....In the last week, the administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have signaled a new willingness to work with Democrats to try to secure their support for three pending trade deals — with Panama, Peru and Colombia. The focus of their talks has been guarantees for the rights of workers in countries with which the United States has negotiated trade accords, including a ban on child labor and forced labor.

“There’s no question that there’s been a change on the Republican side,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Monday. “They refused to talk about these things before, and now they’re talking.”

But it is still not clear how Democrats will respond. Mr. Rangel said that they remained highly skeptical....

The talks over labor standards were due to accelerate this week, with Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative, on one side, and Mr. Rangel and Mr. McCrery on the other. Another crucial negotiator is Representative Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the trade subcommittee of Ways and Means.

The negotiators are trying to complete a broad agreement leading to passage of....

more & in full @

G.O.P. Shift Is Seen on Trade

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, New York Times, March 6

with a little "don't ask, don't tell" thrown in:

"Disinvitation by Obama Is Criticized"

By Jodi Kantor, New York Times, March 6

Excerpts:

CHICAGO, March 5 — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama’s presidential announcement.....

But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.....

Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.....

Since Mr. Obama made his presidential ambitions clear, conservatives have drawn attention to his close relationship to Mr. Wright and to the church’s emphasis on black empowerment. Tucker Carlson of MSNBC called the precepts “racially exclusive” and “wrong.” Last week, on the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes,” Erik Rush, a conservative columnist, called the church “quite cultish, quite separatist.”

In Monday’s interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.

“When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.”

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

Naughty Little Red Book:

The People’s Republic of Sex Kittens and Metrosexuals

By DAVID BARBOZA

New York Times March 4, 2007 (Shanghai)

....this powerful burst of sexual energy seems both a symbol of how rapidly China’s transformation is unfolding and, to some, a harbinger of the troubles ahead for a nation that will inevitably struggle to absorb its newfound freedoms....

Chinese Shrug Off Losses as Market Swings Back

By DAVID BARBOZA and KEITH BRADSHER

New York Times, March 1, 2007 (Shanghai, Feb. 28)

Cashing In on Communism:

In the land of Mao, getting rich is finally glorious. It's also complicated.

By MAUREEN FAN

Washington Post Magazine, February 18, 2007

Excerpt from the above with hard-to-find demographic numbers:

....Any early belief that increasingly free enterprise would lead to political liberalization was crushed in the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators by government troops in Tiananmen Square. Many entrepreneurs joined the students, calling not just for democracy but also for an end to government corruption. Much, but not all, business came to a standstill, until 1992 when Deng took a now-famous tour of the south, a trip that generated hundreds of newspaper articles and at least 20 books. Though 88 and already ailing, and with many of his pronouncements issued by a daughter, Deng promoted a package of economic reforms. He thought fair competition would stimulate business and allow some people to get rich, which would slowly spur others to follow suit. On his southern tour, he repeated a phrase he first used in October 1985 when meeting with a U.S. business group in Beijing: "Rang Yi Bu Fen Ren Xian Fu Qi Lai" (Let Some People Get Rich First). This call for economic exemplars was erroneously translated by Western media into the much more black-and-white "To Get Rich is Glorious," which became a catchphrase in the West for another burst of entrepreneurial activity in China. Though Deng continued to praise socialism, his push for economic reform became enshrined in the constitution and in Communist Party literature.

Since then, the booming Chinese economy has been one of the biggest stories in the world. Wealth and conspicuous consumption are climbing in a country where the average per-capita income has only just jumped to $145 a month (in Beijing, it's $209 a month). On the mainland, about 175 million, or 13.5 percent, of consumers have become what many Chinese scholars consider to be middle class, earning as much as $30,000 a year, the China Association of Branding Strategy reported recently. These consumers have managed to accumulate significant savings, yet often spend an entire month's salary on a single luxury item: a wallet, a watch or jewelry.

That group is expected to grow within 10 years to nearly 260 million, or 20 percent of the population, said Lu Xueyi, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences professor. By then, China could be the world's biggest luxury market, analysts predict.

Another 320,000 to 500,000 people report enough income -- about $60,000 a year -- to put them into an upper-middle class. And because most Chinese do not disclose their exact wealth, experts say there are likely to be many more. Many of these Chinese live in gated communities. They pay $385 covers to entertain clients at karaoke clubs such as Shanghai's L.A. Disco. They spend $3,650 to mingle on a yacht at a "diamond bachelor" matchmaking party.

A far smaller, but more visible, group are the super rich. No. 1 on the 2006 Forbes China Rich List is 37-year-old Huang Guangyu, worth $2.3 billion and the owner of a chain of discount electronics stores. Of the top 40 on the list, more than a quarter are younger than 40. Their combined net worth was $38 billion, up 46 percent from $26 billion in 2005. There seems to be no real cutoff, but the minimum asset levels used by a rival rich list, Rupert Hoogewerf's Hurun Report, are telling. In 1999, people on his list had at least 50 million RMB (about $6.4 million) but this year, the lower cutoff had soared 1,600 percent, to 800 million RMB (about $100 million).

Recently, President Hu Jintao has responded to the growing gap between rich and poor by demanding that more attention be paid to a "harmonious society." Authorities have imposed luxury taxes on boats, golf clubs and diamond watches. But this has only encouraged the wealthy to fly to Hong Kong and buy such items there, where the luxury tax is lower. When not shopping, many mainlanders visit a famous 24-karat gold toilet and $3.5 million bathroom, owned by a local jeweler and displayed in a tourist exhibition hall.

The urge to flaunt economic success competes with the desire to keep a low profile. While many Chinese are flattered by the prestige of landing on various "rich lists," they also fear the publicity and the extra scrutiny from tax collectors, who seem to follow no known assessment standards.

Even so, wealth is beginning to bring other privileges. In Jiangsu province, just north of Shanghai, authorities announced last year that "large taxpayer" entrepreneurs who pay the government more than $375,000 a year get to help decide whether an official is dismissed or promoted....

Related shorts:

China: Growth Creates Migrant ‘Underclass’

By DAVID LAGUE'

New York Times, March 2, 2007

Although the estimated 200 million urban migrant workers in China have fueled the country’s rapid economic growth, they continue to suffer abuse and discrimination, and the authorities should do more to ensure that they were properly paid and provided with essential services, Amnesty International said in a report. Terming the migrants a growing urban underclass, the report said they were routinely exploited, lived in dire conditions and were denied health care and other services because they were ineligible for residence permits in the cities where they worked.

World Briefing, Asia:

China: Reining in the Rich on One-Child Policy

By REUTERS

March 2, 2007

China plans to punish famous and wealthy Chinese who breach the policy of one child per couple by paying to have more children, The Beijing News reported. The rich and famous will face “double punishment” — fines and a ban from accepting “future awards” — if they break the law, the newspaper said. It did not elaborate. “We found out that most celebrities and rich people have two children, and 10 percent of them have three,” it quoted Yu Xuejun, an official at the Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.

World Briefing, Asia:

China: 1,314,480,000 and Counting

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 2, 2007

China’s population grew by almost seven million people last year, to 1,314,480,000, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report.

...The Cherokees, so proud that they survived the racism and greed that forced them to leave the East and settle in Oklahoma, are embroiled in a debate that is dredging up some of the most painful chapters of their history. The fundamental question they are asking is: Who is Cherokee? And it is raising ugly accusations of racism, from both inside and outside the tribe.

At issue is a group barely known outside of Indian country, the Freedmen. These are the descendants of black slaves owned by Cherokees, free blacks who were married to Cherokees and the children of mixed-race families known as black Cherokees, all of whom joined the Cherokee migration to Oklahoma in 1838.

The Freedmen became full citizens of the Cherokee Nation after emancipation, as part of the Treaty of 1866 with the United States. But in 1983, by tribal decree, the Freedmen were denied the right to vote in tribal elections on the ground they were not “Cherokee by blood.”

They sued, and in December won their challenge. But that has prompted a bigger fight. On Saturday, the Cherokee Nation is holding a special election — believed to be the first of its kind — to decide, in essence, whether to kick the Freedmen out of the tribe....

from

By EVELYN NIEVES, March 3, 2007 New York Times

filed TAHLEQUAH, Okla., March 1.

The results?

Cherokee vote against including descendants of black slaves.

More: Cherokee vote revokes citizenship of 2,800

Noticeably Absent From the Giuliani Campaign: His Children

By RUSS BUETTNER and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

New York Times, March 3, 2007

(Print edition blurb: "Other candidates use their families as an asset, but Guiliani cannot")

and then going to google to find this

Giuliani's 'operatic' history a hurdle

The Australian, Australia, March 5, 2007

("AS Rudy Giuliani's political star shoots higher, his family life is fizzling, and has pundits questioning whether an apparent break with his children will...")

and this

SON-BURNED RUDY'S TOUGHEST TEST

New York Post, March 4, 2007

By NILES LATHEM.

("WASHINGTON - Rudy Giuliani's biggest challenge in his White..."

I'd say all the todo about the New York Times' coverage on the Clinton marriage a few months ago being a prejudicial plot against Hillary looks more and more like simple whining about reality of politics. It's equal opportunity: political reporters will cover whatever juicy "human interest" stories they can find, no matter the party or stance. Tabloid-style coverage is part of political coverage in a democracy. (Ask Christine Keeler. Or alternately, see how many Afghani citizens you can find who would vote for someone who was revealed to regularly eat pork and hang out in bars.)

The effect of such coverage on a candidates' fate is all in how the candidate and his/her campaign handles it; example: Ma Ma, Where's my Pa?" ....."Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"