Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Blog Alert
Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

David Weinberger: 4.5 lessons from Twitter Top
You can tell that Twitter has added something important to the ecosystem by the volume of the snickering. If you dismiss it by asking "Why do I care what you had for breakfast?", there are only two choices. First, you're saying everyone on Twitter is an idiot. Second, you don't understand what you're talking about. As a Twitterer ( dweinberger ), I'm going to go with Option #2. Twitter's success tells us a lot...including the following 4.5 points: 1. Twitter in its native form assumes we're ok with not keeping up with the abundance. Tweets are going to scroll by when you're not looking, and you're never going to see them. Twitter assumes you will let them go, the way most of us cannot leave messages in our email inboxes unread (or undismissed). 2. Social asymmetry addresses the scaling problem. At Twitter, the people you follow are not necessarily the people who are following you. That's exactly not how mailing lists and weekly status meetings work, and Twitter's approach impedes the back-and-forth development of ideas. But, maybe that's not what Twitter is primarily about. And the asymmetry means that some people can have lots of followers but still participate as listeners. 2.5. (Maybe in an age of abundance, the back and forth development of ideas isn't the only process. Sure, having a small group kick around an idea often works. But maybe in some instances it also works for an idea to be lobbed like a beach ball from one group to another, each putting their own spin on it.) 3. Twitter is an app that scales as as platform. That is, it comes with a set of features that makes it usable and popular. But it's open enough to enable users and third parties to add capabilities that make it useful for what it wasn't designed for. For example, a convention has arisen among users that "RT" will stand for "re-tweet" when you want to publish someone else's tweet to one's own followers. 4. We'll complicate simple things as much as we have to. We'll invent "hashtags" (tags that begin with #, embedded within a tweet) to let people find tweets on a particular topic, getting past the "it already scrolled past" issue. We'll invent layers upon layers of aggregators of tweets. We'll just bang away on it as hard as we have to in order to accrete significance. We truly are meaning monkeys. More on Twitter
 
Paula Gordon: It's Not Just AIG, Friends Top
Want a growth industry for hard times? Try corporate cynicism. Call me radical -- I don't think being out-of-doors should be life-threatening. Southern Company, a power company behemoth providing some 5 percent of the United States' electricity by burning coal in almost three-fourths of their 77 plants, acts on a very different premise. Maximize profits and devil take the hindmost, masterful "greenwash" aside. Sound like any newsworthy insurance giant "too big to fail" you know? Thanks to irresponsible politicians devoted to developers, the highway lobby, industry and agribusiness -- from Atlanta's Mayor Shirley Franklin to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, Senators Chambliss and Isaakson and all the counties, towns and municipalities stacked up between them -- I never leave our Atlanta home unless I've check the ozone and microparticulates (2.5 microns) "out there". While we've conscientiously cut our own electric consumption by more than 40%, what remains is significantly committed to the HEPA air filtering systems we require to breath cleaner (not clean) air. Remember, I'm the guy whose asthma is entirely attributable to filthy, microparticulate-laden Atlanta air. So before I venture out for a simple walk in the park, I check for smog -- there are lots of sites now -- and for microparticulates (at "AIRNow.gov"). But when IS the air "safe"? Looking ONLY at microparticulates -- not including ozone and/or smog -- it depends on which side of the 49th parallel you ask that question! The Canadian and U.S. governments apparently cooperate across the same agencies. They report the VERY SAME NUMBERS to anyone who's looking. Both use the same COLORS as advisories. But -- when one day recently I looked more closely -- the NUMBERS used in the "green/yellow/orange/red/purple" categories are WILDLY different between the two nations. And only the U.S.A. assigns (profoundly misleading) "words". Read it and weep: Green ("safe") Canada 0-20 ppm / U.S. 0-50 ppm Yellow ("moderate") Canada 21-35 ppm / U.S. 51-100 ppm Orange ("unhealthy for sensitive groups") Canada 36-45 // U.S. 101-150 ppm Red ("Unhealthy") Canada 46-90 ppm / U.S. 151-200 ppm Purple ("Very Unhealthy") Canada 91+ ppm / U.S. 201-250 ppm Remember, this is microparticulates ONLY, ozone and smog are a different subject entirely! It is distantly possible that Canadians are not as tough as Americans. More likely, Canadians value their health as well as corporate wealth. Yesterday The American Physiological Society released the following statement: "Accumulating evidence indicates that an increase in particulate air pollution is associated with an increase in heart attacks and deaths." OK, so the air's dangerous in Atlanta, we'll just "get away" and go to the North Georgia mountains, right? Wrong! "Deliverance, Part II." Any given day, those same microparticulates are regularly HIGHER in the North Georgia Mountains than in Atlanta. And if you've ever flown into the Atlanta airport and looked at our filthy "soup" that passes for air, you'll know -- THAT takes some doing ... until you factor in the years and years of Southern Company "grandfathering" itself out of regulation. The North Georgia Mountains are downwind from the notorious (local apologists aside) Southern Company Bowen coal-burning power plant in Cartersville, GA*. In 2006, Bowen was reportedly the entire utility industry's biggest polluter in the nation. (Reuters March 18, 2008 from the Dow Jones Commodities News Select service.) That year alone, this single Southern Company plant released 22 million pounds of toxic pollutants. And it will be 2011 before the changes forced upon Southern Company at Bowen significantly address decades of abuse. One plant. There are many, many more across the Southeast, in the four operating companies known as Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Gulf Power, and Mississippi Power. Delays even thinking about cleaning things up have guaranteed that Southern Company executives and their company's shareholders have profited handsomely, while lifeforms across the Eastern United States have suffered irreparable damage. Well, it's not surprising that Southern Company is accountable for America's single biggest polluting plant. Southern Company, a mainstay to the Bushites, is a long-time, major supporter of the entire Republican Party of which Georgia Governor Perdue, Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isaakson, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby and other retro-Republican Southern politicians continue to be unabashed standard bearers. Make no mistake, Southern Company's also coddled more than its fair share of elected Democrats. Footdragging's costly, but not nearly as expensive as it is profitable. 
And just in case you're inclined to give Southern Company some slack because it's been forced to begin to clean up some of its very dirty act ... This is the same Southern Company whose Georgia Power subsidiary just pushed through the Georgia legislature -- that's legislature, not simply the predictable pushover of a nominally "Public" Service Commission -- a law requiring Georgians to fund Southern Company's construction of a new nuclear power plant (a $1.6 billion involuntary loan from customers) which, with any luck, will never be built. Nice not-work if you can get it, and, if you're Southern Company, all you need is a Republican Georgia legislature and governor, courtesy of money politics. Seems that "Power" does not refer to electricity. We're about to pay for a nuke that we may or may not live to see built or ever brought on line! And, of course, this economic disgrace completely ignores the deadly reality that nuclear power is just as terrible in its own destructive ways -- and over a much longer time-frame -- as coal-powered electric generation is. And, to be absolutely clear, "clean coal" is oxymoronic. "Private enterprise" is great -- unless you can get a better deal, at the expense of an ill-informed citizenry. It's called "crony capitalism" or "the best government money can buy." Yes, it makes me fightin' mad. I think I'll take a walk ... or not!! *David Whitman's Washington Monthly article "Atlanta Burning" from September, 2005, is still distressingly relevant. Thanks to a good friend for keeping it in front of us.
 
Dr. Drew Pinsky: Narcissism and the Economic Crisis? Top
In his seminal book the Culture of Narcissism , Christoper Lasch lamented the degree to which the Western Psyche had shifted toward traits that by any measure would be seen as predominantly narcissistic. In spite of his grim assessment and dire warnings, even he would be impressed by how deeply we have plunged into the emptiness of narcissism. What impact do narcissistic traits and characteristics have in the face of the ongoing economic crisis? First of all grandiosity and denial are common features of the condition which I think can easily be seen as the two horsemen of the apocalypse that lead us down the path to our current situation. How could we have thought that mortgages would magically be paid when there was no evidence of the basic requirements for this to be so? How could a bank offer such a loan and moreover how could a consumer have the hubris to take on the loan? There were powerful financial motivators to be sure. However to participate in that market required quite a bit of denial and a grandiose sense of invincibility. When one examines the Psychology that allows this to occur you can't help but see the shadowy consequences of narcissism on our society. What is even more interesting to me is to watch how we respond to the current crisis and the degree to which narcissism fosters feelings, which color our response. Another common characteristic of narcissism is a sense of specialness. Well, interestingly enough a common manifestation of this feature that I encounter nearly every day is a panicky sense that the world or at least this country has never seen anything like the current crisis. One needn't be much of a student of history to know how self-absorbed one must be to take such a point of view. The Narcissist is wrought with anxiety and often lacks the healthy skill of turning to others to foster one's ability to regulate overwhelming emotion. The narcissist often misses the sources of nourishment and real meaning in life, our close relationships with other human beings. As such he or she is left emotionally unregulated with a grandiose sense of specialness to buffer anxieties about reality. However, in the current crisis, specialness evokes a sense of catastrophe rather than a more measured response, which can more realistically assess our current crisis in historical context. I have some hope for the potential of the financial crisis to refocus our priorities. My most sincere hope is that we do get down to the business of recovery but that this historical moment causes us to stop and reflect about what is important in the human experience. It is the people we love and our ability to make a difference in one another's life that gives life its richness and meaning. This message has been passed along in myth and scripture throughout human history. Whether you hearken back to the epics of Gilgamesh finding his way back to serve his kingdom or... it is the other that provides meaning to life. I often ask my addicted patients a philosophical question, which has frequently been asked. If I could render you a brain in a jar and as the brain in the jar use my hypothetic infinite powers to dial in to your brain the perfect existence, would you sign up to do it? Would you agree to be the brain in the jar? Most people would forgo the perfect existence if it meant becoming a brain in a vat. When one examines why this is so one discovers that the primary reason is that you would cease to exist to others. Although as the brain in the jar you would think that others were responding to you the fact is you would not exist to anyone else. Our sense of self and meaning is so tied to others that for us not to actually be a part of the human experience, to exist to others and be of service to them, would cause us to forgo continuous pleasure. In fact pleasure should not be the goal of a flourishing life. Rather a life of meaning, a life of significance and that means a life with others, especially those whom we love. Dr. Drew Pinsky is a nationally renowned addiction medicine specialist, the host of the popular radio show Loveline and the star of the VH1 hit Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, its spin-off Sober House and MTV's Sex with Mom and Dad. His new book THE MIRROR EFFECT: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America was recently released. More on Global Financial Crisis
 
Chris Gunn: Small Businesses Want President Obama to Answer One Question, According to the American Small Business League Top
The American Small Business League (ASBL) posted the following press release this morning. In it the league asks President Obama a single question regarding the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 corporations every year. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation's economy. It is not reasonable to move forward with potential solutions to our economic crisis without stopping the diversion of up to $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts to some of the largest corporations in the United States and Europe. -------------------------------------------------------------- Small Businesses Want President Obama to Answer One Question Petaluma, Calif. - As America slides deeper and deeper into recession, 27 million small business owners want President Barack Obama to answer one question at his press conference Tuesday. Why are you allowing Fortune 500 firms to participate in government economic stimulus contracting programs designated for small businesses? Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have been release, which found billions of dollars in federal small business contracts have been diverted to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses around the world. A recent investigative story by the Washington Post found up to 38.5 percent of all federal small business contracts were actually going to Fortune 500 firms alone. In June of 2008, the Department of the Interior (DOI) Office of Inspector General found that agency had diverted millions of dollars in small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms such as Dell, GTSI, Home Depot, John Deere, McGraw-Hill, Ricoh, Sherwin Williams, Starwood Hotels, Waste Management Incorporated, Weyerhaeuser, World Wide Technology and Xerox Corporation. ( http://www.doioig.gov/upload/2008-G-0024.pdf ) The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General referred to the problem as, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire Federal Government today..." ( http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf ) In February of 2008, President Obama recognized the dramatic negative impact abuses in federal small business contracting programs were having on American small businesses when he released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." ( http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php ) To date, President Obama has not followed through on his campaign promise to America's small businesses by ending the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants. The American Small Business League (ASBL) estimates over $100 billion a year in economic stimulus contracts earmarked for small businesses are diverted to Fortune 500 firms and other large businesses. "President Obama doesn't seem to understand that 98 percent of all U.S. firms have less than 100 employees and those firms are responsible for 97 percent of all new jobs in America," ASBL President Lloyd Chapman said. "If President Obama would make good on his campaign promise, and end the diversion of federal small business contracts to large businesses it would re-direct over $100 billion a year in existing federal infrastructure spending directly to small firms, create more jobs and stimulate the economy more than anything else he has proposed so far. Someone in the White House Press Corps needs to ask President Obama why he is allowing Fortune 500 firms to participate in federal economic stimulus programs for small businesses." -###- More on Barack Obama
 
Terry Krepel: WorldNetDaily and Obama Birth Certificate: Evasive Answers to Simple Questions Top
Before WorldNetDaily decided its mission was to stake what little journalistic reputation it has left on a desperate campaign to bring down Barack Obama by becoming an echo chamber for fringe claims that he may not have been born in the United States, it debunked the idea in August 2008, claiming not only that Philip Berg's lawsuit making that claim, in part, "relies on discredited claims" but that "[a] separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic." WND -- and especially editor Joseph Farah -- has been pretending ever since that it never did this story, unable to admit the simple truth of its existence and grotesquely contorting itself into writing around it. I've previously detailed Farah's evasions in responding to me and Keith Olbermann pointing out WND's refusal to honestly acknowledge the existence of that story. Farah demonstrated this once more in a March 3 column , written after Olbermann again referenced WND's original debunking, thus guaranteeing that Farah would respond -- and obfuscate again. Farah wrote: It is simply untrue that WND ever "authenticated" the document on Obama's campaign site. First of all, we would have to examine the original document, not a web posting, to do that. Second of all, assuming it is not a fraud, which is more than I would assume, it proves nothing about Obama's actual place of birth, for the reason stated above. Here's what WND stated in August 2008 : A separate WND investigation into Obama's birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren't originally there. Farah doesn't explain why it is unreasonable -- let alone "untrue" -- to conclude that if a "WND investigation ... found the document to be authentic," then WND has "authenticated" the document. The simple solution to this crisis -- and to avoid further ridicule from Olbermann -- would be for Farah to do what real news organizations would do: acknowledge what WND wrote last August, formally retract the story, then explain to readers why he and his website no longer stand by that conclusion. But for some reason, he won't do that. Why? Perhaps because he knows that the original report is true and that he's now playing a partisan game to undermine Obama's authority by peddling a lie. Farah ironically concluded his column: "If you're sick of being lied to, I urge you to show the Keith Olbermanns and Jonathan Alters of the world what you think of them." But what good does it do to go after Olbermann and Alter if the person you're sick of getting lies from is Joseph Farah? Farah is not the only WND employee who is unable to admit the truth about this. A March 10 article by Bob Unruh purporting to explain why there are " still questions about qualifications" claims that "bloggers who analyzed the image said it appeared to have been modified from the official state version, raising questions at to its authenticity" -- but doesn't tell readers that WND "found the document to be authentic." WND has been less than forthcoming about other birth certificate-releated issues as well. A March 14 article by Drew Zahn touted how attorney and birth certificate obsessive Orly Taitz, filer of several lawsuits on the issue, "confronted" Chief Justice John Roberts "with legal briefs and a WND petition bearing names of over 325,000 people asking the court to rule on whether or not the sitting president fulfills the Constitution's 'natural-born citizen' clause." Zahn added that a Secret Service agent accompanying Roberts "accepted two suitcases of documents and pledged to deliver them to Roberts," among them "[t]he WND petition, consisting of 3,300 pages of names - over 325,000 in all - of people demanding the Supreme Court hear the Obama eligibility case." But the WND petition is highly secretive and apparently problematic. The signees are not publicly posted at WND or anywhere else, and there's no apparent verification mechanism to prevent people from signing it more than once or the use of fictitious names. Nor are signers apparently screened for being of legal voting age or proof of voter registration. It appears to be more of a marketing gimmick -- signees are required to provide their email address, which presumably gets them on WND's mailing list, and after signing are then directed to a page selling anti-Obama books. Perhaps most importantly, there is no evidence provided to back up the number of signatures on the petition that WND claims -- we are expected to take WND's word for it. Given that you and I cannot obtain such basic information about this petition without begging WND for it, and WND has refused to make it easily accessible and verifiable to its readers, how did Orly Tatiz get a hold of it? This smells of a WND-orchestrated stunt. Zahn didn't disclose how Taitz obtained the signatures on WND's petition, but given the logistics of printing out "3,300 pages of names," the only possible conclusion is that WND teamed up with Taitz -- and perhaps paid some expenses to cover Taitz's trip from California to Idaho, where Roberts spoke -- to create this story. WND has yet to publicly address the issue. As with WND reporter Aaron Klein's Wikipedia-bashing stunt -- in which he was forced to admit that he set in motion the "news" events he wrote about -- the issue is one of disclosure. WND still hasn't told its readers that Klein's articles were altered after publication to remove references tracing Klein to his manipulation; WND hasn't disclosed its relationship with Taitz or its role in supplying Taitz with a copy of its petition. For all we know -- given WND's eagerness to promote Taitz and her claims -- WND and Farah may even be funding the legal filings of Taitz or others in order to keep the story alive. WND does have ties to at least one involved attorney besides Taitz. Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has filed a birth certificate-related lawsuit on behalf of Alan Keyes. As ConWebWatch has detailed , the USJF represented WND for at least three years regarding the libel lawsuit filed against it by Tennessee businessman Clark Jones (and which WND settled out of court in February 2008, just a few weeks before the lawsuit was to go to trial, in part by admitting it published false information about Jones), as well as in WND's 2002 efforts to obtain a permanent Senate press pass. To our knowledge, WND has never disclosed its past relationship withUSJF in its articles on USJF's anti-Obama filings. News organizations are supposed to report the news, not create it. And if they do, they're supposed to fully disclose their role in doing so. WND has done neither. Farah and WorldNetDaily have already demonstrated that they care more about attacking Obama than telling the truth. Until they can tell the full and forthright truth about basic issues regarding their coverage of Obama's birth certificate and admit their motivations, they should be treated as the liars and deceivers they are. (A version of this article was posted at ConWebWatch .) More on Barack Obama
 
Mexico Crisis: White House Unveils Anti-Cartel Effort (VIDEO) Top
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to send more agents and equipment to the southwestern border to fight Mexican drug cartels and keep violence from spilling over into the United States. Speaking at the White House Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said officials were still considering whether to deploy the National Guard to the border. She plans to meet with the governor of Texas to discuss the matter. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden pledged "to destroy these criminal organizations" through a united effort on both sides of the border. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Mexico Wednesday for the start of several weeks of high-level meetings between the two countries on the drug violence issue. Many of the moves announced Tuesday are a continuation or expansion of programs that already existed under the Bush administration. Violent turf battles among the cartels have wracked Mexico in recent years, and led to a spate of kidnappings and home invasions in some U.S. cities. Authorities said they will increase the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and anti-gun trafficking agents operating along the border. Prosecutors say they will make a greater effort to go after those smuggling guns and drug profits from the U.S. into Mexico. Officials said President Barack Obama is particularly concerned about killings in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, and wants to prevent such violence from spilling over into the United States. Among the moves the government is making: _Doubling the border enforcement security teams that combine local, state, and federal officers. _Adding 16 new Drug Enforcement Administration positions in the southwest region. DEA currently has more than 1,000 agents working in the southwest border region. _Sending 100 more people form the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the border in the next 45 days. A recent bill passed by Congress already provided money for the ATF to hire 37 new agents and support staff in the region to fight gun trafficking. _ Boosting the FBI's intelligence and analysis work on Mexican drug cartel crime. The administration is also highlighting $700 million that Congress has already approved to support Mexico's efforts to fight the cartels. Yet the plan so far falls short of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's request last month that 1,000 troops be sent to bolster border security in his state. During a visit to El Paso last month, Perry said he had asked Napolitano for aviation assets and "1,000 more troops that we can commit to different parts of the border." Asked then it he wanted the military, Perry said, "I really don't care. As long as they are boots on the ground that are properly trained to deal with the border region, I don't care whether they are military troops, or National Guard troops or whether they are customs agents." Last week, a Perry spokeswoman said that federal border protection had been underfunded for some time and that the 1,000 extra troops Perry requested would fill in gaps that state and local agencies have been covering. While Mexico has insisted the U.S. take more responsibility in the drug fight, officials south of the border have also bristled at the increasing "militarization" of the border. Mexico officials are likely to welcome the stepped up efforts north of the border, but they have argued that much of the extra border security added recently has made illegal immigration more dangerous and done little to nothing to crackdown on the illegal weapons trade. _____ Contributing to this report were Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, and Traci Carl in Mexico City. More on Mexico's Drug War
 
Bill Cusack: Republicans Don't Believe in Tax Cuts Top
As the world's economic crisis continues to play out there are some crucial questions that the Republicans have not been asked for reasons unknown to me, as they are some of the most obvious and most important questions they need to answer. I believe that asking these questions will so utterly stump Republicans they will shut up and go away and give us a break from all their noise so the rest of us can get to work solving our problems. If cutting the highest tax rate from thirty nine percent to thirty six percent in 2001helped create fifty-five straight months of economic growth, as the Bush people claim, why did they cut the tax rate to just thirty six percent? Why not cut it down to thirty percent? How much deeper, broader and more stable would our economic expansion have been? Why not go all the way to a one percent tax rate? At what point does lowering tax rates stop growing the economy and increasing revenue? Didn't the GOP have a moral imperative to find out and cut taxes to the lowest point possible? Republicans are fond of saying the tax based grew larger under Dubya. Great! I'm thrilled! Where is all the money that is supposed to be here after eight years of tax cuts and economic growth? Ari Fleischer and other Bushmen offer an answer. They say the Prescription Drug Benefits Bill and the Iraq War ate up all the increase in revenue. Probably so, if there ever was an increase in revenue, which has yet to be proved since The Bush Administration was incapable of honest accounting practices. But that completely avoids the most important question: why did Dubya borrow money if deeper tax cuts would have generated even more revenue? Did the Republicans not think the Iraq War was worth a nice, deep tax cut? Early in Dubya's awful second term it became clear to even the GOP the Federal Budget deficit was getting out of hand, providing the GOP with yet another reason to cut taxes, which invariably increases revenue, right? At the time they had the House and the Senate. They could have done anything they pleased. If cutting taxes is the defining policy of the Grand Old Party, again, why didn't they do so to keep the deficit from spiraling out of control? But wait- isn't cutting taxes worth doing for any reason? Obviously they didn't turn to their Super Duper Economic Tool to handle all these challenges because it doesn't work. If it did they would not have had to borrow trillions of dollars and add well over five trillion dollars to the deficit. If it did we would have no deficit. Did they not go lower because the spineless Democratic Party might have tried to stop them? Whatever the answer the Republicans give, and we can be sure at this point it will be incoherent and embarrassing to all involved, Republicans did not turn to their most powerful, personally and morally definitive economic tool when the chips were down, and the chips were seriously down like never before. That tells me Republicans don't actually believe in tax cuts and are not conservative. In that case all their posturing about cutting taxes is completely disingenuous and purely political. What does their behavior say they really stand for? Mortgaging our future so they can have what they want right now, or "Teenagerism". If I remember correctly conservatism says nothing about being short sighted, irresponsible and utterly selfish. Now the GOP says Obama's tax cut is not big enough to cover his stimulus package even though a smaller tax cut was supposedly powerful enough to cover the Great Bush Spending Spree over the last eight years which far and away dwarfs the spending Obama has proposed. But why argue Obama's tax cut is too small when they didn't cut taxes farther when they had the most compelling circumstances to do so in our nation's history? Republicans are so utterly convoluted and confused and conflicted and lost they sound like the drug-addled freak I recently saw on a reality cop show that had just been caught red handed with a pound of cocaine in the trunk of his car. The cop demands an explanation and the dope says "Those ain't my drugs, man! I stole this car!" There is just no dignity. They are so desperate they are reduced to hoping Americans can't remember all their colossal failings? Sorry. Americans will never forget Bush's Presidency. We will remember everything. Not to be vindictive, all though that is tempting, but so that it never happens again. Dubya and all he stands for will have to be completely purged from the party if they ever want to win another national election. The best way I can tell to do that is to first and foremost shut up, and I mean completely shut the hell up, until they get their fiscal policies worked out. Tax cuts for the rich coupled with deregulated financial markets plus massive federal spending equals total meltdown. So throw all that out and start at the beginning: tax cuts. Before any Republican dare open his or her mouth to discuss any fiscal policy he or she needs to answer the questions I have posed here, that is, as long as they want to begin what is for them a very long road back to dignity and earn some small measure of national respect. Until these questions are answered I must view any Republican's attempt to lead this country as impertinence, or, in other words, something like Jim Cramer asking to invest my money. More on Taxes
 
Takanori Okubo Indicted In Political Donations Scandal Top
TOKYO — Prosecutors charged a top aide to Japan's opposition leader Tuesday in connection with a political donations scandal, but the lawmaker said he would stay on as party chief and continue his quest to become the country's next prime minister. Ichiro Ozawa, the head of the Democratic Party of Japan, said he still believed he and his aide have not broken any laws. But he apologized for the concern caused by the scandal. Ozawa was not investigated in connection with the case, which he said was politically motivated. The scandal is seen as a major setback to Japan's largest opposition party, which is surging in popularity polls and is seen by many as being in a position to oust the country's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the next general election. The Liberal Democrats have ruled Japan for most of the past 50 years. Hours after prosecutors charged Takanori Okubo with violating of political funding laws, Ozawa told reporters he had received his party's approval to stay on as chief. "I'm determined to topple the ruling Liberal Democrats," Ozawa said at a news conference. Tokyo prosecutors indicted Okubo on charges of violating political funding regulations, alleging he falsified accounting reports to make it appear as if a 35 million yen ($360,000) donation from a construction company to his boss' political funding organization had come from separate political organizations. Okubo, 47, is the chief accountant of Ozawa's political funding organization, Rikuzankai. Prosecutors say Okubo accepted illegal donations from the construction firm Nishimatsu Construction Co. Ltd. between 2003-2006 and then falsified documents to cover it up. Political donations from corporations to lawmakers are banned in Japanese politics. Okubo was arrested on March 3 along with the former Nishimatsu president, who was also indicted Tuesday. Prosecutors dropped their case against another company executive who had been arrested. Katsuya Okada, a Democratic Party of Japan executive, said the scandal "has caused the public's distrust in politics and hurt their expectations for our party, and we must take it seriously." Ruling lawmakers have been capitalizing on the charges to regain support, though several in their own party have also been implicated. The scandal is "an unforgivable act that trampled on Japan's political funding rules," said Hiroyuki Hosoda, the ruling party's secretary-general. Despite the scandal, opinion polls show Ozawa, once a powerful kingmaker with the Liberal Democrats who later defected to the opposition, still has more public support than Prime Minister Taro Aso. If convicted, Okubo could receive up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 1 million yen ($10,200). The construction official faces up to three years in prison or fines of up to 500,000 yen if convicted. More on Japan
 
The Progress Report: A Prescription for Sustainable Security 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 . As the war in Afghanistan rages on into its eighth year, American and coalition forces face increasingly dangerous and unstable conditions. 2008 was the deadliest year for American and coalition forces, with nearly 300 soldiers killed in combat. Seventy-four troops have already been killed in 2009. Last month, President Obama approved an increase of 17,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan by next summer. "This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," he said. Today, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a new report, Sustainable Security in Afghanistan, calling for a significant increase in funding, manpower, and attention to the embattled country. "Two paramount national security interests of the United States are to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists and to ensure the deteriorating security situation there does not envelop the surrounding region in a broader power struggle," the report's authors -- Lawrence Korb, Caroline Wadhams, Colin Cookman, and Sean Duggan -- write. "Doing so will require a prolonged U.S. engagement using all elements of U.S. national power -- diplomatic, economic, and military -- in a sustained effort that could last as long as another 10 years." SHORT-TERM GOAL -- MORE MANPOWER: "Ever since the United States began planning to invade Iraq in early 2002, Afghanistan became the 'Forgotten Front' for U.S. policymakers -- an under-resourced, under-manned, and under-analyzed 'economy of force' operation." A Dutch Major General who commands 23,000 NATO troops in southern Afghanistan recently said he is "out of troops" to provide security for the region. CAP recommends adding 15,000 U.S. troops to the 17,000 ordered by Obama and calls for an 30,000 allied troops -- a total of 100,000 soldiers. "This increase must include troops for combat as well as mentor teams for the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to fill critical gaps in the training effort. ... Together with the 32,000 coalition troops already there, this increase will bring international forces to about 100,000 -- a nearly 300 percent increase over the average force level for the period from 2002 to 2007." A military increase is not itself sufficient, however. "I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means," Obama said last month. Obama has indicated he plans to deploy more than 300 American civilian diplomats, civilian specialists, and reconstruction advisors. "This is a good start," the CAP report notes. "Effectively employing all elements of U.S. national power will require a restructuring of the U.S. national security apparatus and a renewed focus on our diplomatic and economic assets that have been allowed to atrophy in favor of more direct but ultimately unsustainable military-centric policy responses." INTERMEDIATE GOAL -- BOLSTER GOVERNMENT: "No matter how many resources the United States and its allies commit to Afghanistan, the mission is bound to fail if the Afghan government does not become accountable," the report states. The United States must work to make the Afghan government a true partner by protecting its elections, aggressively rooting out corruption, and strengthening the rule of law. Doing so will require a boost in monetary aid to the country. Only 7 percent of the $170 billion allocated for Afghanistan in FY2009 is dedicated to foreign aid and diplomatic operations, "with the remaining 93 percent alloted to Department of Defense operations." "This imbalance must be corrected," CAP writes. The new report calls for $25 billion to be redirected from the savings earned by scaling down the Iraq war to the Afghanistan budget, "and up to $5 billion per year should be redirected to increase U.S. foreign aid and diplomatic operations -- roughly twice the amount of foreign and diplomatic aid that has been provided to Afghanistan in any year since 2002." The U.S. must also build up the Afghan National Army to 134,000 troops as quickly as possible, from its current 80,000 troops, and expand the Afghan National Police to a 150,000-strong force. Finally, the U.S. must add to its anti-narcotics campaign a "counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to expand and strengthen an effective local justice system and economic infrastructure." THE NEED FOR AN EXIT STRATEGY: The CAP report concludes that the long-term policy objectives, over 10 years, are to establish a stable Afghanistan "that can provide for the basic needs of its own people in order to allow for the eventual withdrawal of international combat troops." President Obama emphasized the need for an "exit strategy" during an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday. He said that the U.S. cannot rely solely on a military approach, looking instead to a "comprehensive" strategy. "And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift," Obama added. Indeed, "perpetual drift" is a good description for how the Afghanistan war has been waged since 2003, when the Bush administration diverted resources and attention from al Qaeda's base to invade Iraq. Korb and Wadhams, in a Nov. 2007 report, warned that the "window of opportunity to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan" was "closing rapidly." CAP's latest report lays out the ways that the Obama administration can pick up the reins dropped by Bush and lead the war in Afghanistan to a successful close. More on Barack Obama
 
Carol Felsenthal: Did Obama Come Prepared with his Simon Cowell Line? Top
During the President's exchange Thursday with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show , the line that received the most play was Obama's mention of American Idol 's Simon Cowell. (Except for his unfortunate comparison of his bowling score of 129 on the White House bowling lane as "like Special Olympics, or something.") "I do think in Washington it's a little bit like American Idol , except everybody is Simon Cowell." That joke, I think, had to have been rehearsed -- composed by a speech writer and memorized by the president/client. It's a safe bet that Obama has never watched American Idol and might have only the haziest idea of what it is. When I was writing a profile of Michelle Obama for Chicago magazine, people I interviewed said time and again that Obama hates television. He doesn't understand why his wife likes it so much, and always has -- and from childhood (she memorized the scripts of The Brady Bunch and The Dick Van Dyke Show ) to today ( Sex in the City , The Sopranos , and HGTV ), she admits to finding television enormously relaxing. Her husband, on the other hand, likes to watch sports, but beyond that believes that most TV is a waste of time and prefers that his daughters watch none of it. He is far more strict on this matter than his wife. As Marian Robinson told People magazine in admitting that she sometimes lets the girls watch more than the hour of television their parents allow, "But don't tell him because he cannot stand TV watching." One person I interviewed for my piece said that Obama would have preferred to have no TV at home in Chicago. Given the guilt he felt for allowing his political career to take him so often away from home, he knew that was an argument he could never wage, much less win. More on American Idol
 
Get HuffPost Green On Facebook Top
Be a fan of Huffington Post Green on Facebook to get cool green tech, fun green-it-yourself projects and breaking environmental news right in your Facebook feed. You can also comment, share and vote on stories that go on the page -- and some that don't. Get in on the ground floor and help us shape our Facebook community : What should we focus on? What do you want to know first? And what shade of green are you? If you're on Twitter, you can also follow HuffPost Green editor Dave Burdick there for green news updates, calls to action and tiny little commentary. More on Facebook
 
David O. Stewart: Let The People Choose Their Senators Top
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has proposed a constitutional amendment to require popular elections to fill Senate vacancies. Acting under state law, governors have appointed four new senators this year to replace those appointed to high posts in the Obama Administration. None would have been likely to win an election to fill the seat: -- Most conspicuously, the politically toxic then- Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois appointed Roland Burris even though Burris had lost his last four political races and was effectively retired from politics. -- New senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware had two qualifications for his position: (i) he was Joe Biden's chief of staff for 21 years, and (ii) he promised not to run in the 2010 election to clear the way for Vice President Biden's son, Beau, to run for the seat. -- Michael Bennett of Colorado, then superintendent of Denver's school system, has never run for public office. -- Kristen Gillibrand of New York was a second-term congresswoman with little statewide profile. Feingold's proposal would require special state elections to fill vacant Senate seats. Three states currently require such elections (Wisconsin, Oregon, and Massachusetts). Notably, all vacancies in the House of Representatives are filled by special election. The basic premise of the proposed amendment is unassailable: The people should choose their own representatives. That was why the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 ended the selection of senators by state legislatures and gave that power to the people via direct elections. So far, the arguments against Feingold's proposal are entirely unpersuasive. Quick special elections will favor the wealthy : In 21st-century America, the rich have an advantage in all elections. That edge will be less in a fast by-election where the impact of saturation advertising will be less. Moreover, the smaller electorate for a special election should include better-informed voters who perhaps will be less likely to be swayed by sound-bite marketing. Candidates with high name recognition will have the biggest advantage, which is usually the case. Compare that to the current system. The principal qualifications of the four new senators are that their governor likes them, or that their their appointment served the governor's political interests. Those are hardly values worth fighting for. The constitutional amendment will intrude on state autonomy : Yup. When state politicians create a political structure that aggrandizes their own power at the expense of the people, let's adopt a constitutional amendment. See, for example, the Seventeenth Amendment. Special elections are a lot of trouble and expense : Democracy is a lot of trouble and expense. Despotism is simple. In the eighteenth century, it was difficult to manage elections. Not today. A constitutional amendment is hard to get approved, and we shouldn't monkey with the Constitution unless we absolutely have to : The delegates to the Constitutional Convention intended that amendments be approved. George Mason of Virginia called the amendment process the most important part of the document, since the Constitution would inevitably prove defective. It's good to fix the Constitution. We've done it twenty-seven times, and should do it here, too.
 
Eric Boehlert: Jeff Zucker and the CNBC Straw Man Top
The reason CNBC remains at the center of controversy today, and the reason it's taking on water in a way that other prominent business news outlets aren't in 2009, is that its recent behavior has become so much more shameless and egregious than everybody else's. With its constant stream of on-air misinformation (and borderline demagoguery) about the administration's bailout plans -- from Jim Cramer's intimations that President Obama has communist leanings to Rick Santelli's ignorant, faux-populist right-wing rant -- CNBC has been setting a new standard in irresponsibility this year, an outlandish standard the rest of the business media has mostly avoided. CNBC's editorial staff seemed to have awakened from its eight-year slumber just in time to realize that it was Democrats who wrecked the economy. In terms of newsroom standards, it's like Fox News run amok over at CNBC. And that, Jeff Zucker, is the real problem. Read the full Media Matters column here . More on Jim Cramer
 
Emma Ruby-Sachs: Scalia the Homophobe and Barney Frank the Hero Top
Barney Frank has called one of the most senior justices of the Supreme Court a homophobe. Justice Scalia is the core of the right wing of the court, a staunch supporter of limited constitutional protections and traditional interpretations of constitutional language and, as Frank contends, a homophobe. Well, we can't say for sure that Scalia wouldn't sit down for dinner with a homosexual, or have a pleasant conversation about the various sock colors that match his robe. But we can be sure that he does not support protecting gay rights and certainly feels that gay sex is a pretty immoral thing to do. He also, by the way, doesn't feel that abortion is protected by the Constitution, nor does he feel that killing kids who commit crimes is "cruel and unusual punishment." The sad part of this story is that Scalia is not going anywhere anytime soon. During the election many indicated that court appointments may be the single most important issue of the next four years. Ginsburg is suffering from an aggressive cancer and Stevens is 88 years old and likely to choose to retire under a Democratic President. But replacing those two Justices will merely keep the balance of the court as it is now: four "left," four right and one sitting in the middle (keeping in mind that left wing for a Supreme Court Justice is not the same as popular progressive politics). We would be lucky to lose Scalia. If Obama has a chance to replace the next two oldest judges - Scalia or Kennedy - the balance would be tipped and the three baby conservatives - Thomas, Alito and Souter -would be on their own. Until then, we should keep up the name calling. America is a different country than Scalia thinks it is. It's not a place interested in a dead Constitution that protects no one not contemplated by the founders over two hundred years ago. It is a country with a Black President, a female Secretary of State and a very public and close battle over what rights and freedoms "sodomites" deserve. We must remind him he is wrong everyday until we finally are rid of him. More on Supreme Court
 
Former Taliban Officials Offer Insight On How Talks Can Progress Top
KABUL -- Talking to the Taliban is all the rage. Whether for or against, upbeat or down, everyone seems to be weighing in on the wisdom or folly of negotiating with the black-turbaned crowd. President Barack Obama has even suggested that his administration may reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban. GlobalPost has gained unique access here in Kabul to two former high-ranking officials of the now-deposed Taliban government to hear their view of the possibility of an opening for dialogue. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, and Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who served as foreign minister during the Taliban regime, confirmed in separate interviews that such talks were feasible, but that they would need to begin with a fundamental understanding that the view of this conflict looks very different from an Afghan-Taliban perspective. Both emphasized they do not represent Mullah Omar and the Taliban's active militant insurgency, but offered valuable insight into the likely debate within the Taliban's inner circle about the various overtures from Washington to open talks. Before any serious discussions can take place, they say, the warring parties at least have to agree on what they are fighting about. To date, that fairly obvious goal has been shrouded by rhetoric and misunderstanding. "We are fighting two wars on one battlefield," said Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who served as foreign minister during the Taliban regime. "The Taliban are fighting the 'slaves of America' while the United States is confronting 'terrorists.'" The United States is engaged in a Global War on Terror, battling the jihadists in Afghanistan so that they do not have to confront them on the streets of New York; at least that is how the Bush administration defined the engagement. The Obama administration doesn't use the "GWOT" brand, and is expected any day to release its own policy strategy in Afghanistan. To date, it has contented itself with insisting there is no military solution to the conflict, while approving a 17,000-troop surge and appointing an active-duty general as ambassador. NATO defines its role in Afghanistan as nation-building. The Taliban, for their part, are fighting a holy war of liberation against a foreign, infidel invader that has come to topple their government, impose an alien system on an unwilling people, and further its own interests. In a March 22 interview with "60 Minutes," Obama was concise about the mission in Afghanistan: "Making sure that Al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one priority." This is something that the Taliban are more than willing to talk about, according to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. "The United States has a right to guarantee its own security," he said, in an interview at his home in a dusty Kabul suburb, where he is under house arrest. After serving four years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Zaeef was released and reconciled with the Afghan government. "They have a right to ensure that there is no danger to them from Afghanistan," Zaeef added in an interview that happened only after negotiating a cordon of officers from the National Security Directorate, Afghanistan's internal security agency. Mutawakil agrees that the U.S. has a legitimate interest in making sure that Afghanistan is not used as a base for attacks against America. "That is the limit of their rights in this country. They do not have the right to impose democracy, nor to say to one group 'you are on our side' while telling another group 'you must be killed,'" said Mutawakil, who surrendered in Kandahar to U.S. troops, according to the BBC in February 2002 and was later released. The problem goes back to the very beginning of the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, according to more than one savvy observer. "The Taliban were fighting a civil war in 2001," said Sardar Roshan, a former ambassador for the Afghan government in exile. "All of a sudden they were told they had destroyed New York." But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were the work of Al Qaeda, not the Taliban, insist Mutawakil and Zaeef. "The United States interrogated many Taliban at Bagram and Guantanamo," said Zaeef, who spent more than four and a half years in U.S. detention. "They never proved that a single Talib was involved in the attacks on New York and Washington." Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda and the architect of the 2001 attacks, had been widely viewed by Afghans as a thorn in the country's side for years after he was forced out of the Sudan and arrived here as an exile from his native Saudi Arabia in 1996. After the attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, in 1998, the United States demanded that the Taliban hand bin Laden over. They failed to do so, turning themselves into an enemy regime that harbored anti-American terrorists. According to Alex Strick van Linschoten, an expert on the Taliban who has spent much of the past four years conducting research in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, the problem was not merely the time-honored Afghan code of hospitality to a sanctuary seeker or an excess of fondness for their Saudi guest, but an insistence on the diplomatic protocol involved. "The Taliban were asking that the United States give them some proof that Osama was involved in the bombings," he said. "They would not respond to demands without evidence." Another complication was the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries: The United States had never recognized the Taliban regime, and so had no extradition treaty with it. So the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden. The U.S. countered by sending cruise missiles into Afghanistan. In 2001, after bin Laden's Al Qaeda hit New York and Washington in the worst attack on American territory since Pearl Harbor, the United States again demanded that the Taliban hand bin Laden over. The response was the same, with far graver consequences for Afghanistan. After initial airstrikes in October 2001, the U.S. steadily increased its troop presence to 38,000, with a "surge" force of 17,000 more on the way. "We Afghans are famous for our hospitality," Mutawakil laughed. "But now we have such powerful guests that the host is in trouble." When the United States sent the Taliban packing in 2001, it brought back many members of the Northern Alliance, the loose grouping of fighters who had been all but defeated by the Taliban. Under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the alliance had been confined to a small sliver of territory. "The Taliban could not accept that the enemy they had relegated to 5 percent of the country should be given all the power while they were being bombed," Roshan said. For more than seven years, the international community has been fighting an enemy whose outlines are poorly defined. "Taliban" and "Al Qaeda" are used almost interchangeably, while there is even less distinction between Afghan and foreign Taliban. "It is very important to distinguish the Afghan Taliban from the Pakistani Taliban and from Al Qaeda," van Linschoten said. "The problem stems partly from grouping everyone as 'enemy' and assuming that everyone has the same beliefs and goals." In contrast to the more ideologically driven Al Qaeda and, to a certain extent, the Pakistani fighters, the Afghan Taliban are a relatively pragmatic lot, he said. Ironically, it may be the foreign presence that is cementing the alliance between the Afghan Taliban and their more hard-line allies. "Without a doubt, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are now going in the same direction, because they are fighting the same enemy," Mutawakil said. "Al Qaeda will be here as long as NATO is." On March 8, Obama told The New York Times that he was considering overtures to the "moderate" Taliban, an announcement that spurred a flood of debate on what exactly constitutes a moderate Talib. Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, speaking by telephone in an interview aired on Afghan television, called the statement "illogical." "If it means those who are not fighting and are sitting in their homes, then talking to them is meaningless," he said. "This really is surprising the Taliban." Zaeef and Mutawakil agree that trying to separate out the moderate from the hardline Taliban is not helpful. "We should be talking about 'Afghan' versus 'non-Afghan' Taliban," Mutawakil said. "If I could advise Obama, that is what I would tell him." Up until now, both the Taliban and the U.S. have had highly unrealistic preconditions for talks. The Taliban insist that all foreign troops should leave before negotiations begin; the United States has said that it will talk only to those Taliban who lay down their arms and accept the Constitution. "That is not negotiation, that is surrender," Zaeef said. But the Taliban are not eager for the foreign troops to hop the next plane home, either. With the re-emergence of the Northern Alliance, the stage would be set for another civil war. "If the soldiers leave the way they came, that would be the second tragedy," said Zaeef, who insists that the United States now has a moral obligation to help Afghanistan get back on its feet. Mutawakil agrees. "If the troops leave tomorrow, there will be a lot of bloodshed," he said. But a solution has to be found, and quickly. Obama is looking for an exit strategy, and the Afghan people are desperate for some relief from the unremitting violence of the past 30 years. But so far there is no light at the end of this very dark tunnel. "It is easy to be optimistic if you look at things superficially," Zaeef said. "But at a deeper level, there is a very grave crisis. The current situation is of no benefit to anyone, not to the U.N., the U.S., the Taliban, the Afghan government, or the Afghan people." Read more from GlobalPost. More on Afghanistan
 
American Tea Party Movement Gets Its Own Anthem (VIDEO) Top
In case you haven't noticed, the latest fad in faux populism is the new "Tea Party" movement, which is the new new thing among the extreme followers of blind-following. Basically these Teabaggers gather in the tens of tens, to sound a clear voice for the poor private wealth manager, who may lose a bonus just because he chopped up a bunch of bad mortgages and puppy dog tails and tried to make a fund out of it. They also speak for the people who believe that infrastructure projects should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, instead of relying on taxpayer funding. Mostly, though, they see the stimulus package passed by Congress for what it is -- A PURE UNADULTERATED LENINGASM that would prevent the more desirous outcome of a long and painful exacerbation of the economic downturn. Really, these guys have it all! And they could probably acquire the Ron Paul blimp on alternate weekends if no one else is using it! But what they've lacked, thus far, is a theme song. Something for which Sarah Palin can swap out the Star Spangled Banner. Happily, they now have the tuneful stylings of Lloyd Marcus to work with, and his "American Tea Party Anthem," which inveighs against the socialist government who DARED to stimulate the economy. This is just the sort of funk that the Panic of 1873 needed. Look for "American Tea Party Anthem" on the forthcoming Goin' Galt! Songs of Twenty-First Century Fake Populism , along with Billy Bragg's "Marching Song Of the Covert Battalions" and a bunch of Spiro Agnew speeches remixed by Girl Talk. [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Video
 
The Hollywood Ham: Longing Voice-Over Ruins Wedding of "Winnie Cooper" Actress Top
Danica McKellar, better known as Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years , married her longtime boyfriend, Mike Verta this weekend. Despite the beautiful ceremony, everyone in attendance was made uncomfortable as a wistful voice narrated the nuptials - a voice that sounded oddly like one of the Wet Bandits, the crime duo known for burglarizing houses during Christmas. McKellar was also met with a surprise when Joe Cocker's cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends" accompanied her walk down the aisle. Nobody could identify the owner of the distracting, yet extremely insightful rumination. Most guests suspected it was the adolescent boy, Kevin, who seemed deeply entrenched in his own thoughts and the only person oblivious to the omniscient voice. While the wedding's narration seemed to hover around the topic of "Things Never Turning Out Exactly The Way You Planned," it also spent a lot of time discussing how much it "hated Wayne." "Whoever was thinking those thoughts really needed to make sure this 'Wayne' knew he was not, in fact, a 'butthead'," said one of the guests. "I also think he was in love with the bride." As the couple exchanged vows, the voice let everyone know it was comfortable letting go of a loved one, knowing that "somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect who might be searching for us". It also added that its nerdy friend Paul's "Bar Mitzvah was coming up." Due to the words' poignancy, nobody at the wedding paid attention to the heartfelt and emotional vows exchanged by McKellar and Verta. Later, the newlyweds were upstaged again during the cutting of the cake, as the guests chose to watch the adolescent boy wave stupidly at a cameraman and run over to his parents cooking hamburgers at a grill. -Dan Abramson More on Satire
 
See The Stimulus In Action? Help HuffPost Follow The Money Top
In February, we asked HuffPost readers to help us dig through the stimulus bill, and hundreds of readers wrote in with great tips , including the news that a provision to extend health care coverage for some laid-off workers had been stripped from the Senate version of the legislation. Now it's time for some follow up reporting. Money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going out to state and local governments, and we'd love if readers across the country could provide us with a view from the ground. Do you see shovels hitting the dirt? Is our money being spent wisely? The blog at WhiteHouse.gov is keeping tabs on local news stories showcasing stimulus dollars at work -- adoption programs in Arkansas, green jobs in California, electronic health records in Florida -- but some stories might not make the cut. To wit: pieces like the Boston Globe 's feature on backlash from local officials in Massachusetts who claim some poor school districts are being skipped over because of a state formula for doling out the money. Send us local news stories, tips, rumors, anything you got. Email submissions+stimulus@huffingtonpost.com .
 
Tom Morris: Living in Plato's Cave Top
The ancient philosopher Plato believed that we all live under the distorting influence of illusions. The economic events of our time have arisen out of many of these illusions and, as they continue to unravel the fabric of our lives, are in the process of shattering some of them. But they're also quickly creating new ones to take their place. Plato had a vivid image for the human condition that applies to our current moment of history in a revelatory way. Imagine all of us as prisoners in a cave, chained down, and facing a wall. We see shadows moving across the wall that we mistake as realities. And so we live out our lives, assuming that the limits of our vision are the limits of the world. The philosopher, according to Plato, is an individual who breaks his chains, leaves the cave, and emerges into the full light of the sun, finally able to see the true realities and greater dimensions of the actual world as it is. He then goes back down into the cave to rescue the others, telling his tale of escape and discovery and urging them all to liberate themselves and join him back up in the bright fresh air of truth. Most don't believe him and stay where they are. Many ridicule him and denounce his claims. Some few are persuaded, and boldly break free to make their ascent into the light along with him. We're all right now living deep within Plato's cave. And the floor of the New York Stock Exchange may just be the lowest level of the cavern. We fear the many shadows that we see flitting across the wall. But we still sit and stare at them, transfixed, taking them to be the ultimate realities with which we have to deal. We're mesmerized and frozen in place, largely because we prefer the fears we know to the potentially worse threats of the great unknown that may lurk outside our subterranean home. But the darkness of our cave is a realm of illusion, and it's no place we should stay. The only way out of the cave was well known to Plato, and was highly regarded by his student, Aristotle. It is the path of personal courage. Aristotle understood courage as a primary virtue, or strength, in human life. He saw it as a midway point between the extremes and vices of timidity and temerity - or the overly cautious capitulation to fear, on the one hand, and the irrational disregard of danger, on the other. Courage recognizes challenge, understands risk, and while fully cognizant of danger, moves forward with the insight that the best path to the future demands positive action now. We've heard a lot of talk recently about the absence of confidence to be found throughout America, and our pressing need for much more. Confidence is an attitude expectant of success and is a universal facilitator of achievement in situations of uncertainty, as many of the great philosophers have understood. We do indeed need more of this quality than we're demonstrating right now across the culture. But the virtue of courage can be even more important in a situation of dark threats and daunting anxieties. Deep within the cave, our first need is to be brave. A courageous person does what's right rather than what's easy. He does what's needed rather than what's expected. He's willing to take a chance to make a positive difference. He's not rash in his actions, or careless in his commitments. And yet he's not so cautious as to remain trapped in chains of fear. A confident person believes that his actions will succeed. A courageous person may start out only hoping that they will. He does what he thinks he should do, regardless of his degree of confidence. And then, quite often and wonderfully, the actions arising from that courage help to build up and justify the confidence that then works to support him as he goes on. We need the courage at this moment to free ourselves from our chains - from all those theories and ideologies and shibboleths of thought that, along with our many personal worries, may be keeping us captive - and liberate ourselves from the shadows and illusions that are holding us back. It's time to move out of Plato's Cave and completely board it up. This is one piece of property that should be put into foreclosure, forever. More on Financial Crisis
 
Max Bergmann: Obama's global oped - its prospects and its European limits Top
In what is sure to make all oped writers blush with envy, Obama today had an oped on the global economy published in 30 papers around the world. I believe that maybe the first time that has ever happened. The oped was a preview of what the U.S. will call for at the G-20 summit next week. Obama argues for a concerted effort on the part of G-20 countries to stimulate their economies and stabilize financial systems. He called for boosting the resources at of the IMF so it can continue to help rescue emerging market countries. Perhaps more noteworthy Obama publicly disavowed protectionism and said other countries should avoid going down that path (I bet Mexico's truckers were amused by that). Only toward the end of the oped Obama pledges to take "coordinated international action" to form a new international framework to regulate financial markets. It's a good oped and lays out the right points that need to be talked about at the G-20. With Obama's global and European popularity, this oped and its global scope is an aggressive attempt to rally global - and especially European opinion - to sign on to his global economic agenda - most notably the stimulus effort. But the order of priority laid out by Obama in the oped highlights the challenge he is going to face in the summit meeting. With a week to go before the meeting Europe and the U.S. do not see eye-to eye. Mark Mardell of the BBC writes: If the European Union gets its way the London G20 summit will concentrate on new rules and regulations, not discussing how to further stimulate the world economy. It is going to be hard for significant coordinated action to occur on the G-20 when Europe is intent on opposing a stimulus. This lack of urgency led to Paul Krugman's exasperation last week, writing that: to hear anything in America comparable to the know-nothing diatribes of Germany's finance minister you have to listen to, well, Republicans. The problem then is that Europe is at the point where it has become integrated to the point where national governments lack the tools to address their economic problems, but Europe is not politically consolidated enough to tackle its problems at the Union level. Combine this structural problem, with a general sense of disillusionment with the European project on the part of the Germans, a wide-spread sapping of popular support for the European project, and a rise in anti-immigrant feelings (ie the French fear of the "polish plumber") and  protectionist outcries ("British jobs for British workers") - sentiments that challenge the openness which is at the heart of the EU - and you have a real problem. This is a crisis both of political will and political mechanisms. It is therefore probably unrealistic for the Obama administration to expect to go to the G-20 and simply work it out with Europe, since all Europe can agree on right now is that the economic crisis is our fault and that global finance must be regulated. The one area where progress is most possible - unfortunately this is also the least important in the immediate term - is in laying the foundation for an international regulatory framework - which would be quite an accomplishment. This does not mean that the Administration should simply through up their hands on the stimulus, but the U.S. should perhaps try to view the G-20 as the start of the conversation (particularly with Europe) rather than the end. And over the next few months the U.S.-European diplomatic engagement (particularly between U.S. and Germany) should be ramped up. Making the case for stimulus in Europe is as much about making the case for the European Union, as it is about economics right now.
 
John Passacantando: Geithner Bails Out Wall Street, Ignores Main Street Top
Last Laugh of the Financial Elites Wall Street boomed yesterday, apparently driven by institutional investors who have been given the deal of their lifetimes by Treasury Secretary Geithner. Big investors will be able to buy toxic assets, created by the banks and AIG, with a 93% subsidy from the same American taxpayers who got #$%ed over in the first place - investors will get big gains if the assets recover, and suffer no losses if this whole thing continues to sink. This plan has one primary objective, get the stock market going again. The Treasury Secretary has made it his job to rescue the stock market. Not the housing market, not the millions of people who are losing their homes, not main street, just Wall Street. This plan gives huge subsidies to investors to take the toxic assets off the books of the banks so that the bank stocks will go back up. It is very difficult to see how that trickles down to a small business loan or a new home mortgage. In fact it takes the same kind of creative gimmickry we once saw from these same bankers to imagine this latest two trillion dollars doing anything but giving a temporary bump to the stock markets. Enjoy the bump boys, it cost us dearly. More on Financial Crisis
 
Sherri Shepherd Wants To Buy Mika Brzezinski A Vibrator (VIDEO) Top
It's a sex toy morning TV showdown! "The View" cohost Sherri Shepherd wants to buy "Morning Joe" cohost Mika Brzezinski a vibrator. It all started Monday when Barbara Walters cracked a vibrator joke on "The View," as seen here . Then, Tuesday morning, Willie Geist featured the clip during "News You Can't Use" on "Morning Joe," during which Mika pulled pained faces while saying, "that's just not right." The Mika clip can be seen below. Well, Walters was watching. On Tuesday's "View," Walters recounted watching in her bathroom Tuesday morning as "Mika has a face like she has just eaten the most sour apple and she is plainly disgusted with me..." Sherri's response? "Maybe we should send Mika a vibrator!" Elisabeth Hasselbeck agreed. "To Mika, love Barbara. Just a little something..." The sex toy talk wrapped up with Walters talking directly to the camera. "Mika, I still think you're wonderful, even if I disgust you." WATCH "THE VIEW" FROM TUESDAY: THE 'MORNING JOE' CLIP: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Morning Joe
 
Maia Szalavitz: The Enchantress of Numbers Top
Though this is outside my usual obsessions, I agreed to blog for Ada Lovelace Day today, celebrating women in technology. Ada Lovelace was probably the world's first programmer: although her program never ran because the machine it was designed for was never built, she wrote it for Charles Babbage's proposed "analytical engine" in the early 1840's. Lovelace was the daughter of poet Lord Byron and Babbage called her "The Enchantress of Numbers." These days, we frequently hear about the dearth of women in science and technology. But what we don't see much about is the areas in which women are succeeding in science: in 2000, for example, 60% of undergraduate degrees in biology went to women and as of 2004, 49.5% of students in the first year of medical school were women. In chemistry, 41% of undergraduate degrees are now earned by women. And 67% of psychology PhD's go to women. Sure, you can argue that psychology is a "soft" science that doesn't really count--but molecular biology, chemistry and today's high tech medicine? If a woman discovers a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, is that not science? So, here's to all the female scientists and technologists--in all fields--making their way in a formerly male-dominated world. Right now, we can use all of the intelligence we can get! More on Technology
 
Coleman Collins: Scoring in School Top
The second Wednesday that we met together she started crying midway through the session. Crying! Not boo-hoo crying, but sniffle crying. She was sitting there in front of me crying, tears silently streaming down the side of her face, eyes puffy, when I realized that her teachers hadn't really pushed her before. There was no way -- this was as non-strenuous as an academic exercise could get. We were plotting points on a graph. [(2,2) - Point to the 2 on the bottom. Point to the 2 on the top. Bring your fingers together until they meet. Make a dot with your pencil.] She is a very intelligent girl. Whatever academic struggles she has aren't caused by any learning disability or lack of innate ability; far from it -- I'd venture to say they're caused by it. She's smart enough to fool people into accepting less. She's a pro at just barely missing the answer, just close enough that someone might accept it, correct her and move on. When she doesn't know an answer, she'll launch into one of her stories, bursting with words, not letting you get a word in edgewise. She's a charming girl. [Charlie and Sharon have three cats and two fish. Cats cost $1.10 to feed each day. Fish cost $0.45 to feed daily. How much will it cost for Charlie and Sharon to feed their pets for one week?] One time I wanted a dog but my mama made me get a fish instead and at first I didn't like it but then I sorta liked it and we had to feed him everyday just like this fish here and then he died and we hadda flush him down the toilet and also I have a friend name Charlie he live down the street and he don't have no cats he got a dog and one time it tried to bite me and I ran all-way-cross the street to get away from him and I was soooo tired that time. "Right," I'll say, "Wonderful. So I think we may need to multiply this time." [Read the paragraph before answering the following questions. Why did the Pilgrims come to America? What did the Pilgrims do to entertain themselves?] It started some Wednesdays ago when I was passing through the Mad Ants offices to pick up some mail, when I nearly stepped on a 7-year-old that was walking out of one of the rooms. (They're small. I'm big. It happens from time-to-time.) It turned out that one of the many community outreach programs that they had was an after-school tutoring program for local kids. The Mad Ants organization is very busy in the community -- we've got partnerships with local schools, businesses, churches, children's shelters, pretty much any group with a roof and a door. This is the reason we lead the league in attendance despite an admittedly lackluster record. I've always enjoyed this sort of thing, so I sat in on a session with our PR director (Thanks Heidi!) and ended up being more active than I originally planned. [Connect all the dots that you have plotted on the graph. What geometric shape do you see?] I was able to come to a few more sessions, and though we've only had a short time together, finishing up a little homework, I feel we made progress. Any problems she has in math or social studies stem from a lack of reading comprehension. Any problems with reading comprehension stem from a lack of focus and attention to detail. That comes from someone making you do it. All she needs -- like we all do sometimes -- is a coach. Since I have coaches of my own I haven't been able to make as many sessions as I've wanted to -- Wednesday is often a travel day. I haven't seen her in over a month. I worry I'm not helping enough. Lack of stability can hinder the learning process. [Reread the previous 660 words. Was it worth it? Did you make a difference? Reflect and answer.] They told me that she's been asking about me. Even though I brought a few tears out of her, she's wondering where I've been. I'm happy about my little victory but saddened at it's fleeting nature. The season is quickly coming to an end. So, too, will our time together. Luckily for the two of us, though, there's always a couple more Wednesdays waiting around the corner. More on Sports
 
Amy Spies: Why Women Grieve For Natasha Richardson Top
Why do some tragedies that ride the 24/7 media wave feel so personal? Why did the sad, accidental death of Natasha Richardson make my girlfriends feel like they'd been punched in the gut? I heard repeatedly, "I just can't get over it." Almost all of these women had never met Natasha Richardson, been at the same premiere, market, or parent meeting. There is the celebrity factor, a sense of intimacy that people feel with famous folk. We know details of their lives, although they usually don't even know we exist. In the case of Natasha Richardson, we've seen beautiful, vulnerable, open photographs that make us feel we know her or could hang with her. But we don't, and we didn't. We do know she was a mother and a wonderful actress playing a mom we related to in 'The Parent Trap' remake. We were aware that in her real life, she had a famous mom and that she was a mom. Her revealing eyes and almost naked smile seemed to say, "I've lived, I've loved, I've lost, I've survived...and I'm still having an f-ing amazing time." My girlfriends and I loved that attitude. She could have been one of us, hanging at our 'women goddess' parties. It wasn't an anonymous mother/daughter suffering this tragedy. It was someone we'd come to kind of know through movies where she was a young, textured woman, a mom, etc. like us; through post-trauma and sadly post-mortem images where she smiled out at the world like we often tried to do despite what was crashing in our private lives. We could imagine her on the slopes with her warm inclusiveness. We could see her larger than life husband because we'd watched his heroic dramatic turn in "Schindler's List"; we could feel for her awesome activist actress mom even more because we'd bonded with her characters and persona. We could empathize with this multi-tasking mom, actress, wife, making light of her injury, so that the show of life could go on. Women know about that. But how interesting for an actress to turn the glare away from herself. It's so, well, mom-like. Maybe that's part of what draws my girlfriends and myself to her. We all imagine ourselves in her position, how 'random', as our children might say, the awful accident was. Of course, we imagine our friends, spouses, and especially children hitting their heads on bathtubs, basketball and soccer floors, skateboard, snowboard, and bicycle collisions. We moms don't want to be over-protective, so we try to not over-react. But what if this one head bump is the one that seems fine, but needs special attention? I have been struck by the predominance of women, as opposed to men, who so personally feel this tragedy about Natasha Richardson, someone they didn't in actuality (let's face it) know. Maybe it's a gender thing. We could have been her (albeit less watchable), juggling our loves, losses, and lists of a woman's life's to-dos. She could have been us, relating to this tragedy, worrying about our own beloved children's and their father's falls, not focusing on our own self-protection. Historically, women are caretakers. In grieving Natasha Richardson, let's make a point of making a little history and taking more care of ourselves.
 
Obama Calls Space Shuttle, Flanked By Schoolkids Top
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he is extraordinarily proud of the astronauts aboard the linked shuttle-space station complex. During a video conference call Tuesday, Obama questioned the 10 astronauts about everything from how fast they are traveling and to exercising in space. He also asked what they do besides work on experiments and how weightlessness affects their sleep. Students from Washington area middle schools and members of Congress joined him for the call. Questions from the kids included, "As an astronaut, what do you eat?" "Have you found any life forms or any plants out in space?" "When you say you exercise, what do you do?" "How many stars are there in space?" and "What do you have to study to be an astronaut?" POTUS relayed each question over the phone, in case the astronauts couldn't hear the kids, and interjected his own questions and wry remarks at times. After the question about life forms, he nodded with mock gravity and said, "That's a good question," and after the one about stars, he added, "I'll be interested to hear the answer to that one." President Obama teased one astronaut, whose hair was floating above her head in the weightless space station, asking her whether she'd considered cutting it short before leaving Earth: "Now, can I ask you a question -- were you tempted to cut your hair shorter while you were up there? Or is it fun in weightlessness?" The astronaut laughed and said short hair was probably "ideally" "the way to go" but that a shorter cut wouldn't look good on her. "I think it's a real fashion statement," Obama told her. The president also asked if e-mail worked the same between the space station and Earth as it does on Earth. The astronauts told him they only synch their e-mail up with servers back home one or two times a day. When the satellite linkup window with the station was coming to an end, the president brought the call to a close, telling the kids to wave to the astronauts. "They're all beaming," he said. "What do you all say? That was good, right?" Obama asked the kids. The call over, the astronauts started floating away before the video link cut out. "Look, look!" the president called out to the kids as your pool was led out of the room. "That would be a pretty good way to take off." More on Barack Obama
 
IKEA Car Or April Fool? Enviros Wonder Top
FastCompany cautiously writes about a rumored IKEA eco-car . What I wonder is if the owner's manual would be wordless and illustrated with happy, blobby people . Oh, and whether the car would have tires or plastic casters . The Internet is abuzz about a mysterious yet official-looking French website that appeared today. The site touts the LEKO, an environmentally-friendly IKEA-branded concept car. A video on the LEKO site says that the car is a modular design that can act as either a coupe or convertible. The car apparently also has the full backing of the World Wildlife Fund France, though it's not clear if that means the WWF is contributing to the LEKO's development or just endorsing it. There's a distinct possibility that the LEKO video and site are the viral warning shots for someone's April Fools' Day hoax. The LEKO is absent from the IKEA website, and most importantly, the car will be unveiled on April Fools' Day. See also: IKEA solar lights! More on Cars
 
Michael Wolff: Bonus Rage: Lame-o Lefties Lose Again Top
The bonus revolt is going to peter out. The Senate is going to let the bonus tax die --cooler heads have prevailed. In New York, the state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has persuaded nine of the top 10 bonus babies, all of them mightily rich, to give back the dough --meaning everybody will claim victory and shortly get on about their business. For better or worse, mob anger, when coming from the left, is pretty lame. The economic world as we know it may be ending, but the left can't summon the kind of furies that got us into Iraq, declared war on terrorism, made the nation crazy about abortion, and gave gay marriage its buzzword name. This is partly because the left's outrage is centered around economic issues. And economic issues are too complicated for bankers to understand, let alone earnest social studies teachers and anarcho college students. The fight against abortion has a lot more oomph and clarity than the fight against derivatives. What's more, the middle-class fist that needs to be raised in support of left-wing anger goes limp as soon as the stock market goes up. Five hundred points quells a lot of outrage. There's probably a formula: Liberals, being an optimistic bunch, need at least double the loss to undo half as much gain (or something like that). Continue reading at newser.com More on Financial Crisis
 
"Our Choice": Gore To Release "An Inconvenient Truth" Follow-Up Top
Former Vice President and global warming crusader Al Gore will release a new book in March called Our Choice , which will lay out a "blueprint" for solving the climate crisis, according to a press release from the book's publisher. "Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. Our Choice will answer that call," the release says. Our Choice is a follow up to Gore's last book, An Inconvenient Truth . Read the full release below: EMMAUS, PA, and NEW YORK, NY, March 24, 2009--Today Vice President Gore announced that his next book, Our Choice, will be published by Rodale in the US and by other publishers internationally on November 3, 2009. Picking up where An Inconvenient Truth left off, Our Choice utilizes Mr. Gore's forty years of experience as a student, policymaker, author, filmmaker, entrepreneur and activist to comprehensively describe the real solutions to global warming. A co-recipient of the Nobel Peace prize in 2007 for his environmental work, Mr. Gore continues to make sense of the pressing issues we face and Our Choice will unquestionably inspire and rally those ready to fight for solutions that were deemed impossible only a short time ago. Said Vice President Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message that the climate crisis is threatening the future of human civilization and that it must and can be solved.  Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. Our Choice will answer that call." Since the publication of the New York Times bestseller An Inconvenient Truth and the release of the Academy Award® winning film of the same title, Mr. Gore has led more than thirty "Solutions Summits" with top scientists, engineers and policy experts to examine every solution to the climate crisis in depth and detail.  Our Choice draws on conclusions developed through those summits as well as on extensive independent research, describing how the bold choices necessary to save the earth's climate should also be the foundations of policies worldwide to create new jobs and stimulate sustainable economic progress. As they did with An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Gore and Mrs. Tipper Gore will donate 100% of the proceeds of the book to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit, non-partisan group dedicated to spreading awareness about the climate crisis and how to solve it. Our Choice will feature 100% recycled paper, locally produced and sourced editions, low VOC inks, and will be carbon neutral. "Rodale is honored to continue our relationship with Vice President Al Gore," said Rodale Inc. President and CEO Steven Pleshette Murphy. "We were proud to publish An Inconvenient Truth and very much look forward to bringing Our Choice to the growing audience of committed citizens who are seeking solutions to the climate change crisis. In the spirit of our longtime mission, we are dedicated to creating the greatest possible platform for Vice President Gore's work and message."
 
Paul Hogarth: Red California Death Watch Top
In 2007, right-wing political operatives tried to place a measure on the June 2008 ballot that - if successful - would have awarded California's electoral votes by Congressional District. Democrats and progressives strongly opposed it, because everyone assumed it would give the G.O.P. presidential nominee an extra 19 votes. California is a deep blue state, but parts of Orange County and the Central Valley are still reliably Republican. New data from last November's election, however, suggests that "Red California" is becoming less and less relevant. Barack Obama carried eight Congressional Districts that had long voted for Republican presidential candidates, and John McCain came close to losing three more. All these districts are currently represented in Congress by Republicans, but a few incumbents came close last year to losing to Democratic challengers. It's only a matter of time before some of these districts will eventually flip. None of this is a surprise, however, because the state's Republican base is older, whiter and shrinking in size. But the rate of this change is quite staggering, which explains why Republicans in the state legislature have clung to the "two-thirds rule" for passing a budget. After all, it's the only reason they have any power left in the state. Thanks to the work of bloggers at the Swing State Project , it is now possible to quickly check the results of the last presidential election by Congressional District, and compare it with 2000 and 2004. Congressional Quarterly even has a cool map that you can look at online. What it shows for the future of California Republicans is not pretty. None of us were surprised that Barack Obama won the Golden State by a 60-40 margin. But the bigger story here is that "Red California" has become far less Republican. Take the 24th Congressional District, which includes Ventura County and inland parts of Santa Barbara County. The District is home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, the same town where an all-white jury voted in 1992 to acquit the cops who beat up Rodney King. Republican Elton Gallegy has been the Congressman there for 22 years, and he's never had to deal with a tough challenger. In fact, the lines were drawn to intentionally give him a safe seat. But Obama won the District by a three-point margin. Or how about the 48th District in Orange County - which includes Irvine, Laguna Hills and the mansions of Newport Beach? George Bush carried the District by a 20-point margin in both elections, but Obama won it by over 2,600 votes. Republican Chris Cox represented the District for years, and when he stepped down in 2005 successfully passed it on to a GOP successor. Democrats tried in 2006 and 2008, but Congressman John Campbell has so far managed to ward them off. Now, Irvine City Councilwoman Betty Krom has thrown her hat in the ring - and her campaign kick-off featured Loretta Sanchez. When you look at the map, the most obvious change is the 25th District - which hugs a huge section of the Nevada border and includes Death Valley, before heading south to include parts of northern Los Angeles County. The City of Palmdale, home of the late anti-gay bigot Pete Knight is in the District. It's always been a safe district for Republican candidates, but Obama managed to win it by a percentage point. Mormon Congressman Buck McKeon has had the seat since 1992, and has never had to worry about Democrats. That could change ... But can a candidate like Obama give "coat-tails" for Democrats in Red California? Ask Dan Lungren and Ken Calvert, two Republican members of Congress. When Lungren - the GOP's losing candidate for Governor in 1998 - moved to the Sacramento suburbs to stage a political comeback, he decided to settle in a safe Republican district. Calvert has represented Riverside and Corona since 1992, and even survived a prostitution scandal early in his career to get re-elected - because the District at the time was so Republican. For Lungren and Calvert, the state's demographics are catching up with them. Obama won both of their districts, and both of them came extremely close to losing their jobs in November - when spirited Democratic challengers took them on. Both districts have had an influx of suburban sprawl, and now the headache of foreclosures has hit their communities hard. We're seeing similar trends in Districts 26 in northern Los Angeles (Dave Dreier), 45 in Palm Springs (Mary Bono) and 50 in San Diego (Brian Bilbray.) Obama won all of these districts, and a strong Democratic challenger could benefit. Granted, California still has Republican parts - and progressives were right to defeat the so-called Dirty Tricks Initiative to split up electoral votes by Congressional District. I have never liked the Electoral College's "winner-take-all" system - where a state awards all of its electoral votes to the plurality winner. But until every state splits up their votes to ensure that every minority (not just California Republicans) has a voice in picking our next President, it is unfair and undemocratic . John McCain won 11 out of California's 53 Congressional Districts - which means that Republicans in the Golden State are still red, but not dead. But in three of them - George Radanovich's 19th in Fresno, Ed Royce's 40th in Orange County and Dana Rohrabacher's 46th in Palos Verdes - the margin was surprisingly close. As the party keeps pandering to its Southern base , it will drift into oblivion in California. And if a measure to abolish the "two-thirds rule" in the state legislature passes, it will mean the death of the California GOP. Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of BeyondChron, San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published .
 
Robert J. Elisberg: The Great Republican Contradiction Top
Each day at matins, Republicans chant a near-religious mantra against the Obama Administration's stimulus efforts: government spending bad. But there is a significant, overlooked problem for them with this. Never mind, of course, that while they want tax cuts instead, it's Bush tax cuts that helped get us into this Bush recession. And never mind, too, that Republicans, when in charge, aggressively spend enough to dig a trillion dollar deficit. Never mind all that. The problem for Republican cries against stimulus spending is its contradiction of one of the most cherished of G.O.P. Talking Points. On the one hand, we have Republicans complaining that government spending doesn't stimulate the economy during a recession. On the other hand, Republicans insist (erroneously) that America only got out of the Great Depression because of World War II - not President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. In case you missed it, here's the contradictory problem for them: Republicans are arguing that the building of airplanes, the creation of ships, munitions, equipment, the acquisition of provisions, troop training - all "government spending" - indeed, massive spending - is what pulled America from the Depression. (Contrary to popular belief, battleships and jet bombers do not just spontaneously generate themselves. No, really!) Of course, that also brings us back to the erroneous argument in the first place. Several months back on ABC's "This Week," George Will attempted to use the "Roosevelt spending didn't turn around the Depression" Gambit. However, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman was on the same panel, and he lectured a silent Will how New Deal programs actually did improve the economy, and it was only when Roosevelt acquiesced to Republicans...and stopped spending and instead cut taxes...that the 1930 recession occurred. When FDR returned to spending, and later World War II began, only then did the U.S. economy grow again and solidify. So, in both cases, it's a no-win argument against government spending. It's just that the argument Republicans have been trying to use is the contradictory one. That's become the pattern for the G.O.P.: trying to block the new Administration by attempting to justify their Bush-era actions - and contradicting themselves in the process. Hoping no one will notice Like a week ago last Sunday, there was former Vice President Dick Cheney on CNN, interviewed by John King. Twisting himself into his own contradiction. (Why CNN felt compelled to have Mr. Cheney on is a mystery. With his approval rating around the level of poison mushrooms, the network couldn't possibly think anyone rational would care to hear from him so soon, or...well, ever. But I digress.) Mr. Cheney was asked about coming into office with a budget surplus of $128 billion and leaving with a record deficit of $1.3 trillion. His response was breathtaking in its cruel disdain and - disingenuous contradictions. "Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens." There you have it. Stuff happens. We had two wars, and so the economy crumbled. Stuff happens. Except that - the Republican argument about FDR is that he also had two wars, in Europe against Germany and against Japan in the Pacific...and that's what got us out of the Depression. Go figure. Hard to work your way out of that contradiction. Moreover, blaming Katrina is equally contradictory (and more pathetic) - because the criticism of the Bush Administration is that they didn't spend the money needed to address the disaster. You can't under-spend and claim that it was your unexpected spending that hurt you. But of course, the biggest contradiction is when Dick Cheney contorts the starting point. What the Bush Administration had to deal with coming into office was a budget surplus. What FDR had to deal with upon taking office was..the Great Freaking Depression. And Bush failed. And FDR succeeded. Stuff happens, Dick Cheney callously says. It makes the skin crawl. What cold-hearted, criminal arrogance. No one forced the Bush Administration to falsify evidence for WMDs, ignore hurricane warnings and cut taxes during a war. They chose to do this. It's like holding a gun to someone's head, pulling the trigger and shrugging - "Stuff happens." The next time some Republican mouthpiece tries to insist that up is down, and listen to us, we know how to get America out of the economic disaster our party caused, just know they are being contradictory. Again. You can tell because their lips are moving. The Republican Party has become a party unable to find its moral center, so instead it's flailed away at all contradictory options, and hoped no one would notice. But as the founder of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, famously noted: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." And Americans have figured it out.
 
McCain Economic Adviser: Let Insolvent Banks Fail Top
Sen. John McCain's chief economist during the campaign is sounding a tune on the financial crisis that endears him to some of the progressives he once irritated. Appearing on NPR Tuesday morning, Douglas Holtz-Eakin argued (in contrast to Obama's bank plan) that insolvent institutions should be allowed to fail, and taxpayer money should be geared towards managing the fallout of those failures. "To really get financial stability, we have to acknowledge that some of these institutions have failed, for example AIG has failed, and move past simply keeping them upright -- and pumping money in to do it -- to winding them down in an orderly fashion, selling down their assets to new institutions that have a chance to make a profit in the future. That's the only way we will effectively clean out the bad assets in the system," said Holtz-Eakin. "You certainly don't want to repeat the Lehman Brothers experience where you simply let them go to bankruptcy and fail over night. You want to sell off their assets in an orderly fashion. And as you do it you do have to have taxpayer money in there to make sure the creditors aren't damaged and you don't get a lot of collateral fallout in the economy. We shouldn't be keeping failed institutions alive. We should be insulating others from the consequences of their failure." The remarks put Holtz-Eakin at odds with the White House in ways that may be surprising -- the Republican voice appearing less sympathetic to the desires of Wall Street. The plan for a public-private partnership to clean up the banks, as announced by the Treasury Department on Monday, underscores the president's commitment to not let any major financial institutions fail. It is also another in a series of investments of public money (in this case, in the form of loans and guarantees that would supplement private investors) designed to purge toxic assets from the banking system. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has noted that, if the government were to take over banks completely, it would put the taxpayer on the hook for even more liabilities. But Holtz-Eakin, as others have before him, seems to be arguing that more could be done with less. The former McCain and George W. Bush adviser also had some sharp words for Congress over its reaction to the bonuses issued by insurance giant AIG. Calling efforts to heavily tax these bonuses "appalling," he argued that there were far-reaching economic implications to this surge of populist outrage. "The notion that they will now get the private sector capitol to come in and help restore financial stability, when they change the rules every day and attack the people they are trying to get help, it's just not going to happen," he said. Conservative economist have expressed similar views. But McCain himself has been non-committal. "If we hadn't bailed them out, then they would have gone bankrupt, and all of this stuff would have been the subject of the courts and reorganization," the Senator recently told Fox News . "Instead we poured hundreds and how many billions dollars into this failing institution, and now we have everybody scrambling around. It is incredible that the Treasury Secretary knew about these bonuses and didn't tell anybody or certainly Congress was not informed."
 
Mari Gallagher: Chance of Death by Street Violence Depends on Where You Live: Can Better Data and Information Unlock the Deadly Pattern? Top
Earlier this year, local gangs set an apartment fire to punish their rivals, killing a seven-year-old girl named Itzel and her pregnant mother by mistake instead. Though sad and sensational, the story was trumped by subsequent tales of terror as Chicagoans - many just children - continue to fall victim to street violence. This school year so far, roughly 30 public school children have died violently. This does not include private school children, children who have dropped out of school, or children too young to attend school. (View a new map of locations of these deaths with our "deck-stacked-against-you" indicator that shows Chicago tracts with the highest concentration of African Americans, Latinos, burdened mortgage holders, high school dropouts, and lowest household incomes at www.marigallagher.com/projects .) Does where you live impact quality and length of life, and quality and cause of death? It certainly does. The ongoing headlines sound like scenes from Gran Torino . Clint Eastwood plays the cranky but intriguing old-timer who helps his immigrant teenage neighbor say no to gang-bangers dead-set on recruiting him. They fire automatic weapons through the boy's window, burn a cigarette into his face, and rape and beat his sister to get their point across. This is just fiction, of course, but it mimics real-life circumstances in some of our toughest neighborhoods. Chicago, our "world class" city, has cracks and crevices that function just as similarly. For many here and throughout the nation, intimidation and death by street violence is no movie. And the storyline is not new; it's a constant re-run. Flashback to 1992. In that year, 61 children were victims of Chicago homicides. Remember another seven-year-old, Dantrell Davis? He was killed in gang crossfire while walking to Jenner Elementary School. Dantrell lived in the Cabrini Green housing project. His death triggered ongoing local and national attention. In response, the Chicago Tribune chronicled youth homicides as part of a series entitled "Killing Our Children." These stories are in fact very similar to what we are reading in today's local papers. There are many confounding and complicated factors that threaten the safety of children, including gang warfare, rampant poverty, troubled housing projects, and general health problems. Dantrell himself was a prime example of a child facing danger on a regular basis. He, too, was in an apartment fire; he survived but it scarred more than 50 percent of his body and face. Five months later, his father died of complications from asthma. One month after that, Dantrell was shot dead in the temple by a single bullet from a 10th floor sniper. His mother was holding his hand at the time. Much has happened since the death of Dantrell Davis. His mother requested and was granted by local gangs their first-ever truce, which lasted over three years. The street where Dantrell took his last breath was renamed in his honor. The Tribune received a Pulitzer Prize for its editorial coverage of youth homicides. And over the past two decades especially, foundations, civic groups, and government have invested millions and millions of dollars in a wide range of community revitalization strategies in some of Chicago's most distressed neighborhoods. Cabrini Green itself has been mostly torn down as part of this redevelopment plan to make way for better living conditions and mixed income housing. But while much has changed, too much has stayed the same. Despite concerted investment and many noticeable community gains, Chicago street violence continues. The exact figures rise and fall from year to year. During relatively mild periods, violent activity - not just homicides, but gang activity, assaults, burglary, vandalism and other criminal acts - declines enough for officials to claim success and breathe a sigh of relief. In more turbulent times, it spikes up again at alarming rates. But every year, without fail, hundreds of Chicago lives are lost to violence. Many who die or are injured are children. There has been no clear-cut formula for systematically predicting and curtailing the violent activity that plagues Chicago and other cities. Can that change? Some would say that these high crime areas of Chicago function as war zones, generally defined as a dangerous place where normal, civil society breaks down, and simple, everyday activities, such as the freedom to walk your child safely to school, are risky. In response to the 1992 shooting of Dantrell Davis, for example, former Housing Authority chairman Vincent Lane called for the National Guard to be deployed at Cabrini Green, signaling a war zone out of control. Mayor Daley instead ordered a massive police sweep and metal detectors, although public statements he made at the time suggest he drew the same war zone conclusion. "We have seen a complete breakdown of society," he told Time Magazine. Just this past summer, 17 years after the death of Dantrell Davis, which is roughly the same amount of time needed to transform a newborn into an adult and send him to college, 123 people were shot and killed in Chicago. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. Clearly, something new needs to be done. But what? There is not one single problem or one single solution concerning street violence; it will take all of us to contribute positively to a safer and more civil society. As the president of the National Center for Public Research (NCforPR), it is probably not surprising that I turn the discussion to better data and information as one of many needed strategies. NCforPR plans to develop very robust block-level police and other data to predict and prevent violent societal patterns of activity in Chicago through cluster and regression analysis. The project also includes a qualitative component to gain input from local teens and others in communities that suffer disproportionately from violence. We are extremely fortunate to be partnering with Commissioner Dana Starks, who heads up Chicago's Commission on Human Relations, and his very capable staff. The Commissioner is a thirty-year police veteran who knows our city well and is committed to improving it. Not every city has such a commission; Chicago is unique in that regard. (You can visit their website to learn more.) Our quantitative methodology begins with a very simple premise: that the vitality, health and safety of any urban community is a block-by-block phenomenon. When we think of concepts such as "home" and "community" and the ability of a child and his mother to walk safely to school, we typically think of the very block where we live, and whether or not it is a safe and nurturing environment. Our study of violence prevention - assuming we find funding and gain police buy-in - will be concentrated at the block level for this and several other reasons. Our theory of violent and destructive criminal behaviors that happen in a broad community context (street violence, hate crimes, gang activities, random homicides, and so on) is that they often erupt from many dynamic, complicated and confounding factors that clash all at once. The confluence of erupting factors can be somewhat external to the individual or individuals committing the crimes. We are not at all saying that the individuals engaging in criminal behavior should be exonerated because of their environment. What we are saying is that, in some cases, we might be able to identify in advance approaching collective patterns of behavior - tipping points - that are statistically more likely to result in destructive behaviors and outcomes that negatively impact communities. For example, back in 1992, Anthony Garrett, 33, told police that he shot Dantrell Davis by mistake. Garrett said that he was simply trying to take out a few rival gang members when the first-grader got in the way. The gang-bangers that killed Itzel earlier this year had a similar excuse: it was an accident. They simply got the address wrong. Simple mistake! A warzone is a state of chaos: you take your chances walking down the street or even locking yourself up in your apartment because anything can happen, either as intended or by accident. In real estate, and in public safety, too, we have three defining words: location, location, location. The more the deck is stacked against you in terms of your location, the greater the likelihood of a negative outcome. While gang bangers are responsible for their own individual actions, they, too, are a product of their location. They are influenced by and react to the external interplay of many factors taking place at once: drugs, poverty, boarded up buildings, poor education, peer pressure, lack of options - the list is a long one. We do not expect to find direct causal relationships in this study (a causes x, or a+b+c causes x). However, if we can isolate and reduce some of the factors or combination of factors that support or contribute to undesired outcomes - such as a sniper "accidentally" shooting a seven-year-old - we might be able to prevent some percentage of those outcomes (when a+b+c are present, x is more likely with statistical significance, and when a+b+c+d are present, x is twice as likely with statistical significance, and so on). Using spatial tools, we will be able to measure the distance between the multiple activities that take place at each geographic block center to all other blocks in the city. What we are conducting is essentially a Geographic Information Systems analysis, with the addition of an extra dimension: time. Instead of just looking for relationships among the crimes and other factors such as foreclosed buildings, socio-economic status and so on, we are looking at how crimes at a particular time and place influence crime at a subsequent time and in a perhaps different place. If we can predict these crimes, maybe we can prevent them from happening. This could save lives. There are challenges in isolating cause and effect and holding constant potential statistical confounders, such as income, race, culture, self-selection into specific types of communities, and predisposition to certain kinds of behavior. Although we do need to control for them, our goal is to move beyond stereotypical variables such as race and class that correlate with increased criminal activity but do not themselves cause or create tipping points that steal life and destroy communities. The election of our first African American president signals a new era of civil rights, of hope, and of new possibilities. It signals new language, strategy and focus. But the deaths of so many children in certain types of neighborhoods - in certain locations - means that, for many, the struggle continues. Race, place, class and equal opportunity are more complicated today than ever before. Depending on where you live, many of the original civil rights battles and court victories - such as quality education or the freedom to walk your child safety to school without being shot in the head - have yet to be truly won. In some cases, the deck is stacked against you from the beginning. If we are going to solve some old problems we have to answer some old questions. Why is it that millions and decades of community development dollars have failed to transform targeted communities in certain locations? Will federal stimulus money flowing into neighborhoods where foreclosures have run rampant be any different in terms of intended impact? Can community revitalization really happen without a better understanding of how to unlock our deadliest patterns block-by-block? I haven't always been a researcher. Long ago, while still in my early twenties, I led a project to revitalize a vacant lot on Chicago's South Side in the center of the local business district where a man was chased down and beaten to death. The lot sloped off below grade into the alley and was strewn with tires and trash. Crime was out of control. We turned the lot into a community garden that included a "fantasy mural" painted on an adjoining building wall by former gang bangers as part of a rehabilitation program. At the time, community gardens were not well known or popular. There was such fear of street violence, vandalism and gangs, and hostility to the criminal element, that the project plans initially drew opposition. As a concession, we agreed to a wrought iron fence and heavy-duty lock to keep out troublemakers. The concern was that the garden would invite more violence and the temptation to dig up and steal all the pretty flowers and shrubs planted with the help of the Chicago Botanic Garden and a great deal of local money and effort. As it turned out, neighborhood folks did hop the fence when we weren't looking, but their worst crimes were planting vegetables - we didn't have any - and getting an upfront view of the flowers. So eventually the garden was open to the public during daylight hours and became a more direct community resource. It won an award from Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council. It was featured in 32 distinct media venues, including House Beautiful . One of the young men who worked on the mural exchanged his wedding vows there. Did our "no guns, more roses" strategy make a difference? In the short term, yes; at least it seemed so. Longer term? Maybe. Did it permanently restore law, order, and civility? No. Over the years, the area continued to be plagued by violence. This past February 20th, for example, three teens - ages 13, 15, and 17 - were shot and killed not very far from that very location. Two of them were brothers. As someone who has spent time in the trenches, I can tell you first hand that community stabilization efforts - whether we're talking about foreclosures, violence or anything else - need to be informed by better block-level data concerning markets, community conditions, socio-economics, crime, a range of other variables and the web that ties them all together. Here is another example. Later in my career, as the executive director of a community development corporation and alongside board members and an active alderman, I led the development and co-ownership of a $75 million shopping center anchored by a full-service grocery store. As we talked about earlier, "location, location, location" has an impact on both the potential to develop real estate into higher uses and public safety. In short, it's extremely difficult to corral investors - and shoppers, for that matter - against the backdrop of street violence. In the process of working on this deal I met with a stream of developers and market actors. I remember one saying bluntly: you can't have a full-service grocery store because everyone's too poor, and you can't have a bookstore because poor people don't read books. End of story. In reality, the community was economically and racially diverse. There were some poor people but not everyone was poor; many were quite well off. And even poor people eat and buy food as part of the human condition. How could we quantify local consumers who not only read books but would buy them, too, if they had the chance? In a distressed market, commercial development is already extremely difficult, if not impossible. Highly quality and geographically appropriate data and information are needed to direct resources, but not always available. Good data isn't the only challenge. In a commercial market the highest level of retail sets the tone for the rest of the business district. Retail attracts retail, and like attacks like. We call this the Snowball Effect. If you have a mix of nail salons, currency exchanges, pawnshops, dollar stores, empty storefronts, and broken windows, it's hard to attract a major anchor such as a grocery store and much easier to attract more of the same. This is also true in the housing market.
 
Huff TV: Arianna Discusses Tim Geithner on Larry King Live Top
Arianna appeared on Larry King Live Monday night to discuss whether or not Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should be fired. Watch below: Embedded video from CNN Video Related: Arianna Huffington: Take the Steering Wheel out of Geithner's Hands
 
Geithner Plan Will Rob US Taxpayers: Nobel-Winning Economist Top
The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday. "The Geithner plan is very badly flawed," Stiglitz told Reuters in an interview during a Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. More on Economy
 
O'Reilly Producer Stalks Amanda Terkel: THE VIDEO Top
So, over the weekend, Fox News sent their employees to stalk Amanda Terkel , a blogger for Think Progress. They followed away from DC, into Virginia, across that state, and finally ambushed her on her vacation, in order to ask a bunch of frenzied, crackpotty question in an attempt to make her look fearful, agitated and incoherent on national teevee . They did this on behalf of another person in their employ, the thin-skinned shouty moron Bill O'Reilly. [WATCH.] Why did this happen? Well, Terkel was one of many people who pointed out the super-duper hypocrisy of O'Reilly appearing as a speaker before the It Happened To Alexa Foundation, which is dedicated to assisting victims of rape. This was absurd, because O'Reilly doesn't particularly seem to care for rape victims. Of one, O'Reilly famously said: "Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk." Such sensitivity, I know. But then what do you expect from a loofah wielding sex creep ? By the way, if you want to ensure your O'Reilly ambush footage never makes it to air, simply repeat the phrase "loofah wielding sex creep" over and over again. Interestingly, the complaints about O'Reilly did not begin, or end, with Terkel. As near as I can tell, O'Reilly's hypocrisy on rape victims was first noted by the Fox News watchdog site NewsHounds . Neither was Terkel the highest profile critic of O'Reilly on this regard. That honor would likely fall to Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, who hammered O'Reilly for days on the air . Somewhere between NewsHounds delivering the story and Olbermann repeatedly banging the outrage home, Terkel posted a brief item describing the matter on ThinkProgress . So, why was it Terkel that was singled out for stalking by the O'Reilly Factor ? That's easy! Of all the people they could have possibly intimidated, Terkel was the smallest in stature and the most female. See, all of this is connected, back to the part where O'Reilly is a cowardly sex creep. It's also connected to O'Reilly's extreme paranoia, which borders on camp . In this case, O'Reilly believes that Terkel is a part of a broad conspiracy, led by NBC News, to make him look foolish. After his broadcast of this addled ambush footage, O'Reilly intoned: "Well, Ms. Terkel is certainly a villain. She was obviously used by NBC News." Occam's Razor holds that what O'Reilly actually faces is the widespread belief that he is an uninformed, creepy, loudmouth - a belief that's taken root in the mainstream owing to such "O'Reilly factors" such as "the things O'Reilly does" and "the words that come out of O'Reilly's mouth" and "the creepy sex-loofah stuff, which skeeves people, massively." If this ever happens to you, it's important to keep a few things in perspective. Last weekend, Terkel was enjoying a vacation, while O'Reilly's factotum, Jesse Watters, was crouched in a van with a cameraperson, stuck following a happier and more well-adjusted member of society across the state of Virginia. So, remember, when Jesse Watters runs up on you, you are about to be confronted by a loser. And if it turns out that you just don't have the time or inclination to speak to the Factor, just tell them that you are a homeless veteran. As it turns out, O'Reilly and all of his employees are terrified that they might one day come face to face with a homeless veteran. MORE: I Was Followed, Harassed, And Ambushed By Bill O'Reilly's Producer [ThinkProgress] Bill O'Reilly Knows What To Do To Uppity Women That Won't Shut Up [Jezebel] A Lot Of Parents Like To Say I'm A Villain [Attackerman] PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST: Paul Rieckhoff: O'Reilly Downplays Number of Homeless Veterans Fox News, O'Reilly Offer Chilly Reception To Homeless Vets [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Video
 
Alan Schram: Three Scenarios for the Geithner Plan Top
Three scenarios are possible for the new Geithner plan: 1. The toxic assets will attract only few bidders, while most investors decide they are not a good investment at ANY price, even with Treasury's inducements, since those asset are not just illiquid but actually hopeless. 2. The Geithner plan will attract only few banks, because they fear their assets will receive only very low bids, forcing banks to take further write downs and thus eroding their capital even more. This will tear the mask from the banks' balance sheets and spell their doom. Because of that risk, many banks may choose not to participate. This scenario also renders the plan ineffective. 3. The plan's participants buy most assets from the banks at prices that leave the banks solvent. In this case, the plan works well but would amount to effectively subsidizing the failing banks, transferring their losses and risk to the taxpayers via the Fed's balance sheet. None of the above scenarios is very promising; none leads to a good denouement. And what bothers me most is that we bet our financial system and the economic recovery on this plan, hailed as a panacea. It is never a good idea to bet the house on any grand scheme. Any system as complex and reflexive as the US economy is by definition unpredictable, and nobody could be confident this plan will work. If it fails, shattering the high hopes of so many, the price of disappointment will be immense. We will be with our back to the wall, facing another wave of panic. The very premise behind the plan is flawed. We insist on saving the banks, and refuse to admit most of them are impaired beyond hope. We prefer to sweep their problems under the carpet, but the day of reckoning is here and it is always better to deal with our problems than pretend they are not there. We can handle the truth, although we may not be able to postpone it much longer. What we should do instead is have the Treasury offer to match the capital of new community banks to be formed by the private sector. Entrepreneurs will have strong incentive to launch these new banks because of the federal matching, which will double their capital overnight. These new banks, unburdened by past mistakes, will have clean balance sheets and will be eager to lend, replacing the old failing banks and rejuvenating the credit system. Because most banks operate with loans at least ten times their equity capital, the amount of new credit will be at least 20 times the capital allocated by the government, so the multiplier effect will be very substantial. And the banks that engaged in wretched excess and can't survive without federal funding do not deserve our help.
 
Obama Approval Rating Goes UP: CBS News Poll Top
Despite a wounded economy and public furor aimed at Wall Street, a new CBS poll finds President Obama's approval rating has actually gone up. Sixty-four percent of Americans say they favor the job that Obama is doing right now, a modest increase of two points since CBS's poll earlier this month. More notably, ratings for the president's handling of the overall economy jumped five points, from 56 percent to 61 percent. The news is not all good however. On the AIG bonuses issue specifically, Obama is facing his first instance of relatively high disapproval with 42 percent disapproving (versus 41 percent approving and 17 percent undecided). More on the poll from CBS : The poll numbers can be explained in part by the fact that most Americans do not think there was much the Obama administration could have done about the bonuses. Only 12 percent think the administration had a lot of control over the payouts, while more than half say the administration had little or no control. Even so, 56 percent of Americans say the administration ought to have found some way to stop the bonuses from being paid out. Thirty-four percent said it should not have. The president is set to give his second prime-time press conference Tuesday and it is generally presumed that a central focus will be on mollifying public outrage over towards the AIG handling. From the AP: Obama is virtually certain to use Tuesday's prime-time news conference to continue an effort that began over the weekend: cooling the anti-AIG ferocity, now that it threatens to undermine his efforts to bail out the nation's deeply troubled financial sector. Obama's tone changed dramatically after the House voted last week for targeted taxes to take back most of the $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG executives. Many lawmakers felt Obama had encouraged their step, because he called the bonuses reckless, outrageous and unjustified. Read through the complete poll results below: CBS News Poll - Free Legal Forms More on AIG
 
Howie Klein: Gary Peters-- More Than Just Rage Against The Machine Top
I can't say I was really dismayed at the demonstration of shortsighted posturing-- from both sides of the aisle-- when the members of the House Financial Services Committee saw the cameras begin to roll and they started playing for any home town constituents who might be watching C-Span 3 last Wednesday. It's what I've come to expect from our political elite. Longtime Finance Industry shill Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who has accepted, or solicited, a breathtakingly senatorial $3,789,474 from a grateful financial/insurance/real estate sector for his unstinting service on their special interests-- like passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act -- was particularly reprehensible in his timeworn role as defender of banksterdom. Pandering, whether to pissed off voters or dependable campaign donors, seems like an awful way for congressmen to spend their expensive ($174,000/year with platinum benefits) time. By the time they got to Michigan freshman, Gary Peters, I confess I expected more of the same Democratic expression of anger towards Wall Street and not much else. I couldn't have been more wrong. Listening to Congressman Peters speak last week made me very, very proud that Blue America had endorsed him in 2008 and helped him replace rubber stamp incumbent Joe Knollenberg. Suddenly someone was speaking as though he respected reason and thought it worthwhile to strive towards actual leadership. If you missed his one minute speech please watch him: I called his office and asked him to expand on his remarks and he responded with this statement: When news broke that AIG planned to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, I was outraged. So were the American people, and rightfully so. AIG has received over $170 billion from taxpayers. My constituents and other Americans are finding it harder and harder to believe that such support is justified. Federal support for financial institutions was meant to prevent systemic economic collapse and job losses and get credit flowing to consumers and businesses-- not to enrich executives.  The AIG bonuses are especially outrageous in that they are being paid to the very people who brought the company to its knees and whose reckless investments helped drive our economy into the ditch.  Bonuses are usually meant to reward good performance, but the people receiving these bonuses at AIG failed spectacularly. AIG says the bonuses are not tied to performance but rather are "retention bonuses" to encourage employees to stay at the company. This does not square well with the fact that millions of dollars in bonuses are being paid to individuals who have already left AIG. The bottom line is, as long as tax dollars are keeping AIG afloat, no executive bonuses should be paid. Legislation that I co-authored will reclaim outrageous bonuses paid with our tax dollars that were given out to executives at AIG and other companies that received billions in taxpayer support.  H.R. 1586 , which has now passed the House , would create a 90% tax on egregious bonuses paid to executives of companies supported by tax dollars. Regular state and local taxes would recover much or all of the remaining 10%, effectively returning the entirety of these bonuses to taxpayers. Many said there was nothing that we could do about the AIG bonuses because the company was contractually obligated to pay the rewards. I reject that notion. Thousands of United Auto Worker members in my home state of Michigan and across the country are making sacrifices and renegotiating their contracts right now as a condition of receiving federal support. There are thousands of white collar employees with contracts who have forgone promised bonuses and benefits and have taken pay cuts in order to save their companies. The CEO's of both GM and Chrysler are working for a $1 salary this year.  Auto companies and their workers were told that agreeing to renegotiate contracts was necessary before they received a dime of federal support. The same should have been required of AIG and other financial institutions. I was not in Congress when it was first decided to provide support to AIG to prevent its collapse, but I am here now and am determined to work with my colleagues to solve this problem. People are sick of the double standard in which working class and middle class workers are treated differently than financial industry executives. All that people are looking for is a sense of shared sacrifice. Wall Street does not seem to understand that yet, but they need to start soon. If financial executives think that they should be able to get preferential treatment over other American workers, they've got another thing coming. The double standard must come to an end and these bonuses must be stopped. That's why the legislation we passed in the House is just common sense. It will recover the bonuses, and do so in a manner that protects the sanctity of contracts. The bill allows AIG to meet its contractual obligation to pay the bonuses, and then recovers the bonuses through the tax code. The Senate should pass this legislation so that financial sector executives know that we mean business.  Million-dollar bonuses to the very people who drove our economy to the brink of collapse are simply unacceptable, and we must move swiftly to stop them. As the Administration and more than a few of the 328 Democrats and Republicans are succumbing to pressures from business and political elites to back away from the proposal, it's refreshing to hear someone explain the justice of it so clearly. Like I said, it's why Blue America supported Gary Peters in 2008 and it's why we feel like we made the right decision. It's also why I'd like to remind everyone that if we don't help members like Gary get re-elected, we'll wind up with a Congress filled with bought-and-paid for shills like Spencer Bachus and Eric Cantor. Gary Peter's Blue America ActBlue page is still open and I want to remind you that even $5 and $10 contributions add up to significant numbers in an election campaign. Blue America has managed to collect approximately $2 million for progressive candidates and causes and the average donation has been something like $35. I know times are tough but after you think about Congressman Peters talking about the double standards between the middle class and the self-professed masters of the universe, listen to Rep. Bachus at the same hearing and decide if you can afford a government made up exclusively of people like that?
 
Rob Fishman: The American Nightmare Top
"If we kill the rich," Vicky Ward asks in yesterday's Huffington Post, "don't we kill the dream?" There may well be a dream on the line, but it's not the one Ward's worried about -- namely, "the American dream of meritocracy," which allegedly "Congress is trying to strangle." In fact, of all the misdeeds carried out on the southern tip of Manhattan over the last decade, perhaps Wall Street's greatest fraud was to arrogate the very meaning of the American Dream. What Ward and others are peddling as an American Dream -- and what lies on its deathbed today -- is not that storied Dream, but an ersatz ideology, a vision corrupted, distorted, perverted and bastardized; in short, a nightmare. Speaking to the Democratic Leadership Committee in 1993, Bill Clinton called the American Dream a "simple but powerful one -- if you work hard and play by the rules you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you." And what does God have to say on the issue? Luke 16:13 : "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." While the American credo stops short of condemning profit, it was never intended to equate the two. Looking back on the origin of the American Dream trope, as David Kamp does in this month's Vanity Fair , there was not, from the get-go, "any promise or intimation of extreme success in the book that popularized the term," as Kamp writes of James Truslow Adams' The Epic of America . Nor was astronomical wealth the "dream" promised in Horatio Algers' rags-to-riches stories. In Ragged Dick , Alger's first great success, the protagonist winds up a clerk, happily ensconced in the middle -- and not the upper- upper -- class. In 1907, Burton J. Hendrick authored an anti-Semitic piece in McClure's Magazine called "The Great Jewish Invasion." Manhattan's Jews, Hendrick wrote, "are not what are commonly regarded as the most enlightened of their race." Yet among his accusations of money-grubbing, Hendrick admitted that the Jews' "enthusiasm for America knows no bounds." He continued: "The rapidity with which the New York Jew adopts the manners and trappings of Americans almost disproves his ancient heritage as a peculiar people...Better than any other element, even their native stock, do they meet the two supreme tests of citizenship: they actually go to the polls, and when once there, vote independently." Even in this city -- what Ward today calls the "national epicenter of ostentation and consumerism" -- a bigoted commentator could distill from the basest of stereotypes the true nature of the American Dream: the litmus test was not a paycheck, but a ballot. Yet in the last half of the last century, something changed. Americans started betting, in the words of Joe Nocera, "that tomorrow would be better than today." Consumer credit swelled in the 1960s, and was underwritten in the 1970s by the rise of credit cards. The gold rush reached its apotheosis in the 1980s, when under Ronald Reagan, the American Dream was finally "decoupled from any concept of the common good," as Kamp writes, "and, more portentously, from the concepts of working hard and managing one's expectations." Thus, Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker , who wrote recently of his own foray into the so-called American Dream: "I'd never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous." The American Dream had, and has, become a farce. Over at AIG, Edward M. Liddy is grumbling that they "cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent" if those much-bemoaned bonuses aren't paid out. But as Judith Warner recently asked, "When was it, exactly, that the titans of Wall Street, among their many other perks and privileges, got to be crowned with the title of best and brightest'?" In other words, why should Wall Street occupy the vanguard of the American Dream? Under their watch, we saw the American Dream supersized and subsidized. As economist Robert H. Frank writes in the Sunday Times , "Trillions of dollars, many of them borrowed from China, financed tax cuts for the wealthy, who spent much of their added wealth on things like bigger mansions. But beyond a certain point, when everyone builds bigger, the primary effect is merely to raise the bar that defines the size of home that people feel they need." This was an American Dream bought on the cheap. In the ugliest sense of the word, it was bigger, but in no ways loftier. The anecdote Ward leads with is something a hedge-fund manager told her at dinner: "If your only identity is in your job or your money then there is no point living in New York anymore," he said. "Anyone who thinks like that will leave." And good riddance. In this month's Atlantic , Richard Florida predicts that "the financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy." New York has become a haven for people whose personhood begins and ends with their wallets. As the urbanist Jane Jacobs told Florida, "When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave." "With the hegemony of the investment bankers over," Florida concludes, "New York now stands a better chance of avoiding that sterile fate." As the nightmare passes, there will be time to repair, revitalize and, yes, rethink the American Dream. And with any luck, we'll soon be stewing over bonuses for overpaid Huffington Post writers. More on Financial Crisis
 
Jim Kessler: A Block or a Bloc? Top
It didn't take long for the left to come out guns ablazin' over the formation of a moderate Democratic working group in the Senate . The Mod Dems, led by centrist Sens. Evan Bayh, Tom Carper and Blanche L. Lincoln, were attacked within 12 hours by liberal leader Robert Borosage, who labeled them "obstructionists" who are "trying to undermine" President Barack Obama's agenda. That is one view of this new group, which is being propagated widely on the left. The other view is that the Mod Dems represent Democrats' best hope to achieve transformational change -- that they are, in fact, the difference-makers on energy, health care, the budget and education. Perhaps it is this realization that is at the root of the left's ire. The truth remains that there are two intersecting groups of Americans who will ultimately ratify or reject the president's agenda: ideological moderates and the middle class. Both of them voted for the broad brush strokes of transformational change in huge numbers. In fact, Obama won the highest percentage of moderate voters since the ideology question was asked in exit polls. There is no doubt that this represents a tremendous opportunity to build the support for change among the ideological and economic center. But moderates and the middle class are the devil-is-in-the-details people. They are intrigued by, but not sold on, universal health care. They are open to, but not converted on, cap and trade. They are hopeful, yet skeptical, about a broad expansion of government. They weigh options, shift allegiances and are less inclined toward grass-roots movements and Internet advocacy campaigns. It was they who looked at, but said "no thanks" to, health care reform in 1994, and they still hold both the signing and the veto pen on the sweeping changes Obama and Democratic congressional leaders seek. Quite simply, if their concerns, aspirations and interests are forgotten or papered over, they are as likely to bolt as not. For example, though Democrats swept the middle class in 2008, they lost the middle class in six consecutive election cycles between 1994 and 2004. This is hardly a base group of loyal progressives. If they are so fickle, can Democratic moderates in the House and Senate -- particularly those who represent purplish states -- be counted on to hold the center and push through the major legislation we need? To be fair to Borosage and others on the left, some of the scorn and skepticism directed toward moderates is deserved. In 1992, Democrats nominated and the country elected a moderate with an ambitious agenda to lead the nation. After a crushing defeat in the 1994 midterm elections, the air came out of the balloon. "Moderate" became synonymous with small thinking. Health care reform was replaced by school uniforms. And for the next 10 years, the moderate vision lacked scope and clarity. Today, a new generation of House and Senate moderates has emerged. They are doers with big plans, not equivocators tinkering around the edges. Bayh and Carper are former governors whose temperaments cotton to getting things done. Lincoln has probably taken more difficult votes than any member of the Senate. They created a moderate bloc in order to pass things, not to block things. In the House, Reps. Ellen O. Tauscher, Melissa L. Bean, Artur Davis, Allyson Schwartz, Steve Israel, Joseph Crowley and Ron Kind are just a handful of aggressive-idea dervishes that populate the moderate New Democrat Coalition (though Tauscher will very likely soon be leaving for a State Department position). And we have a president who calls himself a "new Democrat." That is not to suggest that achieving transformational change will be easy -- even with committed elected moderates leading the charge from the center. To paraphrase the president, we don't take these challenges because they are easy; we take them because they are necessary. But the task will be more difficult if the left and center snipe at and mistrust each other. The left and the center ought to put aside their hostilities and take a sober look at what is at stake. The left must understand that for major legislative success to occur, policy prescriptions will have to undergo change. Moderates must acknowledge that the fate of the change agenda rests in their hands. Both must realize that these opportunities come once in a generation. Jon Cowan is president and Jim Kessler is vice president for policy for Third Way , a moderate think tank that works with progressives.
 
Obama Not Committed, But Chicago 2016 Leaders Hope He'll Be At Olympic Meeting Top
DENVER — The committee trying to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago has invited President Barack Obama to be in Copenhagen for its final presentation but doesn't yet have a firm commitment. Pat Ryan, chairman of the Chicago 2016 bid, said Monday that Obama planned to attend the meeting in October barring an emergency. Later, however, he said he wasn't positive about the president's schedule but was hoping Obama would be there. The White House did not immediately have comment. Heads of state have been present at meetings more frequently in the past few years. A few years ago, when London overcame favorite Paris to land the 2012 Games, a strong, in-person push by British Prime Minister Tony Blair was viewed as one of the reasons. Obama's election has been widely regarded as a boon for the Chicago bid because of his Illinois background and his worldwide popularity. Obama already has chipped in by providing a video message for the bid for earlier presentations to international delegates. U.S. Olympic Committee officials say they are in touch with the White House about the 2016 bid and hope he can make it to Copenhagen. "Anyone who's met him senses he has the charisma and chemistry to work well with people," said Bob Ctvrtlik, the USOC vice chairman for international relations. "If he can come and stay for an hour, we'll appreciate it. If he can stay a few days, we'll appreciate it even more." Chicago, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro will give presentations to IOC leaders on Thursday at this week's SportAccord in Denver, the biggest gathering of international sports officials in the United States since the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. Chicago has other issues on the table, most notably the squabble between the USOC and IOC on revenue sharing. Some IOC members want to renegotiate the terms, which they say are overly favorable to the USOC. Ctvrtlik said he plans meetings this week to discuss. There's a notion that the issue could negatively impact the Chicago bid if it isn't resolved in the IOC's favor. "I don't think they're connected, but does that mean that certain individuals wouldn't connect them? I couldn't say that's the case," Ryan said. He also played it straight on how recent upheaval at the USOC might affect the bid. Stephanie Streeter is expected to arrive Tuesday for her first big Olympics meeting since she unexpectedly replaced Jim Scherr as CEO earlier this month. Both Scherr and former chairman Peter Ueberroth have been replaced in the past six months. Ueberroth's departure was expected while Scherr's came as a surprise and left an opening for those who criticize the USOC for not having stability at the top. "The issue of Jim Scherr obviously was not discussed, and I think it surprised a lot of people," Ryan said. But, he said, Scherr was in his job for six years and Ueberroth for four. "I don't think people can consider that an organization in turmoil," Ryan said. More on Olympics
 
Robert D. Stolorow: The Economic Crisis as Collective Trauma Top
What do I mean by referring to our current economic crisis as a "collective trauma"? Let me explain. I have characterized the essence of emotional trauma (RD Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence, Routledge, 2007) as a shattering of what I call the absolutisms of everyday life--the illusory beliefs that allow us to experience the world as stable, predictable, and safe. The shattering of these illusions by trauma brings us face to face with our existential vulnerability and with death and loss as possibilities that define our existence and that loom as constant threats. I describe our era as an "Age of Trauma" because the tranquilizing illusions of our everyday world seem in our time to be severely threatened from all sides--by global diminution of natural resources, by global warming, by global nuclear proliferation, by global terrorism, and, currently, by global economic collapse. These are forms of collective trauma in that they threaten to obliterate the basic framework with which we as members of our particular society have made sense out of our existence. For me, it was the fall of General Motors, even more than that of AIG and other financial institutions, which had this obliterating impact. I grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, where the cars with that name are manufactured and which is located 25 miles north of Detroit and 35 miles south of Flint. For me and my family and friends, GM was an unassailable absolutism, a symbol of the invulnerability and permanence of the American way of life. And now this Olympian symbol, along with other similar ones, has dissolved, leaving us as a nation collectively traumatized. It is my view that our Age of Trauma began with the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. In horrifyingly demonstrating that even America can be assaulted on its native soil, the attack of 9/11 shattered our collective illusions of safety, inviolability, and grandiose invincibility, illusions that had long been mainstays of the American historical identity. The current economic crisis, in addition to being a collective trauma in its own right, is reanimating once again the feelings of terror, vulnerability, and powerlessness spawned by the attack of 9/11. It is what I describe as a portkey to retraumatization. In the wake of the collective trauma of 9/11, Americans came under the spell of the disastrous resurrective ideologies offered by the Bush administration--ideologies that promised to bring back to life the grandiose illusions that had been nullified and lost. Although President Obama, by contrast, has shown that he is capable of grasping the complexities of our collective situation and of transcending divisive false polarities, I worry that Americans in their desperation are attributing messianic powers to him. Such messianic longings and hopes are doomed to disappointment when directed toward any finite human being with humanly limited powers and possibilities. What do we need emotionally in our Age of Trauma? We need to be able to bring our feelings of anxiety and existential vulnerability into dialogue with our fellow sufferers, so that these painful feelings can be held and better borne within relationships--what I call a relational home--rather than being evaded by means of the grandiose, destructive resurrective ideologies that have been so characteristic of human history.
 
Freddy Deknatel: Anniversary in Damascus Top
DAMASCUS, SYRIA -- The screen showed "shock and awe" and Saddam's family scrambled to pack their bags. "I've seen this three times here since it came out," Khalid* said as the next scene opened. At a birthday party in the late 1970s, Saddam's daughter received a gift from President Ahmed Hussein al-Bakr before Saddam took him into his office and forced him to resign. We were watching House of Saddam six years to the day after the American invasion. Damascus spread out below the balcony of Khalid's apartment in one of the myriad suburbs of hastily built concrete sprawling up the dry mountains that hug the city. Over a few hours of sitting and talking, with glasses of whisky and spoonfuls of hummus and Iraqi cheese, talk of the war and its disasters came up plenty, but Khalid and his friend Hussein* never remarked on the anniversary of the war. Instead they focused on the film. In a smoky assembly hall, Saddam, holding a cigar, purged the ranks of government after his take-over. "Like Capone," Hussein said as a lineup of political opponents were shot point-blank. "Like Chicago, no?" They talked freely of Iraq, describing the insurgency, the Mahdi Army and Al Qaeda less as the fault of American troops than the inevitable legacy of Saddam. On the screen, Saddam flirted with an Iraqi schoolteacher after her students sang to him. "The actor, I don't know if he's Iraqi, but he speaks English with the perfect Iraqi accent," Khalid noted. He said slyly that the film was forbidden in Syria as he cautiously loaded it into his computer. But in fact I've seen the docudrama on sale at bootleg DVD shops throughout Damascus (not so Waltz with Bashir , which one shopkeeper told me plainly was "not available here, anywhere"). Khalid and Hussein are two of the 1.2 million Iraqi refugees here. The numbers are probably higher, but that is the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official count of Iraqis with valid visas - though the government designates them "Arab guests and visitors." Syria has taken the bulk of Iraq's refugees and that has been widely reported . But too often the stories of Iraqi lives in distant suburbs of Damascus are reduced to details amid the politics of how to solve the crisis. Khalid and Hussein are friends from Baghdad, though Hussein in his forties is a bit older. He is Shi'i; Khalid is Sunni. None of this matters to them. "Older relatives of mine, generations ago, they were Christians," Hussein explained. "Really?" Khalid asked. Hussein talked about the mix of religions in Iraq; he seemed intent on not talking about sectarianism. "I am Shi'i and he is Sunni," Hussein said. Khalid interrupted. "And I am Sunni and he is Shi'i." They both nodded and said together that this was no problem. "We are after all Iraqis, really." They turned off the film after thirty minutes, long enough to see the start of the Iran-Iraq war and a scene of Saddam walking through a tented vegetable market, dismissing the questions of a foreign journalist. Khalid showed grainy cell phone videos from a recent trip home: Baghdad's famed book market, the reopened National Museum, an old man playing a qanun near the banks of the Tigris to a small audience, and his young niece running around the caked garden of his parent's house. "See the women in the crowd?" he said as the camera panned over a mix of people - including unveiled women - listening to the old man and his qanun along the Tigris. "Six months ago, even three months ago, that wouldn't have been possible." Yet he does not go back except for brief visits. Hussein arrived more recently, and like Khalid has close family still in Baghdad. Khalid told me some time ago that he left because his name alone had made him a target for the Mahdi Army. "I still can't live the kind of life I want to in Iraq," he said, and that's why he's in Damascus. Hussein left Iraq after receiving his own threats. Being Shi'i and keeping Sunni friends made him a target for the Mahdi Army, he said, just as in the reverse you are a target for Al Qaeda or other radical Sunni groups. Khalid let out a string of dirty jokes - it was getting late - and then returned to talking about the National Museum. "We think we are the Sumerians, after all, their descendents, and we should have protected it," he said. The conversation darted in different directions and I remembered the live footage of American bombs on Baghdad six years ago. Between the distance of those images and sitting on a couch past midnight hearing Khalid and Hussein's stories, I wondered where they had taken cover during that time. Then I remembered what Hussein told me weeks a few weeks ago: "I went to the countryside south of Baghdad with my family, to wait for the war to stop." *Names have been changed to protect their identities. More on Syria
 
Adele Stan: Bill O'Reilly's Woman Problem Top
Abusive people often accuse others -- especially those who would challenge their behavior -- of the very act they themselves commit. And so we find Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor", accusing Think Progress bloggerAmanda Terkel of bringing pain and suffering to a rape victim and her family. Terkel's crime? Weeks before O'Reilly's scheduled appearance at a fundraising event for a rape-victim advocacy group, she reminded her readers that, on his radio show, O'Reilly had once blamed Jennifer Moore, a rape victim and Moore's parents (segment starts at around 36) for the young woman's own rape and murder . But it wasn't enough for O'Reilly to call out Terkel on his prime-time cable TV show. No, he apparently sent his male producer to stalk Terkel on a weekend day trip to a Virginia town two hours away from Terkel's Washington, DC, home, leading Terkel to assume that the O'Reilly crew had followed her on the highway in order to ambush her during her leisure time. At the ambush, O'Reilly producer Jesse Watters accused Terkel of bringing pain and suffering to rape victim Alexa Branchini and her family, apparently because Terkel had pointed out what O'Reilly said about the murdered Jennifer Moore: that she was "moronic", that She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk. He equated Moore's fate with that of Mel Gibson, whose drunken anti-Semitic tirade -- which only expressed more crudely beliefs Gibson had stated while apparently sober --led to his own, self-induced public shaming. Even more galling was O'Reilly's blaming of Moore's parents, not two week's after their daughter's brutal murder, for not having had the 18-year-old under curfew. No infliction of pain and suffering there, huh? Your daughter's body is found in a dumpster, and some blowhard with millions of listeners is describing your daughter as a drunk who all but deserved her fate, and blaming you for failling as a parent. The compassion virtually drips. If you read Terkel's initial post about O'Reilly's slated appeance before the It Happened to Alexa Foundation , you will see that she in no way points a finger at Alexa Branchini or her family for having invited O'Reilly to speak at their fundraiser, however baffling that invitation might seem. She simply noted the invitation, and block-quoted the O'Reilly quote about Jennifer Moore that I highlight above. For that sin, O'Reilly apparently chose to have a man stalk Terkel to accuse her, on video, of things she did not do -- but things O'Reilly has indeed done -- echoing the mindset of the kind of men who thrive on abusing women. (Lindsay Beyerstein reminds us that O'Reilly settled, out of court, a sexual harassment claim by his own producer.) O'Reilly is legendary for name-calling and false accusations, but when an organization like Media Matters (for which I have worked and whose mission I support) simply posts a transcript of something O'Reilly has said, he accuses the organization of "smearing" him. Smearing him with what? His own words? It's not news that Bill O'Reilly is a bully. When kept to his side of the camera lens, that's his First Amendment right. And it's his producer's First Amendment right to ask questions on the street of any who would deign to answer them. But there's nothing moral in the physical stalking of a young woman blogger who simply noted on her blog something your boss said about a rape and murder victim. In fact, it's downright sinister, and typifies the threatening behavior to which young women are too often subjected by men who hate women. It's time for the media community to weigh in and condemn this kind of hateful, bullying behavior of those who dare to report the truth. More on Bill O'Reilly
 
Bernanke, Geithner Testify On Bank Plan, AIG (LIVE VIDEO) Top
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, appearing at a subcommittee hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, face questions on the government's oversight of AIG and its plan to relieve banks' troubled assets. Watch live:
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMay 12, 2012 at 4:10 AM

    Excellent Working Dear Friend Nice Information Share all over the world.bicycle shops near london olympicGod Bless You..
    london olympic bicycle company

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)