Sad, I know....

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

you are the media you consume.

Seven Nato members signed a deal today to provide staff and funds for a new research centre designed to boost the alliance's defences against cyber-terrorism.

Defence ministers from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovakia met in Brussels today where they signed an agreement to finance the cyber defence facility, to be based in Estonia.

Estonia, regarded as one of Europe's most internet-savvy nations, proposed the centre back in 2003, but it was only after last year's crippling cyber attacks against the Baltic nation that alliance leaders were convinced it was needed, said Major Raul Rikk, who will head the centre.

The facility will begin operatiing in August. A staff of 30 specialists -- recruited from Nato member states -- will conduct research and training on cyber warfare.

Climb down the stony banks of the massive Sau reservoir in the mountains above Barcelona and you get a real sense of why this famous city is so short of water that it's resorted to bringing in emergency supplies - by ship.

Nestling in a deep valley of stunning cliffs and forests, this vital source of water has sunk so low it's exposed the eerie sight of a medieval village that was flooded when the reservoir was opened in the 1960s.

The huddle of ancient stone buildings, including a church with its spire, has now re-emerged into the light and stands as a potent symbol of the severity of this water crisis.

As violence in Iraq continues -- clashes today left 11 dead and 19 injured -- President Bush has for the first time revealed the great sacrifice he's made for the sake of our soldiers: he's given up golf.

But a sober press release only sees him through until tomorrow morning. Then he has to face the same vast universe of problems he had before him today, except they will loom much larger and much more sharply. Almost every potentially contestable Republican seat is in play now. The "every man for himself" mentality that has taken hold amongst the GOP will become even more firmly entrenched, dooming already-weak NRCC fundraising. In Congress, discipline will likely suffer as vulnerable members (ie, much of the caucus) are tempted to side with the Dems. And we may even see some more retirements. Things are going to get much, much worse before they ever get better for the GOP - if they do at all.

The postal regulator has called for Royal Mail to be partly privatised to safeguard the quality of the UK's mail delivery service.

Postcomm warned that Royal Mail's financial difficulties would worsen unless bold action was taken.

Nigel Stapleton, Postcomm's chairman, told the BBC that without private sector involvement, Royal Mail may require a government subsidy.

Shock! Horror! Government spending money on public services is the absolutely worst thing that could happen. Ever.

I think there is a macro which goes with this story...

Member of the Anti-Fabulousness League since 1987.

Our Great Economic U-Turn

The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. The top-earning hedge fund manager of 2007, in fact, made about as much last year in nominal dollars ($3.7 billion) as J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, was worth in the mid-1970s.

Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans.

I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration - in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse, or by the strategies that enabled small Confederate armies to win victories for slavery over much larger Union forces.

(...)

The feeling I get from absorbing all these facts about the state of labor comes close to the nauseated dread that washes over me when I stay up late to read one of those what-if stories in which Hitler wins World War II. Could this really have happened to my country?

It has not merely "happened"; it has been done to us. The distinction is an important one to keep in mind as we survey the ruins of the affluent society. What has overtaken America's working people is not a natural disaster like "globalization," and not even some kind of societal atavism in which countries regress mysteriously to their 19th-century selves. This is a man-made catastrophe, a result that proceeded directly from the deliberate beatdown of organized labor and the wrecking of the liberal state.

It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections - or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter - as a referendum on plutocracy.

So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about "change" and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers' utopia - where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%.

Holy Crap.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes