Monday, May 4, 2009

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Jerusha Klemperer: Quitting Soda Cold Turkey Top
This is my coming out party. To my close friends, family, and colleagues, this will come as no surprise, but, um, I drink soda. Specifically, Diet Coke. Sometimes I manage to quit, but then I always come a'crawlin' back. In Mexico, regular Coke is made with cane sugar and it is delicious. A glass bottle of ice-cold Mexican Coca-Cola is not to be missed. Here in the US Coke is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup, something I really don't care for on a whole lotta levels, including its taste. It leaves a slick sugary burn on the back of my throat, and frankly -- blech. (for more on the merits of South American Coke, check out this post on the Atlantic Monthly Food Channel ). So, here in the US I forgo regular Coke, and I opt for the Diet, with its Nutrasweet tang (for more about the sweetness levels in various fake sweeteners, read this article in the Times Dining Section ). After a brief bout with the cancer (a little one, "the best kind," said the oncologist), I looked at my life and asked myself where this could have come from. Logically I knew that sometimes cancer comes uninvited, with no place set at the table and no friendly welcomes. But what if, what if, I wondered, there was something I was eating/drinking/doing that brought this on? By that point I was a pretty much a model of real food eating--mostly organics, almost nothing processed. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink much, and I exercised like crazy. All of which, I realize makes me sound pretty un-fun. But, but I'm a blast, I am! I digress... I decided my Diet Coke thing--let's call it that--was really the only identifiable culprit. Sweetened with the questionable aspartame, laden with fake colors, nutritionally bereft, but oh-so-good with a slice of pizza, Diet Coke had maybe given me cancer. I quit cold turkey, finally started guzzling water like you're supposed to, and felt pretty darn good about. Sure there was the fact that I now had no vices, and had maybe lost the little bit of edge I once possessed. But I felt like I'd cut out a little pernicious growth of hypocrisy, just like my doc had snipped out that pesky tumor. This lasted six months. In the 2 years since, I have gotten on and off the ol' soda wagon more times than I can count. And when I titled this post "quitting soda cold turkey," it was more aspirational than real, and I'm just now as I write this going through a trying-to-kick-it cycle. Or thinking about trying to kick it, maybe, say, after the weekend. Or maybe the following weekend. We'll see.
 
Kathy Freston: The Swine Flu And Worldwide Economic Recession: Humanity's Salvation? Top
Are we killing ourselves? There has been a lot of talk in recent days about how factory farmed animals are the cause of the deadly hybrid virus that is eerily mutating, and some are calling it cosmic retribution, a sort of "chickens coming home to roost" scenario. I don't know about that, but an animal virus like swine flu is a completely predictable (and was a widely predicted) response to our modern horribly cruel and appallingly filthy factory farming systems. Undoubtedly, some animal welfare people are hoping that swine flu will serve as a wake-up call for humanity, that the "groupthink" in support of intensive farming might move toward thoughtfulness about the health hazards and cruelty of intensively confining animals, and that governments will pass laws to make these "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs, the industry term for "factory farm") smaller, cleaner, less cruel, and less dependent on drugs--which are used to keep the animals alive through the filthy and stressful conditions that would otherwise kill them in much greater numbers. I must admit that this does feel like a wake-up call: Are we really so addicted to eating meat (even as we demand that meat be inexpensive, meat processors want to make more money, which means faster, meaner ways of raising and slaughtering animals for food) that we're willing to risk the millions who could die from such mutating viruses? Has our desire for gustatory pleasure at any cost pushed us into terrible consequences as we creep toward an ugly future? The "big one" may not be this particular version of the flu, but scientists say we have not seen the last of H1N1; not by a long shot. When the swine flu hit, I was already wondering and talking with friends about whether the economic crisis might inspire a paradigm shift in how we live our lives, especially after reading a remarkable column by generally sober and hyper-realistic Thomas Friedman in the New York Times . Writes Friedman , "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically...?" Friedman concludes that "Often in the middle of something momentous, we can't see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker--the year when 'The Great Disruption' began." Of course, the economic meltdown is already forcing us to rethink our priorities and what we value, so there is a process of letting go of a lot of things we considered important. People have cut back on buying non-essential items; we're eating out less, using the library more, and generally becoming more reasonable in our consumption and more civic-minded in our overall way of being--the economic crunch is, as Friedman predicted, causing a reevaluation of our priorities. But will the changes be as massive as Friedman predicts? President Obama certainly hopes so. I recently saw a quote by the president: "History reminds us that, at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas." Yes, we have; and we can again, of course. In the past, America has faced and overcome enormous difficulties again and again, from the Revolutionary War to World War II to the obstacles of racism and sexism. These challenges, and our ability as a people to address them--with both individual and societal change--should inspire us to optimism in the face of current challenges. What can we do, as individuals, to create a sea change, to halt the mutation of deadly viruses, to say no to out-of-control business practices, to stop creating environmental havoc, and to bring our health up to a better level? All of this can be covered, incredibly, by thinking very seriously about the foods we choose to eat, and then changing our habits if we find that our choices are generating problems. And as we change as individuals, society and governments will change with us. Here's a home run solution that I can't help coming back to: eat less (and eventually no) animal protein. A diet high in animal protein bloats us physically by clogging our bodies with saturated fat, growth hormones, and antibiotics; it has been proven conclusively to cause cancer, heart disease, and obesity . And the meat industry poisons and depletes our clean air, potable water, and fertile topsoil almost more than any other sector of business. As just one example, the meat industry is responsible for about 18 percent of all global warming--that's almost half again as much as all cars, planes, and trucks combined. And now it's become all too clear that factory farms are breeding grounds for viruses to mutate and become deadly. Basically, our current food choices (the average American eats about 200 pounds of meat annually) are killing us on a host of different levels. Perhaps now more than ever, it's time to clear out old, tired, uninformed ways of eating and opt instead for food that nourishes us, is easy on the planet, and gives the animals some breathing room. Oh, and especially useful in these exceedingly difficult economic times: Eating a plant-based diet is cheap relative to eating meat. Compare the price of grains and beans with that of chicken and cheese. And growing grains and vegetables is by no means the filthy business that animal agriculture has become. I realize it's not painless to give up what we are used to, what we like the taste and tradition of, in favor of a diet that we know is better for us and the planet. But if we lean into the shift of eating consciously by giving up one animal at a time (give up chickens first, as I discuss here ), or eating only vegetarian for two out of three meals, we will find our way and get used to new tastes. We will grow to love different foods that are kinder to our bodies, the environment, and the animals. As I ponder Obama's call for change and Friedman's vision of a paradigm shift, and I think about recent predictions that unless we turn back now, ecological disaster is inevitable, I wonder if economic collapse and swine flu might be our only hope. Perhaps in these trying days, the law of unintended consequences may represent our salvation. No one is glad for the swine flu or the economic meltdown, but maybe these great calamities are the push we needed to re-boot and start afresh. We are a world out of balance, to be sure. But we can begin to eat (so simply!) in a way that brings us back to equilibrium, personally and globally. I just hope enough of us answer the call. You can find recipes and cookbook recommendations here , and some tips for making the transition here . More on Swine Flu
 
52 Percent Of Oil Execs Say Alternatives Not Viable By 2015 Top
HOUSTON — Despite millions in new investments and President Barack Obama's push for clean energy technology, many oil and gas executives say mass production of renewable energy is not likely before at least the middle of the next decade, a new survey showed Monday. Fifty-two percent of 382 petroleum industry executives surveyed by KPMG LLP said large-scale production of alternative energy sources will not be viable in the short term, at least not by 2015. Of those who believe such production is possible, 17 percent said the likely source is wind, 10 percent said biodiesel and 7 percent cited solar, according to the annual e-mail survey conducted in April. Participants included executives for major oil companies, independent exploration and production outfits and other energy companies. Based on their responses, there's been a significant shift in perception over the front-runner in alternative energy. In a survey two years ago, 18 percent of executives said ethanol was the most likely renewable energy source for potential large-scale production, but it fell to 6 percent in the latest query. "The results clearly show the momentum wind energy has gained as a clean energy solution," said Bill Kimble, who oversees the global energy institute at KPMG, the audit, tax and advisory firm. Though it now accounts for slightly more than 1 percent of U.S. electricity production, wind was cited in the survey as the alternative energy source mostly likely to benefit as the Obama administration shapes its energy policy. Thirty-five percent said wind would be the biggest winner, followed by natural gas, biofuels and solar all with double-digit percentages. Survey participants had clear choices for their picks as the biggest losers under Obama's policies: Coal at 42 percent and oil at 36 percent, even though fossil fuels are forecast to provide 80 percent of all global energy needs through 2030. The president and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, have vowed to aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change, including a cap on carbon emissions. Proposals have included a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, which could allow companies or plants to trade emission allowances among each other to mitigate costs. Either would be costly for polluting companies. Not surprising, only 8 percent of the executives surveyed said cap-and-trade is the best approach to counter global warming. Sixteen percent said the best solution is tax incentives for investing in renewable energy sources, while 15 percent favored a carbon tax. Many oil and gas executives have said they're concerned the industry will be targeted to carry more of the cost burden than it should based on emissions levels. The potential for new taxes, they say, worries them too. "There's an effort here at the moment to raise money from a segment of the business that is just deemed to be able to pay," Bill Klesse, chief executive of Valero Energy Corp., the nation's biggest refiner, told Wall Street analysts recently. More on Energy
 
Sarah Lovinger: The Chicago Flu Response: Preparedness Versus Overkill Top
What a difference a few days makes. Last week, schools attended by children with probable H1N1 (swine) flu cases were shutting down in Chicago and in the surrounding suburbs. Hospital administrators were insisting on daily temperatures checks on all their employees, and sending home any employee who had an elevated temperature. Public officials were telling us to cover our mouths, wash our hands, and stay home if we felt sick. As new flu cases wane and the news cycle shifts from deadly viruses and pictures of masses of Mexican citizens wearing masks on the subway to Justice Souter's retirement announcement, it's natural to ask: was this response appropriate or over the top? Personally, I think the response might be best described as a dry run for a potentially much deadlier infectious disease outbreak. And I think the city gets pretty high marks on that score. I work as an internal medicine doctor at a community health center, and since last week, we have a reasonably good plan in place to respond to the H1N1 emergency. Our front-desk staff knows which questions to ask in patients in English or Spanish, and to alert our nurses to potential flu cases. They know that patients who come in looking ill or complaining of fevers must immediately put on a mask. Our medical assistants know that they must check vital signs and ask detailed histories, and our nurses know that patients with certain risk factors should be immediately placed in isolation, and referred to me or to the other practitioners. I know what steps I need to take to test potential flu and treat potential flu patients and their close contacts. The plans that local, state and federal officials have been developing for years seem to be working fairly well. If we ever face a pandemic, we should be able to save a lot of lives. I have been following the stepped up federal disaster planning that started after the anthrax attacks in 2001. Both the 9-11 attacks and the bioterrorism that followed turned disaster planning on its head and demonstrated to the federal government and to the American public that our country really needed to be prepared for biological warfare. Dr. Julie Gerberding, the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), developed a plan to prepare the nation for just about any outbreak, whether brought on by terrorists or spontaneous, as in the case of a flu epidemic. The CDC has worked hard to stockpile medication, IV fluids and other essential treatment items that can be mobilized and flown to any city in the country in the case of, say, a smallpox outbreak. Cities, including Chicago and its 'Dark Winter' exercise of a few years ago, held mock disaster drills. Municipal health departments like the one for which I work engaged in massive planning exercises to prepare for outbreaks and germ warfare. Medical journals and organizations such as the CDC disseminated information to the medical public and the general public in print and online on how to prepare for outbreaks and germ warfare. With the exception of the Katrina disaster, I think we have done a commendable job becoming prepared to face almost any public health emergency. That might be why the flu is fading from the news. It may get worse again this week, but hopefully closing schools kept more kids from getting sick, hand washing and wearing masks stopped the flu in its tracks, and stepped-up hospital scrutiny of employees mostly reminded people that they should call in sick if they are. And this flu got us ready to face the next public health disaster. Because the irony of good public health planning is that if it works, you might not know you needed it. More on Swine Flu
 
Tim Ferriss: Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose Discuss Angel Investing and Naming Companies Top
In this video, Kevin Rose -- founder of Digg and others -- and I talk about how we invest in other companies as "angels" and how we choose names for companies. Topics include: -How to test company or product names using Google AdWords -Kevin's criteria for both good site names and good angel investments -The role of start-up "advisors" and investors -How I choose companies to work with: overlap, PR options, UI design Tim and Kevin from Glenn McElhose on Vimeo . It's an Oprah-style conversation, so if watching isn't an option, you can also opt to let the audio play in the background while you're doing other things. Let us know if you'd like to see more of these brainstorming sessions. Special thanks to Glenn McElhose for the great video shooting and editing!
 
Mariqueen Maandig: Trent Reznor ENGAGED To Fellow Musician Top
Trent Reznor and his girlfriend, musician Mariqueen Maandig, are engaged. They announced the news over the weekend on the website of her band, West Indian Girl.
 
Creditors Object To Chrysler Deal Top
NEW YORK (AFP) -- A group of Chrysler creditors objected Monday to the struggling automaker's bid for a quick restructuring, calling it an illegal bid by the government that violates constitutional property rights. The objections set up a showdown that challenges the effort led by the US government to save Chrysler through a "surgical" bankruptcy reorganization that clears away key debts and creates a new firm in partnership with Italy's Fiat.
 
Cinco De Mayo: MICHELLE OBAMA Celebrates (PHOTOS) Top
***SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS*** First Lady Michelle Obama paid a visit to the Latin American Montessori Bilingual Charter School today for an early celebration of Cinco de Mayo. The AP reports : The former lawyer and administrator said she loves her job because she thinks public service is very important. She urged the older students to get involved in serving their communities. She urged the younger students to understand that the institutions in the nation's capital such as Congress work for them. Students from the Latin American school and its sister school, Next Step Charter School, performed songs and dances for the first lady as part of an early Cinco de Mayo celebration. Photos courtesy of Getty Images. More on Photo Galleries
 
Yemen Faces Increasing Violence, Raising Fears Of Instability Top
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A separatist movement in southern Yemen has gained political momentum and grown more violent recently, with a series of demonstrations and armed confrontations that have left at least eight people dead and dozens injured in the past week. More on Middle East
 
Dean Baker: Outsourcing Top Management: The Lesson of Fiat-Chrysler Top
The media coverage of the auto bailouts has focused on the need for union autoworkers to take big pay cuts, causing them to once again miss the real story. The Fiat-Chrysler deal shows that the pay problem is at the top, not the bottom. At the end of the day, the new Chrysler is still likely to be producing most of its cars in the United States. What the new company will be getting from abroad is technology and top management. This big story was so easily missed because it runs against one of the main myths that our elites have cultivated about the US economy: that the country has a "comparative advantage" in highly skilled labor. In this story, the United States will continue to lose manufacturing and other "less-skilled" jobs as its economy becomes more concentrated in highly skilled sectors. This story was convenient for our elites because it meant that the decline of manufacturing was a necessary, if sometimes painful, part of a natural economic progression. It also justified the growing inequality in US society that benefited not just Wall Street bankers and CEOs, but also millions of doctors, lawyers, economists, and other highly educated workers. These people took their six-figure salaries as a birthright, even as the pay of less educated workers stagnated or declined. While this story of the US becoming a high skills center in the world economy may have been comforting to the elites, and was widely promoted by economists and the news media, there was never much truth to it. Highly skilled professionals did well in recent decades not because they succeeded in international competition, but rather because they were largely sheltered from it. Trade agreements like NAFTA were explicitly designed to remove any barrier that made it difficult to export manufacturing goods to the United States, thereby placing US manufacturing workers directly in competition with their much lower paid counterparts in the developing world. Most of these restrictions had nothing to do with tariffs. Instead the key issues were rules protecting investment in the developing world along with limits on the ability of the US to exclude imports through safety or environmental regulations. There has never been any similar effort to eliminate the barriers that prevent professionals from the developing world from coming to the United States and competing directly with their US counterparts as doctors or lawyers or in other highly paid professions. The economists and the media somehow failed to notice that professionals were intentionally sheltered from international competition and instead just trumpeted them as the winners in the global economy. We were just treated to a beautiful example of this double standard when the media and the economists got all huffy about the "buy America" provision in the stimulus bill that might have protected a few manufacturing jobs in steel and other industries. While this provision was roundly condemned and eventually watered down, the buy America provision in the Treasury's latest bank bailout bill went completely unnoticed. This provision requires that any investment manager taking part in the program be headquartered in the United States. Even though the argument against protectionism in financial services is identical to the argument against protectionism in steel, no one bothered to make the argument when Wall Street was the beneficiary of protectionism. The end result of this protectionism for those at the top is a bloated overpaid sector of top managers, which is what we saw at Chrysler. If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel. Therefore, it was only logical that a bailout of Chrysler would seek to take advantage of the lower cost management and design skills available at a European car company like Fiat. In Chrysler, as in other companies, the high pay packages for these people are like an anchor dragging them down in international competition. If the US is to be competitive in the 21st century, we must either bring the pay of those at the top back down to earth or we should look to follow the lead of Chrysler and contract out for these services. More on Auto Bailout
 
Jerry Weissman: A Lesson in Listening from Obama Top
Listening is a social skill that is rapidly becoming extinct in the 21st Century, a subject I wrote about in a March blog , saying, "For those people who still retain a semblance of politeness, it has become waiting for one's turn to speak; for those who no longer bother, it has become not to listen at all, but to talk past the next person." This rude behavior is merely annoying in social circles, but can be destructive in the more mission critical circumstances of business and politics. One of the most common instances of not listening comes in response to multiple questions. Because such queries are usually a rambling set of unrelated issues, it is difficult for any presenter to remember all the diverse parts. Two common responses are to answer only one of the questions and then to turn to another questioner, creating the perception of not listening; or to answer the first question and then to turn back to the questioner and say, "What was your other question?"⎯again creating the perception of not listening. In the Line of Fire offers a solution to this problem, and Barack Obama offered yet another in last week's press conference . Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times asked him, "During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most and troubled you the most?" Tom Shales of the Washington Post called Zeleny's four-part query, "marginally frivolous," but the president did not treat it as such. He immediately reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pen and said, "Let me write this down," producing a wave of laughter from the crowd gathered in the East Room of the White House. As Obama began writing, Zeleny began to restate his question, "Surprised ... troubled..." Obama said, "I've got⎯what was the first one?" Zeleny repeated, "Surprised ..." Obama repeated, "Surprised ..." Zeleny repeated, "Troubled ..." Obama repeated, "Troubled ..." Zeleny repeated, "Enchanted ..." Obama said, "Enchanted," then smiled and added, "Nice," evoking more laughter. Barack Obama had carefully listened to the question, confirmed that he had listened by restating what he heard, and then re-confirmed by writing what he heard, sending a clear message of his attentiveness. Compare his approach to the usual evasive response from most politicians. As Shales described Obama, "You ask, he'll answer⎯earnestly, disarmingly, enchantingly, even⎯and most of the time convincingly." Obama represents a refreshing change for a veteran Washington journalist like Shales because he⎯and we have learned to tolerate, if not endure non-answers from politicians. In business, no man or woman can get away with evasiveness. But in business, presenters often give the appearance of evasiveness because they handle multiple questions poorly. They do so because of the complexity of such questions rather than intent to evade, but net effect is the same: not listening. Take a lesson from the president. Next time someone asks you a set of long, rambling multiple questions about your presentation, reach for your pen, start writing, and confirm what you heard. Keep listening alive in the 21st Century! More on Barack Obama
 
Harry Shearer: The Cheney Torture Tour: What's the Deal? Top
Monday's NYT piece on the unraveling of the torture program during the second Bush term provokes a key question, and provides a stark answer. If, as the article reports, the Bush administration, due to rampant internal debate, had stopped waterboarding and walling and all the other repellent practices by 2005, what is Dick Cheney doing in 2009 saying that the Obama administration's rejection of those practices is making us less safe? Of course, Cheney's resort to old-style Republican "the Democrats hate America" rhetoric is amusingly disturbing in any case. But if he's re-fighting an internal argument he lost four years ago, what's the point? Three words: "don't prosecute me." Cheney's goal is now revealed: to stir up enough passion on the Republican side to make a decision to prosecute the Bush administration's torture syndicate a political hot potato. Without the former Vice President's publicity tour ginning up a "torture debate," public revulsion at the revelations in the declassified torture memos, and at the photographs the Pentagon is preparing to release, might have made prosecution not only politically desirable, but, to use a Tenetism, a slam dunk. So why didn't the Obama administration react by saying publicly that Cheney was defending practices his own boss had disowned? Why was it necessary to set the usual "high administration officials who insisted on anonymity" loose on the Times ? Whatever the answer to that question, one waits eagerly to see what Cheney says now, as he sits down with Regis and Kelly and the ladies of The View . More on War Crimes
 
Bush Library Raises $100 Million in 100 Days Top
Longtime financial backers of the 43rd president have raised more than $100 million for a presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas that will house his official papers, sources close to Bush told TIME. Much of the money was collected in the 100 days or so since Bush left the White House, a pace much faster than that of his recent predecessors. At least so far, none of it has come from overseas, the sources said. More on George Bush
 
Chelsea Clinton Getting Married: Rumors DENIED Top
Darn, and we'd already chosen a gift. Weekend rumors that Chelsea Clinton planned to get married this summer on Martha's Vineyard are not true, says a Clinton spokesman.
 
CNN's Jim Acosta In Cuba: "This Island Needs Help" Top
Jim Acosta, correspondent for CNN's "American Morning," has been reporting live from Havana since last week. Acosta, a Cuban-American whose father left the island in 1962 (just two weeks before the Cuban Missile crisis), reported live on Friday from Havana's May Day parade and has been filing reports as well as blogging and Twittering the trip. On Friday, Acosta called the Huffington Post from a cell phone in Havana to reflect on his first visit to the country where his father was born. "It's warm and it's as colorful as all get-out," he told me. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before." Acosta said the trip came together at the last minute — "I've had more notice for being deployed to hurricanes," he said — but that he had been trying to arrange an assignment in Cuba since the Obama administration eased travel restrictions for Cuban Americans last month . "I started asking about an assignment down here after the new Obama administration policy affecting Cuban-Americans," he said. "And we started making some inquiries, we talked the Cuban Interests Section in Washington...and basically we put in a request with them, and we got word that we were allowed to come to Cuba one day before we left. We got the word on Wednesday and we left Thursday morning." Acosta said that he was most surprised by the level of poverty he encountered when he arrived. "I didn't expect to see the level of poverty that I'm seeing," he said. "This island needs help. I think that's part of the reason why we're seeing the Cuban government sound so open about talking with the US about a whole host of issues that they hope would lead to a normalization of relations. They would like trade and travel." He was also surprised, he added, by the Cubans' friendliness. "Nobody has said, 'Yankee go home!' Nobody has said, 'Down with America! Down with USA!'" he said. "There's none of that here. If anything, people are very friendly and they're sort of ready to throw out the welcome mat if you say that you're an American. They're like, 'Yeah, come on in! Have a mojito, have a cigar.' I was doing live shots this morning and somebody handed me a Cohiba — so I stuck it in my shirt pocket and said, 'I'll have that tonight, thank you!' So that has also been surprising and kind of nice to see. I didn't know exactly how the people would be and they've just been completely friendly." In his reports, as well as in our interview, Acosta stressed that Cubans feel the change the Obama administration has brought to Washington. "What we've found is really that attitudes are changing here," he said. "For years, the Cubans would shake their fists at the United States and obviously they did not like the previous administration. But this one they're giving a chance. And we're hearing that time and again. They're not absolutely sold on President Obama. They recognize that he is the President of the United States, and that he did not instantly end the embargo on Cuba when he came into office, so there are Cubans here who are not satisfied yet. But when you talk to the average Cuban on the street, they will tell you that they're hopeful, and I think that's something we haven't heard in a very long time coming out of this island." Acosta said that he would like Cuba to become a "pseduo-beat" of his, and that he expects that there will be more developments in American-Cuban relations. "I think this is a developing story," he said. "I think we're going to see more changes coming. I could be wrong about that, but I think that the White House would like to have a dialogue with the Cubans. I think they would like to see more exchanges in terms of cultural programs, areas of common interest, that sort of thing. I have no sense as to where they're gonna go with the policy, but my feeling is, after talking to the Cubans down here, that they like what they're hearing out of Washington. They just want to hear more." As for Acosta's own father, he was "shocked" that his son was returning to the island he left when he was twelve and hasn't returned to since. "I only got to talk to my dad as I was leaving the Miami airport, and he said, "You're doing what?!" Acosta said. "He was shocked. He was definitely surprised, but he understood. I've been wanting to come down here for myself for a long time." Watch Acosta report Monday on Cuban embargo politics: Embedded video from CNN Video Watch Acosta report Friday from Havana's May Day parade: Embedded video from CNN Video More on CNN
 
Iran's Iraq Airstrikes Could Complicate US Relations Top
Iranian aircraft attacked three villages inside Iraq over the weekend. The airstrikes -- Iran's first on Iraqi soil since the U.S. invasion -- could complicate the Obama administration's efforts to normalize relations with Tehran. More on Iran
 
The Wind Farm That Doesn't Kill Birds Top
It could be considered an air traffic control system for birds who have flown perilously off course. A wind farm in southern Texas, situated on a flight path used by millions of birds each autumn and spring, is pioneering the use of radar technology to avoid deadly collisions between a 2,500lb rotating blade and bird. More on Animals
 
Lisa Solod Warren: Who's Your (Bad) Mother? Ayelet Waldman Takes On The Art of Mothering Top
How about this Mother's Day we all give ourselves a break, pick up Ayelet Waldman's latest book, Bad Mother , put our feet up, eat some chocolate, and pat ourselves on the back that the kids are still alive, we are, too, and that, really, if we think real hard about it, we can probably come up with more good news than bad news. A woman I barely knew once told me that being a mother was the only job that one was sure to f**k up, and her admonishment has been as true as anything I've ever heard. The fact is that no matter what we do as mothers--whether we follow our own good mothers, whether we rebel against our own bad mothers, whether we read books on parenting or don't, and certainly whether we think we're doing everything right or are sure we're doing everything wrong-- the fact is that somewhere along the way the kids are going to grow up and leave home (until they come back) and every decision we made along the way will amount to just one more decision we made along the way. I say we cut ourselves some slack. Forget Bruno Bettelheim and the good enough mother. In her new book Bad Mother , attorney, author, wife to noted novelist Michael Chabon and mother of four, Ayelet Waldman, is telling us we can aspire to being not bad mothers and she means it. And not bad is good enough for me. Although a recent reviewer in Elle magazine calls Waldman a "bogeymama" and a "literary bomb-thrower" the real story is that Waldman is nothing more than a truth teller and the collection of often brilliant, inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking, and mostly right-on-the mark essays that make up Bad Mother should be required reading for anyone who has ever been a mother, aspires to be one, or is married to one. Hers is the kind of much-need veracity that women who bear children almost never get and desperately need during the child-rearing years, as anyone who has ever become pregnant and longed for a little honesty will tell you. Soon after my own fortieth birthday I began my own expedition into truth telling, trading in novelistic truth for that of the essay and I have begun to speak and lecture about such truth telling when asked to talk about writing to other writers. Now that I'm in my fifties, that honesty has stood me in good stead. Like Waldman I believe in honesty and so I appreciated her saying, right out in her introduction that "I believe that mothers should tell the truth, even--no, especially--when the truth is difficult." This is crucial, Waldman says, because as she points out, the world is constantly trying to make us feel like bad mothers, even when we try our best to be good ones, and "one of the darkest deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals." If we can own up to that simple fact, I think, and this is what Waldman writes about, mothering will be a whole lot less guilt-inducing and a whole lot more joyful. Waldmans's book is divided into eighteen chapters and she manages to tackle all the big issues: birth, death, abortion, nursing, sex, you name it. At the get go she talks about our monitoring of other mothers' public parenting skills--those we view personally and those we see in the media: the famous bad mothers like Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Britney Spears, and now, I might add, the infamous Octomom, in contrast to what it makes to make a good father. Good fathers, Waldman says, with no small sense of irony, are made by just showing up. If he makes it to birthing classes, the delivery room, and a few soccer games and recitals, he's good. Mothers, on the other hand, need to do a whole hell of a lot more to earn their appellation. As Waldman points out: self-abnegation is key: if mom doesn't put the kids first, she loses big time in the good mother department. And that means first above everything. No wonder even the best of us find some solace and, shall we dare admit it, happiness, in finding a mother worse than ourselves? "Terrified of our own selfishness and failures," Waldman writes, "we look for models further on the spectrum from ourselves than we are from the Good Mother." In another chapter, Waldman expertly handles the expectations her mother had for her and how she measures up against her own expectations of herself and where she veered off course; she also talks about her expectations for her children. I well remember holding my first child, a son, in my arms and wondering how I was going to mother him with so little to go on. And I also recall the first time I realized that I was no longer invested in my daughter's successes or failures, and that if she messed up her piano piece at the recital it simply wasn't my fault. In a later chapter about the gifted child and the expectations we all have for our children Waldman hits those subjects right on the nose. "The most toxic thing parents can do is allow their delight and pride in their children to be spoiled by disappointment, by frustration when the children fail to live up to expectations formed before they were born, expectations that have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the parents' own egos." A three-year-old story out of USA Today and taken from Freakonomics authors' research promises that what we think works doesn't, anyway. Parents matter because they matter. In the ways we always knew they did. Waldman also has a hilarious chapter riffing on Marlo Thomas's Free to Be You and Me record (which she takes to task for its bad grammar) -a shared childhood memory of both hers and her husband's which shaped both of them as early feminists and seems to have helped their marriage work in ways many others don't, including sharing household chores. She's positive that that is the best way to happiness in the bedroom, a sentiment that is not new but one that many women with young children might be a little more honest about when speaking in terms of foreplay and she cites the usual statistics, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who has read anything about who cleans the house, no matter who goes out to work or who doesn't. But it is the way that Waldman writes that bears repeating: "Most men I've talked to understand that the women in their lives are not interested in sex when they are feeling beleaguered and frustrated, but they don't really get it. The average man can be angry and frustrated with his wife, but still be perfectly happy to fuck her. The anger might even be just the pinch of Spanish fly he needs. Your typical man uses sex to unwind, while the last thing typical woman wants when she's wound up is to have sex. Women--or most women, or some women, or the women I'm talking about, or maybe just women like me--do not find resentment erotic. On the contrary. If I am angry with you, or even just irritated, then the last thing I want to do is give you pleasure. I'll withhold it, even if it means I'm hurting myself, too." This comes from a woman,mind you, who was booed on the Oprah show for admitting in a New York Times "Modern Love " article that she loves her husband more than her children. You gotta love a woman lwho gets booed on Oprah. Mother's Day is just another made-up holiday, but we all do kind of expect that our kids will pay back some of the love and carrying and fetching we have done for them over the years. Maybe they'll even realize we've made huge sacrifices for them. No, that's far too much to ask. The best way to spend Mother's Day this year might be just to kick back and do a little reading and discover that none of us, well, most of us, are no crazier or saner than Ayelet Waldman, who is no crazier or saner than most us. Which is very comforting, I find. We're all out there struggling to balance our kids and their needs with ourselves and our needs. As much as we love those babies and want the world for them, we need to try and keep a little piece of it for ourselves. Waldman, in her writing, in her truth-telling, in her soul-baring, helps us do that. As we attempt to keep all our many many balls in the air we acknowledge, along with Waldman, that they will drop and drop again and again. But, as she tells us, "When they fall, all you need to do is pick them up and throw them back up in the air." That advice we can also live with. More on Sex
 
Shrinking Baby Maggie Agnew Baffles Doctors (VIDEO) Top
The Agnew family is desperate to discover the reason that their baby girl Maggie is shrinking. So far doctors are baffled by the case. Little Maggie is losing weight and muscle mass despite having a feeding tube connected to her stomach that is pumping in lots of calories. Maggie's father Sean says, "She's getting plenty of calories, but her body is burning all the calories that she's getting and they don't know where it's going to." Watch the heartbreaking report from MSNBC below. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Video
 
Admiral Mullen: Pakistan Nukes Are Secure, Is 'Gravely Concerned' About Taliban Top
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's top military officer said Monday that he is comfortable that Pakistan's nuclear weapons remain secure, but is gravely concerned about Taliban advances there and in Afghanistan. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the United States has worked with the Pakistanis to improve the security of their nuclear arsenal and he believes that country's military is focused on keeping them secure. While he acknowledged that there is a limit to what the United States knows about the nuclear weapons, he believes that Pakistan's military leaders understand the threat if it falls into the insurgents hands. "I know what we've done over the last three years, specifically, to both invest, assist (Pakistan), and I've watched them improve their security fairly dramatically over the last three years," Mullen said. He said he does not believe that Pakistan's nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists. But when asked if he would say he is confident _ rather than just comfortable _ with the state of Pakistan's nuclear security, he stuck with the latter. Instead, Mullen said his greater worry is Pakistan's ability to sustain their military operations, as Taliban violence surges in the region. "I'm gravely concerned about the progress they (the Taliban) have made in the south and inside Pakistan," Mullen said. "The consequences of their success directly threaten our national interests in the region and our safety here at home." U.S. administration and military leaders have said that success in the Afghanistan war is linked to security in Pakistan. And officials will meet this week with leaders from both countries. Part of those meetings will focus on setting benchmarks for economic, political and military progress there. Mullen would not detail the benchmarks under discussion, but he said that the U.S. must have patience as it works to solidify a relationship with Pakistan, that can lead to a more secure region. "We're just going through a very hard time right now in building it, and that's going to take considerable effort," said Mullen, adding that it also will take "an extended period of time to get this right." ___ Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report. More on Pakistan
 
Obama Wants Supreme Court Nominee With Long-Term Impact: Gibbs Top
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stressed on Monday that while the president was not taking age into consideration when choosing his Supreme Court nominee, he was looking for someone who was "going to have a significant impact on the Court for quite some time." "You have to assume whoever you pick is someone who will have great weight on the court for some time to come," he added. In the daily press briefing, Gibbs was peppered repeatedly with questions about filling the forthcoming David Souter vacancy. He largely played coy, saying that he was not aware of contact between the White House and any specific candidates. Gibbs did, however, provide a bit more detail as to how the search, vetting and nomination process would proceed. Before the briefing began, he noted that President Obama had spoken on the phone Monday with two Senators who will play important roles in the confirmation of his choice for the Supreme Court: newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter and former Judiciary Committee chair Orrin Hatch. The topic of conversation centered around "the upcoming [Supreme Court] pick," Gibbs said. Later he stressed that the President's preference was for someone with "a diversity of experience... [and] a diversity in background." "But again, I think the president is looking for somebody with a record of excellence, with a record of integrity, somebody who understand the rule of law, and somebody who understands how being a judge affects everyday lives." Later, Gibbs said that the search for a nominee could be similar to picking a vice president. "Obviously the president understands as he said here last week, just how important a decision and nomination like this are." Asked if they would announce the choice via text message as they did with Vice President Joseph Biden, GIbbs jokingly responded: "Maybe so." The process by which the Obama Supreme Court nominee will get confirmed by the Senate got a bit shakier with news that Sen. Jeff Sessions would ascend to ranking member of the Judiciary Committee . The Alabama Republican takes over for the far-more-moderate Specter. And because of the arcane rules of the committee, he could play a major role in dragging out the confirmation process. On Monday, Gibbs said that there was no "specific timeline" as for when an announcement on the pick would be made. "Except to say that this is something the president believes must be done before the court starts its work again in October, which means we are on a fairly tight timeline." More on Barack Obama
 
Follow HuffPost World On Facebook, Twitter! Top
No, this isn't your typical news alert, but we thought you'd want to know: HuffPost is now breaking the latest world news and opinion on Facebook and Twitter. If you're a Facebook user, follow the HuffPost World page to receive alerts and interact with our writers in real time: Follow HuffPost World on Facebook here. You can also follow HuffPost World on Twitter, where we post exclusive news and updates throughout the day. Follow HuffPost World on Twitter here. Thanks for all your support! More on Twitter
 
Joe Cirincione: Lisa Kudrow Wants a Nuclear-Free Mother's Day Top
Actress Lisa Kudrow has posted a special plea for this Mother's Day, May 10. "Did you know that Mother's Day in America originated as a day to celebrate peace?" she asks in the video message, "The holiday traces its roots to a mother's plea for peace after the Civil War." I met Lisa and her family at a special dinner she and her husband hosted for the Ploughshares Fund last year. Now, she has teamed up with us in a Mother's Day for Peace campaign to urge people everywhere to honor their mothers with a gift of peace. "This year marks a moment of unprecedented hope for change, a year when President Obama and leaders from around the world have pledged to work together to build a nuclear weapon-free world," she says. "This is the year when all of us can join together to help set a new direction for global nuclear policy." Lisa is best known for her role as Phoebe Burray in the popular television series Friends, for which she won an Emmy and two Screen Actors Guild awards. Her film credits include comedic roles in Hotel for Dogs, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Analyze This and its sequel, Analyze That. She is now the executive producer for the series Who Do You Think You Are? in which celebrities trace their family trees. The actress asks sons and daughters to visit the Mothers Day for Peace website and add their voices to the growing call for zero nuclear weapons . While there, they can also make an online donation in their mothers' honor (or in honor of another special person). In exchange, Ploughshares Fund will send the honoree a bouquet of roses, a sterling silver peace necklace or a handwritten card, telling her that a gift of peace has been made in her honor. Donations will support dozens of organizations and people who are working to seize this unique moment and build a safer future for children and families worldwide. "Mothers may only get one day out of the year set aside just for us," says Kudrow, "but by celebrating May 10th as Mother's Day for Peace, you can help ensure a brighter, more peaceful future for our children." More on Video
 
Gail Lynne Goodwin: Living a Charmed Life Top
Some people seem to be born into a charmed life. No matter what they do, their life seems to be perfect. They have financial abundance, a home right out of Martha Stewart magazine, bright children, success in their careers and an incredible relationship with the person of their dreams. They shine with an inner glow, attracting people and things to them. Many label them as lucky, while others look on with a sense of wonder and perhaps a bit of envy. We scratch our heads and question what we're doing wrong and why our life doesn't look like that or why things don't come to us as easily. Most of us write it off saying things like, "If God wanted me to be rich I would have been born with money", or "I'd do that too if I wasn't afraid to take that risk", or "I'll start my million dollar idea when...". Now is the perfect time to start asking ourselves better questions. Are these lucky people really born into this life, or is a charmed life something that can be created by anyone, including us? Many times it seems that no matter what we try, we're still chasing the dream while others are living it. What would it take to create a charmed life where things came to us with such grace and ease? I believe the quality of our life is a matter of our own expectations and everyone has the ability to live a charmed life, regardless of our personal circumstances. Yes, I mean everyone, including you, regardless of what your life might look like right now. Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right". If you believe you can live a charmed life, filled with all the magic and wonder that would create your perfect dream life- you can. If you believe you can overcome the fear that's stopping you in your tracks, you can. Likewise, if you believe you can't live a charmed life, that it's reserved for others who are "lucky" people, then once again, you're right. Our mindset alone will set the tone for our day and from that tone, the degree of our happiness and success in life will be determined. If we wake up each morning chasing the day, overwhelmed with our massive "to do" list, living in fear and holding onto the belief that we are cursed, the day will lose all hope very quickly as our charmed life slips away. However, if we believe that life will show up for us in a magical way and we act from that place regardless of fear or trepidation, life inevitably appears with everything we need to create a charmed life. If we step forward in faith and claim the life that is waiting for us, obstacles that once appeared as insurmountable will be diminished to small hills that we skip over with ease. By simply focusing on our belief in ourselves, fear can be converted into rocket fuel to blast us to success. To create a charmed life, we must believe that we're connected to something much more powerful than what we can see, believe that anything is possible and that we too deserve the best that life has to offer. Think about the greatest things you've ever accomplished in your life and the things that have brought you the greatest satisfaction in your life. Chances are these very things once caused fear or doubt in your life too, but you had a strong belief that you'd succeed. The only difference between then and now is that fear and doubt were replaced with belief and expectation. We are all divinely created to live charmed lives. Not just some of us, but all of us! We have the power to create the life of our dreams. Nothing can change a life more quickly than inspired action from a place of expectation, based on gratitude and belief. Victoria Moran, today's Inspirational Luminary, is a woman who lives a charmed life. In our interview, Victoria shares secrets from her book, Living a Charmed Life. According to Victoria, your life is not ordinary and you are not ordinary. Everyday is magical. You need to live life as if every day were a jewel that you've been given to polish up and get as brilliant as it can possibly be. It's important to stay present in the day, as we're really only able to live in this day only. If you make today magical and sparkling and then make tomorrow magical and sparkling, you are going to end up with a life that is magical and sparkling, not to mention, charmed. We welcome you to listen to today's FREE Inspired Interview with host, Gail Lynne Goodwin, Ambassador of Inspiration from InspireMeToday.com and her guest, Victoria Moran, author of Living a Charmed Life.
 
White House Briefing Video: Live Stream Of Press Briefing With Robert Gibbs Top
Visit this page for live streaming video whenever Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gives the White House press briefing. Video below: Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Video
 
Chicago Television News Stations To Share News And Video Resources Top
Four Chicago television stations are expected later today to announce they soon will be sharing newsgathering resources at general news events, sources said.
 
TNR's "Case Against Sotomayor" Reliant On Anonymous Sources, Uninformed Opinion Top
Jeffrey Rosen seems to want to present the definitive case against Sonia Sotomayor, so much so that he titles his New Republic piece " The Case Against Sotomayor ." Well, if one of the virtues of our legal system is the right to be confronted by one's accusers, then Rosen's case is a little wanting. Though not in the department of provocative criticism! Sotomayor is called "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench." Also, she has an "inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." There is a rumor that "an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, 'Will you please stop talking and let them talk?'" Then, Rosen gives you two paragraphs, not supported by witness testimony at all, of the author's own interpretation: Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues. Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details: In 2001, for example, a conservative colleague, Ralph Winter, included an unusual footnote in a case suggesting that an earlier opinion by Sotomayor might have inadvertently misstated the law in a way that misled litigants. The most controversial case in which Sotomayor participated is Ricci v. DeStefano, the explosive case involving affirmative action in the New Haven fire department, which is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court. A panel including Sotomayor ruled against the firefighters in a perfunctory unpublished opinion. This provoked Judge Cabranes, a fellow Clinton appointee, to object to the panel's opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever to the constitutional issues at the core of this case." (The extent of Sotomayor's involvement in the opinion itself is not publicly known.) It's unknown how Sotomayor was involved in this "controversial" opinion, but let's hang the whole matter around her neck? And a conservative jurist wrote a footnote that we'll accept at face value as being a key element in "the case against Sotomayor?" On the record testimony comes from Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes, who offers, "She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media." Rosen says Cabranes is being "charitable." Indeed he is, if we compare it to all the other unnamed people, talking smack! In fairness, Rosen garners his praise for Sotomayor from another loose collection of unnamed sources -- former clerks and associates. On balance, however, we have an equal amount of anonymous praise to offset the anonymous criticism, an on the record testimonial that's largely complimentary, and a couple paragraphs of challengeable assertions from Rosen. And then comes the sentence that Matt Yglesias, for one , notes as being sufficient to cast this whole exercise -- the anonymous castigation and those two paragraphs of Rosen's supposedly informed critique -- into doubt: I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths. Rosen says he'll be doing "a series of reports...about the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidates on Barack Obama's Supreme Court shortlist." My suggestion to him is that he should title them something like, "A Child's Garden Of Anonymously Sourced Opinions on [SCOTUS Candidate]," and hold off on making definitive "cases" for and against, until such time as he can claim to know what the hell he's talking about. [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Barack Obama
 
Deepak Chopra: The Toxic Residue of Torture Top
It seems clear that the question of torture won't go away. It would be easier to talk about moving ahead. Images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo belong in nightmares. As a physician, my personal nightmare is of the doctors who stood by during torture sessions to monitor the victim's vital signs. This was supposed to be humane, but what about the Hippocratic oath, which says that a doctor shall do no harm? Is making sure that waterboarding doesn't cause a heart attack doing no harm? The whole rationale is grotesque. This is one of those moments when painful truth is the only way to heal. People don't want to hear about bad things from the past when the present is loaded down with more than enough bad things. But inconvenience and fatigue aren't good excuses. There is anger from the left -- and not just the left -- about an inexcusable Bush policy. There are demons in the closet, and shutting the door on them won't make them go away. Better to deal with it now, when a new president's idealism is still fresh. It will take idealism to face the torture issue. Otherwise, any truth commission will either turn into a vengeance squad or go the other way and sweep too much under the rug. The more the right wing tries to justify the torture policy, the worse they look. Using national security to justify torture is just a bald-faced attempt to hide the truth. What really went on was simple. The Bush administration felt that Al-Qaida could not be defeated while still preserving what America stands for. Now we have a President -- and the world has a leader -- who believes the opposite. Obama has stated that the terrorists can be defeated using methods that don't betray the core values of our country. I think he's right. He has to be. A country that resorts to torture has lost the battle to begin with. Not only was torture not effective (it yielded little that regular interrogation couldn't achieve) but even if it was effective, the damage done to America's standing in the world was far greater. What torture mainly does is provide a huge boost in recruitment for Al-Qaeda. If the truth sets you free, then let's have a truth commission as a first step. Lay everything out, however painful. The aim should not be punishment but detoxification. The toxic residue of Bush-era policies hasn't been cleansed; healing hasn't replaced bitter resentment. Not only should the right wing and the war-makers tell the truth, but so should those politicians, including Democrats, who passively went along with what their conscience told them was dead wrong. Then let's see where the truth leads us. There is no pro-torture side on this issue. "America does not torture" was the slogan of the Bush administration as well as the current administration. Now we need to expose how honest and sincere those words are. The road away from torture is the road back to America. Can we all agree on that? Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
 
Jeff Sessions Demanded Up-Or-Down Vote On Alito Top
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), now the Republican with the most power to delay President Obama's Supreme Court nominees, decried filibusters during the battle to confirm Justice Samuel Alito. Sessions will take over for defector Arlen Specter as top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a position that enables him to drag out debate on potential Supreme Court justices. No one knows if Sessions plans to do so -- but when Democrats opposed the nomination of Justice Alito, the Republican declared that judges should face only a "majority vote" and that filibusters of court nominees were "very painful." "Since the founding of the Republic, we have understood that there was a two-thirds supermajority for ratification and advice and consent on treaties and a majority vote for judges. That is what we have done. That is what we have always done. But there was a conscious decision on behalf of the leadership, unfortunately, of the Democratic Party in the last Congress to systematically filibuster some of the best nominees ever submitted to the Senate. It has been very painful." [Senate Floor Speech, 5/23/05] Sessions also brings to his post some interesting baggage -- he was rejected to an appointment as a U.S. district judge two decades ago over charges of racism. The decisive vote: Arlen Specter. Two decades ago, the Senate rejected his nomination as a U.S. district judge by President Ronald Reagan over allegations that his career as a lawyer and U.S. attorney in Alabama showed a pattern of being racially insensitive. Ironically, it was Specter who helped seal his defeat by joining with Democratic opposition. Sessions' dismal record on race -- including a black former assistant U.S. attorney's testimony that Sessions once said he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers" -- was chronicled in a 2002 article in The New Republic . Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Jim Lichtman: 100 Days into Obama's 'New Era of Responsibility' Top
Last November, immediately following the presidential election, Wade Clark Roof, director of the Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life and I asked more than 3,300 likely voters what "qualities do you think the country needs most from the new president" and, "what actions would you like to see accomplished most by the new president and Congress?" The top three qualities they gave: honesty, integrity and leadership. The top three issues: the economy, ending the war in Iraq, and health care reform. From Tuesday, April 28 through Thursday April 30, 2009, Professor Roof and I put our own "First 100 Days" poll into the field asking voters to grade President Obama, as well as congressional Republicans and Democrats on those same qualities and issues they considered important from November, 2008. Here's just a snapshot of what we found: When asked to rate the performance of President Obama in his first 100 Days, more than 3,300 likely voters gave him 54% positive job approval. Congressional Democrats scored only 38% positive numbers and Republicans came in at only 22% positive numbers. When asked to rate Mr. Obama on the top three qualities voters said were important to them last November, 58% gave Mr. Obama positive marks for his honesty and integrity, while 59% gave him positive marks for his leadership. The Capps survey was conducted by Zogby, International in Utica, New York. The poll included 3,367 likely voters and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.7 percentage points. When asked to rate Mr. Obama's leadership on the top three issues voters said were most important, the president was given just under 50% positive numbers on the economy while "bringing the troops home from the Middle East" received 56% positive numbers. In rating Mr. Obama in the area of health care reform, voters gave him a positive rating of 46% while 49% gave him a negative score. However, Congress remains deeply unloved by voters. Rating "transparency," another quality Americans said was important, Congress received only 18% positive marks, while Mr. Obama received 50% positive marks. And when it comes to honesty and integrity, Congress received only 23 % and 22% positive numbers compared to Mr. Obama's 58% in both categories. When asked to rate Mr. Obama's leadership in "working with Congress," 63% gave him a positive score. In "working with the president," Congress was given a 45% positive rating. When it comes to "restoring trust in government" Mr. Obama received 50% positive numbers compared to only 18% positives for Congress. While the "First 100 Days" has become more of a tradition than a true benchmark of accomplishment, the Capps Center survey asked voters to grade Mr. Obama and Congress on the qualities and issues they considered most important rather than what the media thinks. At this point in time, a majority of Americans have confidence in Mr. Obama. However, the next seven to nine months will be particularly critical. The outcomes of Mr. Obama's economic policies, as well as the specifics of his health care plan will play a large part in whether Americans continue that level of confidence. Click here for an overview . Jim Lichtman commentaries on ethics can be found at www.ethicsStupid.com .
 
Andy Borowitz: Virgins Eagerly Await Star Trek Top
Paramount Pictures, which is releasing the latest Star Trek movie this Friday, is hoping for record box office returns, fueled by a big turnout from the movie franchise's core audience: virgins. While the studio has high hopes for the movie's success with the general audience, it is taking great paints to target the group that has flocked to every previous Star Trek film, and that means reaching out to people who have never come close to having sex. "There is already a terrific buzz about this movie among virgins online," said Paramount distribution spokesman Tracy Klujian. "The good news for us is, virgins spend a lot of time online." While Paramount admits that it has done its homework to reach America's virgins, conducting audience testing and focus groups with moviegoers who have never been on a date, they are not taking the virgin audience for granted. "There are so many things competing for virgins' attention in the marketplace," he said. "Not just the Internet, but computer games, comic books, and Transformers 2." Zach Sussberg, 24, a virgin in Flint, Michigan, said that he had cleared out his entire weekend to make sure that he sees the new Star Trek film. "Everybody says that this new Star Trek is better than sex," he said. "But hey, I wouldn't know." Interestingly, Paramount's Klujian said that the studio is not targeting moviegoers involved in the abstinence movement: "Let's face it, those kids are having more sex than anybody." Elsewhere, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he had launched his own version of "No Child Left Behind."
 
Philip Markoff, Alleged Craigslist Killer, Facing New Charges In Rhode Island Attack Top
WARWICK, R.I. — The Boston medical student charged with killing a masseuse he met on Craigslist is expected to face new charges soon in Rhode Island. Rhode Island prosecutors said Monday that they will announce an arrest warrant in the attempted robbery of a stripper inside a hotel last month. They've previously said Philip Markoff, who is charged in Boston with killing the masseuse, was the suspect in the April 16 robbery attempt at a Holiday Inn Express in Warwick. A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity previously told The Associated Press that investigators found Markoff's fingerprint in the hotel. They also believe he sent text messages from there. An exotic dancer from Las Vegas who offered lap dances told Rhode Island authorities that she was bound with cord and held at gunpoint by a man she met through Craigslist, a classified advertising Web site. She said her assailtant fled when her husband came up to the hotel room. Markoff, 23, was arrested April 20 on Interstate 95 while driving with his fiancee to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. He was charged with the April 14 killing of Julissa Brisman, a 25-year-old New York City resident who advertised on Craigslist, at the Boston Marriott Copley Place hotel, in the historic Back Bay district. He has also been charged in a separate robbery at a hotel of another masseuse police say he met through the site. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, John Salsberg, did not return a phone message Monday. Markoff was put on suicide watch at the Boston jail where he is being held. Warwick police officials did not return phone calls seeking comment Monday.
 
Craig Newmark: DonorsChoose.org & Stephen Colbert: Support Our Troops' Children Top
Hey, DonorsChoose.org is a great example of how we all use the Net to help each other out, by pooling a few dollars to give people a break. It's like microfinance applied to classroom projects; we all can contribute a little to fund a classroom projects. Newsman Stephen Colbert has a great project here, Support Our Troops' Children , which the focus is on classroom projects where serve the children of service members. Here's a podcast where he talks about it. This couldn't be any cooler, please check it out! ... and in no particular order ... More on Stephen Colbert
 
Weekend Late Night Round-Up: David Souter, Arlen Specter, And Swine Flu (VIDEO) Top
Justice Souter's impending resignation was the big draw for late night hosts this weekend with Bill Maher saying, "The Republicans say Obama's pick for a replacement is completely unacceptable and they will let us know why as soon as they find out who it is" and Jay Leno shocking his audience by remarking, "Let's just hope the president is better at picking a justice than the justices were at picking a president." More from Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman below. Click here to see last weekend's best jokes. WATCH: More on Late Night Shows
 
Peter Y. Sussman: Take Me to Your Editor Top
Huffington Post is a noble and necessary experiment in citizen journalism -- and indeed in journalism itself -- and I have been pleased to be a contributor, however infrequent. But like all path-breaking experiments, it can be led astray by its very success, and I wonder if it is now in danger of being blinded by the dazzle of one of its own innovations. Citizen journalists at Huffington Post last week received an email crowing, understandably, that "More than 2,500 of you helped make our tea party coverage the biggest distributive reporting success since the election." As evidence of that success, the email noted that Huffington Post 's citizen journalism "caught the eye of the blogosphere, on both conservatives and progressives [sic]. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC was among those watching your reports, broadcasting your photographs live on her show last Friday." Attention garnered is certainly one measure of success, but is that the best measure of journalism excellence? Is the volume of the reporting an adequate gauge of good journalism? To get more specific: Should we not also ask whether the high-wattage attention focused on a series of fringe protests dreamed up by some p.r. wizard with an ideological agenda by itself distorted the importance of those protests? Too often, in this celebrity-crazed nation, the attention paid to a subject is both self-justifying and self-reinforcing, and many of the errors of the mainstream media -- even on issues far more important than a blonde beauty's latest drunk-driving arrest -- follow a similarly dangerous trajectory. That is, the unrelenting attention of "pack journalists" gives a credibility and importance to an event that it did not merit. (The reverse is also true: The paucity of attention paid to a topic marginalizes that topic and can help push it down to the bottom of the national agenda.) The spin may vary from one news organization to another -- one cable channel to another -- but the attention itself may be what most people remember though it can be every bit as misleading as the crazed rant of a verbal bully posing as a journalist. ("Of course it's important; it was the top story on the 6 o'clock network news.") It is a symptom of the perversity of the human mind that, as social scientists have argued, even the repetition necessary to debunk a myth can give it a measure of credibility, by the sheer act of repetition alone. Examples are easy to find in the mainstream media, on issues of supreme importance -- from Saddam Hussein's complicity in the 9/11 attacks to the prevalence of the most recent headline-hogging crime. Misleading or not, stories like those have lasting impact in the real world: Hussein's inflated "guilt" was a key part of the narrative furthering the war in Iraq, and those crime-of-the-moment stories often lead to ad hoc legislation that further distorts our crazy quilt of criminal sanctions. All too often, such saturation coverage conditions public sentiment for quick and easy solutions. Those solutions may be as specific as "remedial" legislation or as general as the validation of "conventional wisdom" or as stubbornly pernicious as the reinforcement of racial, class and other stereotypes. All of this may seem like a heavy burden to place on the coverage of an inconsequential fringe event like the "tea party" protests, but the level of coverage was not inconsequential. Journalism is essentially anecdotal. Such coverage reinforces the reservoirs of anecdotal knowledge from which most of us draw our policy conclusions. In this instance, the public was likely to conclude from the attention paid to these p.r.-driven pseudo-events that the prevailing mood of the country has swung to angry grassroots advocacy of balanced budgets, lowered taxes and a reduced role for the federal government in financing systemic reforms of healthcare, the economy and the environment. There is no evidence that that is true, despite the excessive attention paid to a bunch of people at isolated locales parading around in tea-bag hats. So what's the antidote? Citizen journalism certainly has a valuable role to play in leavening news coverage with local perspectives and with the insights of experts outside the "usual suspects" featured on Sunday morning news shows. But massive, unfiltered exercises in citizen journalism can tilt public understanding as surely as the rush of passengers from one side to the other can threaten the stability of a small boat. I used the word unfiltered intentionally. Despite the scorn heaped on the role of the MSM as filters of the information that reaches the public, we may be losing something important by so completely ditching the old model. The solution for information that has been inappropriately filtered may not be be opening the spigot full-force. Another word for journalism filters is editors. They are critical to the process of shaping the chaos of public events into some coherent form, including a rough hierarchy based on importance. Without them we are left with little more than the accumulation of data measured more by volume than significance. By all means, let's keep the citizens in citizen journalism. Let any interested reader find the raw data from hundreds of localities if they wish. But the measure of our success should be the perspective and understanding we provided for our readers, not how much data was accumulated by how many people or how much of it reverberated elsewhere in the national news echo chamber. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Mexico Lowers Flu Alert Level Top
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials lowered their flu alert level in the capital on Monday and said they will allow cafes, museums and libraries to reopen this week. World health officials weighed raising their pandemic alert to the highest level. Mexican officials declared the epidemic to be waning, announcing that Wednesday will conclude a five-day closure of nonessential businesses that was called to stop the spread of the new virus. Health officials need to finish inspecting schools before students can return to class. Global health experts however said it was too early for countries to lower their guard, but there were no imminent plans to raise the pandemic alert level. In New York on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the World Health Organization "has no plan to raise the alert level to 6 at this moment." WHO chief Margaret Chan also told the U.N. General Assembly by videolink from Geneva that "we are not there yet." In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais published Monday, Chan implied the agency might raise its alert. She played down the impact of going to level 6, saying she was concerned about causing unnecessary panic. WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said the comments appeared to be consistent with what the global body has said all along. "We have consistently said a pandemic is imminent. It's only a matter of time before we move to phase 6 unless the virus suddenly becomes weaker and dies off," he said. According to the WHO's pandemic phase definitions, being in level 5 means the agency believes a global outbreak is "imminent." Though Mexican authorities believe the outbreak may have peaked, WHO maintains it is still too early to tell if the outbreak is slowing down. WHO also emphasized that a pandemic did not necessarily mean the disease was particularly deadly. The past two pandemics _ in 1957 and 1968 _ have been relatively mild. WHO said that the term pandemic refers to a disease's geographic spread _ in all countries worldwide _ rather than its severity. While Mexico began its first steps toward normalcy, the virus spread to Colombia in the first confirmed case in South America, where flu season is about to begin. More cases were confirmed in North America and Europe _ including Portugal's first _ with the total number sickened worldwide rising to more than a 1,000 people, according to health and government officials. With the scope of the disease unknown, several countries have taken urgent measures against arriving Mexicans or those who have recently traveled to Mexico. In China, 71 Mexicans have been quarantined in hospitals and hotels, Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza said. Arriving Mexicans were taken into isolation, said Mexico's ambassador, Jorge Guajardo. Even the Mexican consul in Guangzhou was briefly held after returning from a vacation in Cambodia. And in Hong Kong, 350 people remained isolated Monday in a hotel after a Mexican traveler there was determined to have swine flu. Mexican President Felipe Calderon complained of the backlash against Mexicans abroad, and his government said a chartered plane left Monday morning for China and will make stops in several cities to pick up any Mexican citizen wanting to return home. "I think it's unfair that because we have been honest and transparent with the world some countries and places are taking repressive and discriminatory measures because of ignorance and disinformation," Calderon said. "There are always people who are seizing on this pretext to assault Mexicans, even just verbally," he said, though he did not point to any country. Espinoza planned to talk to Chinese officials about their policy toward Mexicans. China's Foreign Ministry denied it was discriminating against Mexicans. But the Mexican Embassy in Beijing sent a circular out to all its citizens saying China had imposed "measures of unjustified isolation" in response to swine flu and urging trips there to be canceled or postponed. Espinoza also criticized Argentina, Peru and Cuba for banning flights to Mexico, and said Argentina was sending a plane to Mexico on Monday to pick up Argentines who want to leave Mexico. A group of 25 Canadian university students and a professor have been quarantined at a hotel in China since the weekend over swine flu fears. Canada has 103 confirmed cases of swine flu. The group does not have any flu symptoms, University of Montreal spokeswoman Sophie Langlois said Monday. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said at a news conference Monday that Mexico had 727 cases of swine flu and 26 deaths from the virus. Health officials raised the number of confirmed U.S. swine flu cases to 245 in 35 states late Sunday. The new number reflects streamlining in federal procedures and the results of tests by states, which have only recently begun confirming cases, said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC's acting chief, Dr. Richard Besser, said swine flu is spreading just as easily as regular winter flu. "The good news is when we look at this virus right now, we're not seeing some of the things in the virus that have been associated in the past with more severe flu," Besser said. "That's encouraging, but it doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet." In Alberta, Canada, officials quarantined about 220 pigs infected by a worker who recently returned from Mexico. It was the first documented case of the H1N1 virus being passed from a human to another species. Canada stressed that pigs often get the flu and there is no danger in eating pork. Cordova presented the most comprehensive description yet of the dead in Mexico. He said 15 were female and seven were men. One possible explanation could be that women get poorer health care in Mexico because of its male-dominated culture, he said. Cordova also said only 4 percent were unemployed; the rest either had jobs or were housewives and students. More than 50 percent had not graduated from high school and only 11 percent had university education. Pablo Kuri, an epidemiologist advising Cordova, told The Associated Press that tests have confirmed a swine flu death in Mexico City on April 11, two days earlier than what had been believed to be the first death. Kuri also said there were no deaths among health care workers treating swine flu patients in Mexico, an indication that the virus may not be as contagious or virulent as initially feared. ___ Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen in Beijing, Bradley S. Klapper in Zurich and Alexandra Olson, Paul Haven and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City, John Heilprin at the United Nations, Rob Gillies in Toronto and Min Lee in Hong Kong contributed to this report. More on Swine Flu
 
Fortune 's Stanley Bing: Things That Will Survive Top
It's quite possible that the light that we are seeing at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train. True, at the parties I went to over the weekend a certain number of people were unemployed. This was in Northern California, which has been hit pretty hard in the tech sector and in real estate as well. But people were of pretty good cheer. Of course, they were drunk, but that doesn't necessarily impart automatic merriness. I've known a ton of grouchy drunks in my time. No, there was definitely a little bit of hope in the air. I think that may be because it's starting to look like the nasty creepazoids who prognosticated the death of all human life on the planet will be disappointed in the end. The game is now to figure out who will get through this thing, because when we're all safely on shore the survivors will find a world in which they are faced with significantly less competition. There will be more meat, more vegetables, more space at the campfire. Here's my guess at who will be there: A number of hearty newspapers : Yeah, there won't be quite as many as there were before. But the ones who stick around will still control about half of all local advertising. A bunch of lean, tough car companies : And boy, are they going to need to get their brands back on track. How? With advertising, ladies and gentlemen. Therefore... Mass media : Targeting schmargeting. Who do you think those monsters are going to require in order to get back in touch with all the folks who once again want soap, cars and increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals? And beer! Don't forget about beer! Lots of new Madoffs : Things will look better. This will bring out the oldest couple in human history: the gullible and those who will prey on them. A bunch of shiny new philanthropists : The markets will soar. New people will get rich. And for a time, while the shame of having been selfish idiots clings to the marketplace, there will be those who try to help others who have yet to rise from whatever tragedy has befallen them. Most of them will probably be the biggest bad guys from the days of yore, a thought that never left my mind when I attended the Milken Conference in LA last week. A small, gnarly band of Republicans : Wow, are those guys angry. Right now, they're down. But when things improve and unfettered exploitation of the market is once again in vogue, they'll come roaring back into the spotlight armed to the teeth and looking for liberals. Book stores : Will there be as many of them? No. Will there still be some? Yes there will. What about the Kindle? The Kindle! Aieee! Look. The majority of people I know who have Kindles are in publishing. They go around with their Kindles and talk about the end of their own business. Talk about boring! Regulation: Somewhere in our collective memory, the majority of us will harbor some vague memory that it's bad when the FDA, SEC, FEMA and other regulators in Washington are run by former executives and lobbyists of the industries they are supposed to be overseeing, apparatchiks who are in fact enemies of the agencies they are supposed to be managing. Florida: I'm as worried about climate change as the next person, but I still think that Miami will be above water. Also New York. Other : If you can't imagine a world without it, it's probably going to be here, smaller, leaner, more sinewy, and better equipped to make the grade going forward. So relax. You will also note that Twitter is not on this list. More on New York
 
William Fisher: Torture Detainees = Shoot Obama in Foot Top
The Pentagon says there are up to 100 prisoners in Guantanamo who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be tried in U.S. federal courts. They cannot be tried because much of the evidence against them is based on hearsay, which judges would likely refuse to allow. Or because they were held illegally as "enemy combatants" while being stripped of any rights they may have had. Or because what we know about these people and their plans was learned through the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" (have you ever heard of a less descriptive euphemism?). Chances are most Federal judges would also find such "evidence" inadmissible. Former Vice President Cheney tells us the government's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (including waterboarding) was NOT torture (didn't the memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel tell us so?). He also claims these techniques yielded actionable intelligence that disrupted numerous terrorist plots to kill more Americans. So far, we have not seen a shred of evidence to prove that claim. We have only the word of the former Veep. And, given the magnitude of the lies he and the rest of the Bushies have sold us over the past eight years, why on earth would any of us believe a single thing Cheney had to say? The result of W's presidential power-grab is that we are now faced with the prospect of being unable to prosecute accused terrorists in our Federal justice system, or of having to obtain plea deals that will greatly lighten the sentences meted out to these miscreants. The al-Marri case illustrates the point. As noted in a Washington Post editorial this morning, "Nearly six years ago, President George W. Bush declared Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him swept out of federal court and into a U.S. Navy brig so he could be interrogated without the legal protections afforded by the criminal justice system. Bush said the Qatari national, arrested as a material witness in Illinois in December 2001, possessed critical intelligence that 'would aid U.S. efforts to prevent attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States'." The consequence of Bush's action? Instead of being put on trial for providing material support for terrorism - and facing a 30-year prison sentence - Marri was allowed to plead guilty only to conspiracy to provide material support , which carries a 15-year sentence (and even less if he is given credit for the five years he spent in the Navy brig). Why did the Justice Department have to accept this plea deal? Because government lawyers were concerned about the release of classified evidence and the impact of possible testimony regarding Marri's mental state after prolonged solitary confinement. Because he was interrogated using those famous "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- defense lawyers said in court papers that interrogators threatened Marri, telling him he would be transferred to Saudi Arabia or Egypt, where he would be sodomized and forced to watch the rape of his wife. And because Marri was allegedly recruited to come to the U.S. by no less a storied figure than Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, to organize a terrorist sleeper cell. KSM would have been a likely witness for Marri if the case were ever to find its way into a courtroom. And speaking of KSM, it is also questionable that he will ever see the inside of a Federal courtroom. That's not because anyone's afraid that a jury would be sympathetic to him, but because of the headlines he would make by describing his own torture in U.S. custody. It's likely that KSM and many other defendants would use the courts as platforms from which to expose yet more sensational details about their treatment. So what to do with the hundred or so detainees at Guantanamo who the Pentagon says are too dangerous to release but who, like Marri and probably KSM, cannot be tried in civilian courts? The Obama Administration was quick to declare the "enemy combatant" designation as illegal and to order an end to "enhanced interrogation techniques." But the genie is out of the bottle and can't be stuffed back in. The likely consequence is that most of the victims of these techniques will never be tried in civilian courts - even though our criminal justice system is demonstrably well-equipped to try them. So what federal prosecutors are left with now is the grim reality of trying to reach plea deals with the accused, or freeing them, or trying them in settings where the rules of evidence are less stringent. Less stringent? Read Military Commissions 2.0. -- some tweaked version of the totally failed system that produced exactly two convictions in eight years. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has acknowledged that a return the commissions remains an option. But most legal scholars and human rights advocates say there is no amount of tweaking that will repair this deeply flawed system. And, as if this Obama Administration legal migraine wasn't enough, it is also having to deal with the question of where to put these prisoners as they await trial? Gates has already asked Congress for $50 million to build a new prison - a new GITMO. But where? Virtually every voice in Congress is already belting out the NIMBY aria. You can bet that every member of Congress will be running, not walking, away from the opportunity to make an earmark out of this new construction project. Mercifully, George W. Bush couldn't run for reelection last November. But he still managed to shoot the Obama Administration - and all the rest of us -- in the foot.
 
Measuring Random Acts Of Kindness: Track The Trajectory Of Your Good Deed Top
The concept of "paying it forward" is one of the best aspects of a random act of kindness -- all it takes is one person and one good deed to start a chain of charitable events. That said, it's almost impossible to gauge just how far those chains reach. Until now. According to Dan Rascon of the KUTV Utah News , one man has decided to change that, by introducing a little modern technology into an age old way of giving. Jeff Smith from Alpine, Utah, has devised a system of key chain tags to track random acts of kindness. Here's how it works: Once you receive the tags you register the sheet of 10 on the website and then each time you do a good deed you tag the person. Those tagged then type in their tag number which is located on the back of the card and then pass it on when they do a good deed for someone else. The tags are available in sheets of 10 for $14.95 at Smith's website . Smith hopes his tags will encourage more random acts of kindness. "You left behind a mark and that mark which is traceable makes you feel good," says Smith. "You don't have to go out and plan your day to try and find an act to do because you would probably over plan, because they (kind deeds) are all over." Since the company began seven months ago, 11,773 people have come into contact with Smith's tags. Read the whole story here . *** Difficult times have been known to bring communities together as people lean on one another for support. In this recession, there's no shortage of communities around the country that have rallied around a struggling neighbor, reached out a helping hand to those around them, or donated free dry cleaning to the job-seeking and unemployed . We know there are more stories like these and HuffPost wants to highlight them. If you read or hear about an act of kindness in your community, email us the story at goodnews@huffingtonpost.com. These vignettes are a much needed counterpoint to the doom and gloom surrounding the economy; let's help change the conversation -- we can't do it without you. *Follow HuffPostLiving on Twitter and become a fan of Huffington Post Living on Facebook * More on The Giving Life
 
Inside Jason Wu's New York Apartment Top
Financing his fledgling business and buying this modest midtown apartment were both made possible with help from his family. It's very simply decorated, with gray walls and a gray sectional sofa in the living room; a red Eames chair from Vitra adds a spot of color. The kitchen and bath were the only things he altered: He enlarged the kitchen pass-through and removed the bathtub to make the bathroom more modern and streamlined.
 
Black Hebrew Polygamists Begin To Gain Acceptance In Israel Top
DIMONA, Israel -- As a young African-American man in late 1970s Chicago, Atur Yirmeyahu was contemplating the fairly standard dilemmas of whether to go to graduate school and ask his girlfriend of three years to marry him. Before the year was over, he had decided on a wholly unorthodox way forward. Scrapping the university plans and breaking up with his girlfriend, he left his hometown for a sleepy desert settlement in southern Israel. He has hardly seen his family in the three decades since he packed his bags, but here, in this working-class Negev town, he says he has found his rightful home. Yirmeyahu is part of the 2,500-strong Hebrew Israelite community settled in one of three neighboring villages. The first group of vegan, polygamous and ethnically African-American settlers arrived in 1969, following their young, charismatic leader, Ben Ammi Ben Israel. Ben Ammi, formerly a Chicago factory worker named Ben Carter, preached that black Americans were descendants of one of Israel's lost tribes and needed to return to their homeland. To the Hebrew Israelites, or Black Hebrews as they're known here, Ben Ammi is the Messiah and their exodus from America an escape from oppression and violence. Yirmeyahu said he grew up in a crime-ridden neighborhood, experimented with drugs in college and "shudders to think" what might have become of him if he had stayed in Chicago. "The most common cause of death in the black community was handgun murder," he said, sitting on a bench in the village courtyard on a recent afternoon, a group of teenage boys playing basketball nearby. "I've been shot. I've wrestled with individuals with guns. The black experience -- the captivity -- it wasn't a picnic." Life hasn't always been carefree here either. For decades, the group battled the government for the right to live in Israel. They refused to officially convert to Judaism to satisfy the religious nationalists who doubted their authenticity, arguing they didn't need to prove themselves to anyone. There were mass deportations, and newcomers often resorted to sneaking in, sometimes posing as tour groups. "It was a big struggle," said Hagit Peres, a Ben-Gurion University professor and anthropologist who has studied the Black Hebrews. "They didn't get anything easily, and many left during the process." In recent years, some of that tension has dissolved. There was a turning point in 2003 when the government awarded the community permanent residency, allowing them to join the army and apply for full citizenship. Several weeks ago, the government approved a citizenship application from a Black Hebrew man for the first time. "It's a great victory for us," said Avichiel Ben Israel, a spokesman for the group. "It shows us that the God of Israel lives. We see it in a very historic manner -- after 40 years, being recognized." Hiskiyahoo, the director of the one of the nearby villages, said the citizenship is validation that Ben Ammi's teachings are correct and that community members are following the right path in their quest to create what they call the Kingdom of Yah, or "Kingdom of God," on Earth. "All the things he said have come to pass," Hiskiyahoo said. To be sure, the Black Hebrews have come a long way in their relations with government and society here. They run a successful national chain of vegan restaurants, more than 300 of their youth are serving in the army and their choirs regularly perform throughout the country. In 2006, Israelis even chose Black Hebrew singer Eddie Butler to represent them in the Eurovision song contest. "Before, people thought that we were a cult," said Avichiel, the spokesman. "That perception has changed now that people have the opportunity to visit and see that it couldn't be farther from the truth. We have a culture, a way of life." But while their lifestyle has similarities to Judaism -- they practice circumcision, celebrate Passover and observe the Sabbath -- there are major differences that still raise eyebrows among Jewish Israelis. There's the polygamy, for example. It's common for men to take several wives and have more than a dozen children -- a practice Avichiel says stems from an uneven female-to-male ratio and strict purity rules that keep women from fulfilling their domestic role during their periods and after childbirth. "There are more women than there are men, it's really practical," he said, sitting on a couch in an office with a framed photo of Ben Ammi staring serenely from the wall. "During menstruation, she's set aside and doesn't prepare food. After childbirth she's isolated for 40 days after a boy, or 80 days after a female. So you kind of need more than one." Yirmeyahu, the Chicago native, has only one wife and no children but hopes to marry two more women and have at least 10 kids. He is also hopeful he will be among the next to receive Israeli citizenship. "I was never an American anyway," he said. Read more from Global Post. ------ Keep in touch with Huffington Post World on Facebook and Twitter . More on Israel
 
Karin Badt: Child Soldiers on Film: ""Johnny Mad Dog" (II) Top
It isn't easy to translate the horror (and thrill) of being a child soldier on film, and Jean-Stephane Sauvaire does it masterfully, in his new film Johnny Mad Dog , recently screened at the Istanbul International Film Festival. From beginning to end, the audience is riveted by the shots of high-energy youth chanting war-cries, wielding AK47s, gang-raping a woman broadcaster, and cruising into towns on jeeps, waving their arms like one many-tentacled monster. But what makes the film exceptional is that throughout the exacting violence, one senses the humanity of both victims and perpetrators. First, Sauvaire had the original idea of having each child soldier have a distinct identity, from the charismatic Johnny Mad Dog to a boy known as Butterfly, who wears a pair of angelic white wings. One child soldier always wears a long creamy wedding dress. "This is actually the case in Liberia," Sauvaire told me, as we sat on a stone ledge at he American Consulate Residence in Istanbul, overlooking the bay, at dusk, while wine glasses chinked gently around us. "The particularity of Liberian child soldiers is that some are given costumes, as part of their new military identity." Flashes of human affection also mark the film -- a child soldier falls in love; a thirteen year old girl pushes her wounded father across town in a cart to save him. "I added some of these more human moments myself," explained the director. "To give this emphasis." The movie is based on the eponymous book by Emmanuel Dongala, a Congolese chemist, and basically keeps the two basic story lines of Johnny Mad Dog and the thirteen year old girl. I asked how it was possible that the director transcribed so well -- in accurate visceral detail -- what the experience of child soldiers must be like: the group mania, the drug-use, the numbed emotions, the rituals -- all that I had heard myself from child soldiers in Uganda. The key lies in the "docu-fiction" approach. The actors, it turned out, are not actors, but escaped child soldiers. The director worked with them for a year in rehearsals in Liberia. Each child would improvise on the script, adding his or her own experience and authentic dialogue. The result is breathtakingly real. "I also used long-takes, so my camera does not interfere with or manipulate the image." The director's commitment to these children -- both on-screen and off -- is evident, both in his craft and action: proceeds from the film will be used to help the child soldier actors rehabilitate themselves. As is the case with most child soldiers, their greatest problem is not what happens to them in the army, but when they get out: they are outcasts in society, illiterate and untrained, with no future. The director -- whose previous projects include a documentary on the Colombian poor and who shared that his interest in the pains of violent childhoods comes from his own experience -- added that eventually he would like to interface with corporations and foundations to help -- on a wider scale -- former child soldiers build new lives, not just the fifteen he is helping now. The last shot of the film: the sweet thirteen year old turns violent. A universal message of how easily innocence can be damaged, reminiscent of the ending shot of "Four Hundred Blows." Highly recommended.
 

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