Wednesday, May 6, 2009

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David Henry Sterry: Lily Burana's All-American Odyssey: From Pole Dancer to Army Wife Top
Reading Lily Burana's work is like having very tasty martinis with a dear old friend who regales you saucy, sassy, savvy stories about her wild and crazy life. I got to know Ms. Burana's writing in her first memoir, Strip City , about her retirement tour as a stripper. So I was very curious how in God's name this ex-sex worker radical punk bohemian could end up holding in a 40s style below the knee dress, waving an American flag on the cover of her new book, I Love a Man in Uniform: a Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles . Ms. Burana's odyssey takes us from the extreme American world of the strip club, where all is seen, but little is revealed; into another extreme American world that is completely public, yet strangely hidden, the inner sanctum of the US Military. Both are fascinating microcosms of United States. Each has its own code of conduct, moral structure, and of course, dress code. It is in the minutia of these worlds, from g-strings to dress blues, that Lily Burana strips away the veils of these particularly American worlds, and reveals us to ourselves, for better, and for worse. Like any world, the military has its own language, and Ms. Burana displays her customary wit, wisdom and wordsmithing, in describing the myriad meanings of the word, "HOOAH." I laughed out loud, sitting alone in my room. But as the book moves on it deepens, when her brand-new husband is sent off to war, and she is left alone to build a life with someone she's not even sure she'll ever see again. The descriptions of how she controls her diet, the rituals she builds into her day, the almost fetishistic attachment to cell phone and computer, trying to gulp down the tiny little trickles of love from her man sweltering 6000 miles away in 120° hell all are riveting. And this is her skill ultimately, she makes you feel like you're there with her, going through it all. I felt the same way when she walked me into a strip club in the heartland of America in Strip City. The sardonic dark humor, the sharp culture references, from Beckett to the Dixie Chicks, the illuminating eye and ear she brings to bear on the world of the military are also turned inward. So we get to peer into the heart and mind of someone trying to make it through an extreme trial by fire. And she's not afraid to show us when she drops the ball, when she doesn't rise to the challenge of being HOOAH. It's fascinating to watch this character change right before your eyes. By the time we get to the end of this story, she is a different person than the cynical, skeptical, authority-disdaining ex-stripper she was at the close of Strip City. And by the time I got there with her, I understood why she married her Military Man. She made me see how their differences and their similarities matched up in just the right way, juiced by a certain inexplicable animal attraction. My only quibble is that the courtship and marriage went down a little too quickly. It seemed too easy. Maybe it was. But as a reader, I wasn't quite satisfied by how smoothly that all happened. That being said, this is a classic American story, told from a fresh new perspective, shot through with brutal honesty, laced with black comedy, and fueled by a crazy search for true love. If anyone knows Charlize Theron, tell her to read this book, because it's an Oscar nomination waiting to happen. In the end, after some very high highs, and some very low lows, Ms. Burana shows us how she has evolved into someone who can straddle that fine line between her new patriotic Army Wife self, and her tell-it-like-it-is Punk Protester Pole Dancer self. She's now shined her bright light on two billion-dollar industries that epitomize the good, the bad and the ugly of America: military and sex. Makes you wonder, what's next?
 
Amb. Mark Dybul: Mothers, Mosquitoes, and Millennium Development Goals Top
Progress is being made to save the lives of mothers and newborns around the world. Still, every minute, a woman dies of complications in pregnancy and childbirth, leaving her baby more likely to die within two years. Most of these deaths could be prevented. Join The Huffington Post and the Mothers Day Every Day campaign in the global movement to call upon world leaders to invest in health workers and strengthen health systems so that every day, everywhere in the world, all women and newborns have access to lifesaving care. Some of us in the United States might be preparing to celebrate Mother's Day with a backyard party and are worried about pesky mosquitoes after rains across the country. We should consider ourselves lucky to view mosquitoes as pests: in much of the world, mosquitoes cause malaria and malaria causes around 500 million illnesses and more than 1 million deaths each year. Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills a child every 30 seconds -- several by the time you finish reading this posting. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable because pregnancy reduces a woman's immunity to malaria, making her more susceptible to infection and increasing the risk of illness, severe anemia and death. For the child, maternal malaria increases the risk of stillbirth, premature delivery and low birth weight. And 80 percent of malaria deaths are among children under 5. Malaria is a major cause of maternal and child death. Malaria is preventable and treatable through simple interventions, such as sleeping under insecticide treated nets, identification of the infection and provision of effective combination medication and other measures that can be promoted during women's antenatal care visits. Reducing the spread of malaria will help us save the lives of mothers and their newborns -- and help to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The United States, and over 190 countries around the world, committed to the MDGs. These bold goals -- to eradicate extreme poverty, increase women's equality, reduce child mortality, increase primary education, and combat HIV/AIDS and malaria -- are being championed worldwide by political and civil society leaders. However, Millennium Development Goal 5 -- to reduce maternal mortality by 75% -- remains startlingly off track. The failure to make progress on maternal health is particularly disturbing because we know that healthy mothers are the key to achieving the other MDGs. As we prepare to celebrate Mother's day, we are reminded of what we all instinctively know to be true -- mothers are the heart of the family, the community and, therefore, of nations. There are data that confirm what we know to be true. Perhaps the most striking reality is that when a mother dies, newborns are up to 10 times more likely to die within two years than those whose mothers stay alive. Healthy mothers contribute to reducing poverty and growing economies. A women's unpaid household, care giving and farm work worldwide equals about a third of the world's Gross National Product. A mother's death lowers family income and productivity, reducing the chances that a family can be lifted out of poverty and affecting the entire community. And women's income is more likely than men's to go for food, education, medicine and other family needs. When mothers die, children are less likely to go to school and it is doubtful that girls have hope to improve their lives because they will be pulled away to fill their mothers' roles. If children are not educated, economic growth is further imperilled. Providing strong maternal health services promotes the overall health of mothers and their families, not only because they are more likely to spend money on health care for the family, but because women who use maternal health services are more likely to use other health services, such as HIV/AIDS testing and treatment. Women who use maternal health care services are also more likely to obtain vaccinations for themselves and their children, and to get information about malaria prevention. So back to those mosquitoes. . . something as simple as a $10 bed net can save the lives of mothers and children and be part of giving life, hope and opportunity to many of our global brothers and sisters. So think about what you can do to play your part. As we celebrate one thing everyone in the world has in common - we all had a mother - and we remember and celebrate our own mothers and their invaluable contributions to our lives, let's also reflect on the evidence: healthy mothers give birth to healthier children, families, communities, and nations. Join us in making Mothers Day Every Day. Check out the rest of our Countdown to Mother's Day series by clicking here
 
Jeffrey B. Swartz: Empowering Consumers, One Square at a Time Top
Last week, UK retailer Tesco added toilet paper to its list of more than 100 own-brand products bearing carbon labels. Toilet paper joins the likes of orange juice, laundry detergent and light bulbs as household items Tesco has carbon-calculated, and represents another step forward in the company's ongoing effort to carbon-label every Tesco product. I am sit down excited that Tesco -- a company committed to the notion of corporate responsibility, both in the sense of caring for the environment and in helping to better educate consumers -- has reinforced that commitment by way of carbon data on a toilet paper roll. Not everyone was as thrilled as me to hear the news. In fact, Tesco's toilet paper initiative earned them a bit of (pardon the pun) crap from some. Leo Hickman pondered, in an article in last Thursday's Guardian : The big question, though, is will this extra information motivate you to change your habits in any way? The next time you lurch towards the toilet-roll holder, will you choose to use a few sheets fewer to reduce your carbon footprint, no matter how infinitesimally small the saving might be? I can't speak for Tesco, but as the CEO of a company that introduced a similar product labeling concept in our Green Index™ two years ago, I can't help but feel that Mr. Hickman is missing the point. The idea behind eco-labeling is to help consumers make better informed purchasing decisions -- not to curtail their consumption habits. The concept is simple: if companies show consumers at the point of sale how to make smart choices, consumers will make smart choices. They'll buy Tesco's brand rather than squeezing the Charmin. Give consumers actionable data, and they make the right choice. Flush away the rhetoric, and consumers act in good conscience. Contrary to what many would have us believe, its not just politicians and celebrities who are up in arms about climate change. The data is actually quite clear -- normal, everyday consumers are concerned about the health of the environment, and they're willing to reward brands that help them act responsibly, in simple but effective ways. Carbon labeling can be a simple and effective way to empower consumers. Comparing products side by side is regular, normative consumer behavior. Adding to that comparison, simple and standard data about climate impact, along with price or ingredients or other performance attributes, invites the consumer to act in his or her self-interest. Brands that get it right -- price, performance, environmental thoughtfulness -- will earn the sale. In our industry, the government hasn't yet imposed requirements for disclosure about carbon impact. It is left to us, as competitors, to develop an industry-applicable "eco-index" for measuring products and companies. And while the progress is sometimes hard to discern, Timberland continues to work alongside more than 80 of our peers in the outdoor industry to try and build consensus for a label that would allow consumers to act at retail like the citizens they are. Two years after introducing our Green Index™, the pace remains... slow. But we're not giving up. Because we believe that consumers, given the right information, make the right choice. That their consumerism can be satisfying and thoughtful at the same time. And we believe that when there finally is some simple way to compare the products built by responsible brands and companies with the products built by less thoughtful competitors, the consumer will vote clearly and simply. And when they do, companies like Tesco will win. Jeffrey Swartz is the President and CEO of The Timberland Company. More information about Timberland's commitment to the environment can be found at www.earthkeeper.com . More on Green Living
 
Charles Lachman: The Other Grey Gardens Top
The recent HBO movie Grey Gardens has been justly praised for its depiction of the squalid lives of "Big Edie" Beale and her daughter, "Little Edie," the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The movie fleshes out the brilliant 1975 film made by the Maysles Brothers, generally regarded as one of the greatest documentaries ever made. But did you know there was another Grey Gardens? This mansion was called Hildene, and another great American family owned it -- the descendants of President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, built Hildene in 1903, in Manchester, Vermont. Robert Lincoln had served as secretary of war and minister to the Court of St. James. He made a fortune, as a lawyer and then as president of the Pullman Company. Hildene had twenty-four rooms. Lincoln called it his "ancestral home," but as his father had been born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky, people wondered what ancestry Robert Lincoln was referring to. But that was Robert Lincoln. Robert Lincoln and his wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln, lived in high style at Hildene. In its heyday, there was a permanent domestic staff of three maids, a butler, a valet, chef, chauffeur, groomsman, coach and a private secretary. Lincoln died in his bed at Hildene in 1926 at the age of eighty-two. Control of Hildene passed on to Robert's wife, and when she died, her daughter, Mamie Lincoln Isham. When Mamie died, it was bequeathed to Mary Lincoln Beckwith, known as Peggy, the great-granddaughter of President Lincoln. Peggy Beckwith was an odd loner whose devotion to animals, some would say, was so extreme it bordered on lunacy. Like the Beales of Grey Gardens , Peggy ran Hildene into the ground. She had a pet Angora rabbit she let roam Hildene to its heart's content. She gave two raccoons the full use of an entire bedroom on the second floor. The stench of urine and feces coming from the room was so overpowering, even for Peggy, she had to install a dozen deodorizer lights to deal with it. One day, a friend of the Lincoln family was invited to tea at Hildene. She could not believe the deterioration that had befallen Robert Lincoln's mansion. Raccoon claw marks were scratched all over the beautiful wood paneling. The carpeting was soiled. The visitor was taken aback when she saw a raccoon climbing the mantel. In the old days, a magnificent Aeolian pipe organ -- one of the largest in private possession in the world, with 1,000 individual pipes -- sent orchestral music resounding through Hildene. Now the network of pipes hidden within the walls of Hildene became a nesting place for a horde of mice. Peggy was a pack rat -- she kept everything. Piles of newspapers and magazines cluttered Hildene. Peggy was truly unconventional, but a lot less entertaining than the Beales of Grey Gardens . Like her great-grandmother, Mary Todd Lincoln, she had the temperament of a hellcat. Lincoln scholars loathed her because she refused to give them access to Hildene's treasure trove of Lincoln history. In 1963, at the height of the civil rights struggle, she bewildered the nation when she denounced Attorney General Robert Kennedy's policies on racial integration. "People and animals just don't like strangers," she explained. "When strangers are suddenly thrown together, people and animals alike bristle." Peggy Beckwith died of colon cancer in 1975, at age seventy-six. A private appraisal conducted at the time valued the mansion at just one hundred thousand dollars, shockingly low even by 1975 standards. Decades of neglect had finally caught up with Hildene. Peggy left Hildene to the Christian Science Church, which in 1978 sold it to a private organization, The Friends of Hildene. Fortunately, the Friends of Hildene have restored the estate to its former glory -- the same consideration and sense of history shown by the current owners of Grey Gardens, Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn. Charles Lachman is the author of the new book, The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family . He is the executive producer of Inside Edition.
 
Meredith Barnett: Mommy Madness Top
In honor of Mother's Day, an ode to my little one: I feel terrible pangs of guilt every time I leave him. When I went away for a week, I brought his picture with me and used it as a bookmark, cooing over it multiple times per day. He won't wear a raincoat, yet I hate to have him cooped up inside on gloomy days. So I follow him around the park carrying an umbrella as he splashes through puddles and tries to eat the dirt. His name is Richie. I call him Richie Boo, Richie Bear, Baby Bear, The Baby, Boobala, and Boo Boo. In a baby voice. In the elevator. In front of the neighbors. I wasn't going to let him sleep with me, but he's so cute and cuddly that I often put him in the bed when he cries. When Richie had to get stitches and had part of his head shaved, some little girls we passed on the street started laughing and pointing at him. He didn't notice, but I almost killed them. His daycare has a webcam. It's more addictive than Facebook. Richie can be a bit hyperactive at times, so I bought him all-natural calming treats infused with chamomile and lavender. The brand is called Mellow Mut. Richie is six month old puppy. And that makes me...Richie's Mommy. I struggled with the term. But in the same way that I correct people when they call his "crate" a "cage," "mommy" seems more humane (human?) than "owner," especially when -- let's face it -- he is the boss of me. (I loved the pictures of Obama being dragged along by Bo at the first puppy's official White House unveiling. Clearly, the leader of the free world answers to a canine just like I do.) I am also everything I swore to my friends and myself that I wouldn't be. I am one of those people . Oh! I have my limits. No kisses on the lips. (Just the nose.) No unnecessary clothing. (Unless someone else gives it to him.) Let me stop myself now. Consumer spending on pets is thought to be recession-proof. In fact, the American Pet Products Association (APPA) estimates that $45.4 billion will be spent on pets in the U.S. in 2009 (compared to $43.2 billion in 2008 and $41.2 billion in 2009). It seems that as we sacrifice cars, vacations, and new spring wardrobes, we still find space in the budget for Spot. My personal experience echoes the trend: I got Richie right around the time when I took a recession-induced step back from my own business. Suddenly, I had time to on my hands. Fortunately, my fear of boredom (a paralyzing fear for the tens of thousands of type A's like me who are suddenly out of work) was quickly replaced with The Puppy Project. Training. Socializing. Feeding. Belly rubbing. Walking. Potty. Potty. Potty. Really, it's a full time job! Yes, dogs are a lot of work , as anyone will remind you whenever the subject comes up. But they give back in spades with cuddliness, loyalty, companionship and never ending cheer. 63 percent of U.S. households own pets, and it's no surprise that Marley & Me was a bestseller. Despite the hopeless job market, I don't feel down. The APPA says that pets have been proven to help reduce stress and depression. They can even lower blood pressure. As for me, I've been so busy with Richie that I haven't had time for the blues. In between informational interviews and emailing resumes, I've got a puppy to walk! When I walk Richie through the neighborhood, take him to the park or hang out with him at daycare (it's so much fun to watch him play with the other puppies -- why would I want to leave?), there are countless other people just like me -- working age, no kids in sight -- hanging with their dogs like they've got all the time in the world. "Who are they?" I wondered. "Oh, they're all unemployed," the doggy daycare owner told me. Back in my mother's day, dogs were named Buddy, Skippy and Sparky. Richie's friends are Madelyn, Sydney, Ollie, Greta, Lucy, Chloe, Bella, Hailey and Brooklyn. We feed them vitamin-enriched diets, bring them on trips, and get professional portraits taken. In a time when we're supposed to be cutting back, spending on our pets gives us the same satisfaction as shopping for ourselves, yet it can somehow be justified. True, the designer clothing, monogrammed dinnerware, and even doggie yoga classes can get a little excessive. But I don't care to judge -- I don't have time! I've gotta go walk Richie.
 
Helene Pavlov: What to Look for When You Need Orthopedic Imaging Top
Orthopedic medical imaging, including Magnetic Resonance (MR), Computed Tomography (CT), Ultrasound (US), Nuclear Medicine (NM), interventional musculoskeletal and spinal procedures in addition to traditional X-ray examinations, can be daunting for older patients and those with decreased mobility. Older individuals or those with mobility limitations should seek an imaging provider who understands their special needs and concerns and can help ensure that the experience, from registration to discharge, flows easily. The imaging center should be familiar with the needs of older patients and patients with mobility limitations and have established protocols for image acquisition that address the special needs of these patients and ensures that they are comfortable. In addition, the team of radiologists and technologists should be familiar with specific diagnosis that may be responsible for their aches, pains and limited range of motion. It is recommended that elderly patients and their caregivers consider the following: - Verify that the department's Radiologists, the physicians supervising the image acquisition and interpreting the images, have specific sub-specialized training for the imaging examination being requested. - Ideally, the imaging department or center should be dedicated to patients with similar conditions (e.g., orthopedics, oncology, etc.) so the requested examination is "routine" and performed often. At these dedicated centers, the personnel are usually experienced in positioning patients with decreased range of motion in order to acquire the best image. - Ensure that the provider has patient liaisons that can help to facilitate the process, help with putting on an examination gown, and provide knowledgeable answers to questions or concerns. - Inquire about the availability of footstools, handrails/grips and other devices to steady patients while standing for weight bearing images. - Inquire about wheelchair availability. - Inquire about parking access and accommodations. - Ask if higher chairs are available in waiting areas which are more comfortable for patients with hip and back conditions. - Ask if there are handicap accessible bathrooms and/or toilets with elevated seats for those with hip and back limitations. - Inquire if imaging is digitally acquired and can be distributed to the referring physician using a PACS system. This process eliminates the need to hand carry Xrays to the doctor's office. If copies of digital images are required, the images are burned onto a CD, which is much easier to transport. - If not routinely provided, ask for padding on the X-ray and CT tables. - Diagnostic accuracy can be enhanced if the technologist obtains information as to prior surgery or any internal fixation devices that may be present. Individuals with surgical screws, nails, pins and/or total joints may require special imaging protocols. This information may negate the need for repeat examinations. If the technologist does not inquire, volunteer the information. - Inquire about the image retake rate. A facility focused on specific conditions typically has fewer image retakes, which means less time in radiology and less ionizing radiation. Paying attention to the above tips will help older individuals and patients with limited mobility make a more educated choice in their imaging provider.
 
Chrysler Offering Up To $6,000 In Incentives On 2009 Cars Top
NEW YORK — Chrysler LLC said Wednesday it is offering up to $6,000 worth of incentives on its 2009 vehicles as it races to emerge from bankruptcy protection and counter a prolonged U.S. sales slump. The automaker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week and is working to allay consumer anxieties about buying its cars given uncertainty over its future. Chrysler is trying to complete a sale to Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA and hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in 30 to 60 days. All of its factories have since been idled. Chrysler said the incentives, which begin on Wednesday, are aimed at reducing the bottom-line price of the car. They include $4,000 cash, $1,000 for current Chrysler vehicle owners, and up to $1,000 for financing through a participating credit union. The incentives come off prices negotiated with a dealer. They replace employee pricing plus rebates and zero percent financing. Chrysler's sales are down 46 percent for the first four months of the year. The automaker has been subsisting on $4 billion in government loans since the start of the year. It filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday after a handful of its creditors refused to accept a government-brokered deal that would have reduced the automaker's secured debt. On Wednesday, the judge overseeing Chrysler's bankruptcy proceedings ruled the automaker can start taking steps toward selling most of its assets to Fiat. The tie-up would add smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to Chrysler's lineup, give it Fiat technology and open new markets for Chrysler vehicles. But even if the sale is approved, Fiat vehicles would not go on sale in the U.S. for another 18 months. Until then, the automaker will have to survive on revenue from its existing lineup, which remains heavily skewed toward trucks and sport utility vehicles. The new incentives are Chrysler's latest push to keep customers coming into its showrooms. Over the weekend, the company launched a new advertising campaign, which included full-page ads in newspapers across the country that proclaimed it is "building a new car company." Many in the industry have said consumers would be reluctant to buy a car from an automaker in bankruptcy protection because of fears that their warranties would not be honored if the company goes out of business. Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of the auto Web site Edmunds.com, said an incentive program that offers enough of a deal might help allay consumers' concerns about Chrysler's future. "Consumers are under distress too," he said. "If a car is a really great deal, people are going to put aside the risk." Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said last week that Chrysler warranties would be backed by the U.S. government. "Maybe some people have some worries about the longevity of the company," said Jim Press, Chrysler's vice chairman and president, in a conference call with reporters last week. "Well, heck, now the president of the United States, the U.S. government, is not only going to back our warranties, they're going to be an investor in forming our new company." __ AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed from Detroit.
 
Josh Silver: Internet Overcharging: The Next Net Neutrality Battle Top
Last month, the nation's No.2 cable company Time Warner Cable announced plans to test a new billing system known as "metering" that charges Internet customers depending on how much they download. Customers who exceed their limit--say, by viewing online videos--would face steep penalties on top of their subscription rate. Time Warner Cable's usage penalty would take the unlimited service we enjoy today (albeit slow compared to other nations), and make Internet more like cell phones, where you get overcharged by companies making record profits. It is the latest version of the Net Neutrality debate: should the companies that deliver Internet be allowed to block it, slow it down, or in this case, overcharge for it? Here's why this issue threatens the Internet as you know it: Cable companies Time Warner and Comcast, and phone giants AT&T and Verizon sell the vast majority of high-speed Internet service in the United States. Phone and cable companies like these have no other competition in 97% of US markets, thanks to corrupt policies passed by the Bush Administration at the companies' behest. These duopolies are betting on the future of their "triple-play" phone-Internet-TV service, so that you'll pay them more than $100 per month and they can keep earning record profits. They know that if you start downloading video from online innovators like Hulu.com and Roku.com, eventually you won't need their expensive, advertising-ridden television service. The answer? Jack up the cost of downloading video, and once again eliminate the competition. This is exhibit A for when we need government to establish and enforce consumer protections; the same brand of policies we needed to prevent the financial meltdown or protect New Orleans. Fortunately, Time Warner Cable's pricing scam was met by fierce opposition from consumers, public interest groups and members of Congress. Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) spoke out against the scheme, and Time Warner Cable scuttled the plan in four of the five test cities. Beaumont, Texas, was the city left as the lone petri dish, and Congressman Massa has promised legislation to curb the price-gouging. Yesterday, Rep. Massa told the Philadelphia Inquirer he is looking for a Republican co-sponsor for the bill: "This is bigger than a college kid surfing the Internet. Anything that limits access to the basic Internet is a threat to the economy." Time Warner Cable is regrouping, and says it is planning a " customer education process " to teach the public that high prices and Internet caps are good for us. And while the company tries to get its messaging right, other phone and cable companies are dipping a toe in the metering pool. AT&T is already testing a billing scheme that caps Internet use, and other Internet service providers are preparing to do the same. Comcast is billing for over-usage, but they are using a cap that is much higher than Time Warner, and more reasonable. There are a host of other reasons why we should be worried about Internet service providers' march toward overcharging for high usage: First is journalism. We continue to learn about Madonna's adoption problems and Ms. California's old photos, but if you want substance in your news, you'll have to look beyond corporate media's steady stream of sensationalism, celebrity gossip and product placement. We need fast, neutral, affordable Internet that can deliver video, audio and other multimedia to enable efficient production and distribution of journalism and other educational content. Another is access. Today, some 40 percent of American homes do not have high-speed Internet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And high-speed Internet access in the US is already far more costly and slower than in 21 other developed countries. Time Warner's pricing plans would put the Internet even further out of reach for tens of millions of Americans. Time Warner Cable and other Internet providers say they need to penalize users to slow down an impending "Internet brownout"--a day when we run out of bandwidth. That bandwidth doomsday, however, isn't about to happen anytime soon. Even one of Time Warner Cable's own executives offers evidence that bandwidth scarcity is a ruse: "Cable is like the Federal Reserve of bandwidth...we can practically print the stuff!" said Mike LaJoie, the company's chief technology officer. LaJoie has also said that supplying consumers with more bandwidth is "basically free" for his company. As Phillip Dampier, who runs the Web site StoptheCap.com, put it: "[The cable companies] still think they're right: the problem isn't draconian usage caps, it is that people weren't properly conditioned to accept them first...the OPEC of the Internet will be back by the fall, probably with almost the identical plan they 'shelved' yesterday." We can and should celebrate last month's victory. Public pressure foiled cable's plan for now, but Tim Warner Cable - and their telco friends - will soon be back. It's up to us and our elected officials to stop them .
 
GOP Whacks Obama On Gitmo, Michael Bay Style (VIDEO) Top
Over the past few days Republicans in Congress have begun a sustained attack on the President for pursuing a Guantanamo Bay policy that they say would result in a scenario tantamount to terrorists being released in the United States. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans put out a mock movie preview titled, "Guantanamo Bay Terrorists: Coming To A Neighborhood Near You?" The Michael Bay-esque clip seems designed to suggest that detainees at the Cuba-based facility will be moving in next door once the prison is closed -- per the Obama administration's order. "Over the past two weeks, I and others have asked the Attorney General to provide the American people with the assurance that closing Guantanamo will keep the American people as safe as Guantanamo has. We've asked a series of questions. So far, these questions have gone unanswered," read a separate statement from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The whole thing is a bit absurd, not least because it has been ruled that these detainees have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. civilian court. Politically, the argument is a loser. In an interview, prominent GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio told Greg Sargent that such a line of attack risks making the party look "out of touch and irrelevant." Mainly, however, the proposition that Obama is making the country less safe by potentially transferring Guantanamo detainees to domestic locations is an indictment, in a way, of those U.S. security facilities. Some of these centers, after all, hold mass murderers, serial killers and other military prisoners. Either way, the line of attack against Obama is picking up some steam, in part because congressional Democrats -- including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- are withholding comment on the policy until a report on detention practices is released in July. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about the topic during Wednesday's briefing and this is what he had to say: "The review that the president ordered at the very beginning of this administration is ongoing. I know the Justice Department and many players throughout the White House are involved daily on this issue," he said. "There have been discussions [with Republicans] but I will check exactly at what level. But the president and his team are working the review and again there are many decisions that have to be made over the course of the year long period outline [at the beginning of his presidency]." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on GOP
 
Severe Storm Front Settles Over South, Possible Tornadoes And Flooding Fears Top
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A storm front with severe weather settled across the South on Wednesday with heavy rains, a possible tornado in Alabama and damage to about 100 homes throughout the region. Strong winds downed trees onto mobile homes and businesses in Arkansas and several people suffered broken bones. Storm debris blocked roads and damaged houses in north Mississippi, and tornado warning sirens interrupted students taking final exams at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Power was knocked out to thousands of homes and businesses. Forecasters said winds with gusts estimated at 70 mph knocked down trees and damaged homes in Tuscaloosa County, and a funnel cloud was reported near Hamilton in west Alabama. The heavy rains soaked grounds already saturated by weekend rains, raising flooding fears. Parts of the region were under a flood watch or warning, and the nation's largest utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, released water through its dams to prepare for the Mississippi River's expected crest Sunday. On Tuesday night, six tornadoes touched down in North Carolina, causing three minor injuries and damage to at least a dozen homes. National Weather Service forecasters said the severe storms could remain through Friday. "As that moves east, the conditions will become more and more favorable for another round of storms," said Ryan Ellis of the service's Raleigh bureau. "We are looking at unsettled weather all the way through to the weekend." In the Charlotte area, firefighters made at least 50 water rescues because of flash flooding, but no injuries were reported. Some areas across the region anticipated up to two inches of rain. Golf ball-sized hail was reported in parts of Arkansas. At the central Alabama-Mississippi border, a campground worker said stiff winds and heavy rains blew through the area, but no one was hurt. "For a lot of people it was scary enough that they got in the bathhouse," said Margaret Simmons, a gate attendant at the Pickensville Campground. "Our lights are out and our phones and television went out, but we're OK." ___ Associated Press writer Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report. More on Extreme Weather
 
Obama Buchenwald Visit Planned For June: Spiegel Top
President Obama will visit Buchenwald concentration camp in Dresden this summer, Spiegel Online is reporting. Barack Obama's planned trip to Germany in June is not going to be an official state visit. German diplomatic sources told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the US president is planning a private trip in which he will go on a personal search to places of importance for his family history. President Obama's great-uncle, Charlie Payne, served in the 89th Infantry Division during World War II and took part in the camp's liberation in 1945. Last memorial day, Obama mistakenly told a New Mexico crowd his great uncle had participated in the liberation of Auschwitz. "I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps... And the story in my family is that when he came home, he just went into the attic, and he didn't leave the house for six months. All right? Now, obviously something had affected him deeply, but at the time, there just weren't the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.'" As part of the Europe trip, the president is also set to participate in the commemoration the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy in France on June 6, as well as attend a Group of Eight summit in Italy. More on Barack Obama
 
Pakistan's 'Existential Threat' Comes From Within: CFR Interview Top
Interviewee: Bruce O. Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor Bruce O. Riedel, a retired CIA expert on South Asia, who chaired a special interagency committee to develop President Obama's policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, says "the situation remains dire" in the region, and particularly in Pakistan. He says "there is a real possibility of a jihadist state emerging in Pakistan sometime in the future. And that has to be one of the worst nightmares American foreign policy could have to deal with." He says it is crucial for Congress to pass the five-year $7.5 billion economic aid package for Pakistan without too many conditions on the bill, so that "we can send a signal to Pakistan that we're in this for the long haul and that it's not a conditions-based relationship." When we talked in January after Richard Holbrooke was appointed special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan you were rather gloomy on the outlook there. You said he was inheriting a "dim and dismal" situation. You then chaired a special committee to draw up policy for that region. Is the situation now any better? The press reports seem to portray a picture of continuing violence and disorder. I think the situation remains dire. In Pakistan, in particular, it's deteriorating. In Afghanistan, as President [Barack Obama] has said, we're not winning. It's not a lost war, but it's not going in the right direction. In Pakistan, we face a growing coalescence of jihadist militant groups, not just in the tribal areas, but in the Punjab and in the major cities including Karachi. This is threatening the very survival of the Pakistani state as we have known it. It is not inevitable and it is not imminent, but there is a real possibility of a jihadist state emerging in Pakistan sometime in the future. And that has to be one of the worst nightmares American foreign policy could have to deal with. You used the expression when we spoke that this was the "jihadist Frankenstein monster that was created by the Pakistan army and the Pakistan intelligence service." Is there any sign that they're realizing what they've created and willing to do something about it? There are a few tentative signs, but it is far from clear that they acknowledge that the existential threat to Pakistan's freedoms comes from within. I think the army remains focused on the external threat posed by India. Of course, here the "Frankenstein" [monster] is a self-fulfilling prophecy because extremist groups, in this case Lashkar-e-Taiba [Army of the Righteous], attacked India last November in Mumbai. The tension between New Delhi and Islamabad is back to a very high level. In that sense, the "Frankenstein" [monster creates] the conditions for the army to be focused on India. The post-Mumbai era of significant tension between India and Pakistan has not come to a close yet. And there is a serious risk of another Mumbai-style attack, which would ratchet up tensions and make the Pakistani army even more determined to keep 80 percent of its manpower focused on India rather than on the threat posed by the internal jihadist problem. Continue reading... Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Pakistan
 
Palestinians Try To Sell Ancient Text On Black Market Top
JERUSALEM — Undercover Israeli officers foiled an attempt by two Palestinian men to sell an ancient, valuable papyrus document on the black market, police said Wednesday. The men were arrested at a Jerusalem hotel Tuesday after a sting operation lasting several weeks, police said. The 1,900-year-old Hebrew document, previously unknown and valued at millions of dollars, was rescued, and police showed it to reporters. It was unclear where the two men obtained it, police and archaeologists said. Similar documents have been found in caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, where they have been preserved over the centuries by the dry climate, they said. The most famous of those are the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient holy books and apocalyptic treatises thought to have been collected by an ascetic Jewish sect two millennia ago. The document, six inches by six inches (15 centimeters by 15 centimeters), contains 15 lines of Hebrew characters of a type also used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but is a legal text apparently unrelated to the more famous scrolls. In this document, a widow named Miriam, daughter of Yaakov, legally transfers property to her late husband's brother, said Amir Ganor, an archaeologist with the government department entrusted with fighting antiquities theft. Dated to the 2nd century A.D., it is unique because it includes the names of Jewish villages and a date _ "four years from the destruction of the house of Israel." Ganor said that was likely an allusion to a Jewish revolt put down violently by Rome around 135 A.D. Ganor said scholars are "95 percent sure" the document is genuine, but it will be tested to make sure it is not a fake like the ones that surface periodically on the lucrative market in Holy Land antiquities. "Only few scrolls like this were found in Israel and all of the Middle East, and we hope that the historic situation of discovering this scroll will be helpful to the research about the period," Ganor said. The suspects, ages 48 and 60, are from the West Bank town of Beit Sahour, near Jerusalem, police said. After receiving information on the men and tracking them for several weeks, police caught the two at a Jerusalem hotel where they had arranged to sell the document, Superintendent Eli Cohen said. "They came to a place we chose, and they were arrested there," Cohen said, while refusing to reveal whether police agents posed as buyers. They are suspected of violating Israeli antiquities laws by illegally possessing and trafficking in archaeological artifacts and could face several years in prison if convicted. Police are trying to determine how the document fell into their hands. If authentic, the document could help scholars learn important details about Jewish life two millennia ago, said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. "It could be important to understanding everything from the geography, the names of people, the type of contracts they used, and the status of women, of weddings and relationships between families," he said. Similar documents belonging to a woman named Bavta, who lived around the same time, were found in the 1950s by the famed Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, Maeir said, and this one could "fit in nicely" with those findings. More on Israel
 
Leeat Granek, PhD: Mother's Day for the Motherless Top
Mother's Day was always a joyful occasion in our home. When I was younger I spent weeks preparing for the big day. I hung big colorful signs on the bathroom mirror. I strung multicolored balloons across the living room and kitchen walls. I presented my mother with sparkly (in retrospect awful!) homemade gifts that I spent hours making. I beamed with unabashed pride when my mother gushed with gratitude. "This is the best present I ever got!!!" she would exclaim every single year. And I would believe her, even though she gave my bothers the exact same answer. Oddly, they believed her too. My mother was that kind of woman. She had enough love in her to make you feel like the most prized, most wonderful, most precious person on earth. When I got older, the presents were more elegant. A day at the theater, the ballet, or a shopping spree. I would pick her up, pick out the outfits for her to try on, and pick up the check at lunch. They were long, leisurely, blissful days filled with good food, lots of laughter, and a feeling of freedom and carelessness. My mother was my best friend and we could spend hours together without ever getting bored or tired of each other. In fact, there was no one I wanted to spend time with more, and as my mother used to tell me over and over again, the feeling was mutual. When my mother died of breast cancer three years ago after living with the disease for two decades, my heart ripped apart. I couldn't get around the block, or ride two subway stops without sobbing. I was only 25, and she was my best friend. I did not know how to live a life without her. The pain of losing her nearly killed me. Mother's Day was particularly hellish. I spent the first one in bed. Literally. All day. I couldn't face the terrible motherless world I suddenly found myself in and decided to forgo it completely by staying under the covers. The following Mother's Day was a bit easier, but it never really is pain-free. In fact, calling it a "day" is ridiculous. It's really more like a month when you consider the relentless advertising on TV, in store windows, in magazines, in newspapers, and on the radio selling stuff to "give mom." I know it's materialistic and corporate, but it doesn't make it sting any less. Marketers are brilliant that way. They target our emotional vulnerabilities and it's always a bull's eye. No matter how you feel about your mom -- guilty, joyful, exasperated, loving, mournful -- you also feel something else when you see or hear these ads. When your mother isn't alive, that 'something else' is misery. Mother's Day is supposed to be about appreciating your mom. And this is the ultimate irony. For the motherless, every day is Mother's Day. We appreciate the people we love most in the world when they are gone. And when you are mourning a loss -- even years after the person has died -- that appreciation, and longing, and sorrow for all that you are missing, and all that you should have said to them is permanent. There is never any resolution. They are gone and they are never coming back. I envy all of you out there who get to celebrate Mother's Day this year. No matter what kind of mom you have, having one to celebrate at all is in itself a precious gift. Enjoy it. Take it from me, it's temporary.
 
Police Kill Suspect In 30 Robberies After He Hits Gas Station (VIDEO) Top
A Chicago Police detective shot and killed a man suspected in nearly 30 armed robberies after he robbed a Marathon gas station in Jefferson Park Wednesday morning. The police detective and an FBI agent were staking out the Northwest Side gas station, which they thought fit the profile of stores the suspect targeted, as part of the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force, said Roderick Drew, director of news affairs for the Chicago Police Department. Drew said that the detective and an FBI agent approached the store as the suspect was leaving it with a gun in his hand. The officers identified themselves and then the detective shot the suspect after he pointed his gun at the officers, Drew said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The shooting take place around 7 a.m. at the gas station near the intersection of Montrose Avenue and Forest Preserve Drive. At 8:30 a.m. police dogs and their handlers searched the Ridgemoor County Club for a second suspect who was thought to be a getaway driver, WGN 9 reported . That search was called off after evidence at the scene suggested the man was working alone, Drew said. Drew denied a report that a second suspect had been arrested around 10 a.m. The Sun-Times reported that EMS responded to a call but that no one was hospitalized. Police have not yet released the suspect's name. Watch NBC Chicago's Sky Cam coverage of the scene:
 
Ian Welsh: Why Central Bank Inflation Targeting Didn't Work Top
Martin Wolf , one of the best economics commenters, notes that the widespread idea that central banks, over the past 30 years, had found the holy grail of policy in inflation targeting, was clearly wrong . That's good as far as it goes, and he's right. But it's worth taking farther--the problems with inflation targeting included the definition of inflation, the inflation target and the uncontrolled flow of money Inflation as measured during this period did not take into account asset bubbles. Wolf almost notices this, when he notes that the Fed didn't see it as its job to stop asset bubbles. But he doesn't go quite far enough: asset price increases are a type of inflation. If it costs more to buy a dollar of future income, a house, or a share in a company, that's inflation. To manage inflation properly, as a central bank, requires first to know what inflation is, and that means adding asset inflation into an inflation index. This would be the opposite of the current " core inflation " index, which is non-asset inflation minus food and energy prices, ostensibly to remove volatility (which is not the way to remove volatility, the way to remove volatility is to use a moving average.) Of course, in the real world, increases in fuel prices and energy prices are, well, inflation. Add in credit price increases as well, and you'd have a measure which actually measures inflation. Target that, and you'd be targeting something real. The second issue is simpler, the inflation target was too low. It seems like inflation being low is nothing but good, but in fact the lower it is, the more sectors of the economy are actually in deflation at any given time. If inflation is 5% and consumer goods, say, are 4% less than that, they aren't in deflation. If inflation is at 3% and consumer goods are at 4% less, they're at -1% and are deflating. As the last little while (and the Great Depression) have taught us, deflation is not a good thing, and yet for a long time large parts of the economy have been in and out of deflation fairly constantly. In addition, a higher rate of inflation discounts past economic activity, which isn't an entirely bad thing, as it means people have to be agressive with their money. In a world where fraud and financial speculation wasn't the best way to make returns, that is a good thing. (In our world, perhaps not, admittedly.) Finally, open financial flows turn bank policies into something of a joke. As Wolf himself notes, foreign central bank independence from the Fed was largely chimerical: other central banks had to lower interest rates along with the Fed, and if they didn't, then hot money would pour in from the US, or for that matter, from Japan, which was running its interest at zero or near zero for much of the past 20 years. As a result, the effective interest rate was whatever the lowest interest rate of a large credible central bank with relatively stable currency was. (If you're borrowing from a country with an unstable currency, and the currency appreciates suddenly, your apparent low interest rate can turn into a trap which costs you greatly.) This meant that even if central banks wanted money to be expensive, for those people and corprorations able to borrow from foreign sources, it wasn't, and the asset bubbles, inflation and so on which came from that came even if the bank was trying to be conservative. Real independent monetary policy is greatly damaged by free money flows between countries, which is even before you get to its damaging effect on real free trade and comparative advantage . And old management maxim is that you get what you measure. Central banks weren't measuring all inflation, and so they weren't managing asset inflation, which is one main reason we got asset bubbles. Add to that that even where they were targetting inflation, they were targetting it at too low a level and that international money flows made it difficult to run an independent bank policy even in countries which might have wanted to, and you had a very flawed central banking system in virtually every country in the world. So it's not clear to me that inflation targeting is necessarily a bad policy. It seems more likely that it might have been a good policy, implemented in a very bad way. It disciplined the small actors in the economy, small businesses and ordinary workers--restricting their wages and their goods inflation, while allowing rampant inflation in securities and real-estate and (in the 90s) stocks. The people who weren't disciplined, then, drove a truck through the hole created and caused a disaster. The lesson isn't "we shouldn't target inflation", the lesson is "we need to target all inflation" not just inflation which effects some people. More on The Fed
 
Rep. Linda Sanchez: Protecting Victims, Preserving Freedoms Top
If you were walking down the street and saw someone harassing a child, would you just walk by and look the other way? If that person was telling the child the world would be better off if they just killed themselves, would you ignore it? This is what is happening on the internet except it is more painful, and can be more abusive because of the faceless anonymity the web provides. Bullies are using technology in ways we could not have imagined only years ago, and studies show that outdated and erroneous beliefs that bullying is "harmless" downplay its true seriousness. Laws criminalize similar behavior when it takes place in person, but not online. In fact, we have laws criminalizing stalking, sexual harassment, identity theft and more when it takes place in person and online. All of these actions have consequences. But there is one serious online offense that has no penalty -- cyberbullying. Do we not think it is as serious because it takes place in cyberspace and not face to face? Misssouri already has a law that criminalizes cyberbullying, but cyberbullying isn't just happening in one state. It's happening everywhere and it follows kids home -- occurring at any hour of the day or night. Cyberbullying is hurtful enough and affecting kids enough that its victims have turned to suicide or violence just to make it stop. Should we just ignore it? Pass it off as simple child's play? When so-called child's play turns hostile and a child becomes a victim, it is time to act. Victims of cyberbullying do not choose to participate. Rather than build character, bullying can cause children to become anxious, fearful, unhappy, and even cause them to be physically sick. A young person exposed to repeated, severe and hostile bullying online is deserving of protections because bullying puts them at risk for depression and suicide. According to a study by the United States Secret Service, being bullied is a risk factor for perpetrators of school violence, such as the kind that was unleashed with tragic results at Columbine High School in Colorado. When so-called free speech leads to bullies having free-reign to threaten kids, it is time to act. The Supreme Court recognizes that in some instances words can be harmful. For example, you cannot falsely yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater. If you say it even once you can be held liable. Yet, you can repeatedly emotionally abuse someone with words, pictures, and false impressions online and get away scot-free. The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would criminalize bullying like this when perpetrators hide behind the emboldening anonymity of the web. Severe online bullying must have consequences. Current Supreme Court jurisprudence already recognizes some reasonable regulation of speech is consistent with the First Amendment. For example, the Court has found that true threats, commercial speech, slander, and libel can be reasonably restricted consistent with the Constitution. Slander and libel law provide for different standards when the injured party is a public official or private person, and nothing in the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act attempts to override that principle. Instead, the Act would give judges and juries discretion to recognize the difference between an annoying chain email, a righteously angry political blog post, or a miffed text to an ex-boyfriend and serious, repeated, hostile communications made with the intent to harm. I consulted with a variety of experts and law professors in crafting this bill to preserve our American freedom of speech and protect victims of cyberbullying. Congress has no interest in censoring speech and it will not do so if it passes this bill. Put simply, this legislation would be used as a tool for a judge and jury to determine whether there is significant evidence to prove that a person "cyberbullied" another. That is: did they have the required intent, did they use electronic means of communication, and was the communication severe, hostile, and repeated. So -- bloggers, emailers, texters, spiteful exes, and those who have blogged against this bill have no fear - your words are still protected under the same American values. But the internet should not be the last refuge of scoundrels who use its anonymity to abuse, harass, and bully our children. Congresswoman Linda T. Sánchez represents the 39th Congressional District of California.
 
Norb Vonnegut: Top Ten Ways to Spot Financial Fraud Top
I just re-read Harry Markopolis' 2005 submission to the SEC. With a fisherman's precision, he guts Bernie Madoff. He slits the Ponzi scheme down the center and lays bare the innards. Blecch. His language is crisp. The numbers are easy to follow. And as Markopolis fillets "split-strike conversion" strategies, there are no metaphorical references to scales, roe, or other kinds of fish gak. There's only the damning evidence of his exposé. Few of us share Markopolis' expertise. With his special skills--an insider's knowledge of puts, calls, and OTC derivatives--he first smelled the Madoff rot in 1999. It makes me wonder: How can the rest of us avoid con artists? With this question in mind, I offer the "Top Ten Ways to Spot Financial Fraud." The list won't make Letterman. But the purpose isn't to be funny. It's to help you identify the bad guys through "touch and feel" rather than in-depth knowledge of the capital markets. These observations stem from my career in wealth management. I also conducted extensive research while writing my novel, Top Producer. The ten are by no means a fail-safe mechanism for detecting fraud. But review the list, and you'll ask the right questions. 1. Absolute Control Over Financial Statements Con artists must control the flow of financial information. Otherwise, Madoff and his ilk could never lure victims with the promise of 12 percent returns, year in, year out. They could never hide accounts, empty of all value. Custodial banks--State Street or The Bank of New York Mellon--make it possible to separate the reporting function from money management. As a wealth adviser, I arranged for clients to receive monthly statements from custodians. These reports served as a check and balance to the financial statements sent by money managers. Two sets of financial statements are atypical. You'll encounter resistance from legitimate money managers, particularly those who commingle assets like hedge funds. But ask anyway. Your bargaining position is strong. Money managers are fighting to keep their clients. See my post, Beating Bernie, for more details. 2. "Black Box" Money Management "It's proprietary." "It's complicated." Those two responses are siren calls to grab your wallet and run. If you can't explain a money manager's strategy--in simple, jargon-free language--don't make the investment. 3. Uniformly Happy Clients Huh? Where there's money, there's conflict. I founded Acrimoney.com to pose solutions to the inevitable friction that accompanies wealth management. Not everybody is a happy camper. The reason is simple. Investment returns are erratic. Volatility leads to angst, which leads to conflict between adviser and client. Prior to Thursday, December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff's clients were all happy. No wonder. Madoff seldom showed monthly losses. There were only seven, for example, in the 14.5 years leading up to Markopolis' 2005 testimony. 4. Philanthropic Largesse There's nothing like large donations to buy respectability. Crooks find prospects on the rubber chicken circuit. Did you meet your money manager at a charity function? 5. Studio 54 Sales Pitch There's an air of exclusivity to financial frauds. Ponzi artists are masters of the anti-pitch. They understand our aversion to the word, "No." They understand the humiliation of waiting in line while others enter the club. "We don't accept just anybody's money." 6. Big Lifestyles Need I say more? What is it about yachts? Madoff and alleged Ponzi artist, Allen Stanford, owned huge luxury yachts. Even Charles Ponzi, the crown prince of fraud, fantasized about ships. His dream was to buy a destroyer out of retirement from the US Navy and turn it into a floating mall--complete with banking services. 7. Presence of Legitimate People Given the trappings of success, it's no surprise fraudsters mingle with legitimate people. Nor am I the first to notice. J.K. Galbraith, according to The Economist , observed a "disastrous interdependence between man and crook" back in 1961. 8. Lies About Background Con men often exaggerate their education or work experience. See the attached story about alleged fraudster, Danny Pang. Insist on background checks. They're simple, easy, and relatively inexpensive. They will expose a surprising number of would-be crooks. 9. Style Drift In the first half of this decade, a Greenwich hedge fund blew up amid allegations of fraud. The manager purported to focus on value stocks. Court records show, however, he also produced and financed a full-length motion picture. No surprise, his movie bombed at the box office. Fraudsters make risky bets, I believe, to buy their way out of trouble. When long-shots hit, they can return capital to investors and get going again. 10. Neat Freaks Everything in its place. Madoff's sense of order was legendary. He probably arrived at the office early just to run the vacuum cleaner. Other cons are similarly fastidious. The reason, I think, is a function of lies. If you're telling different things to different people, it helps to limit other complexities. You need to reserve your mental energy to remember who's who. When it comes to fraud, there's nothing sacred about the number ten. This is Acrimoney, not Letterman. Can you think of other techniques? Comment, and please share your thoughts.
 
Ralph Gomory: Country and Company: Part II - Aligning Goals Top
The first part of this series asserted that what is good for the modern American corporation is diverging from what is good for our country. This second part describes ways to deal with that problem. Right now all we want from our companies is to get people back to work and restore normal conditions as soon as possible. There is little thought and less agreement about what comes after that. But do we want to simply restore, unchanged, a system in which unbalanced international trade has severely damaged productive parts of our economy while the benefits of economic growth have gone primarily to a few? It is much easier to see what we don't want, like huge Wall Street bonuses to reward massive failure, than it is to agree about what we do want. But if we don't know where we are going we are unlikely to get there. In the first part of this series I wrote about two absolutely fundamental things that a country could reasonably want from its companies and called them "The Ketchum Goals." (1) We want companies that are productive, each contributing as much as possible to the total of goods and services produced in the United States. It is the sum of these efforts that make America a prosperous nation. (2) We want these companies to provide productive and well-paying jobs so that the value the companies create is widely shared by Americans. It is this widely shared wealth that gives the nation and its people economic security and stability. Part 1 asserted that the present corporate emphasis on maximizing profit at all cost was not going to achieve these goals. In fact the overemphasis on profit was the main driving force behind the off-shoring of productive jobs and the unchecked thirst for huge rewards that brought down Wall Street and shook the economies of much of the world. Today even the former General Electric CEO who championed shareholder value, Jack Welch , has doubts about this direction. How can we move toward these goals instead of away from them? We must take two absolutely fundamental steps to move toward the Ketchum Goals. (1) We must have balanced trade. Without balanced trade productive companies operating in the United States are open to continuing assault from foreign entities advantaged by their governments. (2) We must encourage and reward the productive companies that do provide productive jobs in the United States. Step 1: Balancing Trade -- Theory versus Reality When we have balanced trade the jobs that are lost because we import goods instead of making them in the United States are offset by the jobs that are created making goods for foreign markets. If trade is unbalanced, as it has been for many years, goods keep coming in, but we don't balance them by making goods and services for export. Instead we sell our trading partners Treasury Bonds, which are essentially promises to pay later, or less often, ownership of some piece of the U.S. economy. Neither case leads to the creation of jobs in the United States. The first case adds to our already huge foreign debt, the second means that we are gradually turning over pieces of the country to our trading partners. In free trade theory this unbalanced situation is supposed to be self-correcting. If a greater value of goods flow into the United States than flow out, currency exchange rates should automatically adjust to make imported goods more expensive and automatically rebalance trade. But suppose China, for example, engaged in building its economy by producing for export, subsidizes its industries so they become cheap exporters, and follows this up by preventing the rebalancing of its currencies. The imbalance then continues. Companies in the United States are unable to compete at these artificial exchange rates and are destroyed, imports remain permanently larger than exports, and the jobs that would have made the goods to balance trade never materialize. This outcome is inconsistent with both the Ketchum goals. Balanced trade is therefore necessary if we are to retain productive jobs at home. Testimonials to the importance of balanced trade are not lacking: Ben Bernanke noted earlier this year: "In my view, however, it is impossible to understand this crisis without reference to the global imbalances in trade and capital flows that began in the latter half of the 1990s." While G.E.'s CEO Jeffrey Immelt asserts: "If the U.S. government wants to fix the trade deficit, it's got to be pushed. GE wants to be an exporter. We want to be a good citizen. Do we want to make a lot of money? Sure we do. But I think at the end of the day we've got to have a tax system or a set of incentives that promote what the government wants to do." There are many approaches to balancing trade. The most common proposals usually talk about our government "pressuring" Asian countries to change their currency exchange rates. This approach has produced little and it is hard to imagine why these countries should change a pattern that has worked so well for them just because it is harmful to us. Fortune magazine eloquently described the need for balanced trade and suggested an approach to obtaining it. Under the Buffet plan, exporters would receive certificates equal to the dollar value of the goods they export. Importers would need to buy these certificates to cover the dollar value of the goods they import. The certificates would be sold on an open market. This would force the value of imports to match the value of exports and, in contrast to quotas or tariffs, would not be aimed at particular countries or industries. This plan and some of its variants have been carefully studied (see forthcoming reports from the Economic Policy Institute) and it is now time to take this approach seriously. Anything along these lines will be denounced as protectionism, which perhaps it is. But under any name it is much needed protection against destructive non-free-trade practices of other countries. The argument against protectionism always compares it with balanced free trade's theoretical advantages. But we do not have balanced trade. To continue to adhere to a theory that does not apply to our current situation, while suffering the consequences, is neither appealing nor necessary. The WTO itself wisely allows departures from pure free trade by a country faced with a significant and persisting balance of payments problem. (Article XII of the WTO/GATT). This article has been invoked many times by many countries. The United States used it under President Nixon in 1971. Let us move in the direction of the Buffet plan and then work to get back to a world of naturally balanced trade. Step 2: Encouraging and Supporting Productive Companies -- Creating Wealth in the United States Productivity appears in both Ketchum goals. Steadily improving productivity makes a richer nation. Discussions of how to improve national productivity typically focus on R&D, innovation, better K-12 education, and improved infrastructure. These things are helpful, but, as I have testified to Congress , unless we change the motivation of our companies, many of these actions will have limited effect. One example: R&D done in the United States by global corporations can end up in their production sites abroad where it creates new and productive jobs. We need to consider not only the familiar suggestions I have just listed, but also ways to better align corporate profitability with the needs of the country. Aligning Country and Company Some Asian countries have well-developed national strategies aimed at the rapid increase of their output (GDP). Part of that strategy is to induce foreign, often U.S., corporations to create highly productive jobs in their countries. In the case of China the area of emphasis has been manufacturing and as a result, we have seen both the resulting cheap goods and the devastating impact on productive jobs in this country's manufacturing sector. An Asian country will work out individual tax and market access arrangements for productive companies that make it profitable for the company to produce there. By doing this they align the company's profit motive with their national growth goals. Some economists will argue that these developments in Asia are automatically good for the United States. However, the view that the industrial development in your trading partner can at times be harmful to your country also has a long and distinguished history in economic thought. When there is gain and when there is harm is summarized in a Gomory-Baumol article and spelled out in our book on global trade. In the United States we do not have the tradition, the knowledge, nor the desire to follow the Asian development path. But there are approaches to aligning corporate and country goals that are compatible with our own history and with what our government could actually do. We are already using the corporate tax rate to spur R& -- why not use it to encourage directly the creation and retention of productive jobs? For example, the corporate tax rate could be scaled by the value added (a measure of productivity) per full-time employee in the United States. A company with high value-add per U.S. employee would get a low tax rate; a company with low value-add per U.S. employee would have a high tax rate. The choice of actual rates could make this as strong or as weak an incentive as desired. It could be made revenue-neutral. Note that value added is easily measured; in fact it is measured today in Europe as the basis for their value-added tax. This approach to rewarding companies for acting in the national interest is completely different from the "national champion" approach of some countries or the deal-by-deal approach of others. It is very American. It would be an incentive not restricted to big corporations; any company that is productive could benefit. The local plumbing business or the little shop around the corner will benefit if they can find a better way to be productive in what they do. Widely Shared Wealth The second Ketchum goal mentions the distribution as well as the creation of wealth. For the last 25 years most of the country's economic gains have not been widely shared. Globalization was not the beginning of this trend. It was rather a very large additional step in a journey that started years ago. Let us look back. In 1981 the Business Roundtable issued a long Statement on Corporate Responsibility in which it discussed companies' responsibilities to its various constituencies: customers, employees, communities, society at large, suppliers, and shareholders. The Statement concluded with the following statement about the American Corporation: "It must be a thoughtful institution which rises above the bottom line to consider the impact of its actions on all, from shareholders to the society at large. Its business activities must make social sense just as its social activities must make business sense." That was 1981, but today's corporations aim primarily at maximizing shareholder gains. Corporate shares are held overwhelmingly by those who are already wealthy or by those, like top executives, who will become wealthy if share values go up. Corporate leadership today is strongly motivated to cut wages and benefits whenever they can to increase profits and shareholder value and their own compensation. The money saved from wages and benefits comes out of the middle and lower income groups; the gain in profits goes to the wealthy. This decades-long tendency of workers, and more generally the middle class, losing share in the productivity gains is being strongly accelerated by globalization. In globalization, jobs and their wages leave the country altogether and only the corporate profits remain. Globalization is causing that divergence to occur faster and go further than ever before. Balanced trade is again vital for dealing with this problem. To reduce these strong natural forces working toward extreme inequality we should obviously consider what can be done through taxes, individual or corporate, and by strengthening the greatly weakened bargaining power of workers. A direction advocated by Robert Scott of the Harvard Business School is to use charters for corporations that require giving weight to other factors than profit maximization. Today in the United States, in contrast to most countries, corporations can obtain a charter and promise nothing in return. It is interesting that Theodore Roosevelt saw the role of corporations quite differently from the current dominant perspective. When necessary, Roosevelt was willing to influence corporations to act in the public interest. "Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions," he stated in his 1901 State of the Union message. "And it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions." Conclusion: We are living through a difficult time. But difficult times are also times when change is possible. Our country needs productive corporations that create productive jobs. We have described here two essential things that need to be done to start to align the corporate interest with what the country needs. There is more that can be done, but let us start here. More on Global Financial Crisis
 
Lee Camp: WATCH: Could The Skeleton of Unregulated Capitalism Come Back from The Dead? Top
 
Michael Markarian: Europe Votes to Save Seals Top
An historic vote this morning in the European Parliament will have ripple effects for animals on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. All 27 member nations of the European Union will soon ban the import and sale of seal fur, drying up the market for Canada's annual hunt of baby seals--the largest commercial slaughter of marine mammals in the world. Just weeks ago, the world's most beautiful nursery on the ice floes of Canada's Atlantic coast was stained red and turned into a killing field. Tens of thousands of seal pups--some just 12 days old--were clubbed and skinned for their fur pelts, before they could even take their first swim. The Humane Society of the United States and its global affiliate, Humane Society International, have been working worldwide to end this massive global form of cruelty, and have been leading the fight from Ottawa to Brussels to Strasbourg. © Nigel Barker Russia banned its own seal hunt this year, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin calling it "such a bloody hunt" and saying "it is clear that it should have been banned a long time ago." Canada has increasingly become isolated in the world community for allowing this horrible spectacle to continue. Humane advocates often bemoan the fact that the U.S. lags behind Europe when it comes to animal protection laws. The European Union began phasing out steel-jawed leghold traps, veal crates for calves, gestation crates for pigs, and battery cages for hens, all before those policy reforms began to take root here. But today, the European Parliament finally achieved something that the U.S. did 37 years ago. The U.S. Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, barring any trade in the parts of whales, dolphins, seals, and other marine mammals. Seal fur has been banned in the U.S. for more than three decades, although it has remained popular in Europe and is even used by top fashion designers in Copenhagen and Milan. Now, with Europe joining the U.S., there will be little market left for Canadian fishermen to peddle their seal pelts. As last year's seal hunt brought in only $7 million in landed value and less than $11 million in global exports, and the European share is estimated at $6.6 million, the implications for the future of the seal hunt are enormous. Indeed, just the promise of an EU ban was enough to drive the prices for seal fur down to $15 per skin this year--a decline of 86 percent since 2006. The U.S. did its part decades ago, but can still do more to make sure the seal hunt is relegated to Canada's history books. Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have introduced a resolution, S. Res. 84 , urging the Canadian government to end its commercial seal hunt. It's similar to a measure passed by the House of Representatives in the 110th Congress, led by the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). Ask your two U.S. senators to support this important resolution, and join the world community in speaking out against this cruelty. The writing is on the wall, and this is the year to make history for seals. More on Canada
 
Readers: Give Us Your Supreme Opinions! Top
In announcing his criteria for a replacement for outgoing Supreme Court Justice David Souter, President Barack Obama put an idea on the table that's drawn a lot of attention. In addition to the need for a justice who could demonstrate that he or she is "dedicated to the rule of law." capable of honoring "our constitutional traditions," and showing respect for "the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role," Obama put out an idea that was decidedly "street-level." "I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes," the president said. It's an interesting concept -- a judge with the experience to know what sort of impact high-flown legal wranglings have on the lives of ordinary Americans. Of course, since then, the media have latched upon this idea as something either tantalizingly shiny or intimidatingly alien, and they have set themselves to the typical, conventional task of "decoding" what it means. Meanwhile, we've all been given the shortlists of various "experts" to nose over, the names of individuals who were widely suspected of being in line with Obama's leanings well before he was given the opportunity to take office, let alone consider a court appointment. However, what if we went looking for a jurist whose quality of empathy, and whose demonstrated regard for the lives of ordinary citizens, made him or her the ideal, if unlikely, candidate for the court? I sort of hate to call this project, "Who are the Supreme Court candidates in your neighborhood?" But that's what we're asking our readership: to get away from the shortlists, unplug ourselves from the lobbying and favor-currying, and try to identify judges, jurists, or legal professionals who would bring a measure of real-world relatability to the Supreme Court, who could make Obama's pledge to find a guy who's walked in an ordinary citizen's shoes a reality. In other words, who's on your shortlist? We ask this knowing full well that having never been asked for your opinion on this matter, you may not have given it much thought at all. Maybe we won't be able to do better than the experts who've already been advancing names to the press. Still, we'd like to hear from our readership, if not the names of people, then the qualities that are important to you or the legal concerns that impact your life. If you have an opinion -- or a dissent! -- please share it with us, whether it's a personal nomination, an overlooked area of legal concern, or a specific criteria you'd look for in a Supreme Court nominee. We want to hear from you. Please send us an email , and be as detailed as you like. We'll look at it as an amicus brief! [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Barack Obama
 
Paula Crossfield: Oprah Gives Out Free KFC in Most Hypocritical Move Yet Top
Perhaps it was all just too much, too kind and too ahead of the curve, all that work she had done recently to expose what truly goes on for chickens and other animals in the factory farm setting. Because now Oprah has decided to bolster one of America's worst offenders when it comes to support for factory farming, KFC, by giving away two pieces of chicken to every human in America . It may seem harmless: a mass market "they want it, so I'm giving it to them" kind of campaign. But because Oprah has marketed herself as one who cares about animals, even getting a " Person of the Year " award last year from PETA, this KFC campaign is a serious disappointment to say the least. This is because KFC buys their meat from Tyson , which is the largest chicken processor in the United States and is known for supporting a conglomeration of chicken CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). Inside these daylight-free hellholes, chickens are crammed so tightly together they can barely move. Worse, if we were to grow as fast as these broilers are bred to grow, we'd be 350 pounds by the time we were 2 years old. This is largely because these chickens are bred to have more breast meat (because that's what the consumer wants), so many of them can't even stand up. On top of that they produce so much shit that many farm workers get asthma just doing their job -- and that is just the workers on the farm. Most of the Tyson factory workers spend their entire day on one part of the production line, slitting throats, de-feathering or removing intestines for hours on end. Yum. ( video made by one worker , be warned, it is quite grotesque) Just a recap: in order to have what we want to eat, we have created little monstrosities, which then get essentially tortured before routine killings performed by ill and disgruntled workers. And Oprah is paying for this practice to continue! If she would have taken the time to think about all this, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she would see that encouraging these practices is not in line with the Eckhardt Tolle, Live Your Best Life, "We will all be judged on how we treat the least among us" persona she sells on her popular television show. Individual choices do matter, especially the choices of those with enough money to buy every person in the United States two pieces of chicken. If I were Oprah, I'd have struck a better deal with the fried chicken hawking establishment: She could have told KFC to change their buying practices, and only serve free-range chicken, and THEN give away free chicken. Had she done that, producers would start to see the value in letting their chickens outside to scratch the soil, eat grubs and peck grass.
 
Grant Whitney Harvey: Moonshadows: Part 2 Top
Read Part 1 here... Somehow, one of the ropes tightly connecting The Abigail-May to her sister ship at her side - the center ship in the row of three - had come loose. Mr. Harding, standing at the opposite end spewing a constant stream of lecture onto some upper-class Sigma Nu's, halted and called to Billy, who was standing right beside the problem, to retie it. How Mr. Harding knew it was untied at that distance Billy did not know. But he nodded back to him and nonchalantly turned around to see a widened gap of a foot or so between the whites of The Abigail-May and the ship it was tied to. He leaned down into the darkness between the ships and retrieved a portion of the long, wet rope, at which point he had no idea how to re-secure it. The rope was thick and the silver anchors on the railing were quite small; too small to wrap the rope around. Looking down the length of the ships, he saw only bare anchors and not an inch of rope. He was becoming flustered, not wanting Mr. Harding to go out of his way to do it himself. He also couldn't help but to regard the ships as fragile things - as people regularly regard things which aren't theirs - as if to handle them incorrectly meant to shatter them like brittle glass in the cold. Then, just as he thought to look down along the hull, he was interrupted. "Toss it here," she said. Billy first saw a flute of half-gone champagne sat down on the opposite deck from which his eyes then quickly ran up a vibrantly colored summer dress dangling from arced shoulders and a pointy collar bone until they inevitably collapsed upon that angelic face he had come to know detail for detail throughout the course of the day. "The reason it came undone is probably because someone didn't tie it correctly in the first place. Daddy had all kinds of kids helping dock today." She held out her stringent, sun-kissed hand to retrieve the husky rope and smiled. Billy was taken aback, it seemed, for as long as he could remember and was yet to even attempt saying anything. She appeared so suddenly. All day he had been readying himself for an encounter with her, stocking his mind with clever introductions for every optimal situation of his fancy as well as what he considered the most unfavorable. All of which, however, he planned to be ready for. But now, in the suddenness of it all, every bit of preparation was out the window. He was as unsteady as a boy caught stealing gum. He reached out and handed it back to the clerk over the waist-high counter which stood between them. "I'll show you," she said, nicely. She placed one sandaled foot on the railing of the ship and pulled with all her weight at the rope until the ships were but a whistle's crease away from each other. Then she pushed them apart only wide enough to fit her streamlined arms between, which she did after having Billy hold a block of wood in the space. Now she secured it down below with a turned down ear and the bite of her shiny lower lip, upturning her big eyes at him for a quick instant before aiming them off to nothing, using all the sense she could to figure the knot below sight. "Okay," she said as she rose, signaling Billy to pull out the block. After he did, the two ships pressed flush against one another. She stood resolutely, with her hands on her hips in the fashion of Peter Pan. Billy half expected her to dust them off. In a completely polarized moment, she raised her eyes from the ships to Billy as she would have anyone. Although strikingly handsome, Billy was still just another student to her, shelved in that dusty library in the back of her mind of crushes and fantasies of a hundred other handsome boys whom which she was completely oblivious to. So she innocently looked at him with the casualness of a friendly passerby. As for Billy, he too had found a spot for her in his mind - a grand spot, looming gracefully in the shiny foreground of it, like a high wall intent to block anything golden to present, let alone the color to his face, the gumption to his posture, the right words to his mouth... "We don't usually tie all the ships together like this. This is new," she said sprightly, shrugging her shoulders. Billy just nodded back and kind-of grinned a bit - which looked something more like a twitch at the side of his mouth. He then finally locked eyes with her before aiming them upward at the masts. "They're nice," he said mechanically, as if his body had taken over his brain's control of speech. "Yes," she said, looking up. "They are nice, I suppose." "Have you ever climbed up there?" Instead of feeling like an idiot, Billy rather felt grateful for having asked the irreverent question, for the ridiculousness of it was like a screaming alarm at dawn and jolted him out of his daze. "You've gotten hold of some champagne, I see," is all that came to him. "Oh," she said as she kneeled down to retrieve it. The look of puzzlement which had been becoming more and more distinct across her face had vanished once she rose. She pursed her lips and then smiled. "Shhh..." "Your ship, your rules." "Well actually, this is my sister's ship. You're on my ship." Billy looked down at the deck in the same matter of fact fashion as she had a moment before at her champagne. "But either way," she continued, "Not much jurisdiction pertains to these yachts anyway, especially those of the SC Greek system." Billy smiled, placing his hands into his short pockets and taking a glance at the active decks. "Than how come everyone's not drinking champagne?" She playfully tightened up. "Because they don't know where it is," she said, rather than ending the question with a quick, boring answer. "Where is it?" She looked slyly down the length of the ships, rocking her hips, and then ran her eyes smoothly back to Billy, smugly, sarcastically raising her nose. "This is the last glass." "I doubt it." "Well I doubt that'll get you anywhere." "Liar." A worrisome flash swept over Billy that he sounded too literal, but she took it in stride, signaling that she was game as she gasped: "Never!" Billy smiled at the exchange. "How much of it have you drank?" "Well, the glass was full." "You know what I mean. How many glasses have been full tonight?" "This has been the only one." "Sure it has." "It has. There's too many people here to get very tipsy." "I can imagine what it'd be like if everyone was drinking the stuff." "The stuff?" Billy paused. "Yes, the stuff." "Everyone would be dancing maybe." "Maybe you should go bring a few bottles up than. We can have a dance." She rocked her hips. "If everyone was dancing, someone would fall overboard. Daddy wouldn't like that," she said, holding her champagne eye level, examining it. "I love dancing." "It's okay." "So, would you like the last of the stuff?" She held out her glass. "Ah, no thanks. I didn't mean to sound like I was asking or anything." "You should have than. It's the best. Have you ever tasted the best?" Billy was unsure of the question and wondered what it was that exactly prompted it. He worried that it was perhaps rhetorical and was quite unsure what to say. So he lied. "Sure I have." "Then have it again - the best stuff." "Fine." She held the glass over the ships between them. Billy took it and rather un-elegantly drank it down as if it were a shot of whiskey. "It's good," he said, tightening his mouth. "It's a little flat." "I've been babysitting." Billy handed back the glass once she motioned to retrieve it - an action, as it was, that subjected them to the pins and needles of an awkward silence, due in large part to either of them awaiting the other. Billy had assumed she'd continue while she was satisfied with her quaint admittance. They held onto their assumptions stubbornly, saying nothing more for what seemed like far longer than the handful of moments which it was. "Um - " "Do you come out on these things a lot?" She didn't look up at the masts this time. Her glistening eyes, dusted with microscopic intensities of the yellow lights hanging about the ship, remained locked on Billy, who was again peeled at the masts. She now began to notice him. He stood fairly tall, but his arms projected out a bit farther from his body than did those of other guys. She never noticed such a thing until now. It added to his presence. The L's of his jaw and his chin formed a triangle before he looked back down at her once realizing she hadn't answered. She was looking at him with a fox-like suspicion. "Are you the ski-town boy?" "What?" "The ski-town boy?" He looked around. "Is that what I'm being called?" "You've got some fans here tonight." "Fans?" Billy said incredulously, pointing at his chest. She grinned and kindly rolled her eyes, not wanting to improperly misplace herself by complimenting or seeming to acknowledge him too much so. "I guess I am then. If there was another one I'm sure we'd have been made aware of it by now." "Word spreads fast. Everybody knows everything on ships." Billy laughed, nodding, thinking about the relevance and depth of the comment. She looked at her glass, spinning the stem between her fingers. "Once," she began, "A few years ago, my family and I and my boyfriend at the time and, of - " The telling of an ex suddenly made her more human, and the gone relationship existed like an entity to Billy, looming heavily in the past like the precipice state of a disappeared civilization, with the ex-boyfriend as its divine emperor, passing through the vacant streets and emptied buildings forever. The distraction kept Billy from hearing whatever she said immediately after, so he again picked up at: "... I know I was sixteen because I was mad at not getting the exact car that I wanted. Spoiled of me, I know. Oh, yes! We were in the BVI just before - " "What's the BVI?" "Oh, the British Virgin Islands," she said, turning her eyes quite convincingly upon Billy. "It's beautiful there. You'll go someday - you have to." "I'll put a tack on my globe." "You won't regret it. Anyway, I'm losing my point. One night, long story short, we were all staying out on the ship. We had to. It was one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen. It was one of those nights where you can literally see every star there is. And, you know, we never see the stars here. It was just sooo clear. It was warm, it was still... it was just amazing. So after we all went to bed, I had this bad dream; not a nightmare, it was just a crappy dream -" Billy broke his lips, pantomiming her to go on. "I'll tell you... So the next day at breakfast - daddy took us in to eat at one of the restaurants at the resort. It had a patio that overlooked the ocean. We could see the ship and everything from it. Of course, after we settled into the table, I told everyone about my dream - about how real it was; about how daddy had broke it to everyone that we had to return home because he had some obligation for work." She leaned forward and quieted herself, placing a hand on the railing. "Daddy was sitting right across from me. I told him how when I woke up from it I was so happy that it was just a dream that I couldn't fall back to sleep. When I told him that, he looked crushed, and his eyes kinda welled up. But no one noticed but me. He looked down and recovered himself pretty quickly. But that's when I knew that it wasn't a dream - he must've been whispering in the other room to Candace, his girlfriend at the time, or something. When we got back to the states a month later I found out that he had lost some massive amount of money in some negotiation he didn't attend. I don't know the specifics of it - I hardly even get what he does. He travels a lot. He's going to Europe for four months next week. But yeah, I definitely understood the importance of it." She looked down for a moment, nudging her foot at something that wasn't there, but then she looked back to Billy pleasantly half-smiling, her head tilted a bit to the side like a curious puppy. "So see. You can't keep secrets on ships like this." "Does he know?" "Yeah, I think so. He doesn't want me to ever feel bad about it, though. It was one of the times in my life that blind sincerity actually accomplished more for me than anything else could have. There would've been nothing I could do to change his mind." She hadn't meant to do anything except skim the surface in the encounter with Billy - she was unaware that he was the boy her father spoke so highly of, after all - yet she had, so looked at him as so. Finally, although far from submitting too much of herself to him - at least if she had a little already she wouldn't anymore, she at least found him attractive. She was lending him that. It was simply by the way he had listened; by the way he had answered with his eyes and the bends around his mouth and the lifts of his brow that raised him above the other boys. "Did you have fun today," she asked. "I'm still having fun," he said quickly. "I could stay on these things all night." "Things?" "Things." "You and your stuff and things ." "You know what I mean." "I'm done for the night," she said. "Already?" "We've been out all day." "You've told me such a good story, and I haven't told you anything." "Lucky you." "I can stay here all night," he said again, this time much quieter. "I have many times. But I'm getting bored. And I want my bed." Billy nodded. "Why lucky?" "You can tell me another time." The addictiveness that which his eyes could often be found locking onto things was finally beginning to again resonate as the last end of the exchange had calmed him enough to remind the millions of firing nerve endings all over his body of its true self. All that lingered was a lightening weight in his chest, which regained itself a bit in a notion of sudden urgency. She watched him motion to speak and then refrain, for some reason reluctant, then surge out of it, fumbling his phone around his hand as he then did the words which fell from his mouth, forming some kind of clear yet awkwardly constructed sentence used to request her phone number. She answered neither yes nor no, and rather kept in tact the silence that now seemed so much more relevant than their exchange of half-wit replies, drawing the slightest indentation of her dimples with the easy upward draw of the ends of her glossy lips and almost whispering the necessary numbers. He punched them in carefully, insecurely watching the slight tremble in his hand. "I'll call you," he promised. Although it was what she wanted to hear, she shrugged the three words off, indeed having heard them many times, and then sweetly whispered him a good night and an I hope so before floating off. For a handful of moments Billy remained in his place on the deck, surging with a million different thoughts and a million different feelings, looking at his phone in an entirely different light than ever before as he assigned her name to the number she had given. When he returned the phone to his pocket, the millions of thoughts and feelings diminished to but a few quite specific ones. In way of what he felt, he was now less anchored and was jovial for the first time all evening. Although Billy wanted nothing more than to be beside his Abigail, the relief that she was now gone; floated away, as it was, after a successful encounter to leave no time to ruin his charmed impression, a sturdy sense of promise fell over him that
 
Mike Lux: Six Steps To Dis-Empowering Wall Street Top
Get your copy of my new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be Dick Durbin summed up the plain and ugly truth for us : the banks "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And frankly own the place." It's time for the rest of us to declare these big banks politically and morally insolvent, and foreclose on their ownership of DC. The question is how to do it. Here are six steps toward dis-empowering Wall Street: 1. We need to create a big new coalition which becomes the center of gravity on the banking issue, in the same way that Health Care for America Now has become such a center on the drive for progressive health care reform. I envision this as a combination of national organizations and networks, and the grassroots activists like the folks who have been organizing at A New Way Forward. National groups that might be interested labor unions; consumer groups (many of which are already quite active on this issue), broader progressive movement organizations like USAction, ACORN, Campaign for America's Future, and Center for Community Change; neighborhood organizing networks like Industrial Areas Foundation, National Peoples' Action, and Gamaliel. 2. We need the best and brightest thinkers on this issue- people like Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Rob Johnson, William Greider, George Soros, and Leo Hindery- to come together and work through a Plan B , an alternative path to the one being taken now. 3. We need to press forward aggressively on passing public financing of campaigns, because without that happening, the power of the banks will remain overwhelming even if we do convince the Obama administration to go a new way. 4. We should support and encourage the kind of investigative journalism projects on banking that Huffingtonpost and Atlantic Philanthopies are supporting through the Huffingtonpost Investigative Fund. 5. Progressives at the national and local level should reach out to community bankers and savings and loans. They might not all agree with us, but I'm guessing the broad majority are sick to death of the power of the biggest banks. 6. Speaking of which, we should start a nationwide movement to switch our deposits from the big banks into community banks and the savings and loans. I don't think most people like giving their money to people who are destroying our economy and democracy. Let the movement begin.
 
Dr. Irene S. Levine: Circles of Friends Top
QUESTION Hi Irene, I stumbled across your blog, and I think it's so helpful and needed in a society that seems to place greater value on romantic relationships than friendships. I'm in my late 20's, and the older I get, the harder I've found it to keep deep, meaningful female friendships. We're growing in different directions, moving to different states, pairing off romantically, etc. I have three very close female friendships that I treasure but they aren't connected; they are friends from different sectors of my life. So I feel like I'm lacking a "friend group." I also feel as though I don't have enough deep friendships, in general. It bothers me that most people my age seem to have a "group." I've been in friend groups before in my life, but I find that in friend groups, I can't connect as deeply to each friend. So I prefer one on one time. I know this sounds like a sort of hard question to answer, but what's the average number of close female friendships that women my age have? Or any thoughts you have on how friendships change as you get older. Thanks very much, Jane ANSWER Dear Jane: What a great letter! You raised so many thought-provoking questions. A few ideas: Some women have the good fortune of having groups of friends who have a shared history--based on where they were, where they lived, or what they did together. There have been a spate of books lately--- Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope, The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton, and more recently, The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow---that make women feel like they're missing out on something big if they don't belong to a friendship circle. In fact, when I interviewed Mr. Zaslow, he said that he had two types of readers: those who had a circle similar to The Girls from Ames and those that wish they did! When I read that literary trilogy on sisterhoods, I have to admit I was envious because, like you, I'm in the latter category. I have close friends but my friends aren't friends with each other. They come from different ages and stages of my life that don't intersect. While it isn't impossible to forge a sisterhood later in life, it's generally easier to do it as a teenager or young adult because you're likely to have more time and to be thrown together in similar circumstances--whether it's a team, sorority, or neighborhood. As we marry or divorce, move, or graduate and our lives diverge, it becomes tougher to sustain circles of friends. Keep in mind: Even in a circle of friends, there are usually twosomes (dyads or pairs) who seem to have more in common, either temperamentally or situationally. Thus, each woman doesn't have precisely the same relationship with each member in the circle. Zaslow figured out that there was a possibility of 99 different pairs in the 11 Girls from Ames. People generally have far more acquaintances than they do close friends so it isn't surprising that deep and meaningful friendships are the most coveted and difficult to achieve. Just like a romance, most women say that at their start, there is a certain essential chemistry that provides the foundation for best friendships. Then, as two women feel increasingly comfortable together, they are able to become more intimate and reveal their true selves to one another. While there is wide variability, based on the data from my friendship survey, most women have between two and five very close or best friends (there's a section in my forthcoming book that looks at the numbers). What's more important than quantity, however, is quality and whether or not you feel like you have enough of the right type of friends for you. If you feel like something's missing, perhaps it is. I will be returning to this topic again in another blog post but would love to hear from others about the topic of friendship circles and sisterhoods (when you're on the inside) and cliques (when you are on the outside). Best, Irene Do you run in circles? Are you on the outside of a clique? Have a friendship dilemma that is bothering you? Please share your thoughts. Write to me at: Irene@fracturedfriendships.com Irene S. Levine, PhD is a freelance journalist and author. She holds an appointment as a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and is working on a book about female friendships, Best Friends Forever: Surviving A Break-up With Your Best Friend , that will be published by Overlook Press in September, 2009. She recently co-authored Schizophrenia for Dummies (Wiley, 2008). She also blogs about female friendships at The Friendship Blog . More on Relationships
 
Virginia Foxx Sends Apology To Matthew Shephard's Mother Top
U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx has written a letter of apology to the mother of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming man whose name is on a bill adding sexual orientation to federal hate-crimes legislation. During recent debate on the bill, Foxx, R-5th, called attempts to label Shepard's 1998 murder a hate crime "a hoax." She said that he was killed during a robbery and not because he was gay.
 
Dr. Irene S. Levine: The Girls from Ames: An Interview with Best-Selling Author Jeffrey Zaslow Top
The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow tells the remarkable story of the 40-year friendship of a circle of eleven female friends. The tale chronicles more than the experience of coming of age in the Midwest--it offers universal insights on growing up, living a life, and meeting the sobering challenges faced by grown-ups, which often include: marriage, divorce, raising a family, balancing life and work, and coping with serious illness and death among family members and close friends. The narrative pays homage to the significant role that friendship can play in the course of women's lives. The "girls," who all met as children in the "corn-and-college" town of Ames, Iowa , are introduced in photographs with short bios at the beginning of the book. As the reader turns the pages, however, each woman develops a textured persona as Zaslow brilliantly weaves together their individual and collective stories through interviews, letters, photographs, scrapbooks, news clips and diaries. Their long friendship as a group has enabled the girls from Ames to piece together and preserve the anecdotes that comprise their lives individually. This compelling and beautifully written non-fiction book is destined to become a classic in the female friendship literature. I was pleased to be able to speak to Jeff about himself and his latest book. I read that you replaced advice columnist Ann Landers when she left the Chicago Sun-Times, is that true? How did that role prepare you for writing The Girls from Ames? Yes, I did an advice column for the Chicago Sun-Times for 14 years. I was 28 when I started in 1987 and my readers were predominantly women. You have to remember, though, it was a different time: before the Internet. People would write me a letter and wait six to eight weeks for a response. Now, if people want advice about their "acne," they just Google it. That role really did prepare me first for writing The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch. Randy wanted to leave advice behind for his kids, almost like putting himself in a bottle that would wash up on the shore. It was advice that he wished he had twenty years to give to them but he only had a few months. We tried to do that together with his book. With The Girls from Ames , the women are all in this bottle together, giving each other advice all the way through and we learn from them. Of all the topics you could possibly have written about, why, as a male, did you decide to write a book about female friendship? In 2003, I wrote a column on female friendship for The Wall Street Journal , and I knew that it had touched a nerve when I received 300 letters and emails from women. I've seen my daughters (now 13, 17 and 19) struggle with their friendships and I've seen how friendship can lead to great things. I'm always curious about people and I like to think of myself as a sensitive guy. With a wife, three daughters and no sons, I live in a world of women. So the topic resonates. And if I had written The Boys from Ames , no one would have cared. Men don't want to read books about male friendship. Why did you specifically choose to write about The Girls from Ames? I had put those emails and letters in a drawer and the letter from Jenny Litchman from Ames about her friends definitely stood out. The girls had lost one of their group, Sheila, under mysterious circumstances at the age of 22 and she still remained in their thoughts every day. Another friend, Karla, had a daughter named Christie who had been diagnosed with leukemia and they all rallied around her. The women came from the middle of the country and were baby-boomers in their forties. They seemed to be the right age -- an age to which many women could relate. And Jenny also told me that she and her friends laughed so much when they were together that they couldn't always make it to the bathroom. When I looked at the literature, I couldn't find any other books, written by an outsider, that told the biography of a friendship. I've learned that one of the characteristics of good friends is the ability to be authentic with each other. Do you think that the Girls from Ames were authentic in telling you their stories? They were very open. But writing this book was a difficult process. The girls shared diaries and letters from middle-school through college with me and by reading them, I learned things that some of them didn't want to tell me. Some women became the focus of the book because they had interesting and compelling stories, and were more willing to share them. Others were more reticent. It was tough though. The project became so hard about 6 months ago that I almost abandoned it. The girls were honest with me but they didn't want it all to appear in print. I understood that what I was asking them to do was very hard and took a lot of courage. I promised them meaningful discussion of the content but couldn't give them the final edit. In the end, even though there was some friction between all of us, they rallied together and drew lines in the sand that I agreed to live with. They supported one another. What did you learn about women and their friendships? Women's friendships are so different than male ones. I have a friend who says, "I love you" at the end of every phone call. We're very close friends but it still makes me feel uncomfortable to hear that. Women are more emotional in their friendships. It's almost innate and I envy them although I know I can't be that way. Doing the book was really a test of the friendship among the Girls from Ames. I was very pleased when they all showed up at an event in Iowa last week before about 500 people residents of Ames. They could easily have walked away from the book, but we all soldiered through and we're proud of the finished product. They seem happy with most of it. I admire that they were willing to share themselves. Even my wife says she couldn't have shared her life story. So I'm very grateful. In writing the book, I learned about the great power of longtime female friendships. I want my daughters to have what the girls from Ames have. Women readers are now telling me "this reminds me of my friends" or "I wish I had friends like that." That's gratifying. Was there anything about the personalities or circumstance of the Ames Girls to which you could attribute the longevity of their friendship? Ames, Iowa was their shared womb; they all had the same background and knew each other's families. Even though some have high-powered jobs now and some work at home, they aren't competitive with each other. Within the group, Marilyn and Jane were very close when they were young. Marilyn and Jane are still close, but now that Jane is older, she has also bonded with Karla. As women evolve, their friendships change and there was room in this group for that to happen. If there were only 3 or 4 in the group, perhaps things would have fallen apart. I'm convinced, though, that these women from Ames will never part. They are connected with each other and stay in touch daily. In their twenties, they would have to go to the post office and send off 10 envelopes in the mail. "Reply all" on email has been a huge help. It allows them to stay in constant contact. Not everyone writes back to the others everyday, but they're all connected. They worry about their daughters and sons who have a thousand friends on Facebook and wonder whether they have real friendships like their own. Some women might be skeptical of a male writer telling this story but might there have been some advantages? I think my being clueless about women and their friendships may have actually helped. I was able create a wider canvass. The girls rolled their eyes and thought I was naive in a lot of ways but they would answer me when I asked questions. In that way, I was able to collect a lot of information. A woman probably would have gotten different answers, for better or worse. I took a journalistic approach and I wasn't judging their friendships compared to my own. I wasn't aiming for a novel -- more of an extended Wall Street Journal feature story. I predict that The Girls from Ames will be finding its way to the New York Times bestseller list. Do you have any idea what you will be writing about next? Yes, it just landed this week at number 5 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list. So that's exciting. As for what's next, I'm working on a book with Captain Chesley Sullenberger who successfully landed his plane on the Hudson. About the author: Jeffrey Zaslow is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal . Prior to writing The Girls from Ames , he was co-author of the international bestseller The Last Lecture . Zaslow's column, Moving On, focuses on life transitions and often attracts wide media interest. Zaslow was drawn to the story of Randy Pausch - and to the Ames girls -- because he has created a beat unlike almost any other in journalism. While The Wall Street Journal covers the heart of the financial world, Zaslow tends to the hearts of its readers. The Girls from Ames grew out of a column Zaslow wrote about the power of lifelong friendships. To find out more about the book or the author, go to: www.girlsfromames.com More on Relationships
 
Sessions: SCOTUS Filibuster Should Be Rare, Obama Not Nominating "Bomb Thrower" Top
WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee says he's inclined against using a filibuster to block President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said a deal among centrist senators four yours ago that averted filibusters against some of former President George W. Bush's judicial nominees established a "standard" that shouldn't be discarded except in unusual circumstances. Sessions, however, didn't entirely rule out a filibuster. "I think it should not be often used," he said in an interview Wednesday. Sessions said that Obama assured him in a brief telephone conversation Tuesday that he was not planning to nominate a "bomb-thrower." The senator said he told Obama that Republicans would treat his nominee with respect and said that "we're not going to misrepresent their record." Sessions said they did not discuss any potential nominees. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama also discussed the nomination Wednesday morning with two other Senate Judiciary Republicans, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Republicans promoted Sessions to their top slot on the Judiciary Committee Tuesday, making the conservative Southerner their point man for the nomination process after Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania defected from the GOP last week. Sessions has acknowledged that his party is so weakened that it might not have the votes to sustain a filibuster even if it wants to. Under Senate rules, a single senator can mount a filibuster by objecting to consideration of a bill or nominee. It takes a 60-vote supermajority to overcome the filibuster so a final vote can be taken. Democrats now hold 59 votes in the Senate with Specter's defection and two Democratic-voting independents. There is one open seat in the Senate with Norm Coleman and Al Franken fighting in court over the right to be the Minnesota senator. Souter announced his retirement last week. Obama wants to have his eventual nominee confirmed and in place for the Supreme Court session that will begin in October.
 
Bart Motes: Mark Penn: Political Swine Flu Top
Like H1N1, Mark Penn has human, pig, and avian DNA. And like his viral cousin, Penn was bred in a corporate pig sty. Penn recently raised his snout from the trough to wax philosophically about Hillary's defeat. Were it not for John Edwards, he opined, I imagine gesturing animatedly with his trotters, Hillary might have enjoyed an edge. "Most likely it would have been a two-way race and would have released a lot of voters who focused on demographics . . . voters who would later vote for Hillary Clinton." Allow me to translate: Penn says Edwards stole the old racist vote from Hillary! Of course, this is absolute rubbish. It's an insult to Edwards, to Hillary Clinton, to Barack Obama, and to Democratic primary voters. Although true that some racists probably voted for Clinton over Obama--Mudcat Sanders, Edwards's man, nobly said during the primaries that John Edwards didn't want any racist votes--even demographically, Edwards' presence or lack thereof wasn't the reason Hillary lost. As became clear once Edwards exited post-Florida, his voters split fairly evenly between Obama and Clinton. Older, less educated voters did gravitate to Clinton, but they were at least offset by the more progressive voters who found Obama closer to Edwards' economic populism. The elephant in the room, apart from the crippling incompetence of the porcine Penn himself, is obviously the Iraq war. I have no desire to malign Hillary Clinton, who by all indications is conducting herself admirably in furtherance of American foreign policy, and who was always an excellent public servant. However, we forget or obscure the importance of her Iraq war vote to the cost of future political decision making and the security and well-being of our country. When Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war she made Barack Obama possible. If she had taken a position of leadership against the war, she would be President today. She was elected in 2000 and did not have to face reelection until 2006. She came from one of the most progressive states in the Union. She was the most prominent female politician in America and arguably the Senator with the greatest celebrity and name recognition. Had she thrown her weight into opposition, she might have delayed or even stopped the war. Instead, tellingly, she did not even read the National Intelligence Estimate. I suspect that her decision making was shaped by advice from Penn, et al. They failed her. Although poll numbers on war with Iraq seemed daunting, behind the numbers it was clear that Americans only supported war with Iraq under a narrow set of conditions: if Iraq possessed WMD and was poised to use them against the United States. Had Clinton, like Obama, framed her opposition to the war in the limited, pragmatic terms that Obama did--"I am not opposed to all wars, just dumb wars"--she would almost certainly be President today. Penn scoffed at "humanizing" Hillary Clinton, saying that if shown to be soft Clinton "would have gotten zero votes from men." There's your Iraq war vote in a nutshell. If only she had been more like Jeanette Rankin and less like John McCain. Clinton is a good public servant, a brilliant person, and might have made a fine President. But because of the lessons that we should draw from her defeat, it is a good thing for America and the world that she lost. When swine like Mark Penn, rapidly depleting the good will he earned for his star turn in Return of the Jedi , lie in this odious fashion, they are falsifying the public record at the expense of making future tragedies like the Iraq war that much more likely. One final note. The DNC has been sending out letters begging for money to retire Hillary Clinton's debt. Recent campaign finance filings reveal that Clinton's remaining debt is entirely to Penn's firm. Don't do it. Penn doesn't deserve a cent. More on Barack Obama
 
Ryan J. Davis: The GOP and Gay Marriage: Let's Get it Straight Top
Maine leaped to the right side of history today with the passage of a gay-marriage bill through legislative channels. I'm impressed with the momentum of the LGBT movement post-Iowa, and it looks likely that advocates will reach their goal of marriage equality throughout New England by 2012. What's overblown is all this talk, from Meghan McCain to Jon Huntsman, of the Republican Party "embracing" gay marriage. Not taken into account is what is sure to be a brutal 2012 primary decided largely by Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In a recent poll, only 3 percent of Iowa Republicans found candidates who favored gay marriage appealing. And does anyone seriously think Huntsman has a shot at the GOP nomination? Republican primary voters in early 2012 states are too conservative for him, and he's the governor of Utah! More likely than the GOP endorsing gay marriage is that 2012 candidates will be racing to support "traditional families" the most. (Huckabee may get super-duper-married, instead of just super-married.) It's gonna get really ugly, further regionalizing the party and peeling away young voters. Lead by the Huckabees, Palins and Gingriches of the party, opposing gay marriage will be a cornerstone of the 2012 Republican candidates. We haven't heard the worst yet. Originally posted on The Hill's Pundit Blog . Visit ryanjdavis.blogspot.com , and follow Ryan on Twitter . More on Gay Marriage
 
Hobbits Found To Be 'A Separate Species' Top
Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.
 
Lea Lane: Since When is Empathy a Pejorative? Top
OK. Let me get this straight. "Torture" is good. And "empathy" is bad. Soon after Obama mentioned empathy as a general criterion for a Supreme Court nominee, the Republicans are now trying to make it a pejorative. What is empathy? The dictionary has many definitions, but Bill Clinton may have said it best: "I feel your pain." It's not just Do Unto Others, as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. It's feeling others' joys and sorrows and well-being as you would feel them yourself. As with most things, you can overdo it. Then you're a bleeding heart. I had a girlfriend whose bellboy father tipped 25 percent or more, and had trouble paying the rent. That was something beyond empathy. You know if you're empathic or not. Here are some examples I've come up with. Feel free to add others. You have empathy when you ... go to the back to pass a buck to the busboy. ... give up your preferred seat on a long flight to let a couple sit together. ... argue against intolerance/injustice even when all others around you disagree. ... step around the man sprawled on the front step of the office building, and think "There but for the grace of God," not "stupid drunk." ... get up from American Idol and get the leash when your dog looks urgently in your eyes, not after the show is over. ... yawn when someone else does (scientific theory as written in the New York Times -yawn and check your friends to see who does and doesn't). ... feel the sadness of a poignant movie longer than it takes to get out of your seat in the theater. ... ask the new person to sit next to you. ... listen for long as it takes to a friend's woes, even though you'd rather be sleeping. ... volunteer to feed the homeless, not just on Thanksgiving. ... invite someone who lives alone to join you for dinner. ... visit your mom's friend, at a nursing home. ... feel the scrape when your child has a boo-boo. ... give to charity, even when money is tight, and it's not much. ... swerve to avoid an ant on the sidewalk; swoosh a fly out the window. ... avoid eating meat; even avert your eyes at a lobster tank (ok, that might be a bit much, but I do). ... cringe when you see a person getting a paper cut. ... accept a Halfway House in your neighborhood. ... fight racism or bigotry at every chance. You have empathy when you care about the world, and the dignity and worth of every living creature. Sorry Republicans, but since when is that an effing pejorative?
 
Chris Rodda: It's Back -- Randy Forbes Reintroduces His Religious Heritage Week Resolution Top
In the last Congress, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 888, a resolution for an annual religious heritage week. That resolution, packed with a seventy-five "Whereas" clause litany of Christian nationalist historical revisionism, although managing to get ninety-three historically ignorant co-sponsors, never made it to the floor, thanks to the efforts of several organizations and a whole bunch of bloggers who launched a massive letter writing and email campaign against it within days of my first post about it last January. Well, Forbes is trying again with H. Res. 397 , introduced on May 4. This time he's calling it "America's Spiritual Heritage Week," but his list of historical distortions, misrepresentations, and lies has not changed. Therefore, my debunking of his historical hogwash, used last year to stop H. Res. 888, isn't changing either. Because of the number of lies in Forbes's resolution, I wrote my rebuttal in nine parts, the first of which is repeated here. Links to the other eight parts, a new one written each time last year's H. Res. 888 got more co-sponsors, are at the end of this post. The resolution, which purports to promote "education on America's history of religious faith," is packed with the same American history lies found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books of pseudo-historians like David Barton. The resolution's seventy-five "Whereas" clauses are followed by four resolves, the second and third of which are particularly disturbing. Resolved, That the United States House of Representatives -- (1) affirms the rich spiritual and diverse religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history, including up to the current day; (2) recognizes that the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures; (3) rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources; and (4) expresses support for designation of a 'America's Spiritual Heritage Week' every year for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith. Originally posted at talk2action.org on January 4, 2008: I cannot possibly address all seventy-five "Whereas's" in Mr. Forbes's ridiculously long list here, so I have chosen fourteen, focusing mainly on those relating to our country's founding era. "Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible;" The unnamed study referred to by Mr. Forbes in this statement was conducted by Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston, whose findings were published in a 1984 article in The American Political Science Review. Misrepresentations of Lutz's study have been around for years, created by taking a particular figure from the study's findings, but omitting crucial parts of Lutz's explanations of these findings. The following is a typical, and slightly more detailed version than that presented by Mr. Forbes, currently being used by the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools (NCBCPS). "A study by the American Political Science Review on the political documents of the founding era, which was from 1760-1805, discovered that 94 percent of the period's documents were based on the Bible, with 34 percent of the contents being direct citations from the Bible." The NCBCPS gives two statistics in this version, claiming that 34% of the contents of the documents studied were direct citations from the Bible, and in an even more astounding claim, that a whopping 94% of the documents of the period were based on the Bible. So, where do these numbers come from? The 34% comes from the following chart in Lutz's study: From this chart it does appear that 34% of the documents included in Lutz's study cited the Bible. That's because they did. And, without Lutz's explanation of this figure, this chart seems to support the assertion that the Bible, more than any other source, influenced the political thought of the founders. So, the Christian nationalist history revisionists simply omit the explanation that follows. "...From Table 1 we can see that the biblical tradition is most prominent among the citations. Anyone familiar with the literature will know that most of these citations come from sermons reprinted as pamphlets; hundreds of sermons were reprinted during the era, amounting to at least 10% of all pamphlets published. These reprinted sermons accounted for almost three-fourths of the biblical citations..."(1) The 916 documents included in the study were not official documents, legislative proceedings, etc., but writings "printed for public consumption," such as books, newspaper articles, and pamphlets. Only items of over 2,000 words were included. Taking into account that three-quarters of the biblical citations came from the subcategory of sermons, which comprised only 10% of the category of pamphlets, the Bible is really in the same range as Classical influences for documents that weren't sermons. This explains the 34%, but what about the even more far-fetched claim that 94% of the documents of the period were based on the Bible? Well, that comes from a video put out by pseudo-historian David Barton. Barton somehow concluded from his own "study" that 60% of the documents of the period were based on the Bible, and then just added the 34% from Lutz's study, ending up with a total of 94%. Of all the findings in Lutz's study ignored by the revisionists, however, none are as important as those found in the section of his article entitled "The Pattern of Citations from 1787 to 1788." As seen in the earlier chart, Lutz broke down the number of citations by decade. In addition to this, he singled out the writings from 1787 and 1788, and then further separated these writings into those written by Federalists and those by Anti-federalists. Lutz found few biblical citations during these two years, and, very interestingly, not a single one in any of the Federalist writings. The following is from what Lutz wrote about the two year period in which the Constitution was written and debated in the press. "The Bible's prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible has little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalist's inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant."(2) See also http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/4/15/04011/4130 "Whereas throughout the American Founding, Congress frequently appropriated money for missionaries and for religious instruction, a practice that Congress repeated for decades after the passage of the Constitution and the First Amendment;" I would ask Mr. Forbes to provide even a single example of such an appropriation. The best he will be able to do will be to misconstrue a few provisions from Indian treaties, as is done by the Christian nationalist history revisionists. The revisionist version of American history is full of tales about government efforts to promote Christianity to the Indians, and these tales, which contain little truth to begin with, are often turned into vague statements, such as that in Mr. Forbes's proposed resolution, used to imply that our early Congresses funded religious education for the American people. The reason for the use of legislation regarding Indians to create these lies is simply the availability of material that can be turned into lies. There were no actual instances, for example, of the early Congresses passing legislation that aided sectarian schools for children who were American citizens. There was, however, cooperation between the government and the Indian mission schools of the 1800s. Although the government's reasons for this were always secular, such as in an 1819 bill that appropriated a small amount of money for Indian mission schools to add agriculture education to their curriculums, the fact that this cooperation existed means there are actual acts, reports, etc., that can be misrepresented or misquoted, turning them into vague claims, like that of Mr. Forbes, that the government funded religious education. The same is true of Indian treaties. Congress never provided funding for any religious purpose for the American people. It did, however, appropriate funds to fulfill treaty provisions, which occasionally included things such as the building of a church, but even these cases were rare. Of the hundreds of Indian treaties made during the first fifty years following the ratification of the First Amendment, only nine contained provisions related in any way whatsoever to religion, and only four of the nine contained an explicit provision for the building of a church or the salary of a religious teacher. Several of these were nothing more than provisions compensating missionaries for the churches and other buildings they lost when Indian land was ceded and/or relocating the missionaries to the land reserved to the Indians in the treaty. Another example, the 1794 treaty with the Oneida and other tribes, included a provision to build a church to replace a church that the British had burnt down when these tribes sided with the Americans during the Revolutionary War. In this same fifty year period, only one treaty provided direct funding to schools run by a religious organization. This was an 1827 treaty with the Creeks, which provided funding for the tribe's three existing schools, which had been established by missionaries. This is the basis of Mr. Forbes's claim that our early Congresses "frequently appropriated money for missionaries and for religious instruction." "Whereas upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the Fourth of July `ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty';" Like the historical revisionists, Mr. Forbes has selectively quoted from John Adams's letter, making it appear that Adams thought the Fourth of July should be a religious holiday. The following was Adams's entire statement (Adams, of course, assumed at the time that the Second of July, not the Fourth, would become Independence Day): "The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."(3) Restored to its context, it is clear that Adams's statement was merely a prediction of the various ways in which the day might be commemorated in the future, not an opinion that it should be a religious celebration. By "ought to," Adams did not mean "should," but merely that he thought these ways of celebrating were likely, a common usage of the word "ought" at the time. "Whereas 4 days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty Bell was rung;" In reality, the Liberty Bell was never rung in conjunction with the reading of the Declaration of Independence. The belfry of the State House had deteriorated so much by 1776 that ringing the bell was impossible. The bell ringing myth began in 1847 with a fictional story written by George Lippard. In Lippard's story, published in the The Saturday Currier, the aged bellman at the State House was waiting in the belfry, ready to ring the bell the minute that Congress declared independence. But, after waiting for some time, he began to have doubts that this was really going to happen. Then, the bellman's grandson, who was listening at the doors of the Congress, suddenly shouted, "Ring, Grandfather! Ring!" The popular myth of the ringing of the bell on July 8, the day the Declaration was read to the public, evolved over the years from a combination of Lippard's story and an assumption by people unfamiliar with the condition of the State House belfry in 1776 that the bell would have been rung for such an important event as the reading. "Whereas the Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscription from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: `Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof';" In order to associate the Liberty Bell, and particularly its biblical inscription, with the American Revolution, revisionists must disregard its real history. The only connection between the Liberty Bell and the Revolution is that it happened to be the bell that hung in the building where the Continental Congress met. The inscription, which is preceded in the Bible by a reference to "the fiftieth year," was chosen a generation before the Revolution by a now obscure Quaker, Isaac Norris, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Governor William Penn's Charter of Privileges, the 1701 document that secured the religious freedom and other rights of the colonists and formally gave the Pennsylvania Assembly the expanded legislative powers that it had already begun to exercise. At the time of the Revolution, and for many years after, the bell was simply called the State House bell. The majority of the signers of the Declaration probably had no idea what was inscribed on it. It wasn't dubbed the "Liberty Bell" until 1838, when it was adopted as a symbol of liberty by a Boston abolitionist group, and a poem entitled The Liberty Bell was reprinted from one of the group's pamphlets by William Lloyd Garrison in his anti-slavery publication The Liberator. In the decades preceding this, the bell had become so insignificant that, in 1828, the City of Philadelphia had actually tried to sell it as salvage. "Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of `Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,' announced that they `desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement' and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported `into the different ports of the States of the Union';" First of all, the first two quotes in this statement, which Mr. Forbes claims were "announced" by Congress, were not the words of Congress, but come from the petition of a group of Philadelphia ministers. Second, Congress did not import any Bibles. In 1777, three ministers from Philadelphia, Francis Alison, John Ewing, and William Marshall, came up with a plan to alleviate the Bible shortage caused by the inability to import books from England during the Revolutionary War. The ministers' request for help from Congress, and Congress's consideration of the ministers' petition had to do with the problem of price gouging during the war. The ministers' idea was to import the necessary type and paper, and print an edition of the Bible in Philadelphia. The problem with this plan, however, was that, if the project was financed
 
Jeff Schweitzer: A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as...Liberal Top
With apologies to the Bard, I question his premise that nothing is changed by a name. A rose might smell as sweet regardless, but a liberal flower has a different aroma than one unlabelled. Pigeonholing someone into a simple category creates a comfortable means of evaluating, and dismissing, the merits of an argument without the nuisance of having to think too hard about the underlying logic. Labels allow us to make sense of a complex world by creating a simplified standard against which we can quickly categorize and judge difficult issues without taxing our brains. But we pay a heavy price for these mental shortcuts. In simplifying we miss important subtleties embedded in complexity. I plead guilty to this crime. I often use the term "right wing" to describe broadly those who oppose my political views. That is clearly unfair to those right of center who hold reasonable beliefs with which I disagree. But I am unsure if we see symmetry between how labels are applied across the political spectrum. I have this sense that the curve is perhaps skewed more right of center than left. During the election, candidate Obama was called by mainstream GOP leaders and pundits a communist, fascist, socialist, and radical liberal. What did the Democratic leaders call McCain? Usually war hero or brave American. Certainly both parties viciously attacked the policies of the other, but only one used false labeling as a sanctioned strategic tool. As an aside, I distinguish between political labels and attacks on personal qualifications. Plenty of people have called George Bush a moron, dunce, idiot and dupe. Those descriptions differ from political labels. Other than calling Obama "inexperienced" the two candidates in the last election largely avoided such personal attacks, mainly because the two were actually qualified for the job. On the extraordinarily rare occasions when my name is mentioned in the press, I am inevitably called "liberal blogger Jeff Schweitzer" or more specifically, "Huffington Post's Jeff Schweitzer" with the obvious implication of left-wing nut hood. With that introduction, why would anybody right of center even read my little missives? The problem is that the label is inaccurate, or at least of little meaning. Let's look at what makes me liberal and see if the label sticks. Stem Cell Research As a scientist, and author of a book on science, religion and morality ( Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World ), I have always strongly supported properly regulated stem cell research. Fortunately, Obama has finally removed the worst restrictions. But before then, former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) supported stem cell research. In breaking with Bush, Frist said restrictions on stem cell research "will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases." Former first lady Nancy Reagan was a strong advocate, stating that stem cell research "may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp." She went on to say, "I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this." Thirteen Republican senators signed a letter urging Bush to support federal funding for stem cell research. So Frist, Reagan and 13 Republican senators agreed with me on stem cell research. Are they liberal or am I conservative? Climate Change Since I co-authored a book in 1994 entitled Global Change of Planet Earth as part of a U.S. delegation to the OECD, I have been urging political leaders to take climate change seriously, and to implement national and international policies to address the issue. Bob Inglis (R-SC), claimed "there are more and more Republicans willing to stop laughing at climate change who are ready to get serious about reclaiming their heritage as conservationists." Other Republicans who also came to accept that climate change is real and caused by human activity include Senators Pete Domenic (R-NM), Mike DeWine (R-OH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Jim Leach (R-IA). Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida supports efforts to roll back greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels. Tucker Eskew, former deputy assistant to President Bush said, "A new hopeful voice on climate change, for example, is being heard nationally." Newt Gingrich made a commercial with Nancy Pelosi as part of the "we can solve it" global warming ad campaign. Newt Gingrich, Bob Inglis and cohorts agree with me that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Are they liberal or am I conservative? Offshore Drilling in ANWR The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the world's last pristine ecosystems, yet some politicians want to harm this protected area for short-term gain. The most optimistic estimates put peak oil production from ANWR at 780,000 barrels per day; the United States currently consumes 21 million barrels daily. Even at maximum output ANWR would supply only 4% of our daily consumption, and that peak would fall off quickly. Drilling here does nothing but delay our shift to a green economy, and threatens our ability to lead the world into the next generation of energy technologies. Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH) wrote a letter to House leadership opposing ANWR drilling; the letter was signed by 24 of his Republican colleagues. In the Senate, eight Republicans joined in to defeat a proposal to drill in ANWR. On the other hand, five Democratic Senators voted to open ANWR to drilling. With that confusing mix of support and opposition, is ANWR a conservative or liberal issue? Iraq War While I strongly supported the war in Afghanistan as a legitimate exercise in self-defense, I opposed from the beginning the war in Iraq. Rep. John Duncan, Jr. (R-TN) called the war "undeclared and unnecessary." John Leach (R-IO) opposed the war at the outset. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) called the war "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." Marine General Greg Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the Iraq war was "unnecessary" and that the rationale for the war by "zealots" made no sense. Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste told Bush that he "placed the nation in peril." Since all of those folks agree with me about the war, are they liberal or am I conservative? Torture Torture is immoral. As a secondary concern, torture is ineffective and does nothing to protect our national security. In any case, I strongly oppose the practice. That we are even having this discussion is astonishing. Ronald Reagan enthusiastically endorsed and signed the UN Convention on Torture in 1984, which contains the provision: "Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." In a signing ceremony, Reagan said, "Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today." (Emphasis added.) Newt Gingrich, returning from a trip to Asia, issued the following statement: "As I said in China this spring, there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions . There is no place for intolerance of dissent (emphasis added)." With Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich on board, is opposition to torture a conservative or liberal principle? The next time I am called a "liberal blogger" by the Wall Street Journal or other media, we must assume those publications mean that my views are supported by conservative Republicans in the House and Senate, and throughout the military across all ranks. We should really abandon the archaic monikers of liberal and conservative or left-wing and right-wing. I propose using different terminology that is less constraining. I would have no objection, for example, to being labeled a "rationalist" because that implies a methodology used in evaluating issues rather than a pre-determined position on any given subject. I'll let those who oppose my views come up themselves with a name that best suits them. I would suggest "non-rationalist" but I suspect that would be viewed askance.
 
Mount Athos Treasures On View To Women After 1,000 Years Top
For the first time in almost 1,000 years, many of the legendary Byzantine treasures of Mount Athos in Greece are on view to women. Almost 200 works of art from the male-only Orthodox enclave in northern Greece are on show at the Petit Palais in Paris until July. Most of the works have never previously left the peninsula, from which women - and even most female animals - have been banned since 1045. The 20 monasteries of Mount Athos house one of the largest collections of Christian art in the world. Direct access to these treasures is notoriously difficult to obtain for men, and impossible for women. But Paris has been granted the privilege of hosting this "world premiere", largely as a result of France's presidency of the EU last year. The Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dora Bakoyannis, described the exhibition as a "cultural event of the first order". "The treasures exhibited here are a part of European culture," Ms Bakoyannis said. "A large number of these relics are going 'beyond the walls' of Mount Athos for public viewing for the first time by men and women." Previously, only two very small exhibitions have been held of Mount Athos artefacts, both in Greece. The director of the Petit Palais, Gilles Chazal, said: "The monks of Mount Athos have been very enthusiastic in their support of this project." He added that the exhibition would be "hugely significant". The original decree banning women, and female animals (except cats, which help control the rat population), from the enclave was issued by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachos in 1045. Under Greek law, a breach of the ban by a woman can still lead to a jail sentence. The ban on female animals is enforced as strictly as possible. The monks maintain that the presence of women slows their path towards spiritual enlightenment. Particularly spectacular are the displays of imperial gifts which include "one of the most remarkable objects of metalwork of the Byzantine world": a chalice belonging to Manuel Cantacuzène (1349-1380), the son of Emperor Jean VI Cantacuzène, made from a single piece of jasper and most likely of Venetian origin. The exhibition will remain at the Petit Palais until 5 July. Read more from the Independent. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Greece
 
Roy Rivenburg: Swine Flu Virus Speaks to Media Top
As modern medicine gets more sophisticated, so do diseases. Some develop resistance to antibiotics, others join Facebook. Perhaps the most tech-savvy pathogen is swine flu. Scientists have been able to track the virus' origins and spread simply by reading its posts on Twitter and Facebook. Sample entries: • Just added "Outbreak" to my Netflix queue. I hope it's the director's cut. • I'm in New Jersey! Then again, what threat to humanity isn't? • Right now, I'm just trying to be the best pathogen I can. Movies, TV shows, action figures. That's my manager's job. In another first, the swine flu virus recently agreed to an e-mail interview with NotTheLATimes.com , excerpted below: Question: If you could kill only five people, who would top the list? Swine Flu: I try not to personalize this [stuff]. Infecting and killing is in my nature, and I'm sure good people have fallen. That being said, if I could target certain folks, the list would look something like this: • Miley Cyrus. Do I need to give a #@!%ing reason? • The Jonas Brothers. (They count as one person) • Hitler. It seems like a nice thing to do and could sorta help my image. You know how companies donate a percentage of their profits to charity? It would be like that. Killing Hitler would earn goodwill. Oh, and I'd have to get a time machine. • Donald Trump. He is NOT a good businessman, everybody! Wake up! • I'd let President Obama decide the fifth person. Q: Do you have any heroes? A: I definitely look up to the Black Plague ... But, for my money, nothing beats the rage virus from "28 Days Later." It gets in your eyes, turns you into a zombie and you eat other people! As a virus, I don't want to have to do all the work. Q: Hobbies? A: People think I just infect people, close schools and undermine economic activity, but I do have other interests. I recently visited Hong Kong, where I stopped by the Giant Buddha and meditated on suffering. Reaching a higher state of consciousness is definitely part of the big picture for me. Q: Did you go to college? If so, what was your major? A: That's a dumb #@!%ing question. I'm a virus. Q: Why do you think Joe Biden is so afraid of you? A: Most politicians try to minimize panic, tell people to be all calm or whatever. But here's a guy willing to yell fire in a crowded theater. I love this guy! Q: What have you been doing since the swine flu scare of 1976? A: Mostly regrouping. 1976 was a great year for me ... [but] then AIDS came along and really stole the spotlight. Look, I've got nothing but respect for HIV. ... But I've been at this for over 90 years, and it was hard for me to sit on the sidelines and watch some upstart take all the glory. So mostly I watched music videos. Q: What's your family background? Are you related to Miss Piggy? A: Despite my public image, I'm not a pig. Miss Piggy is cool and all, but we're not the same. She's a good front lady though, and she's got mad attitude like me. I'm a proud member of the Influenzavirus A species and have mad cousins. ... I represent the H1N1 subtype, which is responsible for the Russian Flu (killed 1 million) and the Spanish Flu (killed 100 million). H1N1 is the only member of the family to achieve pandemic status. It's an honor to carry on the torch. Q: Anything else? A: I was thinking about fronting a hip-hop artist called Sir Sneeze-a-lot just to promote my message. My thing is, I'm out here innovating. I got a Facebook page , I'm throwing face-licking parties and I even have e-mail and a phone line. I'm a 21st century, web 3.0 pandemic. This ain't your granddaddy's virus. Editor's Note: NotTheLATimes.com , where this interview originally appeared, didn't create the swine flu's online persona. The virus operates independently (although it might use a secretary to handle typing). More on Swine Flu
 
Rick Smith: The Interview Idiot HALL OF FAME Top
There is no way to consistently identify truly outstanding job candidates from a single interview. But you can certainly sniff out the bad ones. Vice Presidents and personnel directors of the 100 largest corporations were asked to describe their worst experience interviewing prospective employees. Here are some of the highlights*: Most Unusual Experience Interviewee wore a Walkman, explaining that she could listen to the interviewer and the music at the same time Candidate fell and broke arm during interview Candidate announced she hadn't had lunch and proceeded to eat a hamburger and French fries in the interviewer's office Candidate said he never finished high school because he was kidnapped and kept in a closet in Mexico Balding candidate excused himself and returned to the office a few minutes later wearing a headpiece Candidate dozed off during the interview Most Unusual Questions Asked "What is it that you people do at this company?" "Do I have to dress for the next interview?" "Would it be a problem if I'm angry most of the time?" "Does your company have a policy regarding concealed weapons?" "Why am I here?" Most Unusual Statements Made "I have no difficulty in starting or holding my bowel movement." "I am fascinated by fire." "I know who is responsible for most of my troubles." "If the pay was right, I'd travel with the carnival." "My legs are really hairy." "I think I'm going to throw up." Source: Steve Kerr This post was originally published at RickSmith.me Subscribe to Rick's Blog . Friend Rick Smith on Facebook . Follow Rick Smith on Twitter .
 
Wal-Mart Death Probe: Company Paying $2 Million To Avoid Charges Top
MINEOLA, N.Y. — Wal-Mart agreed Wednesday to pay nearly $2 million and improve safety at its 92 New York stores as part of a deal with prosecutors that avoids criminal charges in the trampling death of a temporary worker last year. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said that if she had brought criminal charges against the retailer in the worker's death, the company would have been subject to only a $10,000 fine if convicted. Rice declined to say what charges were considered against Wal-Mart, citing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. Instead, she said, the company has agreed to implement an improved crowd-management plan for post-Thanksgiving Day sales, set up a $400,000 victims' compensation and remuneration fund, and give $1.5 million to Nassau County social services programs and nonprofit groups. The agreement included no admission of guilt by Wal-Mart. "Rather than bringing the world's largest retailer to court and imposing a small fine against them, I felt it was important to require significant safety changes that will affect the whole state," Rice said. "Our goal is for the protocols that are set up to be the gold standard for crowd management in this industry." Details of Wal-Mart's crowd-management plan for its New York stores have yet to be worked out. The retailer will work with two independent safety experts on the plan, and the experts will review it over the next three years. Wal-Mart will be responsible for complying with the recommendations. "The crowd management plan we are announcing today was developed by a team of experts whose experience includes NFL Super Bowls, Olympic games, concerts and national political conventions," Wal-Mart vice president Hank Mullany said. The company said it will consider expanding the safety plan to all of its stores. Rice's office began a criminal investigation shortly after last November's customer stampede. Jdimytai (Jimmy-tree) Damour, a temporary employee, had been on the job for about a week and had no training in security or crowd control when a crowd estimated at 2,000 broke down the Valley Stream store's doors, trapping him in a vestibule. Built like an NFL linebacker at 6-foot-5 and 270 pounds, the 34-year-old Queens man died of asphyxiation. Eleven others, including a pregnant woman, were injured. Edward H. Gersowitz, an attorney representing Damour's family in a civil lawsuit, blasted the settlement and said the family was never consulted before the deal was announced. He called for a special prosecutor. "The ability of Wal-Mart to, in effect, buy off this criminal investigation demonstrates the epitome of corporate arrogance that has become all too familiar in this day and age, and shows how Wal-Mart has nothing but contempt for the victims of such corporate malfeasance," he said in a statement. Any victims who accept payment from the Wal-Mart compensation fund will be required to waive their right to a separate civil suit against Wal-Mart, Rice said. Also, she said, Wal-Mart has agreed to advertise the compensation fund in the daily and weekly newspapers that cover Valley Stream and its surrounding neighborhoods. "Facilitating the compensation is one of the main goals of this settlement," she said. The company also agreed to an independent review of its procedures for post-Thanksgiving Day sales. The prosecutor said her office will oversee compliance. "We are hoping that this safety plan becomes the nationally recognized model for crowd management among all retailers and becomes an industrywide best practice," she said. The community grant money includes $1.2 million for Nassau County's Youth Board, which helps nonprofit agencies provide career development, employment training and other opportunities. The retailer also will donate $300,000 to the United Way of Long Island's Youth Build Program in Nassau County. The deal also calls for Wal-Mart to hire 50 high school students annually to work in its five stores in the county. More on Wal-Mart
 
Amex, JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon Pass Stress Tests Top
WASHINGTON — At least three of the nation's 19 largest banks have passed government stress tests of their financial strength. American Express Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. will not be asked to raise more capital when federal officials announce the test results Thursday afternoon, according to people briefed on the results. The people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the results. The stress tests were designed to see how the large banks and finance companies would fare if the economy worsens. Analysts expect about half the companies will be asked to raise capital. Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. all will be asked to raise money, sources have told The Associated Press. Spokesmen for New York-based American Express and JPMorgan would not comment. A Bank of New York Mellon representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon. Bank of America stock rose Wednesday after reports that the Charlotte, N.C.-based company would need to raise $34 billion in additional capital. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported the figure. The Times quoted a bank executive, while the Journal cited unnamed people familiar with the situation. The stress tests are a centerpiece of the Obama administration's plan to stabilize the financial industry. They measure how much the banks would be hurt if unemployment rose to 10.3 percent and home prices dropped an additional 22 percent. The government wants the firms to have enough money to keep lending even if the economy gets much worse. Officials have said none of the banks will be allowed to fold. Shares of Bank of America rose $1.27, or 11.7 percent, to $12.11 in afternoon trading. Bank of New York Mellon shares added $1.11, or 4.1 percent, to $28.52, and American Express gained $1.03, or 3.9 percent, to $27.60. _____ Lepro reported from New York. AP Business Writer Stephen Bernard contributed to this report from New York. More on Economy
 
Sheldon Filger: Ben Bernanke and His Terrifying Toolkit Top
In his testimony before the congressional Joint Economic Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke repeated an earlier prediction that the severe recession in the U.S. economy would end in the current year. Typically, Bernanke offered all kinds of qualifications, just so he would not be seen as too optimistic, thereby eroding all credibility. Nevertheless, the Fed Chairman is now firmly on record as forecasting that the worst impact of the Global Economic Crisis upon the American economy will recede in 2009. And as the foremost expert on monetary policy and economics in all the land, this self-proclaimed genius (as witnessed on the CBS 60 Minutes propaganda segment on Bernanke) is someone we should all pay attention to; that goes for every parsed word flowing from his lips. Before becoming overly indulgent in the gospel of Ben Bernanke, let us take a brief trip down memory lane, to the year 2007. Then, too, the Fed Chairman testified before the Joint Economic Committee. And this is what he had to say, just as the first inklings of a subprime mortgage crisis were percolating. Bernanke, when asked about the ramifications of this threatening disaster to the overall health of the nation's economy, replied that it was "likely to be contained." Likely to be contained? No economic forecast has ever been so catastrophically flawed as Ben Bernanke's utterance before the Joint Economic Committee. And that was by no means the only wrong prediction uttered by Ben Bernanke, as the subprime crisis morphed into a full-blown financial meltdown, leading to the Global Economic Crisis. The track record established by Ben Bernanke in predicting the consequences of an unfolding economic crisis of unprecedented global ferocity has been downright calamitous. Yet this same deficient analyzer of economic phenomena remains as chairman of the Fed, with unchallenged powers to set monetary policy. As the subprime crisis became something much worse, Bernanke adopted a slightly different tack in his public posture. Rather than rosy forecasts, he boasted about the lavish toolkit that the Fed possessed. "We have many tools in our toolkit," boasted Bernanke on more than occasion, cheerfully promising to use all the tools he felt were necessary. The vocabulary that the Fed Chairman has succumbed to I find absolutely fascinating. Massive monetary decisions that are risky in the extreme, and will likely have intergenerational consequences, become mere "tools." The consequential becomes the ubiquitous. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have been in panic mode, as the financial system became unglued. Massive quantitative easing has flooded fiat liquidity into America's battered economy, buying a short-term respite at best, and at the cost of hyperinflation down the road. Most troubling, and often in total secrecy, the Fed has been bailing out Wall Street, above and beyond the TARP program being managed by the Treasury Department. Since last September and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the Fed's balance sheet has doubled to more than $2 trillion. Most troubling is the quality of that balance sheet, which has historically been composed primarily of Treasuries. Now, however, at least 75% of the Federal Reserve's balance is in the form of questionable assets, such as mortgage backed securities. In effect, Ben Bernanke has transformed the Federal Reserve's balance sheet into the nation's largest toxic dump. It may be only a matter of time before the Fed approaches Congress-and U.S. taxpayers-for a bailout of its own. While Bernanke may still inspire confidence from President Obama, he frankly scares the hell out of me. Isn't it time we took away the toolkit from this disaster-prone Fed Chairman, before it is too late? More on The Fed
 
Stephen Zunes: Pelosi the Hawk Top
Reports by international human rights groups and from within Israel in recent weeks have revealed the massive scale of war-crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law, committed by Israeli forces during their three-week offensive against the Gaza Strip earlier this year. Despite this, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has steadfastly stood by her insistence that the U.S.-backed Israeli government has no legal or moral responsibility for the tragic consequence of the war. This is just one episode in a long history of efforts by Pelosi to undermine international humanitarian law, in regards to actions by a country she has repeatedly referred to as America's most important ally in the Middle East. It's also part of her overall right-wing agenda in the Middle East. As the powerful Speaker of the House, Pelosi could very well undermine efforts by President Barack Obama in the coming years to moderate U.S. policy toward that volatile region. Support for the Gaza War During the height of Israel's devastating offensive on the Gaza Strip in January, Pelosi pushed through a resolution putting the House of Representatives on record calling "on all nations…to lay blame both for the breaking of the calm and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame belongs, that is, on Hamas."[emphasis added] Not only did the resolution ignore Israel's attacks in Gaza in November and other violations of the ceasefire that served to "break the calm," it put forward an extreme reinterpretation of international humanitarian law apparently designed to absolve any nation that kills large numbers of civilians, as long as the other side allegedly initiated the conflict. The resolution favorably quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, regarding responsibility for civilian deaths and for the causes of the conflict, but cites no one else. Though the Gaza War should be considered "a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy," as Juan Cole has written , Pelosi instead aligned herself and the Democratic congressional majority with the failed ideology of the outgoing Bush administration. Indeed, some of the language of Pelosi's resolution was even to the right of Bush: For example, while the January 8 UN Security Council resolution — which received the endorsement of Rice and other administration officials — condemned " all acts of violence and terror directed against civilians," Pelosi's resolution only condemned the violence and terror of Hamas. Similarly, her resolution placed conditions for a ceasefire on the Palestinian side that was even more stringent than those advocated by the Bush administration and endorsed eventually by the Israelis. And, despite International Red Cross reports of Israeli forces illegally preventing emergency workers from reaching wounded civilians, killing aid and health workers, and attacking hospitals and ambulances, Pelosi's resolution went on record praising Israel for having "facilitated humanitarian aid to Gaza." Pelosi's resolution also cited the Israeli invasion as part of Israel's "right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against Hamas's unceasing aggression, as enshrined in the United Nations Charter." In reality, the UN Charter explicitly prohibits nations going to war unless they "first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice." Yet Israel — with strong bipartisan U.S. support — has refused to even meet with Hamas. Furthermore, while Article 51 does allow countries the right to resist an armed attack, it doesn't grant any nation the right to engage in such massive and disproportionate warfare against densely packed cities and refugee camps. Pelosi also claimed that Hamas bore responsibility for the more than 700 deaths of Palestinian civilians because of the alleged use of "human shields." Hamas was certainly guilty of less-severe humanitarian violations, such as not taking all necessary steps to prevent civilian casualties while positioning fighters and armaments, but this isn't the same as using civilians as shields. And, as Human Rights Watch noted , even the presence of armed personnel and weapons near civilian areas "does not release Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property during military operations." Furthermore, the nature of urban warfare, particularly in a territory as densely populated as the Gaza Strip, makes the proximity of retreating fighters and their equipment to civilians unavoidable in many cases. In any case, there have been scores of well-documented cases of civilian casualties in areas where there were no Hamas fighters. The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential "pro-Israel" lobby, did not draft Pelosi's resolution, unlike some similar resolutions in recent years. The wording of the resolution came primarily out of the offices of Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman. This was a completely Democratic initiative led by Pelosi herself. Pelosi's siding with the Bush administration in its defense of violations of international humanitarian law by U.S. allies was nothing new. When Bush defended Israel's assaults on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure in 2006 and defied the international community by blocking UN efforts to impose a ceasefire, Pelosi voted in favor of a resolution commending him for "fully supporting Israel." This Pelosi-backed resolution claimed that Israel's actions were legitimate self-defense under the UN Charter and, despite evidence to the contrary, praised "Israel's longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcom[ed] Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties." Directly contradicting empirical studies by Human Rights Watch , Amnesty International , and even the U.S. Army War College , all of which noted the absence of any credible evidence of even a single civilian fatality resulting from such practices, she went on recording insisting that the nearly 800 civilian deaths were a result of Hezbollah using "human shields." Pelosi also echoed Bush's defense of Israel's 2002 West Bank offensive, which also was directed primarily at civilian targets. Once again contradicting findings by reputable human rights groups, she voted in favor of a resolution sponsored by right-wing Republican leader Tom DeLay claiming the massive assault was "aimed solely at the terrorist infrastructure." Pelosi attacked the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 ruling calling for the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention in Israeli-occupied territories. She also voted in favor of a resolution condemning the World Court for its near-unanimous advisory opinion that Israel's separation barrier shouldn't be built beyond Israel's internationally recognized border into the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal settlements into Israel, warning that members of the international community would "risk a strongly negative impact on their relationship" with the United States if they dared push for the implementation of the ruling. (See my article " Attacks Against World Court by Congress Reveal Growing Bipartisan Hostility to International Law .") And Pelosi has even gone as far as defending Israel's use of death squads in the extra-judicial killings of suspected militants. Pelosi's Middle East Record Pelosi's right-wing agenda in the Middle East goes beyond efforts to undermine international humanitarian law. During the Bush years, she tried to push congressional Democrats to support the administration's broader Middle East agenda. "There is no division on policy between us and President Bush, be it on Israel, Palestine or Syria," she declared . Nancy Pelosi doesn't view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of the many rights and wrongs of both parties. For her, it's all the fault of the Palestinians, and the responsibility for the violence and the failure of the peace process rests on them alone. Pelosi has long insisted that the Palestinians' 1993 decision to recognize Israeli control over 78% of Palestine was not enough. She has even portrayed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's 2000 proposal to create a Palestinian Bantustan on approximately 18% of Palestine — which would have effectively divided the territory into four non-contiguous units with Israel controlling the borders, airspace, and water resources — as "a generous and historic proposal." She further insisted that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's rejection of that proposal was indicative of the Palestinians' lack of commitment to peace, ignoring his subsequent acceptance of President Bill Clinton's peace plan put forward five months later. Echoing the Israeli right's claim that the Palestinians' various peace proposals are all just a ruse and that they simply want to destroy Israel, Pelosi insists that the conflict is about "the fundamental right of Israel to exist" and that it is "absolute nonsense" to claim it has anything do to with the Israeli occupation. Subsequently, Pelosi has sought to undermine the road-map for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In May 2003, she signed a letter to Bush insisting that the peace process must be based not on an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land seized in the 1967 war, but "above all" on the end of Palestinian violence and the establishment of a new Palestinian leadership. Though the road-map called for both Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers to simultaneously work to fulfill their obligations, she insisted that the Palestinians alone were responsible for implementing the first stage of the Road Map and failed to even mention any of Israel's reciprocal responsibilities, such as ending the sieges and military assaults on Palestinian population centers and halting construction of additional illegal settlements. Speaking about a visit to one of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2004, Pelosi referred to an infiltration by local Palestinians that had taken place that morning as part of "the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence." By implying that the Gaza Strip, seized by force by the Israeli army in 1967, was part of Israel, Pelosi apparently hoped to reinforce efforts by the Israeli right to resist compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions, and a ruling by the International Court of Justice to withdraw these settlements in accordance with international law. When Israel finally withdrew its illegal settlements from the occupied Gaza Strip the following year, keeping the territory under a strict siege and blockade, she praised it as a "courageous," "gut-wrenching" decision for Israel, as if the Gaza Strip wasn't actually occupied territory but instead a part of Israel itself, generously given up by the Israeli government in the interest of peace.. Double Standards Pelosi has supported strict economic sanctions and even threats of military force against Middle Eastern governments targeted by the Bush administration — such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran, or Syria — that were slow in complying with UN Security Council resolutions. Yet she has never publicly called on Israel to abide by any of the dozens of Security Council resolutions on international humanitarian law, illegal annexation of militarily-occupied territory, or nuclear proliferation with which that government remains in material breech. In Pelosi's worldview, a country's obligations to comply with the UN Charter and UN Security Council resolutions depend not on objective international legal standards but on their relations with the United States. After supporting false assertions that Saddam Hussein had somehow reconstituted his "weapons of mass destruction" in 2002, Pelosi now claims it's actually Iran — another oil-rich Middle Eastern nation — that "represents a clear threat to Israel and to America." She has refused to support calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone for all of Southwest Asia, which would include nuclear states Israel, Pakistan, and India, and would link up with already existing nuclear weapons-free zones in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the South Pacific. Instead, while believing that these U.S. allies need not be pressured to give up their nukes, she argues that Iran "must be confronted by an international coalition against proliferation." Indeed, she threatened Iran for its nuclear program while defending Israel for its development of a sizable nuclear arsenal. Pelosi voted in favor of sanctions against Syria based on its refusal to unilaterally give up its missiles — even though Israel (along with such other U.S. allies as Turkey, Israel and Egypt) have even more advanced missile programs — and its refusal to unilaterally give up their chemical weapons stockpiles, even though Israel and Egypt have much larger chemical weapons arsenals. In short, Pelosi supports the position advocated by the Bush administration rejecting law-based universal standards to challenge the threat of weapons proliferation in the volatile Middle East, insisting the United States can unilaterally decide which countries can and cannot have certain weaponry. Prior to the division of power between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in 2007, Pelosi supported Bush's policy of refusing to resume normal relations with the Fatah-led Palestine Authority, unless the cabinet excluded members of Hamas or any party that doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, refuses to renounce violence, or fails to endorse previous agreements in the peace process. By contrast, Pelosi has raised no concerns about the
 
GOP Pollster: Our National Security Attacks On Obama Make Us Look "Irrelevant" Top
A high-profile and well-respected GOP pollster is strongly criticizing the new effort by the GOP Congressional leadership to revive the party's national security attacks on Obama, saying the strategy risks making the party look "out of touch and irrelevant." More on Barack Obama
 
Stroger Hedging On Sales Tax Veto Threat Top
Thrown to the political wolves by the powerful Daley family, embattled Cook County Board President Todd Stroger now says he might not veto a surprise sales-tax repeal after all.
 
Zach Galifianakis Traps Natalie Portman Between Two Ferns (VIDEO) Top
Zach Galifianakis's insane talk show "Between Two Ferns" is back and he's breaking out of his shell by introducing his awkward sweatiness to a whole new species: the celebrity dog. Natalie Portman joined Zach between his ferns this week with her puppy, Whiz. The dog ran off after Galifianakis asked if he could smell it. The dog is smart. Portman stayed even after Galifianakis asked if she shaved her vagina for "V for Vendetta" along with her head. Natalie refused to answer, but didn't run away. Here are other creepy episodes. WATCH: Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis from Between Two Ferns More on Funny Or Die
 
Doon Baqi: Why We Are Not Winning Afghanistan Top
I think we should pay a little attention to history, both ours and theirs, in order to come out ahead in this chaotic struggle for world peace and prosperity. Take Afghanistan, for example. Afghanistan has a very violent history. It has been invaded by just about everyone. Alexander the Great tried to conquer it, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now America. At every invasion, the otherwise scattered and feuding tribes bonded together and withheld the invaders. Time after time. This is their history. It is in their lore, their myths, their legends, their songs. Every Afghan sings about these past victories, often boasting that Afghanistan has never lost a war (although it has lost plenty of battles). Alexander came and took the land, just like the British, the Soviets, but could not hold it. And eventually had to withdraw, often broken. Keeping this in mind, it is apparent that these people have made an existence out of fighting off invaders. They are fiercely independent. History shows this time and time again. America goes in, not so much as an invader, but as a liberator (from the Taliban). And at first, many Afghans welcomed us. But then, we placed criminals in high power positions and started bombing villages and killing innocents by the thousands. Google search Afghan civilian casualties and it seems to be a weekly occurrence. We suddenly cease to be "liberators" to them, and this results in them banding together, making the insurgency stronger. To them, it is no longer a fight against the Taliban and terrorism, but a fight to ward off the ever present invaders. When the insurgency was once the weakened band of fanatical Taliban, they are now widows, grieving parents, siblings, and cousins. Then, you add the history of the Crusades against Muslim nations, and the Afghans have no choice but to sleep with one eye open. They accepted the Americans, but since most of the allies were Christian, they were wary of the soldiers. They were told not to be, assured that this is not a war against Islam, that the American soldiers were not there for a religious purpose, but only to rid the world of terror. I wonder, then, why on earth we make it so difficult for ourselves to win this war when we have American generals addressing a church congregation in his military uniform that this is hardly anything shy of a crusade. And now, Lieutenant Colonels telling a group of soldiers that they must go out and hunt for souls and bring them to Christ. They were caught red handed. They had printed up bibles in Farsi and Pashto intended to be given as "gifts." They had found a loophole in the Army's General Order Number 1 and realized that gift giving is not the same as preaching. And we wonder why this war is not being won. We have too many American lives at stake here for us to behave like this. Too many soldiers from our neighborhoods there that we want back home. Dear Evangelicals, can you people please stop? Our military is busy trying to restore that image of the professional American soldier that we were once famous for, that I was proud to be a part of. You are not helping. The Army is not a religious establishment. We are a secular country. Soldiers must be soldiers. Brave, intelligent, loyal, and professional. Soldiers are not preachers. By acting as such, all they are doing is placing in harm's way the other soldiers who actually are being true to their uniform. More on Religion
 
Carol Felsenthal: Oh, My Todd [Stroger]: 'An Exercise in Fertility' Top
On Wednesday's "Don Wade & Roma Morning Show" Cook County Board President Todd Stroger said he may or may not veto Tuesday's vote to repeal a 1 percent Cook County sales tax increase imposed last year. He is said to have the votes to do it. "Why do an exercise in fertility?" he asked Don and Roma. "If they don't really care about what happens? If they don't think they need the money, then say nothing and we'll just let it happen. But somebody's gotta do something." The transcript is cleaned up on the Progress Illinois Web site but the audio of the interview with Don Wade and Roma is also posted and Stroger clearly says "exercise in fertility." The malapropism from Stroger -- whose apparent functional illiteracy is so striking that he makes Mayor Daley sound like Winston Churchill, and George W. Bush sound like Adlai Stevenson -- rang a bell when I heard it. Driving and listening to the news on the radio last winter, I caught part of Todd Stroger reading a statement about improved services at the Cook County Hospital, now the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, named to honor Todd's late father and predecessor as County Board president (and the only reason why Todd Stroger would ever be the head of anything). Todd was touting the services at the Stroger Hospital and was about to get to the new and improved facilities for obstetrics, but as he got to the word "obstetrics" or "obstetrical," on his script he tried several times to say it, failed, and, finally, just gave up. On the radio, he sounded like a kid in third grade who hadn't quite mastered phonics. If Todd Stroger loses the next election, let's just hope that President Obama doesn't summon him to Washington as Surgeon General. (I make that joke because I still can't get it out of my head that the president supported Todd over the reformer and Obama supporter Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool.)
 
Ford Takes Steps To Mass-Produce Electric Focus By 2011 Top
WAYNE, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. stripped "truck" from the name of one its Detroit-area plants Wednesday as it announced plans to build its next-generation Focus here, including a battery-electric version Ford expects will run up to 100 miles without using gas or emitting greenhouse gas. While Chrysler LLC sells assets in a New York bankruptcy court, and General Motors Corp. works around the clock on ways to cut labor costs and debt before a government imposed deadline, Chairman Bill Ford Jr. and CEO Alan Mulally announced plans to invest $550 million to retool the Michigan Truck plant so it can make small cars it will sell worldwide. "In the worst of times worldwide, we're here today to celebrate a plan to profitably grow Ford," Mulally said. "We're fighting for the soul of manufacturing in the United States of America and worldwide." Mulally said that the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker would build more than 2 million vehicles a year on its small C-car platform globally. Ford and Mulally were flanked by a crowd of 500 employees, reporters and state officials, including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The retooled facility, which once built hefty sport utility vehicles like the Lincoln Navigator and is now called the Michigan Assembly Plant, will build Ford's next-generation Focus, expected to roll off the line next year. Those cars will be sold globally. The plant will also build a new battery-electric version of the Focus for the North American market in conjunction with battery maker Magna. That vehicle is expected to debut in 2011. "We're building the highest tech vehicle in our fleet here in Michigan," Ford said. "It going to be a critical step toward the commercialization and ultimately the acceptance of electric vehicles." The plant that once helped Ford's profitability, is expected to do the same with the Focus, Mulally said. The struggling automaker, which lost $1.4 billion in the first quarter, said roughly 3,200 jobs will be created in Michigan because of the plant conversion and will reopen late next year. Mulally said that Ford's restructuring efforts are "on track" as the company has cut labor costs, debt, and is adjusting its manufacturing operations to meet consumer demand. Ford said it will also consolidate operations at its Wayne Assembly plant and transform two other truck and SUV plants _ Cuautitlan Assembly in Mexico and Louisville Assembly in Kentucky _ as part of the retooling. UAW vice president Bob King said Ford's Ohio Assembly plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, is also on the list to build new cars. The majority of Ford's investment will be spent on manufacturing at the site and the remainder on engineering and launch costs. Michigan, Wayne county and the city of Wayne have contributed more than $160 million in tax credits and grants to support Ford's expansion. In addition to Ford's zero-emission Focus battery-electric car, the company is working on several other product plans. The company is working with Smith Electric to sell a battery electric commercial vehicle for North America in 2010, the Transit Connect. It also plans to introduce in 2012 a next-generation hybrid vehicle and a plug-in hybrid vehicle. Ford is the only U.S. automaker not taking any government aid, but it has talked to President Obama's auto task force regarding suppliers who are ailing as GM and Chrysler halt production and face running out of cash. "We have no issues right now paying our bills on time," Mulally said. "The supply base is the No. 1 issue." He said that stabilizing the banking sector would be helpful to suppliers because it would offer them easier access to credit, which many need to fund basic operations. Mulally said that it's unclear whether the task force would offer additional aid to supplier, but said Ford was not in the position to carry the entire supply base. Ford shares rose 38 cents, or 6.5 percent, to $6.23 in afternoon trading. More on Cars
 
Jack Hidary: Live from the Kindle DX Launch Top
Jeff Bezos came to New York today to release his bigger e-reader - the Kindle DX. The DX makes is easy to read 8.5" by 11" docs with a larger screen and includes more memory- enough for 3500 books and a stash of documents. The DX also changes from portrait to landscape when you rotate it just like an iPhone. Jeff was clad in his usual jeans and blue blazer and still has that bit-too-thin look of someone training for a 100 mile marathon. I hope he starts eating more now that the kindle is doing well. At one point in the demo the projecter reversed everything on the screen. Jeff laughed and said, "I am going to choose to find this hilarious...imagine you are looking at this through a mirror." Before the projector came back to life he was going to invite everyone in the audience on stage to see the demo up close. That would have been hilarious. The Kindle DX will retail for $489 and will be available this summer. In addition to the Amazon web site, the DX will be distributed by various newspapers inlcuding the New York Times which will offer it at a steep discount in exchange for a long-term subscription to the e-paper. The main drawback of both the kindle 2.0 and the DX is that E-ink which provides the technology has still not fixed the disturbing flash you get whenever you turn a page. It is odd that E-ink could not provide a memory buffer to smooth out this problem. At the launch of the Kindle 2.0 he brought Stephen King (click here for HP interview). This time around his focus was on the larger format of the DX and partners such as the New York Times and a group of universities for textbook use of the DX. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr of the Times spoke as did Barbara Snyder, the president of Case Western. Sulzberger said that "we knew for more than a decade that one day an e-reader would be a signficant platform of distribution for our content." Six universities will pilot the DX as a textbook reader including Pace which hosted the event today. It is curious that Amazon did not get more universities to sign up to this program as a test. I assume more will come soon. Snyder noted that her students at Case Western may study better with this device and, without all the books to weigh them down, will "stand taller." Bezos noted that he hopes the DX will lead to a reduction in printing of regular documents. "The paperless society never came," he said, "we are printing more than we ever did." He showed a web page from Amazon selling a printer toner cartridge- "We sell a lot of these...for some reason I always run out of cyan first." If future kindles can get rid of the between-page flash then I believe this product will really take off and then we can get back to the paperless revolution that was supposed to come a decade ago. More on iPhone
 
Mike Davis: A Day Without Tourists Top
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com Tijuana Versus the Plague "Since everyone is dumping on Mexico these days, you might as well help me do the real thing." My friend Marcos Ramirez (aka "ERRE") isn't kidding. He's building a new house in Colonia Libertad , Tijuana's oldest and most surrealistically colorful neighborhood, and needs to dispose of some construction debris. I ride shotgun in his pickup while his younger brother Omar, a poet-artist with eyes like Che Guevara's, sprawls in the backseat. For once in a lifetime, afternoon traffic in Tijuana is unsnarled and ERRE spurs his Chevy Silverado through the Zona Rio roundabouts, past the giant statue of Father Kino and the utopian sphere of the Cultural Center, until we reach the Avenida Internacional, the long straightaway next to the corrugated steel futility of the border wall . As the road climbs the mesa, there is a jarring view of landscape disfigured by National Guard bulldozers and the endless churning of terrain by Border Patrol jeeps. But today even the brutalism of Operation Gatekeeper is ameliorated by blue skies and a tickle of a sea breeze. ERRE catches the mood and puts on a Beach Boys CD. I have a sudden inkling of what he must have been like when he was a 15-year-old outlaw skateboarder from Colonia Libertad, careening suicidally down its rutted slopes. Later, he briefly practiced law, but quickly turned away from its corruption to work for 17 years as a skilled carpenter and homebuilder in the United States. In 1997, he confounded the Border Patrol by erecting a huge Trojan Horse (two heads, facing in opposite directions) at the San Ysidro frontier. It exactly straddled the international line. Tijuaneses loved it. Since then he has created similar provocations from Reading, Pennsylvania, to Yunnan, China, attaining the kind artistic renown that usually guarantees studio space in Soho or Coyoacan. But he stubbornly prefers being, as he puts it, a "Libertarian." The Silverado lurches into a dirt side street somewhere on the proletarian backside of Chapultepec Heights. ERRE pulls up along a fence, honks his horn, and the debris is quickly unloaded by elves in rags. He hands one of them 100 pesos, or $7. (The minimum wage in the sweatshop maquiladoras is only 55 pesos per day.) The old city dump is closed, the new one too far away, so like most Tijuaneses, ERRE uses the services of the informal economy. Moreover, in the midst of an unprecedented NAFTA recession, a horror-ridden narco-war, and now a much-hyped pandemic, any act that circulates a few pesos amongst " el pueblo " seems conscientious. We fishtail out of the dirt alley and return to a paved avenue of restaurants, beauty salons, and car-alarm dealers. Schools and public buildings are closed, morning masses have been suspended, and sports events have been cancelled, but stores and street markets remain open and desperate for business. Customers are sparse, though. Half the population seems to have disappeared. Few people, apart from municipal employees and office cleaners, wear surgical masks, but no one seems to begrudge those that do. "Looks like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers," I say. "You should have seen Mexico City," ERRE replies. "I was down there for the Zona Maco Art Fair when the flu pandemonium started. At first it was just a big joke. Everyone was decorating their face masks with Salvador Dali mustaches or big teeth like Bugs Bunny. On mine, I wrote ' Ay cabrón, qué gripón traigo! ' ['Oh shit, what a terrible flu I've got!'] "Then the famous archeologist Felipe Solis suddenly died. He was the director of the National Anthropology Museum and the previous week had given Obama a tour of Aztec treasures. There were rumors that he had swine flu. [This was subsequently denied by medical authorities.] That chilled the whole scene. People didn't know what to expect. It was like the Camus novel [ The Plague ]. Best friends were afraid to give each other an abrazo or a kiss on the cheek. "What scared me was simply the idea of being sick and helpless so far from my family. Here together, familia Ramirez is almost invincible. You can bury my bones in Tijuana." We turn eastward, crossing the legendary Avenida Revolución, past the curio stores, discos, and long bars -- remnants of the raunchy Tijuana invented by gringo bootleggers and gamblers during the early decades of the twentieth century. There are no tourists. Nada. Although the only confirmed swine flu cases locally are across the border in San Diego, Tijuana as usual bears the stigma -- the growing fear of all things Mexican even when they originate, like the demand for drugs or the industrialized livestock from which this new flu probably sprung, in the United States. "Feel lonely, gringo?" ERRE laughs. To console me, he points out that there are no cops on the streets either. Three days earlier, drug-cartel gunmen launched simultaneous attacks on police across the city, killing seven in half an hour, one of them in the small station just up the block from the Ramirez family home. Using decoders to break into the police radio frequency, the killers daily taunt the cops, blasting loud narcocorridos and boasting of future assassinations. "Today all the police are either at the funeral for their comrades or in hiding. The narcos have threatened to raise the death toll to 30 in the next week." "Why are they so pissed off at the cops?" I ask. "I think the police confiscated a huge drug cache," younger brother Omar interjects. We stop at a light. Some desperate squeegee guys without water bottles scuffle over ERRE's windshield. Two soldiers on the corner of Paseo de los Heroes observe the melee with indifference. Masked by black bandanas, they cradle new made-in-Mexico FX-05 assault rifles in their arms. It is disturbing that the presence of troops should be so reassuring. The Mexican Army has an appalling human-rights record, and some leftists believe that the pandemic emergency has become a mere pretext for the further militarization of daily life -- like shutting down this year's May Day demonstrations. ERRE shrugs. It is difficult, he explains, to imagine how control of public safety in border cities like Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez can ever be returned to the corrupt, and now terrified, cops. The elites, meanwhile, ensure their own safety by hiring Blackwater-type mercenaries. Almost on cue, we pass a small convoy of SUVs and what looks like an armored car converted into a bullet-proof limo. Stenciled on the side is the corporate logo of "Panamerican Security de Colombia." (The real Blackwater -- now shamelessly re-branded as "Xe" -- has recently opened a training facility just across from the Tijuana airport on Otay Mesa.) ERRE yawns. Heavy metal on the streets of Tijuana is no big deal. By the time we reach Colonia Libertad, it's 4 pm and some bustle is returning to the streets. We park in front of the old family home, across from some chemical tank cars marooned on a branch of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railroad. The family guard dog, a middle-aged Chihuahua named Momo, barks dutifully from the roof. ERRE has to rush to take his dad to a doctor's appointment. Señor Ramirez hails from a proud cowboy town in Jalisco that claims to be the birthplace of the mariachi. After traveling around as a movie projectionist in the villages of the Alta, he came to Tijuana and Southern California in the early 1950s. He worked as an extra in Hollywood, on an aircraft assembly line in San Diego, as a cab driver in Tijuana, and now, almost age 80, oversees the family wrought-iron workshop. The patriarchal home, like Tijuana itself, has been self-built in increments that faithfully graph the family's economic history. The 1990s boom years, when ERRE was a well-paid carpenter in California, are represented by an impressive faux-Victorian wing with dormers, bays, and gables. I wisecrack about his hallucinatory "gingerbread casa de sueños ." He smiles, then scolds: "You know this is the Tijuana dream, my parents' dream. We never stop building. We're always making room for more people. When I was a kid, do you have any idea of how many cousins and compadres from my father's pueblo stayed here until they could cross to jobs in California? Hey, amigo, this is Ellis Island." To underscore the point, brother Omar shows me the key prop in the video he has recently completed about the Ramirez family's neighborhood: the "Lady of Libertad." Omar says it is based on one of French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi's original sketches for the Statue of Liberty -- the famous lady with the lamp standing on the pedestal of an Aztec pyramid. A local artisan has made copies to sell to the tourists, if they ever return. Will they? Since 9/11, irrational fear and toxic bigotry have imposed an informal blockade on Baja California's non- maquiladora economy. Now nativists in San Diego are clamoring for the complete closure of the border. It would be a catastrophe. A Siamese twin might as well saw away the flesh connecting himself to his brother. Both would die in the end. After teasing ERRE one more time, I head off for dinner with Omar and his wife. The weather is still delightful and we find a cozy Italian restaurant crowded with nonchalant and fearless diners. For a quiet evening, at least, the mask of the red death slips off the face of Tijuana. More on Swine Flu
 
Mike Davis: A Day Without Tourists Top
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com Tijuana Versus the Plague "Since everyone is dumping on Mexico these days, you might as well help me do the real thing." My friend Marcos Ramirez (aka "ERRE") isn't kidding. He's building a new house in Colonia Libertad , Tijuana's oldest and most surrealistically colorful neighborhood, and needs to dispose of some construction debris. I ride shotgun in his pickup while his younger brother Omar, a poet-artist with eyes like Che Guevara's, sprawls in the backseat. For once in a lifetime, afternoon traffic in Tijuana is unsnarled and ERRE spurs his Chevy Silverado through the Zona Rio roundabouts, past the giant statue of Father Kino and the utopian sphere of the Cultural Center, until we reach the Avenida Internacional, the long straightaway next to the corrugated steel futility of the border wall . As the road climbs the mesa, there is a jarring view of landscape disfigured by National Guard bulldozers and the endless churning of terrain by Border Patrol jeeps. But today even the brutalism of Operation Gatekeeper is ameliorated by blue skies and a tickle of a sea breeze. ERRE catches the mood and puts on a Beach Boys CD. I have a sudden inkling of what he must have been like when he was a 15-year-old outlaw skateboarder from Colonia Libertad, careening suicidally down its rutted slopes. Later, he briefly practiced law, but quickly turned away from its corruption to work for 17 years as a skilled carpenter and homebuilder in the United States. In 1997, he confounded the Border Patrol by erecting a huge Trojan Horse (two heads, facing in opposite directions) at the San Ysidro frontier. It exactly straddled the international line. Tijuaneses loved it. Since then he has created similar provocations from Reading, Pennsylvania, to Yunnan, China, attaining the kind artistic renown that usually guarantees studio space in Soho or Coyoacan. But he stubbornly prefers being, as he puts it, a "Libertarian." The Silverado lurches into a dirt side street somewhere on the proletarian backside of Chapultepec Heights. ERRE pulls up along a fence, honks his horn, and the debris is quickly unloaded by elves in rags. He hands one of them 100 pesos, or $7. (The minimum wage in the sweatshop maquiladoras is only 55 pesos per day.) The old city dump is closed, the new one too far away, so like most Tijuaneses, ERRE uses the services of the informal economy. Moreover, in the midst of an unprecedented NAFTA recession, a horror-ridden narco-war, and now a much-hyped pandemic, any act that circulates a few pesos amongst " el pueblo " seems conscientious. We fishtail out of the dirt alley and return to a paved avenue of restaurants, beauty salons, and car-alarm dealers. Schools and public buildings are closed, morning masses have been suspended, and sports events have been cancelled, but stores and street markets remain open and desperate for business. Customers are sparse, though. Half the population seems to have disappeared. Few people, apart from municipal employees and office cleaners, wear surgical masks, but no one seems to begrudge those that do. "Looks like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers," I say. "You should have seen Mexico City," ERRE replies. "I was down there for the Zona Maco Art Fair when the flu pandemonium started. At first it was just a big joke. Everyone was decorating their face masks with Salvador Dali mustaches or big teeth like Bugs Bunny. On mine, I wrote ' Ay cabrón, qué gripón traigo! ' ['Oh shit, what a terrible flu I've got!'] "Then the famous archeologist Felipe Solis suddenly died. He was the director of the National Anthropology Museum and the previous week had given Obama a tour of Aztec treasures. There were rumors that he had swine flu. [This was subsequently denied by medical authorities.] That chilled the whole scene. People didn't know what to expect. It was like the Camus novel [ The Plague ]. Best friends were afraid to give each other an abrazo or a kiss on the cheek. "What scared me was simply the idea of being sick and helpless so far from my family. Here together, familia Ramirez is almost invincible. You can bury my bones in Tijuana." We turn eastward, crossing the legendary Avenida Revolución, past the curio stores, discos, and long bars -- remnants of the raunchy Tijuana invented by gringo bootleggers and gamblers during the early decades of the twentieth century. There are no tourists. Nada. Although the only confirmed swine flu cases locally are across the border in San Diego, Tijuana as usual bears the stigma -- the growing fear of all things Mexican even when they originate, like the demand for drugs or the industrialized livestock from which this new flu probably sprung, in the United States. "Feel lonely, gringo?" ERRE laughs. To console me, he points out that there are no cops on the streets either. Three days earlier, drug-cartel gunmen launched simultaneous attacks on police across the city, killing seven in half an hour, one of them in the small station just up the block from the Ramirez family home. Using decoders to break into the police radio frequency, the killers daily taunt the cops, blasting loud narcocorridos and boasting of future assassinations. "Today all the police are either at the funeral for their comrades or in hiding. The narcos have threatened to raise the death toll to 30 in the next week." "Why are they so pissed off at the cops?" I ask. "I think the police confiscated a huge drug cache," younger brother Omar interjects. We stop at a light. Some desperate squeegee guys without water bottles scuffle over ERRE's windshield. Two soldiers on the corner of Paseo de los Heroes observe the melee with indifference. Masked by black bandanas, they cradle new made-in-Mexico FX-05 assault rifles in their arms. It is disturbing that the presence of troops should be so reassuring. The Mexican Army has an appalling human-rights record, and some leftists believe that the pandemic emergency has become a mere pretext for the further militarization of daily life -- like shutting down this year's May Day demonstrations. ERRE shrugs. It is difficult, he explains, to imagine how control of public safety in border cities like Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez can ever be returned to the corrupt, and now terrified, cops. The elites, meanwhile, ensure their own safety by hiring Blackwater-type mercenaries. Almost on cue, we pass a small convoy of SUVs and what looks like an armored car converted into a bullet-proof limo. Stenciled on the side is the corporate logo of "Panamerican Security de Colombia." (The real Blackwater -- now shamelessly re-branded as "Xe" -- has recently opened a training facility just across from the Tijuana airport on Otay Mesa.) ERRE yawns. Heavy metal on the streets of Tijuana is no big deal. By the time we reach Colonia Libertad, it's 4 pm and some bustle is returning to the streets. We park in front of the old family home, across from some chemical tank cars marooned on a branch of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railroad. The family guard dog, a middle-aged Chihuahua named Momo, barks dutifully from the roof. ERRE has to rush to take his dad to a doctor's appointment. Señor Ramirez hails from a proud cowboy town in Jalisco that claims to be the birthplace of the mariachi. After traveling around as a movie projectionist in the villages of the Alta, he came to Tijuana and Southern California in the early 1950s. He worked as an extra in Hollywood, on an aircraft assembly line in San Diego, as a cab driver in Tijuana, and now, almost age 80, oversees the family wrought-iron workshop. The patriarchal home, like Tijuana itself, has been self-built in increments that faithfully graph the family's economic history. The 1990s boom years, when ERRE was a well-paid carpenter in California, are represented by an impressive faux-Victorian wing with dormers, bays, and gables. I wisecrack about his hallucinatory "gingerbread casa de sueños ." He smiles, then scolds: "You know this is the Tijuana dream, my parents' dream. We never stop building. We're always making room for more people. When I was a kid, do you have any idea of how many cousins and compadres from my father's pueblo stayed here until they could cross to jobs in California? Hey, amigo, this is Ellis Island." To underscore the point, brother Omar shows me the key prop in the video he has recently completed about the Ramirez family's neighborhood: the "Lady of Libertad." Omar says it is based on one of French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi's original sketches for the Statue of Liberty -- the famous lady with the lamp standing on the pedestal of an Aztec pyramid. A local artisan has made copies to sell to the tourists, if they ever return. Will they? Since 9/11, irrational fear and toxic bigotry have imposed an informal blockade on Baja California's non- maquiladora economy. Now nativists in San Diego are clamoring for the complete closure of the border. It would be a catastrophe. A Siamese twin might as well saw away the flesh connecting himself to his brother. Both would die in the end. After teasing ERRE one more time, I head off for dinner with Omar and his wife. The weather is still delightful and we find a cozy Italian restaurant crowded with nonchalant and fearless diners. For a quiet evening, at least, the mask of the red death slips off the face of Tijuana. More on Swine Flu
 
Liz Neumark: A Timeless Evening with the Time 100 Top
A Caterer's Perspective Blogging was made for nights like tonight. When the magical feeling in the room is so potent that you need to share it as fast as possible before anything fades. It was in the Allen Room, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where Time Inc held its annual fest to toast the 100 Most Influential People in the World; it is a broad and eclectic group representing great minds, deep souls and outrageous talent. In a year like this, any legitimate reason to get together can result in spontaneous celebration. Add the superstars, mere stars and other constellations on tonight's guest list and it is riotous. As in simply divine! The buzz in the room was palpable from the moment the first guest arrived. Perhaps it was in anticipation of the arrival of a very special Time 100 honoree, Michelle Obama. The room was mesmerized as she spoke about the Barack Obama Administration's vision for a new America (with a big smile on her face). We all felt so good - so at home- in a way that we hadn't in at least 8 years. But I am jumping ahead of myself. Cocktail hour. My first conversation of the evening was with the very brilliant and charming Arianna Huffington, at whose pleasure I write on this illustrious website. It is always a pleasure to greet and be greeted by her. A brief hello to Barbara Walters who in addition to everything incredible about her life and career, is often a very honored guest at our Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel where my associates jump through hoops to spoil her; a riveting conversation with Mort Zuckerman who shared a peek into his crystal ball (and if you are interested, keep buying the Daily News to find out what he has to say); and most wonderfully, a warm and sweet greeting from Dan Barber, my most favorite person to speak on behalf of food and food politics with humor, eloquence and brilliance. And he is a Time 100 honoree. (The only catered event I would have traded tonight's for would be for the honor of catering his wedding. I am patient Dan - I hope she is too!) A. R.Rahman performed. Was it Mumbai or the thriving pulse of another citythat thrilled and transported the listeners?Oprah saluted teachers - who would not agree? Paul Krugman saluted his wife -very romantic.Somaly Mammade us cry and took our breath away. The Twitter Boys earned my ever-lasting love and respect. I love that we wholeheartedly and sincerely embraced their statement that their success is about humanity, not technology. I would like to embrace them. Their toast was tweeted on the giant plasma screens. The perfect 140-character sound bite. For the moment, I suspended my skepticism of technology and ignored the shadow of a brave new world. Naturally, the menu was the ideal backdrop to all this good feeling. An opening salad of Organic Tomato, Lobster and Wild Basil will do that to a room every time. Jimmy Fallon was beyond irreverent and made me laugh so hard - is being so funny legal or just the natural outcome of such a delicious and inspirational first course? John Legend sang, undoubtedly nourished by his dinner of Aged Filet Mignon with Asparagus and Wild Mushrooms. The seasonal debut of this beloved vegetable makes me sing too! Honoree Stella McCartney, noted designer and vegan, inspired our chef to create a luscious dinner alternative of Mixed Grill of Tofu and Portabello Mushrooms with an Asparagus and Tomato Ragout, Wild Mushroom Miso Broth and Katchkie Farm Mizuna. It is not unusual to leave a gala evening feeling tired and ready for a glass of red wine before going right to bed. Not tonight. Tonight was all about the feeling and spirit in the city's most beautiful event space. Tonight, everyone had fun. We collectively chased away the recession blues and had a good old-fashioned feel good party so masterfully organized by Ronnie Davis for our fifth year. Encore! The guests were sincere and alive and earthbound with atypical warmth. The service staff felt energized and proud to have participated in the success of the evening. They too laughed and cried. The city outside looked on mesmerized by the activity behind the giant glass wall overlooking Central Park South. My taxi driver was thrilled to know Michelle Obama was the cause of the traffic jam. I was truly satisfied and could not wait to come home to put all this into words. I wish each of you could sample a taste of the menu. Maybe next year. More on Michelle Obama
 

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1 comment:

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