Wednesday, April 22, 2009

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Dan Sweeney: A Last Bit of Tea Party Coverage (For Those Who Just Haven't Had Enough) Top
It's a bit late to the party, I know, but what the heck. I figured that my column in this week's paper was worth posting, despite the HuffPo's horde of tea party reporters. Enjoy! The Fort Lauderdale brand of the nationwide tea parties took place in front of the federal courthouse in the heart of downtown. I strode into the belly of the beast as the sun set, a lone liberal amid, by my estimate, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 angry conservatives. I tried to keep a low profile. After all, my picture appears in almost every issue of City Link Metromix.com, often quite close to this column, in which I spend a great deal of ink and space ripping apart these people and everything they stand for. I was convinced, however, that the largely white, middle-aged, conservative crowd was not made up of regular readers of a paper that covers loud music, hip fashion, casual sex and a whole host of other topics that are generally anathema to these people. At least, they'd better not be readers, for my sake. But thoughts of being torn limb from limb by an angry mob proved unfounded. I made my way to the front of the protest, against the barricades, and jotted down a few notes for this column. Behind me, I heard a voice: "He's probably writing down what's on the signs. Whatever. Makes him look like a dork." I turned, and there behind me stood a man in perhaps his early 50s with long, graying blond hair and a thick mustache. I finished my notes and then made to leave. But the fellow behind me, arms crossed, refused to move. "Excuse me," I asked, "Can I get by?" "If you can get around me," he replied, widening his stance to take up more room. The options raced through my head. My first thought was to throw a knee in his groin, shove him to the ground and stomp him. But self-control quickly ruled this out, as did the myriad police officers and the previously mentioned thoughts of being torn limb from limb by an angry mob. I then considered asking whether he was coming on to me, and then explaining that I don't swing that way, though I'm cool with gay people. But that would probably end just as badly as option one. Finally, I managed to edge around him and said brightly, "Hey, Merry Christmas, buddy!" I do not know why I said that. He responded with something, but at that moment a car drove by honking its horn, and his retort was drowned out by a thousand cheers. I talked with a few of the teabaggers later, at a nearby Irish pub. They were perfectly nice people, and we had a lengthy conversation about taxes, bailouts and related economic woes. We even found some common ground. After all, nobody's really a big fan of bailing out monstrous greedheads such as the lily-white, soft-bellied tools at AIG Financial Products. But despite the later encounter, that initial meeting with that asshat stuck with me. That man stands for something larger. He is an archetype of a certain Republican demographic. Call them the bitter folks who cling to guns if you like, but the main thrust of it is that a large swath of conservative voters are belligerent idiots who think reading and writing are for suckers. I never had to worry about whether I'd be recognized here. People like that guy aren't merely not readers of my paper; they are not readers, period. And in a country in which the college-educated population grows with each generation, the Republican Party caters to these douche bags at its own peril. To quote the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, they are "flag-sucking halfwits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush. ... They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character." But the New Dumb, as both Thompson and I prefer to call this Republican subgenre, is but one element in a protest that attracted thousands of people. The presence of that Neanderthal and others of his ilk isn't surprising, given that we were standing in a protest over taxes regarding an administration that has lowered taxes for the vast majority of Americans. It was precisely the sort of dull errand that attracts these goons. Of course, the profligate spending of the newly minted Obama administration was also on the table. But where was this raging conservative populist movement in the waning days of the Bush administration, when these bailouts began and the TARP program was set up? Indeed, several people in the crowd proudly wore T-shirts featuring President Ronald Reagan, a man who did more for deficit spending than the 39 previous office holders combined. It would be too easy to tar the whole crowd as a bunch of ignorant yahoos, and only mention the signs that misspelled Congressman Charlie Rangel's name as "Wrangle," or demand that Obama "quit appologising" for America's actions. But the people here didn't, as a whole, remind me of some dumbass redneck stereotype. No, they reminded me of anti-Bush, anti-war protesters from about four years ago. The Don't Tread On Me flags, the signs paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin's line that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," the few silly people in costumes that garner the most media attention and make everyone else at the protest look like crazies. It's all a murky döppelganger of those past protests. One common phrase on signs at the tea party included something along the lines of "Congress: Learn How To Read," a reference to the fact that many in Congress failed to read the full stimulus bill before voting on it. But that exact criticism, for the exact same reasons, was found on signs at liberal protests immediately after Congress passed the Patriot Act back in 2001. We have met the enemy, and he is us. Send Don't Tread On Me flags to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Carol Felsenthal: Bill Clinton and George W. to Share a Stage in Toronto and Rake Up the Bucks Top
Here comes news from John Ibbitson writing in Toronto's Globe and Mail that 42 (Bill) and 43 ("W") will share a stage May 29 in Toronto for what's being billed as a moderated "conversation." Although fees were not disclosed, the two former presidents -- both represented by lecture agents; Bush by Washington Speakers Bureau and Clinton by the Harry Walker Agency -- will surely be well paid. (Clinton's fees, which the law required him to reveal when his wife was Senator from New York, showed that Canada has been generous. As I wrote in my book on Clinton's post presidency, Clinton in Exile , Bill was paid $650,000 for two speeches in June 2005 -- one day in Toronto and the next in Calgary. Before the speech in Calgary Clinton gave another in Toronto for an additional 125,000. There is no pretext this time of helping anyone but themselves -- a change from the days after Bill left the White House but before Hillary started to run for the nomination when "W" dispatched his father and his predecessor to work in tandem for the world's good. In the heyday of their unlikely friendship -- dubbed "the odd couple," by former First Lady Barbara Bush -- 41 and 42 were a traveling call to help the world's stricken. When the tsunami hit parts of Asia and Africa in December 2004, President "W" asked his father and Bill Clinton to travel to the stricken region and bring relief and hope to the victims. They raised a record-breaking $1.2 billion in relief funds. Last May, while Hillary and Obama were still battling for the nomination, I asked, in a post on Huffington, where were 41 and 42 after the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. I knew that 2004 would not be repeated in 2008, given Hillary's standard stump line -- "It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush" -- and her promise that when President she would send 41 and 42 abroad as envoys to fix the relationships with foreign leaders that, she charged, 43 had ruined. (It took mere minutes for 41 to respond through a spokesman; forget it. He professed nothing but pride in his son's accomplishments in the foreign policy arena.) Friends report that 41 and 42 still think fondly of each other, but the frequent appearances and even a joint commencement address (at Tulane in 2006, the first post-Katrina commencement) seem to be history. It will be interesting to see if President Obama finds a way to dispatch this duo of aging Baby Boomers on a mission or two that will fill their time with something beyond lining their pockets. More on George Bush
 
The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: A Timetable for Reform Healthcare NewsLadder Top
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) have set a timetable for healthcare reform by this fall--a major step on the road to passing legislation this year. The Senators' plan, set out in a letter to President Obama, calls for a bill by June, committee markups over the summer, and a final vote in the fall. (Just in time for delayed-action budget reconciliation, should the Republicans prove recalcitrant.) As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes, timetables matter , politically. Furthermore, as Ezra Klein explains at TAPPED , a pact between Baucus and Kennedy is a big step forward: these two key committee chairs NOW have a plan to avoid the turf wars that stymied reform in 1994. This time, the two Senators have pledged to work together to write similar bills, instead having their respective committees very different legislation, like they did last time. Experts agree that successful healthcare reform must work on two fronts: Paying for care while simultaneously keeping the cost of care in check. Elsewhere on TAPPED, Klein discusses why American healthcare costs so much compared to other countries. He points to a study by the famous McKinsey consulting company showing that the extra cost is not because we're sicker, nor because we consume more healthcare: The answer, in the end, is that we're getting a bad deal. You know how when you go shopping you look for sales? America sort of does the opposite of that. We pay more for each unit of care, more for health system operations, and more for health system administration. McKinsey found that "input costs—including doctors’ and nurses’ salaries, drugs, devices, and other medical supplies, and the profits of private participants in the system—explain the largest portion of high additional spending, accounting for $281 billion of spending above US [Estimated Spending According to Wealth]. Inefficiencies and complexity in the system’s operational processes and structure account for the second largest spend above ESAW of $147 billion. Finally, administration, regulation, and intermediation of the system cost another $98 billion in additional spending." Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center outlines what's at stake for women in the healthcare reform debate at RH Reality Check . She writes: In our broken health care system, nearly one in five women is uninsured. Even for those who have health insurance, women are more likely than men to have health coverage that has too many gaps, including large co-pays, life-time limits, and exclusions or limitations in needed services like mental health care or prescription drugs. Since women, on average, have lower incomes than men, they are at particular risk of financial barriers to care; one in four women says that she is unable to pay her medical bills, and women are more likely than men to delay or go without needed health care because of cost. Speaking of raw deals, Martha Rosenberg describes how big pharma distorts science to get approval for yet more drugs of questionable safety and efficacy in AlterNet . Rosenberg notes that the Justice Department is cracking down on AstraZeneca and Forest Laboratories for hiding key scientific evidence that called the safety of their products into question. What pharmaceutical companies aren't dumping onto the market, they're dumping into the water supply , according Lauren Kirchner of Air America Radio: 271 million pounds of drugs, from antibiotics to tranquilizers, have been legally dumped into the U.S. water supply over the past 20 years. The Vatican keeps nixing Barack Obama's picks for ambassador to Vatican City for being pro-choice, according to the American Forum. Carolyn Kennedy was a front-runner until she was disqualified for being personally pro-choice. I would note that there's something of a Catch-22 here. Minor ambassadorships are, after all, rewards for big time political backers. The only reason anyone is in line for this job is because they helped the pro-choice Barack Obama get elected, so this could take a while.... This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.Newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy or follow us on Twitter . And for the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net . This is a project of The Media Consortium , a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder . More on Caroline Kennedy
 
Sophia A. Nelson: Ms. California vs. Gay Marriage: Funny She Holds the same Position as the President, Vice President and Secretary of State Top
Still at the center of a divisive debate about Gay Marriage, several days after her remarks at the Miss USA pageant, Miss California Carrie Prejean went on the "Today" show Tuesday morning and maintained she was proud of what she had said. She said, "I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman ... that's how I was raised." Besides setting off an instant national firestorm of pro- and con-gay-marriage/freedom-of-speech twittering and blogging, her answer was widely believed to have cost her the crown . It also prompted Perez Hilton (the blogger who posed the question) to later post a nasty and unprintable rant about her on his massively popular Web site perezhilton.com. "I was ready for my question, and when I heard it from (Perez), I knew at that moment after I'd answered the question, I knew that I was not going to win because of my answer ," she said. "Because I had spoken from my heart, for my beliefs and for my God. ... It's not about being politically correct, for me, it's about being biblically correct." Earlier in the day Prejean went on MSNBC's morning show, where she was asked about Hilton's attack on her. "I can only say to him that I will be praying for him. I feel sorry for him, I really do," Prejean said. "I think he's angry, I think he's hurt. Okay folks so this post logically follows my post on Ms. Garofolo's comments about the Tea Party Protestors being "Racist Rednecks" angry at the presence of a "black man" in the White House. Mr. Hilton did not like the answer he got from Ms. California and now she is an "intolerant B&^%" who gave the "worst answer in pageant history". I will simply say this : why is there a double standard in America as to who can protest, who can speak "truth" and who can have an opinion without being vicisiously assaulted and attacked by those who do not share their point of view? President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all OPPOSE GAY MARRIAGE. They, like me and a clear majority of Americans favor "civil unions" and other civil rights for gay couples. So why is Ms. Prehean under assault by this left-wing blogger? Because she stands for what "the Bible says"? Or because she was raised to value "heterosexual marriage" as the only valid form of marriage in the church as most of us were? Are you starting to see a pattern developed here? Do as I say not as I do. Ms. Garafolo in March 2003 said (after participating in an anti war protest): "There has been so many inappropriate responses to dissent which is the most patriotic thing you can do and the First Amendment guarantees everyone's right to speak out." Yet, the crazed white red-neck racists cannot protest or dissent. Nor apparently can the pretty blonde Christian beauty Queen. Let me hear what you guys think on yet another out of control crazed liberal rant against an American citizen who has a different point of view from their own. I'm not making this stuff up folks. I am going to stick with this theme for a while so buckle up. More on MSNBC
 
Maddisen K. Krown: Ask Maddisen: How to Forgive Yourself for Judging Yourself Top
Dear Maddisen: I am highly self critical, self judgmental, and even cruel to myself with my thoughts and my mental talk. And the harder I try, the harder it seems for me to be productive in reaching my goals. In fact, I feel paralyzed. Is there any way out of this? Signed, M.Z. Dear M.Z., Powerful question! I acknowledge you for so honestly and clearly outing this issue. The first bit of good news is: you are not alone . Many of us, whether we've experienced success or failure in reaching certain goals, have been hard on ourselves at one time or another along the way. There's even a chance that we've been self critical, self judgmental, and even cruel to ourselves with our thoughts and mental talk. And as a result, these self inflicted behaviors may have slowed or stopped us from moving beyond what we perceived as failure or disappointment or moving forward to the next success. The second and most empowering bit of good news is: there is a cure . The cure is Self Forgiveness . Let me give you some background. When we separate from ourselves or others, meaning when we forget to be our own greatest ally and supporter, we tend to move into self criticism, self judgment, and even judgment of others - which ultimately results in our suffering and feelings of unhappiness, discontent, and resentment. Our true nature is love, and when we forget that, we experience the symptom called suffering. As with physical symptoms, where the symptoms are the body's way of showing us that something is out of balance and needs to be healed, the same is true with mental/emotional symptoms. Any form of mental or emotional suffering is a symptom and is our mind's way of telling us that something is out of balance and needs to be healed, specifically that love needs to be applied to the places inside of us that hurt. Who is best qualified to apply that loving to you? You are, of course. And a highly effective way to apply self loving is with Self Forgiveness. You are the one who has the power to heal yourself, to relieve your suffering and discontent. You instinctively know how to reintegrate any and all of the disowned, rejected, and beautifully human parts of yourself. And if you have forgotten this fact, it's ok, forgive yourself for judging yourself. Self Forgiveness can remove any and all obstructions caused by self criticism, returning you home to your true loving nature, back to being your own greatest ally and supporter. Self Forgiveness promotes healing, self integration, self acceptance, self loving, love for others, love for life, gratitude, flow, liberation, and success. Bottom line: You must make Self Forgiveness a habit, a daily practice. First we'll go over the steps, clarifying them with a sample scenario, and then I'll share a Self Forgiveness success story from one of my clients. Self Forgiveness Practice Becoming your own greatest ally and supporter. Step 1 If you are in self judgment, you may notice feeling emotions such as anger, frustration, sadness, and even fear; and you may criticize yourself with belittling thoughts and self talk. Take a few deep breaths. Be caring and present with yourself and your feelings. Step 2 Take note of the specific judgments you are making about yourself. You can just be aware of them or you may jot them down on paper if it helps you to be clear. (You can shred or destroy this paper once you've completed the exercise.) Step 3 From a caring and loving place, move into Self Forgiveness. Go easy on yourself. This is all part of the human experience. Start with the expression: "I forgive myself for judging myself for..." or "I forgive myself for judging myself as...", and then add whatever the judgments are. Make this an audible process, meaning say these phrases out loud. For example, let's say my client is judging himself as not good enough because he didn't book a commercial role he auditioned for. He might say this: "I forgive myself for judging myself as not good enough for commercials." Or, "I forgive myself for judging myself as blowing the audition." Or, "I forgive myself for judging myself as not a good enough actor." A few more judgments may come up for him as he does this process of self forgiveness, and that's just fine. The more we can forgive ourselves, the better off we will be. And if he finds himself judging the casting associate or the business or even his father, he has the option to forgive himself for judging the casting associate, the business, and his father! First and foremost, forgive yourself , and if then you feel called to forgive any others related to the situation, you can extend the forgiveness to them too. It's up to you. Take as much time as you need for this step of self forgiveness. Go deep, be thorough, and be genuine. When you feel a sense of quiet or completeness, most likely you are done with Step 3. Step 4 Once you feel complete with the Self Forgiveness, follow with this phrasing: "Because the truth is...", and then add the positive traits you know or sense to be true about yourself. This is where you get to fill the loving space just created by the self forgiveness with the self respecting behavior you choose to deliberately practice. Be genuine, be creative, and go for the gusto. Using the same client example above, he might say this: "Because the truth is I felt very comfortable with the role, and I know I could have done a great job had I booked the part." Or, "Because the truth is I showed up prepared, professional, and ready, and I did a great job regardless of the outcome." Or "Because the truth is I believe in myself and my talents, and I love acting, and I will continue for as long as it makes me feel good." Repeat these four steps whenever you want to practice Self Forgiveness. Grant yourself the dignity of your own healing process. A few tips: If you ever find it challenging to move into the loving or caring place of Self Forgiveness, you can take a few approaches -- you can fake it 'till you make it, or you can think of someone or someplace you love, or your puppy for example, and then from that place of caring, move right into Self Forgiveness. And if you want to practice Self Forgiveness on-the-fly, you can say the core phrase by itself, "I forgive myself for judging myself." And still experience great benefits. Self Forgiveness was a foundational skill of my Master's degree training at USM, and continues to be a foundational tool in my coaching practice and in my personal daily life. Here's what my client Norm in Canada has to say about Self Forgiveness: Why do you like self forgiveness? As an entrepreneur & business man, I always put a lot of pressure on myself and my team to set and reach objectives that are sometimes beyond our reach. I've had a tendency to put myself down or be disappointed with the people around me. Once I started working on self forgiveness with Maddisen, however, I started putting less pressure on myself. That relieved lots of energy. I started doing stuff that I never let myself do before, because before self forgiveness, I always complained about not being good enough. With self forgiveness, miracles, contracts, and events started to happen. After just one week, I added $8000 to my weekly income and I had two new speaking engagements; after two weeks I had two full day seminars booked, and I wrote a 28 page program. I prefer being nice to myself over being hard on myself! How is it different from how you were treating yourself before? Before I started to use the self-forgiveness process that Maddisen taught me, I would judge myself so much and my critical self talk decreased my confidence. I was giving lots of energy to all the things I wasn't good at instead of looking at only the things I was great at. With self forgiveness, I've had a shift in thinking and now I am sure I've doubled my energy compared to before. How would you describe its effect on you when you use it? If someone would ask me why I now have so much energy, I would have to say that self forgiveness is the reason. Self forgiveness gives me the permission to do, to be, and to have whatever I want in life. Yes, without judgment. It is actually better than any diet out there. It is food for the soul. Now I ask myself, "Why was I so hard on myself before, and did it serve me to do so?" and the answer is NO! Are you noticing any long term benefits? For example, do you find that you are kinder or more patient with yourself? Is it affecting your relationship with others or how you treat them, or how they perceive you? I am more patient with what is. Instead of giving attention to what is not working, I make this moment more peaceful. As they say, there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. I believe peacefulness is the way. In my case, I judge less and have more time to focus on what I want, which is a win-win approach to life. Thank you Norm, for taking the time to share your successes that are resulting from your regular practice of Self Forgiveness. So, dear M.Z. and all of my readers, begin your deliberately loving practice of Self Forgiveness today. Experience the empowerment of standing up as your own greatest ally and supporter. Notice how your self kindness cultivates inner peace and peace with others. Enjoy your accelerated movement forward into more satisfaction and success in reaching your heartfelt goals. Your Personal Life Coach, Maddisen You may submit your questions for ASK MADDISEN at askmaddisen@krown.us More on Happiness
 
Banks Still Pulling Sway On Major Credit Card Bill Top
They may be held in low esteem around the nation, but the country's largest banks still wield considerable influence in Washington.
 
Judith Ellis: Being Berated for a Handshake and a Smile Top
It is absolutely ludicrous, not to mention utterly hypocritical, that President Obama is being berated by the Right for shaking hands and smiling with Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas in which both leaders were invited to participate. Should a recount of the many years of handshakes, kisses, smiles and other diplomatic measures be given in recent history from President Ronald Reagan to President George W. Bush? More importantly, has the estrangement of certain leaders of the last 30 years worked? Has calling world leaders members of the "axis of evil" worked? Has getting up and walking out in international meetings worked? No, no, no! These hypocritical hard-line policies and often child-like behaviors have not worked. We take a stand against human rights violations in Cuba and embrace China. We go to international meetings with diverse world leaders and walk out when their words are contrary to our beliefs. (Maybe more women should be in attendance at these meetings. Who teaches their children that these methods of dealing with conflict are acceptable?) Power does not exhibit itself always in arms and standoffs. A great leader has an array of arsenals at his disposal to disarm and they are not all bombs and isolation policies. A handshake and a smile may just go further than some policies of the past. More on Barack Obama
 
Stephen Gyllenhaal: Free Bernie Madoff Now! Top
It's just not fair. He's a scapegoat, a distraction on the world's financial stage where the real sleight-of-hand-Ponzi-magic goes on unabated. Two trillion dollars -- give me a break -- you think this is the end of it? It's only the tip of the real looming Ponzi-scheme-iceberg which Bernie only mirrored on a tiny scale and that we're gonna sooner or later titanically hit. I mean, does anyone really believe that all those banks are almost healthy again? At least Bernie had the decency to admit he was a liar. But nobody in Washington is prepared to point out the Emperor's nakedness because they're all pretty much in each other's pockets (not a pretty thought when you consider they're all naked as well) and appropriately terrified that once the imaginary silk and satin confidence game is shown up for what it is there'll be hell to pay and I suspect hell, being what it is, ain't gonna be taken in by no Ponzi scheme. So at least let Bernie out of prison and admit what's going on. Let's face it. Our world economy is now a massive rolling deception game where the thieves who robbed us blind from the highest reaches of business and government have been allowed to keep right on doing it. Talk about chutzpah, Bernie! Six months ago they fueled their pyramids with our hard earned pension funds, speculative cash and the dismantlement of functioning companies. With all that gone they're now sweeping up our tax dollars like there's no tomorrow (which of course there won't be if this keeps going). At least if we let Bernie out we'll be honest with ourselves. We'll be admitting that we really do believe in thievery, that we respect it, honor it, pray that somehow miraculously it will work for us, at least for some of us. And who can blame us? I mean, aren't Ponzi schemes at the heart of every thriving culture that came down the pike -- Greece, Rome, Britain, France, China, Japan, Russia? Every one of them employed some form of taking what's needed and giving back little or nothing in return -- at times brutally with armies, slaves and taxes; at times more refined with religions or civilizing political systems that worked to their advantage, but never for a moment forgetting the bottom line of keeping the beast fed and the engine of empire running, until of course like all empires, they collapsed in generally very nasty ways. So release Bernie Madoff now! Please! Let's face our music in time to hear that the fiddles on our iPods have a similar ring to the ones that gave pleasure to Nero. More on The Bailouts
 
Cute/Ridiculous Animal Thing Of The Day: Cat Regrets Curiosity (VIDEO) Top
Awww, this poor kitty thought the tub was full of wonders to be sniffed and looked at and maybe even swatted in time. But curiosity is a terrible trait for a cat if a feisty child is involved because kids have less patience than adorable animals. WATCH: See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor . More on cute animal videos
 
William Volk: Mountain View, We Have A Problem ... Google's Android Phone Disappoints Developers. Top
Want to know why there are over 30,000 applications on the iPhone? Ask Ethan Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas programmed a little game called iShoot in his spare time. iShoot shot to number one on Jan 11th, with the $2.99 game reportedly earning Ethan over $800,000. Mr. Nicholas has quit his day job at Sun (good timing!) to devote himself to iPhone programming. Ethan's story isn't unique, Koi Pond has earned $623,000 (after Apple's 30% cut) from about 900,000 downloads. Pangea has made at least $561,330 on one application alone, PocketGod. The chance of striking it rich or at least quitting their day job is what drives developers to code the next iShoot. Most iPhone apps won't be big successes but the possibility is real. One Billion application downloads on over 20 million devices proved that online distribution's time has arrived. Sadly, this is not the case with Android. According to the tracking websites AndroidStats.com and Cryket.com, the best selling Android games are only selling a few 1000 units. Even recognized brands like Guitar Hero(r) World Tour (Hands On) have had disappointing sales. Yes, there are only around 1.5m handsets sold so far. Even with that number, some of the FREE apps have over 1/4 million downloads. Yes, free apps are downloaded more on the iPhone as well, but even with the smaller base, you would expect to see paid apps hitting 10's of 1000's of sales, with a few breaking past 100,000. It isn't happening. Here's some comments by Android developers on the Google "Android Discuss" group: "The sales aren't disappointing; they are jaw-droppingly terrible." "I got nearly a hundred thousand downloads of my [FREE] demo, but the sales of the (very highly rated) priced version have been appalling. And I'm ABOVE Guitar Hero in the rankings, for Heaven's sake!" - SUNDOG "I did look at the downloads of the top 10 apps - they are PATHETIC, the max number of downloads I saw was 1000-5000." - Stoyan Damov What's the problem here? Well, one issue is the 24 hour purchase cancellation policy. Consumers have 24 hours to try out a paid app before they are billed. Many developers are upset that their apps are being returned in large numbers. Personally, I think this is a good compromise given Google's "hands off" attitude on accepting applications. Luckily for us, our best selling Android game, Kenny Rogers Blackjack, only sees a 40% return ratio. I consider it akin to having a demo version of the title. So what's the problem? Simply this. To buy an application for your Android phone, you have to opt into Google Checkout. Most users have not done this. Apple uses iTunes to bill consumers for iPhone apps, and 93% of iPhone users have purchased an application. iTunes is widely accepted. What went wrong here? Google has stated that the company "does not make money" from its application store. "Developers get 70 percent of the revenue from each purchase and the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Wired.com. "We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers and carriers." Originally the plan was to have consumer purchases billed to their phone charges. This would have enabled every Android Phone user to buy applications and have those charges tacked onto their phone bill at the end of the month. The entire ringtone market was built upon the ease of purchase with this system. Why didn't this happen for Android applications? I can only speculate that T-Mobile wouldn't accept a 30% cut. Historically operators like T-Mobile earned 40% to 45% of every ringtone, wallpaper, and mobile application sold to one of their subscribers. In economic theory there is a situation called the Ultimatum Game. In this game two players decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between themselves, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. This could be the situation here, T-Mobile rejecting Google's proposal. So T-Mobile earns little from the trickle of sales of Android applications. They could earn considerably more if they allowed Google to bill consumers' phone charges. Meanwhile the iPhone continues to rack up application sales, sales that attract more developers, developers that have created over 30,000 applications with One Billon downloads, applications that make the iPhone the "must have" device. It's a virtuous cycle that benefits everyone, Apple, AT&T, and Developers. So what's the end game here? Without a chance for programmers to strike it rich on Android, the platform simply won't see the depth and breadth of applications that continue to drive iPhone and iPod touch sales. No matter how slim the odds of striking it rich on the iPhone are, everyone loves the sort of success stories that keep on happening to iPhone programmers. T-Mobile should realize that 30% of a vibrant mobile application market, a market that would drive more handset sales, is preferable to 45% of nothing. RIM (Blackberry) and Nokia would be wise to pay attention to this situation as they launch their respective application storefronts. RIM has selected PayPal for their billing platform, which has a better chance of acceptance than Google Checkout. Nokia may be able to pull off billing consumer's phone bills, or maybe not. The operating phrase here is "follow the money," in this case how consumers pay for their applications. Breaking News: RIM (Blackberry) has announced that they are working to add mobile operator billing to their application storefront. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis says the device maker is working to introduce carrier billing options sometime in the future. In an interview with Laptop, which asks Lazaridis whether RIM is looking to make it possible to sign up for a PayPal account directly from the BlackBerry in addition to direct billing via mobile carrier, the exec responded, "The easiest answer and the correct answer right now would be all of the above. That being said, we're putting most of our attention to working with our carrier partners." More on iPhone
 
Dan Dorfman: Ah So, China Is the Way to Go Top
Even Superman stumbles. Take, for example, the economic superman China, which boasts the world's largest population, 1.3 billion, and the globe's fastest growing economy, with a blistering GDP growth last year of 9%. Although that was a sensational showing, the best in the world, it didn't live up to a widely expected double-digit GDP growth rate because of the U.S.'s economic downturn. As a result, China's go-go roller-coaster stock market plunged more than 40% in 2008, which made it about as appetizing to many investors as a plate of cold chop suey. That was last year, though. This year, the Chinese market is on a roll, having rebounded a whopping 47.2%. Accordingly, forget about chop suey. Given that sizzling bounce-back, such tempting Chinese delicacies as peking duck and shark fin soup might be far more appropriate food comparisons. Tony Sagami, one of the country's leading trackers of the Asian markets, sees China's initial 2009 showing as a forerunner to even bigger gains ahead. He bases this conclusion on an analysis of the fast stepping Chinese economy, which the World Bank predicts will turn in well above average 6.5% GDP growth this year and then really start to rock and roll in 2010. In the first quarter, China posted GDP growth of 6.1%. (In the same period, a number of economists see the U.S. economy retreating 5% or more.) Comparing his favorable Chinese outlook to what he expects from the U.S. -- which is more economic pain, more stock losses and more declining real estate values -- Sagami thinks it behooves investors to take some chips off the Wall Street craps table and begin switching to a different table, namely China, with much better odds. Pointing to the country's $586 billion stimulus spending program, which is helping to reinvigorate the economy, Sagami praises China for using the money intelligently to revitalize its infrastructure, such as roads, plants, bridges, shipping ports, airports and dams. In contrast, he says, "we're just mortgaging our future and using our stimulus to buy toxic assets of banks, brokerages and insurance companies." Any way you look at it, he argues, China is getting much more bang for its buck. Taking note of China's strengthening car and retail sales, rising income and wages, growing bank lending ($277 billion in March) and the availability of $1.9 trillion of foreign reserves, Sagami contends the country is reacting to economic adversity in a much wiser fashion. Reflecting this, he points to a number of resultant positive economic signs. Among them: In March, China's Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose for the first time in six months, signaling that manufacturing is expanding again. Urban fixed-asset investment rose 26.5% to $150 billion in the first two months of 2009, with the stimulus plan jump-starting housing and railway construction. Direct foreign investment in China increased last month to $8.4 billion, the highest level since June of last year. According to the Chinese association of Automobile Manufacturers, the Chinese bought 1.03 million vehicles in March, up 25% from the previous month. More impressive, this is the third month in a row that the Chinese have bought more cars than Americans, who bought 857,735 new autos in March. Cement production increased by 10.3% in the first two months of 2009, versus the same year-ago period. Okay, so what are the best ways to play China and other Asian markets, which should also benefit handsomely from the Chinese rebound? For starters, Sagami, editor of the Asia Stock Alert newsletter in BigFoot, Montana, heavily favors companies that would profit from internal or domestic demand. At the same time, he would shun the exporters, which he says are dying on the vine because the rich and not-so-rich Americans aren't buying anymore. His four favorite Chinese stocks -- each of which he thinks offers at least 10% to 20% capital appreciation over the next 12 months -- are New Oriental Education, which teaches English to the Chinese; China Communications Construction, the country's largest construction company; China Nepstar Chain Drugstore, the Walgreen's of China, and Fuel Tech, which removes pollutants from coal-fire plants. Singapore-based celebrity money manager Jim Rogers, a long-term commodities bull, thinks the most productive way to play China is through agricultural commodities. China has built huge reserves for a rainy day and it's now raining, he says. In an 1865 editorial in the New York Tribune , Horace Greeley wrote, "Go west young man, go west." Sagami, relating that comment to today's investment environment, says he would revise it to read, "Go east young man, go east." A word of caution, though, if you're tempted to buy a Chinese stock: "China is like a volatile stock and 20% to 40% corrections happen all the time," Sagami observes. "That's the entry fee for playing the stock market there. It's for big boys only. Investors with a little old ladies' mentality should stick to utilities." More on Economy
 
DERRICK ROSE Named NBA ROOKIE OF THE YEAR Top
Bulls point guard Derrick Rose will be named the NBA Rookie of the Year Wednesday, the m>Sun-Times , Tribune and Bulls.com blogger Sam Smith report. The team has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference to announce what everyone has long expected. The Chicago native will join Michael Jordan and Elton Brand as the only Bulls to win the first year award. Check back for updates. More on Sports
 
Neena Satija: Why Did Financial Journalists Miss the Financial Crisis? Top
I'm not a financial expert (I'm not even an Econ major), I'm not a media expert, and I'm definitely not a financial media expert. Most of my exposure to financial journalism comes from getting stuck watching "Mad Money" reruns while I'm at the gym, and of course, watching Jim Cramer get trashed on the Daily Show. But I'm still comfortable saying that I think Financial Times editor Lionel Barber missed the boat in his talk at Yale on Tuesday, titled "Did Financial Journalists Miss the Financial Crisis?" The short answer to that question, according to Barber, is yes. He pointed to a few specific dangers most journalists failed to pick up on, including deregulation of over-the-counter derivatives and leverage. While counting his own FT as an exception, in particular the talented anthropologist-turned-reporter Gillian Tett, Barber admitted that even the FT failed to provide "sustained coverage" on the economic threats. But he barely touched on some of the broader criticisms, including the mainstream media's allergy to stories that outline problems of a highly technical, complex nature or stories that might have come off as unnecessarily pessimistic when the credit bubble was still growing. And before making any of the above admissions, Barber first pointed out "by way of mitigation" that most political leaders, regulators, and economists were all starry-eyed cheerleaders of the credit boom, too. Since when do instances of political oversight "mitigate" journalistic oversight? Aren't reporters supposed to be political watchdogs? I was also disappointed that in a half-hour lecture, Barber spent less than two minutes on another important question: Where do we go from here? In the Q&A session that followed, I was glad to hear a student ask Barber whether certain stories--such as the AIG bonuses, which amount to the tiniest portion of the government bailout--are being over-covered, ignoring larger issues. "Can you give me an example of specific issues that the media isn't covering?" Barber asked in response, then smirked when the student hesitated. That was a little mean. The point is that we're ignorant undergraduates who read the New York Times , which Yale gives us for free: As the journalist from the more specialized FT , Barber should enlighten us! He finally answered, "The media are not carrying the pitchforks. We look for the positive stories, for the signs of recovery...for the shades of grey. But you can't ignore the public mood." (After the talk, I asked Barber whether financial journalism is improving where it had previously failed to deliver, and got more of answer. He said that the issue of what states were actually going to do with the bailout money wasn't getting enough coverage.) The remainder of the questions came from people who seemed to be either economics professors or New Haven residents working in the financial sector, who basically wanted to ramble about their concerns over nitty-gritty economics policies. Following some lukewarm exchanges, Barber finally threw up his hands and said, "I'm going to Washington tomorrow, and I'll convey your concerns." The lecture was pretty sparsely attended. About 30 people, less than half of whom appeared to be students, were scattered in an auditorium that seats more than 150. (This may be partly because students don't want to schlep themselves over to Luce Hall, which isn't all that close to campus dorms, and because it was pouring outside. Also, Barber read his speech more-or-less verbatim from the slightly abridged version that he curiously posted on the FT website a few hours before doing the live version.) In the editorial workshop later that evening, Barber talked more personably with about 15 students. Perhaps to give the handful of aspiring journalists in the room some rays of hope, he began with why the FT isn't in danger of going under any time soon. Not all of Barber's reasons were necessarily comforting. There are no jumps in the FT --you never have to turn a page to continue a story. Instead there are a series of blurbs on the front page which Barber calls far superior to "boring" 700+ word stories. (For those of you who are still reading this, I'm passing the 700-word mark right about now). But there is something to be said for being more concise--and the FT 's inner pages have longer stories. Other salient points include more openness to double bylines, letting reporters work as a team on a story. In addition, many of the FT 's staff reporters have previously worked in the financial sector; those who haven't, Barber places (disconcertingly, he admits) in "the cult of the gifted amateur," as reporters who can quickly absorb specialists' knowledge and ask the right questions. Full-time staff reporters based all over the world also offer a more global perspective at a time when many papers are shutting down their foreign bureaus. And the FT can afford to do all this because it isn't cheap. In fact, the price of the paper on the newsstand has risen from $1 to $2.50--and retail sales have not declined. Barber brought up none of these points in his talk (he touched on staff training in the Q&A session). That's too bad, because their applicability extends beyond financial journalism to the news media in general: If we think coverage leading up to the financial crisis was bad, Barber told us at the workshop, "Iraq was far worse." The take-away for me is that financial journalists failed because they're in the same straits that most journalists have been in for a while now: Understaffed, facing even more job cuts, forced to slash content, and in some cases, poorly managed and unduly influenced by their revenue sources and by the public. All the more reason for print media to think seriously about the need for a complete overhaul. In the meantime, I'll be reading the Financial Times more often--that is, whatever they'll give me online for free. More on Newspapers
 
Shining Path Rebels Stage Comeback In Peru Top
(CNN) -- A brutal Maoist guerrilla group that terrorized Peru during the 1980s but pretty much disappeared when top leaders were captured in the 1990s is making a resurgence. More on Terrorism
 
Chicago Doctors Launch Free Medical Clinic For Uninsured Top
As boys, they lived across the street from each other on the Near North Side. They've been buddies ever since. Now, these two older men are engaged in a demanding venture -- providing free health care to the uninsured. George Maltezos, 72, came up with the idea first. "Each of us felt we needed to do something after retirement," said Maltezos, a former mental health and substance abuse professional. "And we both were fully aware of how many people don't have health insurance." Dr. Charles Martinez, 74, who worked as a nuclear medicine specialist, wasn't initially inclined to go along. But then, at a medical school reunion, he heard an 87-year-old colleague talk about starting a free clinic and his interest was piqued. Soon, he embraced the project. More on The Giving Life
 
Larry Gellman: Lenin Rules! Top
I have really been struggling lately to figure out what in the world has happened to my Republican friends who used to make so much sense and to the so-called cable news channels which have become more and more of an oxymoron. But I struggle no more. I now realize that what appears on the surface to be self-destructive insanity is really just a posthumous victory lap being run by that great champion of the Right--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It was Lenin, after all, who almost 100 years ago stated what has become the mantra of the angry Right and the deluded media nearly a century later: A lie told often enough becomes the truth It's ironic but appropriate that at a time when Right wing leaders are comparing Obama to Mussolini, Hitler, and Marx that the GOP should get in on the historical bandwagon. And it couldn't come at a better time. With the Republican Party leaderless and falling in popularity, the Right is in desperate need of a philosophical guru with a solid resume and a recognizable name. Actually, the first sign of the GOP's modeling of Lenin appeared during the 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign in South Carolina when "Bush's Brain" Karl Rove launched a massive phone smear campaign against John McCain during which callers told the locals that McCain had fathered a black baby. In fact, McCain and his wife had adopted a child from Bangladesh. When caught in the lie, instead of apologizing and stopping the calls, Turd Blossom (as his boss affectionately referred to him) Rove ordered his charges to just keep smilin' and dialin' and repeating the lies with greater conviction than ever. Bush knocked McCain out of the race and thus a movement was born. Once elected, Bush carried Lenin's formula to new levels. He assured us that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and had tried to procure nuclear fuel from Niger long after he knew that neither statement was true. He talked about Pat Tillman's heroic death at the hands of a hostile enemy for weeks after he was told that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. He assured us that Americans don't torture--even as he insisted we needed to keep doing it. He promised us that no American need worry about abuse of warrantless wiretaps--even as he claimed they were essential. It was Lenin's model--lie, and if you get caught, keep lying. No apologies, no shame, just lies. That's a mini recap. Everyone but Dick Cheney now knows all that stuff. But it helps explain a lot. Otherwise one might think that the clowns who now call themselves leaders of the GOP came up with this whole idea about lying and lying some more on their own. It is comforting to know they're just copying their gurus Lenin and Rove. So when President Obama insists on not bailing out bankrupt banks or car makers without getting rid of bad management or limiting executive pay and Republicans accuse him of nationalizing American business or being a socialist--now I know they're not stupid, they're just lying. And when they say that Obama is raising all our taxes when he's actually cutting them for all but a handful of the wealthiest Americans, I am comforted that they're not confused. They're just doing what Rove did when he assured Scott McClellan and the American people that old Turd Blossom had nothing to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. I no longer worry about those who still believe that Obama is a secret Muslim or that he is not an American. They are just angry hateful people who lie to give their screeds a thin patina of respectability--very thin. And when my Republican friends call for a teabagging party (I'm not even going to go there) and complain that we're being taxed to death at the very time when taxes have never been lower in our lifetimes, I don't even bother trying to straighten them out any more. Because I know they are not misinformed--they are just lying and lying and lying and lying. Actually, most Americans know they're lying too. That's why while the Right claims that there is a revolution afoot and the common folk are mad as hell, polls continue to show that Obama's popularity is rising toward 70 percent while the popularity of Republicans is at a 30-year low. Those same polls show that three times as many of us believe the country is now on the right track as felt that way six months ago. That doesn't sound or feel much like a revolution to me. Based on those polls and common sense, it seems that Lenin's mantra might not be working so well in an age of blogging, the Internet, Google, fact-checking, Wikopedia, and YouTube. It's really a shame. Now, after honing the art of lying and denial to a perfect science, my Right wing friends might have to look for another approach. So much to do and so little time. No one ever said it would be fair. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Donna Fish: Staying Connected To Your Tween Top
Have you noticed your preteen spending more time away from you when what might feel like a minute ago they were asking you to stay longer at drop off? Now they are preoccupied with the dramas going on between friends, spending more time with each other on the computer, and telephone. (Texting of course, no one seems to talk much any more!) While you might feel that your preteen is moving away from you, it is important to know that this is normal and a vital part of their development. Toddlers do this thing that we in the business call 'refueling'. They go back and forth, physically, from the parent. You can literally watch them moving away, and then coming back for a hug or a sit on the lap, no sooner than to turn back to the outside world after they have 'refueled' on comfort. Your tween needs to 'refuel' as well. They need for you to be able to adapt to their growing world and recognize that the ways to remain close to you are changing, but the need to do so remains the same. If you adapt to new ways to connect, you will be able to help their growing sense of identity and strengthen their feelings of competence and mastery, all aspects of good self-esteem. At the same time, learning how to communicate and adapt to their changing needs will help you set the stage for the teenage years, when the time away from home increases, and the issues get trickier. Active Listening Staying connected requires 'tuning in', and 'active listening'. It is through knowing what and how your child is going through whatever they experience, that you will know how to ask the right questions, or offer them the comfort so that they build their confidence in themselves. Some tips to improve that skill: 1) Observe your child's face or listen to their tone of voice. If it is very upsetting to you when you see your child upset or anxious, try to calm yourself down, and trust that they will be okay. It is your job to let them know you are there to listen, not to take the feelings away. They need to know that you have confidence that they can handle powerful feelings. This is a big part of soothing and will help them remain open to speaking up about what is upsetting them, without worrying that you can't handle it or will need to 'fix' it. 2) IF they aren't speaking but you can see that they seem upset, you can suggest:: "You look a bit down; what's up?" 3) Take a moment to observe their reaction. If they don't seem to want to talk but aren't going off to be alone, you can ask them to help you with a task, or setting the table for dinner. Offer an activity where they can feel close to you without feeling like they have to 'talk'. This is soothing and a piece of actively hearing that they want comfort, but want to work out the feelings on their own first. After some time, they may be more open to talking about what is going on, when the feelings are less 'hot'. We call that: 'Strike When the Iron is Cold'. 4) Try to ask open-ended questions instead of questions that end in a "yes" or "no": "What was recess like today compared to last week?" What did you guys do?" 5) We often feel that we have to 'teach' our kids things. Try to listen non-judgementally without feeing pressured that you need to 'teach' them the right thing to do. Our kids need to feel that we are their allies and understand their position. Validate their responses. You can always help them problem solve later. 6) Mirroring and identifying with how your kids feel is a big part of active listening: "I know you were trying to hold it in but I would have felt upset too that Lindsay joined your playdate with Linda. I know how excited you were to spend time together after the vacation. I don't like sharing time with friends all the time either and would have been really upset too." Golden Moments As we get less 'face time' with our kids, the challenge becomes to adapt and find new moments to connect. Here are some tips on seizing these 'golden moments': 1) If you are the one who picks your child up from school, observe their face. At pickup time you will get a lot of information by simply observing their face, their tone of voice, and how they interact with the teacher or their friends. 2) If you are driving them or taking them with their friends to any activities, be a 'fly on the wall'. Listen to the chatter. Pay attention to your child's behavior and how they might act with different friends. You will get a lot of information on how they experience different people. Do they change? Do they tend to be assertive at home, but very deferent to one friend? This is a stage where it is common for girls in particular to become less assertive as they worry about getting 'left out' or hurting other people's feelings. These are good opportunities to observe their behavior or ask whoever picks them up, how things are going. Like they say, it's not getting there, it's the journey! 3) Mealtime is key. While many families can't eat all together until the weekend, find at least two times during the week when you can get home early enough to eat dinner with them. Rules about meals should include no television, no cell phones, don't take calls yourself. Use this time as an opportunity to unwind, share a laugh, talk about the days' events. You will be amazed at how much comes out and how this can keep you 'in the loop'! 4) You may not be reading a book to them, but read together for 15 -20 minutes at their bedtime. A foot or a backrub are ways to offer comfort and connection without talking that are just as vital to staying connected. While your preteen may not talk as often or when they used to, giving them space to work out their problems if they need that says to them that you respect and trust their growing ability to do this on their own while you are there if/when they need to talk it out with you.. As they feel your trust in them and their growing confidence in themselves, they will always come back to 'refuel'. The 'back and forth' may look different from when they were toddlers, but their need for connection and comfort, remains the same. For more information and a terrific website devoted to 'all things tween', visit: www.tweenparent.com Visit me at: www.donnafish.com
 
Grande Lum: Tear Down the Walls: How to Find Your Internal Conflict Top
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms. Kahlil Gibran When you have conflict with someone else, look for the conflict inside yourself. For example, when you accuse the other person for not taking care of their responsibility for a project, you might be upset at yourself for choosing this project in the first place. You may have been deeply ambivalent about taking out the project, as you were caught between paying the bills and working with people you dislike. Nothing said here diminishes the other person's responsibility. Nothing here excuses what the other person has done or said. Spot the internal conflict that mirrors the external conflict pushing your buttons. The internal conflict may be triggered by the person. If you are bothered by a boss or direct report, consider your history with authority figures and subordinates to better appreciate your current difficulties. Perhaps you are still working out a past situation where you and a former boss parted badly. Ask whether your external discussion triggers an internal conflict. For example, if the issue is money and your emotions are skyrocketing, consider how you have related to past financial problems. Perhaps you chose a job based on dollars rather than passion and you still harbor regret. Find your internal conflict to separate out your own stuff. You gain internal clarity to then deal cleanly with the other person. In my next post, I will take this one step further and focus on imagining the other person's internal conflict story. To learn more about the importance of communication skills particularly in negotiation and conflict resolution, read about the solutions, results and publications Grande Lum has created at Accordence, Inc. For further discussion, contact Grande at grandelum@accordence.com More on Relationships
 
Frances Beinecke: A Good Week in Washington for Climate Action Top
We have 228 days until the international climate negotiations begin in Copenhagen, but today stands out among them. It is Earth Day. And though I nodded in agreement when I read Energy Secretary Steven Chu's comment in the New York Times Magazine "that from here on in, every day has to be Earth Day," today is still significant for me. Later this morning I will be testifying before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about draft climate legislation. These hearings will add to the momentum we so urgently need as we head toward the Copenhagen talks. We may not have a lot of time before then, but the last six days show that progress can move swiftly. The quickened pace started last Friday, when the EPA officially recognized that carbon pollution is harmful to our health and to the climate. This conclusion requires the agency to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. The EPA's decision is not surprising. After all, in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that carbon emissions from cars qualify as air pollutants and ordered the EPA to determine--based on scientific considerations alone--whether those pollutants are dangerous to human health or welfare and if so, issue standards for them. (Read my NRDC colleague David Doniger's--one of the attorneys in the Supreme Court case--thoughts on the EPA decision here .) With last week's announcement, the EPA finally did what it was supposed to do all along: follow the science and the law. But the timing of this inevitable conclusion is significant for the climate debate in Congress. Before the EPA's Friday announcement, people could say that if Congress did not act on climate, then nothing would happen. Stonewallers and filibusterers could hope for the last word. Inaction is no longer an option. Something is happening, and the question now becomes: will national climate action be driven by EPA regulation alone? Or will it also be driven by a comprehensive Congressional effort that unleashes the full economic potential of building America's 21st century energy infrastructure? The hearings I am participating in today will address those questions. Congress holds a lot of hearings. Some are for information gathering, and don't lead to action, but the one I am going to is specifically designed to move legislation forward. Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey scheduled four days of hearings to gather feedback on their draft language for the American Clean Energy and Security Act . It's the Committee's chance to get into the nitty gritty of the issues, and after listening to the testimony, Rep. Markey will introduce a revised version of the bill. The themes of the various panels offer a preview of the issues that will be debated as climate bills move through the House and Senate. These range from maintaining American competitiveness to regulating a carbon market when skepticism of markets is running high right now. One key panel will take place on Thursday. It's on allocation--in other words, when we put a cap on carbon emissions, polluters will have to acquire pollution allowances to release carbon. How do we distribute those allowances? How many will be distributed based on a formula? How many will be auctioned, and how will the revenue be used? NRDC, together with our partners in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, reached agreement on A Blueprint for Legislative Action , which identifies principles to guide the fair and equitable allocation of pollution allowances. NRDC has developed some more specific recommendations consistent with the Blueprint that we hope will be helpful to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce when it revises the bill. The Committee has 60 members, including some swing votes who have not yet committed to supporting action on climate. My hope is that the hearings will convince them that passing climate legislation is the smart thing to do for the economy and the environment. I will be monitoring the Committee's progress closely to see if that is the case. Rep. Waxman has pledged to report a revised bill to the House by Memorial Day. That leaves us only six months until Copenhagen, but if American voters keep the pressure on our lawmakers to pass a climate law, that will be enough. This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog . More on Earth Day
 
Russ Wellen: Twin-Track Talks in Burma Raise Peace Hopes Top
Thailand seeks to mediate peace talks between Burma's ruling junta and the Karen ethnic group that it's been trying to wipe out for 60 years. Norway, meanwhile, hopes to heal the rift between warring Karen factions. When we think of the face of the opposition to Burma's ruthless ruling junta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi usually comes to mind. Now in her fourteenth year of on-again, off-again house arrest, she emerged as a national leader when thousands of protesting students and monks were mowed down by the junta on August 8, 1988. The 8888 Uprising, as it came to be known, was reprised, if on a lesser scale, in 2007 when over 100 civilians and monks were killed during the "Saffron Revolution." But the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council -- the predictably Orwellian type of name that dictatorships tend to adopt) faces another insurrection in Burma, one with which the West is less familiar. Minority groups have been battling to establish their own states -- not to mention escape ethnic cleansing -- for years. Eventually, cease-fire agreements with the junta were signed by all, except for the Shans and the Karens. The Karens, the largest such group, inhabit the Burma-Thailand border region, as well as the Irrawaddy delta, the part of Burma hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis. They're waging a war against what they call the three A's -- annihilation, absorption, and assimilation -- in the form of the Karen National Union (KNU) and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). In fact, just entering its seventh decade, it's the world's longest-running war for independence. However, continually outnumbered by the Burmese army and riven by internal division, it's showing its age. Why hasn't the junta finished them off then? Apparently the Burmese army, plagued by corruption, poor morale, and desertion, can't seem to summon the resources to go in for the kill. In fact, KNU vice chairman and spokesperson David Thackrabaw told us that the Burmese army is a "paper tiger." He added, "In a way, the struggle is a stalemate. We can see our situation half full or half empty....For the death of one Karen guerilla, 20 SPDC soldiers die....In three years time, SPDC have suffered 6,000 casualties." [Unconfirmed.] Reduced to fielding an army that compensates for its weaknesses with numbers, it would be natural for the junta to seek a ceasefire. But the last time both sides agreed to stop fighting, in 2004, the junta took advantage of the occasion to reinforce its front lines. The primary reason the junta seeks ceasefire talks is to pave the way for the entire country to participate in next year's elections. The junta hopes that by making a token attempt at democracy it can convince the West to ease the sanctions it's imposed on Burma and re-open economic relations. But, writes the Karen insurgency's most stalwart chronicler, Daniel Pedersen , "If they cannot bring the country's largest ethnic minority into the fold, their chances of selling legitimacy on the back these elections are slim, to say the least." Still, the junta already receives assistance in economic development from China, as well as Thailand, not to mention, the KNU alleges, European interests trying to dodge economic sanctions. Even before elections and open economic relations with the West come to pass, ensuring the success of these projects provides plenty of incentive for all parties concerned to neutralize the KNU and KNLA. For example, the junta has begun to construct the first of a number of dams on the untamed Salween River, which slices through Karen territory. The Salween, with 80 species of endangered fish and animals, was designated a World Heritage Site five years ago. But, from another point of view, it offers the prospect of employment, as well as hydroelectric energy, for the Karens, right? Not exactly. The first problem that the dam presents, Pedersen tells us, is that "it requires building a road to bring construction in. The roads in themselves are a form of oppression in themselves. Crossing a road in Karen State is a bloody big deal -- you can very easily find yourself shot." They're strictly for the use of the junta, which uses the road roads "to sectionalize areas of Karen State" and service base camps. As for jobs, sure, they're provided for the Karens -- if you consider this employment: "The SPDC picks a village easily taken and then establishes a base camp," explains Pedersen. "The village head will be told there are so many people required for labor efforts." But the workers aren't paid, nor even fed, and "they are often first forced to build a bamboo compound in which they are locked at night." The point that turning a people into slave labor provides them with little incentive to sign a treaty seems lost on the junta. As for the dams, they'll not only be of no benefit to the Karens, but to any citizens of Burma. In fact, they're intended to provide electricity to Thailand and China. Worst of all, explains Pedersen, by "signing deals for years in advance," the 12 generals of the junta become "time bandits." This project, however unsavory, along with other deals such as for deep sea ports, is obviously enough to motivate Thailand to mediate the latest round of ceasefire talks. Besides, Thailand is the current chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the country could use an image makeover after the way it's been treating its own protesters, not to mention the Rohingya boat people. Worse in a way, Thailand has been averting its gaze as the junta sends the DKBA across the border into Thailand, where it attacks Karen refugees. The DKBA, or Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (its use of "Buddhist" is even more Orwellian than the SPDC's use of "State" and "Peace"), splintered off the KNU and, bought off by the junta, preys on its own people. When a people turns on its own people, the tendency is to attribute it to ancestral rivalries. But, according to Pedersen, DKBA's members turned on the KNU either to profit from business with the junta or simply to hold on to their livelihoods and keep their families from becoming refugees. Nevertheless, an attempt is under way to graft the KNU and DKBA back together again. The Karens used to host hunts for important Norwegians, who are now returning the favor and offering to chair peace talks between the warring factions. Even though the DKBA has assassinated key members of the KNU, possibly including its revered general secretary Mahn Sha in February 2008, the KNU is willing to attempt a reconciliation. Should that come to pass, a new improved KNU would hold a stronger hand than it previously has in talks with the junta. As the world's longest-running insurgency, the Karens may think they've proven that they can outlast the junta. But the junta, in office since 1962, is nearly as enduring. Though once talks begin, it's not hard to understand why the KNU might stick to one of their founding principles and an avowed non-negotiable -- retaining their arms. Under the circumstances, wouldn't you? More on Burma
 
Michael Wolff: Why Do Liberals Still Care About Matt Drudge? Top
The New Republic , continuing the political world's odd obsession with the Drudge Report, says its editor , Matt Drudge, has disappeared, or gone into seclusion like some latter-day Howard Hughes. I do not think Drudge has disappeared. I think he is dead. Certainly the Drudge Report, which the New Republic claims gets "20 million hits per day" (a meaningless locution as old-fashioned as the Drudge Report itself) has been on automatic pilot for several years. If he is not dead, he is definitely brain dead. There hasn't been a breaking story on the site in months. Drudge, once one of the most vaunted gossips in the nation, clearly isn't in the loop . Or he is just bored to death. He had been doing this for a decade. It is the same old Drudge Report, without improvement or variation. Or staff. Drudge may have theoretically gotten rich ("sources believe he makes millions per year off his site," says the New Republic breathlessly, although Compete.com reports his traffic at 2.6 million visitors a month, which certainly isn't going to make him millions), but he hasn't built a business--it's him alone performing the same repetitive act. (Or him and one Andrew Breitbart, a conservative blogger who seems to help him, and who has a site Drudge links to--and who exists only as an odd Drudge appendage; certainly nobody else seems to link to him.) Continue reading at newser.com
 
Adam Winkler: Making Off Like Madoff Top
Right after Barack Obama was elected president, I followed his lead and began reading books on Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression. Like the president-elect, I wanted to know what lessons history had for dealing with our dire economic crisis. Much of our current crisis stems from the financial sector: risky derivatives, corrupted credit ratings agencies, and worthless mortgage-backed securities. I just read a terrific book that reminded me that history has important lessons to teach us here too. Time has come to heed them. "The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals," by Frank Partnoy, tells the story behind one of the greatest scam artists the country has ever known. Ivar Kreuger was a financial whiz who, in the 1920s and 30s ran the largest match company in the world. Before lighters were commonplace, little wooden matches were one of life's essentials. From these small bits of wood, Kreuger built an empire. The only problem was that the financial foundation of that empire was as ephemeral as the smoke from one of those matches. Modern day "credit default swap" traders have nothing on Kreuger. The Swede was able to raise tons of money from Wall Street investors with little more than a prestigious investment bank's endorsement. For years, he refused to reveal any substantive information about his companies' assets and liabilities. And yet Wall Street investors, even the most sophisticated among them, bought more and more of his stock. The less he told, the more he sold. That's one of the amazing things about Wall Street: investors don't seem to care that they can't understand the value of an asset. The fact that it can't be accurately valued seems to be the reason people buy it. Check out the dictionary under "Enron" or "Derivatives." Part of the reason Kreuger was able to woo the best and the brightest was that they thought he was even smarter then them. And in many ways, he was. Partnoy shows how Kreuger developed new financial instruments that no one had ever seen before--off-balance sheet entities and off-shore liabilities--which made investors swoon, even though they didn't know what they were buying. These "innovations" made it appear that investors had nothing to lose and riches to gain. The Match King, as Kreuger was known at the time, owed much of his success to guaranteed money. Like Bernie Madoff decades later, he promised investors double digit returns annually. And just like Bernie Madoff, he delivered year after year. That it was too good to be true didn't really matter--until the day of reckoning came. Like a Palm Beach Ponzi scheme, Kreuger used newly raised money to pay off older investors. That works fine unless the market crashes and there is no more new money coming in. Then you have to turn yourself in to authorities. One of the most important lessons the Match King's story teaches us is that we can't wait for market crashes to reveal the frauds and the abusers of our financial system. Wall Street in the 1920s and Wall Street in the 1990s both had one major problem: remarkably deficient regulatory oversight. There was no one to stop the madness of the markets. We're now faced with rebuilding our financial system. A good place to start would be Partnoy's engrossing book on Ivar Kreuger. Let's hope President Obama learns the lessons of the Match King before completing his reforms. Maybe I'll send him a copy. More on Financial Crisis
 
Earth Day Eagle Strikes Back, Mugs Woman Top
Happy Earth Day , jerks. Santa knows if you haven't been recycling, and he's sending winged thugs after you . Check this out: Klara Maier told police she couldn't believe her eyes when the eagle, with its 7 foot wingspan, swooped down and grabber her pocketbook out of her hand, Ananova reported. Amazing. Reminds me of a scene from a recent "American Dad" episode (What? My roommate was watching it): More on Animals
 
Howard Schweber: Torture and the Problem of Constitutional Evil: the Way Forward Top
A year ago, in a blog post at Balkinization.com, Mark Graber discussed John Yoo's role as an example of what he has called "the problem of Constitutional Evil." Graber's point is that the assumption that anything that is "evil" is therefore contrary to the dominant understanding of the Constitutional is simply wrong. This is not an argument he makes lightly; Graber is the author of Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil , a magisterial work that makes the case in historical context; orthodox, authoritative, widely accepted understandings of the Constitution may nonetheless permit actions that deserve to be described as "evil." We may, in fact, be about to see a small example of the phenomenon in action; based on the oral arguments, it appears that the current Court is inclined to accept the proposition that an 8th grade girl can be strip searched by school officials based on nothing more than an unsubstantiated tip that she might have Ibuprophen on her person. If the link between that case and questions like torture seems far-fetched, consider the fact that in Fredrick v. Morse - the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case - the brief on behalf of the school district argued that the courts should give school officials unfettered discretion to determine the limits of students' free speech on the grounds that such officials "operate daily on the front lines of public education." Truly, nothing is more dangerous to liberty than the abuse of language for political ends. George Orwell warned us about that danger; so did Thucydides. I am a great admirer of Graber and Balkin. And a few months ago I wrote a post presenting the case against prosecution of Bush administration officials for violations of the Constitution per se. Recognizing the possibility that a perfectly orthodox constitutional interpretation can nonetheless lead to evil results would seem to support an argument for accepting John Yoo's (in)famous assertion that his work in the Bush administration and that of Bybee, Addington, and others, was nothing worse than creative constitutional interpretation. "Creative lawyering" is considered high praise in the law business. And after all, John Yoo's assertion of unlimited executive authority in a time of crisis is not entirely dissimilar to Truman's assertion of an inherent executive power to seize control of the steel industry during the Korean conflict. That action was ruled unconstitutional , but of course the Court might have ruled the other way. Finally, it was no less a authority than Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes who told us that "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." In light of all that, I stand by the proposition that neither the conclusion that an administration has done evil nor even the conclusion that an administration has acted in violation of the Constitution is not a warrant for criminal prosecution. But there's more. There is also the whole idea of the special role of lawyers. A few months ago I attended a conference in Jerusalem at which Natan Sharansky gave an address. During the question-and-answer period that followed, he was asked a question about the role of law. His answer was entirely dismissive: "we have lawyers," he said (I am paraphrasing from memory) "and they can justify anything." Sharansky's view is widely accepted in many law schools; in fact, distinguished American law and society scholars in the room chimed in to lend their support to the idea that "law" has no meaning independent of the actions of lawyers. And President Obama has indicated that government agents who acted on the advice of legal counsel should not be subject to prosecution for their acts, presumably based on the assumption that accepting the advice of a lawyer is evidence that the agent had no intent to violate the law. So there's the argument against prosecutions in a nutshell: acts which are morally repugnant are not necessarily unconstitutional, acts which are unconstitutional do not necessarily warrant prosecutions, the intervention of lawyers provides cover against accusations of lawless conduct. It is also quite true that some of the Democratic members of Congress who are grandstanding these issues today were at least partially aware of the interrogation tactics that were being employed, and found no reason to complain at the time. Is that it? Is that all there is? I hope not, because somewhere in this discussion I have developed an overwhelming urge to throw up. But how do we move forward without ignoring the realities of constitutional evils, the wrongheadedness of equating all constitutional violations with criminally culpable conduct, or the special role of lawyers in our legal system? How do we deal with the issue of torture? The way forward, I think, is to get out of talking in terms of a single category of analysis. There are at least three distinct categories of issues involved here: there are technical legal issues, there are political issues, and there are deep questions about the relationship between "law" and "lawyers" in the American system. And there are at least three distinct categories of actors, too: the interrogators, the policymakers, and the lawyers. And then, there are at least three distinct audiences whose reactions we should care about: the legal professionals, the American public, and the rest of the world. Let'[s talk about the lawyers, first. I have read all the memos as they have come out, going back to the very first unauthorized releases of the memos outlining a theory of inherent executive authority drawing on Justice Sutherland's 1936 opinion that described the president's authority in wartime as directly inherited from the King of England. I still don't know whether any of the authors of these memos can be reasonably charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution or to commit torture. But if "the rule of law" is to mean anything, the term "lawyer" cannot simply mean "one who justifies any action" in the ultimately cynical way that Sharansky described it. We give lawyers special privileges, special immunities, and special authority, and we allow non-lawyers to rely on legal advice and to claim that advice as a protection. That is as it should be, but the consequence is that lawyers are supposed to be held to standards of ethical and professional responsibility. It is exactly the same equation that we make when we allow charitable institutions to operate without paying taxes: the benefit goes with the assumption that the public good is being served. Based on the evidence that is publicly available, I have no hesitation in asserting that Judge Bybee should be subjected to impeachment proceedings, and that Bybee, Yoo, Addington et. al. should face disbarment proceedings to determine whether they have violated their fundamental professional responsibilities. Not because the actions they justified were evil, and not even because the actions they justified were unconstitutional, but because they used their art to creatively discover hitherto unknown ways to find justifications for evil and unconstitutional actions. To quote the motto of my alma mater, "law without morality is vain"; a person who is incapable of assuming the responsibility for that proposition is unfit for the legal profession. There's a movie about this: it's called Judgment at Nuremburg . What about the interrogators? I believe that we need a Truth Commission, to be called just that. The connection to previous Truth Commissions in Guatemala, South Africa, and elsewhere is deliberate. The world no longer take seriously any claim of American moral exceptionalism; at this point we must strive to reassure the world that America seeks to be a member of the family of civilized nations. That requires historical memory, a uniquely public and uniquely political form of knowledge. Peggy Noonan's call for unknowing , the suggestion that "sometimes in life you want to just keep walking" is anathema to the fundamental premise of a democracy. Like a free press and open elections, public knowledge and public acknowledgment of recent history is a basic precondition for the exercise of popular sovereignty. If the results of such a Truth Commission are to be criminal prosecutions, these should be reserved to commanders who are shown to have given or obeyed orders they knew to be illegal. "Illegal orders" is not a new or strange concept, it is a mainstay of military law. And the policymakers? The Rumsfelds and Wolfowitz's who formulated the policies and gave the orders? It may well be that the law cannot reach those officials directly. But there should be investigations into lying to Congress, among other possible offenses, to be conducted under independent, non-partisan auspices; Carl Levin's suggestion of using retired federal judges might be a good place to start. The case against prosecutions for evil actions or for violations of the Constitution per se stands; that is the problem of constitutional evil. The case for a public accounting and acknowledgment of those same actions gains weight by the day; that is we owe to ourselves, and what we ought to want to show to the world. And the case for some kind of action being taken against the lawyers who were involved is inescapable. These are the beginning of a way forward. More on Supreme Court
 
Craig Newmark: Mark Drapeau on social media and national security Top
Hey, I've already written about the paper Mark, from the National Defense University, where he talks about real life use of social media for the Pentagon and other parts of the government. This is a big deal; I've seen first hand how people in the military are working hard to modernize and fight more effectively, using the social media approach. For example, Admiral Jim Stavridis, head of Southern Command has a really good blog . Here's where you can find Mark's paper and a few words: This new paper from the National Defense University by Drs. Mark Drapeau and Linton Wells II is a comprehensive academic study about the universe of social software tools for senior decision makers in government. It is intended to educate, to clear up misunderstandings, to promote consistency, and to outline a framework for what emerging social technologies mean for government missions. While the study was done by a DoD think tank, it is written in such a way as to be applicable to many parts of the federal government, and should also be applicable in some ways to state and local government, and the private sector - particularly large organizations . Some comments from people smarter than me about it include those from Ben Bain from Federal Computer Week : The Defense Department has a lot to gain from the use of social-networking technology, but only if it first develops a departmentwide Web 2.0 strategy to address operational, policy and technology concerns, according to a report sponsored by the National Defense University. The report outlines four primary ways in which DOD and other agencies might use social media to support national security operations, including defense and diplomacy. However, before encouraging widespread adoption of the technology, DOD needs to coordinate an overall strategy. The strategy must do more than identify specific applications for social media in DOD, according to the report. It must also foster organizational and cultural changes that would enable information to flow more freely. As part of that, DOD must educate its workforce on how to use the technology.
 
Illinois Called 'Nigeria Of The Midwest' By Reform Commission Member Top
A key member of Gov. Pat Quinn's reform panel called Tuesday for lawmakers to approve meaningful state contract reforms so businesses that have given up on getting a fair shake no longer will view Illinois as the "Nigeria of the Midwest." (via Capitol Fax )
 
Justin Timberlake Mounts Jessica Biel For Lakers' Jumbotron (PHOTOS) Top
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel snuggled up at the Los Angeles Lakers game Tuesday night. Sitting courtside as the Lakers beat the Utah Jazz, Timberlake and Biel played it up for the Staples Center kiss cam. He whipped off his glasses and a made a show of mounting her for the JumboTron. PHOTOS: Getty Images More on Photo Galleries
 
Adam Hanft: Maureen Dowd, Please Stop Now. Twitter is Not Just For the Banal Retentive. Top
Maureen Dowd devotes her entire column today to a frontal assault on Twitter, a screed badly disguised as an interview with their founders. Is it mere envy, the green-eyed monster that's one of her go-to Shakespearean shout-outs? It's a likely conclusion. After all, Twitter is exploding and its generous VCs aren't holding back funding despite a void of ad revenue, while the Times has to refinance its high IQ HQ. So what does Dowd make of the phenom? She writes Twitter off as an idle plaything for the Banal Retentive. (That's my Dowdism, by the way; NYT are you paying attention? I'm open to filling in while she writes her next book.) She not only loathes Twitter, she over-ascribes a series of dismal prospects to its success, a typical columnist calumny. So it becomes another example of the decline of literacy; a proxy for our digital vanity and vacuity; a marker for the end of Western Civilization; the sound of taps for the elevated intellectual discourse that we've cherished since the Enlightenment showed up. Nonsense, all. Twitter is a neutral and agnostic platform. Ranting about it may be a useful strategy for meeting your column obligations, but it's about as wise, useful and rear-guard as complaining about email or the microwave. As the wounded, role-seeking New York Times stumbles to find a revenue source that is as clearly-defined as its own very chiseled sense of self-importance, the predictable resistance of Ms. Dowd tells us more about the level of fear in the Palazzo Piano than anything meaningful about Twitter. In fact, despite her control of the final interview presentation, and her ability to set Twitter's founders to sea in her Ark of Snark, the 140-character nano-blogging service emerges better than Dowd does. The truth is, like any palimpsest awaiting a scribe, Twitter's value depends on those who choose to play. And those whom you choose to follow. Disclaimer: I Twitter -- "hanft" is my hugely clever and obfuscatory user name -- and those few loyalists who follow me hopefully are rewarded with more plangency than "Subway late again. Ugh." Twitter can be, and is, whatever we make it. As William Gibson famously said, "The street finds its own use for things." So it can report in real-time spasms from Mumbai or the operating room. It allows people in chemotherapy to regain a sense of sense in the face of immune violence. It's Shaq, Beyonce, and Oprah; it's constitutional law professors, chessmasters and a hobbled community of sliced and diced job seekers. It astonishes me that Dowd is silent on all this, exhibiting the complete lack of balance that is apparently the sacred privilege of the Op-Ed feifdom. But you've got to give her rigidity its due. It's tough to summon up the arrogance of dismissal that's powerful enough to ignore the fact that Twitter is successful and popular, that it's filling a cultural role of some material importance. Perhaps, just perhaps, in this most stressful of all epochs, Twitter is a much-needed escape valve, a new genus of psychological sublimation, a meta-socialization apparatus. Rather than offering some lapidary cultural forensics, though, Dowd is as aggressive and militarily incompetent as North Korea. She simply cannot control her frustration at Twitter's new hegemony, which blocks her both from seeing through the faddishness, and acknowledging the instant, impressive and vast ecosystem of Twitter apps and tools that have erupted in a fungi fury. Here's what I say. Beyond whatever else Twitter can contribute -- and didn't it help prevent a violent school episode in Canada recently? -- it has a salutary social role. If a Tweet can release some anxiety that would otherwise be focused on self-destructive or anti-social behavior -- a cigarette smoked, a child spanked, a harsh word slung -- then that alone gives it more meaningful human value than the entire New York Times Op-Ed mausoleum.
 
Pittsburgh Samaritan Does Five Good Deeds For Chicago Strangers Found On Craigslist Top
On the eve of April Fools' Day, a 29-year-old Pittsburgh man posted an ad on Craigslist Chicago offering "help with something this weekend" to any Chicagoans in need of an extra pair of hands for tasks small or large. His only request to those asking for help was that they "pay it forward" by doing a good deed to someone else. More on The Giving Life
 
Eben Esterhuizen: No More Mandelas: What America Can Learn From the ANC's Abuse of Hope Top
I'll never forget the day we inaugurated Nelson Mandela as our nation's president. "Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud," Madiba said at the start of his speech , referring to our triumph over apartheid. It was 1994, and we were dancing in the streets. Newly empowered South Africans had the audacity to hope. Fifteen years later, I can't help feeling that South Africa missed a great opportunity. We wasted our potential by putting our politicians, who liberated us from apartheid, on a pedestal. Instead of getting our hands dirty and rebuilding a nation from the ground up, we waited for hope to trickle down from the speeches of people like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. During a time when crisis could've evolved into opportunity, South Africans were lulled into complacency. We bought into the wrong variety of hope... It's probably a stretch to compare the current financial crisis to the collapse of apartheid, but the same principle applies. America is facing its own inflection point, and today's challenges need to turn into tomorrow's victories. The time has come for the world's superpower to realize that hope alone won't save the day. America must find inspiration from the possibilities created by empowered citizens, not from the words spoken by politicians. Now is not the time for America to repeat South Africa's mistakes. The African National Congress (ANC), the governing party since the end of apartheid, promised that racial oppression would be replaced by economic opportunity. Sadly, the number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day has doubled from two to four million since 1994 . The ANC promised jobs for all, but the unemployment rate has more than doubled to 48% between 1991 and 2002 . While the country's economic condition deteriorated, the elitist ANC kept hammering on the message of hope while asking disgruntled citizens to be patient. Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's successor, once talked about the dream of an African Renaissance , conveniently ignoring the fact that the average age life expectancy in South Africa dropped by 13 years since 1990. To quote the late Studs Terkel: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up." This is what America can learn from South Africa. "The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it -- in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence," wrote Naomi Klein in a recent article. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," writes Sam Gindin, "and putting it in the hands of workers." In closing, us South Africans have not abandoned hope, but we have found a new home for it. His name is Jacob Zuma, and he will be elected as our new president today. He is corruption , rape and polygamy all wrapped in one. He might be an uneducated militant , but his populist rhetoric has given South Africa's disenfranchised middle class new hope. Unfortunately, South Africa is once again looking towards its politicians for answers...
 
Cook County Sales Tax Hike Could Be Completely Rolled Back: John Daley Top
Cook County Board Finance Chairman John Daley isn't making any promises, but he's considering signing on to a complete rollback of the 1 percent sales tax increase. More on Taxes
 
Robert J. Elisberg: Major League Baseball Drops an Easy Pop-Up Top
Two weeks ago, I wrote about a bizarre screw-up by Major League Baseball, which changed its Gameday Audio service on Opening Day, thereby rendering it unusable for nearly all broadcasts online. It should have been a one-day story, mind you. But apparently even Congress-exempted monopolies can compound their mistakes. Because what has happened next is a remarkable textbook study of corporate tone-deafness. You see, for two weeks, subscribers are still unable to get the National Pastime. Yet while fans on the MLB.com forum are exploding with outrage, tech support keeps explaining that things are fine. Or suggests that users change the host proxy on their computer. (Which tends to contradict the concept that "things are fine.") Imagine your cable TV going out for two weeks, and having customer service tell you that it's working perfectly. And then suggesting that you try rewiring your set. You now get the general idea. At times, however, it's gotten a bit humorous, albeit in an "Alice in Wonderland" way. For example, one of the suggestions that "MLBsupport" keeps giving is - "Tell the IM department at your company to try changing its firewall and security settings and see if that works." Personally, I'd pay cash money just to be allowed to overhear that phone conversation. "Can you please remove corporate security, I'd like to listen to a baseball game at my desk." Needless-to-say, all this tends to get people all the more upset. But not so upset that they're quitting. Just to be clear, it's not that no one is trying to quit. They are, in droves - it's just that many are reporting that when they contact customer support, they are being told they can't get their money back. Surprisingly, that tends to bother people. How tone deaf has this all been? The new, snappy Adobe Flash media player that MLB.com changed to on Opening Day doesn't have fast-forward, rewind or pause buttons! Honest. (One subscriber wrote about sitting down at night to listen to an "archive" of that afternoon's ball game - only to discover that there had been a two-hour rain delay, and he couldn't skip past it.) If being tone deaf was adorable, this would be America's Sweetheart. I will admit to taking this personally, since I have been unable to hear my beloved Chicago Cubs all year. But many thousands of other consumers are facing it just the same, expressing their anger online at being powerless against corporate arrogance, not getting the product they paid for and getting even less of a response. How less of a response? How tone deaf? Pull up a chair. Last evening, I wrote a piece for the MLB.com forum about how no one from the company has even apologized yet. And...they deleted it. Yes, a posting about bad customer service got deleted. But in cyberspace, words live on. And so, asking for a slight indulgence, I repost below what I wrote elsewhere - The Heart of the Matter I have a hopefully thoughtful suggestion at the end of this, but first, every ending needs a beginning. And the beginning is - There's been something that's become apparent over time. Not something I've noticed - but something I haven't noticed. Two words that I haven't seen. The words are - "We're sorry." Now, it's possible that I've missed them. After all, thousands of messages have been written since Opening Day, and I haven't read most. But of those many hundreds I have read, filled with unrelenting complaints of no service - I have yet to see one, single message from "MLBsupport" that says - "We're sorry." "We're sorry. We're working on addressing that issue." "We're sorry. But we have that fixed now." "We're sorry for the inconvenience." None of that. To be fair, "MLBsupport" is not anyone in actual charge, it's just the hired hands. So, I'm understanding. Up to a point, though. Because - Saying "We're sorry" is something you're supposed to train your staff to say. Saying "We're sorry" is something you're supposed to know to say, even if you haven't been trained. But most importantly, I'm not even referring to MLBsupport not saying, "We're sorry" - because what's most apparent and galling is that after two weeks of very obvious problems of non-service...there has yet to be an email from MLB.com sent to all subscribers that acknowledges the problems, the lack of service, the massive complaints and says, "We're sorry. And we're working on addressing the problem." I think in many ways, it's this lack of response, this lack of regret that is fueling even more of the frustration people here feel, beyond even not getting the service paid for. Not ever saying "We're sorry" on the forums, or in a mass email to subscribers gives the impression that you're not sorry. That you have not interest in addressing the problem. That the service won't be fixed. Even if I have missed any "We sorry" responses (if) - that doesn't change a word of what I've written here. Saying "We're sorry" is not something that should be said in passing that could be easily missed. If you make a mistake, you say "We're sorry" every time." We are now two weeks into the season - that's 14 days full of mistakes, and 14 chances to repeatedly, regularly say, "We're sorry." And 14 days to send a "We're sorry" note to subscribers. I say all this having once worked in public relations, for 15 years. It's basic. There's nothing mystical about the concept of recognizing a problem and addressing it, apologizing for it. But of course, the reality is that one doesn't need to be a PR expert to know to say, "We're sorry" when you've made a mistake - to say it most especially when you've made massive, ongoing mistakes. It's what we all learned as children. "We're sorry." It's easy. And that leads to a final thought and suggestion: there is clearly not going to be any benefit from complaining here on these forums. Here, there is only "tech support." While it does the soul good to vent, that's its limit. My suggestion is that complaints be made instead to those who are most impacted by the problems and likely are unaware of the problems- the owners of each team, the PR executives of each team, the commissioner of baseball, the operating and communication officials of baseball. If a technical glitch is tarnishing their product, creating very bad will and driving customers away, those are the people who stand most to care. The surface mail addresses and phone numbers are on all their respective websites. Some sites might have direct links to executives, all have "Contact Us" links. After some searching, as far as I can tell, these are the MLB addresses -- bud.selig@mlb.com MLB president and chief operating officer bob.dupuy@mlb.com Executive vice president, business of MLB tim.brosnan@mlb.com I don't have a clue if this will help at all. But I do know that at this point, "We're sorry" no longer suffices. At this point, a resolution is needed. And at this point, a resolution can only come from those at the top. Because it's surely not coming from anywhere else.
 
John Morton: Balancing Giving and Receiving Top
In order for us to fully understand the meaning of human existence and live in this world, we must have the ability to receive and to give whatever is available from the supply in the world. Which is more important? Which comes first -- the receiving or the giving? Actually, they're one and the same. We can't have giving without receiving. We can't have receiving without giving. Giving and receiving coexist. They're polarities on the same continuum. One requires the other in order for either to occur. My view is that the supply for giving and receiving comes from the same divine source. Both are essential and natural. Although giving and receiving can occur simultaneously, they tend to happen in one way and then the other way like a tide that naturally flows and out with variations for the current conditions. Often they occur in cycles. The dynamic of giving and receiving is what's important so there will be a change of flow from giving to receiving and visa versa. I encourage you to find a relationship between giving and receiving such that they balance out for you. A large part of finding that balance starts with being grateful for what you have. When we're drinking from the stream of life, it's important to remember that somewhere there is the source from where that stream generates and to be grateful for the source of the good things that we are receiving. I see that source as God. Others see it by other names and sources or as nature or the world. By claiming a source of infinite rather than finite supply of what's needed, and yourself as a recipient of the benefits that come from that source, you can live in more accordance with how to manifest from the infinite supply. Keep in mind that this infinite source also keeps your best interests in consideration, including what you are to learn and gain from your life experiences. These are the internal benefits that make for you becoming a better human being. You can also consider that the way this all works includes the best for everyone and everything altogether. You can afford to give, rather than trying to hang onto what you have received. You can receive, knowing that how you are receiving for your assistance is just as important as how you are giving to assist others and the situations in the world. We can all become greater sources in the cycle of giving and receiving. The act of giving balances with what we have received. So take a moment to realize you have clothes and a place to live even when those aspects may appear limited. Perhaps for now your dwelling has the open sky for a roof. We all have much more to be grateful for when we consider how each and every experience brings greater learning and lasting wisdom. I encourage you to ask yourself what would serve the most in this moment. Would the best results come by focusing upon giving to the needs of others or by your receiving what is needed for your situation? Would you be better served by focusing on reducing what you take or creating more for the needs for the world in which you find yourself now? Perhaps your life is reflecting that you have been spending beyond your means rather than within your means. Would you be better served by reducing what you spend or creating more so you have more than you need? You may find that you are unsure of how or where to create greater means to live the life you want. Then perhaps you are in a place where you need to ask yourself, "Do I need to adjust what I want? Do I need to utilize what I have in my current means to be less costly and reduce debt?" As we grow spiritually, we're often called upon to experience greater receiving and greater giving. Would giving be increasing while receiving is decreasing? No, of course not. Receiving and giving increase mutually. They increase together because they're one and the same. So to receive well, we must give well. To give, we must be open to receive and to take what serves altogether the greatest health, wealth and happiness. In the Bible it says, "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully" (2 Corinthians 9:6). It is also written in the Bible, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). I consider these references as a promise to us all and direction on how to create and manifest into the world. I find it wise to consider that life provides infinite opportunities to better know and understand just how our infinite source has already created the blessings of all in this world. I encourage all of us to embrace each new experience and all the conditions before us as opportunities to contribute to wealth, wisdom and a better life experience for each and everyone of us. We are called upon to participate fully in creating a better world for ourself and everyone. Our infinite source of supply is also an infinite source of wisdom that can solve whatever conditions are before us so health, wealth and happiness can be increased for all. John Morton is the author of the inspiring books, The Blessings Already Are and You Are the Blessings . Learn more about John at www.theblessings.org . You can contact John at johnmorton@theblessings.org . More on Health
 
Neil Kinkopf: Correcting the Record on Dawn Johnsen's Record Top
In a post recently on Powerline, Paul Mirengoff argued that the Senate should reject the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel. Even though his post was full of errors, some bloggers seem to regard it as credible. So, a point-by-point correction is in order. * Mirengoff argues that "There is strong reason to believe that Dawn Johnsen will consistently err on the side of protecting terrorists and denying the president the power to protect the nation. This fear is not based solely on her blogging; it also stems from her law review articles and, to a lesser extent, statements she has made or declined to make during the confirmation process." In fact, Johnsen has urged critics of the Bush Administration to be careful and focused, cautioning them not to let their disagreement with Administration policies lead them to a weak view of executive authority. "Regardless of who proves correct about the general post-Bush direction of presidential power," she has written , "there is some risk that reactions to the Bush experience--public sentiment, political considerations, or mistaken constitutional understandings--might distort criticism and harm legitimate and valuable executive powers. Commentators certainly should not mute their principled criticism, but they should avoid imprecise and over-generalized reactions that might undermine the ability of future Presidents to exercise legitimate authorities." 88 Boston U. Law Review 395, 398 (2008). * Mirengoff also incorrectly cites Johnsen's views on warrantless surveillance as an example of her supposedly timid view of presidential power: "Johnsen has objected to warrantless surveillance of suspected al-Qaeda communications into and out of the United States. The special appellate court created by Congress to review executive branch surveillance programs upheld the foreign wiretap activities of the Bush administration that Johnsen had denounced as based on 'an extreme and implausible Commander-in-Chief theory.' Even so, during the confirmation process Johnsen has said that 'she hold[s] to [her] criticisms.'" As it turns out, Mirengoff is off-base in a number of respects. First, the opinion Mirengoff cites does not address the unauthorized surveillance program addressed by Johnsen. Rather, after Congress became aware of the existence of this surveillance program, it enacted a law (The Protect America Act) that authorized a surveillance program. The ruling that Mirengoff cites held that the program complies with this new law; it says nothing about whether the program was legal before the Protect America Act was adopted. Second, the Bush Administration's surveillance program at issue was roundly criticized, by Democrats and Republicans alike, as violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Johnsen's views on the program are solidly within this bi-partisan mainstream. Third the Bush Department of Justice itself concluded that at least one version of the program was illegal. * Next Mirengoff argues: "Johnsen also ducked the question of whether renditions are lawful. The Clinton administration Justice Department must have thought that they are, since the Clinton administration regularly used this tool, presumably with DOJ sign-off. And Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, has refused to rule out renditions going forward. But Johnsen has called for an "immediate end" to the practice and, during her confirmation hearings, refused to comment on the legality of the Clinton administration's rendition practices." In fact Johnsen specifically answered the question about renditions. In response to written questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Johnsen wrote, "I know that the practice of rendition did not begin with the Bush Administration and my belief is that it is not in all cases unlawful." Her call for an "immediate end" was not to all renditions, but to "extraordinary renditions to countries known to use torture" * Mirengoff then contends, "Johnsen has also attacked the Bush administration's decision to hold enemy combatants. Indeed, it is doubtful she believes that the president has to power to preventively detain terrorist suspects. In her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Johnsen refused to state her view on this crucial question." Again, his criticism is off base. Johnsen provided detailed written testimony on this point. Here is her position on detaining enemy combatants, in response to questions submitted by Senator Hatch: 6. You met with the Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute about their recommendations for the war on terror. They say that the two choices for handling the terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay are release or criminal prosecution in domestic courts. Do you agree with that? Answer: No, I do not agree that release or criminal prosecution in domestic courts are the only two possible dispositions for individuals held at Guantanamo Bay. The President's executive order of January 22, 2009 concerning closure of Guantanamo recognizes the possibility of other dispositions. That order has set in motion an interagency process for determining how each of the Guantanamo detainees should be handled. 7. At her confirmation hearing, Solicitor General nominee Elena Kagan said that under military law there is no requirement to let captured enemies go back to the war. Do you agree? Answer: Yes, I do agree with Dean Kagan's statement that under traditional military law, enemy combatants may be detained for the duration of the conflict. That is what the Supreme Court said as well in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004). 8. Attorney General Holder said at his confirmation hearing that if there is evidence that a detainee is dangerous, then "I don't think... that that is a person who we can release." Do you agree with him or with those who say that these detainees should be either released or tried in civilian courts as criminals? Answer: As indicated above, I do not believe that release or criminal prosecution are the only possible dispositions for detainees. The President's review of the appropriate disposition of each of the detainees is underway. * Finally, Mirengoff asserts that, "The Clinton Justice Department (in the person of Jamie Gorelick, no less) also defended the president's authority to 'conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes' and concluded that the president 'may delegate this authority to the Attorney General. For that matter, the Clinton Justice Department detained some Cuban refugees at Gitmo and, when challenged, successfully argued that because the refugees were being held in Gitmo, they had no cognizable constitutional rights. This is the position that Johnsen characterized in a Boston University Law Review as radical and unprecedented." Johnsen said nothing of the kind in her B.U. article. She did, however, address the question for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here is what she had to say: "I had no disagreement with [Jamie Gorelick's] position and understood it to be the position of the majority of federal courts that had addressed the issue in a related context." Dawn Johnsen is an outstanding choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel. It is not surprising that her critics have resorted to basing their arguments on fiction. We can only hope the Senate will see through this and quickly move to confirm her nomination. Crossposted with ExecutiveWatch.net More on Guantánamo Bay
 
Cheney Hits Obama Again: 'Devastating' Economic Policies Top
President Barack Obama's expansion of the federal government into the financial sector is likely to have "devastating" effects in the long term, former Vice President Dick Cheney said in his latest salvo directed at the new White House administration. More on Barack Obama
 
Janet Kinosian: Changing The World One Small Loan and One Click At A Time Top
Note: This blogpost starts a monthly column called Voice of the Voiceless -- featuring an everyday person who sees a problem and jumps in to fix it, without waiting for someone else to tackle the job. Varying months alternate with a story of someone who helps people, with someone who benefits animals. Please enjoy. Remember: Helping give Voice to the Voiceless elevates all. Premal Shah is light years from a hot, sticky morning visiting India, his parent's birth country. Holding his mother's hand on a beggar-strewn road in Dabhoi, Gujarat (Mahatma Gandhi's home state) he peers at a middle-aged woman shoving her hand into the open roadside sewer to pull out a rupee coin, the equivalent of two cents. Even at age five, he felt the burning hot shame, confusion and anger at the injustice of such a pathetic act. That day he vowed to himself: "Someday I will grow up to help people like this woman not have to do this horrible thing." That's exactly what Shah did twenty five years later when, in 2005, along with two friends, he started Kiva.org, the world's first online person-to-person micro-lending website. For as little as $25, anyone in the world can log on to the site and loan an entrepreneur somewhere in the world the money to improve their business. By anyone's standards, Kiva's success has been nothing short of meteoric. Today, $67,676,160 dollars has been loaned to 158,600 entrepreneurs in 44 countries. The default rate is currently a mere 2.03%. That comes to about $135,000 dollars a day loaned to much-needy people throughout the world, most in Third World countries. Kiva's first 7 loans made in 2005 were for $3500. With over 476,000 lenders to date -- and despite international banking systems being what they are -- the Kiva loan system seems surprisingly simple. Lenders browse profiles of entrepreneurs in need posted on the website and choose someone to lend to. Kiva collects the funds and then passes them along to one of their microfinance partners worldwide, who then distribute the funds. When the entrepreneur repays their loan, lenders receive their money back, and they can then re-lend to someone else in need, or withdraw their funds. "Contrary to belief, poor people don't want hand-outs they just need the playing field leveled so they can help themselves," explains Shah, Kiva's president. "My dream is that one day Kiva will become such a common part of life that people will go home, log on to see who might need help around the world, and lend some money. I hope our way of loaning becomes as natural as getting that daily cup of Starbucks." Without much public relations effort, Kiva's star rose rapidly. By 2007, big players such as former president Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and PBS's Frontline World all championed Kiva's unique power to let the average person help change the world, one click and one small loan at a time. Says Clinton, who spotlighted Kiva in his book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World : "Kiva.org gives you a chance to do what Muhammad Yunus [the great micro-lender] won the Nobel Peace Prize for last year," he writes. "And it's all on the Internet. It makes you feel like you know these people. "You see their picture," he continues. "You know the facts of their business. You know what their lives are like. You can have a virtual cooperative bank because you may be joined by people all over America or all around the world in helping this particular business. It's amazing." How did the journey begin? In 2004, Shah took tally of his life. Graduated from Stanford with a recent glitzy Wall Street stint, he'd been lured back to Silicon Valley by his best friend, one of PayPal's co-founders. Now working at eBay, he had the perks, executive title and was secure in a high-salaried job he loved, yet was restless and unhappy. The Indian beggar woman on the road so long ago still haunted him. He'd sit at his Palo Alto townhouse's tiny kitchen table and wonder if he was having a mid-life crisis at 28. Most of his spare time was spent working on a dream of a start-up online company, a website that would link ordinary people making small loans to Third World entrepreneurs, helping them lift out of grinding poverty. It was a concept so new it had not yet been attempted. It was while on a 3-month sabbatical in early 2005 in Gulbai Tekra, a large Indian slum, that Shah first had the courage to take real action. Still frustrated by his Silicon Valley work, he was there helping poverty-level workers and low-income women create a small clothing line. In a tiny Indian internet café, Shah finally tried his online idea posting on eBay a simple photo and story of a Ugandan woman who wanted a $100 loan. He asked if any eBayer wanted to purchase it. The next morning he checked his page and saw that 75 people had read it. Though eBay quickly removed the post [it's against eBay policy to solicit money on the site] he knew this simple idea was a winner. At the same time, two Bay area friends were contemplating an idea much like Shah's. All three spent a good deal of time sitting around Shah's kitchen table seeing if they could make the idea work. In late 2005 the friends posted a small site called Kiva.org and emailed their friends and family. By early 2006 Shah knew it was time to quit his daytime job, jump into the unknown and, thus, Kiva was officially born. Right now, anyone in the world can log onto www.Kiva.org and help fund a global entrepreneur. From a beauty salon owner in Tanzania, a taxi driver in Ecuador, a pig farmer in Paraguay, a construction worker in Cambodia, or a coffee brewer in Pakistan, each loan is about a person, says Shah, "a very personal story, and following the people and their stories is part of the excitement," says Shah. Business updates are frequently posted on the website. His parents and friends were initially square against Shah quitting his secure day job, but are now proud, he says, and many log on daily to follow their chosen entrepreneur's progress. "It's about money, yes, but it's also about a personal connection," explains Shah. "It's about the truth to all who struggle in the world that there are other people on the planet who care and are willing to place their money where their mouth is," he says. "This is powerful stuff." To learn more about Kiva log on to www.Kiva.org More on Poverty
 
David Sloan Wilson: Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection XI: Dawkins Protests (Too Much) Top
Richard Dawkins did not invent naïve gene selectionism (see T&R X) but he spread it far and wide with the publication of The Selfish Gene . Let's follow his logic, beginning on page 6 of the 1989 paperback edition: This book will show how both individual selfishness and individual altruism are explained by the fundamental law that I am calling gene selfishness . But first I must deal with a particular erroneous explanation for altruism, because it is widely known, and even widely taught in schools. This explanation is based on the misconception that I have already mentioned, that living creatures evolve to do things 'for the good of the species' or 'for the good of the group'. There's the caution against naïve group selectionism. Good for you, Richard! Now for the explanation of why it is naïve: [A] group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection', long assumed to be true by biologists. Right! This explains how "for the good of the group" traits might evolve. Now for the explanation of why they might not evolve. The quick answer of the 'individual selectionist' to the argument just put might go something like this. Even in the group of altruists, there will almost certainly be a dissenting minority who refuse to make any sacrifice. If there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to exploit the altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely than they are to survive and have children. Each of these children will tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several generations of this natural selection, the 'altruistic group' will be over-run by selfish individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group. Even if we grant the improbable chance existence initially of pure altruistic groups without any rebels, it is very difficult to see what is to stop selfish individuals migrating in from neighboring selfish groups, and, by inter-marriage, contaminating the purity of the altruistic groups. Done. Allow me to make three observations about these passages. 1) Dawkins' portrayal of within- and between-group selection is utterly standard, and that's a good thing. Throughout the T&R series, I have stressed the simplicity of the group selection controversy. From Darwin to Dawkins, it's all about what I have called the original problem ( see T&R II ). 2) Dawkins implies that between-group selection (described in the second passage) is no match for within-group selection (described in the third passage), but he provides no proof. Models (such as the modified haystack model), experiments, and field studies are required to make this determination, not rhetorical flourishes. 3) The status of genes as replicators--what Dawkins calls the fundamental law of gene selfishness--is utterly beside the point. Genes are the replicators regardless of whether altruism wins or loses in Dawkins' own scenario ( also see T&R X ). Using the replicator concept to argue against group selection is arguably the greatest case of comparing apples with oranges in the annals of evolutionary thought! I do not believe the cynical adage "science progresses--funeral by funeral" but I worry that it might be the case for Richard Dawkins on the subject of group selection. In my dreams, I imagine him reading my modified haystack model and saying "Well done, David! I have been wrong all these years. It turns out that a gene coding for altruism can evolve on the strength of between-group selection, even when it is selectively disadvantageous within groups. I do think it is important to keep in mind, however, that when altruism evolves by group selection, it is still an example of gene selfishness because the gene for altruism is more fit than the gene for selfishness, all things considered." Scientists would clap their hands red at such an act of nobility, but it hasn't happened yet. Instead, Dawkins has behaved like a cowboy fighting off the Indians in an old western movie. When one gun runs out of ammo, he grabs another and another. Here are three guns that have run out of ammo. The selfish gene gun . As we have seen, this gun didn't have any bullets to begin with. The vehicle gun . Recall that if individual organisms don't qualify as replicators, they must quality as something else to be so manifestly well adapted. That "something" is variously called "interactors", "targets", or "vehicles" (Dawkins' term) of selection. In one of Dawkins' famous metaphors, genes in individuals are like rowers in a rowing crew. Since they are literally "all in the same boat", they must "pull together" to win the race. As soon as Dawkins threw away the selfish gene gun, he started to claim that groups fail as vehicles because individuals in groups are not completely bound together in a common fate in the same way as genes in individuals. But this was never a requirement for group selection to occur! The groups in the haystack model and in Dawkins' own portrayal of group selection quoted above aren't like individuals in this respect, but they suffice for altruism to evolve despite its selective disadvantage within groups. The extended phenotype gun . When the vehicle gun didn't work, Dawkins decided to bury the vehicle concept altogether by describing genes as having extended phenotypes. Two examples of extended phenotypes are a bird's nest and a beaver's dam. The first is an individual-level adaptation in conventional terms; birds that build better nests raise more offspring than birds in the same group that build worse nests. The second is a group-level adaptation in conventional terms; beavers that build better dams are providing a public good for all of the beavers in the pond at their own expense. The fact that the genes result in alterations of the physical environment in both cases is irrelevant. In short, the concept of extended phenotypes doesn't address the original problem and certainly doesn't provide a novel solution. With the Indians closing in, Dawkins has now started to throw chairs, bite, and kick. Consider his response to my recent article with Edward O. Wilson in American Scientist magazine titled " Evolution 'For the Good of the Group '" Genes Still Central : David Sloan Wilson's lifelong quest to redefine "group selection" in such a way as to sow maximum confusion--and even to confuse the normally wise and sensible Edward O. Wilson into joining him--is of no more scientific interest than semantic double talk ever is. What does beyond semantics, however, is his statement (it is safe to assume that E.O. Wilson is blameless) that "Both Williams and Dawkins eventually acknowledged their error [that the replicator concept provides an argument against group selection]...I cannot speak for George Williams but, as far as I am concerned, the statement is false: not a semantic confusion; not an exaggeration of a half-truth; not a distortion of a quarter truth; but a total, unmitigated, barefaced lie. Like many scientists, I am delighted to acknowledge occasions when I have changed my mind, but this is not one of them. D.S. Wilson should apologize. E.O. Wilson, being the gentleman that he is, probably will. Gracious! What a hierarchical guy! Dawkins acts as if he is the No. 2 monkey, kowtowing to the No. 1 monkey (Ed) while dishing it out to the No. 3 monkey (me)! As Ed commented to me after reading Dawkins' comment, "What does he think--that you slipped me a Mickey?" If you still have the patience, let me make a few observations about this gem of a tantrum. First, why on earth would Dawkins title his response Genes Still Central ? Isn't he ever going to get over the fact that selfish genes have no bearing whatsoever on the group selection controversy? Second, I trust that I have provided ample evidence that the original problem has provided the basis for defining group selection for everyone, including Dawkins and myself. There has been no redefining. Third, when it comes to semantic confusion, you can't beat selfish gene theory. Genes are "the fundamental unit of selection" but this has no bearing on the "levels of selection" controversy. A gene might be selfish because it is selectively advantageous within groups, or it might be selfish because it evolves in the total population all things considered. Individuals might be perfected "vehicles" of selection now, but we also need to use the term "vehicle" to explain how such perfection evolved. This is how the simplicity of the original problem has turned into a terminological quagmire. Dawkins continued his tantrum on his website after Ed and I quoted the passage in The Extended Phenotype where he abandons the replicator argument and takes up the vehicle argument: The Wilson quotation from The Extended Phenotype is a ludicrous attempt to justify their lying statement that I "eventually" acknowledged an earlier error. For one thing, The Extended Phenotype was published way back in 1982, which makes nonsense of Wilson's "eventually". But more important, the point I was making in 1982 (and would make again now) was a general one about the important distinction between replicators and vehicles...I was explaining that those models of group selection that had been proposed were vehicle models not replicator models. I was not for a moment suggesting that I accepted those models as valid. They were (and are) invalid vehicle models, as opposed to invalid replicator models. There you have it from Dawkins himself. The word "eventually" is appropriate for the six-year period between 1976 and 1982, regardless of how much time has elapsed since then. Poor Richard is still trying to fend off the Indians with the butt end of his replicator gun ("genes still central") and vehicle gun ("invalid vehicle models"). If only Bill Hamilton was still alive to fight alongside and defend his brilliant ideas! Fortunately, Bill Hamilton wrote plenty while he was still alive, showing that Richard Dawkins fights on alone. To be continued.
 
Geithner: US Bears Substantial Share Of Blame For Financial Crisis Top
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the United States bears a substantial share of the blame for the current economic crisis but the world must work together to ease the strains. More on Global Financial Crisis
 
Lee Schneider: Fish Can Count and Monkeys Can Subtract Top
Bookmark this because it has the solution to the banking crisis. I've just found out that fish can count and monkeys can subtract. People are worried about the exodus of Wall Street talent, but we can hurry up and hire the best fish and monkeys to fill those fat cat positions. Fish are honest and those who can count eat mosquito larvae -- no eight-figure bonuses required. Monkeys are a little excitable but they get around just by swinging from tree to tree instead of using limos and corporate jets -- a smaller carbon footprint! Both species seem to be more honest and socially aware than our current crop of bankers. I make that bold, pro-fish, pro-simian statement because I watched Jon Stewart last night. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, told us what's happened to at least half of the TARP funds bestowed on bankers by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The deal was that for every dollar we taxpayers gave the banks, the banks would give us a dollar's worth of stock and warrants. Fair enough. But the bankers, according to Warren, only gave us 66 cents on the dollar, and the value of those stocks and warrants has dropped even more since the trade. Well, this would never happen if fish were in key banking positions because fish know how to count. Mosquitofish, a North and Central American freshwater species, successfully counted geometric shapes in a study conducted by psychologists at the University of Padova in Italy. The fish were taught to associate a door in their tank with a certain number of shapes. They recognized the right number even though researchers varied the size, brightness and distance of the shapes counted. Since Mosquitofish are social animals, scientists believe that being able to count might help them seek safety in numbers. On Jon Stewart's show, Elizabeth Warren also mentioned that she doesn't quite know how much of the TARP funds have actually been distributed. If monkeys were in charge of that distribution there wouldn't be a problem, because monkeys know how to subtract. In a test of their subtraction skills at Duke University, Rhesus macaques were able to solve a simple subtraction problem on a touch screen. They didn't need to count, they just relied on their sense of missing shapes. The qualities present in fish and monkeys, being social and caring about their fellows, have gone missing in some bankers. While fish seek companionship and protect each other in schools, bankers enjoy purchasing multiple homes while their customers lose the only homes they've got. Monkeys and even ravens have been shown to care for their communities. Maybe it's not just the bankers who are bonkers, maybe it's clawing to the top of the food chain that has messed with the human mind. Masters of the Universe, we eat anything that moves, screw over weaker species, profit whenever possible. I lust after profit as much as anyone else (if you want to send me money, please do) but I certainly don't want to be bettered by a bunch of animals who can count, subtract and are more socially aware than some of the bankers who watch over my money. Something to consider as we monkey around, fishing for answers. More on Jon Stewart
 
Avital Binshtock: Earth Day Film Review: "A Sense of Wonder" Top
As Earth Day approaches, I find it fitting to recommend an unusual film, called A Sense of Wonder (2008), about the dusk of Rachel Carson's life. Kaiulani Lee wrote and produced the 55-minute piece and also plays that most quintessential of female environmentalists . It's a quiet film, one that asks us to set aside our hunger for over-dramatic portrayals of human conflict; watching it feels like a meditation of sorts. During the opening scenes, it might take a few minutes to get used to the unconventional format that perhaps can best be described as a mockumentary with a serious tone. Once you get your footing, however, it'll be hard not to be won over by Carson's utter reverence for nature and how she put that love to work. In what's essentially a one-woman performance, an imagined Carson speaks from the end of her life, as though to an invisible but always-inquiring journalist. She recalls her childhood, her years as a scientist, her first successes with writing, her adopted son, her convictions against pesticides that led (forced, one might say) her to write Silent Spring - and the breast cancer that ultimately silenced her. One walks away with great respect for this woman's dignity and willingness to stand by her truths even in the face of what, to someone else, would have been soul-shattering criticism. Given the subject matter, the film could easily have crossed into the territory of being overly earnest, but stopped just shy of that. The result is a highly recommendable portrait of an extraordinary woman. Currently screening throughout the U.S.; to plan a screening or watch the trailer, see the film's website . Also available on DVD. More on Green Living
 
Taylor Marsh: Are We Willing to Die for Our Country? Top
by Taylor Marsh Soldiers do it every day. But to save the tenets on which this country was founded, for which we have always stood and U.S. soldiers die every day, are we willing to do the same? It is being called "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm." It seems the only thing we came to fear was getting caught not doing enough, no matter what "enough" meant. The inability to access the morality of the means by which we protect ourselves got us into this mess. The cowardice to be willing to die for which we stand, the tenets of this American democracy, more prevalent than the courage to stand up to protect it, no matter the personal cost. However, after listening to the serious men on "Morning Joe" exchange their pontificating hot air on the importance of knowing the "truth," but that simultaneously no one should be held accountable (or prosecuted if found guilty), no matter where that truth leads, there is little doubt how we got ourselves in this mess. The "leading" lights of government and traditional media, that dying forth estate that now holds court under the glare of cable network spotlights, all made up, some with their hair greased down, others looking rumpled, no woman in sight, holding court to weigh in on the realities of 9/11 and how all Americans supposedly were willing to do -- here it comes -- "whatever it takes" to keep "America safe," starting with 9/12. This included all manner of harsh interrogation techniques that we now know were readied before they were legal, all through the stroke of a pen from George W. Bush, who obviously mistook the presidency for king. With the release of the Armed Services Committee Detainee Report today, we find out how our leaders, helped along by the fourth estate who fell asleep, all believe what Nixon believed, only with a broader brush: Whatever Americans do is not illegal. (U)On February 7,2002, President Bush signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention. The President's order closed off application ofCommon Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. While the President's order stated that, as "a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions," the decision to replace well established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. (U) In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel's Office had already solicited information on detainee "exploitation" from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions. ... That's obviously what was being set up, as President Bush and his administration decided that America had no moral code to follow because we were hit on 9/11. It's especially helpful if you have the medical and psychological institutes represented, on cover thinner than a fig leaf, standing guard: As one JPRA instructor explained, SERE training is "based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the last 50 years." The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, include stripping students of (sic) their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and until recently, for some who attended the Navy's SERE school, it included waterboarding. Is it any wonder that American politicians and others, for so long, condoned what Israel has done to the Palestinian people, because of what was done to them by Palestinian bombers? Quid pro quo becoming the standard, as long as a nation did it under protecting the people. Morality slipping into the abyss of national security. That the blame is being put on the "far left," with those of us whether "far left" or not, demanding our country hold people accountable, makes those citizens fighting for America to regain our moral high ground the last refuge of brave patriots. Vilified, we stand resolved, because we know we are taking our country back to the high ground where the nation began. Willingly standing to sacrifice all for this country in lieu of ripping ourselves to shreds on the altar of "keeping America safe," if that phrase means dismantling what this nation stood for on its founding. "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and loose both." - Benjamin Franklin More on Barack Obama
 
Steven Petrow: Queeries: Beware of Sexting Top
Q: My younger brother is gay, and I've overheard him talk about sexting on his cell phone. I know every generation has its slang, but what exactly is this? Any harm? -- Worried Older Bro A: It's simple enough: Sexting is the sending of nude (or semi-nude) photos with your cell. Not long ago I was at a party and walked over to a small group gathered a round a cell phone. Lo and behold, I found myself staring at a rather large penis on the screen. In hushed tones, the cell phone owner pointed out the penis owner across the room who was completely unaware of the party favor he had supplied to the rest of us. "Yikes," you say. Indeed. A recent study reported that 20 percent of teens have sent sexually explicit photos of themselves - although the phenomenon is hardly limited to those underage and is quite common in the LGBT community, too. Like e-mail gone wild, once "sexted," your little bro's photos are out of his control - now and forever. So, give him some of your older brother perspective: What seems fun and harmless today might not seem so another day. And while you don't mention where you're from, in some states like Pennsylvania and Florida, sexting is a crime. Earlier this year, three teens who e-mailed nude or semi-nude photos of themselves to friends were charged with "creating, distributing and possessing child pornography." Bottom line, don't let your brother get caught with his pants down - so to speak - at least not on camera. Note to straights: All the high-profile sexting cases have been among heterosexual teens, including the suicide of one young girl who sexted a photo of herself and could not live with the severe embarrassment. A different version of this post appeared in The Independent Weekly . If you have a queery, please send it to queeries@live.com.
 
Secretary Clinton Testifies Before Congress Top
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is telling Congress that the core goal of President Barack Obama's anti-terror strategy is to defeat al-Qaida and prevent its return to Afghanistan. Clinton testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where Chairman Howard Berman told her the panel is concerned about Islamic extremists gaining momentum in Pakistan. The California Democrat said the U.S. cannot allow the extremists to take over Pakistan or to operate with impunity on Afghanistan's border. Clinton asserted in response that the international community is working closely together to address the problem of extremism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. More on Hillary Clinton
 
Earl Pomerantz: "The 'Annual Inefficiency'" Top
It's Pilot Season. The time of the year when the commercial television networks make sample episodes for series they hope will be more appetizing than the series whose sample episodes they made during Pilot Season the year before. The problem is, the same executives, or people cloningly similar those executives, oversaw the making of last year's pilots, and the pilots of the year before that, ad backwards infinitum, and their perennial batting average is one that would, were they ballplayers, relegate them to the lowest levels of the minor leagues, or oblivion. Based on mathematical projections, which statistically sensitive networks apply in every area of their endeavor besides Pilot Season, there is no indication they'll do any better this time around. It seems stupid. You spend millions on pilots. Most pilots never make the network schedule. And the majority of the few that do, fail. The casual observer might detect a substantial waste of money. Large sums, seemingly down the drain, with a not much greater success ratio than a blind brain surgeon. "Dr.! You just drilled a hole in the anesthesiologist!" Maybe the networks don't ultimately care, at least from a financial standpoint. Maybe they rely on some network version of an "R and D" tax write-off called: "The writers stunk it up. Again." It's good to have somebody to blame. And, unlike Albert Brooks in Lost In America , you may even get (at least a portion of) your gambling money back. Look, I know how hard it's very hard to pick a hit show. I read a book once, saying how Desperate Housewives, CSI and American Idol were all rejected when they were originally proposed. Seinfeld sneaked onto the air, surviving long enough for the "bad testing", normally a series' death sentence, to be proven incorrect. My issue is not the unfortunate decision-making. That's for the executives' bosses to evaluate. Though I'm not exactly clear on the standard they'd employ. NETWORK BOSS : "How can I rationalize keeping someone whose decision-making ability is so abysmal?" NETWORK UNDERLING : " You decided to hire me ." My beef with the television networks is narrowly defined: Creative interference. In my view, that interference takes a "slim to none" situation -- developing a potentially successful television series -- and turns it more closely, if not precisely, into "none." Here's the question: Why do smart people with beautifully fitting suits - I'm talking about network presidents -- allow -- nay, sir -- require their employees, who have no background or training in that area whatsoever, to, not personally respond to -- that, indeed, is their job -- but to dictate character adjustments and story "fixes" and to, God help us, pitch jokes to seasoned professionals who have engaged in exactly those activities their entire careers? The networks' response to those seasoned professionals appears to have been adopted from the mantra of the Child Care industry: "They can't go around unsupervised! " The response to that response? "How much has that supervision helped so far?" The networks are protected in this matter. We'll never know what we didn't get to see (because the networks preemptively shot it down, by dropping the show, or by picking it up but only after radical alterations). This precludes us from making comparisons with what we did get to see. What we do know, however, is how good (and successful) what we did get to see turned out to be. It's not a very dauntingly high bar. Moving on to this justification for network interference: "It's our money." I happen to be sensitive to this position. I can identify. Years ago, while renovating the crumbling craftsman bungalow we had purchased, Dr. M and I ran afoul of an architect who demanded that the house be remodeled according to his specifications rather than ours. We ultimately had to let the fellow go. The reason? "It's our money." (Also, it's our house. Which the network can argue as well - "It's our network." And now that they've been permitted ownership, they can throw in, "It's our show.") The difference? One: We knew what we wanted. (Networks want a hit show, but have no clue how to get one.) Two: Dr. M had done considerable research on craftsman bungalows. She was arguably more knowledgeable in that area than the architect. (Network executives may have a plethora of abilities, but few of them could ever be confused with experienced writers.) And three: The finished product was intended to satisfy, not an anonymous viewing audience, but us. And, returning us to Point Number One, We knew what we wanted. To which argument the networks might politely listen, and respond: "It's our money." Which brings me to my final point. It's their money. There are Business Affairs honchos, scrutinizing expenditures. There's a Board. There are shareholders. How do these people, the people whose money it really is, feel about the success levels delivered by the expensive efforts of Pilot Season? Say something, you guys! Or nothing ever is going to change. DISCLAIMER : If I've written about this before, forgive me. I'm still trying to have an effect. Earl Pomerantz's blog can be reached at earlpomerantz.blogspot.com More on CEOs
 
Alvaro Fernandez: Goldman Environmental Prize: Change the World, Change Your Brain Top
My wife and I just came back from an inspiring Goldman Prize Award ceremony, where seven grassroots environmental change-makers were recognized for their work and resiliency, and shared their passion and purpose with everyone attending the event. We did hear too from Al Gore, Tracy Chapman, Robert Redford, and the founder of the awards 20 years ago, Richard Goldman. The BBC recently published an Op-Ed by Mr. Goldman on the story behind the Awards themselves: article Here . He explains how... One morning in 1989, as I sat with my daily breakfast and newspaper, I read about the most recent Nobel laureates and wondered if there was a comparable award for environmental work. We asked a staff member at our foundation to do some research and he found that nothing yet existed to recognise environmental work on an international stage, thus the Goldman Prize was born. Our choice to focus specifically on grassroots environmental leaders was unique at the time. Mr. Goldman, and the seven winners, are clearly helping improve the state of the world. Now, the "state of the world" does include their very own brains - you may have seen this recent study on how Volunteer Program Provides Health Benefits To Older Women She and her colleagues found that EC volunteers showed greater improvements in memory and executive function than those who did not participate in the program. In fact, the older adults with the lowest baseline performance in these areas - those most at risk for health disparities - demonstrated the most significant gains. Both studies highlighted above show that everyday activity interventions (e.g., EC) can appeal to older adults' desires to remain socially engaged and productive in their post-retirement years. Simultaneously, these activities provide measurable physical and cognitive health benefits. Of course, those benefits do not accrue only for older adults (or just for women), but may help all of us gradually build Cognitive Reserves through the added novelty, variety and challenge. Talk about win/ win! Related articles on social entrepreneurship: "Everyone a Changemaker," Ashoka and Google Richard Dawkins and Alfred Nobel: beyond nature and nurture More on Retirement
 
Booting Crackdown Begins, 65,000 Cars Could Be Seized Top
Chicago is lowering the boom on motorists with two unpaid parking tickets older than one year after lowering the threshold for applying the Denver boot: 65,318 seizure notices have been mailed and 415 vehicles have been booted.
 
Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse: Prosecutors Say Teenage Somali Pirate Was Brazen Ringleader Of Crew Top
NEW YORK — Prosecutors say Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse was not shy about making his presence known on the Maersk Alabama, brazenly tearing through the ship in a way that belied his young age and skinny, 5-foot-2 frame. He was the first to board the ship, fired a shot at the captain, helped steal $30,000 in cash from a safe, and bragged about hijacking ships in the past, authorities said. But the swagger authorities say the 18-year-old displayed on the ship had evaporated by the time he entered a federal courtroom Tuesday to face a piracy charge that carries a mandatory life prison sentence. He is the first pirate charged in the United States in more than a century. The tough demeanor he was alleged to have shown on the high seas dissolved into audible sobs as his lawyers notified the court that they had spoken to his family in Somalia. When the judge asked him if he understood that court-appointed lawyers would represent him, the teenager responded through a translator: "I understand. I don't have any money." He still had a tattered white bandage on his left hand that resulted from getting stabbed by a sailor during the skirmish. His defense lawyers portrayed Muse as a frightened kid and not the violent pirate depicted by prosecutors. They believe he is 15 years old and should be given greater protections under international law because of his age and the circumstances of his situation, and predicted he would be exonerated. "As you can tell, he's extremely young, injured and terrified," lawyer Deirdre von Dornum said. Muse was charged with several counts, including piracy under the law of nations. That charge carries a mandatory penalty of life in prison. The decision by the federal government to bring Muse to justice here has thrust the teenager into international spotlight and has raised legal questions about whether the U.S. is going too far in trying to make an example of someone so young. Muse's age was called into question by differing accounts, but the judge who heard arguments about the issue ruled Tuesday that he can be tried as an adult. The government says he's 18. On Wednesday, his mother, Adar Abdirahman Hassan, reiterated that her son is 16. "I plead with the American judges not to commit an injustice against Abdiwali and hand down an unfair verdict on my son," Hassan said from her home in Galkayo town. Muse appeared in court as investigators released new details of the hijacking in a criminal complaint against the defendant, the oldest of 12 children and the son of parents who scraped together a few dollars a day in Somalia selling milk and tending to a small herd of camels, cows and goats. The complaint by FBI agent Steven E. Sorrells provided dramatic new details about the seizure of the ship and what transpired before three pirates were shot by U.S. snipers and Muse was captured. Sorrells said that the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, told him he fired multiple warning flares at the pirate boat to try to chase them away as they approached in the middle of the night April 8. The agent said Muse was the first pirate to board the boat when he climbed up a portable ladder, armed with a gun, as the boat was about 280 miles off the coast of Somalia. "From the deck of the Maersk Alabama, Muse fired his gun at the captain who was still in the bridge," Sorrells said. The bridge is an enclosed room in the rear of the ship that provides a view of the deck and the surrounding waters. The agent said Muse entered the room, told the captain to stop the ship and "conducted himself as the leader of the pirates." After the other pirates boarded the boat, three of them accompanied the captain to a safe where he took out about $30,000 in cash, which was then taken by the pirates, the agent said. Sorrells said the pirates held Phillips on a lifeboat for four days, with Muse telling the captain at one point that he had hijacked other ships before. But Muse wasn't the most savvy pirate. Investigators said Muse was tricked into leaving his weapon behind with fellow pirates when he went to hunt for other crew members. A crew member apparently told Muse the crew would be afraid to surrender if he was armed. With Muse searching the boat with a flashlight after the power was shut off by a crew member, one of them hid briefly and then tackled him, the agent said. Another crew member then helped tie Muse's hands with wire and took him to a room where other crew members were, Sorrells said. Later, Muse was freed when he and the other pirates left the boat with the captain to begin their four days on the lifeboat. After the captain tried to escape by jumping in the water, the pirates fired a gun at him and later tied him up and hit him, Sorrells said. The crew member who stabbed Muse said Tuesday that the teenager counted himself lucky to raid a U.S. ship and carried himself as the leader of the pirate gang. "He was surprised he was on a U.S. ship. He kept asking, `You all come from America?' Then he claps and cheers and smiles. He caught himself a big fish. He can't believe it," crewmember ATM "Zahid" Reza said. Muse planned to demand at least $3 million, Reza said. He said Muse told him it was his dream to come to America. "His dreams come true, but he comes to the U.S. not as a visitor, but as a prisoner," Reza said. The details of Muse's life are murky, with his parents in Somalia insisting he was tricked into getting involved in piracy. His mother said he was "wise beyond his years" _ a child who ignored other boys his age who tried to tease him and got lost in books instead. "The last time I saw him, he was in his school uniform," the teen's mother, Adar Abdirahman Hassan, 40, told The Associated Press by telephone Tuesday from her home in Galkayo. "He was brainwashed. People who are older than him outwitted him, people who are older than him duped him." Omar Jamal, executive director of Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, said his Somali immigrant organization made contact with family members of the pirates during the hostage standoff. Muse's family members "don't have any money. The father has some camels and cows and goats outside the city. ... The father goes outside with the livestock and comes home at night. Father said they don't have any money, they are broke," Jamal said. Muse's mother sells milk at a small market every day, saving around $6 every month for school fees for her oldest son. She pays $15 a month in rent. Jamal said his organization was working to get a lawyer for Muse and to find if he has medical or mental problems. "What we have is a confused teenager, overnight thrown into the highest level of the criminal justice system in the United States out of a country where there's no law at all," Jamal said. Alfred P. Rubin, a professor of international law at Tufts University who wrote a book on piracy, said there had not been a major pirate prosecution in the United States since 1885, when the American ship Ambrose Light was attacked by pirates. Reza, the West Hartford, Conn., crew member who stabbed Muse, plans to testify against him in his trial, but hopes not to see him. "No, I don't want to see him. Not at all. I hate his face. I could have died," Reza said. ___ Associated Press writers Katie Nelson in West Hartford, Conn.; Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, Somalia; and Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report. More on Somalia
 
Deepak Chopra: Earth Day Message Top
I'm calling all my friends on Earth Day to just remind them that the earth is recycling in our bodies. Through our rivers and waters are our circulation, its atmosphere is our breath, its trees are our lungs. We call it the environment, but that's the wrong word. It's our extended body. We have a personal body and we have a universal body, and they're both equally ours. When we have that experience and knowledge, it will become impossible for us to hurt the earth and for us in turn to be hurt by it. So my friends, don't choose the word 'environment"; look at the earth as your mother from where you were born, and also remember that all its beautiful forests, its flowers and gardens, its trees, its atmosphere, its rivers--they're all a part of our own biological organism. Love it and love your body, and you will feel exhilarated just by that emotion. Thank you, and God bless. Listen to the audio of the Earth Day Message More on Earth Day
 
Hillary Newman : Claim Your Land: Start A Kitchen Garden With Free Seeds Top
Like most others obsessed with the Obamas , I watched with fascination as the First Lady took shovel in hand to prepare the White House Kitchen garden . Watching her, I thought about what we, America, could all learn from Michelle's "Victory Garden." In a time when Americans feel the economy is careening out of control, the First Lady has reminded us that as individuals, we can control some aspects of our lives through good old roll-up-your-sleeves attitude. Creating a vegetable garden produces connectivity to the earth as well as a grounding sense of stability, sustainability and independence. To help spread the message, Wal-Mart and Ferry-Morse Seed Company have teamed up to send the first 500 readers of this article three packets of starter seeds. Be one of the first 500 people to complete and send in the form below, and start your own Victory Garden. When my twin brother, Jordan, and I fled 3,000 miles from home to attend college, my parents fell deep into a mid-life crisis. As a result, they purchased and developed Jorian Hill, an organic vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County. Whether it is growing grapes or tending to the extensive vegetables and herbs garden, I have learned the satisfaction that comes from nurturing seedlings into full-grown plants and enjoying the fruits (and vegetables!) of my labor.   I was interested in gaining insight into the recent buzz around gardening. Ferry-Morse saw an increase in sales and vegetable and herb seeds in 2008. This trend has continued in 2009. In addition to Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot and Tractor Supply Company are Ferry-Morse's biggest clients. Wal-Mart has also seen growing interest in gardening products. David Ortiz, Senior Category Director, Horticulture, for Wal-Mart Stores in the U.S., explains, "the rising interest in this type of gardening is an indication that everyday shoppers are changing their behaviors in the current economic climate -- learning to save money in new ways large and small." In addition to gardening products, Wal-Mart has felt an increasing interest in local produce . Wal-Mart plans to increase their partnerships with local farmers to meet the growing demands. According to Wal-Mart , gardening is not region specific, "but a nationwide trend. In every region we see more consumers buying and preparing for grown-at-home vegetables or herbs, and certainly this is evident as soon as it arrives in our stores. We've also seen an increase in purchases of container gardens - it's not just an interest limited to rural areas." During the past four years, my family and I have experienced the benefits of gardening. Not only is producing our own food a rewarding feeling, gardening has huge positive impacts on the environment. Supporting locally grown organic veggies reduces the importation of produce from overseas, a particularly carbon heavy activity. With statistics like, approximately 127 million adults in the U.S are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese , it is no secret that America needs to change Her diet. Vegetable gardens offer fresh and pure ingredients without added toxins, hormones, and/or pesticides. My family and I experiment with all sorts of heirloom vegetables that we can't find at markets. In addition to environmental and health benefits, vegetable gardens help reduce those weekly grocery costs. "Americans have decided to grow their own groceries. For every $1 invested in vegetable and herb seeds - the return is $40 in nutritious and delicious homegrown vegetables. Vegetable gardening is also very popular due to current economic conditions that lead to the need for 'staycation' activities," observes Hamrick, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Ferry-Morse . Thanks to Michelle and the rest of the Obama fmaily, the vegetable garden has become a hip way to express one's self-reliance; some might even call it downright patriotic. Vegetable gardens are no longer just for Renaissance Fairs , or for people who live on farms . Today, gardens are for people who want to save money on fresh produce, reduce their impact on the environment and desire health benefits. So now what? Before you leap to find the shovel and gloves buried in your garage, send this on to as many people as you can and ask them to get their hands dirty and reclaim their land. Be one of the first 500 readers to fill out the information below and receive three packs of seeds to begin your own garden. Loading... Twitter: Ecowarriorr Gardening tips from Ferry-Morse Seed Company : Almost all vegetables need full sun -- from morning through the end of the day. Soil must be well drained. Add organic material, such as Jiffy Seed Starting Mix to the soil and dig in. Mulch garden area. Water at soil level, at least 1" of water per week. Keep leaves dry, or water in morning if using sprinklers. For stronger seedlings, start your seeds indoors with Jiffy Seed Starting products. When transplanting, make sure to "harden off" your plants by placing them outdoors during the day and bringing them in at night for about 3 to 5 days before placing in your garden. Other tips can be found at www.Ferry-Morse.com Seeds will be sent May 1st. More on Earth Day
 
Matt Dentler: Greener Movie Viewing Top
We live in a Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon world. Americans want access to more content and information than ever before, and they want it now. However, it's also become increasingly difficult to access that content in conventional ways. The brick-and-mortar stores are evaporating, and a night-out to the multiplex requires more time and energy (and money) than ever before. If this cinema-seeking culture is trying to also remain carbon-conscious, then perhaps video-on-demand could be its salvation. That's why, in honor of this year's Earth Day, we're highlighting a selection of eco-friendly feature films through a medium that provides hardly any carbon footprint. All you need is the power you use from a computer, or a hi-def television. No paper tickets, no gas/oil usage, no extra air conditioning, and no energy-sucking snack bar (unless that's what you have in your home but that's another matter). So, you and the environment win: having immediate access to entertainment while simultaneously saving the trees and preserving the oil. We put all breed of films online this way every day, but we're hoping that a few environmental features can provide both education and entertainment. For example, Joey Carey and JJ Beck's documentary Greasy Rider is more than your ordinary road trip film. Beck and Carey take a 1981 Mercedes Benz, running on vegetable oil, across our great nation while interviewing eco-thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and Morgan Freeman. You don't have to get inside any car to see the film now, as it's available for free on Hulu and SnagFilms . Seemingly every day, we see news stories about the energy crisis. Through independent film, however, it seems like a topic as common as "Peak Oil" can take on new meaning and greater depth. That's certainly the case with Adolfo Doring's Blind Spot , a haunting look at our world's dependency on burning fossil fuels. You can watch it now on Dailymotion , and take action by doing more than emailing a petition; you can send cinema. Documentaries have always been a source of education and activism, but in today's connected online climate, there are more tools and more power at one's finger tips. The stories can be as big as the entire globe, or as personal as a natural spring in Austin, TX. In Laura Dunn's award-winning documentary, The Unforeseen , folks like Robert Redford and Willie Nelson speak out about the destruction of hill country in the Lone Star State as real estate developers move in to tear down. No terrain destruction needed to see the film; it's now on iTunes and Amazon VOD. Sometimes, though, the stories of environmental plight can be satirical and amusing. That's the case with Mark Leiren-Young's The Green Chain , a faux-documentary about a controversial battle between loggers and environmentalists in the woods of Canada. Shot like The Office , the film divides story lines from various perspectives to offer a holistic look into the issue of deforestation. The entire feature film, a hit at many festivals, is now streaming for free on YouTube . If anything, these tales highlight just how many lives are impacted by environmental debates. Not only that, Earth Day isn't just an American event, nor should it be the only day of the year we consider our carbon. Media is quickly becoming more efficient in its production, so why not implement the same thoughts in its distribution? More on Earth Day
 
Bobby Rush: A Black Panther In Cuba Top
Rep. Bobby Rush says he was a little unsure of himself when he first arrived at Fidel Castro's house in Cuba. The retired Communist dictator enthusiastically extended his hand and said, "Bobby, welcome to my home!" Rush was stunned. "It was kinda awkward," The Illinois Democrat told the Huffington Post. "I couldn't say 'Mr. President'" -- Castro installed his brother Raúl as president of Cuba in 2006 -- "so I called him Mr. Fidel." Rush and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus made waves with their visit to Cuba during the April recess, during which they met with both Castros. Rush said that Raúl Castro told him the "Cuban military and American military have been in discussions and having monthly meetings for a number of years now" (something Raúl also told actor Sean Penn). And the ailing Fidel Castro was very eager to talk Christianity, comparing the spread of Christianity to the Communist revolution. The trip was billed as an opportunity to look at expanded trade opportunities . After the visit, members of the delegation called for the U.S. to relax its trade embargo with Cuba. In a Wednesday blog item on the Huffington Post , Rush argues for expanded trade with the island nation. The congressman's subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection will hold a hearing about trade relations with Cuba next Monday, April 27. "We got a market in need of American goods and services 90 miles off our shore," Rush said. "We're approaching the main rainy season and the Cuban people are in desperate need of building supplies after damage caused by the recent hurricane...They own half a million damaged homes. American-manufactured supplies and equipment would have immediate impact." President Obama has moved toward liberalizing its Cuba policy, announcing relaxed restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans before attending the Summit of the Americas last week. But the administration stopped short of fully lifting the embargo. Cuba isn't exactly a democratically elected government, after all, and it sports a record of human rights abuses. And plenty of members of Congress oppose relaxing the Cuba blockade. Three Democratic members of the House wrote a letter last week urging the president not to allow unlimited remittances to family members in Cuba, saying the Cuban government's skimming of payments means the payments facilitate "the regime's finance of its repressive state security apparatus." Rush brushes off that kind of criticism with the glass-houses argument. "I don't believe in pontificating from a platform of superiority. Every time you point a finger it's pointed right back at you," he said. "I'm a person who can bear witness to significant human rights violations right here in America. In my own state there is strong, convincing evidence that there were people on death row who were tortured." As a founding member of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, Rush likes to tout revolutionary roots of his own. Castro told him he admired the Black Panthers' attitude toward human rights. Human rights in Cuba were not a prime topic of conversation at Castro's place, which Rush describes as a modest ranch house. ("It's almost like he's living in bungalow on Carpenter Avenue" in Chicago, Rush said. The delegation that visited Mr. Fidel's house chatted religion, literature, and U.S. Politics. Castro was wearing Wilson athletic gear. "He spends most of his days reading right and thinking," Rush said. "He's a person who is keenly aware of what's going on in the States. He predicted Obama would win because of his message." Rush was surprised to hear Castro talk about religion. "He talked a lot about Christianity, about Jesus, about how the Christian experience has been a revolutionary experience. It changed the world and endured over the years. Compared to 50 years of communist revolution in Cuba -- it doesn't compare." "I think he's accepted the practice of religion in Cuba," Rush said. The congressman said he not only visited church on the island, but actually delivered a sermon through an interpreter. "I preached at a Baptist church on Palm Sunday," he said. "I could have been in a Baptist church on the south side of Chicago." The congregants were "very much enthusiastic and it was the same order of service that you would experience in any Baptist church in America." Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Cuba
 
David Fiderer: IMF Numbers Show a Great Economic Hole That Will Frame Partisan Debate Top
The headline, "2008 profits plunge 85% for top 500 US firms," is largely about three wards of the state. AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, together lost $208 billion. Add in the losses at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which totaled $56 billion, and the cumulative 2008 profits at the 495 remaining companies in the Fortune 500, were largely eclipsed. The total net among all 500 was $99 billion. Those 2008 losses dwarf the positive results reported by banks this past week, which, as HuffPo's Julie Satow points out, were largely driven by accounting adjustments and one-time transactions. Those first-quarter profits may turn out to be a rounding error, if the estimates set forth in the International Monetary Fund's Global Stability Report prove to be correct. Nobody has a good take on the ultimate costs of the mortgage crisis, but the IMF believes the size of the problem is about double the amount estimated six months earlier. U.S. banks, which had $510 billion in write-downs through year-end 2008, can expect to write down another $550 billion in 2009 and 2010. As for the entire U.S. financial sector, the IMF calculated credit losses six months ago to be in the neighborhood of about $1.4 trillion. Now the number is $2.7 trillion. As we see, most of the downward slide in the U.S. was attributable to home mortgages and consumer debt. We are stuck with those losses whether we follow the policy direction set forth by Timothy Geithner, or Paul Krugman, or Elizabeth Warren. No serious person, and no one at the IMF, doubts that governments need to aggressively intervene to prop up the financial system, and that the cost of such intervention will be a drag on government finances for years to come. The IMF estimates that by the end of 2010 we will have spent 12.1% of our GDP on stabilizing the banks and the financial sector. Ireland's debt, as a percentage of GDP, will almost double. It is what Barney Frank called, "The great economic hole." These numbers tell us all we need to know for the next two election cycles. Republicans and their allies will play off of resentment of the bailout, arguing that the financial costs are the result of the liberals' tax-and-spend policies, and that Obama's deficits dwarf those from the early Bush years. That effort is well under way at the tea party network, Fox News. Some notables at CNBC are also prone to echoing that sentiment. The President and other Democrats will note that they are forced to clean up the mess created by their Republican predecessors. But memories can be short and patience will wear thin. And Republicans are intent on revising the past with three recurring narratives: 1. Blaming the cause of the mortgage crisis on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 2. Blaming the Democrats for insulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from regulatory oversight, and 3. Claiming that subprime lending ran amok because of the Community Reinvestment Act. Barney Frank gave a speech on the House floor to set the record straight. "I do not argue that we are facing a vast right-wing conspiracy," he said. "What we are dealing with is something, however, equally troubling. It is crass right-wing mendacity. It is systematic dishonesty, lying, distortions, misrepresentations, bad history being promulgated." Rep. Frank was talking about hit pieces like this one, fabricated by Bret Baier for Special Report on Fox News. The segment has gone viral, with 4.3 million hits on Youtube. For a definitive refutation, read Barney's Frank's speech . More on Timothy Geithner
 
Dunnings 'Shocked' When Stroger Fired Her As Cook County CFO Top
CHICAGO (AP) - Former Cook County chief financial officer Donna Dunnings says she was shocked when County Board President Todd Stroger fired her for her dealings with a former secretary. Dunnings told the Chicago Sun-Times she never had a physical relationship with Tony Cole, who was hired in October and later fired after it was learned he had a criminal background. Stroger has said he was forced to ask for Dunnings' resignation when it was revealed she had bailed Cole out of jail. He said he feared county board members would make an issue of the situation. Dunnings said she harbored no ill will toward Stroger, even though the move will leave her without health insurance. Dunnings suffers from multiple sclerosis and is a single mother of two girls _ one of which is seriously ill. Information from: Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/index -ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Kathy Freston: An Earth Day Reflection On The Breathtaking Effects Of Cutting Back On Meat Top
My first post on the effect of eating meat on the environment provoked quite a bit of discussion, so in honor of Earth Day, I thought I should follow up with more information about how our natural resources (e.g., air, water, and soil) are depleted and devastated by animal agriculture. Of course, Earth Day is also a good time to remember that animal agriculture only exists at these levels because people are purchasing vast quantities of chicken, beef, pork, and fish. The market for meat (i.e., we, the consumers) drives the depletion and destruction. * Excrement produced by chickens, pigs, and other farm animals: 16.6 billion tons per year - more than a million pounds per second (that's 60 times as much as is produced by the world's human population - f armed animals produce more waste in one day than the U.S. human population produces in 3½ years ). This excrement is a major cause of air and water pollution. According to the United Nations: "The livestock sector is... the largest sectoral source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, 'dead' zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many others." * Water used for farmed animals and irrigating feed crops: 240 trillion gallons per year- 7.5 million gallons per second (that's enough for every human to take 8 showers a day, or as much as is used by Europe, Africa, and South America combined). According to the UN: "[t]he water used by the sector exceeds 8 percent of the global human water use." As just one example, "[O]n average 990 litres of water are required to produce one litre of milk." So drinking milk instead of tap water requires almost 1,000 times as much water. * Emissions of greenhouse gases from raising animals for food: The equivalent of 7.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the UN report . Concludes the UN: "The livestock sector is... responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions." That's about 40 percent more than all the cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships in the world combined (transport is 13%). And "The sector emits 37% of anthropogenic methane (with 23 times the global warming potential--or GWP--of CO2)... It emits 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (with 296 times the GWP of CO2). These figures are based on the power of these gases over 100 years; in fact, over 20 years--a more important timeframe for dealing with global warming--methane and nitrous oxide are 72 times and 289 times more warming than CO2. And Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC (which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore) has been saying that the 18% figure is probably an underestimate. * It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein. * Soil erosion due to growing livestock feed: 40 billion tons per year (or 6 tons/year for every human being on the planet--of course if you don't eat meat, none of this is attributed to you; if you're in the U.S. where we eat lots more meat than most of the world, your contribution is many times greater than 6 tons/year). About 60% of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, making waterways more prone to flooding and to contamination from soil's fertilizers and pesticides. Erosion increases the amount of dust carried by wind, polluting the air and carrying infection and disease. * Land used to raise animals for food: 10 billion acres . According to the UN: "In all, livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet." And "70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder." And "About 20 percent of the world's pastures and rangelands, with 73 percent of rangelands in dry areas, have been degraded to some extent, mostly through overgrazing, compaction and erosion created by livestock action." * According to the UN, animal agriculture is a leading case of water pollution . The main water pollutants in the US are sediments and nutrients. Animal agriculture is responsible for 55 percent of the erosion that causes sedimentation, and for a third of the main nutrient pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorous. On top of that, animal agriculture is the source of more than a third of the United States' water pollution from pesticides, and half of its water pollution from antibiotics. * Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems. * Grain and corn raised for livestock feed that could otherwise feed people, according to the UN: 836 million tons per year (note that the more commonly used figure, 758 million tons, is metric). That's more than 7 times the amount used for biofuels and is much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty, and the number doesn't even include the fact that almost all of the global soy crop (about 240 million tons of soy) is also fed to chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals. * An American saves more global warming pollution by going vegan than by switching their car to a hybrid Prius. * Razing the Amazon rainforest for pasture and feed crops: 5 million acres of Amazon per year. Former Amazon rainforest converted to raising animals for food since 1970 is more than 90% of all Amazon deforestation since 1970. * According to the UN: "Indeed, the livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity..." And "[l]ivestock now account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth's land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife." And "Conservation International has identified 35 global hotspots for biodiversity, characterized by exceptional levels of plant endemism and serious levels of habitat loss. Of these, 23 are reported to be affected by livestock production. An analysis of the authoritative World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows that most of the world's threatened species are suffering habitat loss where livestock are a factor." United Nations scientists, in their 408-page indictment of the meat industry, sum up these statistics, pointing out that the meat industry is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity." Perhaps it's time to explore vegetarianism. Click here for tips. Happy Eating! United Nations statistics and quotes come from the FAO report "Livestock's Long Shadow." Other statistics come from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Pimentel & Pimentel, 2003); the World Bank (Marglis, "Causes of Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon," 2004); and Earth Interactions Journal (Eshel & Martin, "Diet, Energy, and Global Warming," 2006). Other non-attributed statistics were calculated by Noam Mohr, a physicist at New York University Polytechnic Institute. More on Earth Day
 
Dave Hollander: John Salley: The Best Damn PETA Celebrity Period Top
Former NBA Champion and jovial sports talk show host John Salley advocates for healthier eating, theorizes why Charles Barkley got so fat and set his terms for posing nude. You have embarked on a mission to convert Chicago school kids to vegetarianism. Chicago is well known for its steak houses and is a one of the hot dog capitols of the World. What is your strategy going in to this uphill battle? Uhm, we got canceled today from the [Chicago] school board. They decided not to have us involved. So now we're tying to figure out if we can take 2,000 of the burgers we have to the Boys and Girls Club. 2,000 burgers? Yeah, we had like 2,000 or something veggie burgers and the [Chicago School Board] decided to cancel like a half an hour before I was supposed to speak. What I want to do is tell people there is an alternative. I'm starting a program now for life enhancement. I see it as my job is to tell people the truth and let them make a decision after. That's fair enough. When and why did you become a strict vegetarian? I am a vegan . It took me 15 years to do that. I decided to learn how to better enhance my life, everyone else kept wanting to detox. I was trying to figure out how to live longer. Everybody in my family died of cancer, how I was gonna be the one who escaped that. And then I found out cancer is something that your body develops. Obviously I was gonna give my body food and water and oxygen, the three things that kill disease. When I found out that the foods we were eating weren't foods that came out of the ground -- they were foods that came out of a plant, a factory -- I did even more research. I'm a history guy, and what I found out when we became an industrial country they had to make industrial food. So, they made us addicted, all of us, addicted to sugar, which made us addicted to alcohol, which makes us addicted to cigarettes, which makes us addicted to drugs and then they give you drugs to counteract that, and your life expectancy is short. Everyone thinks at 40 you go downhill at 60 you retire and at 70 you die. That's not necessarily true. The NBA playoffs are here. Which teams and players do you suspect suffer from excessive meat consumption? WOW. I would say most of them, if not all of them. Most athletes have no idea how to eat. Most athletes have no idea that they're suffering -- proven fact. When you look at guys with bodies like Charles Barkley, Rich Mahorn, Patrick Ewing -- you see how big Patrick Ewing's gotten? They think when you get older you get fat. That's not true. Not true. So it has to be that they can't develop they can't get rid of the ... (pauses) ... I went to a couple of these guys and told them I would help them. I weighed 249 lbs when I won the NBA championship in 1989. Today, I am 4 lbs heavier than I was 20 years ago, but I went up to 290 I had the high cholesterol and nearing dangerously high blood pressure and everybody in my family has diabetes and all that, fucking bullshit. You don't have to be like that. I was a vegetarian until I realized that -- how can I say -- I don't eat the animal but I eat the things that come out of the animal's ass; the egg. I mean, people eat the spoiled milk of a cow that a calf won't even eat. I mean a cow won't even drink that and I'm feeding it to my kids? That's crazy . So I decided I wasn't doing that. I gave that up. Now you're working with PETA? I work along side of them. I work with myself. I started "John Salley Foods" and I've got a couple other people I'm in business with. I did a PSA and PETA liked my message about the food. Many athletes and celebrities have felt so strongly about the work PETA does that they have posed naked to bring attention to the cause. When will you bare all for the greater glory of vegans? Their conversation is about animals. My conversation is about health. So there won't be any Amanda Beard moment for John Salley? Oh, I would love to show my body off, but when I do I'm gonna get paid for it.
 
Rep. Bobby Rush: My Hopes and Dreams for the People of Cuba Top
A lot has been said and written about my recent trip to Cuba with my colleagues from the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. While much of the initial media interest rightfully focused on the historic meeting with former Cuban President Fidel Castro, on April 7, along with my colleagues CBC Chair Barbara Lee and Rep. Laura Richardson, that event marked the end of a productive, five-day series of meetings on America's trade relationship with Cuba. Because I chair a subcommittee that will hold the first congressional hearing that will further examine the status of America's trade relationship with Cuba, I am taking this opportunity to share with you the proverbial 'rest of the story.' While it is true that I enthusiastically support the Obama Administration's recent announcement of progressive policy changes that ease travel restrictions for Cuban Americans, allows cash remittances from Cuban Americans to family members in Cuba and provides American telecommunications providers the opportunity to establish cable and satellite telecommunications facilities that link the U.S. and Cuba, I believe much more is needed. Far from being ill informed, as some voices on the right have suggested, my views on the inevitable forward march of democracy in Cuba is shared by a diverse, bipartisan array of House and Senate leaders. My support for an expanded trade relationship with Cuba goes back several years. Most notably, the vote I cast in support of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, a bill signed into law by President Clinton in October, 2000, that lifted sanctions on sales of agricultural commodities and medicine. While our party suffered an epic loss of the White House only a few weeks later, within five years after that bill became law, total sales of farm products to Cuba dramatically increased from virtually zero to $380 million by 2005. Imagine what more could have been achieved over the last eight years if our federal government had monitored and bolstered this modest improvement in a trade relationship that has steadily thawed since the near, half century old U. S. embargo was established. But don't just imagine, read. Read, as I have, the committee report produced in February, 2009, by my colleague from my neighboring state of Indiana, Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the Ranking Member on the U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Lugar's report details the results of a trip by one of his staff members to Cuba, in January of this year, which produced findings remarkably similar to those of a politically diverse group of leading think tanks and experts on U.S.-Cuba policy. In part, the report said, "Economic sanctions are a legitimate tool of U.S. foreign policy, and they have sometimes achieved their aims, as in the case of apartheid South Africa. After 47 years, however, the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of 'bringing democracy to the Cuban people.'" I believe, strongly, that now is the time for the forward march of justice to take root so that it might bear fruit in the form of economic prosperity and democratic freedom for the people of Cuba. Yes, my hopes for Cuba include democratic freedoms. While this issue was not a major focus of this trip, it is certainly a concern of mine and other members of our delegation. The fact is that I did meet with many Afro Cubans during our meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro. Last week, when I returned to my district, I spoke to a capacity Latin American audience where I, once again, heard moving stories of their struggles for equality, a struggle that mirrors our nation's civil rights legacy. I am absolutely convinced that the injustices that have been visited upon the citizens of Cuba will be addressed and that they will be addressed quickly. As my staff and I engage in further dialogue on this subject with the Obama Administration, we are raising the question as to whether a portion of the $1.1 trillion commitment made during the recent G-20 summit could be targeted to Cuba as part of a multi-lateral effort to increase trade with Cuba, directly, or within the region. While Cuba is not the poorest country in the region, an approach like this might allow the U. S. to further strengthen Cuba's trade climate without having a direct, bi-lateral arrangement with Cuba. It is my fervent belief that by expanding trade, especially Internet-based technologies in Cuba, greater respect for human rights and the plight of Cuban dissidents will be addressed because the voice of the Cuban people will be amplified throughout the world. It's worth noting that in the sound byte-driven media culture we live in I've only been asked once, by a reporter, about the plight of Afro Cubans but my answer got lost on the cutting room floor. On April 27, I will chair a congressional hearing on the status of America's trade relationship with Cuba. That hearing is just the beginning of a series of steps I intend to take to open up markets for U. S. commerce--especially among small, minority- and women-owned businesses. A trade relationship will also help to shine a spotlight on the plight of those who suffer under a regime that remains repressive in many ways. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to standing up for human rights--anyone's human rights, and I marvel at how far we've come. I speak from experience including what I now consider a privilege to have once been targeted by an unjust U. S. Justice Department when it was led by the infamous J. Edgar Hoover. Today, our nation is led by a man whose home remains in my congressional district, but who occupies public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And we have a man of the caliber of Attorney General Eric Holder, a brilliant legal scholar whose unbiased sense of justice led him to dismiss charges against a former member of Congress. It wasn't too long ago that people like me were called the dreamers for our far-fetched ideas that change could come to America. Under our new President, we're standing on the threshold of the shadow of global change brought about by those of us, of all races, who dared to dream the dream when it put our lives at risk to do so. My abiding hope and prayer for the people of Cuba is that they, too, will soon experience their long hoped for dream for democracy, justice and economic prosperity. More on Cuba
 
Hollywood Reporter Throwdown! Industry Watchers Trash Each Other Top
"Along come the blogs, and now they share that agenda with us," said Neil Stiles, the publisher of the Variety Group. "There's no question about that." "The agenda of the day," he added, thinking aloud, "where we once had that on our own, we now share that." Of course, they're not all sharing nicely.
 
Chris Jepson: Lindsay Lohan's New Man? Top
Lindsay Lohan seems to have finally broken up with Samantha Ronson, and according to few new reports Lohan is back to dating men, namely one man: Chris Jepson. The NY Post reports that Lohan, who cannot get a job because she's not insurable, has hooked up with Jepson, whom they identify as a "British paparazzo": On April 15, Lohan and Jepson were inseparable at a Hollywood Hills house party. According to a spy, they even went into a bathroom together and didn't come out for quite some time. Meanwhile Life & Style sent out a similar story linking the two, but identifying Jepson as "a manager at Bungalow 8" in London: On April 15, Life & Style can exclusively reveal, Lindsay hooked up with a guy at a house party in LA. "His name is Chris Jepson, and he's British," an insider close to the 22-year-old star tells Life & Style. "Lindsay's mom, Dina, has even met him. He seems like a good guy. Lindsay's family is very happy she's moved on from Samantha Ronson." At the party, Lindsay certainly didn't seem broken up about her split with Sam. "At one point, she took Chris' hand and disappeared into the bathroom with him for 45 minutes," says a partygoer. "People were knocking on the door, but she wouldn't come out." No word what he does, but a google of the name Chris Jepson reveals a MySpace page for a "London Based photographer" - who is 41. More on Lindsay Lohan
 
Bruce Friedrich: It's Time to Enjoy More Soy: April is National Soy Foods Month Top
If you don't normally eat healthy soy-based foods, including tofu, tempeh, miso, edamame, and even veggie burgers and soy milk, this month, National Soy Foods Month, is a good time to start. Soy foods are cholesterol-free, low in saturated fat, and packed with protein and essential amino acids. Unlike meat, eggs, and dairy products, which are known to cause heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers, soy foods have been shown to help protect against cardiovascular problems, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases . According to a study conducted by UCLA, people who consume soy may even have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Research also shows that soy consumption can help prevent strokes, that menopausal women who eat soy may have fewer hot flashes, and that soy consumption can protect against osteoporosis. A study from Clinical and Experimental Allergy suggests that the antioxidants in soy may also benefit asthma sufferers. Cancer As John Robbins has written , "in 1997, the American Institute for Cancer Research, in collaboration with its international affiliate, the World Cancer Research Fund, issued a major international report, Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. This report analyzed more than 4,500 research studies, and its production involved the participation of more than 120 contributors and peer reviewers, including participants from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Agency on Research in Cancer, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute. In 2000, Riva Bitrum, the President of Research for the American Institute for Cancer Research, said that 'Studies showing consistently that just one serving a day of soyfoods contributes to a reduction in cancer risk are encouraging. Consuming one serving of soyfoods is a step most individuals would not find too difficult to take.'" Numerous studies have shown that women who eat soy are less likely to develop breast cancer. Just recently, in fact, the National Cancer Institute released the results of a new study suggesting that young girls who eat soy foods are less likely to develop breast cancer as they get older. Another National Cancer Institute study conducted in 2006 found that women who ate the most soy-based foods early in life reduced their chances of breast cancer by 58 percent. Several other studies show a similar correlation between soy intake and breast cancer rates. Many health experts believe that women who eat a typical Western diet--high in meat, fat, and sugar--have a much higher risk of breast cancer compared to women who eat a typical Asian diet--high in soy and vegetables. Heart Disease More from Robbins : "In 2000, the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association published a major statement in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation, officially recommending the inclusion of 25 grams or more of soy protein, with its associated phytochemicals intact (i.e., not in the form of an isolated soy protein supplement), in the daily diet as a means of promoting heart health. This recommendation is consistent with the FDA's recent ruling allowing soy protein products to carry the health claim: '25 grams/day of soy protein, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.'" Super Soy Soy foods are not only nutritious, they're delicious and versatile. Soy products can be used in everything from stir fries and smoothies to cheeseburgers and cheesecakes. While a healthy diet should consist of a variety of vegan foods, including lentils, beans, fruits, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and whole grains, it's also wise to enjoy wholesome soy foods on a regular basis. For vegetarian recipes, product suggestions, and tips on preparing soy, see www.VegCooking.com . Have a happy National Soy Foods Month!
 

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