came, would have been even steeper. Going further in that direction would make the state's masses even more reliant on the good fortune of a few than they are today. And as the last few years have shown, in the long term that can be a very risky proposition.

"One hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was not running on a platform of experience. It was clear that his opponent had far greater experience, as Lincoln's experience was confined to a few obscure years in the House of Representatives. But the country was then suffering from a President with experience, James Buchanan, who had been Congressman, Senator, Ambassador, and Secretary of State. He had been in public service for almost 42 years. Herbert A. Garth, the historian, has written, and he mistakenly believed that he had been learning all the time [laughter], "I don't think experience necessarily counts" [applause]. The three great qualities which characterized Lincoln's Presidency were leadership, courage, and foresight, the three qualities that the next President of the United States is going to need in full measure if this country is going to meet the challenges at home and abroad."

The important fact about the treatment of energy purchases as loans is that they did not affect, in the slightest, how Gov. Gray Davis and legislators fashioned a state budget in 2001 or 2002. While they may have created a cash-flow squeeze, requiring additional outside borrowing, the energy loans had absolutely no effect on the budget itself, as state budget officials repeatedly pointed out at the time. Some Republican legislators suggested that the energy outlays be treated as budget outlays, rather than as loans, but the dominant Democrats rejected that suggestion because it would have sharply curtailed other spending. This bit of fiscal history is being offered because Davis, Attorney General Bill Lockyer and other state officials have decided to rewrite it to serve their own political purposes. The false account of what happened is contained in filings this week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, supporting their assertion that California was ripped off during the energy crisis by energy generators and brokers.

That's a deliberate lie. There's no other term for it because Davis, Lockyer and the others who filed the papers with FERC know the truth. It's a lie that not only bolsters their case with FERC for refunds, but one that also, in effect, acquits Davis and legislators of responsibility for the budget crisis that did develop in 2001. The budget crisis occurred because Davis and lawmakers of both parties foolishly succumbed to political pressure from various interest groups to cut taxes and raise spending when state revenues suddenly spiked upward in 2000, even though they knew that the windfall could be a one-time occurrence. It was just a one-time revenue boost, as it turned out, but because spending had been ratcheted upward and multibillion-dollar tax cuts had been enacted, the state was left with a huge "structural deficit" between income and outgo. The current estimates of the problem, something in the $26 billion to $35 billion range, are the accumulated deficits of the past two budgets, plus the projected shortfall for the next fiscal year.

As California's budget problems leave the prospect of freezes and layoffs hanging over tens of thousands of state employees, many of the people who worked on Gov. Gray Davis' reelection campaign have been given new government jobs or promotions. At least 21 of the governor's campaign workers have been either hired into new state jobs or have received promotions despite the current hiring freeze and a call by Davis to cut half a billion dollars annually out of salary and benefit packages for public employees. Sometimes their salaries come out of the very departments facing cuts that will be directly felt by the public -- areas such as environmental protection, disease research and child protection services -- even though most of the employees actually work on the governor's support staff.

ALLEZ TOUS VOUS FAIRE FOUTRE BANDES DE GROS BLAIREAUX VIVE LA FRANCE! QUE CREVE BUSH ET TOUTE SON ADMINISTRATION NOYEE DANS SON PETROLE IRAKIEN

Go fuck yourselves, gang of the fat Blair! One who belives Bush and all his administration bathe in Iraqui gas.