Wednesday, May 27, 2009

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Funny & Fine: Who's America's Sexiest Comedian? You Decide! (SLIDESHOW) (POLL) Top
We've selected 15 of the sexiest funnymen we know for a HuffPost poll of ridiculous proportions. They're all hilarious, they're all more comedian than actor (sorry Paul Rudd!), and they're all sexy as hell. Think we're missing someone? Complain about it in the comments section! Missed the ladies list? Click here and vote! More on Jimmy Fallon
 
Geithner To Meet With Chinese Leaders Top
Timothy F. Geithner, who before his confirmation as Treasury secretary unintentionally charged that China was "manipulating" its currency, will make his first trip to that country and meet with its leaders next week amid rising concern about China's willingness to continue buying United States debt. More on Timothy Geithner
 
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman: Ad Sales Stabilizing Top
NEW YORK -- Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman predicted a drawn-out upfront advertising market Wednesday and reiterated that ad sales have stabilized in recent weeks. More on Advertising
 
CIA, Intel Director Locked In Turf Battle Top
WASHINGTON — The nation's two intelligence chiefs are locked in a turf battle over overseas posts, forcing National Security Adviser James L. Jones to mediate, according to current and former government officials. The jockeying between CIA Director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair centers on Blair's effort to choose his own representatives at U.S. embassies instead of relying only on CIA station chiefs. Current and former U.S. officials described the dispute on the condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of intelligence issues. Blair's office was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to better coordinate intelligence gathering and make sure critical information isn't overlooked. But former and current CIA officials warn that his plan could do just the opposite _ creating competing chains of command inside U.S. embassies and potentially fouling up intelligence operations. They also worry it could complicate the delicate relationships between U.S. and foreign intelligence services, and leave ambassadors confused about where to turn for intelligence advice. CIA station chiefs posted in American embassies have handled the national intelligence role abroad for the last four years, but Blair wants the option of designating other intelligence specialists for the job. That prompted strong objections from Panetta. The question has been referred to Jones, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, to settle. Blair's attempt to exert his authority complicates an already strained relationship with the CIA. The DNI's office has traditionally relied on the power of persuasion to further its mandate of fostering cooperation between the 16 disparate intelligence agencies. Blair's plan is contained in a classified May 19 intelligence community directive, a policy document periodically issued by his office to the 16 agencies underneath him. From the DNI's perspective, the proposal would allow Blair to tap the most relevant intelligence officer in an embassy or foreign country to serve as his eyes and ears. In most cases that would be the CIA station chief. The station chief system has existed for 50 years, allowing the CIA to call the shots on pursuing and managing relationships with foreign intelligence and security services, and coordinating _ and sometimes constraining _ the work of other U.S. intelligence agencies and military forces abroad. But in some countries the United States has few if any spies on the ground, and relies instead mostly on electronic eavesdropping to collect intelligence. A former senior intelligence official said that in those cases, Blair might want to have the senior National Security Agency officer instead of the station chief at the embassy serve as his personal representative. The CIA last year successfully derailed a similar effort by the national intelligence director's office, then headed by former Adm. Mike McConnell. Blair's directive was described by some government officials as an attempt to shore up both the office's authority and its ability to oversee foreign operations, which has so far been stronger on paper than in practice. Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing in January that he intended to fully exercise the authorities of the DNI's office, and said if its powers proved inadequate he would ask Congress and the president to strengthen them. Neither agency would comment officially. "This matter is under review by the national security adviser and we have no further comment," CIA spokesman George Little said. Blair's spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi, declined to comment. The National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment. The dispute over the espionage organizational chart could have far-reaching implications, according to former and current CIA officials who oppose the change. The officials said the move could lead to a bisected intelligence structure in the field that would end up with CIA station chiefs carrying out day-to-day spy operations while intelligence director representatives oversee and report back to Blair on the same operations. CIA veterans warned it could complicate and slow missions that require rapid decisions. CIA officials also said the move could confuse or degrade long-standing relationships with foreign intelligence agencies and U.S. ambassadors who would not know whether to rely on the word of the station chiefs or the national intelligence director's representatives.
 
Bardwil, Linen CEO Beat His Maid: Cops Top
The CEO of the nation's largest linen company went berserk and brutally beat his housemaid in his posh Upper East Side apartment -- leaving her with swelling on the brain, officials said.
 
Jeffrey Sachs: Moyo's Confused Attack on Aid for Africa Top
Ms. Dambisa Moyo's recent Huffington Post article exposes the confusions that underlie her slashing attacks on aid. Most importantly, she seems to believe that sub-Saharan Africa was economically prosperous and then was pushed into poverty by aid. She makes the following ludicrous statement: "No surprise, then, that Africa is on the whole worse off today than it was 40 years ago. For example in the 1970's less than 10 percent of Africa's population lived in dire poverty -- today over 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa lives on less than US$2 a day." Let's parse that statement for a moment. World Bank researchers Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion prepare the benchmark under-$2-a-day historical headcount data going back to 1981. According to their figures, headcount poverty under $2 a day was 74 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa in 1981 and 73 percent in 2005. Other prominent estimates that go back to 1950 or 1970 also contradict Moyo's statement, by showing high and persistent poverty. All of the macroeconomic time series by Maddison, Summers and Heston, and others tell the same story: the majority of Africa's population started out impoverished at the time of national independence in the 1960s and 1970s, and a majority remains impoverished till today. If we move beyond the GNP and income measures, the enormity of Africa's long-term poverty challenges become even more apparent. As we have documented elsewhere, Africa's literacy, agricultural productivity and urbanization rates were very low in 1970. Rural poverty was pervasive. Africa's road coverage, electrification, rail network, and other infrastructure were sparse at best and typically non-existent in rural areas. Aid did not kill Africa. Despite the persistence of poverty, many conditions in Africa have in fact improved in recent decades. Child mortality has declined from 229 per 1,000 births in 1970 to 146 per 1,000 births in 2007. Adult literacy has increased from around 27 percent in 1970 to around 62 percent in 2007. Primary school net enrolments have increased from around 53 percent in 1991 to around 70 percent in 2007. Aid has played a helpful role in this. Yet aid was very limited, averaging around $35 per African per year since 1960. Aid has never been properly resourced or targeted for a focused period to end the poverty trap and thereby to break the dependency on aid. Africa's differences with other regions lie not in aid, but in circumstances and history. Unlike South Asia, for example, Africa has not yet had a Green Revolution of higher food yields, the formative event of India's economic takeoff from the late 1960s. India is a civilization of great river systems and large-scale irrigation, thanks to the Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt and the annual monsoon rains. Africa is a continent of rain-fed (non-irrigation) agriculture. The original Green Revolution, in which India's food output per land area rose markedly, came in the irrigated systems of Asia, not the rain-fed systems of Africa. US aid heavily subsidized India's Green Revolution while World Bank opposition to aid for African agriculture from the 1980s until recently played an opposite and adverse role, holding back a similar breakthrough for Africa. It was the absence of aid for African agriculture rather than its presence that cost Africa mightily. And one can go on. Africa's tropical disease burden, heavy concentration of landlocked countries, decline of aid for infrastructure during the 1980s and 1990s, and misguided attempts by Africa's creditors to collect debt servicing under "structural adjustment programs" during the 1980s and 1990s all played their part. Moyo now campaigns against the kinds of aid that can keep millions of African children from dying or being maimed for a lifetime through the consequences of serious episodes of disease. She advocates cutting the aid that has allowed more than 2 million Africans access to life-saving AIDS treatment, since governments are involved. Almost unimaginably, she opposes the distribution of anti-malaria bed nets for Africa's hundreds of millions of young people on the alleged grounds that it has put bed net producers in Africa out of business. In her own words: "Finally, with respect to Mr. Sachs' remark that I would see nothing wrong with denying US$10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malarial bed net -- even labeling me as cruel; I say, if working towards a sustainable solution where Africans can make their own anti-malaria bed-nets (thereby creating jobs for Africans and a real chance for continents economic prospects) rather than encouraging all and sundry to dump malaria nets across the continent (which incidentally, put Africans out of business), then I am guilty as charged. Don't forget that the over 60 percent of Africans that are under the age of 24 need jobs not sympathy." The confusion underlying this remark is staggering. There are hundreds of millions of Africans at risk of a killer disease, around two hundred million cases of the disease, and around 1 million preventable deaths per year, yet Moyo is opposed to urgent help if nets are not produced in Africa. She seems both unmoved by the massive suffering and unaware that Africa has gone from producing exactly zero long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) a few years ago to several million per year now, with thousands of jobs in the local industry, as a result of the demand for nets created by aid for malaria control. She takes no note of the fact that global aid for malaria control is also training tens of thousands and soon hundred of thousands of rural Africans as community health workers; and seems to be unaware that unchecked malaria has long devastated Africa's economy while malaria control is finally emptying the hospitals, putting mothers and fathers back to work and children back to school, and contributing to the boost in Africa's productivity and economic growth of recent years. She says that if her position against aid for LLINs is deemed to be cruel, then yes, she is "guilty as charged." Moyo is not offering a reasoned or evidence-based position on aid. Everybody that deals with aid wants to promote financial transparency and market-led growth, not aid dependency. We and others have recommended many successful mechanisms to limit corruption and ensure that aid reaches the recipients, as is happening in the disease-control programs. The purpose of aid should indeed be to break the poverty trap through targeted investments in an African Green Revolution; disease control; children's education; core infrastructure of roads, power, safe drinking water and sanitation, and broadband; and business development, including microfinance and rural diversification among impoverished smallholder farmers. Moyo wants to cut aid off dramatically, even if that leaves millions to die. African leaders - like President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Dr. Awa Coll-Seck of Roll Back Malaria, and Ministers Charity Ngilu and Beth Mugo of Kenya - have fought for Africa's poor and have used aid to save lives and help economies to prosper. These leaders disagree fundamentally and urgently with Moyo's attacks. They recommend more aid, fully accountable and properly targeted, to meet urgent needs. Since the record shows that Africa has long been struggling with rural poverty, tropical diseases, illiteracy, and lack of infrastructure, the right solution is to help address these critical needs through transparent and targeted public and private investments. This includes both more aid and more market financing. That combination will indeed ensure that private markets and African entrepreneurship can succeed. More on Africa
 
"Daily Show" Correspondents Answer Your Economic Questions (VIDEO) Top
The "Daily Show"'s Samantha Bee, Larry Wilmore, John Oliver, Wyatt Cenac, Aasif Mandvi, and Jason Jones are on, even when their show is not. The late night correspondents are answering your questions this week while the "Daily Show" is on break. In this installment they tell us their plans for the economic collapse. (SPOILER: Brown people should be very afraid of John Oliver.) The men and women of the "DS" seemed happier with this today's viewer question than yesterday's : "Just how totally mondo stoked were you when you found out you would be a featured member of the 'Daily Show' cast?" That led to snickers in several accents. Today we learn why this topic is such a bummer for Larry Wilmore in particular and where Wyatt Cenac plans to ride out the turmoil. WATCH: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Ask a Correspondent - Economic Collapse thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on Daily Show
 
Moody's: US Government's 'Aaa' Rating Is Stable Despite Rising Debt Top
NEW YORK — Moody's Investors Service said Wednesday the U.S. government's "Aaa" rating is stable despite the country's swelling debt. A credit rating of "Aaa" is the highest possible. It means the agency sees very little risk of the government defaulting on its debt. Last week Standard & Poor's, another ratings agency, raised worries that the United States could lose its "AAA" rating after it warned Britain was at risk for a downgrade. Both the British government and the U.S. government have had their central banks inject billions of dollars into their economies by buying bank assets. The warning sent the dollar and Treasury prices tumbling last week, because a downgrade would increase borrowing costs and hurt the government's economic stimulus efforts. Moody's on Wednesday did not completely rule out a downgrade. Steven Hess, vice president and senior credit officer at Moody's, said that while the U.S. government's debt rating is stable, a reassessment of the economy and the government's debt could put "negative pressure on the rating in the future." He added that risks related to Social Security and Medicare could also affect the rating. "The rating is not guaranteed forever," Hess said in an interview with The Associated Press. Hess said that if the U.S. government's debt ratios are still increasing significantly even after the recession is over, the agency will have to revisit its rating. Moody's has never rated the U.S. government anything below "Aaa" since it began rating the country's debt in 1917. The closest Moody's came to downgrading the U.S. government was in 1996, Hess said, when Moody's said certain Treasury bonds coming due that year were at risk for a downgrade. Early that year, Congress refused to raise the government's debt ceiling, and the Treasury Department said it would not be able to make payments on debt if Congress did not lift it.
 
Les Leopold: Fear and Looting in America: Are We Really Out of Money? Top
"Well, we are out of money now..." President Obama, May 25, 2009 Depends on the definition of "we". We got into this crisis because Wall Street invented and pedaled fantasy financial instruments that turned out to be junk. While their party lasted, those complex derivatives were a gold mine for the largest financial institutions. According to the New York Times , the profits from the nine largest commercial banks "from early 2004 until the middle of 2007 were a combined $305 billion. But since 2007, those banks have marked down their valuations on loans and other assets by just over that amount." In other words, the profits weren't real. When the fantasy finance bubble burst and all the fictional profits disappeared, the banks headed straight for mass bankruptcy. Had the government not intervened, many, if not all of them would have gone under, taking the world economy with them. To prevent a total meltdown, we've forked over several trillion dollars in bail outs, loan guarantees and stimulus funds. But let's back up a bit. What happened to the $305 billion of 2004 through 2007 bank profits that have since vanished from the banks' balance sheets? About half were paid out in compensation to executives, managers and traders. Yes, amazing as it may seem, when you work for a large financial institution you can be paid massive sums even if your work ends up producing nothing -- not even just nothing, but a negative result. All those autoworkers who are being blamed for the miseries of GM and Chrysler? They actually did make cars that are still transporting people. But the Wall Street players, who took home billions for supposedly making valuable financial instruments, were actually making economic weapons of mass destruction. And you can bet that much of their billions are safely parked in off-shore accounts and other low/no tax investments. In a sane and fair world, we would be thinking about how to get it back to help pay for the costs of cleaning up the toxic financial mess. In a more general way, the bubble boom produced by those fantasy financial instruments helped create a slew of billionaires. As Obama likes to point out, "This is America. We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anyone for achieving success." But is there some limit beyond which success spills into obscene accumulation? At the very least we should be careful not to lose sight of how much money billionaires possess. In researching The Looting of America we tracked the wealth of the super-rich. In 1982, the top 400 individuals held an average net worth of $604 million each (in 2008 dollars). By 1995, their average wealth jumped to $1.7 billion. And in 2008, the 400 top winners averaged $3.9 billion each.... The total for the 400 high rollers adds up to a cool $1.56 trillion. That's equal to about 10 percent of the entire gross domestic product of the US... We certainly could have a heated argument about how much of this wealth derived from the derivative-driven boom that just went bust. A case could be made that much of this money is ill-gotten since it came from artificial financial instruments that were rated improperly, or came from artificially leveraged transactions that now have crashed the system as a whole. An even more contentious fight would break out if we discussed whether there is any justification for allowing that such sums to accumulate in the hands of the few, no matter how worthy any of these individuals may be. And we could have us a row asking whether or not a democracy can really survive with so much wealth in the hands of so few people. But surely we can all agree that those top 400 are sitting on a huge pile of money, while our country is going deeply into debt to fix a financial system that has contributed mightily to their enrichment. Here's a dangerous thought. What if we had a very steeply progressive wealth/income tax that reduced the net worth of the super-rich to "only" about $100 million each? You wouldn't be suffering if you had $100 million kicking around. Now do the math: The 400 richest x $100 million each would equal $40 billion. That would leave about $1.52 trillion to help pay back the country for the Wall Street meltdown that we, our children and their children will be subsidizing. Maybe we're not so out of money after all. Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What we can do about it . (Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009) More on Financial Crisis
 
Holly Robinson: Why Our Stories Matter Top
The last time I called my father, he asked me what time it was. "Don't you have a watch, Dad?" I asked. "No, they always take those away when you travel, and the clocks in the train station are all wrong," he answered. "He thinks he's going on a trip," said my brother, who'd driven down to Myrtle Beach from New York to visit Dad in the hospital. "He keeps trying to do up his seatbelt." Dad was going on a trip. It was his last journey, the same one we all eventually make. For him, the journey came just after Christmas. I'd been to see him the first week of December, and we'd managed to play a game of Monopoly, though his hands were so shaky that I had to move his little cannon around the board for him. Still, Dad's blue eyes gleamed with the hope of landing on Boardwalk. He landed in the hospital two weeks later with pneumonia. Given his emphysema, his prognosis wasn't great. I wanted to fly down to see him, but Christmas and New Year's were in the way and our four children were coming home from college. Plus, the doctors were noncommittal. He might bounce back, they said. Let's get him into rehab. I made a reservation to fly down from Massachusetts to South Carolina the week after Christmas. Dad died the day before I arrived. I flew down anyway, taking off from Boston in a blizzard on the last plane to have its wings de-iced for the day. I drove so fast out of the Myrtle Beach airport that a tiny, sunburned, Napoleonic cop handed me a ticket for $100. "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" the cop asked. "Not fast enough," I said. I spent the next week helping my mother clear out Dad's closets and dresser drawers, marveling at how my father, a career Navy man who served his country during the Korean War and Vietnam, still folded his briefs and t-shirts in that tidy military way despite his palsied hands and lack of breath. The neat rows of shining shoes bothered me the most, clear evidence that Dad never went anywhere at the end. Only his slippers were scuffed. I kept a soft flannel shirt and a few family photos. Otherwise, off it went, all of that detritus of life carted away to the Salvation Army in the mafia-sized trunk of my mother's lumbering American sedan. My last stop was at the funeral home to retrieve Dad's ashes, which weighed so much that I staggered when the funeral director handed me the brass box. Death is seldom convenient, but for me, Dad's death has a peculiarly sharp resonance because I wrote a book about him that he never saw. My memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter , is due out today by Harmony. To research the book required spending many hours with my father, talking about how and why he, a Navy officer, became so entranced by gerbils -- "pocket kangaroos," he liked to call them -- that he retired from the military and raised them on a grand scale. My dad was a world- renowned gerbil expert, a Gerbil Czar with nearly 9,000 gerbils housed on our 90-acre farm in Massachusetts. We kids were his first employees. Despite what some readers might think after James Frey published his memoir-that-wasn't, A Million Little Pieces (which probably made more money because Oprah gave him such a sound scolding for faking it), most people who write memoirs are not fanciful liars, but dogged researchers. In my case, I interviewed family, friends, my father's employees, and anyone else I could get to talk to me about Dad, hoping to capture a life on the page. At Dad's memorial service last week, our family gathered for an outdoor ceremony at a cemetery that is, literally and figuratively, on a dead end street in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Standing in this cemetery, you get no sense of the world beyond. There are no traffic sounds or children shouting, no ambulance sirens or buses honking their horns. None of that busyness of life to interfere with our contemplation of that last journey we all make, leaving behind our shoes and hats and families who love us. When the minister sang, though, a mockingbird sitting high in an oak tree above us suddenly started chattering and singing, too, louder and louder over the minister's fine soprano until we were all laughing. "That's Dad, having the last word," my brother said, looking up at the bird. "I hope so," I said. For all I can think, as my book makes its way into the world, is this: what if I got something wrong? Dad read the book before he left for his last journey, but what if he missed something, too? Ah, well. As the brilliant writer Jim Harrison says in his poem, "Larson's Holstein Bull" from In Search of Small Gods , "Death steals everything except our stories." That's why it's so important to tell them as best we can.
 
Clinton: North Korea Will Face Consequences For Belligerent Actions Top
WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned on Wednesday that North Korea faces consequences for its nuclear and missile tests and denounced its "provocative and belligerent" threats. Clinton also underscored the firmness of the U.S. treaty commitment to defend South Korea and Japan, U.S. allies in easy range of North Korean missiles. Clinton's stern statement came after North Korea threatened military attacks against U.S. and South Korean warships and called Seoul's decision to join an international program to intercept ships suspected of aiding nuclear proliferation tantamount to a declaration of war. "North Korea has made a choice" to violate U.N. Security Council resolutions, ignore international warnings and abrogate commitments made during six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, Clinton said. "There are consequences to such actions," she said, referring to discussions in the United Nations meant to punish North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests. Clinton did not provide specifics, saying only that the intent of diplomats was to "try to rein in the North Koreans" and get them to fulfill commitments made in the nuclear talks. Clinton said she was pleased by a unified international condemnation of North Korea that included Russia and China, North Korea's only major ally and the host of the currently stalled disarmament talks. The success of any new sanctions would depend on how aggressively China implements them. Despite her tough words, Clinton held out hope that North Korea would return to six-nation disarmament talks and that "we can begin once again to see results from working with the North Koreans toward denuclearization that will benefit, we believe, the people of North Korea, the region and the world." The North Korean army called South Korea's actions a violation of the armistice the two Koreas signed in 1953 to end their three-year war, and said it would no longer honor the treaty. At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs played down North Korea's angry rhetoric. He said Wednesday that North Korea's threats against South Korea will not give it the attention Pyongyang wants and will only add to its isolation. Gibbs said North Korea has threatened to end the armistice many times in past decades but the peace has held. The Pentagon was still testing and analyzing particle matter taken from clouds in the region to confirm that the North's detonation was, indeed, a nuclear explosion. A senior Pentagon official said U.S. military jets were to take a second sampling later this week. ___ Associated Press writers Lara Jakes and Philip Elliott contributed to this report. More on North Korea
 
Glowing Baby Monkeys: Marmosets Inherit Genes Added By Science Top
NEW YORK — Scientists gave marmosets a gene that made their feet glow green, and one of the animals passed it along to its offspring _ the first time that an added gene has been inherited by a monkey. It was a milestone, experts said, that should make it easier to produce animals with versions of human disease for medical research. Animals that get added genetic material are called transgenic. While researchers have long created transgenic mice and other animals by giving them extra genetic material, monkeys offer a promising avenue for medical studies because of their similarity to humans. Researchers have added genes to rhesus macaques before by injecting embryos, but the new work is the first documentation that such genes can be passed along to future generations of monkeys. That's important because it opens the door to creating colonies of transgenic monkeys by breeding, which would be far simpler than the cumbersome process of making each animal from scratch by injecting a gene into an embryo. The work is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by scientists at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki, Japan, and elsewhere in that country. The researchers plan to use transgenic marmosets to study such conditions as Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. Anthony Chan of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta said the result boosts his confidence that his transgenic macaques will also pass along their added genes to offspring, once they become old enough to reproduce. For the study, the researchers used a gene that makes tissues glow under ultraviolet light, as an easy way to see where the gene is present. They put the gene in a virus that would insert it into the DNA of cells, and then injected the virus into marmoset embryos. From these embryos, five healthy marmosets were born. All showed evidence of having inherited the gene. Later, one of those animals fathered a male by test-tube fertilization. The gene was shown to be active in the offspring's skin. "The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone," Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a colleague wrote in a Nature commentary. Transgenic marmosets could be useful for studying infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders as well as some genetic disorders like muscular dystrophy, they wrote. But marmoset biology differs enough from humans to prevent study of other disorders like AIDS and tuberculosis, which can be approached instead through other monkeys that are more closely related to humans, they wrote. ___ On the Net: Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature More on Animals
 
Jennifer Preston Named NYT Social Media Editor: "I've Just Been Playing Around With It For The Last Few Weeks" Top
Ms. Preston, who previously oversaw The Times' regional weeklies, told The Observer that "everyone recognizes that there is tremendous opportunity with these social media sites to use them to make our journalism stronger. ... I've just been playing around with it for the last few weeks--Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us--to figure out how we can just use these tools."
 
Ellen Sterling: Senator Harry Reid, President Barack Obama: Campaigning in Las Vegas Top
Harry Reid is the senior senator from Nevada and the Senate Majority Leader. He's not the sort of Democrat I -- as a New Yorker -- am used to. Our Dems are generally liberal, a lot less quiet and we know where they stand. From all of those official rankings put out by groups like the ADA and Planned Parenthood, Reid seems to be all over the place. He is not, clearly, all things to all people. That's not a bad thing. It is, however, as I mentioned above, an odd thing to one not used to this. So, yesterday, the first big political fundraiser of the year was held here at Caesars Palace to kick off Reid's reelection campaign. Bette Midler, Sheryl Crow, Rita Rudner and Clint Holmes entertained. But the big draw was President Obama. The Mayor of Las Vegas -- the self-styled "happiest mayor in the universe" -- Oscar Goodman and the governor of Nevada Jim Gibbons took umbrage in February when President Barack Obama suggested at an Indiana town hall meeting that recovery money must be used carefully. Addressing the bailed out banks, he said, "You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime." This made some local pols and businesspeople angry. Goodman asked for an apology. He's since calmed down and greeted Obama at McCarran airport yesterday. The governor, on the other hand, had asked for a private meeting with the president to discuss the issue and was turned down. He was, however, invited to join the president, Reid and other dignitaries at an event touting solar power today at Nellis AFB. He declined the invite. If you've watched this governor for any length of time, that declination is no surprise. Anyway, the fundraiser went swimmingly. It was, as these things are, a lovefest. Obama even joked about visiting Las Vegas: He noted that when he stayed at Caesars during his frequent campaign visits to this early caucus state, "I thought I had a pretty nice room. But now that I'm president, they upgraded me. It's a really nice room now." It was a terrific event, raising about $2 million for Reid and the Nevada Democratic Party. But, it also sadly ushered in Round Two of the silly season when campaign ads attacking a candidate, ads in which truth is not required, are smeared all over TV. The first ad came out in January. Funded by the Republican Senatorial Committee. It labeled Reid a "super spending partisan." With absolutely no sense of irony and a conveniently short memory it blamed Reid for funding all the attack ads during the 2008 presidential campaign. Now a conservative PAC is attacking Reid and I don't quite get it. How can Harry Reid alone be responsible for our economy? How can Harry Reid, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a liberal? And, most important of all, how can anyone who cares about humanity begin to inflict these ads on an unsuspecting public when the election is 18 months away? Reid, by all reports, faces a tough race. He tried-and-true campaign slogan from years past -- "Harry Reid, Independent like Nevada." -- likely won't hold up this time. In fact, anyone who bought a ticket to last night's fund raiser could suggest a slogan for 2010 and the writer of the best one got a meet-and-greet with the president. We'll have to wait and see what the new slogan is. Meanwhile, one protester outside of Caesars Palace last evening held a sign calling President Obama "Pinky." That, to people who know their movie history, is racist to the nth degree. The sign was carried by a youngish woman caught by a photographer with her mouth agape in mid-shout. Shame on her. At any rate, the fundraiser was a great success. (Even though a limited number of tickets were given away by a business called House Seats that is utilized by local venues to ensure a full house.) Today, Obama and a host of dignitaries visited Nellis AFB to tour and tout a solar energy installation there that is the largest in the Western hemisphere. During his remarks there, he grinned and said, "There's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas. Like millions of other Americans, we came to this beautiful city for the sights, the sounds -- and today we came for the sun." On this 100th day since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted, Obama spoke about it. During his speech from the solar energy site transmission on at least one television station failed. Nothing -- in life or politics -- is easy. And in today's world -- in politics, in this city -- it doesn't look like it will get any easier. Hopefully, that power failure during the President's speech is not an omen. On the other hand, we have a president with a terrific sense of humor. That should help us all.
 
Joanne Bamberger: Sonia Sotomayor and Elle Woods Have a Lot in Common Top
"Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see." That's what Supreme Court nominee and federal court judge Sonia Sotomayor has said in the past about how individual experience comes into play when deciding cases and looking at the law. Many conservatives are afraid of that approach and are going to try to convince America that no judge should be appointed to the Supreme Court who doesn't decide cases merely by applying the law to the facts of a case in a vacuum. But which facts? How do we know which ones are the important ones in any case? The right ones? The ones that will sway a case from one outcome to another? As someone who practiced law for about 15 years, I know that sometimes those questions are easier than others. You can't decide a case without looking at all the facts, even the ones that don't seem important at first blush. I learned that the hard way as a young lawyer. That's where digging a little deeper and calling on the things we've learned in life help us out as lawyers in a way that all those law school classes don't. At the risk of being called too flip in this analogy, I'd like to invoke my favorite movie lawyer Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. (If you're short on time, pick up the video at about 4:30). As a recovering litigator, I love a good cross-examination! I'm not talking about the unlikely witness stand confession -- Elle's personal expertise that the rules of hair care are are simple and finite are what turned the tide in that case. Without knowing those facts, she would not have been able to make the connection and prove that the witness was lying. Yet her male bosses scoffed at her, thinking she was headed down a pointless tangent as she questioned the witness. I know this was just a movie, but the example happens in real life cases every day -- lawyers and judges find ways to apply the things they've learned in their own lives -- to sift through facts to figure out what's relevant and what isn't. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it takes something more than an Ivy League law degree and years on the bench to put the pieces together to see the whole picture. Does anyone really doubt that the outcome of the Lilly Ledbetter case would have been different if the majority of Supreme Court justices had faced the kind of discrimination Ledbetter or their colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had? Ginsburg, as is evident from her dissent , saw the facts of the discrimination a lot differently than her male counterparts. Facts are never just black and white. They look a lot different depending on the lens through which they are viewed. For some men, there's no relevance to how women have been treated differently than men by companies who find loopholes in existing laws. But to a woman who has lived or observed that experience, there's a very real and significant difference. When the GOP goes on the attack on Sotomayor's nomination, as they surely will, and try to frame her as an activist judge or someone who can't focus just on the facts and the law, keep reminding yourself about Elle Woods. If she hadn't been a Cosmo girl, her client would have ended up in jail for life for a murder she didn't commit. I'm not saying that we should ask if Sonia Sotomayor was ever a Cosmo girl, but sometimes there are important things our life experiences teach us that get us to the right outcome. That's not activism. That's real life. Joanne Bamberger is the founder and editor-in-chief of the political blog, PunditMom . She is also a Contributing Editor at BlogHer . She is a political and social media analyst whose commentary has appeared on CNN, Fox News, BBC Radio, Al Jazeera English and more. More on Supreme Court
 
Stephen H. Dinan: Why Gay Marriage Is Important for All Americans Top
The California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Proposition 8 in banning gay marriage is a setback not only for gay rights, but for the psychological and spiritual growth of our country. Gay marriage concerns far more than the 5-10% of our population that identifies as gay. America's deepest tradition is the protection and expansion of individual rights and freedoms with a goal of liberty and justice for all. Today, the movement to overturn millennia of discrimination against gay people represents the next major expansion of individual rights and freedoms. Even as a straight man, I see this not just through the lens of fairness but as an essential part of the evolution of America. While most commentators see Proposition 8 as a temporary setback in the context of an otherwise clear march towards equality, it does provide an appropriate moment to reflect upon why gay marriage is important not just for gay people but for all Americans. At the core of the debate is the right of same-sex couples to marry and receive the full benefits and blessings accorded others under the law. Marriage is the most sacred contract sanctioned by our nation, consecrating the love between two beings and forging a legal partnership that also creates a stronger container for families. As such, it is a key place where spiritual values meet secular values. So long as gay marriage is outlawed, we are, as a country, creating a definition of sacred that excludes 5-10% of our citizens and the way they love. This message creates a profoundly split social order and has insidious effects on the psychology of straight people as well. The suffering that comes from this form of apartheid is not as obvious as when we have separate drinking fountains for "white" and "colored." And yet, the number of people directly affected is parallel to the 10% of the US population that was black in the 1950s and faced with "separate-but-equal" facilities. The indirect effects of discrimination against gay people hurt everyone. For straight people, the lack of full sanction for gay relationships creates a more polarized social view of gender. Children are particularly sensitive to what is socially approved and what is not. Boys raised in a homophobic culture learn to overemphasize masculine qualities, fear feminine qualities, and create more macho personas, as well as to fear being "loving" with their male friends. Girls are similarly affected in a negative way. As both learn to be less authentic to their true nature in an effort to fit social ideals, they create long-term psychological challenges for themselves. The pain of inauthenticity flares up in substance abuse, violence, sexual dysfunction, isolation, and divorce. We all crave being loved for who we are. To the degree that we create an inauthentic facade, we never have the feeling of full loving acceptance. Suicide rates have long been higher among homosexual teens and, by inference, we would expect that heterosexual teens with some same-sex attractions would also have lower self-esteem and higher suicide rates. A single suicide can have a devastating effect on dozens of other friends, families, and allies. I would know. One of my close friends from high school, who came out to me and a few others in college, was one of those suicide statistics and his sexual orientation certainly played a role in his eventual fate. When we multiply negative self-esteem effects by millions, we realize how many social problems arise when homosexual feelings are defined as sinful or bad. The ban on same-sex marriage thus creates distortions in our children's development that have profound affects on our national health and happiness. For example, since we have a primarily male power structure in America, a more macho social ideal for masculine behavior leads to an overemphasis on aggression, which creates more conflict and violence than may be necessary. The costs to our society of our psychological gender imbalance may be enormous. The legalization of gay marriage will not, by itself, alleviate all our society's imbalances. What it will do, though, is create a more expanded sense for what we hold as sacred and worthy of respect. That will trickle down, creating more permission for every child to be authentic to themselves and, in the end, forge a society with a healthier balance of masculine and feminine qualities, less conflict, and more overall happiness. This will not only have benefits for gay citizens but literally for all Americans. For religious Christians who tend to be more strongly oriented to preserving the social order, legalizing same-sex marriage will ultimately allow an expansion of their heart. As it is now, Jesus admonition to "love thy neighbor as thyself" is at odds with the ban on same-sex marriages. By creating social approval for same-sex marriage, we eventually make it easier for religious people to put their core teachings into practice and love gay people fully. The movement for gay marriage is, at the deepest level, a movement for the psychological and spiritual growth of our country. By honoring same-sex marriage in the same way as heterosexual unions, we send the signal to the next generation of children that their natural inclinations are, well, natural. This in turn allows all Americans to grow up in a more authentic way. Men can be less hyper-masculine or defended and women can be more connected and loving as well. The full legalization of gay marriage in America will represent a pivotal moment in evolving an ever-more-perfect union that is a beacon for liberty and justice for all. May that moment come quickly and gracefully. More on Gay Marriage
 
Bill Clinton's Life: An Inside Look Top
Bill Clinton loves to shop. On a March day in an elegant crafts store in Lima, the Peruvian capital, he hunted for presents for his wife and the women on his staff back home. He had given a speech at a university earlier and just came from a ceremony kicking off a program to help impoverished Peruvians. Now he was eyeing a necklace with a green stone amulet. More on Bill Clinton
 
Val Brown: Memo to the Today Show: Don't Make Me Defect to Good Morning America Top
NBC's Today show has lately taken on the air of Ripley's Believe It or Not . The last few weeks have seen a disappointing parade of features on assorted accidents: a couple of shark attacks, a nail through the head, divers lost at sea and other assorted personal mini-disasters. This all culminated with an astounding four features on poor Farah Fawcett -- coverage more promotional than newsworthy -- in what was no doubt an NBC directed effort to try and make their money back on the $5 million reportedly paid for her documentary. I like the show's anchors and was heartened to see that they too are tired of this cavalcade of calamities. After a quick mention of another bizarre accident as reported in an Australian newspaper, Meredith Viera, in one of her refreshing loose-cannon moments, jokingly cried out "Book 'em!" The rest of the morning team and crew burst into laughter, knowingly. It must be dizzyingly dull, if not embarrassing for those with real news chops, like Meredith, to endlessly ask survivors if, um, "you were afraid?" And it's dizzyingly dull for me. But of course television is a business and apparently this is what people want to see. It gets ratings. This is all part of the long bemoaned sorry state of American television among not just the "cultural elite" but a lot of just plain normal folks who feel television has been dumbed down beyond recognition. And now it's infected our news programming too. When we're not being fed tales of personal calamity, we're watching interviews with reality show winners, losers, and miscreants. We're hearing about Octomom and Jon and Kate Plus 8 and -- stop the press -- Jon's philandering -- out of the mouths of Matt Lauer et al. But the last shark attack was really the straw that broke the camels' back. So after many years at NBC, I may have to change horses. It's funny how we get stuck on one network for all our morning needs. At least I have. I think it's because my parents watched Today and like any brand, we pledge allegiance until long after the product stops giving us what we need, switching reluctantly. I dipped my toe in the water and made a quick hop over to Good Morning America. I was pleasantly surprised -- Green Day was the morning's concert. Ah, a little edgy, that GMA . The band's punkish lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong gamely interacted with Robin Roberts and her cohorts. Curiously, after the first song, they broke for a cooking segment featuring barbecue. Though timely, right before Memorial Day, it was certainly an unusual choice for intermission at a rock show. Providing counterpoint to Billy Joe's black eyeliner? Straddling a line between attracting a younger demographic while appeasing the at home Moms? I know, I know, I have other choices. I could watch CNN and I do watch the BBC, but they don't break for local news. Doesn't CBS's The Early Show reach an older demo (much to their chagrin)? Maybe I'll give them a try. Or just stick with my New York Times , in silence, and maybe a little NPR in the shower. Of course I know I can be getting all my news online, but old habits die hard. What's your morning news habit? More on Today Show
 
Christian Nwachukwu, Jr.: King Pleasure Promised Me One Top
What remains of the bruising grace can make grown men cry. Women, too, in their toughness are not immune. Mary Murphy of So You Think You Can Dance turned stormy eyed during the show's season premiere Thursday after Brandon Bryant's magnetic interpretation of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna." "I have to say that I have the greatest job in the whole world to be able to sit here some days and be able to witness something like that -- something I wouldn't be able to do in a million years, to dance like you," Murphy said, then she wiped her eyes. "You're the kind of person, the kind of dancer that touches millions of people in a few short moves." The championship starved city of Cleveland -- the 1964 Browns brought Clevelanders their last professional sports title -- is looking to be touched come June. They have witnessed with nearly as much pleasure as the pleasing -- clouds of pre-game powder and shirtless post-season circus shots -- Cavaliers appeared to have as they tore through the year's opposition. Coach Mike Brown and his Cavaliers opened and closed their regular season with losses: falling first to last year's champion Celtics and ending with a defeat to Philadelphia at home. But in between they crafted the League's best record by one (66-16 to the Lakers' 65-17), which led, one would think, to LeBron James' coronation as the NBA's Most Valuable Player. It also led to Cleveland's -- the city, not the team -- cavalier attitude to the alignment of the stars in their favor this year. Many Clevelanders were vocal that not only would LeBron lead them to a championship, but that the title would also signal the beginning of an era. "We're tired of all the talk that LeBron might go to New York," a friend raised just outside Cleveland told me as we stood in Times Square. "Just because we win this year, that doesn't mean LeBron is going to leave." Not to get too ahead of myself, I asked my fourth graders to handicap the Conference Finals for me. "It's going to be the Lakers and Cleveland," one nine-year-old said. "But it's going to be exciting first: Kobe (Bryant), Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher; versus (Denver's) Carmelo (Anthony), Chauncey (Billups), and J.R. Smith." "His streetball nickname is 'The Prodigy,'" another student said. "Right. And then the Cavs should take the Magic," the first student continued. "You like their line-up better?" I asked. "You've got LeBron James, Mo Williams -- he's LeBron's right hand man -- (Daniel) Gibson, (Wally) Szczerbiak -- he can shoot threes -- and Ilgauskas." "How do you spell that?" I asked. "I-l-g-a-u-s-k-a-s," he said. "Do you think if the Cavaliers win, LeBron will come to New York?" I asked. "I don't think he's coming," another student said. "Do you want him to come to New York?" "He's not coming, so what's the point?" he said. "The Knicks should get Amar'e Stoudemire and Joe Johnson." "What about Chris Bosh?" a student asked. "He's not as good as Amar'e and Joe," he said. "And they should get Yao Ming?" "Yao Ming?" I asked. "Yeah," he said. "He only plays forty, fifty games, but he's still good. And he's Chinese, and New York has a lot of Chinese people. They'll love him." "Let's say the Knicks haven't thrown in the towel on LeBron, okay? Do you think they're going to trade more of their players to get him into a Knicks jersey?" "I don't know," he said. "Do you think they'll trade Nate Robinson?" I asked. "No," many of my students said together. "He's like their best player," one said. "He's like my father," another said. "So what about the Magic? You all counting them out already?" I asked. "They're good, but this just ain't their year." The men of many talents who make up the Orlando Magic apparently don't count astrology among their gifts. As Charles Barkley pointed out, the Magic handed the Cavaliers two double-digit defeats this year, including a 116-87 rout at Orlando's Amway Arena in April. But despite having the best defensive player in the world -- Dwight Howard -- the Magic were given little chance to break LeBron's march to his first title this year except on the streets. "You can't defend everyone," a man shouted to his cadre during a game of dice in Harlem. "Plus, the Magic play defense. They got a big 'big man' in Dwight and deadly long range shooters. (Hedo) Türkoğlu, Rashard (Lewis), Dwight -- they're hungry this year. And, besides, LeBron can't do it all." History seems to agree. LeBron followed up his stunning Game Two closer with a last minute drought -- both from the field and at the line -- in Game Three. And LeBron led his team in scoring (26), rebounds (9), and assists (5) during the Magic's 29 point pummeling of the Cavaliers back in April. But the conversation of the League's best players still rises and sets with the King. Most observers that I have asked say that even if the Cavaliers fall to the Magic, LeBron will still be regarded as the world's best basketball player, particularly because many will say that even a king can't carry a team to a title on his shoulders alone. Only a head-to-head match-up of Kobe versus LeBron has any hope of settling the question of who is his generation's undisputed Hardwood Colossus. The best center to ever touch a basketball -- Bill Russell -- has a slightly different view, as he told Tom Ashbrook on public radio's On Point this past week. "The guy whose team wins, that'll be the best one for me," Mr. Russell said. But he was talking about LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Carmelo Anthony. "If the Magic win it all, that will prove that defense wins championships," my aunt said. "But it won't say that Dwight is the best player, only the best defensive player. But we already know that. "And no one is talking about Dwyane Wade," she continued. "But for my money, D-Wade should have been the MVP. He carried the Heat to the playoffs by himself. If it wasn't Dwyane, it should have been Kobe. If the game is on the line, I want the ball in Kobe's hands. Really, they should have had three MVPs." Forty-five years is a long time for a drought. One can wonder who is more hungry -- the city of Cleveland or their future sports savior LeBron. Sometimes I imagine that LeBron James, who entered the League in 2003, once played Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," with its famous line When I am king, you will be first against the wall -- thinking of Kobe Bryant. For surely James will have to vanquish last year's MVP, the three-time champion Bryant who has been spellbinding crowds and closing games since 1996, if he is to have no claimants to his throne. But I also imagine championship starved Clevelanders waiting on the precipice, hoping that their cusp doesn't become a brink, with a single peremptory plea in their throats: "King Pleasure promised me one." More on Sports
 
Penny Herscher: A Tale of Two Californias Top
As Dickens said "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and the phrase could be applied to California here in April 2009. The unemployment data released last week touts California at the top of the jobless lists at 11% - worst in the country - and yet it's not a reflection of reality in California because the sad truth is there are two Californias with very different challenges and for one the problem is a lot higher than 11%. While Silicon Valley chugs along at 8.3% and decreasing unemployment, a slowly recovering housing market and companies still competing for engineers, we have sister counties with unemployment at depression levels and higher. In the Great Depression unemployment in the U.S. peaked at 24.9% in 1933. Imperial County today has an unemployment rate of 26.9% closely followed by counties like Merced and Yuba at 18% - you can see the sobering Central Valley stats here and a map of California's unemployment rate by county here . It's too easy to forget how close the poorest communities are to the hubbub of the tech world where Facebook raises $200M and NEA raises over $2B for it's new fund. High end wine stores still do well, and you still can't get a table at the Woodside Village Pub without a reservation. But with the California budget in crisis and the Governor proposing to drastically cut Welfare and California's Family PACT Program, the most vulnerable members of our community are more at risk now than they have been since the Depression. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte (the largest PP affiliate which is based in San Jose and covers many of the poorer counties in the Central Valley) has seen a 15% increase in the number of visits so far this year because so many people have no other health care options. PPMM provides broad health services (yes, only 3% of the services are abortion - a little understood fact) and families are coming in who have never needed the safety net of PPMM health care before but they have no choice and no access to medical care. Now, more than ever, is the time to pay attention to your charitable donations and to give to the communities that support the most vulnerable in our society. And while California may seem like the land of milk and honey and Malibu Barbies on 90210 it's the land of tremendous struggle just 100 miles away. When you are approached by a friend to give to the non-profits trying to help please give.
 
Ruth Padel Resigns From Oxford Chief Poet Post Top
LONDON _ A fight over who gets to be Oxford University's top poet has set Britain's pens racing _ and weakened the careers of two well-known wordsmiths. St. Lucia-born Derek Walcott pulled out of the race for Oxford's Professor of Poetry after letters were distributed highlighting sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston Universities in the 1980s and 1990s. His rival, Ruth Padel, resigned from the prestigious post Monday after admitting she sent e-mails to journalists publicizing the claims. Some commentators called the move poetic justice, but others say the controversy uncovered the racially and sexually charged undercurrents still coursing through the uppermost reaches of academia. Padel, the first female Professor of Poetry since the job was created three centuries ago, was elected only after Walcott, a Nobel Literature Laureate, dropped out under pressure from an anonymous letter-writing campaign. The mysterious missives, dropped in Oxford University mailboxes, reportedly recapped a 1982 incident in which officials at Harvard admonished Walcott for pressuring a freshman into having sex with him, as well as a 1996 sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by a former Boston University graduate student. Walcott called the letters an attempt at character assassination. Padel denied having anything to do with them, but The Sunday Times revealed that she had drawn attention to the charges in e-mail exchanges with unidentified journalists. Some of her previous backers called on her to stand down. "As soon as I was told yesterday that there were people in Oxford who were severely against me I thought it was the right thing," she told BBC radio Tuesday. "I didn't want to divide the university, I wanted to offer it my services, so of course I stood down immediately." A message seeking comment from Walcott's publishers, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was not immediately returned. But Walcott was quoted in The Times of London on Tuesday as saying he would not run for the position again. Walcott said he had no desire to revisit "that awful business," the Times said. Poet Jackie Kay mourned the loss of Padel, telling The Guardian newspaper that "the old boys have closed in on her." "It would not have happened to a man, and I am very sad," she said. Novelist Jeanette Winterson, herself an Oxford graduate, told the paper that her alma mater was "a sexist little dump." The controversy has been splashed all over the British papers, with some literary pundits lashing Padel and others expressing disquiet that some people appeared not to be taking sexual harassment seriously. Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said that, as a black man and a woman competing for one of British academia's most venerable posts, Walcott and Padel should have known they would be come in for a disproportionate amount of scrutiny. "At one level, this mirrors the fierce contest between race and gender represented by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton," she wrote in The Independent newspaper. "Only it is more unforgiving and is playing out in what is believed to be that otherworldly, cerebral, ancient place of learning ... Oxford." The notion that such an underhanded campaign _ with allegations of sexual impropriety, anonymous letters, and briefings to journalists _ took place at the English-speaking world's oldest university excited particular comment. Guardian columnist Zoe Williams suggested that it was because the dispute pitted poets _ of all people _ against each other that it was so enthralling. "You have these two people held, as poets, to represent the highest in human sensibility, and as academics, the most advanced in maturity and sophistication, and they're pulling each other's pigtails," she wrote. ___ On the Net: http://www.oxfordpoetry.co.uk/ More on England
 
Katie Molinaro: Vegan Living: Vegan Brunch Top
I love breakfast. I get annoyed at people who skip breakfast and go straight to lunch just because they woke up at noon. I think restaurants that serve breakfast all day deserve an award. And Fat Tuesday should come once a month -- breakfast for dinner! Breakfast hasn't been as interesting since I went vegan and gave up bacon, scrambled eggs and Entenmann's Raspberry Danish Twist. There are vegan options for breakfast -- bagels topped with Tofutti cream cheese, pancakes made with soy milk, mock sausage, which many grocery stores carry. But vegan breakfast just didn't have the excitement and glitz that I wanted for my first meal of the day. Until now. Isa Chandra Moskowitz's fourth cookbook, Vegan Brunch , brings that excitement I've been craving along with a big helping of creativity. With over 175 recipes, there is something for every cooking ability and every taste. The book's theme is sweet and savory recipes, and Moskowitz does a nice job of incorporating flavors from around the globe, like the Chili Cashew Dosas and Ethiopian Crepes. I wanted to start with something familiar, and since I really like the recipes in "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World," which Moskowitz wrote with Terry Hope Romero, I flipped to the baking section of "Vegan Brunch." The Coffee Chip Muffins were not as sweet as I thought they would be, but that's actually a good thing, seeing as how they are meant for breakfast. I thought they would taste more like the Cappuccino Cupcakes in "Vegan Cupcakes," but once I accepted them for what they were -- muffins, not dessert -- I really liked them. The recipe only requires easy-to-find ingredients that you probably already have, and the mixing process is quick and simple. Many grocery-store brand chocolate chips are accidentally vegan, and if you're feeling fancy, Ghirardelli chips are also vegan. After the muffins, I turned to the very first recipe in the book -- the Tofu Omelet. I have never had an omelet, vegan or not, and this recipe intimidated me. I don't know if it was because it has to be flipped or just because I had no reference for comparison, but I was nervous. Unfortunately, I got so preoccupied with worrying about the omelet itself that I missed the section entitled "Fillings: It's What's Inside that Counts." Instead of heeding Moskowitz's suggestion to make a sauce for the omelet, I just stuffed some roasted asparagus and chopped tomatoes inside mine. The result was bland, but I refuse to be intimidated by this dish. Next time I am going to add the black salt that Moskowitz recommends because of its "sulfuric taste that is reminiscent of egg yolks," but which I left out because I got too hungry before I found it at a store. And I am definitely going to spend more time making the insides. The Classic Broccoli Quiche, which is in the savory section of "Vegan Brunch," became one of my favorite recipes when Moskowitz posted it on her blog . It requires enough chopping and sautéing and pulsing in the food processor to make you feel like you're making a gourmet dish, but the recipe is straightforward and easy to follow, so it doesn't give you the urge to throw the crust frisbee-style against the wall in frustration. It's a creative way to get a serving of broccoli and any other vegetables you mix in and the flavors are perfect together. The quiche also travels well (in case you're not the one hosting brunch this week) and if you take it to work for lunch, get ready to make your coworkers jealous. Even if your only kitchen equipment is a hot plate and a microwave, "Vegan Brunch" is still an entertaining and informative read. Moskowitz writes in a friendly, conversational style and provides lots of confidence-inspiring tips and explanations for those of us who don't know the first thing about Swiss chard or what type of spatula makes crepe flipping easier. Moskowitz also includes tips for hosting a brunch, a list of ingredients that appear in many of the recipes in the book, and my favorite, notes about which dishes can be made a day or two ahead of your brunch. That way breakfast is a breeze, even if I don't wake up until it's technically lunchtime.
 
China-Brazil Economic Alliance May Be Exaggerated Top
By Seth Kugel | GlobalPost SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Judging from the headlines, it has been a big month in Brazilian-Chinese relations. First China jumped ahead of the United States as Brazil's top trading partner for the month of April. Then President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva headed to Beijing, business leaders in tow, to conclude a series of deals with the Chinese and push for others. And news spread that Brazil and China were discussing plans to abandon the dollar and trade in yuan and reais. So you'd be forgiven for thinking that as the crisis-ridden American economy staggers to get back on track, less-affected Brazil and China were headed off to party on their own, leaving the United States in the international trade dust. That is an exaggeration, of course, but the relationship between the two BRIC countries is growing steadily. As recently as last year, China was the third biggest of Brazil's trading partners, behind not just the United States but also Argentina; in April, it out-traded the United States $3.2 billion to $2.8 billion, imports and exports combined. "It's difficult to say whether China has definitely taken first place from the United States," said Andre Loes, HSBC's chief economist for Brazil. "But China used to be a much less important partner five or seven years ago, so I would say this is the final achievement of a very strong trend this decade." Still, comparatively speaking, Brazil remains relatively isolated: Despite being the world's 10th biggest economy, it does not even make the top 20 list of importers or exporters, and U.S.-China bilateral trade is still much bigger than U.S.-Brazil or China-Brazil trade. What happened in April? In two words: commodities stockpiling. Brazil may have a few flashy industrial products, like Embraer jets and car plants scattered around the country, but it mostly produces lots of commodities like iron ore, soy and petroleum. Iron ore was particularly responsible for the April numbers, as lower world prices led to a spike in purchases by the Chinese, who are huge steel producers. For Rubens Ricupero, who served as Brazilian minister of finance in the 1990s and was secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Brazil's importance to China is all about the raw materials. "What is really meaningful in China's rise," he said, "is that they constitute a very important factor for commodities-producing countries now that mature industrial societies were not increasing demand for commodities." Lula's visit to China was in part portrayed here as a meeting of giants. "No economic discussion is possible that does not take into account China, Brazil, India and Russia," he boasted while there, and upon his return declared it the most successful of his foreign trips. But all signs pointed to the visit not meeting expectations, at least in the short term. It broke little new ground and largely saw the signing of deals that had been virtually concluded, most notably a $10 billion loan from China to the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras, and an agreement to allow Brazilian chicken into China. Other efforts failed: pork exports are still halted, and Brazilian textile industry leaders were unable to squeeze any voluntary reductions in exports out of the Chinese, whose imports have flooded the Brazilian market this year. Efforts to jump-start a stalled 45 plane contract between Embraer and the Chinese were unsuccessful. The trip was shortened to three from five days, and several events were canceled. "Lula comes home empty-handed from Beijing," according to a Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper editorial, "without having advanced the objected to diversify bilateral trade." To Ricupero, the downside is that Brazil-China trade is a throwback to old north-south trade, when rich countries used poor ones as a cheap source of commodities for their own industrial production. "Lula was trying to change that," Ricupero said. "But that idea has always been a non-starter. You can't change it in terms of government to government agreement. The reason the Chinese are capturing a large chunk of the market is that they make products at competitive prices." Brazil, on the other hand, is criticized for its heavy tax burden on business, high interest rates and high cost of labor, something business leaders and economists complain about and a situation that discourages outside investment. The sentiments of Mario Marconini, chairman of the council on international relations for Fecomercio, a federation representing hundreds of thousands of Brazilian companies, were typical: "The relationship between taxes, finance and production is completely out of whack," he said. "I'm surprised people produce anything at all in this country." Brazil desperately wants China to treat it as a strategic partner, said Marconini, but really, he said, China is calling the shots. "They found in us a supplier of whatever commodities they need," he said, "and by the way, they don't need to do anything to get them." And about the possibility of skipping the dollar altogether and trading in reais and yuan? Possibly a useful long-term strategy, but still far off, as Marconini and others noted -- just like any real influence Brazil might yield over the Asian giant. "Don't expect China to pay as much attention to Brazil as we think they should," he said. "The world is almost a G-2 -- China and the United States. They have to figure out what they want to do. And that's it." Read more from GlobalPost Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Economy
 
Obama Speaking At Cairo University -- Or Not Top
CAIRO -- The official word is that nothing has been decided about where President Obama will give his speech when he visits Cairo next Thursday to address the Muslim world. More on Egypt
 
Alex Pattakos: Swine Flu and the Paradox of Intention Top
I recently returned from Greece and while I was abroad, I learned about the "Swine Flu," also known as the H1N1 virus, which emerged in Mexico and began spreading to other countries. On my way back to the United States, the concern about this unpredictable virus and whether it would become a pandemic, was evident at the Washington Dulles Airport, which was the first place where I observed passengers wearing face masks for fear of contracting the virus. When I returned to my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (not to be confused with "Old" Mexico) I even saw a woman wearing such a mask while driving her car! Alright, I'm all for being taking precautions and being hyper-vigilant whenever a potentially dangerous situation arises. I remember well the SARS epidemic in 2003 which killed more than 800 people around the world. And I know that the World Health Organization hiked its alert level to 5 from 3 -- the last step before a pandemic -- due to the flu's spread and the threat that it could target poor and disease-prone communities. At the same time, I would not go as far as Vice President Joe Biden who raised the alarm even further by recommending, albeit by implication, that people not fly or ride public transportation! To be sure, this is a time for being attentive and for remaining on our guard. Likewise, it is a time for common sense. As scientists are still trying to assess this new virus and develop a vaccine for it, we also must recognize that "regular" seasonal flu strains kill between 250,000 and 500,000 people around the world every year. In the U.S. alone, to put the new "crisis" in context, about 36,000 people die every year from flu-related causes. And U.S. health officials are cautiously optimistic that this new swine flu isn't as dangerous, relatively-speaking, as first feared, while recognizing of course that commonsense precautions are still necessary. Let me underscore that it is important and reasonable to be hyper -vigilant as this complex human drama continues to unfold. At the same time, I'm reminded of the dangers that lurk behind the watchful eye of the beholder. Remember the period immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when we were also called upon to be hyper-vigilant? Good intentions aside, because we were afraid of "terrorists" and were on high alert, in our mind's eye we increased the likelihood of "seeing" suspected terrorists even if they were innocent people who just happened to fit a predetermined "profile!" This behavioral phenomenon, which is closely related to hyper-vigilance, can effectively lead to working against ourselves . In my book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts , I describe this meaning-focused principle as "paradoxical intention," that is, we become so obsessed with or fixated on an intent or outcome that we actually work against the desired result. In the case of post-9/11 terrorism, we became obsessed with or fixated on finding terrorists, and guess what? We began to "see" potential terrorists everywhere we went! Now, in the case of the swine flu, many of us have become obsessed with or fixated on the symptoms of the disease, and guess what? We begin to observe in others or manifest in ourselves these symptoms whether they/we actually have the flu or not! Consider the case of Mexico having to charter a plane to bring home 70 of its citizens from China who were seized at the airport and quarantined, declaring that the swine flu epidemic was no reason for "repressive and discriminatory measures." Hyper-vigilance or over-reaction, you decide. Paradoxical intention, in this regard, involves two other "hyper" behaviors that, again, are related to being hyper-vigilant. One is called "hyper-intention," that is, the obsession with or fixation on a result or outcome. Put differently, the end justifies the means, since we are intent on achieving our aim no matter what (even if it is unrealistic, improbable, or not even necessary). And the other is called "hyper-reflection," that is, the obsession with or fixation on "seeing" something in ourselves or in others. Isn't it amazing how frequently we "see" things that we are intent on seeing even if those things are not really there? You know, our mind has a funny way of playing tricks on us when we allow it. Paradoxically, in combination the dual forces of hyper-intention and hyper-reflection serve to work against even our best intentions. In other words, we actually work against ourselves and, as a result, may exacerbate the situation at hand rather than resolve it! What is the antidote, you ask? Let me suggest first that you try to let go and lighten up about the situation you are facing -- be it concern about the swine flu or anything else in your personal or work life. This will help you temper your need for hyper-vigilance and put the situation into a more reasonable and workable context. In turn, this shift in attitude and perspective will help you avoid the human tendency to "hyper-intend" and "hyper-reflect" (and for some, even to "hyper-ventilate!") when dealing with crisis situations. Trust me, I have used this advice many times in my own life, as well as have observed it work effectively in the lives of others. Without hesitation, I can assure you that it helps. In the final analysis, it is also more than simply "hype!" *** em>You can find out more about Dr. Alex Pattakos, author of the international bestselling book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts , in his HuffPost Bio and at http://www.prisonersofourthoughts.com . See also his "Dr. Meaning" Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/DrMeaning and follow him on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DrMeaning . You can contact Alex at: alex@prisonersofourthoughts.com . More on Swine Flu
 
Meghan Rhoad: Giving Birth in Shackles Top
Last week, New York legislators passed landmark legislation on an issue that has received far less public attention and debate than waterboarding and sleep deprivation, but that involves the same core issues of human dignity and protection from cruel treatment: the shackling of incarcerated women during pregnancy and childbirth. As the legislation awaits his signature, Governor David Paterson should reflect on the accounts of shackling shared by Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH), an association of formerly incarcerated women. The accounts include the following words from Tina: "The evening when I was to give birth I was transported to Valhalla hospital in handcuffs, I was in labor. When I arrived at the hospital and was about to give birth to my son the doctor who was to deliver my child requested that shackles be removed. The correctional officer released one of my legs. I remained tethered to the gurney during labor and child birth and when my son was to be held in my arms I only held him in one arm because that was all I was allowed by the officer who witnessed the birth of my son. I was not a flight risk! I felt dehumanized and unworthy to be treated in such a way." Certain practices are so much at odds with contemporary standards of decency that they simply have no place in a system that respects decency and human rights. Shackling pregnant women is one of them. Current policy and practice around shackling varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction within New York, with some authorities granting more protection than others. This legislation would ensure consistent protection for women in transportation for delivery, during delivery and in the postnatal recovery period, regardless of where they are held in the state. Much is at stake in enacting this legislation. Pregnant women who are shackled are at risk of injury during transportation to medical appointments, can suffer added pain during delivery, and may be deprived of appropriate care during examinations and delivery. Officials from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have opposed shackling on the basis that "physical restraints have interfered with the ability of physicians to safely practice medicine by reducing their ability to assess and evaluate the physical condition of the mother and the fetus ... thus, overall putting the lives of women and unborn children at risk." The risks are heightened by the fact that the pregnancies of women in custody are usually already high-risk because of their past medical histories, which can include substance abuse and limited access to prenatal care. In addition, the humiliation brought on by the shackling is inflicted on women who often have already suffered sexual or physical violence. The practice of shackling pregnant women is not supported by any persuasive security threat: most women in prison have been convicted of non-violent offenses. States that have restricted the use of shackles have not reported security problems. Support for restricting the use of shackles on pregnant women has had growing support from medical authorities, legislators, and penal systems. Illinois, California, Vermont, and New Mexico have passed laws to restrict shackling, and other states are moving to do the same. The Federal Bureau of Prisons revised its policies in October 2008 to ban the shackling of pregnant prisoners in almost all instances, and the Federal Marshalls have also revised their standards. In taking these steps, these states and institutions join an international consensus that shackling is an intolerable practice, irreconcilable with human rights principles, along with prohibitions against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. Now Governor Paterson has an opportunity, not only to retire this shameful practice to the state's history, but to assume a leadership role in this growing movement to defend the health and dignity of women across the country. He should take it.
 
Barbara Ficarra: What Do Patients Really Want? Top
The Doctor/Patient Relationship What do patients want? Despite the technological promises of the Health 2.0 movement, in some ways it's really no different today than it was forty years ago. An article that appeared in Time Magazine on May 13, 1966 says: Today, Americans get far better medical care than ever before; as for the rest [of the doctor-patient relationship], they are often lucky to get as much as a hurried smile. The result is a troubling paradox: at a time when medical skill has reached new pinnacles, the doctor-patient relationship has badly deteriorated. It is a situation that both irritates the patient and worries the medical profession. In 2009, it's much the same: Patients today often feel rushed during the "seven minute" office visit. They feel the doctor-patient relationship is dwindling since there's not much time to communicate. And they crave attention. They have questions and they want answers. I recently attended the Health 2.0 Meets IX conference in Boston where the overall theme was how to engage patients. According to those at the conference, doctors want their patients to be proactive and they are learning that communicating, collaboration and partnering with their patients are critical. A lot of the talk was about how technology can help: patients can connect with doctors via social networks and e-mail, they can connect with each other, and all sorts of devices can provide treatment and diagnostic information that will make care more efficient. But none of that changes the underlying need for connection between patient and doctor. "Patients and physicians must be partners in the patient's health. To do this requires mutual respect. It comes down to listening, communicating and understanding," says Dr. Daniel Z. Sands, Director of Medical Informatics at Cisco IBSG and a primary care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Back to 1966: In a word, the U.S. medical profession is trying hard to get back to a principle as old as Hippocrates'; it is rediscovering that there is still healing power in the laying on of hands. In an area where the stakes are life and death, but where the modern doctor knows that nothing is finally certain, he can still only say to his patient: "Trust me." Today's patient, who is sophisticated enough to realize his doctor's limitations, is willing to extend that trust--but in return he wants some understanding and sympathy, the vital ingredients that nowadays are too often missing. That exchange should be a compact between the patient and his doctor. It is a compact less complete than the old one, which was based on the patient's total faith and on far less knowledge, but it is a more realistic one. Patients don't just want to engage with doctors and nurses via social networking sites and new technologies. They still want to connect face-to-face, and want collaboration and respect. More on Health
 
27 Million Still Victims Of Modern Slavery Top
Yasmina was 12 years old when an aunt and uncle brought her to France from Mali to be a live-in nanny to their children. Once she was settled in a suburb near Paris, her new life consisted of 16 hours of household chores and regular beatings with electric cables. More on France
 
AT&T Admits Overeager Employees Helped 'Idol' Fans Text For Kris Top
LOS ANGELES — "American Idol" sponsor AT&T says a few overeager company employees helped Arkansas fans vote by text at viewing parties _ but didn't influence the final results. Kris Allen of Conway, Ark., ended up winning the "Idol" title last week over Adam Lambert, who'd been cast as the frontrunner by the show's judges. AT&T said that in the future the company will ensure employees understand that its sponsorship "celebrates the competition, not individual contestants." In a separate statement, Fox and the show's producers said they are certain the results are "fair, accurate and verified" and that the integrity of the voting process was protected against unfair influence. More on American Idol
 
Baghdad Bomb Kills US Soldier, Making May Deadliest In 8 Months Top
BAGHDAD — A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier Wednesday in Baghdad, making May the deadliest month for the American military since September. Also Wednesday, the government's watchdog agency announced that nearly 1,000 arrest warrants have been issued this year as part of a crackdown on corruption. They include warrants for nearly 50 senior civil servants, the agency said. The fatal attack occurred two days after a blast struck a U.S. convoy west of the capital, killing three Americans, including two civilians and a soldier. The spike in deaths comes as U.S. forces face a June 30 deadline to pull back from urban areas as part of a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect this year. At least 20 American service members have died so far this month, compared with 25 in September, according to an Associated Press tally. The 20 deaths include five service members killed in a May 11 shooting at a mental health clinic in Baghdad. Sgt. John M. Russell has been charged with murder in the case. April had at least 19 American troop deaths, more than double the nine killed in March, which was the lowest since the war began in March 2003. In Wednesday's incident, the soldier from the Multi-National Division _ Baghdad died of injuries suffered when a bomb exploded near a patrol in a western section of the capital, the military said in a statement. In all, at least 4,302 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war, according to the AP count. Four U.S. civilians also have been killed in Iraq since Friday. They included a top reconstruction official who once headed the Illinois Commerce Commission and a Defense Department employee working for the U.S. Embassy who were killed in the roadside bombing on Monday on the eastern outskirts of the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. A defense contractor also died in a rocket or mortar attack near the U.S. Embassy and another was found stabbed in his car on Friday. Iraqis also have faced a resurgence of violence with a series of deadly attacks in recent months, illustrating the resilience of militants despite security gains. In the latest attack, a car bomb exploded near a medical compound in Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding 13, two police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. Belgium's Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht, meanwhile, called the plans for Iraqis to take over security of their cities after the Americans pull back an important step toward normalization. De Gucht began a two-day visit to Iraq on Wednesday, the first such visit by a Belgian Cabinet minister since 1990. Belgium opposed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, but like other European countries is reaching out to Iraq as a business and political partner now that security is improving. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari welcomed assistance offered by Belgium, including debt reduction, financial aid for reconstruction projects and training for Iraqi judges, diplomats and Interior Ministry employees. Security and corruption have been cited as two major issues facing Iraqis as they struggle to rebuild their society after six years of war. The head of the Commission on Public Integrity, Judge Rahim al-Ogaili, told parliament that since Jan. 1, 997 arrest warrants have been issued against officials suspected of corruption _ including 51 in high-level positions. At least 335 of them have been arrested as of Wednesday, he said. Trade Minister Falah al-Sudani resigned this month after two of his brothers were charged with skimming millions of dollars in government imports. One brother has been arrested and the other remains at large. Parliament is expected to decide this week whether to charge the former minister in the case. ___ Associated Press Writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report. More on Iraq
 
Eagleburger Mocks Cheney As "Benighted" (VIDEO) Top
Lawrence Eagleburger mocked Dick Cheney on Tuesday, saying that the former vice president, whom he dubbed "benighted," has long exaggerated his position as a partisan in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power during the first Gulf War. Eagleburger, a GOP elder statesman who was in President George H.W. Bush's inner circle during the war, said Cheney and others who say they were "screaming and yelling" for Hussein's removal only did so when it was obvious Bush had the capacity to do so. When the real decision was being made, Eagleburger implies, Cheney sang a different tune. Eagleburger answered questions at a Brookings Institution forum. Cheney has recently taken center stage as a spokesman for a GOP hard line. Eagleburger, a former secretary of state, is the highest-ranking Republican to challenge him. "The arguments that were made later by some of the benighted people--oh, never mind. I will just say screaming and yelling about how the president should have gone after Saddam at that time were only made once it was a fairly clear that he could have done so. If he had done so it would have been taking the advice of certain people who became vice presidents later on," said Eagleburger. WATCH: Ryan Grim is the author of the forthcoming book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Dick Cheney
 
Mike Papantonio: Cheney Doesn't Want Us to Ask Questions Top
Former Minnesota Governor, Jesse Ventura is in demand on the interview circuit these days because of his new bestseller book. I interviewed him last week, and he opened the discussion with the topic of torture. He told me that he could get Dick Cheney to confess to murder if he could get Cheney on a waterboard for a couple of minutes. It became clear that Ventura feels true repulsion toward people like Cheney, Sean Hannity, and all the other war pimps who talk tough but stay clear of real combat. Ventura earned the right to humiliate the right wing tough talkers because unlike them, he spent his early years enlisted as a Navy SEAL on active duty in Vietnam. He explained that he had experienced waterboarding unlike the war sissies he criticizes. Given the chance, I'm certain that Ventura could at least get Cheney to come clean over many of the questions people have about the scandals and criminal activity that developed during Cheney's watch. You've probably noticed that Cheney has come out of his secluded bunker after hiding for eight years. Think back to the number of times when the media was asking "Where is Cheney?" Like the time he hid in his private bunker after 9-11. Or the times no one could find him after Katrina, and after he shot his friend in the head during a bird hunt. Cheney's handlers were skillful in keeping Cheney away from the public eye. They recognized that his public approval was just about equal to that of the Taliban. But do we really need to put Cheney in a room with Ventura and a waterboard to figure out why Cheney is everywhere in the media these days looking like Richard Nixon right before Nixon was busted for Watergate? With every Cheney interview, you expect him to break into one of those Nixon-like speeches where he says, "I am not a crook." Cheney wants us to quit asking questions. Not just questions about Gitmo. He wants us to stop wondering about his role in domestic spying on journalists, peace activists, and political opponents. The once reclusive Cheney is urging us to stop asking those pesky questions about how he rigged the intelligence process to gin up an unnecessary war in Iraq. According to Cheney, it is inappropriate for Americans to ask about how many billions of dollars disappeared in Halliburton contract fraud. In the last few weeks, Ventura has been in attack mode telling Americans just the opposite. Ventura's philosophy is that Americans need to kick over the rotting logs left behind by Cheney. According to Ventura, we need to prosecute the creatures that have been hiding there. Ventura's advice is good. Unless we continue to dig deeper we will never know how much damage our democracy sustained. We won't be in a position to make repairs unless we fully explore the wreckage that Cheney created. A decision to do nothing will be an open invitation for tomorrow's Cheneys and Nixons to disable democracy again. I don't doubt that Dick Cheney wants us to look ahead and ignore his past conduct. Nixon would have wanted us to do the same with his Watergate years. More on Dick Cheney
 
Craig Newmark: Yellow Ribbon Fund: real support for troops & families Top
Hey, the Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America helps vets on one level, but a number of small groups focus on other needs not addressed by anyone. The Yellow Ribbon Fund 's mission is to "Welcome Our Injured Service Members Home." They do this by supplying free rental cars to family members, (1,000 in four years), free cab vouchers, hotels, apartments, job mentoring and internships, and free tickets to cultural and sporting events. A new program, The Family Caregiver Program, helps the wives and mothers of the injured. Stephen Colbert has raised over $250,000 for the Yellow Ribbon Fund through sales of his Wrist Strong Bracelets . More on Stephen Colbert
 
Senate Dems On Pakistan: U.S. Here To Stay Top
Look for the United States to be sending troops and money not only to Afghanistan, but Pakistan and the rest of the region for the foreseeable future, a group of swing Democratic senators said toward the end of their fact-finding trip to the Middle East. The five senators, all members of the Moderate Democrats Working Group led by Evan Bayh, have spent the past few days touring the area and are scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday. On a conference call Tuesday, the senators said a whirlwind tour of meetings with Pakistani officials convinced them that further U.S. commitment wouldn't go to waste. But they also made it clear that U.S. commitment wouldn't be ending anytime soon. Alaska Senator Mark Begich said the U.S. was ready for a "long-term commitment to Pakistan, recognizing that we're not just there for the moment, that we want to be there assisting them in their long-term economic and social sustainability." He cited the need for increased diplomacy and trade with India. "Let me make sure we emphasize one point, that it's a regional approach, not just Pakistan by itself," Begich said. The U.S. delegation met with a wide variety of military and political officials, Delaware Senator Tom Carper said, and they all told the senators the same thing. "They said this is just not about a military victory," Carper said. "What we must do is raise the standard of living, the quality of life in the people in these areas along the northwest border." The nation-building foreseen by the Democratic senators involves management at the local level and efforts to improve Pakistan's military capacity. Carper highlighted the rebuilding and repopulation of Kashmir, as well as maintenance of Pakistan's relatively small helicopter fleet, as top priorities. But he said U.S. forces will have plenty of time to think about other projects during a period of "nation-building governance." "That's what they want. That's what they need," he said. The senators are aware that U.S. anti-terror funding to Pakistan since 9/11 has had a habit of disappearing, but Colorado's Mark Udall said they heard "a much different tone" in discussions with the nation's business community. "There are no guarantees," Udall said. "The past is illustrative and can be educational but the past doesn't necessarily have to be prologue, either." Further outreach to moderate clerics is also necessary, Udall said, to limit the influence of jihadists in the region. Begich, Carper and Udall were joined on the trip by Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. All but Carper are freshman senators. The nation building in the region, far from nearing an end, is just beginning. As with Pakistan, Carper said investment in Afghan infrastructure and economic growth must be as much a part of U.S. strategy going forward as importing trainers to expand the national army. He declined to discuss even a ballpark date for military withdrawal. "We're beginning our buildup now," he said. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Pakistan
 
Elisabeth Braw: North Korea's forgotten orphans: they live in China Top
Elisabeth Braw wrote this story for and the Huffington Post. Five-year-old Eun-jong has to live with strangers in northeastern China. Her father, a farmer, is unable to take care of her, and her mother has been expelled from the country. Eun-jong is one of thousands of children to North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers who have effectively been made orphans. An estimated 70% of North Koreans living illegally in China are women, many of whom live with Chinese men and have children with them. "A large number were sold to Chinese men by human traffickers", explains Caleb Choi, a South Korean pastor who helps North Korean refugees in China. "Some voluntarily married a Chinese man to get somewhere to live and food to eat." In both cases, physical abuse is common. Particularly since China began to enforce its policy of repatriating North Korean refugees four years ago, children from these relationships have been caught in a heartbreaking limbo. China expels mothers without their children. "The trauma of forced repatriation is increased by the sudden separation of mother and child", explains Tim Pieters, an American whose organization, Helping Hands Korea, assists North Korean refugees. "And the father often sees the mother as just a purchase and doesn't feel responsible for the children. Other men are disabled or very poor and are unable to care for their children." As a result, up to 25,000 children - estimates vary - are now de facto orphans. "At the moment, a few missionaries look after these children, but the number of helpers is far too small", reports Choi. Many Chinese street children are, in fact, North Korean orphans. Adds Human Rights Watch China expert Kay Seok: "The Chinese government should allow UNHCR and aid organizations to assist North Korean refugees, including children. And the international community should pressure Beijing to stop summarily arresting and repatriating North Koreans." ----- Background: Between 100,000 and 400,000 North Koreans live illegally in China. China denies the UNHCR access to these residents since it considers them economic migrants rather than refugees. Children living in China are entitled to education, but to enroll in a school a child needs identification papers. Since requesting such documents exposes illegal residents, families with a North Korean parent are usually unable to send their children to school. Others succeed by bribing officials. (Source: Human Rights Watch).
 
Sex With Ducks (VIDEO) Top
Via Buzzfeed we find this fabulous music video by Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci who use song to mock Pat Robertson for saying that legalizing gay marriage will lead to sex with ducks. WATCH: More on Funny Videos
 
Fortune 's Stanley Bing: Attention Mr. Geffen Top
Hi, David. I read in a magazine someplace that you were interested in saving the New York Times. I think it's a terrific idea. Something about setting up a non-profit foundation that would run it, so the pressures of the business would not impinge on Journalism being done there. I can't think of a better idea. It's clear the newspaper business is in some kind of trouble, with Craig's List snatching all its classifieds and the citizen journalists getting things wrong so they don't have to. I have one other idea for you. It came to me when I was reading the Thompson/Reuters news rundown this morning. Here is the item I read in its entirety: According to the AP, Unions that represent mailers and printers at The Boston Globe have agreed to concessions they hope will keep the newspaper, owned by The New York Times, publishing. The Boston Mailers Union voted 107-95 to approve $5 million in cuts, while the Boston Printing Pressman's Union accepted $2.2 million in concessions. That was really interesting to me. The Boston Globe, which I believe is owned by the New York Times Co., can only stay in business if the working people who help to distribute the newspaper give back a total of $7.2 million. I know that's a lot of money to a pressman or mailer, particularly when it's expressed in personal terms. But in the vast scheme of things, I was honestly quite surprised at the small scale of the problem that could wreck the business system to the extent that the newspaper might go under if it wasn't solved. So, Mr. Geffen, I guess I'm just suggesting that as you contemplate laying down hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a foundation to save Journalism - a truly laudable goal that just might be necessary to the preservation of our democracy - is it possible that some little wafer of that largesse might be applied to what appears to be a very small part of the much larger problem? More on Newspapers
 
Salena Tramel: Egypt-Gaza Border-Crossing A Soap Opera Filming Set Top
The Egyptians are world famous for their soap operas. As a student in Cairo nine years ago, I remember seeing glitzy billboards all over town and trying to make out the drama of the background noise they provided in almost every household I visited. This Monday, I accidentally ran into one of these productions in full swing. It turned out to be a soap opera within a soap opera. I arrived at the Rafah border Monday on the heels of a twelve-hour flight from New York and a six-hour bus ride across the desert with an assortment of documents and support meant to aid in entering Gaza. This included a letter from the U.S. Embassy, a personal invitation from UNRWA, and official papers from the Egyptian media. I had followed all recommended procedures for getting into Gaza and was feeling pretty confidant having been successful in March. A friend and I had met up with a student-organized mostly U.S. delegation in Cairo to make the journey to Rafah where we joined a Canadian delegation. The Canadians were on their third day in a row attempting to cross the border, understandably frustrated and close to exhaustion. Besides the 47 international visitors at the crossing, there were also a few Palestinians trying to reach home. (Many Palestinian refugees in Egypt are not allowed past the network of checkpoints leading up to the Rafah gate.) The border officials presented us with a series of catch-22's to block our passage, despite the fact that all of our names had supposedly been cleared in advance. We received conflicting information all day, one minute thinking that we were clear to move forward and the next feeling that there was no way we would ever get in. By the time morning turned into late afternoon, we knew that it was not looking good. However, at about 4:00 p.m., we were told that we had security clearance from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and would be in passport control within the hour. A half-hour later, the guards said that the border was closing and all of the workers were going home but promised to let us through first thing in the morning. Part of the impossibility of crossing into Gaza was the bona fide soap opera unfolding at the border that entire day. A full television crew was setting up their gear at the Rafah gate, all the time people squeezing past them (including myself) to try different tactics with the guards. We were told that they were shooting an episode about a family that was reunited thanks to the open border. Once the cameras started rolling, the Egyptian security literally opened the border gate. No one was allowed anywhere near it except the immaculately dressed actors embracing each other warmly upon being 'reunited'. When those of us who were there to actually cross the border got too close, the guards asked us not to disturb the production and stay out of the way. A Palestinian father was at the end of his ropes trying to bring his young injured son home. The boy had one mangled arm, the other in a cast, and he walked with a horrible limp. Pleading with the officials to no avail, the father broke into loud sobs. I returned to the nearest town in Egypt, Al Arish, that evening with the delegations to wait for morning and try it all over again. In the middle of the night, some of the organizers got a visit from the secret police, telling us not to return to the border in the morning. Morning came and we weighed our options. Sources in Cairo informed us that the police who visited were only tourist police trying to harass us and presented no real threat. We decided that it would be worthwhile to go ahead with our plans being that we had the support of the Foreign Minister and people with strong ties to Washington working on our behalf in Cairo. A few kilometers outside of Al Arish and still a considerable distance from Rafah, police surrounded our buses at the first checkpoint. They informed us that this part of the Sinai had been declared a 'closed military zone' and sent us packing back to town. A few hours passed and another phone call came from the Egyptian government saying that each of us now had the highest level of security clearance and that we were free to leave immediately for Rafah. At the first checkpoint, the same police who had surrounded us parted and opened the road. Six checkpoints and three hours later we cleared customs and boarded another bus across 'no mans land' to the Palestinian border control. On that side, the border officials handed out individual bottles of water and warmly welcomed us to Gaza. We flew through passport control and customs and finally stepped outside, not quite believing that we were really there. Again, there was a camera crew waiting right outside of the terminal. Thankfully, they were not there to film a soap opera, but to break the news that international visitors had made it into Gaza. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Egypt
 
Durbin: I Won't Support Burris Again (VIDEO) Top
Illinois' senior Senator Dick Durbin said Wednesday he would not support his embattled colleague Roland Burris for a second term in 2010. On Tuesday a transcript of a telephone call between Burris and Robert Blagojevich, the brother of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and head of his campaign fund, revealed that Burris offered to "personally do something" for Blagojevich's campaign fund while pursuing the Senate seat. Burris flatly denied Wednesday that he participated in a pay-to-play scheme in exchange for the seat. But Burris' claims of innocence aren't enough for Durbin, who said that he is "disappointed" by Burris and would not back him again. "I met with him after the information came out about his conversations and told him how disappointed I was because, you know, we stuck our neck out for him," Durbin said after an appearance in Des Plaines . "And I just don't think his testimony in Springfield was complete and accurate." View more news videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video . More on Rod Blagojevich
 
Ingmar Guandique Pleads Not Guilty To Killing Chandra Levy Top
WASHINGTON — A man serving a prison sentence for attacking women in a Washington park pleaded not guilty Wednesday to killing federal intern Chandra Levy. Twenty-seven-year-old Ingmar Guandique was arraigned in District of Columbia Superior Court on six counts, including first-degree murder, kidnapping and attempted sexual abuse. He pleaded not guilty to all counts. Guandique listened through a Spanish translator during the hearing. He kept his head down and remained silent, except to reply "si" when asked if he understood the charges. Judge Geoffrey Alprin set a two-week jury trial for Jan. 27. Guandique's public defender, Santha Sonenberg, asked the judge for more time to prepare, but Alprin insisted on the date. Following the arraignment, Sonenberg and another defense attorney issued a statement calling the prosecution's evidence "false and deficient." Levy, a Modesto, Calif., native, disappeared in May 2001, and her remains were found in Rock Creek Park a year later. Guandique has been serving a 10-year sentence for two other attacks in the same park. The case has been blamed for destroying the political career of former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit of California, who was romantically linked to Levy. Authorities questioned the Democrat who represented the Modesto district where Levy grew up, but he was never a suspect. A status hearing in the case is set for July 31.
 
Barbara Coombs Lee: The Conversation Top
"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." --Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Dylan Thomas' famous admonition aside, at the appropriate time (and not a minute too soon), most ill and elderly do wish to go gently into that good night. Very gently indeed. The "rage, rage" we've witnessed is not so much at the dying of the light, but at the suffering caused by brutal, invasive and futile procedures all too common in today's high-tech mode of dying. Most Compassion & Choices supporters would eagerly bargain away a few days of extended life in an intensive care unit in exchange for final days spent at home, in relative comfort and meaningful communion with those they love. Such folks don't adhere to the doctrine of redemptive suffering and would rather slip away peacefully if imminent dying would be otherwise prolonged and agonized. Well, the evidence is in. Recent studies indicate the single most powerful thing a person can do to improve the chance for gentle dying is --- simply and courageously --- to talk about it. Talk to whom? First and foremost, talk to your personal physician . It's never too early for this conversation. This March an important study appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine . A large, multi-institutional study, it evaluated the quality of life at the end of life for people with advanced cancer. Lo and behold! Those individuals who had discussed end-of-life values and preferences with their doctors experienced significantly less suffering in their final week of life. A significant reduction in intensive care hospitalizations and high technology interventions accounted for this desirable outcome. Not too surprising, the patients who had talked with their doctors, and who experienced a more peaceful, pain-free end of life, also received less costly care than those tethered to the tubes and machines meant to extend their lives. But one finding is stunning enough to be a game-changer in end-of-life care. For all the suffering they inflicted and all the cost they incurred, the tubes and machines actually bought no life extension. None . It's hard to imagine a worse situation for a person dying of cancer --- trapped in an intensive care unit, remote from family and loved ones, suffering through intrusive and painful medical procedures, and living no longer than those who chose to end their lives in hospice, at home, with loved ones at their side. Start this conversation with your doctor. There's no reason not to. Unfortunately, your doctor is unlikely to broach the subject, so it's up to you. You might wonder how to begin this conversation without seeming morbid. I humbly offer several openers for your consideration: • "I just read about a study that found all that high technology at the end of life doesn't work and just causes suffering. Do you know I wouldn't want that?" • "My relative (or friend or acquaintance) had a terrible death, hooked up to tubes and machines. I think I'd just want to be home with my family. What do you think about a decision like that?" • "I love so much about my life --- being active, loving my family. If none of that were possible anymore, I'd like to go out peacefully, without a lot of heroics. Does that fit with your medical philosophy?" Note that for unmarried LGBTQ folks, this conversation should include identification of the person you would designate as surrogate decision-maker if you could not speak for yourself, and those who should be allowed to visit you even if more traditional "close family" might object." Compassion & Choices has visitation forms available for this purpose as well. If the conversation reveals a physician seriously out of sync with your values and beliefs, find another whom you feel you can trust to honor your wishes. As we often say, "When you're dying is no time to find out your core beliefs and your doctor's are incompatible." If you are uncomfortable having this conversation with your doctor in person, broach the subject with a letter. You can download Compassion & Choices' free " Letter To My Doctor " and mail it or hand-deliver it to your doctor at your next appointment. Call our End-of-Life Consultation Service at Compassion & Choice s ( 1-800-247-7421 ) if you'd like to report on how your conversation went. We'd love to hear from you. Best of luck.
 
Republican Senator: Sotomayor Will Be Confirmed (VIDEO) Top
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said on C-SPAN Wednesday morning that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be confirmed by the United States Senate and become a member of the Supreme Court. Grassley is a member of the Judiciary Committee, which will consider the nomination. The Democratic caucus controls 59 seats; 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. Grassley voted against Sotomayor in 1998, but he said he would give her a fresh look. "Evidently I was one of the 27 people that voted against her when she went on the Circuit," he said. "And I don't want anybody to believe that I'm going to have that be a reason for me having my mind made up now. Because quite frankly, I'm going to have to go back and hopefully I gave a speech at the time, or there's something in the record of my rationale for the no vote at the time." WATCH: More on Sonia Sotomayor
 
David Wild: A Playlist Fit for a Dick: Songs for Cheney to Chill Out To Top
I may never get over the cognitive dissonance of hearing that George Bush loved to listen to Van Morrison on his iPod. How could this be? After all, I love to listen to Van Morrison on my iPod, and I have absolutely nothing in common with George Bush, right? Right? Fortunately, I have no concept of what pet sounds Dick Cheney curls up with in-between robustly defending torture and the occasional act of bad will hunting. I'm thinking perhaps Dick gets his groove on to something by Iron Maiden. "The Number of the Beast," perhaps? Seven months ago, I suggested "An Embarrassingly Premature Obama Victory Party Mix" in these digital pages. Thankfully, I got to use that playlist. Little did I know then that all this time later, we'd still have Dick Cheney to kick around. But I am here today not to hurt, but to help heal. Here then is my playlist created to encourage our former Vice President to kick back and chill the hell out. What would you add to this playlist fit for a Dick? "TWO YEARS OF TORTURE' - Ray Charles "BEFORE YOU ACCUSE ME" -- Bo Diddley "DIRTY LITTLE SECRET" -- All American Rejects "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY" -- Alice Cooper "HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN" -- The Beatles "DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS" -- Tom Jones (for Liz Cheney) "BEAUTIFUL LOSER" - Bob Seger "DON'T YOU (FORGET ABOUT ME) -- Simple Minds "HANDS CLEAN" -- Alanis Morissette "IDIOT WIND" --Bob Dylan "COULD YOU BE LOVED" --Bob Marley (for Lynne Cheney) TORTURE ME - Red Hot Chili Peppers "ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG" -- Billy Joel "DON'T GO AWAY, MAD (JUST GO AWAY)" -- Motley Crue More on Dick Cheney
 
Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: Recent College Graduate for Hire Top
Originally published on Youthradio.org , the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. By: Emma Jacobs My job search began nearly four months ago. I've sent out dozens of cover letters and applications, mainly for jobs without pre-requisites. A history major like me doesn't come with many specialized skills besides research. These days, it's difficult to convince people to take a chance on an entry-level hire. I've landed a handful of interviews, but still no job. There was one week when I got three rejections. It felt like I'd hit a brick wall. I'm scared of having nothing to do after working non-stop for 4 years. I'm not questioning my abilities, but I have been questioning my choices, knowing students with engineering degrees are still finding jobs. And many of the positions I am equipped to fill are disappearing. Alex Kaz is another new graduate without a job. He majored in physics and has been applying for teaching jobs like Teach for America which usually hires recent graduates. Not this year: "We had the one day interviews and that's when everyone comes in." Alex remembers. "A lot of people were former bankers, lawyers, attorneys etc. You could see that clearly this was not their first career choice. And many worked on Wall Street for x number of years, or worked at a law firm, marketing or whatever. And they were sitting amongst us in a program originally geared towards people leaving college and trying to get them to get into the classroom." Now Alex is feeling a bit lost. So am I. After all our hard work, it's difficult to face the reality of a big blank space now that we've finally graduated. I'm not devastated, but I'm exhausted. Before graduation, my father kept asking if he should bring the car to take my things back to Boston. I wasn't sure how to answer. If I found a job, I wouldn't have to move home. So I just said, I don't know. At least I can commiserate with my friend Avigail Oren about our job searches. We give each other pep talks. At this stage of the game, it's all about shifting our expectations. "I would hate to say that I would take any job," Avigail says. "I've definitely had to rethink. I started out looking for jobs that paid 30 to 40 thousand dollars and now I'm looking definitely from 20 to 30 (thousand.) And I would say it's been difficult hurry up and waiting. 'Oh! We want to get you in for an interview right away! Right away!' You hustle in. Two weeks later, you're sending a follow up email saying: 'Are you still alive? Hello?'" I've been there. But sometimes when you're lucky you get a reality check early. At one small nonprofit, the hiring manager told me up front that other applicants had master's degrees and years of work experience. Avigail says she gets it: "Ultimately I am a new entry into the job market, despite all my unpaid internship experience, despite all of my volunteer work and activities. I've never gone into an office at 9 o'clock and walked out at 5." And for us, it may be a while longer until the 9 to 5 job materializes. I finally decided to take another unpaid internship and stay in New York for as long as I can afford it. I'll have to get temp jobs to pay the rent. But at least when my father asks about my plans, I can tell him not to bring the car. Youth Radio's Emma Jacobs graduated May 20 from Columbia University with a degree in History and Francophone Studies. She co-directs Youth Mic , a youth media program for teenagers. Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org More on Economy
 
White House Smacks Gingrich For Calling Sotomayor A Racist Top
The White House hit back at Newt Gingrich on Wednesday for a twitter post made by the former House Speaker accusing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist. Early on Wednesday, Gingrich put up a post on twitter rapping Sotomayor for saying that her background as a Hispanic female allowed her to understand cases in a different, better, manner than her white male contemporaries. "Imagine a judicial nominee said "my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman" new racism is no better than old racism." Asked at the daily briefing to respond to the tweet, spokesman Robert Gibbs offered a bit of thinly-veiled frustration with Gingrich and warned against the escalation of racially heated rhetoric. "I think it is probably important for anyone involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe aspects of this impending nomination," said Gibbs. "I think when the people of America and the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker that they will come to the same conclusion as the president did. ... I feel certain that partisan politics will take a back seat to common sense and open-minded decisions based on a full examination of the record, and I think that that's what every Supreme Court and judicial nominee deserves." Playing up the racial aspect of Sotomayor's candidacy is a dangerous proposition for the conservative community, with the risk of offending wide swaths of Hispanics omnipresent. To this point, the charges of reverse-racism have been primarily trumpeted by non-elected officials. But as Greg Sargent pointed out first, the director of new media for the Republican National Committee, Todd Herman, re-tweeted Gingrich's post , bringing the line of attack ever closer to the rank-and-file GOP. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 

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