Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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Jerry Weissman: The Art & Science of Oprah Winfrey: Part II Top
Part II: The Science The science that fuels Oprah Winfrey's enormous popularity is empathy , the universal human dynamic that has recently been gaining more and more attention in the media and scientific communities. Empathy, evolved from the Greek word for emotion or affection, refers to shared or vicarious feelings, as distinct from sympathy , which is more about pity, and implies separate feelings. On Miss Winfrey's show, the empathy that resonates between her and her guests--whether they are celebrities or men and women from ordinary walks of life--fairly jumps off the video screen. In a virtuous cycle of emotions, that empathy then generates further empathy in her audiences. What makes these dynamics all the more significant is that those feelings in her audience are involuntary . The evidence for this powerful bond comes in a 2004 scientific study made by a team of British neurologists. In the study, volunteer couples were invited into a research laboratory where the scientists attached electrodes to each person's brain. First, one member of the couple was administered a very mild electric shock. In reaction, a particular area of that person's brain produced an impulse. Then the mild electric shock was administered to the second member of the couple. When the first person observed the partner's reaction to the shock, the first person's own brain produced the same impulse in the same area as when they were shocked themselves--even though that person was not experiencing the shock. What the first person saw produced the same reaction as they felt . While Miss Winfrey is not in the business of inflicting pain, she is clearly in the business of understanding the pain--and pleasure--as well as the entire gamut of her guests' emotions and sharing them with her audiences. That sharing produces powerful contagious empathic forces. Miss Winfrey connects with 46 million people every week in the United States, and with millions more in 134 countries around the globe. Tomorrow we will see how Oprah's art communicates that science to her devoted audiences. More on Oprah
 
Srinivasan Pillay: Changing The Brain's Radio Station: From Suffering to Relief Top
Last week we started a discussion on viewing the brain as a receiver and transmitter of suffering rather than the source of it. Much like a radio tunes in and out of radio waves when we change radio stations, can we tune in and out of suffering? While pain is an unavoidable reality in life, do we have to have to suffer to endure this pain? There are essentially two basic aspects to the experience of pain: one is the actual pain itself, and the other is the attention that we pay to that pain. The first question that arises is: if we stop paying attention to pain, does this reduce the pain? Before we take a look at this more closely, think of what it is like when a two-year old who is playing somewhat over-zealously hits her hand on something (e.g. the metal leg of a table) and starts to cry. There are several ways that one can try to stop the child from crying. If you've ever hit the table leg with your own hand and said, "Naughty table leg!" you might have noticed that even though the child was bawling, the child might stop crying instantly and look at you hitting the table leg. Another response that may stop the crying is to rub the affected spot on the hand or to make funny faces that make the child laugh. Why do each of these responses stop the crying? When you hit the table leg and reprimand it or when you rub the hand or make faces, you are effectively distracting the child from the pain. While the child was initially experiencing the pain and the child's brain was tuned into it, your actions essentially asked the child's brain to tune into something else. You changed what the child's brain was tuning into and in so doing, stopped the crying. But does this work in adults? Absolutely. Distraction as a form of pain reduction is commonly seen in adult situations. It is always a wonder to watch people run marathons, motivated by reaching the finish line, and then collapse directly after reaching it. They have distracted themselves from the pain they were experiencing by focusing on the goal and reaching the finish line. If they focused on the pain, they might never have made it. But all of these examples are of physical pain. Can the same be said of mental pain or anguish? Martin Seligman, a scholar on positive psychology, did a study on severely depressed individuals. He asked them to write down three blessings every day. Also, he encouraged them to talk to others about their blessings. This form of "positive distraction" led to a significant improvement in depression by tuning out of the depression station and tuning into the blessing station. But what is the evidence, if any, that the brain can actually do this? Well, there is increasing evidence from multiple research studies. The basic idea is that if you take two groups of people and administer the same amount of pain to both, the group that focuses on the pain experiences the pain as greater than the group that focuses on something else. Also, the more the brain's attentional center is activated when focusing on the pain, the greater the pain. By changing what we attend to, we can change what the brain is tuning into and what our own experience is. By opening ourselves to that vast source of consciousness energy that is out there, and by focusing on the thought-waves that contain healing and positive energy, we can focus the brain's attentional center on something other than suffering and reduce the pain we are experiencing. Here are some practical suggestions on tuning out suffering: 1. If your suffering is not based on anything specific but on the drudgery of getting up and going to work every day, ask yourself: what three things will I do for myself today that are going to make my day great. Then go ahead and do them. 2. If your suffering is based on something specific like not having enough money, rather than focusing on how you do not have enough money, focus on methods that you can use to attract more to your life. There is a lot of money out there in the world. But tuning into the "money station" can be tricky. "Tuning in" does not simply mean moving from left to right like the red marker that moves with a radio dial. That red marker is actually marking a different frequency. "Tuning in" means changing your frequency to a state of consciousness located deeply within yourself. Some reach this by prayer, others by meditation, and still others by hard work and service. Whatever your method, if you can tune into the frequency where giving and receiving act in concert, you will attract money. And to attract more money, your giving has to be from the most valuable part of you in the most valuable way that you can give. When you reach this value and share it, the value will come back to you. 3. Reduce your exposure to negative events in a day. Often, we listen to the news and disaster stories all day. The sensation of negative news can be distracting and therefore helpful, but after the sensation is gone, your brain is left with having to process and store this negative information that just adds to your own plight. It makes it more difficult to focus your attention on your own blessings or on positive ideas. 4. When I talk about tuning into the vast consciousness out there, what I am saying is that you should expect the best. Studies have shown that people in pain who expect pain relief experience significant pain relief compared to those who don't. Research has also been done in people with low back pain showing that those people who expect to recover do so. The theory behind this is that expecting relief activates the relief pathways in the brain. 5. Don't focus on past failures. Instead, focus on how you have reached this point in your life and on your strengths. The brain needs to be trained to focus on positive things for it to start to do this automatically. Excessive doubt is the static that makes it difficult to tune into a brighter station. So, here we see that even after experiencing pain, if we tune into something other than the pain, we have a greater chance of experiencing less pain. Depending on the type and amount of pain, this is, of course, not always immediately possible. But we can train our brains to focus on goals, expect the best and examine positive things in our lives in a way that can change how we handle the downs in life. Next week we will take a look at the brain's "image channel" to look in more detail at how tuning into this channel can help us meet our goals. More on Happiness
 
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Don McNay: The Search for a Bailout End Game Top
We can't return, we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game -Joni Mitchell I've been opposed to every bailout plan. All of them. It's not because I am a mean jerk. It's because I've never seen an end game. I understand that the quicker the markets hit a bottom, the quicker we go back to the top. Every bailout plan reminds me of an economic re-run of the Iraq war: There is a lot of panic. A hastily written plan sweeps through Congress without scrutiny. The plan is expected to "shock and awe" us. We then find that the intervention created a bigger mess than we had before we started. Thus, we keep throwing more resources at it. The problems never go away and the ramifications will haunt the nation for decades. The latest bailouts have been the economic version of "the surge." It is time to start our withdrawal from bailouts just like we are withdrawing from the mess in Iraq. Going back to the Wall Street bailouts, doing nothing would have been better than where we are. Government should have done one thing: protect bank depositors and insurance policyholders. After that, it should have let the Citigroups and AIGs of the world play in the "free markets" that they so embraced when they wanted deregulation. . Instead we propped them up. Now Citigroup and AIG are back looking for more. If we had let them fold, we would already be on the rebound. Someone could have taken the leftover parts and started creating businesses that made sense. Those businesses would be hiring instead of laying off. We are going to get to a bottom, whether we go there slowly or quickly. Let's get there quickly and get it over with. I was in favor of the public works project that I thought President Obama was proposing. I supported President Obama and liked the idea that he was going to push a massive roads and bridges plan. I didn't mind spending tax dollars to get a bridge or a road. I was hoping for a nice bridge between Kentucky and Cincinnati, to replace one that is going to fall in the river someday. I recently missed a couple of weeks of news when my power was knocked out by an ice storm. When I got back online, I saw a stimulus plan but I didn't see my bridge on the list anywhere. Now we have a lot of things related to housing. Somebody in Washington might think it will stimulate the economy, but no one is going to buy a house unless he feels confident about his economic future. Or unless the housing market hits bottom and it becomes impossible to pass up a bargain. No one is going to feel confident until the markets have finished the boom and bust cycle. We had an overheated boom. Now we are having an overheated bust. It is going to take time to work itself out. I keep hoping someone in Washington 'gets it". I keep getting disappointed. Maybe it is because all of the people in Washington keep talking to other people in Washington. As I mentioned, Obama was my guy. I didn't just want him to be President; I wanted him to be a great president. Then he picked his economic team. It was a bunch of people who spent most of their lives in Washington or on Wall Street. They went to the same schools and get invited to the same dinner parties as the gang that just left town. Somewhere on his team, I would like for President Obama to have an adviser who sold insurance in Minnesota or ran a corner grocery in Tennessee. Those are people who understand street level economics. I understand the President's urge to pick "brand names." President Johnson felt the same when he was selecting leaders to run the Vietnam War. Those who study that period of history will conclude that being surrounded by the "best and brightest' did not serve President Johnson all that well. I feel a little lonely because my thoughts don't fit into either political party's doctrine. A lot of Republicans were preaching "free markets" when they really meant that they wanted big companies to be free to walk all over us. Letting big corporations do what they please got us into this mess. It happened on President Bush's watch. The Wall Street bailouts were proposed by President Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulsen. The Republicans can't walk away and pretend it's not their problem. They helped get us here. My friends in the Democratic Party don't like that I am not falling in line behind the President. For the country's sake, I want the President's plans to work. But so far, none of them have worked for me. Some friends throw poll numbers at me, hoping that I will "go along with the crowd." When someone pushes me based on "being part of the gang," my mind goes back to the movie Man For All Seasons about the fight between Thomas More and Henry VIII. Big moments in history are made by those who don't "go along with the crowd." John Kennedy said that history should be the final judge of our deeds. I hope our elected leaders start thinking that way. Nothing I am saying is historic. It is simple but takes political courage for our leaders to implement. I want us to hit the bottom, bounce back and get on a better road. We are not going to bounce quickly if we keep trying to cushion the fall. That puts me in a partisan limbo land. Part of America is there with me. There has been a ton of media attention given to CNBC commentator Rick Santelli's rant about President Obama's housing proposal. I watch CNBC every day (although I started watching some of Fox Business News because they don't yell as much) and Santelli has long been one of my favorites. He was opposed to the Wall Street bailout back when some of his co-workers stopped being journalists and started being Wall Street cheerleaders. CNBC has been hyping the rant for ratings purposes, but it has been fascinating to see the strong reactions to Santelli, both pro and con. The remarks of a television commentator surrounded by (mostly male and white) commodity traders is not a reflection of a true cross section of America. Nevertheless, Rick touched a nerve. People either loved what he said or hated what he said. But few people were neutral. Expect for maybe me. I've seen Rick described as a modern day Howard Beale, the mad television anchor in the movie, Network. The Network character I want to see step forward is Ned Beatty's Arthur Jensen, who tells Beale, "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature and you will atone!" Each time we do another form of government bailout, we are meddling with the primal forces of economic nature. And every time we do, the economy is making us atone. It is time to let the markets reach their natural bottom and end the days of atonement. Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the Founder of McNay Settlement Group in Richmond, Kentucky. He is an award winning, syndicated financial columnist and the author of Son of a Son of a Gambler and t he Unbridled World of Ernie Fletcher. McNay is Treasurer for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. More on Stimulus Package
 
John Bruhns: What Obama Is Risking In Afghanistan Top
President Obama's campaign slogan was "Change we can believe in." Americans, desperate for change, gave Obama a clear victory. Now in power, he's realizing that he can't deliver that change -- at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama said during his campaign: "I will meet with military leaders and the secretary of Defense and give them a new mission - bring our troops home safely and responsibly from Iraq within 16 months." But there is now no plan to fully withdraw our troops from Iraq within that time frame. After meeting with military leaders, Mr. Obama is considering a 23-month withdrawal. Violence in Iraq has been in decline. But the situation remains dicey. We're very likely to see a spike in violence at some point in the near future. When that happens, the new 23-month withdrawal plan will be extended. On the Afghan front, Obama has just ordered 17,000 more troops into the effort. The timing is pertinent. The Pakistanis, our supposed allies, have agreed to a truce with the Taliban, providing them sanctuary in Swat, an area roughly the size of Delaware. The Taliban version of Muslim sharia law has been imposed, and the Pakistanis have suspended all military operations against them. The Pakistani government has denied our troops access to this area. Pakistani troops have even shot at our helicopters flying reconnaissance missions. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been in resurgence for years. And this concession by Pakistan will give the Taliban ample time to prepare for our new troops who'll be just walking in the door. Why just 17,000? Because that's all we can spare due to the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the turnaround time needed for those returning from combat. The Afghan surge is a terribly bad idea. But Obama can initiate it because of his high approval ratings. Sound familiar? George W. Bush's ratings were quite similar before the invasion of Iraq. Imagine if Bush were still in office and pulled this stunt? The crowd I run with on the left would be screaming in protest. I'm screaming, waiting for the rest of the anti-war gang to voice disagreement with this certain fiasco. Bush bet the farm on Iraq and let Afghanistan fall by the wayside. We missed our window of opportunity to defeat al Qaeda in the early years of the war and nab Bin Laden. So who are we going to be fighting? Obama needs to define the mission. The Soviets bogged down in Afghanistan with 100,000 boots on the ground. The United States backed the Mujahedeen for Cold War reasons. After we helped the Mujahedeen defeat the Soviets, they turned on us. Will we now rely on the Northern Alliance in a similar fashion? After all, they're an offspring of the Mujahedeen. They fought the Taliban, but their ideologies are almost identical. And despite Obama's commitment of troops, Gen. David McKiernan, overseeing the war in Afghanistan, can't ensure success. He has emphasized the difference between the troop surge in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan, saying the Afghanistan surge won't be short-lived -- we'll be there for years. Most U.S. combat troops arriving in this first wave will be sent to southern Afghanistan, an area McKiernan describes as a stalemate, at best. If our troops get bogged down in the Kandahar area, what will become of the rest of the country? Al Qaeda and the Taliban will surely be enticed to regain ground in other areas. All while war-weary NATO troops work on their plans to extricate themselves from the situation. I see a dilemma. We have to do something. But 17,000 troops won't make a difference, except to cost more lives and money. What does Afghani president Hamid Karzai have to contribute? Not a whole lot. I'm not sure we can trust Karzai, a former member of the Mujahedeen, early supporter of the Taliban and former lobbyist for the U.S. oil company Unocal. After eight years of U.S. involvement, the Afghan army and defense ministry still rely heavily on U.S. troops for most security operations. And don't forget the extremely challenging terrain, especially in a war. The country is extremely mountainous, with limited water, with blistering summers, and frigid winters. And don't forget the borders with China, Iran, Russia and Pakistan, creating worries about regional conflict. Americans are fed up with war. History shows that no war can be won without the support of the people. And the economy is so dire it's hard to understand why Obama would allow such an expensive military commitment. I know the president is tasked with protecting the American people. But Mr. Obama is moving too quickly without doing his homework. See my column in today's Philadelphia Daily News. More on President Obama
 
Annie Leibovitz Pawns Rights To All Her Photographs Top
Last fall, Annie Leibovitz, the photographer, borrowed $5 million from a company called Art Capital Group. In December, she borrowed $10.5 million more from the same firm. As collateral, among other items, she used town houses she owns in Greenwich Village, a country house, and something else: the rights to all of her photographs. In other words, according to loan documents filed with the city, one of the world's most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off.
 
Jonathan A. Schein: Rock on, Rockefellers! Top
For the second time in a year, the descendants of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil (the company that became Exxon Mobil Corp.) have backed a resolution demanding the company loosen fossil fuel's hold as its main source of revenue, as well as move more ambitiously into renewable energy technologies. According to published reports, the resolution, which will be presented at Exxon Mobil's annual meeting in May, will require the company to "investigate the potential impact of climate change and compare the outcome in which Exxon Mobil becomes a leader in renewable energy." Last year the family presented a similar resolution and it received 10.4 percent shareholder backing. According to Neva Goodwin, a great granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Exxon Mobil is simply not doing enough to move into renewables, and its investment plans are overly-dependant on increased oil demand from developing countries. Exxon Mobil has responded by stating that it is spending investment dollars on researching increased energy efficiency through renewables and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It's an interesting reaction. Instead of presenting specifics, the company seems to be offering affable generalities, and then changing the subject. Instead of deflecting the Rockefellers, Exxon Mobil should listen to what they are saying, if not from an environmental point of view, then from a simple business perspective. There may be such a thing as a genetic predisposition to capitalism ; in the 1870s, coal and wood were the main sources of energy in this country, not oil. John D. Rockefeller, however, had a vision about oil's potential, and by the late 1940s, it had surpassed coal as the nation's main energy supply. If history can be used as a gauge, Exxon Mobil might be wise to take some business advice for the future from the family that got them started. Jonathan A. Schein is the publisher of MetroGreenBusiness.com and GreenBuildingsJobs.com More on Green Energy
 
Beyonce's Oscar Nipple Slip (PHOTOS) Top
Beyonce's Oscar performance with Hugh Jackman was a broad, family-friendly tribute to the musical. But, she had a split second moment of nudity thanks to a bit of a wardrobe malfunction. Spotted by egotastic is a quick nipple slip. Below, Getty images from her performance, ending with an AP snap and a NSFW zoom. PHOTOS: More on Slideshows
 
Levi Felix: So You Think You Can Dance... For 26 Hours? Top
Causecast is a proud sponsor of UCLA Dance Marathon 2009. Thousands of Students, Celebrities, Performers and Activists United at UCLA to Fight Pediatric AIDS Last Weekend. The central motif of 2009 thus far has been hope - hope for change, hope for justice, hope for a new found LOVE for fellow Americans and all world citizens. At UCLA, students occupy the forefront of this movement, representing a new generation of activism and dedication to social equality. Nowhere, is this better illustrated than through UCLA's ever-growing Dance Marathon. A fundraiser for pediatric AIDS, organized and executed entirely by students, the event is more relevant at this moment in history than ever before. That is why, on February 21st-22nd, students, performers, celebrities, and corporate sponsors united to fight ignorance, demystify pediatric AIDS, raise money for research and resources, and have a blast. That is why the theme of Dance Marathon 2009 was LOVE. Dance Marathon at UCLA is the largest philanthropy event on the west coast organized and run entirely by students. In just seven years, the organization has donated nearly $1.4 million to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, One Heartland, and Project Kindle. Last year's event alone raised $384,507. And this year shaped up to be the biggest and best UCLA has ever seen. More than 1,200 dancers pledged to stay on their feet for a full 26 hours, acknowledging the struggle of children infected with HIV by fighting their own personal battle. And more than 1,500 additional students stopped by to offer "morale" for three-hour shifts or volunteer to keep the event running smoothly. With student involvement at a record high, Dance Marathon raised even more money to benefit the event's three amazing beneficiaries. "This is truly a threshold year for Dance Marathon - the event has become a UCLA tradition," said George Fistonich, the Director of Operations. "It is so inspiring to me that all this work is done not by professional organizations, but by students." Assistant Director Taylor Wirth similarly commended his fellow students for taking a stand in an international fight. "Dance Marathon places students at the forefront of social change, illustrating that this generation will not simply sit back and watch injustice unfold," Wirth said. The eighth annual Dance Marathon took place at the UCLA campus this weekend in Ackerman Grand Ballroom. The event commenced at 11: 00 a.m. on Saturday and continued for 26 hours until 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. The red carpet was rolled out on Saturday from 6:00 until 9:00 p.m. These three hours provided the perfect opportunity for media to capture celebrities supporting student activism and a worthy cause. More importantly, the chance to pose with their favorite celebrities was a dream come true for special guests from One Heartland and Project Kindle - campers who had been affected by HIV for most of their lives. Ultimately, the effects of Dance Marathon on the UCLA community extend far beyond a single weekend. Many students become deeply and personally connected to the cause, going on to volunteer at the camps that are funded through Project Kindle and One Heartland. Working to provide an experience filled with outdoor fun, art, drama, campfires, scavenger hunts, and other summer camp traditions, volunteers help to create a haven for those stigmatized by HIV/AIDS and a support group for those seeking to discuss their statuses free from judgment. "Kids can attend these camps and feel like any other child whereas in their daily lives there are often times where they are ostracized or identified by their HIV status alone," said Afarin Davari, the Director of Community Outreach and Education. "At camp no child is singled out as different; everyone is just there to have fun."
 
Tom Donohue: Economic Recovery: The Next Steps Top
Everybody knows that the economy is not doing well. We are in a deep recession. Credit markets are still largely frozen. Companies and consumers that are lucky enough to have cash are sitting on it. No one is sure where the bottom is. We have cause for concern, but not despair. We can emerge from this crisis stronger than before--if we keep our cool, act swiftly but thoughtfully, focus on solutions that really work, and not get distracted by political rhetoric that sounds good and feels good, but won't create a single American job. The first step toward recovery is to implement the stimulus bill signed by President Obama last week. It is not perfect, but the tax cuts and some of the spending measures will help create jobs and jolt the economy. Despite significant reservations, the U.S. Chamber supported this legislation because doing nothing would be irresponsible. With the markets functioning so poorly, the government is the only entity capable of jump-starting the economy. Once the economy improves, we will work hard to return government to its traditional role and put our nation back on a path toward fiscal responsibility. But a stimulus bill is only the beginning. The second step is the revival of key industries. In recent days, new proposals have been put forth to give U.S. automakers a better chance of surviving a steep decline in global auto sales and to keep responsible mortgage holders in their homes. These proposals should be carefully scrutinized to ensure that they would be fair to all parties (including the taxpayers!) and work as intended. But there can be no doubt that healthy auto and housing sectors are critical to jobs and economic vitality. The third step is restoring credit and confidence to the economy. We need a solid plan to fix what went wrong in the financial markets and restore them to full vitality. There is no silver bullet, and it won't be easy. The fourth step is to maintain our role as a global leader. Economic slowdowns have always bred isolationism and always with devastating results. In 1930, for example, America sharply raised tariffs, which helped turn a severe recession into the Great Depression. We must not make the same mistake today. Finally, we need to remain positive and confident. It may be hard to believe, but we really can talk ourselves into an even worse economy. These are tough times, and we face enormous challenges. But these challenges aren't nearly as big as the will, determination, and ingenuity of the American people. More on Recession
 
Suspect Arrested In Shooting Death Of Three Teens Top
The police arrested a suspect early this morning in the fatal shootings of three teenagers on the Southeast Side last week, officials said. Assistant Police Supt. James Jackson confirmed the arrest of a suspect believed to have been the shooter in the incident Friday afternoon near 87th and Exchange that left three dead -- 13-year-old Johnny Edwards, 17-year-old Kendrick Pitts and 15-year-old Raheem Washington.
 
Kathy Griffin Memoir Acquired For More Than $2 Million Top
The comedian Kathy Griffin is writing a memoir, and according to three sources with knowledge of the deal, her literary agent at Endeavor, former Dutton editor-in-chief Trena Keating, sold it at auction last week to an editor at Random House's Ballantine imprint for more than $2 million. Ms. Griffin, who got her start on the sitcom Suddenly Susan, stars in a successful reality TV show on Bravo (My Life on the D-List) and has a passionate fanbase that includes lots and lots of gay men.
 
NYT Repeats Pelosi Mouse Smear Debunked By Own Reporters Top
Okay, this is pretty interesting. As I noted here yesterday, the infamous GOP talking point that the stimulus package contains gobs of cash for saving marsh mice found its way into a New York Times story, without the paper mentioning that the claim is untrue. More on Stimulus Package
 
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Fred Whelan and Gladys Stone: Leave My Job in This Market? Top
You've been itching to leave your job for a while now and nothing exciting has cropped up in your current company. A recruiter calls with a great opportunity. In the past you would have jumped at this. But this time, there's a nagging voice that's telling you "You can't leave your job in this market. If you do, and there are layoffs in the new company, then you'll be first to go." So, you stay put wondering if you are making a big mistake by not pursuing this potential dream job. Should you stay or should you go? Before you decide to pass on this great opportunity, consider this: 1.The New Company is Hiring - While there are no guarantees, the fact that the new company is hiring in this economic climate is a good sign. Companies that are hiring in down markets are usually in industries that are not as negatively impacted by the recession. Because of this, they are less likely to be downsizing in the near future. 2.There's a Need for the Position - This new position is part of some strategic plan that they just put in place. After all, if they didn't value the position, they wouldn't be hiring for it. So, don't automatically assume that if a layoff does occur that this position will be affected. During the course of your interviewing, find out from the company how this position fits into their long term strategic plans. If they see it as something that is integral to their long term future, that's a good sign. Even if there are layoffs and you're new, don't assume that all layoffs are a function of tenure - LIFO (last in, first out). 3.Great Jobs Don't Come Along Every Day - You can't steal second with your foot on first. As Oprah says, "The greatest risk is never daring to risk". If you never put yourself in a position of potential risk, you will significantly reduce your ability to advance your career. This job sounds like a great opportunity because it is! The greater risk might be staying where you are. 4. There's No Security Where You Are - Wouldn't you kick yourself if you didn't take the new job for fear of being laid off, only to get laid off from your current company? No job carries with it a "lifetime guarantee", so you need to actively and consistently evaluate your career to determine when a job move is warranted. 5. It Ain't Happening at Your Current Company - This isn't a dig at your current company, it just means that this great new job doesn't exist where you are. If your current company can't offer other challenging positions, then it's just a matter of time before you'll leave anyway. If you decide to wait until the market turns around, you'll miss out on this great opportunity. If you are presented with a great new job opportunity evaluate all the pros and cons carefully, but realize that advancing your career can sometimes entail a certain degree of risk. There are no guarantees in life. You can minimize that risk by doing your homework, but don't let the fear of what might happen down the road prevent you from taking advantage of what appears to be a good career choice. Fred & Gladys Whelan Stone Executive Search and Coaching www.whelanstone.com More on Economy
 
Dan Gould: Poster Boy & Aakash Nihalani Remix the MoMA Collection Top
This article originally appeared on PSFK.com . Yesterday morning, on the way to the office, we noticed something was pleasantly different about the Museum of Modern Art's temporary display inside the Atlantic Avenue subway station. It seems (from the looks of the artwork) that Poster Boy and Aakash Nihalani had worked their magic overnight, and transformed several of the MoMA's art reproductions into new pieces. Classic works of art were remixed with samples from advertising and cut-outs of other pieces. Aakash Nihalani also spruced up the MoMA's advertisements and added some nice colored tape boxes in strategic spots around the station. Unfortunately, as of last night most of the remixed art had been taken down. It's a shame, because they were very well executed - and added a twist to the well known art used in the exhibit. If only the MTA could see the value in this unusual street art collaboration they might actually encourage more public participation. (And I think many people were waiting for this kind of thing to happen anyway.) For more pictures, please visit PSFK.com . To read more articles by Dan, please visit PSFK.com .
 
Jacqueline Novogratz: The Deep Imperfections Of Life Top
We are in Kibera, where one year ago a group of young men looted the Toi Market, killing a number of people and in burning down the market entirely, destroyed the livelihood of thousands of people. We are visiting the offices of Jamii Bora, Kenya's fastest-growing microfinance institution, with more than 170,000 borrowers. My organization, Acumen Fund, has invested in Jamii Bora's efforts to develop a community outside Nairobi that will house members, many of whom currently live in the Kibera slums. Kibera is 2.5 square kilometers, in which 1.5 million people live; the slum includes about 42 tribes. A mix of boys, though mostly Luo and Nubian, were at the core of the violence. Andrew, a Luo himself, and Gabriel Kadidi, a Kikuyu who was serving as Director of Communications for Jamii Bora, were charged with rebuilding Toi Market. They knew they needed to get the boys on their side before they rebuilt the market, or it would be torched again, with perhaps even with more violence. Jamii Bora devised a plan to "redistribute the marketplace" by expanding it from 1,776 stalls to about 2,500, providing a stall to each of the 200 young attackers. They also hired the boys to rebuild the market and provide security at night (every stall member now pays 10 shillings per month for security). John, the leader of the 200 boys who destroyed Toi Market, was given a place to work on the edge of the market, next to Jamii Bora's office. It was a controversial move by Jamii Bora, for this guy was known to have been serious trouble for nearly 15 years. John told us his story. "I dropped out of school as a young guy - I was really bright, you see, and there was nothing useful or interesting for me there. But then without school, I would sit home and be lonely without anything to do. A group of guys playing cards noticed me - and I noticed them. I approached the group one day and asked where they got the money to do this casino thing they were doing. The gambling looked cool to me. They told me I could have a job carrying water all day long for the women who made illegal brew - and for that, I'd be paid 200 Ksh (Kenyan Currency). "I was 19 years old and for the first time, was able to wear nice clothes, go out to dinners, and buy whatever I wanted. Life was good." The gang then offered him a job mugging people; he'd be paid 5,000 Ksh each time. "I saw that I could earn a lot and didn't need education to do it." By the time he was 30, John knew how to use every weapon available to the gangs, and everyone knew that fact. "I was the most respected because I could use all the weapons and I wasn't afraid. During the riots, I was among those who destroyed everything in this area. We thought now we have land and so now we can finally build our own houses." John and Andrew both knew that the other traders in the market now had to accept the fact that the dangerous boys who had done so much damage would now have the right to sell things besides them, in the same market where they lost everything. "I went to the women and asked for their help. I said, "Look if you help these boys, we will have peace. But if you don't there will be trouble." Andrew keeps close watch on John and the boys. They managed to repay loans they were given to start. John says, "I'm very happy. I am walking free. Before I couldn't be with anyone either. But because of Jamii Bora, my girlfriend married me, and I can be proud to be with my wife and son." Between 1996 and 2008, John didn't see his mother out of both shame and fear that something might happen to her. With Jamii Bora's encouragement, he finally went to visit her last June. As he described their reunion, it was the first time I could see any trace of vulnerability in John's face. "I told her the bad things I'd done, and that I was reforming and becoming a real man. You know, I am the last born and so, as a Luo man, I am supposed to look after my mother. Now she is so happy." As I reflect on the definite tension in the air at Toi Market, the way I heard murmurings this time rather than the familiar shouts of hawkers selling their vegetables or fabrics, I have conflicting emotions. I can't imagine how I would feel if the thug who had destroyed my livelihood - everything I'd owned - was not only given a loan and a stall without earning it (indeed the boys had done the opposite), but he was the center of attention for foreigners coming into see the new marketplace. How can you create a sustained culture of peace when such impunity exists? What kind of retribution would I want from John if I were his neighbor whose business had been harmed? On the other hand, I've met a culture of forgiveness in low-income communities in East Africa that is awe-inspiring. Maybe the women who see John know he could be their son, and if he finds the light and starts giving back, well then their sons can too. Maybe they see the suffering in one another's eyes and know the deep imperfections of life, that there are never easy answers when so few institutions are on your side. When the police don't protect you and the government doesn't serve you, then you only have your community, however flawed it may be. In that forgiveness as well is perhaps the deepest part of our own humanity that bespeaks of our true ability to endure. More on Giving
 
The Progress Report: The Bush Deficit Top
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers To receive The Progress Report in your email inbox everyday, click here . Tonight, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama is expected to lay out his plan to slash the federal deficit in half by the end of his term. The reduction would come in large part from drawing down in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire by 2010. On Thursday, Obama will release his first budget outline and "confirm his intention to deliver this year on ambitious campaign promises on health care and energy policy," which will help alleviate budget deficits and bring growth to the economy. And in recent days, the White House has also said that it is prepared to make "tough choices" on the budget. This fiscal situation is not a recent creation. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained yesterday, the enormous deficit Obama has to grapple with was inherited "before the stimulus." "This administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit -- the largest in our nation's history," Obama reiterated. INHERITING RECKLESSNESS: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Cheney said in 2002 when pushing for a fresh round of tax cuts. With this attitude in hand, Bush passed on a budgetary nightmare to his successor. Bush came into office with an advantage few presidents have enjoyed -- a $230 billion surplus. But due to a $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, a $1.5 trillion tax cut in 2003, and a massive defense buildup through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bush quickly blew through that surplus. The next president will "inherit a fiscal meltdown," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) warned in February 2008, as the Bush administration projected a budget deficit of $400 billion. After the financial crisis emerged last fall and the ensuing bailouts, Bush's budget deficit ballooned to over $1 trillion. As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger explained, budget deficits swelled under Bush because his supply-side tax policies slashed revenues while failing to deliver strong economic performance. SIMPLE HONESTY: Obama has already made a departure from the Bush budget legacy by instilling new openness and transparency. Last week, the New York Times reported that Obama will not reject "four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller." In 2005, the Washington Post editorial board called Bush's budget proposal a "farce" for using accounting tricks. Obama's changes include accounting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Bush relied on "emergency supplemental" war spending), assuming the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation, accounting for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipating inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief. The result of Obama's openness is a budget that is $2.7 trillion "deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear." As The Wonk Room explained, "that debt was always there. It was just being hidden." "For too long, our budget process in Washington has been an exercise in deception -- a series of accounting tricks to hide the extent of our spending," Obama remarked yesterday. THE NEW FISCAL HAWKS: While purporting to be deficit hawks, the Republican-led Congresses from 2001 to 2006 rubber-stamped the Bush agenda that created the current fiscal crisis. "[W]e're hopeful...that eventually the Democrats will decide...to move aside and let Republicans govern in the way that President Bush has led us to do," said former senator Rick Santorum in September 2006. The Congress shuttled through pork-stuffed legislation, massive tax cuts, and huge increases in defense spending. Yet those same members are trying to stifle the Obama agenda with concerns about the budget -- even as they proposed a $3.5 trillion tax-cut-only recovery package. The recovery package "spends far too much," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said recently. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) remarked, "It's very wasteful...if you throw in the interest it's about $1.3 trillion." Yet many of the same Republicans eagerly supported Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cuts in 2001. Influential Republicans in Congress have also indicated that they may oppose Obama's housing plan because it is allegedly too expensive. More on Stimulus Package
 
Andy Ostroy: The Party of "No" Top
In response to President Obama's agenda for the country, Republicans have borrowed former First Lady Nancy Reagan's mantra from her 1980's anti-drug campaign: Just Say No! Get used to it. This is the strategy the GOP's gonna employ for the next four years as it attempts to bring Obama down and win back the House and Senate. And what a boneheaded strategy it is. We recently saw the Senate pass the president's $787-billion economic stimulus bill with just three GOP moderates -- Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter -- breaking ranks to vote for it. The measure previously passed in the House with 177 Republicans marching in lockstep to vote against it. Not one single vote from the right. Smells a little fishy, right? After former President Bush and Republicans gave Wall Street and the banking industry $2-trillion last Fall in bailouts and guarantees, don't tell me the January 29th vote on the Hill was anything more than pure partisan politics at its worst. Make no mistake: Republicans are pissed off. They got trounced in November, and their response has been to act like spoiled, petulant, whiny 4-year-olds. The geniuses in the Party have decided that the road back to power is paved with defiant, unified opposition. That's a very calculated strategy that's going to backfire big-time. Americans mandated change when they elected Obama president and gave Democrats greater majorities in both houses of Congress. Obama currently enjoys a 68% approval rating, higher than when he was campaigning for the job. And Democrats hold a 12-point approval lead over their colleagues across the aisle. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll out Tuesday morning shows 74% of Americans believe Obama is "trying to work with Republicans to get things done" while 59% said no to the question "Are Republicans trying to compromise with Obama." After eight miserably polarizing years under Bush, Obama's attempting to bring a new bi-partisan civility and tone to Washington, and Americans clearly recognize and support that. But he's wasting his time. For Pete's sake, his former rival Sen. John McCain on Monday challenged him over his use of a helicopter! Can it get any more trivial and petty than that? In that one little 'copter comment from McNasty we got to see just what these guys are all about. With regard to the stimulus bill, wouldn't it have been more politically prudent for Republicans to rally around the president in a show of unity as they together attempt to lift the American economy out of its current abyss? Wouldn't it have been better to show voters they're part of the solution , while at the same time denouncing parts of the bill but promising Americans to "keep Obama and the Democrats in check" as the watchdog party these next few years? I'd call that a win-win for the GOP. But that's not what Republicans have up their crisp white sleeves. What they want is to giddily roll into the 2010 midterm elections with a smug "I told ya so" campaign theme. To be able to proudly declare, "we didn't vote for this bill." There is the right's unwavering hope that Obama and the Democrats fail in its efforts to jumpstart the economy. They see that as their ticket back to victory. But what Republicans fail to grasp is that Obama's plan must succeed. It has to succeed. It simply cannot fail, period . Because if it does, and we're still racked by this financial crisis in 2010, we're all gonna be bankrupt and on breadlines...and that includes House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Opposer-in-Chief John McCrusty himself. If the clownish GOP believes that America can withstand another 20 months of recession, credit freezes, layoffs and stock market declines, it's truly delusional and drunk on it's own Kool-aid. Poison Kool-aid. The kind that kills political parties for good... More on President Obama
 
Conrad Black Prison Interview: "I Find Helping Others Rewarding" Top
As the first anniversary of his 6 1/2- year sentence approaches (on Mar. 4), Conrad Black admits he "had no idea of what to expect" when he entered the federal prison near Coleman, Florida. By the same token, I had no idea of what to expect when I visited him last week at the Federal Correctional Complex in the centre of Florida, 50 miles north of Orlando and Disney World in the middle of nowhere.
 
Bill Maher: New Rule: Size Matters Top
Food companies must face the facts: One container equals one serving. Look, we are Americans that means once we open the bag there's no stopping us till we're licking stray bits of powdered cheese off the carpet... More on Food
 
Geithner's Private Investment Fund Details Revealed Top
One reason the US authorities are reluctant to pull the plug on any big banks is that they hope their toxic asset purchase plan could show that losses on traded assets may not be as large as feared... ...Details of the scheme are still being worked on. Yet some people involved in the interagency process say the authorities could provide $6 of loans for every $1 in equity capital deployed by the private investors joining the government's Public Private Investment Fund. More on Timothy Geithner
 
Christina Bellantoni: First Lady's guests tonight Top
First published at WashingtonTimes.com The White House just sent over a few tidbits on who will sit with First Lady Michelle Obama during the president's address tonight. Among the guests will be a Dillon, South Carolina eighth grader and a Miami banker who shared his bank sale proceeds with his employees. Ty'Sheoma Bethea was invited because the First Family was "moved" by her letter asking for help rebuilding her more-than-a-century-old J.V. Martin Junior High School, according to this McClatchy story . Leonard Abess Jr. "quietly shared" $60 million in proceeds from the sale of bank shares with tellers, bookkeepers and clerks, according to this Miami Herald story . The Herald report noted that Geneva Lawson, who bought a new car with her bonus from Abess, also will sit in the First Lady's box. —   Christina Bellantoni , White House correspondent, The Washington Times Please track my blog's RSS feed here . Find my latest stories  here , follow me on Twitter and visit my  YouTube page . More on President Obama
 
GOP Recycling Failed McCain Campaign Tactics Top
The Republican Party has been using a grab-bag of strategies to counter Obama's policies over the past month. They rail against the stimulus package for its (supposed) pork. They hammer home their points with gimmicky videos and props. They speak in warrior rhetoric and revel in heroic, fighting-man stunts. More on Sarah Palin
 
Presented By: Promotion Marketing Agency Celebrates 50 Year Anniversary Top
Promotion marketing agency Marden-Kane celebrates 50 Year Anniversary. (PRWeb Feb 23, 2009) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Marden-Kane/50Anniversary/prweb2001064.htm >> Read more Ads by Pheedo
 
Sarah Walker: Like Annie Leibovitz, I Too Am Selling My Photo Collection Top
Annie Leibovitz is pawning her photographs to help pay for her seventeen homes, so I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that I'll be selling five of my most prized original prints for one million dollars each. Descriptions below: Untitled #1 and #2 (2000) : A fan of the Phelps bong hit photo? Here's a candid snap of my friend Pat taking a huge hit from his four-foot bong while sitting on the futon in my common room. I'll also throw in the shot taken right after when he realized that he was being photographed where he's putting the bong to his crotch so it looks like a huge dick. Hilarious. I can put both in one of those plastic frames that bends in the middle so two photos can fit in. Two Lovers (2002): Two of my guy friends passed out one night and we arranged them so it looks like they're doing it. Mapplethorpe-esque. We also drew a dick going into one of their mouths. Save the Last Dance (2001) : A print of one of my more portly friends in the middle of recreating the classic dance scene from the Julia Stiles vehicle Save the Last Dance wherein she shows those Julliard snobs what it's like to dance on the streets. Amazing juxtaposition of dexterity and girth, as he appears to be floating in air while putting "his back into it." America (2003): My roommates and I dressed up as the Pink Ladies from Grease for Halloween. Evokes a nostalgia for a time and innocence long since past. You can also see my friend Lacey's nipple.
 
Karen Bass: Moving Forward in Califorina Top
The California budget approved last week by the legislature and signed by the governor is tough medicine and hard to swallow. But with our state on the edge of a fiscal cliff, it had to be done. Without this budget, hundreds of infrastructure projects would have been stopped, which means the state would have lost even more jobs; 20,000 layoff notices were ready to go to state workers; taxpayers' refunds would have continued to be withheld, small business vendors would get IOUs for payment, and students wouldn't get financial aid. And it would only have gotten worse. With 9.3% unemployment and the highest number of foreclosures in the nation. California has been battered by the national economic crisis. This budget stops the bleeding and buys California time to weather the recession and move into recovery. This budget was full of difficult choices. No legislator came to Sacramento to cast these kinds of votes. I ran for office to protect and expand services for vulnerable members of our society. Because of this unprecedented crisis, I had to vote for cuts in those programs. My fellow Democrats and I compromised on environmental regulations, labor provisions, and education. We compromised on a spending cap that restrains expenditures even in good times and puts money into a rainy day fund. The cuts in this budget are on top of 180 others --$19 billion worth -- made since 2003. I respect my Democratic colleagues for the painful choices they made in this emergency. I respect my Republican colleagues who showed leadership by supporting new revenues in this crisis. This closes a $41 billion, 18-month problem and puts reductions and revenues in place sooner so they can be smaller. The cuts and taxes included will also be smaller depending on the amount California receives in federal stimulus funding. The taxes are temporary, with their duration tied to approval of the spending cap. With education, one of Democrats' highest priorities, we protected core instructional programs and services for at-risk students. We targeted cuts, such as maintenance, in-service training, school safety grants, and education technology. This approach along with giving districts more flexibility, helped limit classroom cuts -- and while the education cuts are real, the funding level is restored over time. When it comes to labor, another key priority for Democrats, the budget does include design build and public private partnerships and recognizes the savings the governor sought from employee furloughs. Democrats made some accommodations on clarifying scheduling options that can be voted on by employees, but we also held the line because we understand it was eight years of federal actions and inaction that caused the recession -- not the eight hour day working parents depend on in raising their families. On environmental regulations, the budget allows for some case by case flexibility. However, Democrats did maintain the state's strong commitment to the clean air and water that every individual and business needs to thrive in California. Most of the elements in this budget have been previously discussed in some form -- including the majority-vote solutions package Democrats put forward in December. Given the immediate harm to Californians from the cash crisis, it was unfortunately necessary to have an accelerated process for bringing this budget to a vote. As a former community organizer, this kind of insider process isn't my preferred way of reaching a compromise, but given the severity of the crisis, it was a necessity. I do hope California is never in a situation where a budget like this has to be rushed through again. I also hope we -- and that includes voters -- will finally fix the two-thirds vote requirement and remove the harm that it causes. In the best of times the two-thirds requirement can lead to budget game playing from those in the minority. In a crisis like we are in, the two-thirds requirement essentially allows budget solutions to be held up for ransom. That has to change. With the budget behind us for now, I have asked the members of the Assembly to focus on creative ways to maximize the benefits of the federal stimulus program, to promote new jobs, and to encourage economic recovery. That focus has to be our number one priority. While there is something in this budget for everyone to hate, and the legislature will be criticized for the tough choices we made, I want it said that when it counted we did our jobs so more Californians wouldn't lose theirs.
 
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Murdoch Non-Apology Top
The day the New York Post sleazed its op-ed section with the vile, vicious, and veiled urge to violence cartoon against President Barack Obama this writer demanded that Post boss Rupert Murdoch issue this statement. "The News Corporation pledges that the Post's offensive cartoon will not be circulated, or reprinted, or syndicated. Further, we have zero tolerance toward racially insensitive and inflammatory cartoons or editorial depictions of African-Americans and other ethnic groups. Finally, we apologize for the Obama cartoon and pledge in the future that the Post and other Murdoch entities will hold to the highest standard of editorial sensitivity in our cartoons." Though it took a firestorm week of massive demonstrations, threats of a boycott, and an FCC license challenge (the Murdoch owned Fox Network), and a Mt. Everest sized stack of emails, letters, and faxes demanding the firing of Post management, Murdoch pretty much issued a statement that came close to what this writer demanded. But that by no means closes the book on the sorry Post-Murdoch-Fox saga. It can, and probably will happen again. Start with Murdoch's apology. There were three escape clauses buried in it. One is the self-serving, lame Post defense that the cartoon was just fun and games spoofery of Obama's stimulus plan. The other is a rehash of the other Post editor's fall back line that the cartoon was not meant to be racist. Murdoch's final give the paper a pass defense was his declaration that the cartoon was "interpreted" as racist by "others." That's not a whole heck of a lot better than the non-apology, apology Post editors issued a day after their public shellacking. But even if Murdoch had made a sincere bare-the-chest heartfelt apology it wouldn't amount to much. That's the standard ploy that shock jocks, GOP big wigs, and assorted public personalities employ when they get caught with their racial pants down. On a few occasions the offenders have been reprimanded, suspended, and even dumped. That won't happen with the Post editors, or the offending cartoonist, and Murdoch gave absolutely no hint that anyone would be disciplined for the racial slander. There are two reasons why. They tell much about why the Post, Murdoch's media empire, and shock jocks can get away with demeaning gays, blacks, Latinos Asians, Muslims, and women and skip away with a caressing hand slap. One is that these guys ramp up ratings and that make media syndicates such as Fox and the Post's cash registers jingle. The other reason is that it's virtually impossible to effectively muzzle cartoonists such as Sean Delonas and others that draw or talk race trash is the sphinx like silence of top politicians, broadcast industry leaders, and corporate sponsors. Sharpton, Spike Lee, and a handful of local New York politicians led the charge against the Post, but that's pretty much where it ended. The problem of the silence or perfunctory belated criticism by higher ups to racial taunts surfaced a few years ago following then Senate Majority leader designate Trent Lott's veiled tout of segregation. It touched off a furor, and ultimately Lott stepped down from the post, but it took nearly a week for Bush to make a stumbling, and weak sounding disavowal of him. The silence from top politicians and industry leaders to public racism was even more deafening a few of years ago when former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett made his weird taunt that aborting black babies could reduce crime. Even as calls were made from the usual circles almost always blacks and liberal Democrats for an apology, or his firing from his syndicated national radio show, neither Bush or any other top GOP leader said a mumbling word about Bennett. There's another reason for their silence. The last two decades many Americans have become much too comfortable using code language to bash and denigrate blacks. In the 1970s, the vocabulary of covert racially loaded terms included terms such as "law and order," "crime in the streets," "permissive society," "welfare cheats," "subculture of violence," "subculture of poverty," "culturally deprived" and "lack of family values" seeped into the American lexicon about blacks. Some politicians seeking to exploit white racial fears routinely tossed about these terms. In the 1980s new terms such as "crime prone," "war zone," "gang infested," "crack plagued," "drug turfs," "drug zombies," "violence scarred," "ghetto outcasts" and "ghetto poverty syndrome" were shoved into public discourse. These were covert racial code terms for blacks and they further reinforced the negative image of young black males as dope dealers, drive by shooters, and educational cripples. And the image of young black women as a dysfunctional collection of B's and "hos," welfare queens, and baby makers. Obama is hardly exempt from this irresponsible race tinged character assault. The non-stop whisper and slander campaign against President Obama by packs of bloggers, talk jocks, and even a senator on the legitimacy of his US citizenship is a case in point. The loud demands will continue that Murdoch back up his kind of sort of apology with real action. But he won't. There's simply too much money in racial trash talk (and cartooning), and too much silence from the higher ups that send a tacit signal condoning it. That silence is Murdoch's ultimate trump card. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009). More on Barack Obama
 
Jeff Biggers: Powershift09 to Capitol Power Action: Follow the Young Top
"The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on Is when the reins are in the hand of the young, who dare to run against the storm" Ella Baker's Song, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey in the Rock This weekend, over 10,000 students and young green energy activists will converge on Washington DC, for a historic national youth summit, Powershift09 (www.powershift09.org/) Organized by the Energy Action Coalition and a mind-boggling network of nationwide student organizations, Powershift09 will present 72 non-stop hours of panels, workshops, concerts and speeches with a take-no-prisoners message: It's time for the White House and US Congress to stand up to the dirty energy lobby and pass the energy and climate policies we truly need. Twenty four million young voters helped to put President Barack Obama into office. Powershift is about stirring, educating, training, and mobilizing these young voters into a vibrant movement to keep Capitol Hill accountable to a sustainable green agenda--to feel the urgency of the moment to pass bold, comprehensive energy and climate legislation. In a time of naysaying and foreboding crisis, the phenomenon of Powershift should be an inspiring bolt of energy for anyone in the green movement, regardless of age. "Being young is a state of mind,'' my hero Ella Baker, the legendary Civil Rights organizer, once declared, "and young people are the people who want change.'' We need that change now. Last spring, NASA climatologist James Hansen and a group of leading scientists published a paper in Science Magazine that spelled out the future projections of carbon dioxide emissions and climate destabilization in clear terms: "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future," Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, has declared. "This is the defining moment." On Monday, March 2nd, another historic event is planned at the Capitol Power Plant, to symbolically take this message to Washington, DC. As the first massive act of civil disobedience, thousands will cross the line to demand an end to our nation's denial of the spiraling impact of dirty coal and old coal-fired plants. Rallied by a clarion call from our beloved farmer-poet laureate Wendell Berry and pioneering climate change author Bill McKibben, this historic action is organized by Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network and sponsored by a broad alliance of citizen groups (http://www.capitolclimateaction.org/). As a 100-year-old relic, the Capitol Power Plant spews over 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions to keep government buildings warm. Not far away, the Potomac River Plant operates on coal hauled from mountaintop removal strip mines that have left parts of Appalachia in ruin. For many of us, the March 2nd action will not be our first time to cross the line. In fact, the historic act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant follows in the tradition of the Civil Rights Movement and the Free South Africa Movement. On a cold fall day in 1984, at the age of 21, I sat in the holding tank of a Washington, DC precinct jail, listening to my jailmate describe his recent visit to South Africa. The impoverished black townships were aflame. In the face of widespread strikes, the repressive Botha administration had unleashed its police and military with brutal force. Over 6,500 striking laborers at the Sasol coal-to-oil plant had been dismissed. The apartheid system withheld political rights for the majority black population. Nelson Mandala remained in prison. The Reagan administration chose to deal with this horrific situation through a policy of "constructive engagement," which effectively turned a blind eye to the atrocities of apartheid, and rejected any calls for economic sanctions on South Africa as an instrument of diplomacy. "Constructive engagement is another slogan for a state of denial," my jailmate, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, told me. For Coffin, who was the head minister at the Riverside Church in New York City (where I served as his aide in the mid-1980s), the journey to a Washington jail cell had not resulted from a whimsical decision to protest. As part of the Free South Africa Movement, launched that fall by several organizations such as TransAfrica, we had blocked the doors of the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, as an act of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience, Coffin reminded me, was a non-violent act of drawing attention to an ignored crisis taking place in an administration beset by crisis management. In the spring of 1961, as the chaplain at Yale University, he had boarded the bus in the volatile Freedom Rides to Montgomery, Alabama, to test the desgregation laws on transit. The troubling facts about dirty coal demand a similar movement for a new generation. It's time to end our constructive engagement with dirty coal. Jeff Biggers is the author of The United States of Appalachia, and the forthcoming, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (The Nation/Basic Books). More on Global Warming
 
Solis To Be Confirmed By Up-Or-Down Vote Tuesday Night Top
The long and dramatic confirmation of Hilda Solis to serve as Labor Secretary is coming to an end tonight, it seems. Republicans in the Senate just agreed to unanimous consent on the California Democrat's nomination for the labor post, according to a labor source. That means that no cloture vote is needed and Solis will be confirmed should she get more than 50 votes. In short: she will be the next Labor Secretary. Solis' nomination had been held up in committee and on the Senate floor due to a variety of factors, most recently tax liens her husband had failed to pay on his business. Labor allies, however, contended that the opposition was driven by her support of the Employee Free Choice Act -- a union priority that Republicans in the Senate staunchly oppose. With Solis set to get through the Senate Tuesday afternoon, these same labor allies are now ecstatic. "We are glad the Republicans have stopped obstructing the confirmation of Rep. Solis so that she can start helping America's workers," said one union official.
 
Gale Gand: Is it OK to be in Love With Girl Scout Cookies? Top
Like the annual migration of Baltimore Orioles through my woodland back yard, or the emerging pink nubs from my yearly rhubarb plants, so marks the passage on time when the neighborhood girl scout rings my door bell (well actually my door bell hasn't worked in years. I had it disconnected because it made my dog go Tasmanian Devil on me) and, unfolding her multipage form like an uncooperative broadsheet newspaper, shows me her newest offerings from the pastry kitchens of the Girl Scouts of America. I always buy something and not just because I used to be a Brownie and a Girl Scout, but because I like to support kids when they are honing their entrepreneurial skills. I prod them through their spiel, acting interested in whatever they've been encouraged to pitch, making them appreciative of this early media training with key messages that later could become their life's work, if they are good on camera or on stage, or even just give good phone. Then we decipher how to fill out the form and help them close the deal, the real reason they are there in my home. But this year is was different. I got an email from a mom/girlfriend, stating that her daughter typed this herself with no help, offering to sell me my annual fix of girl scout cookies. It went like this: I am selling girl scout cookies for my Brownie troop. can you help me. Thay are fore dollars a box. These are the kind I have Caramel delites Peanu butter patties Shortbread Thin mints Peanut butter sandwich Thanks a lot Lemonades and Reduced fat daisy go rounds. Thank you for helping me! from XXXXX PS. I did not help XXXXX (insert the mom's name here) with this. She typed it herself. We were suppose to go door to door but it has been way too cold. Now our time is up ~ all orders are due Monday morning! Thanks everyone! XXXXX Of course I hit reply and ordered some, but not as many as I usually do, times being what they are. The cookies arrived yesterday, delivered by the actual little girl, not a cyber version bearing virtual cookies. We wrote the check and started the hoarding, hiding and rationing. These are precious, you know, and we must make them last. Last year we went the more traditional route when our neighbor Sarah came by to sell us some, and my 11-year-old son sat down at the negotiating table with us and helped determine the quantities and types. I like to teach my children consumer skills early. So he helped place the order, filled out the form, etc. Later that year, my husband and I were at the therapist to improve our parenting skills and to learn to work more as a team (seems to be the mantra of modern parents, but that's another article) and he was trying to show her how I indulge our children. The example he conjured up was this time I let our son help order the girl scout cookies. She said, "Tell me about what happened." My husband reported that I bought a reasonable amount of cookies for the family but I let our son buy 10 boxes of his own with his own money (if case you're wondering what some kids do with their allowance) and stash them in his bedroom closet for his personal rationing! She looked at me scoffingly, shaking her head, and in my defense I blurted out, "But they were Thin Mints!" Suddenly she gave a look of understanding, nodding her head in approval and said, "Oooooooh, well if they were thin mints . . ." I guess I'm not the only one in love with those cookies. More on Food
 
Earl Pomerantz: "'Oscars' Post-Mortem Rant" Top
I watched the last hour of the Oscars . Before that, I was at a yoga class. This particular practice is called "Restorative Yoga." You do an hour-and-a-half of poses without ever standing up. When I originally took "Restorative", I characterized it as napping with strangers. (This is a tiny glimpse of me in a nutshell. I make fun of something; then I end up loving it. Which is one reason I could never be a movie critic. I'd have to write my review of every movie twice. The First Review : I wanted my money back. The Second Review : It could be my favorite picture.) The Oscars don't mean anything to me. For one thing, I wasn't nominated for anything. (Apparently, to get nominated, you have to actually do something in movies, aside from just going to see them.) Secondly, I don't see violent pictures, which, I think, rules out every "Best Picture" nomination this year. I did make the mistake of seeing "Best Picture" winner, Slumdog Millionaire . The reviews said it was cheerful. It was, except for the torture of the main character, the selling of the girl of his dreams into prostitution, and the blinding of a little boy's eyes with acid. I wanted my money back. (I am not planning to see Slumdog again.) My favorite movie that I saw last year? The Wizard of Oz . I saw it on television. I also enjoyed, among others, Lawrence of Arabia, All The President's Men, Singin' In The Rain, Red River, High Noon, Double Indemnity and Casablanca . Ditto on where I saw them . The Oscars mark "on the curve." It's "Best Picture" this year . If it weren't, the above pictures and other indisputable classics would be nominated over and over. They don't do it that way. The Academy chooses five of what they consider the best from that year. They never say, "The best pictures of 2008? Well, none of them were that great. We'll see you next year. Good night, and drive carefully." Instead of more than three hours, the Oscars telecast would be over in twelve seconds. By now, I imagine, anyone under a certain age is pretty much sick of me, though my contemporaries may be more forgiving. Here we go again. Another round curmudgeonly grumbling. A tedious reprise of, "They don't make 'em like they used to". How about some perspective, huh? When it came out, Casablanca was considered standard fare. The Wizard of Oz didn't get all raves either. There's no place for any of that! Not while enjoying our nostalgic look through the rear-view mirror. Sing it, Baby. The old is great; the new is garbage. Blah-buh-blah-buh-blah-blah-blah. No. Or, more emphatically, No! Listen to me. I know it's an unpopular thing to say. I know art's supposed to be subjective. But, I'm telling you, It isn't. There's good and there's bad. And everything in between. As a writer, I can tell good writing from crap. I can tell if a story holds water. I can tell if it omits essential steps in its development, or it doubles back on itself, repeating the same series of moves over again. I can tell if it builds naturally to its climax. I can tell if that climax pays off. I can tell if the movie resolves itself smoothly, or stumbles on its way out the door. I can tell if the characters are heart-beatingly multi-dimensional or stereotypical stick figures I can tell if the movie made me think, or moved me emotionally in a disturbing but illuminating way. Wait a minute. You don't have to be a writer. Anybody can be sensitive to these elements. You may not articulate them that well. ( I may not have articulated them that well myself.) But if you're open, you can feel them in your kishkas (Yiddish for "gut"). I realize there are movies that scored huge at the box office which are totally lacking in these aforementioned considerations. But in my view, no movie ever made less money because it happened to make sense. Another wild assertion? Movies that make sense stand the test of time. "Special Effects" are constantly being topped. But you can't "top" logical believability and emotional truth. Certain values are timeless. Cave men could get The Wizard of Oz . Yes, some issues are generational. Some values have changed. It would be hard to do a contemporary movie whose "big, dark secret" is, "He's gay." A response by today's audience would be, "So?" Judd Apatow marries corny with introspective, generating comedies that are hilarious, and feel new. The old movie standards wouldn't have allowed such shenanigans. Though the exploitation of "no standards" can be wildly uneven. When the liberating freedom is used skillfully, the results are shockingly refreshing. Or to younger audiences, just funny. Today's movies offer a sped-up tempo, a nod to the familiar (to the young) fast cutting of MTV , commercials and video games. But "faster" needn't mean, "The story doesn't make sense." Why can't a movie move quickly, but remain logical? I don't know, but invariably they don't. (Take Mission Impossible . Any number.) On the other side, moviegoers who've been around a while are often brought low by a debilitating dose of, "We've seen that already." They're trying to get the antagonist to "break on the stand". In Frost/Nixon , it's Frank Langella. In A Few Good Men , it was Jack Nicholson. In The Caine Mutiny - it was Humphrey Bogart. It's exactly the same scene! By its third incarnation, people who are familiar with those movies are like, "Are they doing this again?! " For whatever reason, or combination of reasons, it feels to me like movies have lost something. Maybe it's the glamor. Sean Penn ain't Cary Grant. Maybe...well, you know this stuff. The Youth Market. Language sacrificed to international distribution. The robotic attention to the bottom line. Maybe it is even that they're running out of ideas. All I know is, The movies aren't as good. "Best Animated Feature" - Wall-E ? Dumbo . Please. The jailed mother, touching trunks with her big-eared baby through the prison window bars? The quintessential alcoholic fever dream - "Pink Elephants on Parade"? A flock of hipster crows chirping, I've seen a peanut stand I've seen a rubber band I've seen a needle that winked its eye. But I think I've seen about everything When I see an elephant fly. Oh, my. And if that's not the best, try Lady and the Tramp . Earl Pomerantz's blog can be reached at earlpomerantz.blogspot.com More on Award Season
 
Dan Dorfman: More Nightmares Lurk on Street of Dreams Top
Enough already! The last thing the nation's more than 100 million bloodied equity investors want or need is more horse manure. But that's essentially what some Wall Street pros insist they're getting -- a steady diet of it, in fact -- as exemplified by a non-stop barrage of brokerage buy recommendations in the face of one of the worst periods in the history of the stock market. Even the media has jumped into the stock-pushing act. Just click on any of the business networks. The supposedly bullish guest experts and anchors easily outnumber the bears by at least a 25-30 to 1 margin despite the market's gloomy outlook. "It's unbelievable," contends Los Angeles day trader and money manager Arnold Silver. "The media is supposed to be skeptical, not push stocks. Sure, we would all like to see the market get sane again, but the media gets paid to report the news, not have an agenda, and common sense tells you this is a very wrong time to believe in the tooth fairy and promote stocks." Silver is one of several crack dogged and skeptical market trackers I spoke to who ridicule the media's increasingly bullish tone. Their over-riding view is that the worst is far from over. They basically believe that Wall Street, the perennial street of dreams, is likely to produce many more nightmares for all the reasons everybody knows before the stock market can right itself. They point in particular to a sagging world-wide economy, the dire straits of the banking system and the ongoing housing slump. The media's bull case for the market, echoed by some prominent investment strategists, largely presumes that the President's stimulus package and the Administration's efforts to revitalize the housing industry will trigger a significant economic rebound. It's sunny reasoning also factors in the belief that stocks are basically dirt cheap following a wicked $7 trillion loss in value last year and further declines in 2009. In sharp disagreement is one of the country's most highly regarded market timers, Mark Leibovit, who heads up VRTrader.com. an online investment advisory service headquartered in Sedona, Ariz. His view of the stimulus package: "It's a farce, a waste of money because you're not creating a permanent source of new revenues or new jobs." The government, he says, "is misguided on financial issues. It's a government gone crazy. You don't solve problems by adding much more debt on top of existing debt." (Latest figures show the average American household owes 20% of its annual income). Everybody is excited about Barack Obama, Mr. Leibovit observes. Nonetheless, he took pot shots at the President for including among his advisers some of the very people who caused the financial problems. He figures Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is on borrowed time and will be gone in about a year. Leibovit also opposes a bailout of the banks. "Let the bad guys go out," he says. "Throwing good money after bad is just the wrong thing to do." He recognizes, he tells me, that any serious contemplation in Washington of letting the bad banks go belly up would not produce a quick green light and invariably lead to a great deal of political fireworks. Taking note of the positive market comments on the TV business networks -- he frequently tosses darts at CNBC in this context in his online commentaries -- Mr. Leibovit basically shares the view of Abraham Lincoln who once said, "'Tis better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Named by Timer Digest Magazine as the nation's number one market timer over the 3, 5 and 10 years for the period ending 2007 and also listed among the top 10 in 2008, Mr. Leibovit tracks about 20 market indicators -- among them market sentiment, volume trends, contrary opinion and interest rate movements -- in seeking to calculate the likely course of stock prices. His latest reading tells him: "We're still in a bear market; the trend remains down and there's no sign of a bottom." As he sees it, "a perfect storm is building to a crescendo -- higher interest rates, higher taxes, slumping stock prices and economic contraction, all at one time." He likens today's economic environment to the panic of 1837, a recessionary year preceded by rampant real estate speculation, over-lending by the banks and huge unemployment. All told, this recession ran about six years, running from 1837 to 1843. In the process, stock prices tumbled about 50%. Mr. Leibovit figures the current economic and financial mess will run some five or six years, as well, before the storm is over. As a result, he says he would be almost 100% out of equities and use every rally to lighten stock positions. "We're in a vicious cycle and every investor should rush to protect their assets and realize cash is king," he says. Over the next 12 months, he sees the major market indexes getting bashed, with the Dow skidding to about 6,500 and the S&P 500 falling to around 680. Taking a longer term outlook, he thinks "we're in for five or six years of hell," with the Dow tumbling to about 2,000. So where should investors put their money? His favorites: Cash and gold, which recently topped $1,000 an ounce in the wake of growing financial concerns. He feels a further rise to $1,200 to $1,500 is a reasonable target before year end. You can contact Dan Dorfman at dandordan@aol.com. More on Stimulus Package
 
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Four U.S. Soldiers Slain By Iraqi Policemen Top
Iraqi policemen shot dead four US soldiers and their local interpreter in the main northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, an interior ministry official said.
 
David Hoyt: Shuttered Bank Branch on 53rd a Window on Credit Crisis Top
The story of the shuttered Washington Mutual branch at 1364 E. 53rd Street is not unique. It was repeated all over the city of Chicago and nationwide during the five year boom in bank-branch expansion. The boom saw corner cafes, fashion boutiques, dry cleaners, and other neighborhood retailers displaced by bank branches willing to pay top dollar for central urban locations, driving up lease prices and driving non-bank competitors out. Filter Cafe at Damen and Milwaukee; the ladies' boutique at St. James and Clark; readers can undoubtedly supply many other examples of unusual local businesses replaced by sleepy offices with a few tellers and an ATM over the last half decade. As of 2009, many of the local retailers that preceded the branches are long gone. The news is that now, many of WaMu's bank branches are going, too. Fifty-seven of them by March 2009. For the retail fabric of Chicago's neighborhoods, the outcome is a net loss. On some Chicago blocks, there is now less retail occupancy in 2009 than there was 5 years ago. The Washington Mutual property on Hyde Park's beleaguered 53rd Street commercial district is a paradigmatic case. In 2004, as the credit boom was nearing its peak, a handsome though dilapidated brick building at 1364 E. 53rd Street was home to a number of rental units, and a ground floor fully occupied by five independent retailers. In 2005, 1364 E. 53rd Street was purchased by a new owner, MAC Properties, and the leases on the ground floor retailers were not renewed. The retailers left, and in 2006 were replaced by a Washington Mutual Bank branch. Now it's gone, too. So turns the wheel of fortune. Is 1364 E. 53rd better now than it was before? Before: 5 independent, minority-owned businesses in a solid but run-down building, some of them delinquent in rent payments. After: a building preserved from the wrecking ball, refurbished, and returned to the market as rental units by its new owner, a building that now presents a quarter-block, 5,000 square foot stretch of empty storefront where the bankrupt WaMu branch used to be. WaMu's branch expansion began in 2002 and was part and parcel of the high-risk, rapid-growth strategy that led the venerable thrift bank into the choppy waters of subprime mortgages, subprime credit cards, and other risky forms of lending. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported of WaMu Senior VP and Group Manager Tony Manisco in April of 2004, the bank executive was "focused less on deposits and more on customer service and profitability from checking accounts and mortgage loans." Using a concept devised in Las Vegas in 2000, one of the housing bubble's epicenters, WaMu set out to be the Starbucks of retail banking, an off-site living room where you could bring the kids and sign on to a low-rate home equity line of credit at the same time. As Manisco put it in 2004, "They use the mortgage, home equity products as the initial point of contact ... with attractive rates, and then they try to add other products." By 2005, WaMu's attempt to break into the Chicago market was being called out by analysts as a bust. By late that year, WaMu had built 147 Chicago branches from scratch, at costs of between $750,000 to $2 million apiece, but had carved off only 0.3% of deposits in the Chicago metro area. Hyde Park's MAC Properties, in what was probably a riskier move than they appreciated, signed a lease with WaMu at about the same time that analysts began pointing out how WaMu's expansion had come up short. In 2006 WaMu began closing branches. In 2008, Chicago home foreclosures on WaMu originated mortgages were outnumbering those of almost all other lenders, with 51 in February 2008, 64 in April, and 43 in September, according to foreclosure reports from the real estate website www.realinfo.net . The ironies of history. Now we have a landlord at 1364 E. 53rd who had a tenant paying $32/square foot and now has nothing; had he kept the paying tenants cut loose in 2005, he would be in a better position. Instead, he signed with a financial institution that has gone down as the biggest bankruptcy in US history, which has caused the credit markets to freeze up, and a recession to accelerate, all of which make it highly unlikely that he will find a new tenant for the space vacated by the bank that drove the businesses out to begin with. The viral spread of bank branches may be over for now, and it's a good thing. Chicago suburbs recognized earlier than most the dangers posed by their irrational multiplication to healthy commercial districts. They began to zone against it when they realized that no one would want to visit a downtown full of bank branches, a district that closed at 5PM and had displaced the very businesses that would take all the money withdrawn from conveniently located ATMs. [This post also appears on Hyde Park Progress ] More on Financial Crisis
 
Time Out London Editor Quits Top
The editor of London's Time Out magazine, Gordon Thomson, has resigned, with former Heat editor Mark Frith brought in to lead the search for his replacement and begin a revamp of the title. Thomson, who has edited Time Out since October 2004, tendered his resignation to the magazine's board today and will step down at the end of March to pursue new challenges.
 
Diann Rust-Tierney: We, Too, Are Abolitionists: Black History Month, Slavery and the Death Penalty Top
When one hears the term "abolitionists" one automatically thinks of the courageous men and women, white and African American, who aided runaway slaves fleeing to freedom in the nation's Northern states and Canada. A parallel abolitionist movement developed in the U.S. of the late 18th century, continuing into the 19th Century and the present, the movement to abolish the death penalty. Religious groups such as Unitarians and Quakers, who were active in the anti-slavery movement, as well as liberal secularists, were also death penalty abolitionists. Several were influenced by a 1767 essay authored by Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishment," which said there is no justification for state sponsored executions. The essay led to the death penalty's abolition in Austria and Tuscany. Thomas Jefferson, who was moved by the essay, supported legislation in Virginia outlawing the death penalty except in cases of murder and treason. It was defeated by one vote. But such enlightened thinking did not apply to slaves; death by execution was a significant tool in maintaining slavery in the U.S., no less so than in Virginia. As activist and scholar Angela Davis noted, "In Virginia before the end of slavery there was only one crime for which a white person could be executed, but there were 66 crimes for which a slave could be executed. Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty." African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass pointed out in his autobiography that in some states, slaves could be executed for trying to learn to read. The late A. Leon Higginbotham, the first African American judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, elaborated on the death penalty double standard in his book, "In the Matter of Color, the Colonial Period." If a slave killed his master or another white person, or raped a white woman, the penalty was automatic death. If a white person killed or raped a slave, the punishment might be imprisonment or a fine. Most crimes by whites against slaves went unpunished. The laws carried the clear, if unstated, message, that some lives are worth more than others. This is still true today, as there are more people of color sentenced to death whose victims were white than the reverse. Higginbotham's book posits the idea that our criminal justice system was less about public safety than it was about reinforcing the social and legal inequality of African Americans and other people of color. To some degree, anti-slavery abolitionists also lived under the threat of execution, as the Southern states viewed the anti-slavery movement as a threat to their intricately interwoven race, caste, and economic infrastructure. A Georgia newspaper's slogan in the years prior to the Civil War was "The cry of the whole South should be Death, Instant Death, to the Abolitionist, whenever he is caught." In the 20th Century, death penalty abolition was embraced by major civil rights movement figures. Ebony Magazine quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1957 as saying, "I do not think God approves the death penalty for any crime -- rape or murder included. God's concern is to improve individuals and bring them to the point of conversion. Even criminology has repudiated the motive of punishment in favor of reformation of the criminal. Shall a good God harbor resentment? Since the purpose of jailing a criminal is that of reformation rather than retribution - improving him rather than paying him back for some crime that he has done -- it is highly inconsistent to take the life of a criminal. How can he improve if his life is taken? Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God." Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, said, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. . . An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder." Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King, has said that "The death penalty is a matter of place and race, inequity. . ." and "The state does not have the right to kill, to take a human life; the state does not have the right to enslave. It has the power, but the Bible addresses that. It says 'Not by power, not by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord.' " Death penalty abolitionists, like their anti-slavery predecessors, have fought to end that which enslaves our humanity. We Americans should honor abolitionists of the past and present not only by remembering them during Black History Month, but by working to repeal capital punishment in all death penalty states. In their memory, we must forever renounce and reject this outdated legacy of slavery.
 
Robert Stavins: The Myth of Simple Market Solutions Top
I introduced my previous post by noting that there are several prevalent myths regarding how economists think about the environment, and I addressed the "myth of the universal market" ­- the notion that economists believe that the market solves all problems. In response, I noted that economists recognize that in the environmental domain, perfectly functioning markets are the exception, not the rule. Governments can try to correct such market failures, for example by restricting pollutant emissions. It is to these government interventions that I turn this time. A second common myth is that economists always recommend simple market solutions for market problems. Indeed, in a variety of contexts, economists tend to search for instruments of public policy that can fix one market by introducing another. If pollution imposes large external costs, the government can establish a market for rights to emit a limited amount of that pollutant under a so-called cap-and-trade system. Such a market for tradable allowances can be expected to work well if there are many buyers and sellers, all are well informed, and the other conditions I discussed in my last posting are met. The government's role is then to enforce the rights and responsibilities of permit ownership, so that each unit of emissions is matched by the ownership of one permit. Equivalently, producers can be required to pay a tax on their emissions. Either way, the result -- in theory -- will be cost-effective pollution abatement, that is, overall abatement achieved at minimum aggregate cost. The cap-and-trade approach has much to recommend it, and can be just the right solution in some cases, but it is still a market. Therefore the outcome will be efficient only if certain conditions are met. Sometimes these conditions are met, and sometimes they are not. Could the sale of permits be monopolized by a small number of buyers or sellers? Do problems arise from inadequate information or significant transactions costs? Will the government find it too costly to measure emissions? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the permit market may work less than optimally. The environmental goal may still be met, but at more than minimum cost. In other words, cost effectiveness will not be achieved. To reduce acid rain in the United States, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require electricity generators to hold a permit for each ton of sulfur dioxide (SO2) they emit. A robust permit market exists, in which well-defined prices are broadly known to many potential buyers and sellers. Through continuous emissions monitoring, the government tracks emissions from each plant. Equally important, penalties are significantly greater than incremental abatement costs, and hence are sufficient to ensure compliance. Overall, this market works very well; acid rain is being cut by 50 percent, and at a savings of about $1 billion per year in abatement costs, compared with a conventional approach. A permit market achieves this cost effectiveness through trades because any company with high abatement costs can buy permits from another with low abatement costs, thus reducing the total cost of reducing pollution. These trades also switch the source of the pollution from one company to another, which is not important when any emissions equally affect the whole trading area. This "uniform mixing" assumption is certainly valid for global problems such as greenhouse gases or the effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the stratospheric ozone layer. It may also work reasonably well for a regional problem such as acid rain, because acid deposition in downwind states of New England is about equally affected by sulfur dioxide emissions traded among upwind sources in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. But it does not work perfectly, since acid rain in New England may increase if a plant there sells permits to a plant in the mid-west, for example. At the other extreme, some environmental problems might not be addressed appropriately by a simple, unconstrained cap-and-trade system. A hazardous air pollutant such as benzene that does not mix in the airshed can cause localized "hot spots." Because a company can buy permits and increase local emissions, permit trading does not ensure that each location will meet a specific standard. Moreover, the damages caused by local concentrations may increase nonlinearly. If so, then even a permit system that reduces total emissions might allow trades that move those emissions to a high-impact location and thus increase total damages. An appropriately constrained permit trading system can address the hot-spot problem, for example by combining emissions trading with a parallel system of non-tradable ambient standards. The bottom line is that no particular form of government intervention, no individual policy instrument - whether market-based or conventional - is appropriate for all environmental problems. There is no simple policy panacea. The simplest market instruments do not always provide the best solutions, and sometimes not even satisfactory ones. If a cost-effective policy instrument is used to achieve an inefficient environmental target -- one that does not make the world better off, that is, one which fails a benefit-cost test - then we have succeeded only in "designing a fast train to the wrong station." Nevertheless, market-based instruments are now part of the available environmental policy portfolio, and ultimately that is good news both for environmental protection and economic well-being. More on Environment
 
Thai Parliament Dissolution Demanded By Thousands Top
BANGKOK — Thousands of protesters surrounded the prime minister's office Tuesday demanding Thailand's parliament be dissolved and new elections held, the latest challenge to the two-month old coalition government. The rally by demonstrators allied with exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came three days before Thailand is to host the annual summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The crowd swelled to about 20,000 people as dusk approached, police said. Thailand was plagued by political upheaval last year when demonstrators who oppose Thaksin's allies in the previous government occupied the seat of government for three months. They also held Bangkok's two airports for eight days in November and December. The protest ended only when a court ruled to oust Thaksin's allies for electoral fraud and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was voted into office by parliament. One of the protest leaders, Jakrapob Penkair, said the demonstration Tuesday was being staged this week to show Thailand's Southeast Asian neighbors that Abhisit's government had no right to rule. Abhisit's Democrat Party, which came in second in a December 2007 general election, cobbled together a ruling coalition from defecting supporters of the previous administration. "This government is full of robbers," said Jatuporn Phromphan, another protest leader, on top of a pickup truck amid loud cheers. "The majority of this country did not vote for them but somehow they are in power because the elite want them to be." Abhisit's government held its weekly Cabinet meeting in Hua Hin, 90 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Bangkok, instead of its usual venue at Government House, at which some 3,000 police in riot gear were deployed. Two-thousand army troops were on standby in the area, said police Lt. Gen. Worapong Chiewpreecha. "We will not use violence," Abhisit told reporters. "I am ready to walk into (the Government House) as long as there are no weapons." Jakrapob said the demonstrators would camp out there for at least two days to press their demands but would not break in as their political rivals had done. The Tuesday protest was organized by the Democratic Alliance against Dictatorship _ commonly known as the "red shirts" because of their attire, which contrasts with the yellow shirts worn by their rivals, the self-styled People's Alliance for Democracy, who dominated last years' protests. The DAAD is an eclectic mix of Thaksin loyalists, rural farmers and laborers, all of whom benefited from Thaksin's policies that reached out to the poor. Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon, remains popular among the rural majority for introducing social welfare plans, including virtually free medical care. He now lives in self-imposed exile after being forced from office in a 2006 military coup for alleged corruption and abuse of power. More on Thailand
 
Brownback: Kennedy And Pelosi Aren't Real Catholics, Obama A "Pro-Abortion Radical" Top
In a fundraising letter with his signature on it, Sen. Sam Brownback alleges that Sen. Ted Kennedy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are not "real Catholics" for their stance on "values" issues and questions the Catholicism of five other Senators for their position on abortion rights. The letter, distributed by the conservative group Catholic Advocate, included an envelope that had the Senator's signature as well as a seemingly-official, though unprofessional-looking, letterhead bearing Brownback's name. ( See the full letter here .) The tone of the three pages of text is unusually personal and direct. "Real Catholics need a new voice -- not the likes of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi who have campaigned as Catholics while voting to undermine the values that we hold most dear," the letter reads. "The same can be said for the five 'Catholic' senators sponsoring the Freedom of Choice Act, namely: Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). "It is with Christian charity -- and in fraternal correction that we say to them: You can't be both Catholic and Pro-Abortion." The letter also goes directly after the president, calling Barack Obama a "pro-abortion radical." "As I write," the letter reads, "Congress is considering a bill -- called the Freedom of Choice Act -- to reverse the ban on the gruesome Partial Birth Abortion procedure. And to make matters worse, Barack Obama made this chilling vow: 'the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." From there, Brownback's letter details the "evil that is Partial-Birth Abortion," a procedure which, it should be noted, Obama has said states can properly restrict except when the mother's health is in jeopardy. Brownback's office did not immediately return a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Catholic Advocate told the National Catholic Reporter that "approval came from the senator's office."
 
Johanna Smith: Top
 
Fortune 's Stanley Bing: Microsofties Top
Our thanks go to Microsoft (MSFT), that gray and lumbering incarnation of serious business, for providing us with one of the most outrageous, timely and ultimately edifying stories from this young recession of ours. As you know, Microsoft, like every company in the world, is looking at how to manage its way through these essentially unmanageable seas. You can only save on electricity for so long. After a while, cutting out free beverages in the company lunchroom only accomplishes so much. Eventually, it comes down to firing people, whatever name you give to it. Reorganizing. Downsizing. Rightsizing. Outsourcing. Decruiting. A thorn by any other name. Anyway, as they transitioned a bunch of people out the door, it seems that the software giant from Redmond miscalculated the severance owed to certain of its former corporate citizens. It was sort of like the Three Bears. Some received the proper amount. Others got a check that was too small. And finally there were those who got too much. There is no record as yet that I've found of how Microsoft communicated with those who were shafted. I'm think they're perhaps still working on that thorny issue. But those who were on the receiving end of the excessive generosity received a letter specifying the amount owed by the laid-off employee to his or her former employer, and requesting that a check be mailed off immediately, made out to Microsoft. When news reached the blogs of this stunning development, they reacted with predictable outrage. If you were unemployed and planning on how to live off your severance for a while, a letter like this would put you into something of a quandry. A number of possible responses would suggest themselves. First would be laughter, immediately followed by the urge to toss the letter into the circular file. I think that's probably what I would do, actually; throw the letter away and wait to see how many times The Company sent me follow-up communications before they got nasty. It's not only insurance companies who can stall, delay, "lose" things and become "confused" about financial obligations. Ordinary people can do it too, although seldom as flamboyantly. I suppose, in the end, I would pay the company back. I would take out my checkbook and look at my balance, which is now being depleted daily with no incoming salary to augment it, and write a check to the multi-billion dollar entity that cast my entire family into the pit of uncertainty. It would be the right thing to do, of course, and I guess most of us would do it, cursing. But wait. There's more. Yesterday, on the heels of public interest in the story, the Viziers of Vista took a deep breath, bethought itself, and reversed its policy. In fact, CNET reports that that head of Human Resources herself made the calls to the 25 folks involved. Later in the afternoon, Microsoft issued the following statement: Last week, 25 former Microsoft employees were informed that they were overpaid as a part of their severance payments from the company. This was a mistake on our part. We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner. We are reaching out to those impacted to relay that we will not seek any payment from those individuals. There are several things notable about this development. First, it's interesting that somebody at Microsoft actually thought it was worth hitting up the 25 people for the approximately $5,000 they were each overpaid. That's $125,000 that the billion-dollar organization was trying to recoup. Yes, times are hard. But that hard? Decisions made under stress are often not the best ones. But congratulations, Microsoft. I know how hard it is to reverse a company decision once it's made. Lots of meetings. Lots of people sitting around and wondering whether the story will go away if you just ignore it for a day. And it's true. A lot do. The blogosphere is an angry, stupid beast. It feeds on meat and plant material alike, the innocent as well as the guilty, and as soon as its belly is full it moves on to the next meal with virtually no memory of the last. So it's tempting to simply lie very still while the predator snuffles at you or even gores you a bit, waiting for it to cast its eye on a subsequent victim. Nobody ever got a second round of poison in their eye for sitting quietly and doing nothing. So once again, congratulations, Microsoft, and most particularly to the haute HR executive who, I bet, said, "I'll do it," and picked up the phone and told each one of the overpaid 25 that they could keep their cash. When a decision like that is reached, in the end, there's always one person who has to say, "Enough talking already. I'll do it." But uh-oh. Not too fast. Congratulations, as well-earned as they may be, may also be premature. So disgusted is the American public with corporations, with large corporations in particular, and with certain large corporations specifically, that the vast majority of us have no room in our hearts for understanding or forgiveness or even a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. Why do I say that? Because in a news.com poll taken since Microsoft made its rather sensible change of course, 84.9 percent of the nearly 1000 people queried said that the Company did it to "save face." Another 6.1 percent said "it wasn't that much money," and only 9% opted for "because it was the right thing to do." I wonder what the number was before I voted. Because you know what? That's what I believe. I believe somebody at Microsoft had a human thought and said, "Hey, this is stupid, we're taking money away from people we just fired. Let's bag it." And then they did the right thing. Of course, it didn't hurt that it wasn't that much money. More on Microsoft
 
Study: Taking B Vitamins Can Prevent Vision Loss Top
CHICAGO — Taking B vitamins can prevent a common type of vision loss in older women, according to the first rigorous study of its kind. It's a slight redemption for vitamin supplements, which have suffered recent blows from research finding them powerless at preventing disease. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people 65 and older, with nearly 2 million Americans in the advanced stage of the condition. It causes a layer of the eye to deteriorate, blurring the center of the field of vision and making it difficult to recognize faces, read and drive. There's no cure, but treatment, including laser therapy in some cases, can slow it down. Preventing it has been more elusive. "Other than avoiding cigarette smoking, this is the first suggestion from a randomized trial of a possible way to reduce early stage AMD," said William Christen of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the research. He said the findings should apply to men as well. The women in the study who took a combination of B vitamins _ B-6, folic acid and B-12 _ reduced their risk of macular degeneration by more than one-third after seven years compared to women taking dummy pills. The study, involving more than 5,000 women ages 40 and older at risk for cardiovascular disease, appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. Allen Taylor, director of the Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research at Tufts University in Boston, said the study was strong because patients were assigned at random and followed for a long time. But because the findings were teased out of a larger experiment for heart disease, there wasn't strict categorization of the type and severity of the eye disease, said Taylor, who does similar research but was not involved in the new study. Among women taking the B vitamins there were 55 cases of AMD. In the placebo group, there were 82 cases. More serious cases, causing significant vision loss, totaled 26 in women taking B vitamins and 44 in those taking dummy pills. There were too few cases of the most advanced AMD to make claims about vitamins' potential benefits, Christen said. B vitamins lower homocysteine, a blood substance once thought to raise heart disease risk, but the nutrients weren't helpful for that in the larger study on cardiovascular disease. The eye's small blood vessels may respond better to B vitamins' effect on homocysteine than the body's large vessels, Christen said. It's too soon to recommend B vitamins to people who want to prevent age-related vision loss, he said. But people who already have the disease should talk to their doctors about over-the-counter eye-protecting supplements, including vitamins C and E and zinc, which prior studies have shown slow the disease. Christen and others recommended food sources of B vitamins and folic acid such as meat, poultry, fortified cereals, beans, nuts, leafy vegetables, spinach and peas. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Vitamins and placebos were provided by chemical maker BASF Corp., which did not participate in the study otherwise. Some of the researchers reported past funding from pharmaceutical and nutritional supplement makers. ___ On the Net: Archives: http://www.archinternmed.com
 
Eric C. Anderson: Intelligence Community Searching for Relevance Top
The U.S. intelligence community is in search of relevance. Evidence supporting this contention is to be found atop the web pages hosted by our new Director of National Intelligence. Tastefully pasted below an image of the American flag is the following quote: "Nothing is more important to national security than the making and the conduct of good security policy and timely, accurate, objective, and relevant intelligence." This seems a harmless observation of the obvious--until one realizes the bit about intelligence--the job that employs over 100,000 people and results in an annual expenditure of between $40 and $50 billion--comes as an after thought. Policy, if we are to take the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) at his word, can be developed and implemented prior to the collection, analysis, and dissemination of classified information. Please note, I am not suggesting the DNI is wrong--good security policy likely can be made and conducted before the intelligence community is brought into the picture. In fact, some of my colleagues like to argue this has happened on a regular basis irrespective of the intelligence community's findings. Why the cynicism? Consider a story The Hill ran in mid-June 2007. Following a lengthy effort to determine how many U.S. senators read the controversial 2002 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prior to authorizing Saddam Hussein's forceful removal, The Hill discovered only 10 to 22 of the body's members felt compelled to wade through the entire report. That is to say--only 10-20% of the U.S. Senate thought work from the intelligence community should be fully considered before going to war. In retrospect it's relatively easy to excuse this behavior. The Iraq NIE's reported reliance on single-sources--who subsequently were found to favor an invasion--provided sufficient cover for many elected officials who chose to explain why they had not read through the document. But the shortcomings of a single document do not explain repeated decisions to ignore the intelligence community. Other factors have to be at play. In fact, they are. Let's take a look at a more current example of Intelligence Community irrelevance. Over the last four years, the DNI has provided congress with an unclassified "Annual Threat Assessment." Since February 2006, this report has proven a veritable encyclopedia on terrorism, the war in Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction. On economic concerns the DNI has been largely silent. A few throw-away quotes will help make my point. In February 2006, then-DNI John Negroponte reported, "to one degree or another, all nations are affected by the phenomenon known as globalization." In January 2007, Negroponte took pains to note, "Globalization, the defining characteristic of our age, mandates global intelligence coverage." Why? Because, Negroponte continued, "Globalization is contributing to conflicts, instability, and reconfigurations of power and influence." During his February 2008 testimony, then-DNI Michael McConnell offered little more--simply declaring, "Globalization has broadened the number of threats and challenges facing the United States." Now, fast-forward a year. On 12 February 2009, Dennis Blair used the following opening line in his Annual Threat Assessment. "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications." In other words, that pesky "globalization" his predecessors had buried in a sea of terrorism and North Korean nuclear weapons had suddenly become Washington's number one threat--and the intelligence community was now on board. A year too late, and only after more than a trillion dollars had been committed to addressing the problem. A relevant intelligence community might have begun beating the drums earlier--oh say, in 2004, when Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser began warning academics and the Federal Reserve something wicked this way comes. Instead it appears the DNI and a gaggle of intelligence agencies blithely continued monitoring the obvious. Rather than suggesting our elected representatives consider the possibility of an impending economic implosion, the intelligence community continued looking for another terrorist attack, discussing measures of progress in Iraq, and postulating on the number of nukes in North Korea--an exercise best likened to haggling over the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. Quite simply, it is my contention a relevant intelligence community would have done more than offer platitudes on the benefits and dangers of globalization. A relevant intelligence community has to look forward to threats, to consider the hard questions, and to engage outsiders--even if they are not preaching mainstream gospel. How do we accomplish this? I offer three recommendations. First, the intelligence community needs to surrender the delusion it is the sole--or most authoritative--purveyor of information. The intelligence community is but one source a policy maker considers--academia, the media, and an expanding universe of think tanks are all viable, and equally reliable, competitors. To be relevant one has to factor in the competition and then know how to beat them at their own game. How? For the intelligence community we need look no further than Dennis Blair's prescription--"timely, accurate, objective, and relevant." This brings me to my second recommendation. Policy makers like to know the reputation and track record of their advisors. It is very difficult to sell reports prepared by faceless bureaucracies--even ones with names that can be abbreviated into three letters. Policy makers like names, of people. This is an approach the intelligence community could adopt tomorrow. Rather than signing a report with CIA, DIA, NGA, etc, we should put analyst names in a by-line. Universities do this, think tanks do this, and one often selects a media source based on this human connection. Why? A simple by-line allows for the recognition of expertise, development of a track record and establishment of a reputation. Finally, I would recommend the intelligence community shed its overwhelming tendency to throw house and home at the crisis of the moment....and, more importantly, look beyond our tradition preoccupations. As the DNI has been warning since 2006, globalization is the problem of the future--we need to recruit more bankers, economists, international business experts, and trade specialists to properly prepare for tracking, explaining, and predicting the resulting developments. How to accomplish this task without expanding the existing intelligence budget? For starters we should look to Wall Street. One suspects there are multiple candidates looking for options. Two, eliminate redundant analysis within the intelligence community--if policy makers want competing opinions they can see academia, the media and think tanks. We don't need to waste money and time on the intelligence community debating itself. The intelligence community needs to be relevant--or be thrown back in the crucible for recasting. In the interim it only seems fair to add the global economic crisis of 2008-09 to our list of shortfalls; an expanding document that includes Pearl Harbor, Chinese intervention in Korea, and 9/11.
 
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Britain Unveils 'Queen Mum' Memorial Top
LONDON — Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has unveiled a new statue honoring her late mother, the beloved Queen Mum. The Queen was wearing the type of feathered hat and matching coat the late Queen Mother adored when she pulled off the cloth revealing the statue. Prince Charles and his sons, William and Harry, and other senior members of the royal family were on hand for Tuesday's unveiling. The bronze sculpture sits near a statue of the Queen Mother's husband, King George VI, near Buckingham Palace in central London. Sculptor Philip Jackson says he tried to capture the Queen Mother's sense of fun. The memorial was funded by the sale of special coins. The Queen Mother died in 2002 at age 101.
 
ProPublica: Obama Admin. On Detention Policy: What He Said Top
by Christopher Weaver , ProPublica The Washington judge charged with deciding whether four detainees in Afghanistan can have their day in court gave the Obama administration nearly a month (PDF) to distinguish its views on detention from President Bush's. In a court filing Friday, President Obama's lawyers declared that the new policy is the same as the old one (PDF): This Court's Order of January 22, 2009 invited the Government to inform the Court by February 20, 2009, whether it intends to refine its position on whether the Court has jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by detainees held at the United States military base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Having considered the matter, the Government adheres to its previously articulated position. The stance adheres to the Bush administration's theory of a global battlefield , where "enemy combatants" can be detained indefinitely even if they're far away from any traditional battlefield, and even if they're not directly engaged in hostilities. It stretches an argument that Bagram, a military base leased from the Afghan government, is significantly different from Guantanamo, where the Supreme Court determined last summer that habeas corpus applies. The decision also reaffirms the fears of human rights activists and civil rights lawyers who worry that the new administration's review of terrorism policies will lead to changes only in rhetoric. Obama signed two executive orders on his second day in office, pledging to close Gitmo's prison within a year and banning torture . But the orders didn't address the broader questions of detention policy that have left the four Bagram prisoners behind bars for years, without due process. The men are basically the same type of prisoners that stirred up fervor over Gitmo. Unlike most of the 600 inmates at Bagram, who were detained in combat on the battlefield, these four were captured outside of Afghanistan or any other war zone, and they've been in custody for years. One detainee, according to his lawyers, was captured on a business trip in Bangkok. Observers weren't surprised that the Obama administration hasn't developed a sweeping new policy on combating terrorism in the brief period allotted by the court. Jack Balkin , a Yale law professor, told the New York Times , "It may take some time before we see exactly what is going on -- whether this is just a transitory policy or whether this is really their policy." However, compared to the tone set by Obama during his campaign , others found room for disappointment. "At a minimum, we were expecting that the Obama administration would say that they are still considering their position and whether or not to change course," Tina Foster , a lawyer for the Bagram detainees, told us. "It's one thing to say that we're going to close Guantanamo in a year," said Foster. "It's another to say that we're going to close Guantanamo, but we're not going to change any of our policies on holding people without charges and denying them access to courts." ProPublica is America's largest investigative newsroom. More on Afghanistan
 
Jeff Bezos Promotes The Kindle 2.0 On "The Daily Show" (VIDEO) Top
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appeared on the "Daily Show" last night to showcase the new Kindle 2.0, which started shipping yesterday. While Bezos was, naturally, enthusiastic about the gadget's appeal, Stewart didn't seem overly impressed: "books are comfortably low-tech," he said somewhat nostalgically. The Kindle, he quipped, "doesn't seem like the kind of thing you want to fall asleep with on your chest." But by far the best line of the night was when Bezos boasted that with the Kindle "you can read with one hand, which is very handy." Interpret that how you will! WATCH: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Jeff Bezos Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things With Demetri Martin Funny Political News Joke of the Day More on Daily Show
 
Michael Shapiro: Heads in the Sand (And Why Baseball Survives) Top
Donald Fehr, who heads baseball's players' union, launched his spring training barnstorming tour yesterday by assuring one and all that just because 103 players in addition to Alex Rodriguez tested positive in 2003 for banned substances, this by no means taints the reputations of everyone else. A foolish claim, but not unexpected. It is Fehr's job to protect his rank and file - both in their earning potential and in their reputations, no matter how badly some of them have behaved. So forget any retreat on the arrangement that assured that those names remain confidential. Fehr is no fool and, like Commissioner Bud Selig, must know that the names will leak, just like A-Rod's. With each new name will come more calls for a full airing of every documented juicer. The response will be the inevitable palaver about putting the "steroids era" behind us, and instead focusing on all the many things the game now does to crack down on the dopers. Even as several of the game's luminaries - Brad Lidge, Curt Schilling and Lance Berkman --- are calling for a release of all those names, the sense here is that Fehr, Selig and, most importantly, the owners will ignore those pleas in the belief that they can wait the critics out. And, sadly, they are probably right. They are right because there remains a healthy portion of baseball fandom that would like to forget the whole, sordid business, and who can point to the public humiliations of such outsized stars as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and now A-Rod as evidence of the sanction that awaits those who dare besmirch the sanctity of the great game. But there is something else at play here which explains how it is that baseball endures, even in the face of scandal: modest expectations. Contrary to its prevailing myth, baseball is not a national sport, certainly not like football. Rather, it is a local game, which explains, in part, how it is that attendance can rise even as World Series ratings decline. People love and follow and wear the colors of their teams, their stars. It much the same way that people think of, say, schools: the state of American public education is forever held in low regard. But people do love their kids' schools. Baseball rose to the lofty perch of National Pastime not by design but by default - no other professional team sports that could compete with baseball until the 1960s. But, in truth, baseball was not so much an organized sport as it was a series of fiefdoms, presided over by - forgive the metaphor - warlords, the most powerful of whom were motivated by the overwhelming desire to enrich themselves as the expense of everyone else. The domineering owners of the past - the Dodgers' Walter O'Malley, the Yankees' Del Webb (who when he wasn't building hotels was building casinos) - cared very little about the greater good of the game. They cared about themselves, and made sure that the game was presided over by figurehead commissioners who could be relied upon to their bidding. Only once in baseball's long history was there a moment when the greater good was imposed by a higher authority - when the sport's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned for life the eight Chicago White Sox accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. Landis spent the next 25 years meting out fines, assuming a resolute demeanor, and ensuring that baseball's shameful color barrier endured. He was otherwise a self-important fool. Baseball has almost always been a game without a center, without an organizing logic or prevailing sense of what might be in most everyone's best interests. There is nothing in baseball that resembles the "league think" that the late Pete Rozelle imposed upon the NFL when he was its commissioner. This is not to say that pro football is a model organization. But consider that football embraced revenue sharing in the 1960s, and with it the promise to its fans that on any given Sunday any team could beat any other. It took baseball over 40 years to appreciate that tenant of sporting wisdom. Baseball was slow to integrate, slow to acknowledge that its players deserved pensions, slow to embrace the possibilities of television, slow to appreciate how the perception of widespread cheating could undermine the sport. How could it be otherwise? No one was in charge. And because the value of the game - as measured by the value of franchises - continued to grow, there was no incentive to change. Wealthy men came to the game, and grew richer merely by cashing out. The players saw this, and quite reasonably wanted a piece of the action. And so it is that baseball has been plagued since, yes, the late 1980s, by a scandal from which it cannot extricate itself. The names will leak. Testing will one day presumably begin on Human Growth Hormones, which may well uncover yet another cache of cheaters. Congress will call on the carpet call Selig, Fehr and perhaps several more players. Righteous anger will follow. But there will be a game that night. And another game the next. People will come out to see the local fellows play. San Francisco loved Barry Bonds, even as fans everyplace else turned out dressed as hypodermic needles to taunt him. Bonds was a cheater, but in San Fransisco he was "our" cheater. Give A-Rod until his first two home run game of the season to be celebrated with a curtain call. So long as the home crowd pays to see him, baseball can delude itself into believing that all is good in the world.
 
Paula Duffy: Follow the Roar Gets Your Juices Flowing for Tiger's Return Top
If you are a Tiger fanatic like me, or you just want to learn what it is like to physically follow the man who seemingly props up the PGA Tour, you are in for a treat. Bob Smiley, a television writer, contributor to espn.com's golf coverage and all-around great guy has written the definitive account of Tiger's incredible 2008 season. Follow the Roar: Tailing Tiger For All 604 Holes of His Most Spectacular Season certainly delivers what is promised. And more. Smiley's attitude about Woods wasn't one of fawning fan. In fact he used to root for others to knock Tiger off his perch. But at the age of 30, with a stalled career and starting to lose hope for his own golf game, Smiley decided to see if Tiger had something to teach him. What he produced is nothing short of a wonder. Smiley gives golf fans enough detail and insight into every shot Tiger hit between January and June 2008 to make us happy. But he also provides a funny travelogue that takes us around the U.S. as well as to the United Arab Emirates, as he relates his experiences traveling in less than first class-style. Although he held a press pass from ESPN, he got no special privileges from tournament officials and he certainly never got closer to Tiger than any fan who is lucky enough to stand right at the rope line. He had to stretch his less than enormous book advance and convince his wife that his absence from her and his two young children would all be worth it...someday. Smiley doesn't spare any detail about his foibles, his family's opinion of his book project and his prospects in life. That charming thread runs through the pages as he chronicles the turn-around in his feelings about Tiger Woods and the profound wonder he felt as the golfer's worldwide tournament winning streak wore on. The author convinces us of the righteousness of the Tiger apologists and provides the most stirring account of the U.S. Open that saw Tiger rise to new levels of mental toughness and physical prowess. If you want to relive the glory of the 2008 season or just learn how one individual can concentrate on the task at hand without deviating from a plan (and I mean Smiley here, not just Tiger) then Follow The Roar is just what the doctor ordered.
 
Don LaFontaine: Worst Oscar Omission Top
Two days after the 81st Annual Academy Awards, the talk of who won and who got snubbed is dying down. But let me ramp it back up for a second. As the archly irreverent blog FilmDrunk points out, there are often people "left out" of the Oscar telecast's "In Memoriam" section "and no one knows exactly why." They make an unimpeachable case for one person who should not have been omitted, Don LaFontaine , who "did virtually every movie trailer for 30 years and was easily the most famous voice-over guy who ever lived." Too right. This is the guy who basically invented the trailer opening phrase, "In a world, where...," you know..."bunnies poop exploding doubloons"...or whatever. A nation of filmmakers who needed a trailer to quickly make sense of a world where bunnies pooped exploding doubloons or where pirates ruled Lake Michigan or where robot tricycles from Luxembourg threatened the time-space continuum relied on LaFontaine to quickly establish their idea in the minds of moviegoers, jonesing for their feature presentation. In short, LaFontaine's voice was often the first thing to bridge the gap between the creative spark of a filmmaker's inspiration and the yawning imagination of the filmgoing public. That voice was unmistakable, by the way, as anyone who saw this GEICO ad campaign remembers: One can help but think there might have been several uniquely good-spirited ways the academy could have honored LaFontaine Sunday night, giving viewers one last chance to enjoy the man they called "The Voice of God." That they didn't is a real shame. More on Video On HuffPost
 
Dr. Judith Rich: Impossible To Inevitable: Dare To Dream Big Top
Part One "So many of our dreams at first seem Impossible, then they seem Improbable, and then when we Summon the Will, they soon become Inevitable." Christopher Reeves Newsflash: The economy is a mess! OK, now that's out of the way. Can we talk? Since the world seems to be unraveling and everyone's walking around like a bunch of pretzels, all contorted and screwed up in our bodies and minds because we're scared you-know-whatless , it occurred to me that now might just be the perfect time to haul out those big dreams you packed away, gave up on, or never even started. This could be the perfect moment pick one up, dust it off and go for it. Seems we all have a whole lot less to lose than we did six months ago. So why not? Actually the spark of this idea came from a reader, livelovelaugh14 , in response to last week's post: What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail ? LLL14 responded with: " I would get a new dream ". Great idea! Thanks! That got me to thinking about the kind of dreams we dare not to dream. You know, the ones so big and overwhelming, so scary and seemingly impossible, you can't even begin to wrap your mind around them? I'm talking about the kind of dreams that make your toes curl and your stomach churn and make you ask yourself, " Who do you think you are to have such a dream? " Good question! But how about this: "Who do you think you're not?" What's the story you tell yourself about why your dream is impossible? You're too old, too young, don't have the right education or experience? You don't have the money, the time? Nobody would support you, you don't have enough self-discipline? You're not worthy or deserving? You might fail so why bother? You might succeed and then what? Or how about the latest primo excuse for not _______ (fill in)? "In this economy......" "Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask." Fox Muldar The Story of Phillipe Petit- Man On Wire! And Oscar Winner This is the story of one man's impossible dream. He did something no one in the world had ever done before or will ever do again. It's impossible! Listen to this. Phillipe Petit is a French" wire walker ". As a young boy, Petit dreamed of dancing on a high wire, but settled for a rope strung between two trees instead. (Last week, we imagined being on a wire. This week, we're actually going there with someone who lives on one.) Phillipe spent his much of his adult life as a street performer, and spent hot summer days performing on the streets of Paris, juggling balls and fruit, while riding a unicycle. But this was child's play for him. His sights were set much higher. Literally. Petit was a bit of a rascal, to put it mildly. To live his passion required that he take his street performances to the farthest edges he could imagine and he almost always ended up being arrested at the end of each act, for what he did was clearly outside the law. One day, while visiting his dentist because of a toothache, he picked up a magazine in the waiting room and read a story that would fire his imagination and take him to a place no human being has been before or will be again. He began to dream a dream that looked completely impossible, which to his way of thinking meant, " Go for it" . So he made a plan and set to work. After many years of dreaming, planning and false starts, on August 7, 1974, Petit, together with his team of co-conspirators, managed to rig a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trace Center and spent 45 minutes dancing on it, before the police threatened to pluck him off it with a helicopter and he chose to come off on his own. His amazing story is the subject of the 2008 documentary, Man On Wire ! which just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. In accepting the award, the director, James Marsh, told the audience, "Nothing is impossible". Then, Petit, in typical fashion, bounded up on stage and gave the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history. Here it is: It just doesn't get much better than this! If you think your dreams are too far out of reach, this 10-minute video montage of Petit's story might change your mind and make you a believer. Behold! : Any questions? The man who danced between the towers now can only dream of what he did, for the towers didn't even exist when he caught the dream, and now no longer exist. This is indeed Oscar winning material! But what about you? Let's explore how you might pull off your own impossible dreams. 5 tips to help you get started: ( There are many tips to share, too many for one post. So next week we'll look at 5 more. In the coming weeks, we'll flesh each one out in detail. So stay tuned.) 1) Find something tangible that represents your dream. It should be something that evokes the dream in your body, mind and spirit and calls forth your passion. It might be a photo, or a page torn from a magazine, like Phillipe did at the dentist's office. It could be a small statue or object. Put your dream in tangible form. 2) Create a sacred space for your object with the intention of incubating your dream . You might choose the top of a bookcase, a shelf or a dresser top. Include a beautiful piece of fabric upon which to place candles, photos, statues, flowers; whatever brings you back to your dream vision and fires your imagination. (There's much more to explore here. This is a big one!) 3) Declare your dream to a community of kindred spirits who will say "yes" and will support you finding the path. (This is another "big" one) I've created a group on Facebook called The Impossible Dreamers . Anyone can join. Come start an impossible dream revolution! Use this space to declare your dream and ask for support getting there. Invite your friends. Think of the energy you'll bring to your dreams when 100's of people are holding your vision with you. If you're not yet on Facebook, jump on. It's up to you how much or how little you use it. It doesn't have to take over your life. Make it work for you. In a pinch, you can always come back here and play Petit's acceptance speech. 4) Don't be attached to how you get there . Philippe and his co-hort, Jim Moore, were stopped by the security guard at the elevators on their first attempt to get to the top of the tower. So they decided to walk to the top. 110 floors! There's more than one way to get from A -Z, or even A-B, so don't get stuck on the mechanism. Chances are, you'll have to re-invent the path 100 times. Or 101. 5) Be willing to do whatever it takes. . Impossible is only a word. It's not a fact. Re-interpret what it means. Remember, Petit began by acknowledging that his dream was surely impossible. Then he said, " OK, let's get to work ." And he did. Keep in mind however, "doing whatever it takes" could have adverse consequences if you don't stay smart. So be smart and don't compromise your integrity or inflict harm on others. Come to think of it, these are all really big, important things to keep in mind. There's so much more to say than can be contained in a single blog. That's why I hope you'll stay tuned and come back as we'll be following this thread for several weeks. And invite your friends to join us! Here's my impossible dream : to write a best selling book that makes a difference in people's lives and be on Oprah! Kind of like the more "seasoned' version of Elizabeth Gilbert, with a few twists thrown in just to make it interesting. Why not? (Small detail: the book's not written yet, but I've taken the first steps, so consider it done). The writing part doesn't seem impossible but the Oprah part? Well, let's just say I've got some work to do. So let me get busy. Oprah, are you listening? Til next time, if you have stories about people (maybe even you!) who pulled off what they thought was impossible I'd love to hear about it. Please send them to me at judith@theraisinyears.com. They might even end up in my book! Also, let us hear about your impossible dreams. What's the dream that's so big, you dare not dream it? What are you saying "no" to? What's in the way of "yes"? How do you imagine your life would be different if your impossible dream came true? And thank you for being part of this vibrant community of readers! More on The Oscars
 

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