Saturday, March 28, 2009

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Connecticut School Bans Physical Contact Top
A Connecticut middle school principal has laid down the law: You put your hands on someone -- anyone -- in any way, you're going to pay. A violent incident that put one student in the hospital has officials at the Milford school implementing a "no touching" policy, according to a letter written by the school's principal.
 
Lane Hudson: Dear Bill O: I doubt your mother would approve Top
Dear Bill (the real villain): Hillary Clinton, former O'Reilly Factor producer Andrea Mackris, rape and murder victim Jennifer Moore, and now blogger Amanda Terkel. You seem to think women are expendable, or at least not worth valuing as equal. About a year and a half ago, you took a break from your ridiculous characterizations of progressive bloggers as 'worse than the Ku Klux Klan' to distract America from the fact that your followers at BillOreilly.com are so vile that they fancy offing Hillary Clinton with their shotgun. At no point, did you condemn your misguided minions. Instead you said I was a liar and insane for being a stand up citizen and notifying the Secret Service of a threat to a protected person. Where do you get our values from? I doubt your mother would approve. Your former producer, Andrea Mackris, sued your for sexual harassment. Instead of addressing her allegations (such as your propensity for loofah and language usually only found in hard core porn videos), you quietly settled out of court, paying her millions of dollars to stay quiet. I doubt your mother would approve. Recently, ThinkProgress.org, which has a rather impeccable record for accuracy, reported on the hypocrisy of your propensity to blame rape victims like Jennifer Moore for the horrific crimes committed against her and your willingness to speak at a fundraiser for the Alexa Foundation, which seems to be diametrically opposed to the beliefs that you have espoused on your teevee and radio shows. At no point did you apologize your misguided beliefs. Instead, you sent your minions to stalk ThinkProgress.org blogger Amanda Terkel, a diminutive and kind human being, on her vacation. Your minions even ambushed her unexpectedly on camera. (That is so classy and professional!) Instead of denouncing the highly unprofessional conduct of your minion (otherwise known as producer Jesse Watters), you proceeded to use highly edited footage of said minion's ambush of knowledgeable and fact-conscious blogger Amanda Terkel to cast her as a villain . How in the world could someone (like a highly partisan talk show host with the most fragile of egos) take someone (like a highly ethical writer) and cast her as a villan? It's a very simple and well-known tactic to some people (like talk show hosts who must defend their fragile egos at all costs). It's known as abandoning any semblance of journalistic integrity. I doubt your mother would approve. Now, instead of calling highly ethical professional writers names just because they called out your hypocrisy, it would have been really refreshing if you showed us that Ms. Terkel jumped the gun because of your pending plans to acknowledge your past mistakes of blaming innocent women for rapes committed against them. After all, the entire notion boggles any kind of logical thinking. You're not that unreasonable of a person, right? Alas, I guess it wasn't in the cards. You must be that unreasonable. I'm not sure why I even suggested you might be. In spite of this, I'll give you some advice that you should already know. Stay away from Amanda Terkel. She's way out of your league. Her integrity is something you have never had in your career and never will. I'm sure you (or your minion of a producer) made a strategic decision not to invite her on your show before you attempted to smear her because you already knew that you couldn't hold your own against her (knowing you could cut her microphone off wasn't enough of a comfort). So, instead of a highly edited 'interview' conducted by a shady producer stalking and ambushing someone on vacation, could you find a way to not be so lame? Even people like me, who know how pathetic you are, think this is a new low. Your mother would probably agree. Hugs and Kisses, Lane Hudson More on Bill O'Reilly
 
Late Night Jokes Of The Week: CNN, Schwarzenegger, Barack Obama And More (VIDEO) Top
It's everyone's favorite time again, when we can look back at the late night jokes that week and say here are the ones you need to see. In this edition, Jay Leno takes on CNN's new anchor model, Jimmy Kimmel takes on the Governator, and David Letterman shows us why George Bush is uncool. WATCH: More on Late Night Shows
 
Brazil: Abortion Debate Flares Amid Widespread Abuse Of Girls Top
SÃO PAULO, Brazil -- The waiting room at Pérola Byington Hospital resembles a small day care center many days. Young girls play on the cold tile floors or rock hyperactively in plastic chairs, while their mothers stare pensively at the red digital readout on a wall, signaling their place in line. More on Crime
 
Newsweek's Krugman Cover Story: Obama's Loyal Opposition Top
A stark image of Paul Krugman, the bearded New York Times Op-Ed columnist and Princeton economist, appears on the cover of next week's Newsweek, with the headline, "OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman." Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last fall, has been arguing that Obama is doing too little to respond to threats to the nation's banking and economic system, and contended that the $787 billion stimulus bill should have been bigger. More on Barack Obama
 
Afghan War Rationale Questioned By Some Key Strategists: Analysis Top
WASHINGTON, Mar 28 (IPS) - The argument for deeper U.S. military commitment to the Afghan War invoked by President Barack Obama in his first major policy statement on Afghanistan and Pakistan Friday - that al Qaeda must be denied a safe haven in Afghanistan - has not been subjected to public debate in Washington. A few influential strategists here have been arguing, however, that this official rationale misstates the al Qaeda problem and ignores the serious risk that an escalating U.S. war poses to Pakistan. Those strategists doubt that al Qaeda would seek to move into Afghanistan as long as they are ensconced in Pakistan and argue that escalating U.S. drone airstrikes or Special Operations raids on Taliban targets in Pakistan will actually strengthen radical jihadi groups in the country and weaken the Pakistani government's ability to resist them. The first military strategist to go on record with such a dissenting view on Afghanistan and Pakistan was Col. T. X. Hammes, a retired Marine officer and author of the 2004 book "The Sling and the Stone", which argued that the U.S. military faces a new type of warfare which it would continue to lose if it did not radically reorient its thinking. He became more widely known as one of the first military officers to call in September 2006 for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation over failures in Iraq. Col. Hammes dissected the rationale for the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in an article last September on the website of the "Small Wars Journal", which specialises in counterinsurgency issues. He questioned the argument that Afghanistan had to be stabilised in order to deny al Qaeda a terrorist base there, because, "Unfortunately, al Qaeda has moved its forces and its bases into Pakistan." Hammes suggested that the Afghan War might actually undermine the tenuous stability of a Pakistani regime, thus making the al Qaeda threat far more serious. He complained that "neither candidate has even commented on how our actions [in Afghanistan] may be feeding Pakistan's instability." Hammes, who has since joined the Institute for Defence Analysis, a Pentagon contractor, declined to comment on the Obama administration's rationale for the Afghan War for this article. Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, has also expressed doubt about the official argument for escalation in Afghanistan. Pollack's 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm," was important in persuading opinion-makers in Washington to support the Bush administration's use of U.S. military force against the Saddam Hussein regime, and he remains an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. But at a Brookings forum Dec. 16, Pollack expressed serious doubts about the strategic rationale for committing the U.S. military to Afghanistan. Contrasting the case for war in Afghanistan with the one for war in Iraq in 2003, he said, it is "much harder to see the tie between Afghanistan and our vital interests." Like Hammes, Pollack argued that it is Pakistan, where al Qaeda's leadership has flourished since being ejected from Afghanistan, which could clearly affect those vital interests. And additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pollack pointed out, "are not going to solve the problems of Pakistan." Responding to a question about the possibility of U.S. attacks against Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan paralleling the U.S. efforts during the Vietnam War to clean out the Communist "sanctuaries" in Cambodia, Pollack expressed concern about that possibility. "The more we put the troops into Afghanistan," said Pollack, "the more we are tempted to mount cross-border operations into Pakistan, exactly as we did in Vietnam." Pollack cast doubt on the use of either drone bombing attacks or Special Operations commando raids into Pakistan as an approach to dealing with the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. "The only way to do it is to mount a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign," said Pollack, "which seems unlikely in the case of Pakistan." The concern raised by Hammes and Pollack about the war in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan paralleled concerns in the U.S. intelligence community about the effect on Pakistan of commando raids by U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan against targets inside Pakistan. In mid-August 2008, the National Intelligence Council presented to the White House the consensus view of the intelligence community that such Special Forces raids, which were then under consideration, could threaten the unity of the Pakistani military if continued long enough, as IPS reported Sep. 9. Despite that warning, a commando raid was carried out on a target in South Waziristan Sep. 3, reportedly killing as many as 20 people, mostly apparently civilians. A Pentagon official told Army Times reporter Sean D. Naylor that the raid was in response to cross-border activities by Taliban allies with the complicity of the Pakistani military's Frontier Corps. Although that raid was supposed to be the beginning of a longer campaign, it was halted because of the virulence of the political backlash in Pakistan that followed, according to Naylor's Sep. 29 report. The raid represented "a strategic miscalculation," one U.S. official told Naylor. "We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response." The Pakistani military sent a strong message to Washington by demonstrating that they were willing to close down U.S. supply routes through the Khyber Pass talking about shooting at U.S. helicopters. The commando raids were put on hold for the time being, but the issue of resuming them was part of the Obama administration's policy review. That aspect of the review has not been revealed. Meanwhile airstrikes by drone aircraft in Pakistan have sharply increased in recent months, increasingly targeting Pashtun allies of the Taliban. Last week, apparently anticipating one result of the policy review, the New York Times reported Obama and his national security advisers were considering expanding the strikes by drone aircraft from the Tribal areas of Northwest Pakistan to Quetta, Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are known to be located. But Daniel Byman, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism policy specialist at Georgetown University, who has been research director on the Middle East at the RAND corporation, told the Times that, if drone attacks were expanded as is now being contemplated, al Qaeda and other jihadist organisations might move "farther and farther into Pakistan, into cities". Byman believes that would risk "weakening the government we want to bolster", which he says is "already to some degree a house of cards." The Times report suggested that some officials in the administration agree with Byman's assessment. The drone strikes are admitted by U.S. officials to be so unpopular with the Pakistani public that no Pakistani government can afford to appear to tolerate them, the Times reported. But such dissenting views as those voiced by Hammes, Pollack and Byman are unknown on Capital Hill. At a hearing on Afghanistan before a subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee Thursday, the four witnesses were all enthusiastic supporters of escalation, and the argument that U.S. troops must fight to prevent al Qaeda from getting a new sanctuary in Afghanistan never even came up for discussion. *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. Read more from Inter Press Service. More on War Wire
 
British Police Identify 200 Children As Potential Terrorists Top
Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are "vulnerable" to Islamic radicalisation. The number was revealed to The Independent by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and Britain's most senior officer in charge of terror prevention. He said the "Channel project" had intervened in the cases of at least 200 children who were thought to be at risk of extremism, since it began 18 months ago. The number has leapt from 10 children identified by June 2008. The programme, run by the Association of Chief Police Officers, asks teachers, parents and other community figures to be vigilant for signs that may indicate an attraction to extreme views or susceptibility to being "groomed" by radicalisers. Sir Norman, whose force covers the area in which all four 7 July 2005 bombers grew up, said: "What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards 'the West'. "One of the four bombers of 7 July was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society. "But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In his exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qa'ida. That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child's family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man." The Channel project was originally piloted in Lancashire and the Metropolitan Police borough of Lambeth in 2007, but in February last year it was extended to West Yorkshire, the Midlands, Bedfordshire and South Wales. Due to its success there are now plans to roll it out to the rest of London, Thames Valley, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and West Sussex. The scheme, funded by the Home Office, involves officers working alongside Muslim communities to identify impressionable children who are at risk of radicalisation or who have shown an interest in extremist material - on the internet or in books. Once identified the children are subject to a "programme of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual". Sir Norman said this could involve discussions with family, outreach workers or the local imam, but he added that "a handful have had intervention directly by the police". He stressed that the system was not being used to target the Muslim community. "The whole ethos is to build a relationship, on the basis of trust and confidence, with those communities," said Sir Norman. "With the help of these communities we can identify the kids who are vulnerable to the message and influenced by the message. The challenge is to intervene and offer guidance, not necessarily to prosecute them, but to address their grievance, their growing sense of hate and potential to do something violent in the name of some misinterpretation of a faith. "We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric. That is not the same as targeting the Muslim community." Nor was it criminalising children, he added. "The analogy I use is that it is similar to our well-established drugs intervention programmes. Teachers in schools are trained to identify pupils who might be experimenting with drugs, take them to one side and talk to them. That does not automatically mean that these kids are going to become crack cocaine or heroin addicts. The same is true around this issue." But Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said the police ran the risk of infringing on children's privacy. He warned: "There is a difference between the police being concerned or believing a person may be at risk of recruitment and a person actually engaging in unlawful, terrorist activity. "That said, clearly in recent years some people have been lured by terrorist propaganda emanating from al-Qa'ida-inspired groups. It would seem that a number of Muslim youngsters have been seduced by that narrative and all of us, including the Government, have a role to play in making sure that narrative is seen for what it is: a nihilistic one which offers no hope, only death and destruction." A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists. The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour." Related article: Charity Commission 'must monitor extremist links' Read more from the Independent.
 
Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: Krugman is Wrong Top
Paul Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist and one of the leading thinkers in the Democratic Party. He is held in high regard by many people -- myself included. In fact, I have cited his work on several occasions and used his statements on television to refute several right wing talking points. However, in one of his latest columns Dr. Krugman advances a viewpoint which I disagree with because it is incorrect. From the NY Times: After 1980, of course, a very different financial system emerged. In the deregulation-minded Reagan era, old-fashioned banking was increasingly replaced by wheeling and dealing on a grand scale. The new system was much bigger than the old regime: On the eve of the current crisis, finance and insurance accounted for 8 percent of G.D.P., more than twice their share in the 1960s. By early last year, the Dow contained five financial companies -- giants like A.I.G., Citigroup and Bank of America. And finance became anything but boring. It attracted many of our sharpest minds and made a select few immensely rich. Underlying the glamorous new world of finance was the process of securitization. Loans no longer stayed with the lender. Instead, they were sold on to others, who sliced, diced and puréed individual debts to synthesize new assets. Subprime mortgages, credit card debts, car loans -- all went into the financial system's juicer. Out the other end, supposedly, came sweet-tasting AAA investments. And financial wizards were lavishly rewarded for overseeing the process. But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization -- that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely -- turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption. Sooner or later, things were bound to go wrong, and eventually they did. Bear Stearns failed; Lehman failed; but most of all, securitization failed. ..... But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules. As you can guess, I don't share that vision. I don't think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don't think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don't believe it should try. Dr. Krugman's criticism of the financial sector boils down to the introduction of "securitization" into the financial world. His argument concludes: As you can guess, I don't share that vision. I don't think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don't think the Obama administration can bringsecuritization back to life, and I don't believe it should try. Let's begin with a definition of securitization: Securitization is a structured finance process that involves pooling and repackaging of cash-flow-producing financial assets into securities, which are then sold to investors. The term "securitization" is derived from the fact that the form of financial instruments used to obtain funds from the investors are securities. As a portfolio risk backed by amortizing cash flows - and unlike general corporate debt - the credit quality ofsecuritized debt is non-stationary due to changes in volatility that are time- and structure-dependent. If the transaction is properly structured and the pool performs as expected, the credit risk of all tranches of structured debt improves; if improperly structured, the affected tranches will experience dramatic credit deterioration and loss.[1] All assets can be securitized so long as they are associated with cash flow. Hence, the securities which are the outcome of securitization processes are termed asset-backed securities (ABS). From this perspective, securitization could also be defined as a financial process leading to an issue of an ABS. Let's put this into English by using a mortgage as an example. Your mortgage is a "cash flow product[ing] financial asset." What that means is when you take out your loan you must provide the lender with a predictable set of payments -- namely, your monthly loan payments. These payments are based on the length of time the loan will be outstanding, the borrowers overall credit risk, the amount of money borrowed etc..... The point is the lender will be receiving a predictable amount of money on a regular basis for a specific amount of time. Securitization takes your loan and combines it with loans that have similar qualities. For example, your loan is not the only loan where the borrower takes out a 30 year, 5% loan of $100,000; thousands of these loans are written every day. Securtization takes these loans and combines them into one big loan. Then it either sells that big loan as a whole or in pieces or cuts the pool of mortgages into different bonds which it sells to different investors. The former security is called a pass-through while the latter is called a collateralized mortgage obligation, or CMO. The central complaint against the process of securitization is it removes the oversight function from the lender. For example, it use to be that a bank held a loan for the entire life of the loan. As a result, the bank had a strong incentive to perform a large amount of due diligence to make sure the borrower would repay the loan. Compare that to a "lend to securitize" model where lenders make loans they never intend to hold as a long-term asset, thereby removing the incentive to actually perform an analysis of the borrower. Combine that with a ratings "system" that is at best incompetent, investment bankers providing pressure on loan originators for more and more product, a regulatory oversight system which is non-existent and incredibly cheap money and you get a disaster waiting to happen. Yet securitization provides two incredible advantages. First, it adds liquidity to the financial sector. Instead of having to hold a mortgage until it was paid off, a bank could sell it for cash and then use that cash to make another loan. This allows banks to increase the number of loans it can underwrite, thereby freeing up credit. Secondly, it allows individual investors to target needs and purchase products for those needs. For example, suppose an insurance company anticipated a financial payout in 3-5 years. Securitization allows investment banks to carve pools into specifically targeted assets which will fill the insurance company's need. This allows them to manage their portfolio far more effectively. In short, securitization increases overall credit and provides more tools for financial managment -- both of which increase overall economic growth when property structured. In correlation, the process of securitization has been around for almost 30 years, yet this is the first time it has been so prominently in the spotlight. If there were a fundamental problem with securitization in and of itself it would have been exposed when the program originated, not 30 years after its inception. The reality is securitization is not in and of itself a bad financial tool. Instead, the sum total of numerous inter-related issues such as the repeal of Glass Steagall, record low interest rates, a compromised ratings system and lack of oversight rather than are to blame, not merely "securitization". Finally, let me end by pulling the lens back to a much broader macro-level view. Over the last two years there has been an understandable criticism regarding the people who created this situation -- namely, the upper echelons of the financial sector. Many of the people involved in this sector made many mistakes which we are now paying for. The mistakes were large and spread into many areas of the economy. They are one of the primary causes of the current recession. Additionally, the system as a whole -- its overall organization -- needs to be significantly restructured to prevent this situation from happening again. As I have pointed out, the current mess is the combination of numerous factors, not merely one boogie man called "securitization." But that does not mean that finance in and of itself is evil or that all people involved in this area of the economy are corrupt. I have often read the criticism that "The US doesn't make thinks anymore" as if creating financial structures is somehow less valid than making a physical good. In fact, both activities are equally valid and should be treated as such. Individuals who prudently manage other's money and take well-thought out risks provide a valuable service to the economy; they should not be publicly vilified because other members of their profession have made huge mistakes. In essence, there are good practitioners and bad practitioners in any profession; but the presence of bad practitioners does not nullify the contributions of the professions as a whole. In addition, many finance people provided invaluable advice to their clients throughout this recession -- advice which preserved their client's money during an incredibly difficult time. Market watchers such as Barry Ritholtz, Mish Shedlock and Tim Iacona all provided invaluable advice to their clients and the public at large. Yet the criticism of finance groups all people in this industry together -- or provides asterisks and caveats regarding industry professionals who are agreed with while still spilling a fair amount of bile at the industry as a whole. Throughout this recession I am often reminded of the public's attitudes about criminal defense lawyers -- a profession which is ridiculed and roundly criticized on a regular basis until you need one. Then you can bet your bottom dollar that you want Johhny Cochran at your side saying, "If the glove does not fit, you must acquit." The point is broad brush strokes about any profession are inappropriate at best. In short, Dr. Krugman's analysis is wrong. Securitization has provided many benefits to the economy as a whole. It is not the sole problem with the current situation; we arrived at out present crisis because of a combination of numerous ill-thought out events and decisions. Finally, finance is not in and of itself bad and not all "wizards were frauds." Securitization has been around a long enough time to indicate that properly done it does not pose a threat to the economy as a whole. The current mess is not solely caused by securitization, but instead a combination of many inter-related events. In short, I respectfully disagree with Dr. Krugman's analysis. More on Economy
 
Rick Smith: Why Right Now is the PERFECT Time to Start a Business Top
The economy is in the toilet. Consumer sentiment has been very negative for quite some time. But there are some early signs of hope, a chance that we may be approaching the beginning of the end. This was the mood when I first was thinking about starting a new business in 2002. This week I had a very real sense of de je vu. The beginning of the end of a recession is the perfect time to start a new company. Numerous businesses have been conceived and launched in a terrible economy, only to ride wave of economic recovery to success. Examples include Hyatt, American Express, Burger King, Lexis Nexis, FedEx, Microsoft, Wikipedia, Sports Illustrated, GE and HP, just to name a few. By January of 2003, I was seriously starting to play around with ideas for a new business. By January of 2004, my plan had been basically laid out. I incorporated World 50, in February of 2004, investing only $400.00 (to buy stationary for invoices). By the time 2008 rolled around we had grown into an eight-figure business, having never taken a dollar of investment capital. We did not do this in spite of the terrible market we launched in. We were able to do it because of it. Fact: There are 5 things that you need to successfully start a new business. 1) An Idea. An idea can be born in any economy. However, when things are changing at a rapid pace, the birth of new opportunities accelerates. 2) Time. Nearly every entrepreneurial idea starts out as crap. You need time to think things through, to give up and start again, to have people tell you that you're crazy, to tell you why you're wrong, and time to change things until you might be right. The tail of a recession gives you the time and space you need. 3) Money. If you are starting a company completely from scratch (with no track record), you won't get venture capital, period. This may have been possible in the boom times of 1998-2000, but not before and not since. You need to bootstrap a new business until you have a team together and your business model is at least partially working in the marketplace. Where you can get money is from friends and family. While they may be reluctant to invest in your business, at the beginning of the end of a recession, they are likely a) frustrated with their current investments, and b) starting to become optimistic that things will soon turn around. This is the time they may be most likely to take a chance on you. 4) Talent. A great idea without execution is no more valuable than the note inside a Fortune Cookie. You need great talent to execute. But in all other phases of the economic cycle, Talent is NOT interested in your low paying, unproven new business. Now is the time you can sell the vision. Now is the only time you have a realistic shot at attracting the very best people. 5) Attention. If a bear comes up with a GREAT new idea in the woods during a boom ecomony, does anyone hear him? NO! Everyone is too concerned with what they have going on that is already working. But in a recession? Everyone is still freaking out. They are trying to shake every tree to identify something that will pull them out of this mess. And they are not as busy. This is when they are MOST willing to listen to something new. All you can ask as a start up is for someone to give you a fair hearing. Court is now in session. Now is the time to begin vetting your new idea. Now is the time to bring some of the most talented people you know into the conversation. The door is beginning to crack open. Now is the time to prepare to walk through it. This post was originally published at RickSmith.me Friend me on Facebook . Follow me on Twitter .
 
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Wave the White Flag in the Limbaugh War Top
President Obama and the Democrats should wave the white flag in their strawman war on Rush Limbaugh. The Media Research Center delivered the grim casualty figures for the Democrats. Since January, the top talk show gabber's ratings have soared off the charts. Radio affiliates that carry Limbaugh's syndicated show call the ratings boost he's gotten from the Democrat's orchestrated attack on him a "dramatic surge." This writer predicted as much when President Obama cracked to Congressional Republicans in late January that they should knock off listening to Limbaugh if they expected to get anything done in Congress and with his administration. The gabber instantly snatched at the quip and turned it into a multi show bonanza. No matter what topic Limbaugh gassed on, he managed to slide in a reference to Obama's prop up of him as the Democrat's prize punching bag. This did three things. It gave him an even bigger pile of fodder to puff himself up as the emperor of talk radio, claim to be the real kingmaker in the GOP, and in a perverse way paint himself as a credible and thoughtful political critic. It snapped many shell shocked Congressional Republicans out of their post election funk. Now suddenly feisty and combative, they draw a deep line in the sand against any and everything that Obama proposed. And it stiffened the spines of many timid Republicans and made them determined not to be bullied, or at least appear not to be bullied, by a mere talk show host into standing up to Obama. This should have been the red flag warning to the Democrats to drop Limbaugh from their enemies rolodex. But no, they continued to blunder on. They took out ads, radio spots, and email blasts bashing and trashing bogeyman Limbaugh. The idea was to make sure that when the public thought GOP, they thought Limbaugh. This was even more grist for Limbaugh. An he went on a tear. In quick succession he picked a fight with Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, a handful of GOP accomodationists, and the usual suspect to him liberal Democratic interest groups. But the real payoff was that it let him pad his bully pulpit to further whip up the pack to nit pick, poke fun at, and blow up any and every alleged slip or misstep by Obama. This in turn added even more steam to his inflammatory campaign of rumors, half truths, distortions, and flat out lies about Obama, liberals, and just about any other issue he rants on. Any other time this might be fun and games stuff, a side show distraction that bored reporters and TV talking heads used to fill up column space or a talk cast on off a slow news day, but the Democrats just couldn't let it go. And that insured that the Limbaugh as Democrat's foil ploy would continue to have shelve life. Limbaugh in a phony self-deprecating moment mockingly minimized his importance as a radio talk show host, feigning puzzlement at why the Democrats were so obsessed with him. He was right. They never should have been. Obama didn't need him to get Congressional Democrats and whipsaw a few Republicans into backing his program and to approve his cabinet appointees. He still doesn't. And that's all the more reason to wave the white flag in the Limbaugh war. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com More on Michael Steele
 
Obama, Medvedev To Sign Declaration On Nuclear Arsenals Top
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama will sign a declaration next week committing them to talks on reducing their countries' nuclear arsenals, a Kremlin aide said on Saturday. The two leaders will also sign a document on U.S.-Russian relations in general at a meeting in London, Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to President Dmitry Medvedev, told reporters. More on Barack Obama
 
Tens Of Thousands Gather In London To Protest Upcoming G20 Summit Top
LONDON - Tens of thousands of people marched across central London Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G20 summit next week. More than 150 groups threw their backing behind the "Put People First" march. Police said around 35,000 attended the demonstration, but there were large gaps in the line of protesters snaking its way across the city toward Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. The marchers are pushing for a more transparent and democratic economic recovery plan. "The whole economic meltdown ... There's a really good opportunity for governments to get together and invest in a sustainable future," said unemployed Steve Burson, 49, marching with the protesters. The biggest groups backing the demonstration include the Stop The War Coalition, whose supporters marched under the slogan "Jobs Not Bombs," Friends of the Earth, and the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group of British trade unions, which is calling for Britain's crisis-hit manufacturing base to share in country's banking bailout. "They should be solving (the crisis) in the interest of working people," said Andy Bain, the president of Transport Salaried Staffs' Association. "All the money is going to the rich." Protesters whistled and booed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's 10 Downing Street office -- with one shouting: "Enjoy the overtime!" as they filed past. Security was tight around a small group of people waving anarchist flags Saturday. Anarchists and others have promised violence before the G20 meeting Thursday, and the British capital is bracing for a massive police operation as representatives of the world's 20 leading economies fly in for a summit on the financial crisis. More protests are planned Wednesday and Thursday, while left-leaning teach-ins, lectures, and other demonstrations are scheduled throughout the week. Other demonstrations aimed at the G20 summit took place in Europe on Saturday. Berlin police estimated that around 10,000 people gathered in front of the capital's city hall and more than 1,000 in Frankfurt, Germany's banking capital, for similar demonstrations under the slogan: "We won't pay for your crisis." Some demonstrators in Berlin sported headbands reading "pay for it yourselves" and carried placards demanding: "make capitalism history."
 
Willie Geist's Week In Review: Blago On The Radio, Mika-View Vibrator-Gate & More (VIDEO) Top
As always, "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist ran down his top five stories of the week Friday morning — though this week, he started off with a bonus story: a man who had sex with a vacuum cleaner at a car wash in Michigan. Willie's Top 5: 5. Blago on the Radio 4. Michael Steele, Machiavelli 3. Charles Simonyi, Microsoft billionaire, goes to space 2. Oops, I Didn't Attend! Cantor skips President's speech for Britney 1. Vibrator-Gate: Mika vs. Barbara Walters and "The View" Watch: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Morning Joe
 
Obama Brings Flush Times For Black News Media Top
For the nation's black magazines, newspapers, and television and radio stations, the arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in an era of unprecedented access to the White House. President Obama gave Black Enterprise magazine his first print interview and gave a black talk show host one of his first radio interviews. This month, he invited 50 black newspaper publishers to meet with him at the White House. And at his news conference Tuesday, he skipped over several prominent newspapers and newsmagazines to call on Kevin Chappell, a senior editor at Ebony magazine.
 
Disney, Hulu Restart Talks Over ABC Shows Top
The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources. The talks were described as "serious" by the sources and said to center on ABC prime time shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Lost," and "Ugly Betty." Other content from Disney's cable networks, such as ESPN and Disney Channel, were also being considered, the sources said. More on ABC
 
Obama "Face The Nation" Interview: CEOs Need To "Show Some Restraint" Top
President Obama told Bob Schieffer Friday that he has no illusions about how difficult the task of securing Afghanistan and Pakistan from Al Qaeda influence will be for the United States. "This is going to be hard, Bob... I am under no illusions," he said. "If it was easy it would already have been completed." More on Barack Obama
 
Celebrities With Little-Known Twins: Alanis, Kiefer, Scarlett, Ashton And More Top
we were surprised to find out how many stars have a twin sibling leading a very different life. Scarlett and Hunter Johansson: Scarlett Johansson might have been e-mail buddies with then-Senator Barack Obama, but her twin brother Hunter helped get him into the Oval Office. In June 2008 ScarJo's twin left his job as a community organizer at Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office and became a campaign organizer for Obama in Denver. As everyone knows, Obama became President, while Hunter received an honor of his own: People magazine named him a "Hot Bachelor" in their "Single and Sexy Men of 2008" feature. Kiefer and Rachel Sutherland: Maybe it's because we think of him as the ultimate loner on the TV series "24," but we were shocked to find out that Kiefer Sutherland has a twin sister.
 
NY Times Profiles Peter Orszag, Obama's "Supernerd" Budget Director Top
At 6 in the morning, Peter R. Orszag is racing: across wet pavement for a 35-minute run, into a shower and a suit, and through a living room that looks rather like an office, the walls painted presidential gold and hung with pictures of federal monuments. As he heads to his job as White House budget director, he already seems to pulse with energy, but he asks his driver to stop at Starbucks for enormous doses of iced and hot tea. His epic caffeine intake concerned him until he solved the problem with typical Orszagian efficiency: he underwent genetic testing, confirmed that he could safely metabolize large amounts and happily moved on to the next worry.
 
UK Charity Urges Madonna To Reconsider Adoption Top
LILONGWE, Malawi — Madonna is expected to arrive in Malawi Sunday, airport officials said, as the star's plans to adopt a girl as her second child from the poor African country began to draw criticism. Officials at the airport in the capital spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. The luxury lodge where Madonna has stayed in the past has been fully booked and casual visitors have been turned away. International media have begun arriving in the capital in anticipation of her visit. Friday, a welfare official and a person involved in the adoption proceedings said the singer plans to adopt a 4-year-old girl. But a British children's charity has urged Madonna to "think twice" before adding another African child to her celebrity family. Save the Children UK said Saturday that the recently divorced star risked sending the wrong message by going through with the adoption. Spokesman Dominic Nutt said many international adoptions are unnecessary _ and some even feed into a criminal "adoption industry." Nutt said he was not suggesting that Madonna was doing anything wrong _ but he said the whole process of international adoptions is often flawed. He said that, barring exceptional circumstances, children should be kept in the care of their extended families or within their communities. Madonna's spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg in New York, who has not commented on the adoption reports, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the star would not respond to Save the Children. The welfare official and people close to the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, said the girl's mother, an unmarried 18-year-old, died a few months after the child was born. Her father is believed to be alive but no other details were available. The girl's relatives at first resisted the adoption but have now consented, they said. Madonna and the girl's uncle are expected to appear in court on Monday to sign adoption papers. Madonna was harshly criticized for her adoption of David Banda, now 3, in 2008. Children's advocacy groups accused the 50-year-old star of wielding her wealth and influence to circumvent Malawian law requiring an 18- to 24-month assessment period before adoption. Austin Msowoya, legal researcher with Malawi's Law Commission, played down concerns that a second adoption by Madonna would violate any laws. He said the best interests of the child needed to be taken into account _ whether this was staying in an orphanage in Malawi or getting "an education with Madonna." "When you look at these two options, then perhaps it becomes in the best interests of the child to allow the adoption if the parents and the guardians consent to it," he told Associated Press Television News Saturday. Reports that Madonna wants to adopt a girl from Malawi have been circulating for some time. But the first official hint came from the star herself last week. In an interview in Malawi's leading daily The Nation, the singer said she was considering another adoption but would only do it if she had "the support of the Malawian people and government." If the adoption goes through, Madonna would become a single mother of four. She also has an 8-year-old son, Rocco, with former husband Guy Ritchie and a 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from a previous relationship. Madonna first traveled to Malawi in 2006 while doing charity work and filming a documentary on the devastating poverty and AIDS crisis there. She is also establishing a school for girls there. ___ Associated Press correspondents Khaled Kazziha in Lilongwe, Malawi and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report. More on Celebrity Kids
 
Arianna Huffington: I'm Guest Hosting CNBC's Squawk Box, and I'd Love Your Suggestions Top
I'm going to be guest hosting CNBC's Squawk Box Tuesday morning. Among my guests will be saw-the-meltdown-coming economist Nouriel Roubini, Black Swan author Nassim Taleb, and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank. I'd love to hear what questions you'd like me to ask them. Please put your suggestions in the comments section of this post, then tune in to CNBC from 7 to 9 am Tuesday morning. Memo To Obama's Economic Team: Get Some Sleep! Take the Steering Wheel out of Geithner's Hands Larry Summers: Brilliant Mind, Toxic Ideas Watch: Arianna Discusses Obama's Afghanistan Policy, Bank Bailout On Larry King Live Watch: Arianna Discusses Tim Geithner on Larry King Live More on CNBC
 
Presidents Getting Married! A Retrospective (SLIDESHOW) Top
Check out these political power couples on the day they made their unions official. Want more romance? See a slideshow of Presidential PDA . *Follow Huffington Post Style on Twitter and become a fan of Huffington Post Style on Facebook * More on Photo Galleries
 
Britney's Dad Forces Fansite To Shut Down Top
Jordan Miller -- the owner and webmaster of Britney Spears' most popular fan site, BreatheHeavy.com -- has spent the past five years supporting the singer, but he's about to be shut down by the pop star herself. Although Miller asserts that the sole purpose of the site is "to support the icon of our generation, Britney Spears, and to continuously stick by her through the good and bad," Spears' father Jamie has taken legal action over some of the content. More on Britney Spears
 
Amy Poehler Readies Sitcom Debut Top
On her new show, which has its premiere on April 9, Ms. Poehler is portraying another government official: Leslie Knope, the deputy parks director of fictional Pawnee, Ind. It's a character who exudes all the qualities Ms. Poehler most loves to play. "She's naïve and narcissistic, completely deluded and completely out of touch with reality," she said. As if to prove her solidarity with her character, she added: "I think we'll be the first TV show to win an Academy Award. And the Nobel Peace Prize."
 
Bruce Willis Makes His Marriage Legal Top
It's official: Bruce Willis and Emma Heming are husband and wife. After their wedding celebration in the Caribbean last weekend, the actor and the model/actress were wed in a civil ceremony Friday at a friend's house in Beverly Hills, his rep, Paul Bloch, tells PEOPLE. "They could not be happier," Bloch says.
 
Blythe McGarvie: Earth Hour in Beijing Top
After landing in Beijing, I talked with a Gen Y (26 years old) named Wilma who mentioned she would be observing Earth Hour. In less than 12 hours, it will be Earth Hour. No matter where you are in the world, at 8:30pm on March 28th, you are supposed to turn off your lights and reduce your use of electricity. I heard of this in the U.S. as a way to recognize the impact of human life on the environment, but know of no one who will be observing this challenge. It struck me that my Chinese host Wilma was trying to tie in to the interconnected world with me. She assumed that this is a worldwide phenomena, perhaps akin to celebrate the New Year's Eve with fireworks or balls dropping all over the world. Is Earth Hour something only Gen Ys care to celebrate? Stay tuned....I will let you know if I see a darkening of the buildings in Beijing tonight. Also, I will let you know what else is on Wilma's mind, a newlywed who has her own apartment.
 
Wire Creator Predicts Surge In Corruption As Newspapers Decline Top
Fictional corrupt politicians are a mainstay of The Wire, David Simon's celebrated television series about life on the Baltimore streets. But the show's creator says he fears a real-life explosion of rampant corruption in American political life if the newspaper industry, in which he worked for more than a decade, is allowed to collapse. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the award-winning writer and producer launches a tirade against newspaper owners who, he says, showed "contempt for their product" and are now reaping the whirlwind. But he rejects the idea that newspapers should seek ways to embrace the new world of free information, arguing that they must urgently start charging money for content distributed online. More on Newspapers
 
Earth Hour 2009: Cities Around The World Turning Off The Lights Top
SYDNEY — The floodlit cream shells of the famed Opera House dimmed Saturday as Sydney became the world's first major city to plunge itself into darkness for the second worldwide Earth Hour, a global campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. From the Great Pyramids to the Acropolis, the London Eye to the Las Vegas strip, nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries planned to join in the World Wildlife Fund-sponsored event, a time zone-by-time zone plan to dim nonessential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Involvement in the effort has exploded since last year's Earth Hour, which drew participation from 400 cities after Sydney held a solo event in 2007. Interest has spiked ahead of planned negotiations on a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December. The last global accord, the Kyoto Protocol, is set to expire in 2012. Despite the boost in interest from the Copenhagen negotiations, organizers initially worried enthusiasm for this year's event would wane with the world's attention focused largely on the global economic crisis, Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley told The Associated Press. Strangely enough, he said, it's seemed to have the opposite effect. "Earth Hour has always been a positive campaign; it's always around street parties, not street protests, it's the idea of hope not despair. And I think that's something that's been incredibly important this year because there is so much despair around," he said. "On the other side of it, there's savings in cutting your power usage and being more sustainable and more efficient." In Australia, people attended candlelit speed-dating events and gathered at outdoor concerts as the hour of darkness rolled through the country. Sydney's glittering harbor was bathed in shadows as lights dimmed on the steel arch of the city's iconic Harbour Bridge and the nearby Opera House. Earlier Saturday, the Chatham Islands, a group of small islands about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of New Zealand, officially kicked off Earth Hour by switching off its diesel generators. Soon after, the lights of Auckland's Sky Tower, the tallest man-made structure in New Zealand, blinked off. Forty-four New Zealand towns and cities participated in the event, and more than 60,000 people showed up for an Earth Hour-themed hot air ballooning festival in the city of Hamilton. At Scott Base in Antarctica, New Zealand's 26-member winter team resorted to minimum safety lighting and switched off appliances and computers. The U.N.'s headquarters in New York and other of its facilities were dimming their lights for an hour to signal the need for global support for a new climate treaty in Copenhagen in December. The first round of climate negotiations this year begins Sunday in Bonn, Germany. U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon called Earth Hour "a way for the citizens of the world to send a clear message: They want action on climate change." "We are on a dangerous path. Our planet is warming. We must change our ways. ... We need sustainable energy for a more climate-friendly, prosperous world," Ban said. China was participating in the campaign for the first time, with Beijing turning off the lights at its Bird's Nest Stadium and Water Cube, the most prominent venues for the Olympics, according to WWF. Shanghai was also cutting lights in all government buildings and other structures on its waterfront, while Hong Kong, Baoding, Changchun, Dalian, Nanjing and Guangzhou were also participating, WWF said. However, the official WWF Earth Hour Web site appeared to be blocked in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin on Saturday afternoon. While China rarely gives reasons for blocking Web sites, the campaign coincided with the 50th anniversary of the suppression of an uprising in Tibet that forced the Dalai Lama to go into exile. In Hong Kong, the government planned to suspend its nightly "Symphony of Lights," which beams lasers and lights into the sky from 44 buildings on the city's famed Victoria Harbor. Landmarks along the harbor also were to switch off nonessential lights for an hour. Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva pressed a button that switched off the lights on Khao San Road, a famous haven for budget travelers in Bangkok that is packed with bars and outdoor cafes. City officials then hosted an hour-long outdoor seminar on global warming that offered ideas for reducing energy consumption. The lights also went out at the Grand Palace and other riverside monuments, and on several of the Thai capital's busiest boulevards. On Bangkok's bustling Silom Road several street vendors hawking pirated DVDs, T-shirts and fake watches chipped in by turning off the bulbs that light their stalls. Earth Hour organizers say there's no uniform way to measure how much energy is saved worldwide. Earth Hour 2009 has garnered support from global corporations, nonprofit groups, schools, scientists and celebrities _ including Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and retired Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu. McDonald's Corp. planned to dim its arches at 500 locations around the Midwest in the United States. The Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont hotel chains and Coca-Cola Co. also planned to participate. ___ On the Net: Earth Hour: http://www.earthhour.org U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Earth Hour video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v9bm7yR0HcVY
 

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