Saturday, May 9, 2009

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White House Correspondents' Dinner: PHOTOS Top
The White House Correspondents' Dinner was quite the star-studded event. Celebrities mingled with journalists and politicians as President Obama and Wanda Sykes gave speeches roasting the GOP, the press and the Obama administration. Check out the slideshow of notable names below. More on Photo Galleries
 
Stewart Nusbaumer: What I Learned In Afghanistan Top
The best blogs nail down one key point, writes Bob Creamer in The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. In many of the book's entries, authors say to wander or ruminate or zigzag you will quickly lose your readers - with mouse in hand, they will click-skip off into cyber-space. So blogging is about brevity. It's about being fast-paced and highly focused. It's leaping on an important point and ridding it. Blogging is writing in the fast lane. I have my important issue, Afghanistan. I've been here for two months, traveling, writing, observing. This while the heavy surge of some 21,000 U.S. troops began and Afghanistan's traditional upsurge of violence, the "Spring Offensive," courtesy of the Taliban, started. Every year since the US invasion in 2001, this country has experienced an upsurge in violence and killing. Obviously, we're on the wrong track. The Obama Administration's policy is to pour US troops and equipment and advisors into to the country to train and mentor the Afghan army and police and government agencies. There is also an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid. At the same time, the Obama Administration is downsizing US goals. Forget George Bush's fantasy of a full-blown democracy; Obama just wants to keep the country from imploding into utter chaos and then returning to a sanctuary for those who want to attack America. The new administration, then, has turned George Bush's policy on its head: instead of little resources for huge goals, it is greater resources for lower goals. Reality has finally intervened. The neo-cons pie-in-the-sky dream of democracy overnight with miniscule means was profound screwy thinking, if you can call it thinking. From my three months in Afghanistan in 2006 and these two months in 2009 I have learned a national flag and a constitution and a president and a national seal do not make a nation. Nationhood requires a bond between the people, loyalty to a set of ideals, commitment to the land -- not just to your parcel of land. Called the "empire's graveyard" -- having booted out first Alexander the Great, then the British Empire, and finally the Soviet Union - it's clear Afghans can fight foreigners. And when there are no foreigners they tear into each other. But what else does Afghanistan stand for? In fact, there are those who believe Afghanistan is not a weak state, not even a failed state, but no state. There is much truth to this. While the Obama strategy appears to have minimal goals, a closer look turns those goals into being quite ambitious, while also remaining realistic. Well, as far as realism goes here. Before a democracy can exist there must be a state. The administration is shifting US strategy from simply killing for democracy to teaching, mentoring, advising, and equipping for statehood. The focus is on developing a national army and police, desperately needed in this fractured land, and a national government that reaches into the countryside, a countryside that has no government. The democratic spirit grows out of personal stability and a sense of being united to a people. This, the former community organizer, Barak Obama, understands well. To remain faithful to the brevity requirement in The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, let me wrap this up. Huge numbers of Americans troops and many private contractors in Afghanistan are "partnering" with Afghans. I've been with Marines training the Afghan National Army and US Army soldiers advising the Afghan National Police and private contractors mentoring different Afghan government ministries. Obama is staking the war on training the Afghans to defend and run their own country, instead of simply killing those opposed to their government. Yes, US troops are killing Taliban and other insurgents. But the goal now is to secure an area for development rather than to kill for democracy, a difference overlooked by many. Yes, there are developmental projects, but Afghanistan cannot be rebuilt with merely money like Germany after World War II. There is not anything here to rebuild here. Everything has to be built -- roads, power plants, infrastructure, capitalism, and of course democracy. So what I see in Afghanistan is a great experiment in American education. Educating a people to defend themselves and govern themselves to become a genuine nation. Will it work? I don't know, but after two months in Afghanistan, I'm more optimistic than when I left my home in New York. Wait! The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging says a blog shouldn't run over 800 words. I'm at 750! I have to work on this brevity thing. 758! Verbosity is the kiss of death in blogging, right? 767! OK, I'll tell you why I'm more optimistic in my next post. More on Afghanistan
 
Stewart Nusbaumer: What I Learned In Afghanistan Top
The best blogs nail down one key point, writes Bob Creamer in The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. In many of the book's entries, authors say to wander or ruminate or zigzag will quickly lose you readers - with mouse in hand, they will click-skip off into cyber-space. So blogging is about brevity. It's about being fast-paced and highly focused. It's leaping on an important point and ridding it. Blogging is writing in the fast lane. I have my important issue, Afghanistan. I've been here for two months, traveling, writing, observing. This while the heavy surge of some 21,000 U.S. troops began and Afghanistan's traditional upsurge of violence, the "Spring Offensive," courtesy of the Taliban, started. Every year since the US invasion in 2001, this country has experienced an upsurge in violence and killing. Obviously, we're on the wrong track. The Obama Administration's policy is to pour US troops and equipment and advisors into to the country to train and mentor the Afghan army and police and government agencies. There is also an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid. At the same time, the Obama Administration is downsizing US goals. Forget George Bush's fantasy of a full-blown democracy; Obama just wants to keep the country from imploding into utter chaos and then returning to a sanctuary for those who want to attack America. The new administration, then, has turned George Bush's policy on its head: instead of little resources for huge goals, it is greater resources for lower goals. Reality has finally intervened. The neo-cons pie-in-the-sky dream of democracy overnight with miniscule means was profound screwy thinking, if you can call it thinking. From my three months in Afghanistan in 2006 and these two months in 2009 I have learned a national flag and a constitution and a president and a national seal do not make a nation. Nationhood requires a bond between the people, loyalty to a set of ideals, commitment to the land -- not just to your parcel of land. Called the "empire's graveyard" -- having booted out first Alexander the Great, then the British Empire, and finally the Soviet Union - it's clear Afghans can fight foreigners. And when there are no foreigners they tear into each other. But what else does Afghanistan stand for? In fact, there are those who believe Afghanistan is not a weak state, not even a failed state, but no state. There is much truth to this. While the Obama strategy appears to have minimal goals, a closer look turns those goals into being quite ambitious, while also remaining realistic. Well, as far as realism goes here. Before a democracy can exist there must be a state. The administration is shifting US strategy from simply killing for democracy to teaching, mentoring, advising, and equipping for statehood. The focus is on developing a national army and police, desperately needed in this fractured land, and a national government that reaches into the countryside, a countryside that has no government. The democratic spirit grows out of personal stability and a sense of being united to a people. This, the former community organizer, Barak Obama, understands well. To remain faithful to the brevity requirement in The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, let me wrap this up. Huge numbers of Americans troops and many private contractors in Afghanistan are "partnering" with Afghans. I've been with Marines training the Afghan National Army and US Army soldiers advising the Afghan National Police and private contractors mentoring different Afghan government ministries. Obama is staking the war on training the Afghans to defend and run their own country, instead of simply killing those opposed to their government. Yes, US troops are killing Taliban and other insurgents. But the goal now is to secure an area for development rather than to kill for democracy, a difference overlooked by many. Yes, there are developmental projects, but Afghanistan cannot be rebuilt with merely money like Germany after World War II. There is not anything here to rebuild here. Everything has to be built -- roads, power plants, infrastructure, capitalism, and of course democracy. So what I see in Afghanistan is a great experiment in American education. Educating a people to defend themselves and govern themselves to become a genuine nation. Will it work? I don't know, but after two months in Afghanistan, I'm more optimistic than when I left my home in New York. Wait! The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging says a blog shouldn't run over 800 words. I'm at 750! I have to work on this brevity thing. 758! Verbosity is the kiss of death in blogging, right? 767! OK, I'll tell you why I'm more optimistic in my next post. More on Afghanistan
 
Are Taxpayers Bailing Out Troubled Banks Twice? Top
The federal government is taking up the fight against credit card companies accused of taking advantage of consumers. In taking aim at what he called "abuse that goes unpunished," President Obama has asked Congress to send him a bill by Memorial Day that prevents credit card companies from suddenly raising rates on everyday customers. More on Bailout Bandits
 
Frank Rich: The American Press On Suicide Watch Top
IF you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That's when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq). To prove the point, the partying journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom could be seen (courtesy of C-Span) fawning over government potentates -- in some cases the very "sources" who had fed all those fictional sightings of Saddam Hussein's W.M.D.
 
Wanda Sykes: Video Of White House Correspondents Dinner Speech Top
Full video of comedian Wanda Sykes at the 2009 White House Correspondents Association dinner is below. Watch the video: Part 1: Part 2: Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Video
 
Steven Weber: Dick Cheney: We Done Him Wrong Top
How to explain the utterly cracked behavior of our former VP (and avoid kicking ourselves every waking moment for having somehow allowed this man to run the country for as long as he did). It turns out that Dick Cheney, the legendarily infallible, mythically redoubtable Dick Cheney has actually been the victim of a nagging yet little known malady which has made his life a living hell and inadvertently caused an entire rational world to look upon him with loathing and disgust. But due to the security provided him by the unflinchingly loyal Right Wing media, his Achilles' Heel has been unknown to anyone outside the impregnable corporate/fascisto/quasi-Republican/neo-conservative fortress. Until now. Dick Cheney is a sufferer of Malapropus Myasthenia. For, as it has recently been revealed, while he talks of "water boarding" with the self-assured relish and zealous commitment of Ernst Blofeld, the former Vice President has in fact been actually talking about: Smørgasbording. The poor misunderstood bastard. Apparently, those enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and various CIA black sites were not subjected to the internationally outlawed and abhorred technique involving inducing a feeling of drowning and subsequent, heart-stopping panic but rather to a buffet offering a wide variety of hot and cold meats, salads, hors d'oeuvres and those cute little squares of pumpernickel bread until they cried "uncle" or the terrorist equivalent ("Stop it, I'm full!"). How else to explain this man's consistently outré utterances? The way he's been going on lately one would have to think he, rather than the widespread assumption of his having been the puppet master who animated George "Mortimer Snerd" Bush, is himself being manipulated by an unseen hand. Is it God's. No. He wouldn't touch him with a ten foot Pole. It's the disease. Clearly, Dick's been a victim rather than a victimizer. He was just too proud, too much of a patriot to seek help. A malaprop (according to my trusty keyboard-worn Apple Dictionary Version 2.0.2) is a noun. But more than that even, it is "...the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often used with an unintentionally amusing effect". One would have to assume that in Vice President Cheney's case that meant an enemy combatant crapping his pants and sobbing a lot without offering up any information of value to his interrogators. And as anybody with an Eastern European heritage knows, too much herring can bring anyone to that point. While this revelation goes some distance to explain our XVP's kooky konduct, we must be vigilant, as his protectors will attempt to co-opt this revelation to perpetuate a host of other nefarious deeds. For example, when he or anyone else ever mentions "Walling", implying that they might in fact be referring to the relatively benign interrogation technique "Walking" (which, with the advent of this recent disclosure, they would prefer us to believe) they are in fact actually referring to the practice of smashing a prisoner against a wall until said prisoner, you know, cooperates. And/or fills the holes in the wall with their dislodged skin and muscle tissue, which were extant from previous "Wallings" (a practice known to interrogators as "Spackling"). So let's cut the old bastard some slack. Or at least a tiny slice of gherkin.
 
Full Video: Obama's White House Correspondents Dinner Speech Top
President Obama roasted the press, Republicans and members of his own administration in a very well-received speech on Saturday at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Among his targets were RNC chairman Michael Steele, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, his daughters, and GOP leader John Boehner. Obama ended the speech on a more serious note, saying that while journalism was going through troubling times, its "success as an industry is essential to our success as a democracy." He called it a season of "renewal and reinvention and that's what journalism is in the process of doing." Watch the whole speech below: Part 1: Part 2: Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
White House Correspondents' Dinner: Wanda Sykes Knocks Sarah Palin Over Abstinence Top
Wanda Sykes, the featured entertainer at tonight's White House Correspondents' Dinner , aimed one of her dirtier jokes at Governor Sarah Palin. Sykes noted that Palin had been scheduled to appear but then pulled out at the last minute. Sykes then remarked: "Somebody should tell her that's not really how you practice abstinence." Watch Obama's full speech here . WATCH ,center> Related: WATCH: Obama Pokes Fun At Michael Steele And His Love Of Street Slang Related: WATCH: Sykes Derides Sean Hannity For Not Honoring Pledge To Be Waterboarded, Also Takes Shot At Rush Limbaugh More on Video
 
Michael Roston: If you were Tweeting about the 'Nerd Prom,' you probably weren't there Top
Well it was a nice night, at least on television, where at home you could watch the White House Correspondents' Dinner and know that in fact you weren't really a part of it. Blogging about it afterward is a contrast to all the maniacs on Twitter, adding #nerdprom to their 140-character posts which was a sure sign that they weren't there; for instance, consider how many WHCD hash tags there were on Ashton Kutcher's Twitter page. The answer? ZERO! Off 2 the White house correspondents dinner. I'll shootnlive vid if something exciting happens. Maybe Obama will take the pee challenge lol If Ashton can't find too much excitement, we won't blame him. Thinking back to earlier White House Correspondents' Dinners, like this one , it's worth noting that this one wasn't really about anything. Wanda Sykes, who is a true queen of comedy, told a lot of really great, solid jokes. But there was no consistent theme running through her routine, nor was there any running joke through President Obama's remarks. After all, President Obama's administration is 110 days old; how could there possibly be any consistent storyline when we're not entirely sure what this presidency's story will be? (Other than the financial apocalypse that no one in this country can really get a handle on.) When everyday we're not really sure what the news is, it's not shocking that we have trouble finding the real news story from this event. Still, there are some things we learned tonight: Twitter is really for people who aren't at the big dance because it will take you three hours to find a tweet from someone who's actually there if you just search by hash tags. AP's Jennifer "Mc" Loven is bringing back the big hair and giant earrings. Michael Steele may in fact be blacker than President Obama. Robert Gibbs laughs harder at President Obama's jokes than anyone else. The farther away you get from the Beltway, the less you got Obama's joke about House Minority Leader John Boehner. President Obama is ultimately a softy for the press: "We count on you to help us make sense of a complex world and tell stories of our complex lives the way they happen." Another great line: "I look forward to working with you and answering to you." According to Wanda Sykes, blackness is now correlated with success - "Who voted for the mulatto?" A number of members of the press corps laughed a little too hard at the prospect of Vice President Biden getting kidnapped by terrorists. What was your favorite moment of the nerd prom? Answer our poll at True/Slant and tell us what you thought. More on Barack Obama
 
White House Correspondents Dinner: Wanda Sykes Knocks Limbaugh, Hannity Top
Wanda Sykes, the comic featured as tonight's entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, took a couple of shots at Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. She speculated that Limbaugh was actually the 20th hijacker on 9/11 and derided Hannity for not living up to his pledge to be waterboarded for the troops. Watch Obama's full speech here . WATCH Related: WATCH: Wanda Sykes Knocks Sarah Palin Over Abstinence Related: WATCH: Obama Pokes Fun At Michael Steele And His Love Of Street Slang More on Video
 
White House Correspondents' Dinner: Obama Pokes Fun At Michael Steele (VIDEO) Top
President Obama had some fun with RNC chairman Michael Steele at tonight's White House Correspondents Association dinner, noting Steele's penchant for using street slang and telling him for the last time, the GOP cannot have a bailout and they cannot cite Rush Limbaugh as a "troubled asset." WATCH Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Barack Obama
 

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