Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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Swine Flu Quarantines Planning Memo Sent Out By Department Of Homeland Security Top
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to some health care providers noting procedures to be followed if the swine flu outbreak eventually makes quarantines necessary. DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the swine flu memo, which was obtained by CBSNews.com, on Monday night. It says: "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines." More on Swine Flu
 
GOP Senator To Specter: At Least I Don't Have To Campaign In Erie For You Anymore Top
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) met briefly with his former Republican colleagues Tuesday at their weekly lunch after announcing that he was leaving the party. "We didn't have as energetic a meeting as we might typically have," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) after the gathering, in a bit of an understatement. But Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) did find the silver lining, Specter told reporters. "Senator Cochran said at least he wouldn't have to go to Erie anymore to campaign for me," said Specter to a round of laughter -- chuckling probably not shared by Erie residents who might wonder what's so wonderful about Mississippi. Though Cochran won't be forced to go to Erie for campaign stops, Specter told the Huffington Post, Cochran was welcome there any time. "He can go on his own now," said Specter. Two Republican senators said they would take up Specter on his offer to return campaign contributions. Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee, said they wanted their money back, Post Politics reported . "Sen. Specter said he would return contributions made to him in this cycle, upon request. That's the right thing for him to do, and we will request a refund," Alexander said in a statement. Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Arlen Specter
 
Robert Creamer: The First 100 Days - How Obama Scores on the Nine Qualities of Leadership Top
At 100 days, the political vital signs of President Obama and his administration are robust. The averages of public polls published by Pollster.com show the President's job approval at 62.2 percent. Sixty-four percent of the voters view him favorably, and only 26.8 percent unfavorably. More remarkably - even in the midst of the worst economic downturn in a half-century - 50.9 percent now think the country is on the right track. That is a massive turnaround in sentiment from the almost 85 percent last October that thought the country was on the wrong track. What accounts for these terrific numbers? In his first 100 days, Barack Obama has consistently scored very highly on each of the nine qualities that voters use to evaluate leaders. 1). Is Obama on my side? This is the threshold question of all politics. Voters want to know that when the chips are down, a candidate or leader will understand them and stand up for them. Obama has done an outstanding job of communicating empathy for everyday Americans, and willingness to take on special interests on their behalf. His focus on health care, education and energy has demonstrated to average voters that he understands their real world concerns. And his demand for change in the way things are done in Washington resonates with average people who think that those with wealth and power have stacked the "business as usual" deck against them. On this critical parameter, Obama's only vulnerability has been a nagging fear that his Treasury Department's attempts to rescue the financial system go too far to bail out the Wall Street types, whose sense of entitlement and reckless risk-taking led the country over a financial cliff. The AIG bonus scandal crystallized that feeling. So far Obama has managed to stay on the right side of that divide. It's critical that he stay there. 2). Does Obama have strongly-held values - or is he just a "typical" politician who does whatever he thinks will help him politically? Voters want leaders who are strongly committed to core values - and every day they see a President who meets that test. Obama frames everything he says in terms of traditional progressive American values. And he does more than talk. He believes in those values, and his actions reflect it. In his first week of office he ended torture - no exceptions. He called Americans to a new era of responsibility and sacrifice. He has demonstrated an uncompromising commitment to equality and to the principle that every child should have the same opportunity to live up to their greatest potential. Every day Obama gives voters a sense that he is centered - and that he will doggedly defend the things he believes in. That centeredness is one of his most powerful political assets. 3). Is Obama a strong, effective leader? Voters don't just want leaders who are on their side, they want leaders who get things done. Obama's success at moving elements of his program has contributed mightily to the voters' view that the country is on the right track - and that he is doing a good job. His ability to work with Congress to pass an economic recovery package, his budget, equal pay for women, and expansion of the health care for children have given people a sense that he knows how to get things done. Voters have also watched him succeed in improving America's reputation around the world. But Obama is keenly aware that in the end it's not just the "sizzle," it's the steak . By this time next year, they will expect to see concrete improvements in their lives. Obama knows he will ultimately be measured by his success in actually improving the economy for everyday Americans. His administration is focused like a laser on making that happen. He said himself, that if he fails to do that he will be a one-term President. 4). Does Obama have Self-Confidence? Voters want leaders who have confidence in themselves. God knows Obama exudes confidence - genuine confidence, not the kind that morphs into arrogance - but the kind that allows him to listen to different points of view and then make decisions. It's the kind of confidence that allows him to shake hands with Hugo Chavez and know he's not going to be "taken advantage of." Obama has the kind of confidence that we loved in the movie character James Bond: cool under fire - capable of dispatching a dozen bad guys, all without mussing his tuxedo. The quintessential "self-confidence" moment of his first 100 days came during the episode with the Somali pirates. Right-wing talk show hosts brayed that he was exhibiting a "pantywaist" response to the "crisis." They wanted the kind of bluster and "big talk" they loved from George Bush. Instead, Obama calmly and effectively managed the situation; then when the moment came, Navy snipers took out the pirates with three well-placed shots. Obama looked like Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke. 5). Does Obama Respect Me? Once people's physical needs are met, there is nothing they want more in life than respect. That's because people are driven by their need for meaning. They want to matter. And the converse is true. Voters never forgive being disrespected. Barack Obama treats everyone with respect. When he speaks to the American people he speaks to them like adults. Just as importantly, he treats everyone in his life with respect - his family, his staff, his political opponents, the leaders of foreign governments. 6). Does Obama connect with the voters - do people like him? Chemistry and personal connection is a huge factor for any political leader. It was one of Bill Clinton's greatest assets - Al Gore, not so much. On this measure Obama is a star. His smile, his family, Bo the dog, his warmth, his vigor, his story, his basketball. People connect. They love him. 7). Does he have integrity? People want leaders with integrity. Obama started out by insisting that no one is to be hired by his Administration who has lobbied in the last two years in an arena in which they would be working. He refused to take money from lobbyists during the campaign. While some of his appointees have had tax problems or other issues, so far at least, no serious scandal involving conflict of interest or foxes guarding chicken coops have yet cropped up in the new Administration. Just as important is the ethos of Obama's inner circle. Obama's administration is packed with people who have come to Washington to get things done - to change the country. His people want to make history - not pad their resumes so they can make money. 8). Does he have vision? Yogi Berra used to say that "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." Voters want leaders who have vision - who know where they want to take our country over the long run. Especially when it comes to the economy, polls show that voters want their leaders to create a foundation for long-term prosperity - new "clean energy" jobs, and 21st Century education. Obama has framed all of his economic initiatives in precisely these terms. Vision for the future is a key element in both in his policy-making and in messaging for this White House. 9). Does Obama inspire me? People want to be inspired by their leaders - and, of course, Obama delivers like no other president has since John Kennedy. We mean something very specific when we talk about inspiration. When someone feels inspired, they feel empowered. Inspiration is a sense that you can be more, and do more - as an individual and as a society. It is a sense of being part of something meaningful that is bigger than yourself, and that you have the ability to play a significant role - personally - in making it happen. On a personal level, of course, great relationships are based on a feeling that you are empowered when you are in the presence of another person. The same is true in politics. People know instinctively that the feeling of inspiration Obama communicates not only makes us feel good about ourselves - it also enables us to do more and achieve more than we otherwise would. The ability to mobilize the American people through inspiration is a major weapon in Obama's arsenal. It will help him be successful at creating a new economy, providing health care for all, and charting a new energy future. In summary, Obama gets an "A" on every one of the nine qualities that, in my experience, are the most critical measures that voters use to evaluate political leaders. Of course you might say these parameters don't measure a president's actual accomplishments, only the way he or she is viewed by the voters. I would answer that the chief measure of leadership is the ability to mobilize people in order to make change. If his first 100 days are an indication of how Barack will perform against these nine measures of leadership, he is poised to be a transformational president. Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategis,t and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com . More on Michelle Obama
 
David Frum: Another Triumph for the Club for Growth Top
With Arlen Specter's defection, all that stands between the Democrats and a 60-seat Senate majority are Norman Coleman's lawyers. I wish them every success -- but they have not exactly been on a winning streak to date. Which means that Democrats won't need to resort to unorthodox tactics to push, say, their healthcare bill through Congress. They'll have the votes. If the Democrats do succeed in pushing through national health insurance, they really should set aside a little extra money to erect a statue to Pat Toomey. They couldn't have done it without him! Pat Toomey is of course the former president of the Club for Growth who planned to challenge Arlen Specter in the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican primary. Polls showed Toomey well ahead -- not because he is so hugely popular in the state, but because the Pennsylvania GOP has shriveled to a small, ideologically intense core. Toomey now looks likely to gain the nomination he has sought -- and then to be crushed by Specter or some other Democrat next November. The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a "wake-up call." His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against! For a long time, the loudest and most powerful voices in the conservative world have told us that people like Specter aren't real Republicans -- that they don't belong in the party. Now he's gone, and with him the last Republican leverage within any of the elected branches of government. For years, many in the conservative world have wished for an ideologically purer GOP. Their wish has been granted. Happy? Let's take this moment to nail some colors to the mast. I submit it is better for conservatives to have 60% sway within a majority party than to have 100% control of a minority party. And until and unless there is an honored place made in the Republican party for people who think like Arlen Specter, we will remain a minority party. This post originally appeared on NewMajority.com . More on Arlen Specter
 
Sarah Jessica Parker And Matthew Broderick TWINS: Surrogate Girls On The Way Top
LOS ANGELES — Representatives for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick say the couple is expecting the birth of twin daughters this summer through a surrogate pregnancy. The "Sex and the City" star and her actor husband are "overjoyed," according to their publicists. The couple has a son. More on Celebrity Kids
 
Eleanor Smeal: Obama's First 100 Days: Giant Strides for Women Top
By any measure, the work President Obama and his team have accomplished for women and girls in the first 100 days is impressive. They not only have reversed some of the most egregious Bush policies, but also have taken some powerful actions to advance and empower women. I've been working for women's rights in Washington, D.C. since the Carter days and I have never seen anything like these first days. The pace is fast, and the outreach is inclusive. It started during the transition: The Obama/Biden team reached out to women's leaders and met with us on a whole host of issues frequently and at high levels. And it has continued. In the current issue of Ms. , which will hit newsstands next week, the editors have compiled a list of the major Obama achievements thus far vis-à-vis women's issues, and it bears repeating--see below. In reviewing this list, it's amazing how fast we are checking off as done major goals we have been working toward for several years. We still have a long to-do list--the damage of the Bush years was massive, and we have to remedy it while moving forward. But we are going in the right direction with all deliberative speed. One area of concern that should be noted, however, is the percentage of women in top jobs. We must keep pushing. According to the Washington Post's appointment tracking database, women thus far number only 30% of appointments to positions needing Senate confirmation. But very encouragingly, appointments include a high percentage of people of color and include many outstanding feminists. Savor the beginning of what promises to be a long list of Obama achievements for women: JAN 23 President Obama overturns the "global gag rule," a move that will literally save countless women's lives in developing nations and will lead to the U.S. re-funding many international family-planning programs JAN 29 Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring women's ability to sue for pay discrimination FEB 4 Obama signs act to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover 11 million children--Bush had vetoed this act twice FEB 17 Obama's economic stimulus package saves and creates jobs not only in construction, where men dominate, but in fields where women workers are the substantial majority--health care, child care and education; also increases Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits FEB 27 Obama moves to rescind the Bush administration's "conscience" clause, which could have let health-care workers deny patients abortion, contraception or any other procedure they objected to MAR 2 With the choice of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, Obama appoints a total of seven women to Cabinet-level positions MAR 6 Obama institutes a new ambassador-at-large for global women's issues and names Melanne Verveer to the post MAR 9 Obama lifts restrictions on stem-cell research MAR 11 Obama establishes the White House Council on Women and Girls and names senior adviser Valerie Jarrett as chair and director of public liaison Tina Tchen as executive director Omnibus Spending Act restarts U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (which the Bush administration had blocked for eight years) and reinstates low-cost birth control availability at college health centers and at some 400 clinics serving low-income women MAR 19 Obama pledges to sign a U.N. declaration to decriminalize homosexuality, which Bush had refused to sign MAR 20 Obama appointee Elena Kagan is confirmed as the first woman Solicitor General APR 3 Obama calls Afghanistan's proposed Shia Family Law--which would permit marital rape--"abhorrent," helping to lead Afghan President Hamid Karzai to review the law APR 23 The FDA extends Plan B availability to 17-year-olds--something highly unlikely to have happened under Bush More on Women's Rights
 
Johann Hari: Obama Isn't FDR Yet - But He Might Still Do It Top
Nobody feels like hanging out tinsel to mark Barack Obama's first one hundred days - least of all the President himself. After the cheering crowds in Grant Park and the choked-up crowds on Inauguration Day went home, he has been left with a depression, a slew of wars, and an unraveling climate. Mario Cuomo, the former mayor of New York, said politicians "campaign in poetry, but govern in prose" - and Obama has had to hit the prose hard. So now George W. Bush has been dispatched to torture only the English language, has "change come to America", as Obama promised? To the people who shrug and say they're all the same, answer with four words: torture and stem cells. Under Obama, the United States government no longer tortures. Its Jack Bauers have been sent back to base. Instead, it publishes the evidence of the moral Chernobyl that occurred in the soon-to-shutter Guantanamo Bay. There is a battle within the Obama administration - and Obama's soul, I suspect - about whether to prosecute the Republican politicians responsible. He should: jailing torturers is worth any political row. Similarly, under Obama, the Christian fundamentalist block on using stem cells for medical research is over. British scientists have already used blastocysts to invent a cure for the most common form of blindness. Now American scientists will be able to pull humanity forward too. If you say there is no difference between Bush and Obama, then you are saying torture and stem cells don't matter. But equally, those who believed that the problems with US state power dissolved in the yes-we-can euphoria of November have been proved wrong. Obama's actions have been morally mixed, because he is reacting to a torrent of pressures - not least from huge corporate donors, who are exerting pressure for the US to control resources and maximise their profits across the globe. The American President makes policy on two areas that will determine the future of our species: global warming, and nuclear weapons. While the Bush administration ramped up both threats - blithely building "more useable" nukes, and vandalizing any attempt to control warming gases - Obama has pivoted. Obama's environmental appointments have been startling good. As Energy Secretary, he appointed Professor Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who says that if we carry on emitting as we do now, "there's a 50 percent chance we may go to 5 degrees centigrade [of warming in this century]. We know what the Earth was like 5 or 6 degrees centigrade colder. That was called the Ice Ages. Imagine a world 5 degrees warmer. The desert lines would be dramatically changed. The West is projected to be in drought conditions. [For that] there is no adaptation strategy." It has been little noticed, but with Obama's approval, the Environmental Protection Agency has classified carbon emissions as harmful to human health. This means Obama can now secure a sharp reduction in gas emissions overnight, without any further legislation.. But he hasn't done it yet, even as his countrymen belch out the highest emissions on earth. He is still fiddling with failed mechanisms like Cap and Trade preferred by big business, rather than Chu's preferred solution of a carbon tax. As if on cue, an ice sheet the size of Jamaica has just broken off from Antarctica and melted into the seas. The climate can't wait. On nuclear weapons, Obama has been more bold. After the Cuban Missile Crisis came within inches of incinerating us all in a final flash, there was a global agreement called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It had two equal prongs: the existing nuclear powers would multilaterally reduce their weapons - eventually to zero - and in return nobody else would tool up. But for decades now, the NPT has been disintegrating as all sides ignore it. In a speech in Prague, Obama said that if we don't revive it, "we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable." To stop this nightmare, he has announced that the US and Russia - who hold 95 percent of all warheads - will begin slashing their stockpiles in an attempt to begin momentum towards "a world without nuclear weapons." He will convene a conference in Washington D.C. next year to try to spur all nuclear states to join in, and to gather support for sanctions against states that may try to go nuclear. This will be a brutally difficult process - but it will be harder still to live in a world where apocalyptic weapons are spreading from state to state, and possibly beyond. It is a bold step towards sanity. Obama's reaction to the engulfing depression has commanded most attention - except for his purchase of a puppy. This is the most mixed of all the President's policies. His financial appointments have been a disgrace. He has put in charge the very people who brought us to this calamity in the first place: Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, and Larry Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, were the architects of deregulation in the Clinton administration. They peeled back the last inches of FDR-era protection that could have prevented this crash - and then danced off to Wall Street to make millions from it. Last year alone, Summers raked in $8m from Wall Street firms he is now bailing out. But what about the program Obama has made them enact? He is absolutely right that there needed to be a big government stimulus, paid for by temporary government debt. He explained plainly: "Economists on both the left and right agree that the last thing a government should do in the middle of a recession is to cut back on spending. You see, when this recession began, many families sat around their kitchen table and tried to figure out where they could cut back. That is a completely responsible and understandable reaction. But if every family in America cuts back, then no one is spending any money, which means there are more layoffs, and the economy gets even worse. That's why the government has to step in and temporarily boost spending in order to stimulate demand." This has been proven to work countless times. The right-wingers who deny this - and shriek about growing debt - are ignoring reality as plainly as those who deny evolution or global warming. Some of the $787bn stimulus has been pushed in good directions: some 16 percent is going towards building a low carbon economy, and blood is flowing into the arteries of education and infrastructure after decades of Reaganite cuts. But far too much has been slathered at the top, bailing out Summers and Geithner's old colleagues. It was necessary to prop up the banking system - if the ATM machines had run dry, the economy would have collapsed - but Obama's team have simply handed billions over to appalling institutions, without receiving any control in return. Any more stimulus funds need to flow from the bottom up, concentrating on keeping people in their homes, and on local and state banks. But they don't have armies of lobbyists or vast campaign contributions behind them - so they may be left in the cold. Worse still, the stimulus is way too small. As this year's Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has warned, "You can't jump half-way across a chasm." As if all this wasn't enough, Obama has three wars on his hands. Yes, three. T he most disastrous is in Mexico , where he has pledged military support to a war against the armed drug cartels, and even authorised plans to seal the border if Mexico collapses. But every time you knock out a drug cartel with force, you trigger a new war for control of their patch - and even more violence. The only way to restore Mexico to peace is - as a bevy of Latin America leaders now warn - to take drugs into the legal economy and bankrupt the criminals. Yet Obama - a former drug user himself - refuses to do it. Obama is right to begin the withdrawal from Iraq, as more than 70 percent of the country's people demand. But he is flooding these troops into Afghanistan and bombing the tribal areas of Pakistan - into a fantastically complex conflict. The idea that this is an estrogen-drenched fight for women's rights lies discredited. The government the US installed is flirting with laws that forbid women from leaving their houses without their husband's permission. It even legalizes marital rape. As Fatima Husseini, one of the heroic young female protesters in Kabul, said: "It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way he wants." The US and her allies are now backing one group of foul misogynists against another. Nor is it possible to see how we can win against the Taliban while we are committed to destroying 60 percent of Afghanistan's economy - the opium crop. There is a danger that by ramping up the war, rather than trying to negotiate a solution, legalize the drug crop, and break away the less extreme parts of the resistance, he will simply stimulate more opposition. The flooding of US troops into the region has already spurred a surge of Talibanism in Pakistan, pushing their rag-tap troops to within sixty miles of the capital, Islamabad. Yet somehow, no-drama-Obama remains impressively Zen and sweatless in the middle of this whirlwind. Should we have "faith" he will do the right thing? Absolutely not - and the very idea is dangerous. You should pick the best leader available, and then pressure him or her like hell. Obama is dramatically better than Bush - but in the end, he will only be as good as the pressure put on him by ordinary people. FDR came to power as a budget-balancing centrist, until the American people forced him to the left, and to greatness. One hundred days in, are they ready to shove Obama to act on his own best instincts? He ain't Franklin Delano Obama yet. Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here or here .
 
Alan Lurie: The Beginning of EVERYTHING, Part 2 Top
This is Part 2 of a two-part exploration of EVERYTHING. Last week, I posed the question: How is it that there is a non-physical component to our physical being that is unrestrained by the limitations of space, time, and matter; that allows us to be self-aware, and to which we can connect? Here, then is the essential paradox that is at the foundation of all paradoxes: How can Consciousness know and be known when It is all that is, and there is no possibility for anything else, since something else would be just a subdivision, or a fractal of the whole, simply looking back at Itself? The only solution was to create something that is "other" - that is different, but accessible to the whole. Yet, how can something else possibly exist, since pure Consciousness is all there is, and anything else would contain elements that it does not possess? Where would this new element come from? The "other" can not exist outside of Consciousness since, at this point in our imagining, before the Big Bang, there is no "there", and no "thing". Somehow, the infinite Desire to Become overcame this irreconcilable paradox (we're here after all!), and Consciousness "contracted" Itself to allow for the possibility of something "other" to be born - something that It could enter in to a relationship with - and an infinitely small "point" was created to allow for the potential of space, time, and matter to appear. But since this situation is impossible (how can anything exist that is not part of, and connected to, the whole?), during an infinitely small time Consciousness flooded back in to the point, imbuing physicality with the eternal element of Consciousness, triggering the first event, the Big Bang - an ejection of endless consciousness through finite space. And that original orgasmic scream of creation still reverberates throughout the Universe. (In1964, the accidental discovery of this reverberation as cosmic radiation earned Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson Nobel Prizes) Because physicality is animated by Consciousness, everything that exists contains the capacity to be, and the desire to grow. We have seen this process take place, as inanimate clouds of elemental gasses slowly evolved in to stars and human beings. But, how can pure Consciousness - timeless and formless - interact with physicality - limited and organic? The transient can not be mixed directly with the Eternal because the physical would then be instantly destroyed; or better expressed, instantly returned to its Source. Some system must have been created to allow for this paradox to happen in order for physicality to even be possible, because physicality without consciousness is inanimate and mute. We can, then, imagine layers of increasing dense "filters" that slowly "dim" pure Consciousness so that the physical can partake of it and be part of it, while remaining physical. This process is like slowly diminishing the power supply from the electrical substation to your house to allow your toaster oven to operate without frying its hardware. Unlike the toaster, however, we can consciously ascend these "filters" to higher and higher realms where there is more pure Consciousness, and bring glimpses of these realms back to physicality, thereby raising the level of our existence closer to our Source, and bringing more consciousness in to the world. This is how Consciousness can know and be known by physical creatures. The desire and purpose of creation is for physical matter to evolve in to self-awareness, and this can only happen through the choice to struggle to grow beyond the limitation of physicality. If we automatically connected to the Source of our consciousness there could be no growth and no relationship, since there would be no choice. There can be no meaningful relationship with an automaton that has no free will. There can also be no obvious system of reward and punishment. Imagine a system in which whenever someone does "wrong" they are struck by a lightening bolt, and whenever we do "good" gold coins float down from heaven? Then there would be no choice; only coercion and fear of punishment. Love has no meaning if it is not freely given. You can not love someone who you fear, and love can not develop when one panders to authority in order to receive desired rewards. We want our children, for example, to do the right thing not because they fear punishment, or hope for reward, but because they choose to do so in spite of temptations to do otherwise, and in acceptance of the consequences that may delay personal gratification. Only then are they truly adults, and only then can they enter in to healthy relationships of love. Embedded in physicality, then, is the possibility of, and attraction to, unconsciousness - the temptation to choose to reject the inherent desire toward growth and relationship. Because pure pre-physicality Consciousness could not know of limitation and imperfection that is inherent to physicality, (matter being less than Consciousness Itself), It "assumed" that conscious physical creatures would automatically be drawn to It, since It is the very Source of existence, and the only Reality: Why, It "wondered" would anything choose stagnation and decay over growth, or hatred and death over love and life? The appeal to unconsciousness, therefore, was made very strong. Perhaps too strong... This may be the only "flaw" in the perfection of creation, requiring Consciousness to periodically intervene and provide guidance. These are moments of grace and revelation, documented by sages and mystics, and experienced by human beings since the dawn of our species. We can now make this essential statement: The purpose of creation is the desire of Consciousness for relationship. The only way to fill this desire is through our choice to nurture and expand our own consciousness to higher levels of awareness, thereby increasing the relationship. The final cosmic paradox, then, is this: We are something that pure Consciousness, our Creator - what religious systems often refer to as God - is not: we are physical. And, we can actually do something that our Creator can not; we can grow and evolve by adding more awareness to the realm of physicality through our own choices. And by doing so, we literally sanctify creation, elevating our existence, and growing ever stronger and clearer in our connection to Consciousness, as we journey together toward an unimaginably glorious future when we live in undiluted awareness of our true nature and great purpose.
 
Kathleen Sebelius: Health And Human Services Secretary Top
***UPDATE*** April 28, 6:10pm The Senate has confirmed Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services Secretary by a vote of 65-31. ***UPDATE 2/28 6:25PM*** The AP has more : Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is President Barack Obama's choice for secretary of health and human services, a White House source said Saturday. The source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said Obama will formally announce the nomination on Monday. Sebelius, 60, was an early Obama supporter. She picked his presidential campaign over that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, now the secretary of state. Sebelius worked tirelessly for Obama's bid and was a top surrogate to women's groups. Obama's first choice for HHS, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, withdrew after disclosing he had failed to pay $140,000 in taxes and interest. Sebelius drew praise for the consumer watchdog role she played as Kansas insurance commissioner for eight years before she became governor. Her name had been floated for several Cabinet posts. She said in December that she had removed herself from consideration from a Cabinet job, citing Kansas' budget problems that needed her attention. Sebelius is in the middle of her second term as governor and is legally barred from seeking a third term next year. Many Democrats had hoped she would finish her term and run for the U.S. Senate seat that Republican Sam Brownback is giving up in 2010. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, and Sebelius was seen as the best chance for breaking that string. She comes from a strong political family. Her father, John Gilligan, was the governor of Ohio in the early 1970s. Abortion foes strongly oppose Sebelius because she once had a reception attended by a late-term abortion provider who now faces criminal charges. Democrats say there was never any doubt that Obama would appoint an HHS secretary who supports abortion rights. Sebelius will be subject to confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate. ***UPDATE 2/28 5:50PM*** Politico reports that President Obama has asked Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to be Health and Human Services Secretary for his administration. She has accepted. Obama is expected to announce the nomination on Monday. UPDATE 2/18 : Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is Obama's top choice for secretary of health and human services, reports the New York Times : WASHINGTON - President Obama has settled on Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, a key ally with a record of working across party lines, as his top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday... Ms. Sebelius resolved a state budget crisis on Tuesday and plans to be in Washington from Saturday through Tuesday for a meeting of the National Governors' Association. Asked about the cabinet job, her spokeswoman, Beth Martino, said the governor "is focused on the economic challenges currently facing Kansas, including our state budget and the impacts of the federal stimulus package." Kathleen Sebelius could replace Tom Daschle as President Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary. An official says she's a top candidate, based in part on her long and close working relationship with the president. From the AP : Sebelius, 60, signed on early with the Obama campaign, backing his candidacy over that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination and now secretary of state. Sebelius worked tirelessly for Obama's bid and was a top surrogate to women's groups, especially after Republicans picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their vice presidential nominee. Advocacy groups like the consumer watchdog role Sebelius played as insurance commissioner for eight years before she became governor. A Kansas Democrat close to Sebelius said she had not spoken about the post in recent days but appeared to remain a strong contender. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not officially authorized to speak for the governor. * * * * * Johnathan Cohn, an expert on health care policy, writes at The New Republic : People marvel about [Sebelius'] managerial abilities and there's no question about having the relevant experience. She was the state insurance commissioner before she became governor; over the years, she's fought to stamp out fraudulent carriers, block dangerous industry mergers, and overcome lawmakers opposed to expansions of government health insurance for kids. She's well-known and well-liked by the health care advocacy community. And while she's not steeped in the ways of Washington, she'd have plenty of advisors to help -- not to mention a strong relationship with Obama, based in part on her bipartisan touch. However, Sebelius is said to be considering a run for the Senate in 2010, meaning she might turn down the HHS post if offered. More on Kathleen Sebelius
 
Buchanan: GOP A "Heavily White Party" Top
Pat Buchanan told MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall Tuesday that the Republican party is facing a tough time as the result of demographic shifts across the country, but it isn't dead yet. "There's a real demographic problem with the Republican party," Buchanan said. "It is a heavily white party, quite frankly. And as a share of the electorate, that is diminishing and Hispanics are growing very rapidly, Asians are growing rapidly, and by two-thirds they tend to vote Democratic." Buchanan told Hall that the party is losing young people as well. "Young people increasingly are more liberal and more socially moderate, and they move away from the Republican party," he said. "These things are undeniable, the Republican party ... is in tough shape." But Buchanan said the party shouldn't be written off just yet, and said Republicans have made impressive comebacks from deep deficits before. I went though the Goldwater disaster, when we were down to 140 House seats and we were dead forever, and I came with Nixon in '66 and we won 47 House seats and we won 5 out of the next 6 presidential elections. I don't think that's necessarily in the cards, but I think it'd be foolish at this point when Obama is at his peak, really, to write off the Republican party for 2010. WATCH:
 
NY Flyover FAA Memo: Feds Knew It Would Cause Panic, Threatened NYPD, Mayor's Office, Secret Service If Secret Ever Got Out: Report Top
In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.
 
Bill Maher: New Rule: Statutory Tape Top
New Rule: From now on, Duct tape must be called what it really is... Check out Real Time with Bill Maher live Fridays at 10PM ET/PT - Only On HBO. More on Bill Maher
 
Dionna Humphrey: Peaceful Revolution: Close the Wage Gap Top
It may or may not surprise you, but as a woman of color, I have been personally affected by wage discrimination. I have been working since I was 15, and since the age of 15 my male and white counterparts have made more than me. And I am not alone. I don't need statistics, all I have to do is look at my previous pay history. Nevertheless, the numbers may surprise you: Right now white women are making 77 cents to a man's dollar. Black women make 68 cents to the dollar and Hispanic women make 59 cents to the dollar. Mothers take enormous wage hits, with women who aren't mothers earning about 90 cents to a man's dollar, mothers earning 73 cents, and single mothers earning just about60 cents to a man's dollar. How did the overall average get to 77 cents to a man's dollar for women? Well, a full 81% of modern women have children by the time they are 44 years old -- and as we all know, once a mother, always a mother. (On top of wage hits, mothers also face extreme hiring discrimination with a recent study finding that with equal resumes and job experience, mothers are offered jobs 79% less of the time than non-mothers.) The earning gap exists between men and women across a variety of professions. For women physicians the wage gap is 61% of a man's dollar, 63% in sales related occupations. And in some areas, women are actually losing ground! These are pretty scary numbers. That's why we need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. We've made real progress on pay equity in this country, and we continue to gain momentum. The signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act was a tremendous step toward victory in pay equity. But that was just the first step in the new administration. The Equal Pay Act is more than 40 years old, and it needs updating. The Paycheck Fairness Act would, among other things, allow those who have been discriminated against to receive punitive and compensatory damages. It also prohibits employer retaliation. This is key because without the ability to learn about wage disparities with co-workers, it is difficult for an employee to evaluate whether or not they are being compensated fairly. Finally, the bill would provide increased training for EEOC employees to help them identify and respond to wage discrimination claims. There are several other positive provisions in the bill, and when you add them all up it makes sense to move this bill forward. I know in my lifetime I will see the wage gap between men and women close. And with a new president and a new agenda, the time to move on this is now. Right now the Paycheck Fairness Act has more than 30 co-sponsors in the Senate. And it's already passed the House, with overwhelming numbers. We don't have much farther to go on this one. Closing the wage gap helps women provide better economic security for their families, and it's also good for the economy. Family economic security is critical, now more than ever, and thankfully more and more people and organizations understand the link between closing wage gaps and getting families out of poverty. MomsRising.org is part of a coalition of groups who are working to make this happen. Want to do your part to close the wage gap? Join us in sending a letter to your Senator urging them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Go to www.momsrising.org to find out more. A Peaceful Revolution is a blog about innovative ideas to strengthen America's families through public policies, business practices, and cultural change. Done in collaboration with MomsRising.org , read a new post here each week. More on Women's Rights
 
Obama Administration Flips Bush Endangered Species Ruling Top
WASHINGTON — Federal agencies again will have to consult with government wildlife experts before taking actions that could have an impact on threatened or endangered species. The Obama administration said Tuesday it was overturning a rule change made in the final weeks of the Bush presidency. Officials at the Interior and Commerce departments said they have reimposed the consultation requirement that assured the government's top biologists involved in species protection will have a say in federal action that could harm plants, animals and fish that are at risk of extinction. Such consultation had been required for more than two decades until the Bush administration made it optional in rules issued last December, just weeks before the change in administrations. Environmentalists argued that the change severely reduced the protection afforded under the federal Endangered Species Act. "By rolling back this eleventh-hour regulation, we are ensuring that threatened and endangered species continue to receive the full protection of the law" and that top science will be the foundation of the decision making, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke added: "Our decision affirms the administration's commitment to using sound science to promote conservation and protect the environment." Agencies in the two department's share responsibility for managing and enforcing the Endangered Species Act and employ the government's top scientists in species protection. In March, President Barack Obama issued an executive order putting the Bush rule change on hold. Congress followed by giving specific authorization for the Interior and Commerce departments to revoke the action, avoiding a long and complicated regulatory process. The end of the long-standing requirement _ dating back to 1986 _ of interagency consultation with the Interior and Commerce agencies on endangered species protection produced a firestorm in both Congress and within the environmental and conservation communities. For years, agencies involved in thousands of federal activities _ from issuing clean air rules to approving highway or dam construction_ have had to consult not only their own experts but also biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ensure the activities did not harm plants, animals or fish that are protected by the Endangered Species Act. Developers and business groups argued that the consultation caused unneeded delays and increased the cost of projects. The Bush administration made the independent consultation optional, arguing that it was a minor shift in policy. One impetus for the rule change was concern by the Bush administration that the Endangered Species Act might be used as a back door to regulate greenhouse gases as a way to combat climate change. The Interior Department earlier had declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice, a change attributed to global warming. Salazar and Lock said the two departments will jointly decide if any changes are needed to improve the interagency consultation procedures. The Fish and Wildlife Service, which is part of the Interior Department, has jurisdiction over plants and animals, while NOAA, part of the Commerce Department, deals with fish species that are at risk of extinction. More on Animals
 
Korean Scientists: We've Cloned Glow-In-The Dark Beagles Top
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean scientists say they have engineered four beagles that glow red using cloning techniques that could help develop cures for human diseases. The four dogs, all named "Ruppy" _ a combination of the words "ruby" and "puppy" _ look like typical beagles by daylight. But they glow red under ultraviolet light, and the dogs' nails and abdomens, which have thin skins, look red even to the naked eye. Seoul National University professor Lee Byeong-chun, head of the research team, called them the world's first transgenic dogs carrying fluorescent genes, an achievement that goes beyond just the glowing novelty. "What's significant in this work is not the dogs expressing red colors but that we planted genes into them," Lee told The Associated Press on Tuesday. His team identified the dogs as clones of a cell donor through DNA tests and earlier this month introduced the achievement in a paper on the Web site of the journal "Genesis." Scientists in the U.S., Japan and in Europe previously have cloned fluorescent mice and pigs, but this would be the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned successfully, Lee said. He said his team took skin cells from a beagle, inserted fluorescent genes into them and put them into eggs before implanted them into the womb of a surrogate mother, a local mixed breed. Six female beagles were born in December 2007 through a cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that make them glow, he said. Two died, but the four others survived. The glowing dogs show that it is possible to successfully insert genes with a specific trait, which could lead to implanting other, non-fluorescent genes that could help treat specific diseases, Lee said. The scientist said his team has started to implant human disease-related genes in the course of dog cloning, saying that will help them find new treatments for genetic diseases such as Parkinson's. He refused to provide further details, saying the research was still under way. A South Korean scientist who created glowing cats in 2007 based on a similar cloning technique said that Lee's puppies are genuine clones, saying he had seen them and had read about them in the journal. "We can appraise this is a step forward" toward finding cures for human diseases, said veterinary professor Kong Il-keun at South Korea's Gyeongsang National University. "What is important now is on what specific diseases (Lee's team) will focus on." Lee was a key aide to disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whose breakthroughs on stem cell research were found to have been made using faked data. Independent tests, however, later proved the team's dog cloning was genuine. More on South Korea
 
Christine Neumann-Ortiz: National Day of Action - May 1st Top
WHY WE'RE MARCHING ON MAY 1ST When Antonio, a high school teacher, was asked why he will march this year, he answered, "I march because my grandfather marched as a Bracero along the railroad tracks of America, and was finally paid this year, four years after his death; because my father, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends have marched, bent over the Michigan crop rows, picking cucumbers and lettuce for the tables of America. I march because thousands of immigrants have sacrificed their lives and homes for a chance at dignified work and a better life." Like Antonio, hundreds of thousands of people of all races, nationalities, and religions, from all walks of life, dish washers and doctors, seniors toddlers -- will be joining forces to march in cities across the United States on May 1st calling on the Obama Administration to end the cruel enforcement-only immigration policies of the Bush era and calling for passage of humane immigration reform this year. May 1st is a national Day of Action because it marks the closing of the first 100 days of the new Obama Administration and a day which recognizes workers' rights. For a list of all participating cities (including New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington DC) and information on actions, visit www.anewdayforimmigration.org . People can also join a National Mobile Rapid Response Network by texting the word "justice" (or "justicia" for Spanish speakers) and sending it to 69866 to receive important updates. FIRST 100 DAYS Our May 1st actions will demonstrate support for President Obama's recent assertions that immigration reform is a priority for his administration. We must ensure that working groups will indeed start crafting legislation as early as this summer and that immigrant and labor advocates are at the table. Obama's position is in keeping with his pledge to Latino voters. In 2008, at the National Council of La Raza convention, he promised, "I think it's time for a president who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform just because it becomes politically unpopular...I will make it a top priority in my first year as the president of the United States of America....That way, we can reconcile our values as both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws." However, the administration's record on raids and detention is mixed and one of the overarching demands of the May 1st marches is "Reform, Not Raids". In the wake of public outcry over a raid in Bellingham, Washington, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Napolitano ordered a review. She has since stated that work-site enforcement needs to be focused on employers and prioritize the deportation of persons with violent criminal histories. DHS is investigating human rights abuses in the immigrant detention system; whose growth has exploded as a private for-profit business, with limited government standards or enforcement. One Wisconsin business owner and lawful permanent resident, Tomas Contreras, was thrown into a border detention center, beaten and placed in isolation for speaking out publicly about the abuses he saw while in detention; he was eventually released and cleared of all charges. THE TIME IS NOW Now is the time to pass legislation for humane immigration reform. The urgency is not just a moral issue -- it is also a critical component of rebuilding an economy based on workers' rights, corporate accountability, and prosperity for working people. And if politicians want the Latino vote in 2010 they must deliver in 2009. Strengthening our economy will require shifting the balance of power between corporations and workers. The Obama Administration has two important labor reforms that will accomplish this goal: the Employee Free Choice Act and a pro-worker legalization bill. In a weak economy unscrupulous employers try to take advantage of the most vulnerable workers. When workers are legalized they are in a stronger position to assert their rights and organize collectively with native workers to improve wages and working conditions. Though a majority of unauthorized workers already contribute to our tax base, legalization would also close the economic gap by bringing in more workers and employers out of the underground economy. Finally, President Obama recognizes the need to address the causes of forced migration by renegotiating trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which resulted in the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico skyrocketing by an additional six million after 1994. What kind of America do we want to live in? We are at a crossroads: On the one hand, we can continue down the path of failed enforcement-only policies that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, failed to deter unauthorized migration, criminalized and imprisoned working people, and grown an underground economy. Or we can establish a system that is orderly, provides legal avenues for immigration, and upholds families, workers' rights, and democratic values. So why am I marching on May 1st? Because I am the daughter of immigrants; because working to survive is not a crime; because children are being incarcerated; because people are dying on our borders; because children are being forcibly put up for adoption while their parents are in detention; because I believe in the American people who have challenged unjust laws throughout our history; and because I believe that together we will make a difference.
 
Anne-Marie Cusac: Torture, American-Style Top
What does torture have to do with America? The answer is, unfortunately, a rich one. In 2004, when Seymour Hersh and Sixty Minutes II broke the news of Abu Ghraib , I had spent eight years reporting on American prisons and jails. Abu Ghraib looked familiar. As I demonstrate in Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America (Yale University Press, 2009) , in the decade or so before Abu Ghraib, American prisoners had been hooded, intimidated with dogs, threatened with electrocution, shackled for days in situations where they had to defecate and urinate on themselves, sodomized with objects, exposed for long periods to intense heat, and raped by guards -- all forms of treatment that allegedly occurred in Iraq. What astonished me was not the Abu Ghraib torture, but the public's shock and dismay. How could people be so surprised when so many of the same practices had already happened here? Abu Ghraib was not the only atrocity with American antecedents, as the recent release of the torture memos shows. The August 1, 2002 memo from Jay S. Bybee considers considers "ten techniques," among them slapping, "cramped confinement," "stress positions," and "the waterboard." The Red Cross report leaked in March thanks to Mark Danner offers evidence of other torture modes, including cold water and exposure to extreme temperatures. As the New York Times reported, the techniques in the memos came from Communist and fascist governments. But I want to caution against assumptions that the CIA torture techniques -- forcing people into a state of near-drowning, for instance, or chilling people in ice water -- are not American. Unfortunately, they are ours, too. For instance, cold water: From the Red Cross report: "I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets....I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation." As Darius Rejali , the author of Torture and Democracy , observed in Slate in March, "American military prisons subjected conscientious objectors to ice-water showers and baths until they fainted." Cold water also has a history in civilian U.S. jails and prisons. And here is where we find the link between ordinary domestic punishments and what we might otherwise tend to think of as torture -- something exotic, unusual, far away. Rejali notes, "In the 1920s, the Chicago police used to extract confessions from prisoners by chilling them in freezing water baths. This was called the 'ice-water cure.' " My own research found cold-water punishment in numerous early American prisons. Nineteenth-century guards punished inmates with the "douche or bolt-bath" at the Auburn, New York, and Trenton, New Jersey prisons, according to the writings of prison reformer Dorothea Dix, who notes both wardens banned the treatment. As the Auburn warden explained to Dix in a letter dated July 17, 1844, "Punishment with cold water has often been most effectual, in subduing the refractory, but I believe is often detrimental to health, and has therefore been discontinued at this prison." Two years later, "severe flagellation" killed an inmate at Auburn. The government banned flagellation. Thus, cold-water treatment revived at the prison. In 2003, the Cayuga Museum in Auburn, New York, held an exhibit featuring this description of "the shower bath": This "true torture device...consisted of a barrel about 4-feet high with a discharge tube at the bottom. The prisoner was stripped naked, bound hand and foot, with a wooden collar around his neck to prevent his moving his head. The barrel, with the inmate inside, was placed directly under an outlet pipe, where water, sometimes iced, would pour down." Auburn abandoned the shower bath "in 1858, after the death of an inmate from this punishment." The Red Cross report also describes torture through exposure to cold air: "I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room....[T]he cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold." Rejali mentions a 1961 case at the Parchman, Mississippi, penitentiary, where officers "blasted civil rights detainees with a fire hose and then turned 'the air-conditioning system on full blast' for three days." As the Parchman case implies, American prisons applied pain through temperature well into the twentieth century. But heat seems to have been at least as common as cold. For instance, in 1947 a researcher named Mabel Elliott wrote, "prisoners may be locked in the 'hot box' with the heat turned on and suffer all manner of torture. Some men have even died in such metal cages." Other early twentieth-century writers mention deaths in hot boxes, also called "dog houses" and "sweat boxes." "The sweat boxes are small coffin-like cells just large enough to suspend a man in an upright position," says one account. "A small hole the size of a silver dollar lets in the only air. The cell is placed in the hot tropic sun, or sometimes a metal plate underneath is heated with fire." "Cramped confinement" also appeared in early American prisons. For instance, an 1839 pamphlet from the Boston Prison Discipline Society, describes a container at the Pittsburgh penitentiary "just large enough to hold one man." The box is "so fixed, that the inmate cannot lean one way or the other; while, to prevent kneeling down, there is a piece of hard wood or iron put through the box." Now to the most notorious of the tortures in the memos: the waterboard. Simulated drowning occurred in early twentieth-century American prisons. A "water crib," three feet deep and six feet long was what historian David Rothman, in Conscience and Convenience , calls "perhaps the most incredible torture instrument of the period." As Rothman's work shows, guards would handcuff inmates and place them stomach-down in the trough. Water flowed into the device. "The effect was of slow drowning," writes Rothman, who cites one guard's exaltation at how well the crib caused inmates to "wilt" into compliance. Recently, our domestic jails and prisons have returned to tools once condemned as cruel. To take just one example, in the early 1990s, something called the restraint chair appeared. It was actually a reinvention of something its original inventor, Founding Father Benjamin Rush, called "the tranquilizing chair." Rush's "tranquilizing chair" had a history of torture at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, one of the early American prisons. Like its predecessor, the restraint chair immobilized prisoners and mental patients. Its reappearance in the 1990s soon led to serious abuses, including torture and death. The manufacturer claims that the restraint chair is humane and intended to be so--an echo of Benjamin Rush's words about the "tranquilizing chair." These declarations of humaneness are not that distant from the Bush Administration memos' assertions that the time-honored tortures they invoke are not really tortures. It is no accident pain returned as an acceptable means of prisoner control not long before the U.S. government decided to adopt torture techniques overseas. The two shifts are part of a cultural continuum. In both cases, we can see an increasing acceptance of pain as useful, a return to once-taboo behaviors, and public pressure on officials to do something about crime -- whether domestic crime or terrorism. All too often, the results veer in the direction of physical pain. Unfortunately, recent decades show how American torture is. More on Iraq
 
Hef: Holly Welcome Back, She's "The Love Of His Life" Top
It has been several months since Hugh Hefner and his former flame Holly Madison went their separate ways, but it seems the 83-year-old men's magazine mogul still has super strong feelings for the 29-year-old pin-up. Hef told Jason Binn, editorial director of Niche Magazine's Los Angeles Confidential, in his debut issue that he'd welcome Madison back with open arms because she is still the "love of his life." More on Playboy
 
Churchill Downs Horse Crash VIDEO Top
Tragedy struck at the Churchhill Downs racetrack just days before the Kentucky Derby. A three-year-old colt threw his jockey and took off out of control down the track, crashing into another horse and jockey and sending all tumbling to the ground. The horse that was crashed into was a two-year-old filly that was injured so badly she had to be euthanized. WARNING: viewers may find the video below difficult to watch: More on Video
 
Police Stop Bicyclists To Give Them Hugs And Helmets (VIDEO) Top
Is it just me or does Denmark have the cutest cops? In the video below we see two members of the Politi stopping cyclists and giving them free helmets and hugs to show they care about their safety. The video has no sourcing, but we can only assume it is a public information ad meant to pull on the heart strings of Copenhagen's notoriously bad bikers. According to Nancy Keats of the "Wall Street Journal": No one wears bike helmets. They're afraid they'll mess up their hair. "I have a big head and I would look silly," Mayor Klaus Bondam says. People bike while pregnant, carrying two cups of coffee, smoking, eating bananas. At the airport, there are parking spaces for bikes. In the emergency room at Frederiksberg Hospital on weekends, half the biking accidents are from people riding drunk. Doctors say the drunk riders tend to run into poles. Sounds like they need to seriously up the hug quotient. WATCH: Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on Video
 
Tribune Picking Up Zell's Legal Bills In Blagojevich Case Top
Financially strapped Tribune Co. plans to pay the legal bills of company Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell, who has been interviewed as a potential witness in the federal corruption investigation of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to a filing today in bankruptcy court. More on Rod Blagojevich
 
Michele Bachmann Links Swine Flu To Democrats, Gets History Wrong (VIDEO) Top
Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, following Rush Limbaugh's cue , suggested on Tuesday that President Obama was to blame for the swine flu crisis. She went even farther than the talk show host, implying that swine flu epidemics are a Democratic phenomenon that dates back to President Carter. "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." Unfortunately, Bachmann's facts are a little off. As Glenn Thrush notes, Republican President Gerald Ford, not Carter , led the country during the last outbreak of the virus. Video: Become a fan of HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Swine Flu
 
Matthew Alexander: An Officer's Obligation -- Say No to Torture Top
"Once an Army is involved in war, there is a beast in every fighting man which begins tugging at its chains... A good officer must learn early on how to keep the beast under control both in his men and in himself." -- General George C. Marshall As a former active duty military officer, it is troubling to me that other military officers followed unlawful orders to torture or abuse prisoners. Military officers have a sacred responsibility that is embedded in their oath of office: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..." The Constitution specifically prohibits cruelty to any person in the Eighth Amendment ("Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted"). Those officers who ordered, authorized, or were complicit in the torture and abuse of prisoners violated their oath of office. The United States has a rich history of military ethics dating back to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. According to General Washington, "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any prisoner...by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." He said this in 1775, during a time when the birth of our nation hung in the balance. It is the role of military officers, as first line supervisors, to ensure that we live up to our American principles in the conduct of every tactic we use in war. If an infantry platoon is ordered to take a hill and fails to do so because of enemy resistance, an order is not given to break out flame throwers and mustard gas in violation of the Law of Armed Conflict. Instead, we leverage our American ingenuity within the rules, we use our intellect, and we preserve through our courage to fight in accordance with our principles. As I led an interrogations team in Iraq chasing the notorious former leader of Al Qaida, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, we encountered detainees who did not provide us valuable intelligence information. We used those men as opportunities to refine our approaches and to improve our interrogation skills within the rules. It was those improved skills that we later used to break the terrorists within Zarqawi's network who, ultimately, sold him out. We are Americans and we are smart enough to win the battle of wits in the interrogation room. We cannot afford to doubt our abilities. We should focus on improving our methods within the legal framework of Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution. And military officers have a heightened responsibility to effect change and to lead our interrogator corps to its full potential. We are smart enough. Matthew Alexander spent fourteen years in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves. An "investigator turned interrogator", he deployed to Iraq in 2006, where he led the interrogations team that located Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq, who was killed by Coalition Forces. Alexander was awarded the Bronze Star for his achievements. He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
 
Empty Seats Force NY Yankees To Slash $2500 Premium Prices In Half Top
MYFOXNY.COM - Embarrassing images of empty field-level seats at the new Yankee Stadium during the team's opening homestand has apparently helped prompt executives into cutting the price and giving free seats to other ticket holders. The team is cutting the price of some of the most expensive seats in half.
 
Swine Flu's Potential Economic Effects: Mexico's Tourism, Retail Sure To Suffer Top
Wachovia has issued a report that gives a cursory overview of how the swine flu crisis will effect Mexico as well as international economies, based primarily on the 2003 SARS epidemic model. The report notes that Mexico's tourism industry will surely suffer, as the Christian Science Monitor reported Monday in the aftermath of the European Union's travel advisory that trips to Mexico should be canceled or delayed, unless it was absolutely "urgent." The Wall Street Journal also reports that , though "the potential impact from the influenza on industry is less than clear, retail and tourism businesses are likely to bear the brunt of the losses." In fact, according to the AP , Mexico City alone is losing $57 million per day on event cancellations and closed businesses. The blow to domestic tourism and retail industries is also compounded with a large drop in the Mexican Peso, which according to Bloomberg dropped by 5.1 percent on Monday, more than any other currency that Bloomberg tracks. The Bloomberg report notes that the currency devaluation and economic swine flu woes will increase the likelihood that Mexico will tap into a new $47 billion International Monetary Fund loan facility. Here are Wachovia's projections: Economic Effects Of Swine Flu - Free Legal Forms UPDATE: Swine flu economic fears, compounded with capital concerns continued to metastasize in world markets Tuesday, with European stocks dropping across all 18 Western European markets, Bloomberg reports. More on Mexico
 
Carolyn Makinson: Fueling Humanitarian Aid Top
What is your morning routine? If you're a typical American, it probably involves turning on the coffee maker and popping a slice of bread in the toaster, or maybe frying some eggs on the stovetop. But what if there was no coffee maker, no toaster and no gas came from the stove? What if the only way to boil water or cook food was to use firewood? What would happen to your kitchen -- to your lungs -- if you lit a campfire in the middle of your home every time you wanted a hot meal? Now go a step further. What if the firewood wasn't delivered to your door, but instead you had to collect it from your local park? Every morning -- every time you wanted a cup of tea -- you'd have to walk to the park, chop some large branches off a tree and carry them back home on foot. Here's the final twist: the park is three hours' walk away and filled with armed gangs lying in wait to attack you. Every morning. Unimaginable, right? Yet that is precisely the morning routine of millions of displaced women all over the world. And it doesn't only happen in the distant deserts of Africa -- thousands of urban, apartment-dwelling Sarajevans faced a similar reality when gas and electricity lines were cut during the Bosnian war. City parks became fuel sources. The humanitarian community typically provides displaced families with food and water. However, the food that is distributed -- usually dried beans, hard rice, whole grains -- has to be cooked in order to be edible (imagine throwing a dinner party for your friends and placing bowls of uncooked rice on the table). Yet the need to provide safe access to the fuel required to cook these food rations has escaped high-level international attention -- until now. This week, the United Nations is launching the work of a global task force that has been focusing on precisely this issue for the past two years. Led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Program and my own agency -- the Women's Refugee Commission -- have for the first time created a new humanitarian policy that will compel cooking fuel to be addressed with the same level of urgency as food and water. It is no longer acceptable for the humanitarian system to distribute dried beans and expect women to risk being attacked and even raped as they collect the firewood they need to cook those beans for their children. Our work is not done, however. Recognizing the central importance of cooking fuel to the daily lives and safety of millions is one challenge; devising alternatives to firewood is another. Firewood is the primary cooking fuel for a staggering 80 per cent of the world's population -- from refugees in Darfur to rural villagers in Nepal -- and it is one of the dirtiest, least safe fuels available. When burned indoors, it releases toxic smoke that kills more people each year than malaria... It contributes to global warming. It causes house fires and burns children. Its collection is devastating forests from Africa to Asia and is hastening the spread of desertification. It is for these reasons that a coalition of humanitarian agencies, environmentalists, health and energy experts and others from around the world are working together to devise safe, appropriate alternatives to firewood. Just as we in the industrialized world use different devices to cook different kinds of food, many alternatives are needed for use in conflict and disaster settings -- everything from fuel-efficient stoves, to solar cookers, to gas made from animal waste, and ideas yet to be discovered. All options must be on the table in this global effort to address one of the most fundamental human needs for one of the most basic of human activities: cooking. In the global quest to find cleaner, greener fuels, we must not ignore the needs of the more than 40 million people -- mostly women and children -- who have been uprooted because of war or natural disaster. Here in America, we take our morning routines for granted. Displaced families should be able to cook in peace as well. More on Darfur
 
Swine Flu: Mexico City Losing $57M A Day Top
MEXICO CITY — A leading business group estimates that canceled events and closure of movie theaters, night clubs, museums and other establishments to prevent the spread of swine flu is costing Mexico City at least 777 million pesos ($57 million) a day. Arturo Mendicuti, president of the city's Chamber of Trade, Services and Tourism, says the figure represents a 36-percent drop in revenue generated by tourism and services in the Mexican capital. He said Tuesday the estimate was made before the city government expanded the shutdown Tuesday to include restaurants, which now are only allowed to serve takeout. The Confederation of Industrial Chambers urged the government to reconsider its decision to close restaurants. More on Swine Flu
 
Matt Tyrnauer: The Amazing Odyssey of Directing Valentino: The Last Emperor Top
Valentino: The Last Emperor , a movie I directed about the design icon, Valentino, and his partner of 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti, came to theaters in the United States this spring. Currently, the movie is expanding its run to many cities across the country, and has become the highest grossing documentary of the year. Theatrical distribution, let alone audience acceptance for a documentary is rare, so this has been a pleasant month of traveling the nation, and doing press and events around the movie in cities from New England to California. Valentino and Giammetti, the stars of the show, joined me for several of these premieres and events, most notably in New York City, where they attracted a celebrity juggernaut, headed up by Gwyneth and Madonna. In L.A., Gwyneth and Anne Hathaway were among the many who did turns on the red carpet. Valentino and Giammetti have basked in well-deserved accolades. They are, it turns out, great movie stars, and they can rightfully share in the good reviews the film has gotten. However, even as late as the eve of the film's festival premiere in Venice, it looked like Valentino and Giancarlo would not be participating in the release of Valentino: The Last Emperor . It may come as a surprise to many that, after seeing the final cut of the movie, the stars were very unhappy with the picture, and they were not shy about expressing their unhappiness to me. They are control freaks, after all (it's fashion, remember), and they were not prepared to see themselves portrayed without a lot of airbrushing. I had final cut on the film, and I was prepared to release the movie without their participation. That was the plan, if I could not get them to come around. We had many meetings where I discussed their displeasure with them. These meetings all ended in stalemate. At one session I believe that Giancarlo listed every sequence in the film as objectionable in some way. Frustrating as it was to be at loggerheads with Valentino and Giancarlo, I was sympathetic to their situation. It's not easy to see your life vivisected on the big screen. Just looking at yourselves 30 feet high is traumatic enough. (For more anecdotes and details see Nick Dawson's interview .) I told the press at many film festivals that I thought Valentino and Giancarlo were very brave to undertake the project, and I was expecting some rejection upon showing them the final product. (There have been a few cases of documentaries that have been held up by their subjects: the Maysles Brothers' Gimme Shelter about the Rolling Stones, the Robert Frank's movie about Bob Dylan, Cocksucker Blues , and a film about Yves Saint Laurent.) Even in the most pressured moments, I was always able to find some sympathy for Valentino and Giancarlo. They were not the authors of this film, and they had no control. This was a very unusual position for them to be in, and one they could hardly grasp. For 50 years they had lorded over a fashion empire where they had absolute authority. Now, their lives and careers were being depicted in a way that was, I believe, honest, but not in the exact form or order they would have chosen. The film is uncensored, and they have led very censored lives in the press. Last fall, after the movie and its stars received a very big standing ovation at the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival (and an even bigger one in Toronto) the dam began to break. I witnessed the subjects of the movie starting to get some perspective on the situation. As Valentino told the press at Venice: "There are many things in this movie I did not like, but I have to accept it, as you see me as I am." After the good reviews and great box office, the stars have embraced the film, and they have done their publicity tour. (I continue on mine.) One moment on the tour with Valentino and Giancarlo stood out in an unexpected way. We started the TV campaign with an appearance on Oprah. It was terrific honor for the film to be singled out and given this kind of national attention. Oprah had seen the movie on her own, and taken a liking to it. It was the most valuable endorsement possible in any media. Our last stop on the TV tour, however, turned out to be the most cathartic and in depth: Charlie Rose . Rose invited the three of us to sit together for an interview. None of us gave it much thought beforehand, nor have we discussed it since. However, in retrospect, it was a very important moment. It was Charlie Rose's roundtable where Valentino, Giancarlo and I were finally able to discuss, in depth, the experience of making the movie, and how that experience had transformed all of us. The two-year shoot for the movie had been challenging in ways too numerous to list. The greatest difficulty of all for me during filming was dealing with two stars who were not used to being on anyone's schedule but their own. The movie may have seemed to Valentino and Giancarlo like new and fun experience at the outset, but after months of being wired for sound and interrupted at work (and play), tensions sometimes ran high. I think that one of the journalist or filmmaker's greatest skills is to know when to leave -- always before the welcome wears out. We came and went for two years, never outstaying our welcome. I was interested to discover an Italian trait I had not know about: terror of seeming overly eager. I would arrive in Rome with a crew of eight and 20 metal equipment cases. My first stop was always Giancarlo's office to say hello. He would receive me like this: "So, my darling, what brings you to Rome?" Charlie Rose is headquarted in the new Bloomberg building in Manhattan. The interior of Bloomberg media is by far the nicest office space I have ever been in. It looks like a movie-set version of a media empire. Before starting the broadcast, Rose kept us in conversation on the set around the table. It was difficult to tell if the cameras were rolling, as he just kept talking, and throwing questions at Valentino. I believe he did this on purpose to warm up the conversation for the broadcast. When the cameras were on, Rose went in for a brilliant kill, right off the bat: He asked Valentino and Giancarlo if it was in Capri in 1960 "where you fell in love." They were astonished. No one had ever asked them such a guileless question before, much less with five TV cameras rolling. Valentino, panicked, blurted out something like, "this is a very big word." Giancarlo began to tell about the origins of their relationship. I was able to chime in as well: "Let's be clear, it's a love story," I said. The stars of the film did not object. The love story has been much discussed in reviews, mentioned by Oprah on the air, and recognized by audiences. It is the movie I made. But it had never been put to the stars of the film directly, and they had never been asked to comment on it, with the director present. The interview got better and better from there, as Rose led a conversation that was, in a way, group therapy with the esteemed broadcast journalist as the shrink. Rose asked Valentino about his over-the-top lifestyle. Valentino tried to deny it. Rose showed images of his castle and his private plane. Valentino had to concede, with a laugh, that he lives better than anyone on Earth. Rose showed a sequence where it seems as if Valentino is not going to acknowledged Giancarlo in an acceptance speech after receiving the Legion of Honor in Paris. Giancarlo admitted on national TV that he was worried that Valentino would forget to thank him. All of the back-and-forth was good television with well-chosen clips , but to the interviewees, it was more of a catharsis than a slick public TV show could ever seem to be. The hour on Charlie Rose put an end to months of silence between the three of us about the outcome of the project that has transformed us. The movie has put an end to Valentino's staid image, and has made him an all-to-human Last Emperor of fashion; Giancarlo Giammetti has become a much more widely recognized public figure, the man behind Valentino who deserves much credit for Valentino's success. I got the rare opportunity, thanks to Charlie, to have a very cheerful and very public encounter with two men who defined my life for the past three years. Together in the blackness of the TV studio, were finally able to discover that, at the end of a difficult journey, everything was all right. All previous tribulations have been forgotten. Grazie tanto, Charlie Rose. More on Fashion
 
Robert Stavins: Does economic analysis shortchange the future? Top
Decisions made today usually have impacts both now and in the future. In the environmental realm, many of the future impacts are benefits, and such future benefits -- as well as costs -- are typically discounted by economists in their analyses. Why do economists do this, and does it give insufficient weight to future benefits and thus to the well-being of future generations? This is a question my colleague, Lawrence Goulder , a professor of economics at Stanford University, and I addressed in an article in Nature . We noted that as economists, we often encounter skepticism about discounting, especially from non-economists. Some of the skepticism seems quite valid, yet some reflects misconceptions about the nature and purposes of discounting. In this post, I hope to clarify the concept and the practice. It helps to begin with the use of discounting in private investments, where the rationale stems from the fact that capital is productive ­- money earns interest. Consider a company trying to decide whether to invest $1 million in the purchase of a copper mine, and suppose that the most profitable strategy involves extracting the available copper 3 years from now, yielding revenues (net of extraction costs) of $1,150,000. Would investing in this mine make sense? Assume the company has the alternative of putting the $1 million in the bank at 5 per cent annual interest. Then, on a purely financial basis, the company would do better by putting the money in the bank, as it will have $1,000,000 x (1.05)3, or $1,157,625, that is, $7,625 more than it would earn from the copper mine investment. I compared the alternatives by compounding to the future the up-front cost of the project. It is mathematically equivalent to compare the options by discounting to the present the future revenues or benefits from the copper mine. The discounted revenue is $1,150,000 divided by (1.05)3, or $993,413, which is less than the cost of the investment ($1 million). So the project would not earn as much as the alternative of putting the money in the bank. Discounting translates future dollars into equivalent current dollars; it undoes the effects of compound interest. It is not aimed at accounting for inflation, as even if there were no inflation, it would still be necessary to discount future revenues to account for the fact that a dollar today translates (via compound interest) into more dollars in the future. Can this same kind of thinking be applied to investments made by the public sector? Since my purpose is to clarify a few key issues in the starkest terms, I will use a highly stylized example that abstracts from many of the subtleties. Suppose that a policy, if introduced today and maintained, would avoid significant damage to the environment and human welfare 100 years from now. The 'return on investment' is avoided future damages to the environment and people's well-being. Suppose that this policy costs $4 billion to implement, and that this cost is completely borne today. It is anticipated that the benefits - avoided damages to the environment - will be worth $800 billion to people alive 100 years from now. Should the policy be implemented? If we adopt the economic efficiency criterion I have described in previous posts, the question becomes whether the future benefits are large enough so that the winners could potentially compensate the losers and still be no worse off? Here discounting is helpful. If, over the next 100 years, the average rate of interest on ordinary investments is 5 per cent, the gains of $800 billion to people 100 years from now are equivalent to $6.08 billion today. Equivalently, $6.08 billion today, compounded at an annual interest rate of 5 per cent, will become $800 billion in 100 years. The project satisfies the principle of efficiency if it costs current generations less than $6.08 billion, otherwise not. Since the $4 billion of up-front costs are less than $6.08 billion, the benefits to future generations are more than enough to offset the costs to current generations. Discounting serves the purpose of converting costs and benefits from various periods into equivalent dollars of some given period. Applying a discount rate is not giving less weight to future generations' welfare. Rather, it is simply converting the (full) impacts that occur at different points of time into common units. Much skepticism about discounting and, more broadly, the use of benefit-cost analysis, is connected to uncertainties in estimating future impacts. Consider the difficulties of ascertaining, for example, the benefits that future generations would enjoy from a regulation that protects certain endangered species. Some of the gain to future generations might come in the form of pharmaceutical products derived from the protected species. Such benefits are impossible to predict. Benefits also depend on the values future generations would attach to the protected species - the enjoyment of observing them in the wild or just knowing of their existence. But how can we predict future generations' values? Economists and other social scientists try to infer them through surveys and by inferring preferences from individuals' behavior. But these approaches are far from perfect, and at best they indicate only the values or tastes of people alive today. The uncertainties are substantial and unavoidable, but they do not invalidate the use of discounting (or benefit-cost analysis). They do oblige analysts, however, to assess and acknowledge those uncertainties in their policy assessments, a topic I discussed in my last post ("What Baseball Can Teach Policymakers"), and a topic to which I will return in the future. More on Climate Change
 
Grassroots Green Organizers Celebrated Top
Al Gore, Robert Redford and Tracy Chapman (who rocked the house!) were present to mark the 20th anniversary of the award. Each year the Goldman Prize recognizes environmental heroes from the six inhabitable continents with an award of $150,000. Because all obstacles seem to be in the way of the extraordinary award recipients, attendees inevitably leave feeling like they could and should be doing more in their own communities (no matter how much they are already doing). It is a humbling evening of education.
 
Maine Gay Marriage: Judiciary Committee Endorses Same-Sec Marriage Top
AUGUSTA, Maine — A same-sex marriage bill is going to the Maine Senate and House with a strong committee endorsement. Eleven of the 14 Judiciary Committee members voted Tuesday to pass the bill, while two voted against it and one proposed sending it to voters in a November referendum. Gov. John Baldacci remains undecided. Supporters said the bill corrects an inequality that's long existed in Maine law, while one of the opponents pointed to overwhelming constituent opposition to the bill. Republican Sen. David Hastings of Fryeburg said he prefers sending a straightforward question to voters. The committee session was interrupted by an outburst by a protester, who shouted that the bill is morally wrong. She was escorted by police from the State House. More on Gay Marriage
 
Schaumburg Prostitution Ring Under Investigation Top
Prostitutes were operating out of an Schaumburg apartment that was the subject of a SWAT team response Saturday after a customer said he was robbed there by a group of armed men, police said.
 
Conyers, Nadler Call For Special Counsel To Investigate And Prosecute Torture Top
Members of the House judiciary committee asked attorney general Eric Holder on Tuesday to appoint a special counsel to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute Bush administration officials involved in decisions that led to torture of detainees held in counter-terrorism efforts. In a letter to Holder, the congressmen write that memos released by the Obama administration last week confirmed that legal justifications for interrogation techniques like waterboarding came from high-up administration officials. "During your confirmation hearings, you testified that waterboarding is torture," the letter says. "This letter makes official our views on the necessary procedure in investigating those U.S. officials who allowed or actively instructed others to commit torture," said a statement from Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who along with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) were the letter's principal authors. "Because the United States is bound by its own laws and by international treaty, we are obligated to investigate and, where necessary, to prosecute those who have violated the laws against committing torture - whether by ordering it or committing it directly." The letter argues that there is "abundant, credible evidence of torture," that an internal justice department investigation would be hobbled by conflict-of-interest, and that the public would benefit from an investigation from an independent special counsel. Click here for a PDF of the letter. Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
Andy Borowitz: Specter: "Now I Can Say It: What a Bunch of Fucking Assholes!" Top
Arlen Specter, the newly minted Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania, let his hair down in a freewheeling press conference at the U.S. Senate today, making this comment about his former Republican colleagues: "Now I can say it: what a bunch of fucking assholes!" Mr. Specter had a bounce in his step and lilt in his voice as he tore into members of his former party in a press appearance that appeared to set records with its body count. "This is something I've wanted to say for years: is there a bigger dick on this planet than Mitch McConnell?" he said. "I know he thinks he's doing his job, but please, what a fucking turd." Observers who are accustomed to the much-ballyhooed collegiality of the Senate were taken aback by the jaw-dropping profanity of Sen. Specter's parting shots, many of which were breathtaking in their anatomical crudeness. "He must've had a lot of rage bottled up over the years," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). "Suddenly he was talking like a Somali pirate." While Mr. Specter's tirade had many high points - or low points, depending on one's party affiliation - he reserved some of his harshest words for House Minority whip Eric Cantor: "Eric fucking Cantor? Please. That douche can kiss my goddamn stimulus package." More on Arlen Specter
 
Reid Stresses Bipartisanship After Specter Defection Top
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the defection of former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) to the Democratic party Tuesday, saying he welcomed "Senator Specter and his moderate voice to our diverse caucus." With Specter as a Democrat, the party controls 59 seats in the upper chamber. When Minnesota's Al Franken is seated, Democrats will boast a filibuster-busting 60 votes, rendering the opposition party impotent -- at least theoretically. Like a good sportsman, Reid stressed bipartisanship in his statement. "Before this happened, it was critical the Democrats and the Republicans work together to deliver the change that the American people have demanded now," Reid said. "That's not any less critical today than it was yesterday. It's still as true as ever." For his part, Specter said he wouldn't necessarily do as the Democrats do. "I will not be changing my own personal independence or any own approach to individual issues," Specter said. "I will not be an automatic 60th vote. I note that some of the news stories since my statement was released this morning are taking a look at the 60th vote, and I will not be an automatic 60th vote." To make his point, Specter trumpeted another switcheroo -- his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions. Specter had supported the bill before he came out against it this year. "I have always agreed with John Kennedy that sometimes the party asks too much, and if the Democratic party asks too much," Specter said, "I will not hesitate to disagree and vote my independent thinking and what I consider as a matter of conscience to be in the interest of the state and nation." Reid kept his comments more vanilla: "Democrats and Republicans must still work together to help our economy drop develop and save jobs," he said. "Democrats and Republicans must work together to help hard working families keep their homes. Democrats and Republicans must still work together to make health care more affordable, invest in renewable energy and help all people in America to get an education. Democrats and Republicans must still work together to ensure our troops have the resources they need to more effectively fight extremists in the middle east and around the world. but there's a lot of work to do." Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Arlen Specter
 
Les Leopold: Is Paul Krugman Afraid of His Own Logic? Top
Nobel Laureate economist-columnist Paul Krugman has a problem: he can't draw the obvious conclusions from his own analysis of the banking crisis. In his April 27 column, " Money for Nothing ," Krugman makes a great case against the enormous pay packages Wall Street is still awarding itself. • First, he says quite accurately that "there's no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify those humongous paychecks." • Next he argues that such high pay is not justified by the so-called innovations produced by Wall Street -- like those disastrous subprime mortgages (a point I also made in " Let Us Now Praise Luddism "). • And finally he states that the free market is no position to set bankers' wages because "Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private sector. It's a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a.k.a. 'welfare.'" So what does Krugman propose to do about it? Silence. Okay, that's not quite fair: He says he hopes our leaders "carry through with real reform." Which is what? Let's help him out by following through on his own logic. If Wall Street is a ward of the state then the state should set its pay scales just as it would with any other government agency (or welfare recipient). Here's a generous solution: Why not a President's Wage Cap? No one in a financial institution that receives bailout funds or loan guarantees of any kind should receive more than the President of the United States. (That's $400,000 per year.) No exceptions, no deferred compensation, no stock options...just a hard wage and benefit cap, not unlike what autoworkers now must live with. Is that fair or what? One thing's for certain, unless we come up with a hard cap, bankers will continue to pay themselves lavishly, only this time with taxpayer money. Please, Mr. Krugman, lead the charge! Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity -- and What We Can Do about It , (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009) More on Financial Crisis
 
Michael Kieschnick: Ten Ways to Bring the Bush Administration's Torture Ten to Justice (and One Way to Avoid) Top
The release of the so-called torture memos and resulting coverage in the mainstream press has brought new momentum to our longstanding campaign to bring key figures from the Bush administration to justice for their roles as masterminds in the expanding torture scandal. There is a noticeable lack of bravery and integrity among the promoters and enablers of torture -- none of whom have come forward to simply admit that they performed illegal acts because they thought it was the right thing to do, and are willing to submit personally to the consequences of making their case to a judge or jury. This is called civil disobedience in the honorable sense. President Obama's Justice Department should indict and then prosecute decision makers -- legal and executive -- who enabled and ordered torture. By our counting, Mr. Holder's attention should turn immediately to those we can consider the Torture Ten: Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, Condi Rice, John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, Jay Bybee, William J. Haynes II, George Tenet, and Alberto Gonzales. Are these self-styled patriots afraid of the American system of justice? While citizens across the country call for accountability, it is worrisome that even the most outraged of our leaders inside the beltway are calling only for the familiar bipartisan truth commission to "investigate." Such a commission is most likely to be used as a platform for posturing to the media and will trade grants of immunity for any actual accountability. We should not even consider it unless all other measures are off the table. Short of doing nothing, a bipartisan commission is the single worst tactic and the least likely to deter future crimes. Lacking a miracle, such a commission will merely enable posturing before the media, offer broad immunity to criminals in exchange for testimony, and lead to any number of outcomes that fall far short of actual accountability. But of most consequence, relying on a commission will almost certainly mean that in the future, our leaders will once again torture in our name. There are ten strategies (other than a toothless bipartisan truth commission) to bring the Torture Ten and their accomplices to justice. Indictment and prosecution by Holder is at the top of the list, but there are other tactics that any concerned American can pursue in parallel to assure the Torture Ten face some measure of justice. 1. Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate, and, if warranted, indict and prosecute the Torture Ten. Think U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. 2. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers, should draw up articles of impeachment for federal appellate court judge Jay Bybee, the author of some of the worst torture memoranda. Usefully, the judiciary committee can compel testimony under oath whether articles of impeachment are approved or not. 3. Review, word by word, any testimony under oath by the Torture Ten before Congress or the 9/11 Commission for perjury. It is not an accident that the Bush Administration sought to avoid having its representatives swear to tell the truth, but they were often forced to do so, and no doubt they lied. 4. All lawyers who helped create the legal architecture for the illegal torture program -- including Jay Bybee, John Yoo, William J. Haynes II and David Addington to name the most prominent -- should be disbarred. This is a disciplinary process overseen by any state bar that licenses a particular lawyer, and can be initiated by a complaint by another lawyer or a legal organization. (A successful rightwing campaign resulted in the state bar of Arkansas revoking former President Bill Clinton's license to practice law shortly after he left office.) 5. Students and alumni should protest any honorary degrees that might be provided to the Torture Ten by colleges and universities. Campaign tactics could include sending a pre-emptive letter to the presidential leadership of the nation's institutions of higher education, as well as responding after the fact if a torture leader is announced as the recipient of an honorary degree. 6. Consumers and stockholders should not stand by and allow any publicly held company to hire a member of the Torture Ten, especially in the position of legal counsel. Chevron for example has done this with Pentagon torture architect William J. Haynes II who bears responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Shareholder actions can be launched to demand the removal of any torture leader in the employ of a major corporation. 7. There must be continued release of detailed information on the torture regime via documents from the Red Cross, whistleblowers, the Justice Department, White House emails, and so forth. Relentless investigative reporting and litigation will be required to make this happen. 8. Citizens must embolden the press to ask tough questions of the Torture Ten and their prominent apologists when they appear in public -- and hold them accountable when they do not. No softball questions should be allowed. 9. We must support the public appearances and investigative costs of the finest investigative writers who bring torture abuses to light, including Mark Danner, Jane Mayer, and Marcy Wheeler. When the public learns what was done in their name -- even as Mr. Bush repeatedly denied it -- they become angry and will join the demand for justice. 10. Religious denominations must adopt as official policy that torture is a sin. Congregation leaders, particularly those at churches attended by the Torture Ten, must preach sermons on the subject that are unflinching and widely covered in the press. Our nation's honor is at stake. Those who choose to ignore the transgressions of the past doom future generations to suffer mightily. Michael Kieschnick is the president and Becky Bond is the political director of CREDO Mobile. More on Dick Cheney
 
Joe Waz: Comcast Cares Day powers dreams across America Top
On Saturday, the skies across most of the U.S. were as blue as the tees worn by Comcast Cares Day volunteers. The turnout was amazing. My previous post projected 50,000 volunteers - but the last official registration update had us at over 58,000 from coast to coast! In the current tough economy, community organizations need all the help they can get. Comcast employees, spouses, and lots of their kids teamed up with community partners to get things done… contributing nearly 350,000 person-hours to build stronger neighborhoods. In the Philadelphia area alone, we had seven projects underway, mostly at public schools and rec centers. I spent the day at Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. There were projects scattered all over this huge park, and I was one of a dozen volunteers who scraped down and painted a big wooden picnic pavilion. At the morning kick-off, one of the event sponsors, the Fairmount Park Conservancy , honored Comcast’s 89-year-old founder, Ralph Roberts, with a park bench and a tree to thank Comcast for (as the executive director put it) “putting down roots in Philadelphia.” (She was referring to our LEED Gold-certified headquarters that opened in Center City last year). “Thank you, and I plan to be around another 10 or 15 years to watch it grow,” Ralph said with a big smile. As happens every year, we’re hearing some really touching stories from the field. There was the 6-foot-4 executive director of a Boys and Girls Club in Massachusetts who teared up when all the volunteers presented him with a grant to the Club. There was a young woman, a Comcast Leaders and Achievers scholarship recipient who attends Community College of Denver , who told our volunteers at Denver Health how grateful lower-income moms are for the well-provisioned baby bags they receive. (She got one when she had her baby last year, and our volunteers spent Saturday stuffing 400 more). This was the first year that Comcast Cares Day had a big social media presence. There are already 48 pages of tweets since Saturday (search Twitter for “ #ccday ”) offering a play-by-play on Comcast Cares Day as it unfolded. There are over 500 photos from Philadelphia, New Jersey, Atlanta, and several projects in Colorado and Oregon on Flikr . Our Seattle team also set up a cool page combining streaming video and tweets. We’ll be pulling together the stories of Comcast Cares Day from across America in the coming weeks, but for now we just want to thank every single one of those 58,000 volunteers – every employee, family member, friend, and community partner — who gave up a spectacular Saturday to help make their city or town a better place. Cross-posted to Comcast Voices .
 
Maddisen K. Krown: Ask Maddisen: How to Be Your Self in the Presence of Others Top
Dear Maddisen: I feel secure and connected to myself when I'm alone, but when I get around other people, even my significant other, I seem to lose myself and my own voice. How can I stay connected to myself and express my truth when interacting with others? Signed, LR Dear LR, Thank you for asking such a relevant question, which speaks to a fairly common but often unaddressed human quandary. It is absolutely possible for you to reclaim your connection to yourself and your own unique voice while in the company of others, and I'm here to throw you a lifeline! Let's start with some useful background information. The research of developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson, suggests that our sense of individuality, identity, and values is established during our adolescent years between the ages of 12-20; with internal and external factors influencing our behavioral patterns that result in Identity or Identity Confusion . He describes the balanced and desired outcome of this phase as Fidelity - Being True to One's Self . Individuals who develop a healthy sense of identity tend to have a committed sense of fidelity or loyalty to themselves, a sense of self acceptance and self respect, and a natural trust in expressing their truths with others. Their behavior is internally referenced from their authentic or core Self. Individuals with identity confusion may lean toward self rejection, self criticism, a lack of confidence, and a fear of standing out in the presence of others. Their behavior is externally referenced , meaning they may be overly influenced by the behavior of others. From this unsteady position, there may be a need to isolate, to lose oneself or even freeze in the presence of others, or to overcompensate with bravado or even by belittling others. So the million dollar question is: If we've beating the drum of identity confusion, what can we do to become more consistently true to ourselves in the presence of others? Well, we can fake it by imitating confidence, which can be utterly exhausting, OR we can change genuinely from within, with utterly uplifting and lasting results. I vote for the latter! To support your new habit of being true to your Self while alone and in the company of others, we're going to learn a game I developed called 1-2-3 Me You We . (say that 3 times fast!) I'll demonstrate with our fictional client Jasmine, famed soap star from my last column. This is an easy 5-step exercise. 1-2-3 Me You We Jasmine and I stand facing each other. We each hold a lit candle, safely close and level with the solar plexus (the area between the chest and the belly button). Step 1 Jasmine closes her eyes and takes three deep breaths, 1-2-3 (which she deliberately feels in her solar plexus region). Step 2 Jasmine opens her eyes and says aloud, "Hello, I AM Jasmine, and this candle represents my unique and wonderful Self. I AM here, I AM fully connected to my Self, I AM sharing this space with you, and I AM expressing my truth with you." Jasmine takes her time to feel into this, and shares anything else she'd like to say. We engage in honest and loving conversation, while each holding our own candles. Step 3 Jasmine hands me her lit candle. (This represents the act of losing or giving herself away when she comes in contact with others.) She says, "I've given my self away. I don't know who I am. And now I need you to tell me who I am, how I am, and what to do." Jasmine stands here and fully experiences this feeling of giving herself away. Step 4 I say to her, "Jasmine, I already have my own candle that represents my unique and wonderful self. I know who I am. Please take your unique and wonderful self back where it belongs." Step 5 Jasmine takes back her lit candle, holds it by her solar plexus, and with eyes open, takes three deep breaths, 1-2-3. She says again, "Hello, I AM Jasmine, and this candle represents my unique and wonderful Self. I AM here, I AM fully connected to my self, I AM sharing this space with you, and I AM expressing my truth with you." We engage in conversation together, each holding our own candles. Repeat as desired We repeat Steps 1-5 several times until Jasmine feels complete. Jasmine expresses that this game has clearly shown her how in the past, she was unconsciously losing her self in the presence of others, and how uncomfortable that was. Jasmine loves the feeling of staying connected to her Self, and enthusiastically commits to this new practice. She asks what she should do if she is with others and blanks on what to say. I suggest that it's best for her to speak her truth whenever possible, so for example in this case, she might express honestly that she's at a loss for words! She likes that idea. I've witnessed profound improvements with my clients who have played this game. And if you're out and about with others but without your candle (!), try this: Center yourself with three deep breaths and visualize a lit candle or a golden ball of light in your solar plexus. Be aware of staying connected to your own center as you interact with others. Be patient with yourself and use self forgiveness as needed. One last tip about the solar plexus and chakras : the chakras are energy centers that support the flow of our life energy. The seven chakras are: root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow (third-eye), and crown . The solar plexus chakra is the energy center that supports our individuality, self esteem, and personal power. It is represented by the color yellow and the element of fire. If you'd like to learn more, I recommend listening to Colette Baron-Reid's audio CD Journey through the Chakras . And so, dear L.R., it's fine and healthy to enjoy your time alone, but please remember to COME OUT AND PLAY! Share your Self with us! Share your truth and your voice with us! Share your inherent gifts with the world! It's the reason you are here ! In closing, I bid you all adieu with this fitting quote from you-know-who: This above all, to thine own self be true . Your Coach, Maddisen You may submit your questions for ASK MADDISEN at askmaddisen@krown.us
 
Obama Restates Support For Public Plan In Meeting With Progressives Top
A group of progressive members of the House of Representatives met with the President on Tuesday to discuss economic and health care matters. The message that they conveyed from their meeting is that the White House supports efforts for a public plan for insurance coverage when it comes to health care reform. One of those members, speaking to the Huffington Post after the affair, summarized it like this: "The President told us we have his backing on a public plan." The obstacle, the member added, will come in Congress, where cobbling together the votes needed to pass a health care package with a public plan could be problematic. Needless to say, progressive health care reform advocates will be heartened to hear that Obama restated his support for a public option for insurance coverage. While the private insurance industry views this as a gateway toward universalized health care, progressives and many Democrats see it as the most affective way to bring costs under control in the near term. More to come... Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Barack Obama
 
AIG A Shadow Of Its Former Self, Likely Doomed For Failure: CNN Top
Once a titan in the insurance world, AIG is a shadow of its former self, and experts say the company is likely doomed for failure. That's partly because AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) is slowly getting rid of its strong, moneymaking businesses as it attempts to pay back the roughly $130 billion it has borrowed on its $182 billion government bailout.
 
Arlen Specter's Climate Change Politics: What His Switch Means Top
So what are his positions on climate change? Roughly those of a conservative Democrat. He voted against the McCain-Lieberman climate bill twice and declined to vote for cloture for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill last year. He said that the latter bill contained "very difficult standards which I, candidly, do not think are attainable." As an alternative he has pushed a bill co-sponsored with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the "Low-Carbon Economy Act," which has weak targets, free permits, automatic off-ramps, and all the rest of the kinds of provisions that neuter a climate bill. (See Wonk Room for more on Specter's green record.) More on Arlen Specter
 
NRSC Memo: Specter An Opportunist, He Can Still Be Beat Top
While not "happy" with the defection of Arlen Specter, national Republicans are doing the best they can to squelch concerns from within the party that they now have no shot of winning that seat in the 2010 election. In a private memo sent from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and obtained by the Huffington Post, spokesman Brian Walsh distributed the following background information for his fellow GOPers to work with. · First, while I wouldn't necessarily use the word "happy," the item below from Congressional Quarterly has several points worth keeping in mind when assessing today's news; · Second, for those who haven't seen it, below that are Senator Cornyn's comments from today's press stakeout where he reiterated that this was a decision about political self-preservation; · Third, at the bottom, note that in addition to former National Constitution Center head Joe Torsella who insisted in a statement this afternoon that he is still running for the Democratic nod and Specter's statement that he still opposes card check - which DC & PA labor bosses will have trouble swallowing -- The Hill has a statement from Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak who also leaves the door open to challenging Specter in a primary. · Finally, in case you missed it yesterday before the Specter news even broke, Politico had a piece on a new survey out by Public Opinion Strategies showing that voters, by a 22 point margin, said they preferred a candidate who would be a "check and balance" to President Obama over a candidate "who will help Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress" pass their agenda. Click here for the story . The sum of the material seems to be this: paint Specter as a political opportunist, play up the shot of a Democratic challenging Specter in the primary, and hope that the public desire to have a check on Obama outweighs the massive gains in voter registration that Pennsylvania Democrats made in the last election. Become a fan of HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
"Wall Street" Sequel: Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone On Board Top
LOS ANGELES — Michael Douglas and Oliver Stone are going to show us the money again with a sequel to their 1987 hit "Wall Street." According to 20th Century Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant, Douglas is reprising his role as Gordon Gekko and Stone is on board again to direct the as-yet-untitled sequel. Brilliant notes that it's a timely project given what's happening in the world. With the economy and financial markets in a tailspin, it will be different times for Douglas' Gekko. In the original film, corporate raider Gekko was a symbol of Wall Street greed and corruption during the boom era of the 1980s. More on Financial Crisis
 
Susan J. Demas: Will Michigan's Depression Drag Obama Down? Top
Think your state has it bad? Michigan's unemployment rate will likely hit 15 percent this year, thanks to the implosion of the auto industry. That's the assessment of Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica. If either Chrysler or General Motors goes into bankruptcy, the damage would be far worse. Try an "unmitigated disaster," in the words of Gary Olson, director of the nonpartisan Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency. For March, Michigan's unemployment was 12.6 percent, more than 4 points above the national average. And all 83 of Michigan's counties posted gains in unemployment, including Great Depression-era levels like 28 percent in Mackinac County. Cities like Detroit and Highland Park have had jobless rates topping 20 percent for months. So what does this have to do with Barack Obama? His favorables might reach 72 percent , but his handling of the domestic automakers could spell big trouble -- 53 percent disapprove . Michigan gave the president a 16-point margin of victory last fall, but we have an unpopular Democratic governor who's getting a lot of blame for the economic crisis. Jennifer Granholm is term-limited and may pop back up in Washington -- she was widely considered a finalist for cabinet positions -- but her likely successor, Lt. Gov. John Cherry, could feel the wrath of Michigan voters' anger next year. If Republicans successfully make the argument that Obama killed the auto industry -- an increasingly popular meme in Michigan -- and Granholm strangled the rest of the economy by raising taxes , the Democrats could be in real trouble here next year. That's why there's already a broad field of Republican candidates for governor, with more likely to jump into the fray. And independent polling , albeit from a GOP firm, shows that Cherry loses to all of them. If that continues to hold, I predict you'll start to see a spate of Republican resurgence trend stories on Fox News and right-wing blogs. "Michigan is the canary in the coalmine," a toothy pundit will chirp. "Americans are sick and tired of socialist tax-and-spend policies and Michigan is suffering the most of any state. That's why you're seeing the Republican comeback start in the Wolverine State." Obama has made vague promises to help Michigan with job retraining, unemployment benefits and health care. He appointed Ed Montgomery as recovery czar. The stimulus money is helping the state, which has at least a $1.4 billion budget deficit for next year, keep its lights on. But when times are this rough, the political landscape is volatile. How the president plays it in Michigan is indeed one of his first political tests. Unless he proves to Michiganders that he is committed to the state as it bleeds jobs due to government-mandated auto restructuring, 2010 could be a very good Republican year here. And spell plenty of trouble for Obama in the Midwest for 2012. More on Barack Obama
 
Obama Will Fundraise And Campaign For Specter If Asked: Gibbs Top
If there were any lingering doubts about how Arlen Specter would be welcomed in the Democratic Party, or if the party would welcome a primary challenge to the now-former Republican, they were put to rest during the White House Daily briefing on Tuesday afternoon. Asked if the president would aid the Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat's primary efforts, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs replied: "If the president is asked to raise money for Senator Specter, he will happily do it. If the president is asked to campaign for Senator Specter, he will be happy to do that as well." Later in the briefing, Gibbs was pressed whether the president would consider supporting another Democrat in the Pennsylvania primary should one choose to run. He responded: "Full support means full support." Freshman Rep. Joe Sestak, a Pennsylvania Democrat and retired Navy officer, told MSNBC on Tuesday that he was still considering a potential run at Specter's Senate seat. Also on Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee blasted out a fundraising email headlined, "Arlen Specter Switches Parties," and declaring it "a great day for all of us who want to help bring real, lasting change to this country." "The Democrats welcomed Sen. Arlen Specter into our party today," the message read. "This one's a game-changer. Specter's move immediately improves the prospects of President Obama's bold change agenda." Become a fan of HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Obama Fundraising
 
Nicole Williams: Five Reasons to Love the Recession Top
Right now the outlook is pretty bleak. Banks are going bust. Loyal employees are losing their jobs. And our 401(k)s have taken a nosedive. But there is a silver lining to this recession. Here are five reasons why a downturn needn't get you down. 1. Frugal is now fashionable. "It" bags are out, and good old-fashioned ingenuity is in. That means there's less emphasis on wearing the latest styles and more focus on your smarts and business savvy (finally). Those of us who are savers by nature no longer have to hide our brown-bag lunches or be coy about shopping secondhand. Suddenly, the word "recessionista" has some cachet! These are skills that will help us even when the economy improves. 2. Stores are offering serious sales. For those who have the cash, this is clearly a buyer's market. Mortgage rates are low (for those who can get one), and travel companies like hotels and cruise lines are offering outrageously cheap vacations in attempts to lure travelers. Retailers are offering ridiculous deals on electronics, clothing, and other goods. 3. We have an excuse to explore inexpensive hobbies. Instead of going out to dinner, people are learning to cook and eating at home. Rather than buying a new spring wardrobe, they're hosting swap parties to share clothes with friends. We're digging the DIY revival, because it forces us to get creative and try new things that we might not do under different circumstances. 4. An end to the excess. In some ways, higher gas and utility costs are good for the green movement, because they force people to be more conservative in their driving and energy use. Also, because of rising grocery prices, many people are buying locally, which helps support local farmers and reduces the environmental impact of shipping food across the country. Less spending means less waste on packaging and useless products that people don't really need. 5. Two words: more sex. While couples are cutting back on lavish dinners and luxury vacations, they're still having sex. In fact, condoms and adult toys are among the few products that actually saw an increase in sales last year, even more so around the time that Lehman Brothers went under. It makes perfect sense, because sex is an inexpensive way to spend a Saturday night with your significant other -- and it relieves stress. More on Sex
 
Lincoln Mitchell: The First 100 Days: A Whole that is Greater than its Parts Top
The first hundred days of the Obama presidency have been an extraordinary time for our country and or president. Evaluating the president with a letter grade, even for an old academic like me, seems like a banal approach to a rich and complex story, but the world, and even the Huffington Post, is not UC Santa Cruz in the 1980s anymore, so I will do my best. Before evaluating the president, it is helpful to know what courses he took during this period. As I see it, President Obama can be most usefully evaluated for his work in three courses: Foreign Policy, The Economy and Politics. None of these were easy courses, but President Obama, on balance, has done well in most of them. Foreign Policy President Obama may have gotten a little lucky in this area. The test for which, in Vice-President Biden's unfortunate words from the campaign, we were supposed to gird our loins, never really came. The war in Gaza ended before Obama became president; the North Korean missile landed harmlessly in the sea: Russia and Georgia did not go to war again; Al Qaeda did not try another terrorist attack in the US. All of this made Obama's first hundred days, while not without incident or concern, somewhat easier. In foreign policy, some of the biggest successes are often the hardest to see because they are preventative. Obama's reintroducing America tour, in which he has been ably assisted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, built up a reservoir of goodwill towards the US which will be an extremely valuable asset as the hard work of foreign policy goes on. Already, for example, Obama's new popularity has made it much tougher for other countries to blame the US for this global recession, which is what many leaders from Moscow to Europe and beyond would like to do. The jury is still out on a number of other issues. The administration's efforts to reset relations with Russia have not been sufficiently fleshed out; and in this particular case the devil is very much in the details, but already the administration seems to have cooled tensions with Russia from what they were last fall when many spoke about the possibility of a new Cold War. Major issues like Afghanistan or AfPak as it is increasingly frequently called, are not showing marked improvement. There is a real likelihood that region will suffer from increased state collapse, more power in Islamist hands and a more tenuous security environment. It is too early to tell whether or not Obama's plan of increased US presence in Afghanistan will work, but there is reason for concern. The broader Middle East remains a very difficult challenge. The administration seems to be moving toward some kind of dialog with Iran, but it is not yet known what will come of that. The notion that the surge in Iraq worked is a bit of conventional wisdom left over from the previous administration, but it is still not clear what that means. Iraq could move forward towards stability but it could just as easily collapse entirely. Obama's policy towards Iraq is also suitably ambiguous, combining a drawdown of troops with a commitment to stay in Iraq for several years. Venezuela, Israel/Palestine, Cuba, Darfur and China are among the other foreign policy challenges with which this administration has begun to grapple. Clearly foreign policy is a four year colloquium which is difficult to grade after only the first semester. However, Obama's major successes include the G20, laying the foundation for useful dialogs with a number of allies and non-allies, keeping our country safe from the attack which many Republicans warned would be inevitable if Barack Obama became president, and reinvigorating key alliances. These are important, but not earth shattering accomplishments. Obama has not yet achieved any of the almost impossible tasks such as bringing peace between Israel and Palestine, stabilizing Iraq or Afghanistan or creating a working relationship between Russia, the US and Europe, so we will have to wait a while before giving a final grade. Preliminary grade-B+. The Economy This is the most difficult area on which to evaluate President Obama. He has some substantial accomplishments here which are the most significant and concrete of his presidency. The stimulus bill which he passed in the first weeks of his presidency, while perhaps not big enough, was within the context of what was possible, an impressive and helpful piece of legislation. The stimulus bill was the biggest legislative accomplishment in the first year of a presidency since at least the Reagan administration. More importantly, it set a tone that the Obama administration was going to confront the recession directly and began to put money into the economy in a useful way. Unfortunately, the rest of Obama's economic program has not been as strong. Timothy Geithner's Treasury Department has failed to bring vision or a meaningful plan to righting our deeply troubled banking and finance sectors. Not surprisingly, the administration's biggest problems, thus far, have been in this area. Geithner's Wall Street background, while clearly providing him with a fluent understanding of finance, has made it extremely difficult for him to understand the depth of the problem or to think creatively about solutions. Geithner has continued to shovel money at the banking and finance sector while being far less enthusiastic about holding the banks accountable or implementing any serious structural changes and reforms in those areas. This has been a real drag on an administration which began with such a positive stimulus bill. Obama's performance on the economy has also been disappointing because he has only vaguely touched on the major, if often overlooked, question of what comes next. Once we staunch the economic bleeding, we need to build the next American economy, one that is fairer, less environmentally destructive and based on sounder economic thinking than the one which recently collapsed. It is not clear the administration has done any real work in this area. It is difficult to give Obama a grade on the economy because he has had some very impressive accomplishments and some real disappointments. Grade-B. Politics If I may depart from the extended academic metaphor, Obama has hit it over the fence here. Doing the politics well is not a trivial or unimportant thing. This work has been part of the foundation for all of the accomplishments Obama has achieved in his first 100 days and will contribute to all the future successes of his administration. Practically speaking, Obama has two major political accomplishments. First, he has reduced the Republicans, or perhaps more accurately, stood by as the Republican have reduced themselves, to a fringe party of backward looking, red baiting, tea party throwing, hate mongers, led by angry, belligerent, but highly compensated media figures, bizarrely incompetent governors and assorted other extremists. It is possible that Obama has been lucky in the opposition he has faced both during his campaign and during his presidency, but a more realistic look at the picture must give credit to the President as well as to Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and others who have succeeded in ensuring that the President is perceived as a moderate, never taking the bait from the extremists and continuing the magical hold that the Obama White House still seems to have for so many Americans. Obama's second major political accomplishment is less obvious, but perhaps more significant. Obama, like the last two Democratic presidents before him, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, got elected with substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of congress. Clinton and Carter, however, were unable to exploit the political situation to push through any meaningful legislation. Instead, they did not work well with congress, alienated many of its leaders and had nothing to show for the first parts of their presidencies. The Carter and Clinton presidencies are, of course, history, but the Obama administration read that history well and did not repeat those mistakes. Instead, the administration has worked well with congress and passed at least one very significant piece of legislation with more on the way. Moreover, relations between the Democratic White House and the Democratic controlled congress have remained strong. Fears that Rahm Emanuel would try to strong arm congress have proven unfounded as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have both positioned themselves as supporters of the White House, but held on to their institutional independence. Grading Obama on the politics is easy. Grade A Overall Placing Obama's first 100 days in context is important because for the first 100 days, at least, the whole outweighs the sum of its parts. Not only have Obama's first 100 days been by far the best of any president of my lifetime, but they began not a day too soon. The country was reeling economically, directionless in foreign policy, losing credibility and support abroad and suffering a crisis of confidence at home when Obama became president. Obama has begun to turn all of this around. Moreover, even though Obama has not been a constant optimist in the White House he has restored confidence both abroad and domestically as most Americans believe our new president is, for the most part, leading us in the right directions. There have also been a range of less high profile issues including stem cell research, national service, allowing science back into policy and, frankly, bringing a sense of normalcy back to Washington, for which Obama also deserves credit. Ultimately, what stops Obama from getting an A is his approach to addressing finance and banking issues, so his final grade is A-. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Betsy Perry: Montezuma's Revenge: Can The Best Thing About Mexico Really Be Beverly Hills Chihuahua? Top
Used to be the worst thing about visiting Mexico was drinking the water or tickling an ice cube in your margarita; it was guaranteed regardless of safety measures that within hours you would be physically attached to the "commode." Warned against eating anything that might have been touched by the Mexican help with hands washed in parasite infested tap water, you'd live on guacamole and Doritos even at the finest hotels. Nowadays the best PR Mexico has is the movie "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." Between the guns, drugs, kidnappings and swine flu, this poor country can't catch a break and, maybe it shouldn't. Getting Montezuma's Revenge seems the least of Mexico's headaches for now. Years ago going to Acapulco was only for the very rich who swam in private pools at the pink bungalows of Las Brisas. And the late DK Ludwig invested zillions to fly in movie stars and press for 24 hours to cover his hotel openings. Nowadays, you couldn't pay me to go. Just yesterday I flew back from Miami and at the first sound of a hacking cough coming from a passenger I searched for anything to cover my nose and mouth — I do think masks are an excellent idea for commercial plane travel anyway (I guess if you have your own G5 you can pick your germs). I maintain that people travel way too much anyway when they're sick and now that the CDC has told them to stay home, I think anyone with germs should feel free to not share them. Arrest the coughers, I say! (And as long as I'm on my travel rant, how about not bringing on Big Macs or ribs when the flight is less than three hours? Can you really not make it without onions and barbecue sauce on a flight from NYC to Fort Lauderdale at 8 AM? And we wonder why certain fliers may have to buy an extra seat or perhaps the person next to you is reaching for the airsick bag?) I really don't want to get into the immigration issue because I do believe everyone has a right to work but if this country doesn't get a grip on its banditos and blast the heck out of the corrupt police forces, Mexico is going to get a big time out and spend years on the naughty chair list (Miami is now seeing the tourists once booked at Cancun and Cozumel and of course, a Rod Stewart sighting may mean Hollywood will be cha cha-ing to the east coast rather than south of the border). Listening to the news this morning made me realize that others are thinking along the same lines — can it be we have been looking for just this swine flu excuse to close our borders to Mexico? If I were in charge and looking for a little positive PR, I'd make sure "Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2" was rushed into production mucho pronto. Viva los 'huahuas!! More on Swine Flu
 
Rosalind Wiseman: Don't Be An Adult Bystander Top
It's been a difficult spring. The schools I work with have experienced an unprecedented level of bullying. An 8th grade boy beats up a female student on the bus while his peers egg him on. A sophomore boy refuses to take down embarrassing pictures he has of a female student unless she sends him more. Two fifth grade girls give $5 to a boy in their grade if he asks out a girl they don't like to go out with him--and then dump her the next day. Two 8th grade girls record themselves on YouTube completely trashing another girl in their grade and won't take it down. And now in the last two weeks two boys, both under 12 have committed suicide because their peers relentlessly teased them for being gay. When you read these stories your heart breaks for these kids. If you have kids, you may have gone through the anger and frustration if anything like this has happened to your child. If it hasn't, you worry if they will be targeted. Then we wonder what is wrong with children today. They're heartless. They have no sense of decency. We shake our heads and then don't know what to do so we go back to our lives hoping this problem won't touch the kids we know and love. But we really could stop this. By "we" I mean parents, teachers, administrators, and anyone who works with kids. Because when we don't, we become the bystanders who could have helped but chose to look the other way. How can we help? My challenge to you is to start a conversation. With any child you are close to or work with you say, "I don't know if bullying is a problem for you (at school, in your youth group, athletic team) but I need to get really clear with you about where I stand. When people use the word "gay" or "fag" to put someone down, that is intolerable to me. It is against everything this I stand for. If there is someone in your class, someone you don't even know well, that is being constantly humiliated in any way, I want you to come talk to me about it. When you tell me, I'm not going to freak out. But we will bring it to the attention of the right people so the target can get help. "If I find out that you have been involved in humiliating someone in this manner either in real life or using your cell phone or computer, I will work with the school to discipline you in a manner where you learn that a person's dignity is more important that your right to demean them." "If you are targeted, I will support you every step of the way to get the help you need. You have the right to exist in this life without people making you feel miserable and unworthy." We also must get ourselves straight (pun intended) about homophobia. It should go without saying that every one has the right to be treated with dignity--gay or not. This dignity is not negotiable. You do not have to change your religion or your politics in order to have the basic human decency to respect another person's right to exist in this world. Kids calling each other "gay" and "fag" and parents not understanding its wide-ranging implications creates an environment where violence occurs. Starting around 4th or 5th grade boys are called gay or fags not just when they are acting like girls but when they speak out against bullying. You see a kid in school being teased and you want to say something about it? If you do, any boy by 6th grade knows he's going to be labeled gay for doing it. In high school this dynamic is so powerful and pervasive that most boys don't realize its vise like grip on their behavior. So whether you see a boy being teased for being a fag or watch your junior friend try to get a freshmen girl drunk so you can hook up with her, if you speak out, you will be labeled a fag. What's so frustrating and ironic about this is that calling boys fags for speaking out makes no sense. Guys who speak out about social injustice don't want to have sex with other guys--but that's what the bullies believe when they try to silence others with, "Don't be a fag." But even more important, is that connecting being gay with speaking out against degradation and violence is that we are saying is that real men--heterosexual men--say nothing when they see someone being degraded. We must do better. We must individually and collectively change the definition of masculinity to standing up for social justice so that real men speak out when they see someone being targeted. Go to your children and talk to them. If you're a parent, talk to them tonight before they go to bed or do it on the way to school tomorrow. If you're a teacher start the class tomorrow making sure that your students know your classroom is a sanctuary. And if you're straight, you have an even larger responsibility to speak out--because we won't be so easily dismissed for trying to advance "an agenda." We have the power to transform a target's life from desperation to dignity. It is beyond time for us to begin. More on YouTube
 
Gary Hart: Obama's First 100 Days and the Politics of Transformation Top
Last June I urged then-candidate Barack Obama to use his presidency to transform the country for the 21st century world, not simply to repair the damage to our economy, foreign policy, and defenses done by the Bush administration. By that standard, his first three months have been a remarkable success. Using stimulus investments, President Obama is repairing an aging infrastructure, investing in education, stimulating new technologies and inventions, and starting us toward the post-carbon economy. Instead of trying to prop up a failing 20th century economy, he is investing in the new model. Likewise, by his early foreign travel, meetings with traditional allies, openings to former cast-off nations, willingness to listen not dictate, and commitment to the global agenda of the new century, including climate remediation, arms reduction, and poverty, he has restored our standing in the world and, by his very image, transformed the world's idea of America. We will need new alliances in this century and he has launched the effort to create them. The transformation of our military is hindered by two ongoing, inherited wars. Even as new strategies for those wars are adopted and commitments wound down, President Obama will have the opportunity to accelerate a new agenda started by Secretary Gates. That agenda is to size, shape, and equip our forces for the low-intensity conflicts of the 21st century, not the nation-state wars of the 20th. Mr. Emanuel is right: crises are too important to waste and the Obama administration is using the many crises it inherited not to go backward but to launch into the new century--finally. More on Barack Obama
 
Is There A Greener Cut Of Meat? Top
Cows, sheep, and other ruminants end up looking so bad in part because they eat a lot more, pound for pound, than their single-stomached brethren: That means more fertilizers, more pesticides, and more energy are required to grow their food. (The livestock industry as a whole consumes a whopping share of the world's crops--at least 80 percent of all soybeans and more than half of all corn.) One bright side: Ruminants' hardy stomachs can digest cellulose, which means they can graze on grassland other animals can't. More on Green Living
 
Mary Lyon: The Meaning of the Spector Switch Top
4 28 09 The Meaning of the Spector Switch By Mary Lyon Arlen Spector?!?!?! The first time I blurted that out was during an industry screening of Oliver Stone's "JFK", in which his name came up in connection with the rogue "magic bullet" issue. I just had another Arlen Spector blurt a few minutes ago (as of this writing, anyway). He's switching? Defecting? "Coming home," as some people on the other side of the aisle (oops, I mean, his side of the aisle now, don't I?) have noted with the added word "welcome"? The newest Senate Democrat, the Man of the Hour, has even moved the Swine Flu and his former GOP sister Susan "we don't need no stinking epidemic funding!" Collins off the top of the breaking news watch. Well, okay, I'm celebrating. I guess. My instinct is not to trust this too much. I can't help looking this gift horse directly in the mouth, through the teeth, and down the hatch. At least he seems to be somewhat honest, openly admitting how he recognized painfully well that he'd be eaten for breakfast by a primary challenge from a more rigidly conservative challenger, which would likely move his seat into the Democratic column in the 2010 election anyway. Spector also seems honest enough to tip his hand on the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the Office of Legal Counsel. Good to know, and not particularly surprising. I remember what a rough time he gave Anita Hill when she tried to warn us about the questionable judgment and character of then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. I remember him posturing on any number of issues through the years and SOUNDING as though he was going to be as reasonable as can be to the Democratic or liberal point of view, only to wind up back in Republicans' arms again when it counted. Look, when I'm out there blogging or in some political chat room or even occasionally just on Facebook, I'm the first to say I'm as Machiavellian as the next guy. I'm glad he's one of us. Kinda. Because I'm not sure I'll ever be completely certain about him, and I won't be counting on him too much. He's been a Republican, or at least, been in bed with them, for far too long to convince me completely. He's admitted that he, too, is pretty Machiavellian - this latest maneuver being the most glaring example. He's not the only one worth watching closely, though. Looks like we're going to see some mighty elaborate political chess-playing in the weeks and months ahead. This changes the game board, and there'll be a ripple effect that will be gobsmackingly fascinating. Despite Mitch McConnell's insistence that this is strictly a Pennsylvania story, it's anything but. The Minnesota Senate stand-off starring the hapless Norm Coleman now becomes ever more glaring. Pass the popcorn and watch the ramifications start to roll out. It's probably gonna get GOOO-OOOOD. This may wind up moving Governor Tim Pawlenty up in the GOP food chain as their great white hope for the future. I strongly suspect he secretly believes that if he'd been John McCain's choice of running mate instead of Sarah Palin, he'd be vice president now. How long will he play politics with that seat and obstruct Al Franken's increasingly justifiable claim to the job, now that the Dems will technically have 59 votes? Perhaps we'll see Pawlenty staking out a claim as party savior as their last fire door as the flames roar down the hallway toward it? Pawlenty certainly has no motivation to hand the 60th vote to Senate Democrats anytime soon. And the longer he holds out (and the hell with what his own state might need, with only 50% Senate representation in these tough times), the bigger a hero he's likely to be to his party's hardcores. And there's the hardcore thing, too. The more moderates - either civilian or office-holder - will continue to defect from the Republican Party as we now know it. Spector's move has made that all the more acceptable and will give them cover if they were previously hesitant to stick their necks out this far. The 13th-century minds currently in control of the GOP, who are hellbent on pushing it as far to the right as they can, will continue to alienate reasonable minds of every persuasion. I've tried to have conversations with them myself, and they seem determined to avoid getting the message. Whether it's some congressional staffer in a hardline GOP representative's office or my pleasant but misguided neighbor down the street, there's a surprisingly prevailing feeling that they lost in November either because they didn't package their positions effectively, or they weren't conservative enough. These poor souls have spent a couple of decades by now trying to move the country to the right, and then prematurely proclaiming that America is a center-right country philosophically. Well, they're wrong. Arlen Spector's decision just puts a period on the end of one of the sentences here. Liberal principles have been under assault since the dawn of the Reagan era, but majorities in America STILL support a woman's right to choose. The last eight years of horror - on the GOP's watch - have been enough to convince solid majorities of voters to give Barack Obama an absolute mandate - not the house-of-cards pretend version Republicans boasted nonstop that George W. Bush had earned. Overwhelming adversities, especially those that cross state lines, ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the foreclosure crisis and Wall Street mess and now the spreading Swine Flu, are waking people up to the value and need of a strong and able federal government - and the fact that these kinds of necessities cost tax money. Look at Texas Governor Rick "maybe we just oughta seceed" Perry desperately scrambling for help from the CDC only days after excoriating federal spending and priorities, with the Swine Flu now infecting his state. Yes, it's true, freedom isn't free, but neither are all those government services and programs you don't want to admit you really do want and can't live without. Much of what's left of the GOP just doesn't get that. And they won't. It's simply not in them. The Specter Switch will mean that BOTH parties have to look at themselves and at their future. Personally, I'd dearly love to see the dreams of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist turned upside down and inside out - and forever if possible! The carefully-engineered "great political realignment" of Rove's design appears ready to morph into perhaps a generation of Democratic control. Norquist's long-cherished goal of shrinking the federal government so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub shrivels by the day into near-nothingness itself. I know all about the arguments in favor of a two-party system and checks and balances and all that. But the one-party rule that we just barely survived as a nation during most of this decade inflicted so much damage, some of it of the gravest kind on our poor country domestically and in all corners overseas, that we're in desperate need of strong and decisive reversal and a whole lot of it. The Republicans and their increasingly radical political philosophy have hurt and divided this country so profoundly that they deserve to wither on the vine - while the rest of us clean up their many messes. Democrats now have to make sure their own burgeoning majority is protected and nurtured, and keeps its integrity so it survives for many years. There should be more of us on the Democratic/liberal/progressive end of the spectrum, anyway. After all, the multiple disasters that Republicans and extremist conservatives left behind, everywhere you look, will require an increasingly large clean-up crew anyway. And, Senator Spector, since it's your now-former crowd that screwed everything up and left us in all this wreckage, it's only fair that you be one of the first to grab a broom and some scrub-brushes.
 
Elizabeth Goitein: Transparency in the First 100 Days: Grading the Obama Administration Top
Government transparency is vital to a free and well-functioning democracy, and it is particularly so in the area of national security. History shows that national security policies carry a heightened risk of intrusions into individual rights and liberties, making it all the more important that the people are kept informed of their government's actions. Moreover, because these policies may help protect us from catastrophic attack, it is critical that they we get them right. Policies developed in secret - without the benefit of public scrutiny, debate, and input - are invariably less effective. To be sure, national security policies implicate some information that properly should be classified and kept secret. The careful classification of information that could endanger our national security if released is a key part of keeping the country safe. But experts agree that far too much information is classified, and too much non-classified information is swept into the ambit of secrecy - to the point that entire policies have been improperly withheld from public and even from Congress. The Bush administration was among the most secretive in history. Policies regarding detention, interrogation, rendition, and domestic surveillance were developed behind closed doors by a small, select group of officials. Legal memoranda purporting to justify these policies were kept under lock and key. Congressional inquiries and judicial review were thwarted by overbroad assertions of privilege. The result was a set of policies that violated both the law and our nation's shared values. They also made us less safe by alienating our allies, providing powerful recruiting tools to our enemies, and undercutting our ability to insist on humane treatment of our own captured troops. President Obama has pledged to take a different approach. Upon taking office, he heralded a "new era of openness" in which "this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known." But a report card issued this week by the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Project suggests that the administration's actions have not consistently lived up to this pledge. The Brennan Center's report card, entitled " Transparency in the First 100 Days ," analyzes 15 administration actions that directly or indirectly affect public access to information about national security and counter-terrorism policies. Examples include the Attorney General's guidelines restoring a presumption of disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act ; the new Defense Department policy allowing media access to dignified transfers at Dover Air Force Base ; the release of Bush-era OLC opinions on torture ; increased transparency in signing statements ; overbroad assertions of the state secrets privilege in litigation ; and opposition to a commission of inquiry to examine recent counter-terrorism abuses . By dividing these actions into categories, clear patterns emerge. In the areas of open government and access to presidential records and information, President Obama has put excellent policies in place. All that's needed now is faithful implementation - particularly when it comes to the area national security, which is too often seen as the exception to any rule. The administration also has made important strides in reducing the executive branch's reliance on secret law. But in cases where people seek accountability for government misconduct - whether through the courts, Congress, or an independent commission - the administration's commitment to transparency falls by the wayside in every instance. Thus, the administration has asserted the "state secrets" privilege to block litigation, opposed an independent commission of inquiry to learn the full truth about torture and other abuses, and asserted the right to disregard a statutory provision designed to protect executive branch whistleblowers who provide information to Congress. The President's approach in these cases is embodied by the comment he made when he was first asked about Senator Leahy's proposal for an independent commission: "I will take a look at Senator Leahy's proposal, but my general orientation is to say let's get it right moving forward." On that occasion and several times since, he has implied that there is nothing to be gained by examining the mistakes of the past. He also reportedly told Democratic members of Congress that a commission would become a distraction from his ambitious policy agenda. President Obama's concern for his policy agenda is understandable. But by Obama's own account, restoring the rule of law is one of the most important items on that agenda. Achieving that goal will be impossible if we simply sweep past mistakes under the rug, shutting down lawsuits that threaten to unearth the truth and eschewing a comprehensive, non-partisan inquiry. There is too much we need to learn: not just what the previous administration's policies were, but how they were developed, why the mechanisms of congressional and judicial oversight failed so miserably, and what institutional changes are required in order to ensure that these abuses never happen again. There is much to celebrate in the President's early transparency record. The administration has opened windows onto the workings of government that have been shut for years. Perhaps equally important, the administration has signaled to the people of this country that they have a right to know what their government is doing. But this right should be stronger, not weaker, when the people seek accountability for government wrongdoing. Until the President embraces the principle of transparency in this context, his pledge to the American people will remain unfulfilled. More on Barack Obama
 
Eugenio Montoya Sanchez Gets 30 Years In US Prison Top
MIAMI — A Colombian who was one of the top financial managers and supervised money-laundering for a cocaine cartel accused of smuggling $10 billion in drugs into the U.S. was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in federal prison. Eugenio Montoya Sanchez, 39, pleaded guilty in January to drug trafficking and obstruction of justice charges, the latter involving his role in setting up the torture, killing and dismemberment of a cartel associate suspected of cooperating with authorities. In a brief statement, Montoya expressed remorse. "There is no justification for what I did," Montoya said through a Spanish interpreter. Montoya is the brother of the purported mastermind of Colombia's North Valley cartel. Diego Montoya Sanchez is also in U.S. custody in Miami and has pleaded not guilty to a 12-count federal indictment charging cocaine trafficking, money laundering, witness retaliation and obstruction of justice. Another brother, Juan Carlos Montoya Sanchez, is serving a 22-year prison sentence in the U.S. for his role in the drug cartel. The Montoyas are accused of overseeing a cocaine empire that smuggled cocaine into the U.S. beginning in the 1990s. U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga set a July 10 hearing to consider whether Montoya can pay restitution to the U.S. government for his drug activities. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Davis said most of Montoya's assets have been seized by the Colombian government and that the additional time is needed to determine how much he could pay. Eugenio Montoya, who has been cooperating with U.S. authorities, previously admitted his role as a top financial manager of the cartel. Among his duties was handling a series of so-called "stash houses" in Colombia where about $20 million in U.S. currency was hidden. Montoya also made numerous real estate investments and oversaw a computer equipment business. The obstruction charge stems from the August 2003 killing of Jhon Jairo Garcia Giraldo, known as "Dos Mil," whose main job was handling pagers and cell phones for the Montoya organization. According to court documents, Garcia was tortured at a farm outside Cali, Colombia, on orders from Diego Montoya to find out if he had talked with U.S. officials during a visit to South Florida. "Methods used included hitting Garcia Giraldo with baseball bats in the shins and other parts of the body, holding his head under water, and asphyxiating him with a plastic bag over his head," according to a statement of facts signed by Eugenio Montoya. Although Garcia denied being an informant, he was beaten to death and dismembered, his body parts thrown in a river.
 
Daniel Cubias: How the Swine Have Stopped Us from Hugging Top
By now, you've no doubt heard about the killer flu that originated in Mexico. Dozens of people are dead in that country, and cases have sprung up in the United States. In all likelihood, this virus - an offshoot of swine flu - will run its course long before the country turns into something out of Stephen King's "The Stand." Just in case, however, I suggest you check out that sore throat that's been bothering you (it's probably nothing...) Regardless, the flu outbreak reminded me of what, at first glance, seems to be a completely unrelated incident that happened a few weeks ago. It wasn't happy hour. It was more like unhappy hour, and it was held at a bar near my former place of employment. At the end of this going-away party for all of us who had just been downsized (see my earlier post on this), the time came to say goodbye to my former colleagues, make sincere but doomed promises to stay in touch, and exchange final hugs. Actually, I pretty much had to skip that last one. You see, I live in the Midwest, and most of my ex-coworkers are born-and-bred white middle Americans. As such, they are as comfortable with the idea of hugging as China is with dissent. One of my friends, a woman I had worked with for years, announced beforehand that she rarely hugged her family members and never her friends, so I would have to settle for a handshake. Her preemptive strike was because she knew my propensity to embrace people. It's not that I'm touchy-feely. Indeed, I've been accused of being reserved, aloof, and even insensitive. On any given personality test, I always come back as introverted and quiet (not shy; there's a difference). Bubbly and outgoing are among the last adjectives one would use to describe me. So where does all this hugging come from? You guessed it: the Latino gene. Hispanics hug out of instinct. We hug loved ones and acquaintances. We hug when saying hello or goodbye. We hug when overjoyed and when offering condolences. And yes, we will even hug you. The cultural reasons for this are unknown to me. But it's a very real phenomenon. Suffice to say, we're perplexed at white America's reticence and (I'll just say it) uptight attitude about being touched. This can lead to painful interactions, which I have witnessed at times, where the white person sticks out a hand, and the Hispanic person looks at it as if mystified at what to do with the offending object. Depending on the relationship and the setting, you may as well spit in a Latino's face if a handshake is the best you can offer. Even my wife, of fine German-Irish stock, was thrown off by my tendency to wrap my arms around people. I hugged her once when we were still in the "just friends" stage of our relationship, and she figured I was up to something... ok, she was right about that one. But that's not usually the case. The point is that my wife, who is extroverted and expressive, was confused by my behavior. These days, of course, she reciprocates the bone-crushing clasps that my family dishes out as greetings. It's what we do. Until the flu outbreak, I presumed that every American would eventually follow the example of Hispanics (who, as I've stated many times before, are clearly taking over the country). Either that, or they would withdraw into a cold world where the nearest one gets to being touched is receiving an extra emoticon on the latest text message. But the virus has forced me to reconsider that position. That's because what we Latinos have for so long regarded as a cultural positive has backfired on us. That's right - the Latino impulse to embrace people may help to spread the swine flu. Physical contact is a godsend for the virus, which looks for any opportunity to jump from person to person. As such, it must have come as a shock to the Mexican populace that, in addition to fearing for their lives, they are being told to avoid hugging and that there should be "no kissing to say hello" and "no close contact" with others. Of course, being forced to limit physical interaction is psychologically upsetting to people of any culture, but even more so for Latinos. As one Mexican woman said, "Mexico is a social place. People like to go out and be together. The sickness has taken that away." And it's also taken away, at least temporarily, the Latino drive to be affectionate and demonstrative. Good Hispanics everywhere must fight their natural tendencies out of the fear that a quick squeeze of a friend could lead to an unpleasant death for everyone involved. That means no hugging, my amigos. But the most disturbing thing about this epidemic - aside from the inconvenient potential it has to cause whole civilizations to collapse - is that it has turned a virtue into a detriment. Latinos now have to wonder if maybe those Scandinavians, with their virus-killing cold weather and contagion-limiting handshakes, are on to something after all. More on Swine Flu
 
Zandile Blay: Fashion Road Test: Chic Lap Tops Top
Gigabytes, software and memory: relevant terms all, yet when it comes to computers the only ones I care about are shiny, tiny and cute. It must be for technologically challenged fashionistas like me that the computer industry has churned out a crop of laptops which are as easy to use as they are easy on the eyes. Efficient, powerful and fast, these beauties,give as good as a standard p.c and often at a much lower cost. Their chief selling point however? Being small enough to fit in a purse. Perhaps petite is the last quality one should look for in a p.c, but more often than not logging on while on the go is a top priority, and sometimes a Blackberry just won't do. That's exactly why I endeavored to undertake this week's fashion road test: trying out three of the most fashionable - and portable -notebooks on the market: Acer Aspire One, Sony Vaio P Series, and the Vivienne Tam HP Mini. From fashion shows to interviewing designers to market appointments, I used each computer during a standard work day to experience how versatile and durable they would be in an average work day. First up was the Acer Aspire One, which debuted last summer and remains popular for it's light weight, mini 10.1 or 8.9 inch monitor and uber-friendly price point: a starting cost of $379. I found it sturdy, dependable and super easy to use. But alas, function alone doesn't suffice, for this fashion writer, a certain measure of style was needed - and though the Apsire One is available in several colors, I needed a little bit more. I found that in Sony Vaio's new P Series, a computer so light and lean that it literally fits in your back pocket. The P Series debuted to much fan fair last fashion week during a super swank party at the Sony Style lounge in New York City. Several fashion designers, including threeASFOUR and Cushnie et Ochs created special window displays which combined their couture creations with the luxe laptop. Ultimately, that's the hook of the Vaio P series: a computer that seamlessly marries fashion with technology. Unfortunately, this union isn't always blissful. To have a unit that small, that sleek and that pretty meant sacrificing a touch pad, a disk drive and other elements which I still found essential to my work day. Fortunately, the best - Vivienne Tam's HP Mini - came last. Unlike the first two laptops the HP doesn't just aspire to be a fashionista's notebook, it literally is. Legendary fashion designer Vivienne Tam partnered with HP to design a notebook for the fashion set. The p.c, which debuted in December 2008, comes in only one color: a brilliant cherry red overlayed with delicate pink peonies. True to it's fashion roots, the computer comes in a red silk duster - much like European luxury houses who provide customers with a silk monogrammed bag to preserve the color and quality of expensive leather bags. But the Vivienne Tam Mini is not about superfluous finery, it's about supreme function. Weather writing from the front row at the premier Fashion Rocks fashion show in Miami or transcribing an interview at a coffee shop in New York, this computer worked flawlessly time and again. At a starting price of $699 it's not as cheap as the Acer Aspire One and with a 10.2 inch monitor it's not as small as the Sony Vaio's P series yet ultimately, it offers something both don't: fashion and function at a friendly price point. Finally I found everything a fashionista needs in a laptop: size, style and substance. More on Fashion
 
Deane Waldman: Who Do You Want To Ration Your Health Care? Top
The label on your bottle of today's bitter medicine reads: " Health Care Rationing ." Before the 20th century, health care was cheap. Very little could be done for a sick person. Starting around the Second World War, a cornucopia of medical and surgical treatments became available, all expensive. Now we have $50 pills; coronary artery stents; artificial parts like ceramic hips; replacement parts such as liver transplants; and soon stem cell even gene therapy. Partly because of medical advances but primarily due better public health and nutrition, more of us are living longer meaning there are more old people. Health care for old people is very expensive. People often behave against their own best health interest. They smoke cigarettes . They do not exercise. They eat to obesity with all of its complications. They fail to get regular check-ups. When ill, they delay seeking medical care so when they do, the illness is much worse and more expensive. These are only three of the nine reasons for out-of-control healthcare costs . Demands for health care services are increasing for reasons noted above. Supply of health care services is contracting, especially its personnel. With rising demand, decreasing supply and under our present system , supply cannot balance demand. Something or someone must create balance. That is called rationing. Rationing means control by someone other than you of distribution to you of goods and/or services. Rationing is a very negatively charged word because it has been associated with periods of extreme scarcity: the Great Depression and two World Wars. The word itself comes from Latin "ratio" meaning to think or to reason. Strictly speaking, rationing is a process to create a "reasonable" balance between supply and demand. If anyone other than you controls the balance of your demands with the available supplies, whatever euphemism they call it, that is rationing. In the USA, payers - insurance companies and the Federal government - delay or deny payments and pay according to predetermined schedules. By controlling payment, they control [ration] the delivery of goods and services. What about countries with so-called universal health care ? In Canada and Australia, the government determines what services it will pay for and how much. If what you want or need is not on the list, you do not get that ration. In Great Britain, the National Health Service "rations" by queueing: yes, you can get a hip replacement or dialysis...but you go on a waiting list and might wait years before your name comes up. If you die before that time with neither hip replacement nor dialysis, there is no expense. SOMEONE will ration your health care. Call that someone the system, the government, the insurance company, the evil empire, or...could we create a system where WE ration our own health care? The answer is yes and that is what we need. Healthcare is and will be rationed . Who do you want to do it?
 
Harut Sassounian: Et Tu Obama? Letter from a Former Admirer Top
Mr. President, how could you? Your candidacy was a breath of fresh air. You stood for change. You made wonderful promises and the Armenian-American community put its trust in you. We are now terribly disappointed because you acted not much differently than your predecessors on the Armenian Genocide issue. Your April 24 statement fell far short of your solemn pledge to recognize the Genocide. As a Senator and presidential candidate, you left no doubt about your intentions on this issue. You spoke about it eloquently and passionately. Yet, when the time came to issue your April 24 statement, we were surprised to find out that "genocide" had been replaced by "Meds Yeghern," a clever ploy, no doubt suggested by one of your ingenious aides. You may want to know that "Meds Yeghern" does not mean genocide; it means "Great Calamity." Armenians used that term before the word "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940's. "Genocide" in Armenian is "Tseghasbanoutyoun," which is a much more precise term than "Meds Yeghern," in case you decide to use it in the future. Not only did your aides come up with the wrong Armenian word, but they failed to provide its English translation, so that non-Armenians could understand its meaning. What was, after all, the point of using an Armenian word in an English text? Did your staff run out of English euphemisms for genocide? Just in case your resourceful advisors think that they were the first to devise the clever ploy of replacing "genocide" with "Meds Yeghern," let me inform you that several previous leaders have employed that same trick. Pope John Paul II used that term in 2001 during his visit to Armenia. The BBC observed that the Pontiff had said "Meds Yeghern" in order not to offend Turkey. Your immediate predecessor, Pres. George W. Bush, used the English translation of that same tricky word in his April 24, 2005 statement -- "This terrible event is what many Armenian people have come to call the 'Great Calamity.'" Mr. President, last year when you were seeking votes and financial support from Armenian-Americans, you did not promise them to recognize the "Meds Yeghern!" You actually told them: "As President, I will recognize the Armenian Genocide." Moreover, you did not state that your acknowledgment of the Genocide is contingent upon Armenian-Turkish negotiations, opening Armenia's border, war in Iraq or anything else. You made a flat out promise, with no ifs or buts. There are also two sets of serious contradictions in the words you used before and after your election to the presidency. In your April 24, 2009 statement, you said: "I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed." Yet, on January 19, 2008, as a presidential candidate, you had said: "The Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view." Furthermore, on April 24, 2009 you stated: "My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts." Yet, as a candidate, you stated that the Armenian Genocide is "a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable." Mr. President, twice in one month, both in Ankara and Washington, you made a reference to your past statements on the genocide, in order to avoid using that word as president. This is an old trick that was also utilized by Pres. George H. W. Bush (Senior). In his presidential message of April 20, 1990, Bush stated: "My comments of June 1988 represent the depth of my feeling for the Armenian people and the sufferings they have endured." In order to avoid saying genocide, Pres. Bush, like you, made an indirect reference to that word, by mentioning his earlier remarks as Vice President and presidential candidate: "The United States must acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian People in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of survivors, scholars, and indeed our own representatives at the time, if we are to ensure that such horrors are not repeated." Dear Mr. President, there was no need for your staff to waste their valuable time trying to come up with such ploys and verbal gymnastics. If you did not want to say genocide, you did not have to say anything at all. The Armenian Genocide has already been acknowledged by another U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, who signed a Presidential Proclamation on April 22, 1981, in which he referred to "the genocide of the Armenians." Armenians actually gain nothing by having one more U.S. president reiterate what has been said before. As you know, presidential statements, just as congressional resolutions, have no legal consequence. Pres. Reagan's proclamation and the adoption of two House resolutions on the Armenian Genocide in 1975 and 1984 have brought nothing tangible to Armenians in terms of seeking reparations for their immense losses in lives and property. By not keeping your word on April 24, however, you have only succeeded in undermining your own credibility in front of the American people and world public opinion. Already, the Obameter website (politifact.com) has labeled your April 24 statement as "a broken promise." This week, as you complete the first 100 days in office, major TV networks and the press are widely reporting your broken promise on the Armenian Genocide, thus undermining the trust of the American public in your other promises. Finally, Mr. President, it was improper for you to exploit Turkey's "make- believe" negotiations with Armenia by using it as a pretext for avoiding the "genocide" word in your April 24 statement. Given your high position, you must know that the Turkish government's intent all along has been to create the false impression that its discussions with Armenia are proceeding smoothly, making everyone believe that the border would be opened shortly. Turkish leaders have been dangling that carrot in front of Armenia for many years. The fact is that, once you were elected president, Turkish officials took seriously your campaign pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide and were told by your close aides that unless Ankara made a friendly gesture towards Armenia, you could well carry out your promise to the Armenian-American community. While Turkish officials, with their fake diplomatic initiatives, managed to deceive the rest of the world, including Armenia's relatively inexperienced leaders, you, Mr. President, knew better. You went along with Turkey's false gestures knowingly, thus bartering away your principled stand on the Armenian Genocide in order to secure Turkish participation in the Afghan war, and carry out its U.S. assigned role with respect to Iraq, Iran, and Israel. You must have also known that Turkey would not open its border with Armenia in the foreseeable future, unless the Karabagh conflict was resolved to Azerbaijan's satisfaction. Using various carrots and sticks, with the connivance of Russia, which pursues its own economic and political interests in Turkey and Azerbaijan, U.S. officials succeeded in pressuring Armenia into agreeing to issue a joint declaration with Turkey and Switzerland as mediator on the eve of April 24. This declaration was a convenient cover for you to duck the genocide issue in order to appease Turkey. Mr. President, by compelling Armenia to sign such a declaration, you have managed to pit the Armenian Diaspora, as well as the people in Armenia against the government in Yerevan. As a direct result of that action, the ARF, one of Armenia's influential political parties, quit the ruling coalition this week. The ARF did not wish to associate itself with a government, still reeling from last year's contentious presidential elections, which is negotiating an agreement with Turkey that could compromise the country's national interests and historic rights. The ARF also vehemently opposes Armenia's announced intention to participate in a bilateral historical commission that Turkey would use to question the facts of the Armenian Genocide. Mr. President, in the coming days, as your administration invites Armenia's leaders to Washington in order to squeeze more concessions from them, please realize that they can only be pressured so much before they lose their authority. As was the case with Armenia's first president, crossing the red lines on the Genocide and Karabagh issues could well jeopardize the tenuous hold on power of the remaining ruling coalition, regardless of how many promises are made and carrots extended to them by Washington. More on Turkey
 
Fortune 's Stanley Bing: This Just In! GM's 2010 Car Line! Top
Word comes today that GM (GM) has offered the Government a majority stake in the Company as part of its restructuring plan. This was both expected and widely reported. What is less well known, however, is the creation of a new line of GM cars that has been designed, in large part, to sell the concept of Federal ownership to lawmakers. This blog has been leaked a highly confidential draft of this plan, and it is my pleasure to share the bare outlines with you today. New cars now being prepped for the assembly line of the new General Motors include: The Senator : Heavy in the beam, with a brilliant white canopy, this limousine sucks up gas and oil like a tank but is expected to come with a lot of attractive perks and, if well-maintained, a long life-span. The Congressman : Long and low-to-the-ground, this slightly cheesy but attractive sedan has a tendency to blow a lot of exhaust and is clearly meant to be traded in for a new model every couple of years. The House Republican : A lot tougher than it appears given its light weight and manoeuverability, and capable of converting from a conservative brougham into a revolutionary coupe in the wink of an eye. The Lobbyist : Small, fast, and very expensive, this car is designed to outlive many of its owners. The Timmy Gee : This classy, two-door vehicle comes only in gray and is equipped with a set of well-disguised flame throwers that extinguish any extraneous life forms in their path when fully activated. Most reliable when fully garaged in an affluent suburb. The SEC Cruiser : An SUV that only operates in rescue mode, and even then only when jump started by another more powerful vehicle. The Barackmobile : The ultimate luxury car in the GM line. How it will operate is still shrouded in mystery, but the firm has put all its hopes into it and believes that, in the end, it just might be the answer to its current difficulties. More on Timothy Geithner
 
Swine Flu: Obama Wants $1.5B To Combat Outbreak Top
WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) -- U.S. President Obama asked Congress Tuesday to include $1.5 billion in the 2009 supplemental budget to respond to a potential swine flu outbreak. More on Swine Flu
 
Ahmadinejad Borrows Obama's "Yes We Can" For Iranian Election Top
Barack Obama's offer of a hand of friendship to Iran after 30 years of hostility may have met with a sceptical public response from Tehran. But now a rapprochement of sorts may be under way amid evidence that the US president's can-do electioneering tactics have struck a chord with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More on Iran
 
How Hillary Clinton Got Specter To Switch Top
Credit Hillary Clinton's relentlessness for the decision Arlen Specter made Tuesday to abandon the Republican Party and become a Democrat. It wasn't her immediate goal, of course, but when Clinton decided to carry the primary to Pennsylvania despite incredibly high odds, the resulting statewide campaign led to hundreds of thousands of Republicans registering as Democrats so that they could vote in the April 22nd contest. In terms of the delegate count, the primary campaign was effectively over in February, when Obama ran the caucus table. But Clinton soldiered on. A massive voter registration drive by both candidates ran up to the deadline of March 24th in Pennsylvania and was extremely successful. Specter twice cited the voter-registration shift in explaining his decision to leave the party, saying that he didn't want his congressional career to be judged only by the right wing voters who had remained in the Republican Party. An internal poll that Specter received on Friday showed his chances of winning a primary in the drained Republican pool to be "bleak," he said. "The party has shifted very far to the right. It was pretty far to the right in 2004, but to take away a couple hundred thousand Republicans who wanted to vote in the Democratic primary--they're dissatisfied with the Republican Party is the pretty obvious conclusion. So if you review the numbers and you add the math, the stimulus vote, that's why I ended up saying the prospects were bleak," he said. Republican primary voters have pilloried Specter for his yes vote on the stimulus. "When you take a look at the Pennsylvania Republican electorate, several hundred thousand Republicans shifted last year and it has a bleak picture. We do not have a dominant voice there," Specter said. It had become clear to Specter, he added, that the Republican Party would not come to his defense against the far-right elements remaining in Pennsylvania. A reporter unleashed a tirade when she asked what his decision said about Republicans on Capitol Hill. "The Republicans didn't rally to Wayne Gilchrest in Maryland who was beaten by the Club for Growth and the far right [in the GOP primary] and [the Club's candidate then] lost the general election. Republicans didn't rally to the banner of Joe Schwartz of Michigan and he was beaten by a conservative and the Club for Growth and they lost the general election," said Specter, adding to the list Heather Wilson, another moderate beaten by a Club for Growth candidate who lost the general election. The Club's founder, Pat Toomey, had declared his bid against Specter in the 2010 primary. His biggest beef with the Club, however, was over Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Rhode Island senator. Chafee won his primary in 2006 against a Club candidate but was so weakened and drained of cash he lost the general election. "And had Linc Chafee been elected in 2006 the Republicans would have controlled the Senate in 2007 and 2008 and I would have been chairman of the [Judiciary] committee and President Bush nominated 13 circuit judges. They were all left on the table for President Obama. And President Bush nominated 21 district court judges and they were all left on the table for President Obama. Now take the social conservatives in America and how they prize circuit judges," said Specter. "And for people who are Republicans to sit by and allow them to continue to dominate the party, after they beat Chafee, cost us Republican control of the Senate and lost us 34 federal judges, there oughta be a rebellion. There oughta be an uprising. So thanks for asking me the question about what are the Republicans like here," he said. Become a fan of HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Arlen Specter
 
Air Force One Photo Op Could Cost Taxpayers Between $27,500 And $213,000 Top
With Reporting By Arthur Delaney The cost of an Air Force One photo-op over the Statue of Liberty that ended up frightening scores of New Yorkers likely stands between $27,500 and $210,000, according to official estimates of flight costs. On Monday, the Air Force and White House were criticized for an operation that saw the large Air Force One jet flying at low altitudes over the Statue of Liberty and New York City in an elaborately staged photo-op. The White House released a statement expressing regret and the president was reportedly furious. Asked on Tuesday how big a bill taxpayers would have to pay for the whole affair, spokesman Robert Gibbs urged reporters to look at a recent Government Accountability Office report that detailed the operating costs for Air Force One craft. According to that report -- requested by Rep. Henry Waxman in March 2006 -- "the flight operating costs" of Air Force One "are $56,518 per hour." That, however, was not the extent of the aircraft involved in the photo-op. Two fighter jets were escorting the big bird over New York City. According to the public affairs office at the Air Combat Command, the cost for operating an F-16D jet is $7,304 per hour (including takeoff and landing) while the cost of the other jet, a F-16 Charlie, is $7,375 per hour. An Air Force official told the Huffington Post that the estimated time in air was three hours, so the total cost of the mission could exceed $213,000 ($213,591). That total, however, takes into account all the costs that come with operating the Air Craft over time -- from maintenance to man hours -- and not for a lightly-staffed and short operation. A smaller estimate is being put out by the Secretary of the Air Force public affairs office. As an individual privy to their numbers tells the Huffington Post, the costs they are tallying put the two jets at $1,800 an hour and the VC-25 (the Air Force One craft) at $8,000. With a three-hour mission, the total price in that scenario would be $27,600. Either total, if accurate, may seem like a waste of money from an administration preaching fiscal prudence. But when put in context it might seem slightly more sensible. One White House aide noted: "These guys weren't in the air just to take a photo. The flights were both routine training missions. They were in the New York area to take the photo." Also, the most famously bundled aircraft photo op -- George W. Bush taking a fighter jet out to the U.S.S Abraham Lincoln to declare "mission accomplished" in Iraq -- cost between $100,000 and approximately $1 million . Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 

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