Here are excerpts from the monthly Harper's Index, not yet on line:
? Minimum number of people killed by CIA drone attacks on Pakistan last year: 607? Number of those who appeared on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: 2
? Percentage of the GDP that will be taken as federal revenue this year: 14.8
? Last year in which the percentage was this low: 1950
? Age of the youngest person facing life without parole in the United States: 13
? Average salary difference between a starting New York public school teacher and a first-year private lawyer in 1970: $2000
? Today: $106,000
? ? ? ? ?
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
The fear created by 9/11 has already cost the lives of several Iraqi women and children. The car bomber has managed to turn the US troops deeply suspcious of the Iraqis, who were actually [grateful] Saddam has been set running.Having lived through 9/11, and believe me, there is nothing like seeing an F-15 fly over Central Park at 3,000 feet armed, I'm mystified at the sense of fear which has gripped this country. The whole freedom fries debacle and the boycott of French food is not a rational reaction.
Americans have simply refused to come to grips with two things: one, the intense hatred for our policies around the world, only made more intense by the Iraq war, two, the paranoia which has swept across suburban America. The whole idea of plastic sheeting and duct tape was as logical as duck and cover and a future generation will laugh heartily at images of Tom Ridge telling us to buy things most people would have under their kitchen sink.
Dr. Phil was talking to some subur[b]an woman frightened to death of terrorism and I had to laugh. I have friends who survived 9/11, there isn't a firehouse which didn't lose a member that day, I smelled the burning remains of human beings for days, living five miles away from WTC, my friend swept "ash"-really human remains and paper-from her apartment for days, since, at the time she lived in downtown Brooklyn. We are all getting on with our lives. No Al Qaeda team is coming to wreak havoc on her subdivision.
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