ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Several conservatives in the media have recently blamed the Community Reinvestment Act for the current financial crisis -- when, in fact, the CRA does not apply to institutions making the vast majority of troubled loans underlying the crisis. It applies only to depository institutions, such as banks and savings and loan associations. Experts have estimated that 80 percent of high-priced subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA.

2008-ComplianceTech, a provider of technology and business intelligence for consumer lending institutions and government agencies, has released an industry report indicating that the majority of subprime-rate loans originated in 2006 were made to non-Hispanic Whites and upper-income borrowers (conventional, 1st lien, 1-to-4 family, owner-occupied, home purchase and refinance).The findings are contrary to the way subprime-rate lending has been portrayed. Frequent media portrayals and congressional dialogue refer to subprime-rate lending as a minority and low-income issue. Findings in the report are based on data submitted by lenders under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) analyzed with the data-mining tool LendingPatterns(TM).

The report concluded that a disproportionate share of loans made to minorities and low-income borrowers were subprime-rate loans, but the majority of subprime-rate loans were made to non-Hispanic Whites and upper-income borrowers. Of the 1,917,809 subprime-rate loans originated in 2006, non-Hispanic Whites had 70.82 percent of the loans, and 56.23 percent of the subprime-rate loans. Upper-income borrowers had the highest share of the subprime-rate loans at 39.37 percent, followed by 27.55 percent for middle-income borrowers and 20.99 percent for moderate-income borrowers.

Contrary to popular belief, low-income borrowers had only 149,173, or 7.57 percent, of 2006 subprime-rate loans. The report also concluded that the majority of subprime-rate loans were originated in predominately-White geographic regions (areas representing census tracts less than 30 percent minority).

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"

Woe to you, my Princess, when I come... you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle girl who doesn't eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.

Two Taliban assassins on a motorbike shot and killed a senior policewoman as she left for work in Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday and gravely wounded her son.

Malalai Kakar, 41, who led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women, was leaving home Sunday when she was killed, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her 18-year-old son was wounded, he said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar.

A leading urogynaecologist has spoken out against the growing popularity of cosmetic vaginal surgery.

Professor Linda Cardozo, of King's College Hospital, London, says little evidence exists to advise women on the safety or effectiveness of procedures.

These include operations to make the external appearance more "attractive" and reshaping the vagina to counter laxity after childbirth, for example.
...
Professor Cardozo said the most established vaginal cosmetic procedure was reduction labioplasty - a procedure to make the labia smaller - which is requested by women either for aesthetic reasons or to alleviate physical discomfort.

"Women want to emulate the supermodel. It's part of a trend. But they should know that all surgery can be risky.

In the high desert near Rifle, Colo., Shell engineers are burying hundreds of steel rods 2,000 feet underground that will heat the shale to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which Teflon melts.

The heat will be applied for the next four years....

[T]echnologies now exist that require little or no process water, minimize surface disturbances and significantly reduce emissions. While some of The Tribune's claims about purported environmental impacts may have been true several decades ago, that is no longer the case.

"I've always said [to oil shale critics], 'What are you afraid of?'" [Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah] said. "You're afraid it might work."

“There’s a misconception that it’s (oil shale development) all going to be new water, it’s really not,” Kuhn said. “Oil companies have existing valid water rights.” Some of those companies have water rights dating from the 1950s or 1960s"....During a water shortage, water consumptive oil shale extraction could deny Gunnison Basin or San Juan Basin or other water users their water rights if they date from 1970s or 1980s, he said.

[C]limate change scientists say...it is undeniable that the pumping of [CO2] into the air is positively correlated with the growth of industrialisation.

Robinson and Morris demonstrate that this conclusion, when subject to the simplest statistical test, fails.

In theorising, they point out, climate change modellers need not accept that the future will be like the past.

Modellers say: "Is there not sufficient evidence of global warming in the melting of the polar ice caps?"

Here we come to a second reason for scepticism. If true, this can only be, at most, partial evidence in their favour. More generally, policy should require guidance from modelling on the time scale of global warming and its magnitude.

To compare their activities with religious extremism is modish, but enlightening. Prophecy leading to identification of sin, salvation and heresy can be identified in their pronouncements.

Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.

The Bush administration has overturned a 22-year-old policy and now allows customs agents to seize, read and copy documents from travelers at airports and borders without suspicion of wrongdoing, civil rights lawyers in San Francisco said Tuesday in releasing records obtained in a lawsuit.

[T]hose policies were first enacted by President Ronald Reagan's administration in 1986, in response to lawsuits by U.S. citizens who were questioned and searched after returning from Nicaragua. President Bill Clinton's administration refined the policies in 2000 but made no major changes, Sinnar said.

Taking his title from George Washington, who complained during his presidency of being “buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers,” Burns explores an era in which opinion ruled newspapers, and journalists didn’t hesitate to use crude language, baseless accusations or character attacks as weapons to make their cases.

In a panicked atmosphere and amid flaring tempers, Democrats and some Republicans announced before the White House meeting that they had the outline of an agreement, but GOP leaders refused to sign off on it. Liberal and conservative interest groups railed against the bailout, while business groups insisted that Congress pass the plan with all speed, warning that tight credit already is sharply slowing business activity.

At the White House, Republican leader John Boehner expressed misgivings about the plan, and McCain would not commit to supporting it, people from both parties who were briefed on the exchange told the Associated Press. In the Roosevelt Room after the session, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to withdraw her party's support for the package over what Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal, according to the New York Times.

There is little doubt among economists that a recession has begun. The question is how deep and long it will be, and that depends on whether the bailout plan, if it passes Congress, works. Another possibility is a long stagnation like Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s, which followed a similar real estate market collapse in that country.

Either way, the nation faces what Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen, an expert in financial panics, calls unavoidable consequences.

These could include big budget deficits, higher taxes to service that debt, higher interest rates and more-strictly regulated banks that will lend more cautiously. "We've had a decade of relatively successful economic growth and have been living beyond our means," Eichengreen said. "Now we'll have a decade of the opposite. It's payback time."

Maybe credit markets would recover on their own, as some believe, or maybe they wouldn't. But few in Washington really want to find out.

Those principles will include improved oversight of the program, as well as a plan to phase in the $700 billion investment in stages, while still assuring the administration a virtual free hand for at least the first $350 billion.

There is a greater emphasis on efforts not just to relieve Wall Street firms of their bad debts but also to help homeowners threatened by foreclosure. Companies that benefit from the plan would be expected to limit pay and severance packages for their executives, and community banks are expected to benefit from a new $3 billion tax break as a result of their stock losses in the government takeover of the two mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

A sneaking suspicion

So now the whole rationale for the plan is "price discovery": we're going to throw lots of taxpayer funds into the pot because that will let us find the true values of troubled assets, which are higher than the fire sale prices out there, and so balance sheet will improve, confidence will return, etc, etc..

So I just did a Nexis search trying to find out when Paulson and Bernanke started talking about price discovery, which we're now told are at the core of the plan's logic. And the answer is …

Yesterday.

I can't find any use of the term, or even a hint of the argument, until yesterday's Senate hearings.

One possible explanation. It wasn't until yesterday that they realized that it would actually be necessary to explain themselves.

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain's campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Understanding Women and What is Most Important to Them: In Lifetime's late July Every Woman Counts poll, Barack Obama handily beat John McCain 52% to 18% with 11% volunteering "neither" to this question. Just six weeks later, and with the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, McCain/Palin has dramatically reversed those fortunes, now in a virtual tie with Obama/Biden, 44%-42%.

Once, there was a financial elite in this country. During the first two-thirds of the 20th century, middle-aged men with names like Mellon and McCloy led Wall Street firms, corporate boards and white-shoe law firms and occasionally emerged to serve in government.

...

So we have arrived at one of those moments. The global financial turmoil has pulled nearly everybody out of their normal ideological categories. The pressure of reality has compelled new thinking about the relationship between government and the economy. And lo and behold, a new center and a new establishment is emerging.

The Paulson rescue plan is one chapter. But there will be others. Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders. Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks. For Republicans, people like Paulson. For Democrats, the guiding lights will be those establishment figures who advised Barack Obama last week — including Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said lawmakers and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson narrowed their differences on a $700 billion plan to buy bad investments and they agreed the U.S. should get equity in the participating companies.

Lawmakers ``made it clear'' the U.S. should get stock warrants ``so that if the company becomes profitable, we get more than the general share for taking these risks,'' Frank told reporters today in Washington. Paulson agreed as both sides narrowed differences over the plan, Frank said on Bloomberg Television.

...

Frank and Dodd have proposed changes that include strengthening foreclosure-prevention efforts, curbing executive pay for companies that need the U.S. to buy their assets and expanding oversight of the Treasury program. Paulson has opposed limits on executive pay, Frank said in the television interview.

The Treasury proposal gave Paulson ``much too much authority,'' Frank said. ``We have restored the notion of judicial review and accountability.''

Both presidential nominees, who face the prospect of inheriting an enormous new program, said there had to be more oversight of the Treasury Department than the Bush administration had proposed.

US President George W. Bush on Monday warned lawmakers wary of his 700-billion-dollar debt bailout scheme that "failure to act would have broad consequences" for the battered US economy

Bush's overall approval rating fell to 19 percent, from 30 percent last month, with 76 percent disapproving.

Last week Barclays paid $1.75 billion to buy Lehman's North American investment banking and capital markets business. It emerged over the weekend that Barclays had agreed to pay $2.5 billion in bonuses to Lehman bankers in the United States in a move that has angered stricken staff in London.

A hundred years later, in 1889, the chronicler of a government expedition to the region remarked prophetically: "That this region is stored with a substance of great economic value is beyond all doubt, and, when the hour of development comes, it will, I believe, prove to be one of the wonders of northern Canada."

Until recently, banks and other investors have been eagerly pouring their dollars into Alberta's vast oil sands, the world's second-biggest reserves behind Saudi Arabia's trove....

"There's a whole mix of projects - some of them candidly wouldn't make it even with a very high oil price," said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private-equity firm. "The cost of capital going up combined with the price of oil going down makes it more likely that already weak supply expectations (for non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) aren't going to be met. Is this going to be a problem? Yes."

Petro-Canada, the country's second largest refiner, estimated costs to develop its Fort Hills oil- sands project in Alberta, Canada, have increased by 50 percent since a memorandum in June 2007.

The recent banking crisis has shown how the financial markets can totally misjudge both the risks and values inherent in company balance sheets. Oil companies depend on oil reserves for their market values. BP and Shell are two of our most trusted UK stocks, but it is a shocking fact that 30% of Shell's oil reserves are in tar sands.

[T]he motives behind many real estate deals cast a shadow over efforts to reconcile Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, whose desire to live in exclusive sectarian enclaves is a major driver behind the resurgent property market, realtors say.

Now, for example, Shi'ites who fled the Baghdad district of Karkh want to live with their co-religionists in Rusafa, one realtor said. Given that Rusafa is roughly half the size of Karkh, property prices there have risen with demand.

House Republican staffers met with roughly 15 lobbyists Friday afternoon, whose message to lawmakers was clear: Don't load the legislation up with provisions not directly related to the crisis, or regulatory measures the industry has long opposed.

"We're opposed to adding provisions that will affect [or] undermine the deal substantively," said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, whose members include the nation's largest banks, securities firms and insurers.

A deal killer for the group: a proposal that would grant bankruptcy judges new powers to lower the principal, interest rate or both on a mortgage as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.

"If there's a risk a judge could change the terms...that will increase the risk of mortgages [and] increase the cost," Mr. Talbott said. "It makes homes less affordable for everybody."

Brokerage firms are fighting limits on executive compensation for firms that participate in the package, saying that particularly in an industry under siege, the limits will hurt their ability to find and retain top brass. The industry could lose that one: proposals to limit executive pay enjoy bipartisan support and backing from the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 4,000 new crucial biomedical articles were deposited in the last month alone. This proposed bill would prohibit the deposit of these articles, and as a result, researchers, physicians, health care professionals, families and individuals will find it much harder to get access to this critical health-related information.

I am one of those NIH supported researchers whose papers get locked up for decades behind copyright permission firewalls. I want you to have access to my research. I want the journals I publish in to be required to make it available to you after a reasonable time period (the shorter the better) as the NIH policy now does. It helps me professionally by making my work more widely disseminated. It helps me as a professional by making it possible to get access to scientific research, now inaccessible because of the predatory and outrageous charges of the large scientific publishers, the same people behind the Conyers legislation.

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain's article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

(b) Necessary Actions.--The Secretary is authorized to take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act, including, without limitation:

(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;

(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

In the clinical terminology of political science, Alaska is a classic "petrostate." That is, its political system is geared toward the maximization of oil "rents"--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of all other economic activities. Such polities have an inherent tendency toward corruption because of the close ties that naturally develop between government officials and energy executives and because oil revenues replace taxation as a source of revenue (Alaska has no state income tax), insulating officials from the scrutiny of taxpayers....

The question thus arises: how does Palin's experience as a maestro of petropolitics bear on her candidacy for vice president? To begin with, it should be clear that she has nothing in common with the leaders of any other state. Although it is true that Texas produces more oil per day than Alaska, Texas is no longer a petrostate, since its economy has become so much more diversified. Alaska is virtually alone in possessing a large (oil-supplied) state budget surplus--now about $5 billion--at a time when most states and the federal government are facing massive deficits and citizen groups are rising up in fury at the prospect of budget cuts. Palin is simply unqualified to deal with the demanding economic realities of any nation that is not a petrostate.

That a solidly anti-choice politician could become a standard-bearer for progressivism, the subject of hagiographic profiles in The Nation and elsewhere, speaks volumes about the low priority of women's rights to the self-described economic left, forever chasing the white male working-class vote.

A surprising number of readers felt pro-choicers should shut up about their silly little issue and embrace Kucinich in the interests of progressive unity.

In his latest attempt at a total makeover, John McCain said today that if he were president, he'd fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC, for keeping in place "trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino."

McCain's former economic adviser is ex-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. On Dec. 15, 2000, hours before Congress was to leave for Christmas recess, Gramm had a 262-page amendment slipped into the appropriations bill. It forbade federal agencies to regulate the financial derivatives that greased the skids for passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors.

We've got an exclusive story on medical neglect at the only federal prison hospital for women, dirt on anti-gay-marriage but prostitute-going Senator David Vitter, a look at misogyny within polygamous cults, and more …

Maybe the reason why Bitch isn't succeeding is because, although it's trudged along for 12 years, it just isn't successful. Has anyone stopped to think that it's the content, and not the mean, evil corporate world that's costing them money? A lot of women don't really subscribe to the stilted rhetoric of first-year women's studies. And it would seem that a lot of women don't really subscribe to Bitch either.

As the BPA audit ending in June 2007 shows, counting the Hill-delivered copies allows the New Republic to keep its subscriber numbers up above the 65,000 mark (although just barely, at 65,779) . That is a critical point because it means the magazine, which has been losing circulation since 2000, can say that it has stemmed the losses. Keeping subscriptions up at the magazine is a priority for its new owner, CanWest.

In an extraordinary turn, the Federal Reserve agreed Tuesday night to take a nearly 80 percent stake in the troubled giant insurance company, the American International Group, in exchange for an $85 billion loan.

The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the quasi-government mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank's history.

Summary: Rush Limbaugh said of the investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's dismissal of Alaska public safety commissioner Walter Monegan: "This is pure sexism in Alaska on the part of these old boys trying to get rid of Sarah Palin, and she didn't put up with it, and she didn't bend over and let them have their way."

One of my fabulous routines concerns a San Francisco men's club which lost its battle to exclude women from membership. The courts ruled that they had to admit women on the basis that businesswomen were being unfairly denied opportunities to do business. This is specious. How much business did women think they were going to get as a result of forcing their way in?
Anyway, after one year, the female members demanded their own exercise room. They were probably tired of being ogled by a bunch of slobbering men while they pumped iron in leotards and spandex. The men offered to install the first three exercise machines in the women's new workout room. The ladies were thrilled. When they arrived on that first exciting day they found, to their stunned amazement, a washing machine, an ironing board, and a vacuum cleaner. Heh, heh, heh. (The Way Things Ought To Be, p.142-45 Jul 2, 1992)

On the September 15 edition of MSNBC Live, while assessing Sen. Joe Biden's speech on the economy, Reuters Washington correspondent Jon Decker said that Biden does not "help[] his case when he's making the argument on economic issues wearing French cuffs and dressed to the nines. I think that he's really got to connect with these voters." MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing agreed, asserting: "Yeah, it's about the message, but also about the perception. I guess ... I was a little surprised too that he didn't have that coat off and roll up his sleeves." Contrary to the notion that wearing French cuffs may interfere with Biden's ability to "connect with these voters," French cuff shirts can be found for $37.50 on the website of J.C. Penney, a national department-store chain that many voters can presumably "connect" with.

McCain, in a speech in Jacksonville, Florida, this morning, said, "You know that there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is -- people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still -- the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times."

Quinn & Rose's Rose, whose co-host referred to NOW as the "National Organization for Whores," called Obama a "sexist pig"

Summary: On the Quinn & Rose radio show, co-host Rose Tennent claimed that Sen. Barack Obama's remark regarding Sen. John McCain's policies, "[Y]ou can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig," was directed at Gov. Sarah Palin. After saying she was "offended" and "appalled" by Obama's remark, Tennent stated, "You know what, you're a pig, you're a chauvinist pig is what you are, Barack." On previous shows, Tennent's co-host Jim Quinn introduced a segment about Sen. Hillary Clinton by playing the song "The Bitch Is Back" and referred to the National Organization for Women as the "National Organization for Whores."

"I'm assuming you guys heard this watching the news. I'm talking about John McCain's economic policies and I said here's more of the same, 'You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Suddenly, they say, `Oh you must be talking about the governor of Alaska!' "

McCain criticized Democratic contenders for offering what he called costly universal health care proposals that require too much government regulation. While he said he had not studied Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan, he said it was "eerily reminiscent" of the failed plan she offered as first lady in the early 1990s.

"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," he said of her proposal.

A deficit of that magnitude could severely constrain the next administration's agenda, regardless of whether Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican candidate, or Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), his Democratic opponent, wins in November. Each has promised billions in new tax cuts or new spending.

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing the oil and gas that energy companies barter to the government instead of making cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such Royalty-in-Kind payments last year. The oil is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.

Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, the investigators found.

Devaney said the former head of the Denver Royalty-in-Kind office, Gregory W. Smith, used illegal drugs and had sex with subordinates. The report said Smith also steered government contracts to a consulting business that was employing him part-time.

When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, nurturing, cautious and emotionally responsive. Men tend to be more competitive, assertive, reckless and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear.

What's not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists contend that these are innate traits inherited from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists asserts that both sexes' personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time nurturing children and more time in jobs outside the home.

To test these hypotheses, a series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the variation is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India's or Zimbabwe's than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.

These findings are so counterintuitive that some researchers have argued they must be because of cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But after crunching new data from 40,000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level external barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being revived.

This has been going on for years. As I wrote in response to the uproar generated at places like The New Republic over the fact that MSNBC has now given an actual liberal, Rachel Maddow, her own show and is thereby jeopardizing non-partisan, objective, high-minded journalism:

Over the past seven years, the following people have hosted prime-time cable news shows: Joe Scarborough (MSNBC), Michael Savage (MSNBC), Glenn Beck (CNN), Tucker Carlson (MSNBC), Nancy Grace (CNN), Bill O'Reilly (Fox) and Sean Hannity (Fox). None of that seemed to bother the likes of [TNR's Sacha] Zimmerman. None of that was depicted as the downfall of objective journalism or the destruction of civil, elevated, high-minded discourse.

Several of those hosts had and continue to have atrocious ratings (Carlson, Beck, Scarborough), yet were kept for years.

Beyond that, network and cable shows routinely convene panels filled with right-wing views and devoid of anything remotely approaching liberalism, and that creates no controversy.

One final point.

How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time with her family and to be Vice-President. How dare they do that?

When did they ever ask a man that question?

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.


While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

John McCain will bring about the change that will create jobs and prosperity…let's talk specifics…John McCain will lower taxes so our economy can grow. He will reduce government spending to strengthen our dollar. He will expand free trade so we can be even more competitive. He will lead us to energy independence so we can be free of foreign oil. And he'll do it with an all-of-the-above approach, including nuclear power and off-shore drilling.

[ chants of "Drill, baby, drill"]

Giuliani laughs as the audience chants.

This and a lot more is the kind of change we need…

John McCain will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad. For 4 days in Denver the Democrats were afraid to use the words Islamic terrorism. i believe they think that it is politically incorrect to say it…please tell me who they are insulting if they say Islamic terrorism. They are insulting terrorists. A great concern for me, they rarely mentioned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

NEW DELHI — An old woman missing her upper front teeth holds a child in rumpled clothes — who is wearing a Fendi bib (retail price, about $100).

A family of three squeezes onto a motorbike for their daily commute, the mother riding without a helmet and sidesaddle in the traditional Indian way — except that she has a Hermès Birkin bag (usually more than $10,000, if you can find one) prominently displayed on her wrist.

Elsewhere, a toothless barefoot man holds a Burberry umbrella (about $200).

Welcome to the new India — at least as Vogue sees it.

Vogue India's August issue presented a 16-page vision of supple handbags, bejeweled clutches and status-symbol umbrellas, modeled not by runway stars or the wealthiest fraction of Indian society who can actually afford these accessories, but by average Indian people.

Perhaps not surprisingly, not everyone in India was amused.

Is Sarah Palin the first nominee on a major-party presidential ticket whose daughter got pregnant out of wedlock? Or is she just the first whose daughter didn't get an abortion?

If any of these daughters conceived, but no pregnancy or birth was reported, what happened? One possibility is miscarriage. But the Guttmacher analysis suggests a different answer: Most unintended pregnancies in the higher income and education brackets end in abortion.

Remember that before you judge or poke fun at Sarah Palin. She's not the candidate whose daughter messed up. She's the candidate who didn't get rid of the mess.

Yet, last night lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and the American Trucking Association put on a raucus six-hour party at a downtown bar featuring music by the band "Hookers and Blow." There was no evidence of any actual prostitutes or cocaine.