Wednesday, July 1, 2009

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Paul LeGendre: A Place for Human Rights at the U.S.-Russia Summit Top
In a week, President Obama will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The agenda items of the summit in Moscow are of course numerous and complex, but it would be a mistake to let human rights concerns get lost in the mix. High among those concerns is the troubling rise in hate crimes in Russia, the government's inadequate response to this trend, and increased harassment - including at times murder - of human rights defenders. These and other outstanding human rights issues could make Russia a far less reliable partner in addressing economic, security, and other issues. During the past five years there has been a sharp increase in the number of racist and other bias-motivated attacks in Russia, a rise of about 15 percent per year. In 2008, there were nearly 100 such reported murders in Russia - by far the highest incidence of such serious violence in Europe. This problem has been compounded by a lackluster governmental response to these heinous acts. Russia's deeply-flawed antiextremism legislation has been used to silence government critics, rather than to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the cases of increasingly brutal violent hate crimes. In recent years, human rights activists have also been the targets of aggressive attacks by neo-Nazi and other groups. In a letter to the President, Elisa Massimino, the CEO and Executive Director of Human Rights First explained: "We believe, as you stated in April, that respect for human rights and the rule of law is the bedrock of a more constructive relationship between the United States and Russia. You also said then that 'it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.' Your attention to Russia's efforts to combat racist, xenophobic and other violent hate crimes and to strengthen and protect human rights organizations and civil society will help the move from words to deeds by making clear that the United States considers progress on these issues essential to building a strong bilateral relationship with Russia in the future." In his upcoming meetings with President Medvedev, President Obama must: * Express concern about the sharp rise in violent hate crimes in Russia and the so far inadequate response of the Russian authorities to this most pernicious form of discrimination, while making clear the common interest of the United States and Russia in combating violent hate crime throughout Europe and North America through developing shared solutions to the problems. * Encourage a regular dialogue between the U.S. Department of Justice and the Russian Interior Ministry and prosecutorial officials to improve responses to hate crime. * Show support for Russian human rights and other civil society groups by meeting with them in Moscow. HRF's letter to President Obama was sent on the same day the organization submitted testimony in conjunction with a United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) hearing examining the realities of "the Medvedev thaw." In those remarks for the record, HRF called on the Commission to encourage the Obama Administration to set the tone to the new relationship with Russia by welcoming some of the positive steps taken by President Medvedev since he assumed the presidency, while consistently raising continuing human rights concerns. My organization has put together a sign-on letter if you would like to lend your voice to this debate, urging President Obama to raise human rights concerns in his upcoming meeting with President Medvedev. Take Action: Tell President Obama to raise human rights issues with Russian President Medvedev! Paul LeGendre is the Director of the Fighting Discrimination program at Human Rights First . Join them at facebook.com/humanrightsfirst and twitter.com/humanrights1st More on Russia
 
Jim Jaffe: Why Wal-Mart Backs Mandatory Health Coverage Top
Wal-Mart's endorsement of a requirement the employers offer workers health insurance is a reminder that while most employers may resist such a law, those employers who pay most workers already offer insurance and can thus painlessly support the principle. About half of America's workers are employed by a firm with more than 500 workers - the percentage rises over time - and nearly every one of them is offered an opportunity to buy insurance. Only about six percent of them are uninsured. As firm size shrinks, the insured population grows, reaching 30 percent among those who have fewer than nine colleagues at work. The big employers comprise less than one percent of all employers, but have ample political clout. They find an increasing number of reasons to find mandatory coverage attractive and the upcoming debate may further fray their already deteriorating relationship with the Republican Party. Here's why: 1. It creates a more level playing field, imposing costs on their competitors who aren't now offering health insurance. That's why American Airlines took a similar stance more than a decade ago. 2. It lowers their costs. Insofar as the uninsured run up costs for care that are then shared by the insured population, any move toward universal insurance provides relief for those now providing coverage. 3. It solves a problem they have little confidence they can solve and decreasing enthusiasm. In an era where businesses are concentrating on what they do best and outsourcing ancillary tasks, fretting over keeping health insurance costs down is a distraction they have decreasing patience for. Business groups that once thought they could fix the system have decided the problem is simply bigger than they are. 4. It buys them a seat at the table. There are many ways to design a health reform program. Chances of influencing a design they'll ultimately be comfortable with are better if they are helping construct the new system rather than opposing it. For reasons both practical and political, small business owners continue to be wary of such a mandate. At best, it will exclude them while making it more difficult to recruit workers who'll increasingly expect health insurance as part of an employment package. At worst, it will impose complex and costly new responsibilities. While both parties continue to genuflect toward small business as a sparkplug of the American economy, this issue indicates a growing split within the employer community between the bigs, who are comfortable dealing with other big institutions and complying with a growing rule book, and small firms who are struggling. If the health debate concludes with the American people seeing Wal-Mart - which offers convenient in-store clinics, discount prescriptions and health coverage for its employees while championing such protection for all - as the good guy and their neighborhood store that offers less selection and higher prices along with service from an uninsured workforce as simply old-fashioned and out-of-step, that could have a big impact on our politics in the years ahead. More on Wal-Mart
 
Giles Slade: Eebs: A History of Future Publishing Top
Few people have noticed, but the competition over e-Book formats between Google-Sony et al, and Kindle-Amazon has introduced two tiers into the emerging market for electronic books. Google is now going to make all of its 1.5 million titles in the public domain available in various formats, establishing it as the premier source of golden oldies. If you want and electronic version of Moby Dick or Leaves of Grass , you know where to go. But today, as Google "celebrate[s] bygones... I project the history of the future." In the world of digitized music, the iPod-Apple ecosystem occupies the luxury end of the consumer spectrum. Steve Jobs took the initiative early to guarantee uniformity, quality and sleek design for high-end consumers. Then, he began working assiduously on his back-list, making history when The Beatles songbook became available on iTunes. Apple makes money on the device, and the songs. Apple's control of the market is obvious. Just as all photocopies are Xeroxes, a podcast is a podcast even if it's recorded in MP3. As the competition drives innovation, Apple brings out newer, cooler models -- like the nearly invisible, Nano Air -- and makes more money. By not competing with its competitors, Apple avoids a race to the bottom line. It competitors cannot do this. Checkmate. In the emerging world of e-Books, Kindle-Amazon will increasingly occupy a position similar to the iPod while Google (a collector and purveyor of e-Books) together with its partner Sony (a manufacturer of e-Readers) will forever be positioned at the lower end of the e-Book market along with several other manufacturers. This too, resembles the structure of the digitized music industries. The Sony reader is less imaginative than the Kindle. It's cheaper, uglier, less functional, less popular, and its ecosystem is not as fully developed. While it is true that other applications spread Googles' inventory onto mobile devices, notice the vagueness of the term 'mobile device' itself. The Stanza, eReader and 'iKindle' applications are all add-ons for existing machines that have small screens and are mainly valued for other functions: phoning, messaging or mobile Internet connectivity. While electronics manufacturers constantly dream of designing, building and selling an all-in-one personal electronic doodad to 6 billion people, still no Swiss Army Knife will never replace a good corkscrew, a good screwdriver or a good pair of scissors. Feature creep harms the quality of any tool, but, most important, it obscures a manufacturer's ability to market it. The Kindle, on the other hand, is what you keep at home or take with you on vacation to relax into. It is for the book-lover who might occasionally buy a first, a signed or a special edition. It is lingerie. It is a box of chocolates or a bottle of double-malt. Especially well-timed for the recession as a luxury item that keeps on giving by allowing you to 'save' on cheaper electronic editions, it's now here to stay. Competition will drive it to adapt and compete, of course. That's only natural. Stanza, for example, has many attractive features that Kindle now needs to copy. It will. According to the current growth curve, electronic books will dominate world-wide book sales by 2018. (This is the book industry's own prediction, and is extremely 'safe.' It does not anticipate a watershed or 'tipping point'). In any case, Kindle-Amazon and Google will continue to make good money. Traditional print media will continue to lose money as long as they stumble around wondering how to accommodate themselves to what happened yesterday. In desperation, print news publishers will soon seize back their own material from Google, but Google does not have the financial problems of print news publishers. Its universe is mainly a young generation of screen readers who have little loyalty to Rupert Murdoch (much as I love him) or the Wall Street Journal. When its current news sources dry up, Google will join with online media sources and develop its own instant eReportage. Newspapers will continue to wither and die. Of course, the big winners will be the Taiwanese device makers themselves. Freescale Semiconductor, for example, makes processors for many e-readers including the Kindle and Sony. Another Taiwanese eBook powerhouse is Netronix, a contract device manufacturer, partly owned by display-maker Prime View International (PVI). A conglomerate of print publishers could probably still guarantee themselves survival and success by investing heavily in the manufacturing-end of ePublishing. But this presents enormous logistical challenges. A entire generation of news and publishing executives would have to reeducate themselves and then work out a massive compromise. The Klingons would have to join the Federation and then buy out the Borg. I do not anticipate this happening. Netronix now owns the worldwide patents for e-ink/e-paper. They manufacture several models of an eReader called Mentor in much the same way that Sandisk (and many others) make good, usable MP3 players that nonetheless do not compete with Apple's iPod. In the future, no matter which brand of e-Reader you choose, your device will undoubtedly contain many components manufactured by PVI-Netronix as well as a processor made by Freescale. What I am eager to see, however, is not the dominance of any one format, device or publisher, but a qualitative change in the actual use of the technology. From the history of technology we know that early on, every device or tool imitates the technology it replaces. The earliest pottery has beautiful geometric designs that are derived from patterns of the woven baskets that pottery supplemented and replaced. The creation of early movies too, was described by its practitioners as a 'camera-stylo' [a fluid camera-pen] which made writing a model for a bold new technology that quickly surpassed the printed word. What I want to see is an e-Book that is no longer a simulacrum of a printed work. Soon, when people begin writing exclusively for eBooks, book metaphors like pagination will lose their functionality and fall away. But I also want the new medium to develop brand new possibilities. Maybe then, we will stop calling them e-Books and simply call them 'eebs.' The Kindle feature of reading itself aloud is a good beginning in expanding this new medium. In the future, I foresee hyperlinks that will break the reader out of the printed page and take him or her on a roller-coaster ride across the Internet during an accelerated and compressed 'knowledge-journey' [nahjer?] that would be impossible in a printed work. I don't know how long this will take, but I know it has to come. Describing an unknowable future he would never experience, Pablo Neruda once wrote: Other days will come, the silence of plants and planets will be understood, and so many pure things will happen. Violins will have the fragrance of the moon. More on Apple
 
Ben Gordon Agrees To Deal With Detroit Pistons, Leaving Bulls Top
DETROIT — A person with the knowledge of the negotiations says the Detroit Pistons have agreed in principle to contracts with free agents Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva. The person spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday night on the condition of anonymity because NBA rules prohibit teams from announcing free agent signings until next week. Gordon, the third pick in the 2004 draft by the Chicago Bulls, agreed to a 5-year deal for at least $50 million. He was the Bulls' top scorer the past four years and became an unrestricted free agent after the season. Chicago officials had said bringing him back next year was a top priority. The 26-year-old Gordon averaged 20.7 points during the regular season before scoring 24.3 points during the playoffs when the Bulls lost to the Celtics in seven games. Villanueva, the seventh overall pick by Toronto in 2005 who has played the last three of his NBA season with the Milwaukee Bucks, also agreed to a five-year deal. His contract is worth at least $35 million. Villanueva averaged 16.2 points and 6.7 rebounds last season for the Bucks. More on Sports
 
Dave Johnson: Did Free Trade Cause The Recession? Top
For many years the world has suffered under a "free trade" regime that eliminates good paying jobs in every country, sending the work to countries that keep wages low and restrict workers' ability to organize for a better life. The profits went to an already-wealthy few and the inequities increased, wealth concentrating massively at the very top. And now consumers around the world have run out of money. This is not a surprise. Did these "free" trade policies cause the recession? Imagine a company in South Carolina that makes 20,000 pairs of shoes a week and distributes them to stores. Now, imagine that the company closes its South Carolina plant, opens a plant in a low-wage country, ships all the machines and raw materials there, ships back 20,000 pairs of shoes each week and distributes them to the same stores. Is that "trade?" Are the raw materials sent out of the country an "export?" Are the shoes brought back into the country an "import?" The only thing that has been "traded" in this scenario is American jobs traded for huge executive bonuses. The workers in the low-wage country are not paid enough to buy any remaining American-made products. And, as the economic collapses as a result of shenanigans like this, American workers are no longer able to buy shoes so the executives won't be getting bonuses next year. I submit that nothing in this example is "traded" except that our standard of living has been traded away. And this exchange brings little benefit to the workers in the low-wage country. This is exploitative trade, not free trade , and we need to protect our workers, the workers in other countries and the world's economy by demanding that our trade partners provide living wages and benefits. We can enforce this demand be attaching import tariffs at a level that makes our own goods competitive. This removes the advantage gained by exploiting workers - and the revenue reduces our own tax burden to maintain our competitive infrastructure. It is an incentive to pay their workers enough so they can reciprocate and buy the things we make here. Instead of the race to the bottom that led to this recession such tariffs create an incentive to raise standards of living around the world. More on The Recession
 
On The Trail Of Chicago's Best Microbrews Top
As Chicago has morphed from a meat-and-potatoes town to one claiming some of the country's best chefs, consumers have started demanding better beer. While the craft beer movement that exploded in cities like Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Philadelphia infiltrated Chicago within the last couple of decades, it's only lately that the city has experienced a brewing renaissance of its own. Today, local beer is popping up all over town. More on Food
 
AMA Reverses Position, Says Open To Government-Funded Insurance Top
(CNN) -- The new president of the American Medical Association, which represents the interests of the nation's doctors, said Wednesday the group is open to a government-funded health insurance option for people without coverage. Dr. J. James Rohack told CNN that the AMA supports an "American model" that includes both "a private system and a public system, working together."
 
Kevin Jonas Engaged To Danielle Deleasa Top
Kevin Jonas surprised his girlfriend Danielle Deleasa by showing up at her doorstep in New Jersey early Wednesday morning and dropping down to his knee to ask her to marry him. Presented with a cushion-cut diamond ring that Jonas designed with Jacob & Co., Deleasa couldn't believe what was happening. Then, "She said yes, yes, yes like 500 times super fast in a row," the oldest of the Jonas Brothers tells PEOPLE exclusively.
 
Andy Worthington: Release Of The "Holy Grail" Of Torture Reports Delayed Again Top
Today was supposed to be the day that the Justice Department -- after two delays -- released an unclassified version of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Report into the interrogations of "high-value detainees" in the "War on Terror," which Democrat Congressional staffers described as the "holy grail," according to Greg Sargent of the Plum Line , writing in May, "because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works." Sargent was following up on an article in the Washington Post , "Hill Panel Reviewing CIA Tactics," which described how Senate Intelligence Committee investigators were interviewing those involved in the interrogations, "examining hundreds of CIA e-mails and reviewing a classified 2005 study by the agency's lawyers of dozens of interrogation videotapes" (which were later destroyed), and also examining the CIA Inspector General's Report. The Post explained that "government officials familiar with the CIA's early interrogations" said that the "top secret" CIA report, "based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents," contained "the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses," and added that the officials indicated that, although the report remained "closely held," White House officials had told political allies that they intended to "declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month's release of the Justice Department's interrogation memos." These four memos, issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 and 2005, and released in April , provided a companion piece to the notorious " torture memo " of August 2002 (leaked in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal ), and, notoriously, involved lawyers in one of the DoJ's most prestigious departments -- charged with interpreting the law as it applies to the Executive branch -- seeking to rewrite the rules on torture so that it could be used in the CIA's "high-value detainee" program. According to the Post , officials familiar with the contents of the report said that it "concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994." The Post also added that, according to excerpts included in the OLC memos, the report "concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information." This was a fair précis of the "excerpts" from the report that were included as footnotes in the three memos from May 2005, written by the OLC's Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Steven G. Bradbury, but as I explained in an article at the time , when analyzed in the context of the memos, the "excerpts" were even more alarming. To establish the context, the footnotes followed Bradbury's lame attempts to explain why it was "necessary to use the waterboard 'at least 83 times during August 2002,'" on Abu Zubaydah , and "183 times during March 2003" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . This apparently involved an appraisal that "other ... methods are unlikely to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing [an] attack " (in other words, the fictional ticking time-bomb scenario), but I was obliged to conclude that these "mind-boggling figures" seemed to reveal "not that each horrific round of near-drowning and panic, repeated over and over again, defused a single ticking time-bomb, but, instead, that it became a macabre compulsion on the part of the torturers, which led only to the countless false alarms reported by CIA and FBI officials who spoke to David Rose for Vanity Fair last December." What amazed me, however, was that, while filling his memos with largely implausible justifications for the use of torture, Bradbury cited from the Inspector General's Report, even though it was so clearly critical of the manner in which interrogations had been conducted. These are the key passages from my article at the time: One sign that this was indeed the case [in other words, that the CIA overreacted] comes in a disturbing footnote, in which Bradbury noted, "This is not to say that the interrogation program has worked perfectly. According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially, could not always distinguish detainees who had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have the information ... on at least one occasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques. On that occasion, although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within CIA Headquarters still believed he was withholding information [passage redacted]. At the direction of CIA headquarters, interrogators therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah [passage redacted]." Furthermore, as another revealing footnote makes clear, the IG Report also noted that, "in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated," and also that it was "used in a different manner" than the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in SERE training [the torture techniques taught in US military schools to enable US personnel to resist interrogation, which were reverse engineered for use in the "War on Terror"]. As the report explained, "The difference was in the manner in which the detainees' breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator ... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose. One of the psychiatrist / interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is 'for real' and is more poignant and convincing." In addition, the IG Report noted that the OMS, the CIA's Office of Medical Services, contended that "the experience of the SERE psychologist / interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant." Chillingly, the report continued, "Consequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe." I'm not surprised that the release of the report -- delayed for a week from June 19, at the CIA's request, and again from June 26 to July 1 -- has been delayed again, as it clearly contains information that is vital to those of who believe that President Obama cannot "restore America's moral stature in the world" (as he pledged in November ) without holding to account those who authorized the use of torture by US personnel. However, every delay only increases the fear that, on arrival, the report will be barely less comprehensively redacted than the laughably censored version that was released to the ACLU in May 2008 ( PDF ). In order to keep the debate about torture alive, I therefore recommend a visit to the ACLU's " Accountability for Torture " project, which has been running for the last few weeks, and which states, "We can't sweep the abuses of the last eight years under the rug. Accountability for torture is a legal, political, and moral imperative." I also recommend a number of articles from the last few days, as part of what blogger and psychologist Jeff Kaye has described as "a mini-blog storm on behalf of the ACLU's Accountability Project," looking at how the Bush administration's torture program was not just reserved for the waterboarding of three "high-value detainees" in the custody of the CIA, but was a poisonous virus that also infected the US military, and that led to over a hundred deaths in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. First up is Glenn Greenwald's article for his blog at Salon , "The suppressed fact: Deaths by US torture," in which he states, "Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions -- that we "Look to the Future, not the Past" -- are literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder." Then there are articles by Marcy Wheeler , bmaz and Jeff Kaye at Firedoglake, by Digby , and by drational and mcjoan at Daily Kos, and there's also my article, " When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan ," which draws largely on passages in my book The Guantánamo Files , but also on testimony by former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes , and researcher John Sifton , and which, I believe, exposes three murders at the US prison at Bagram airbase that have never been investigated. Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here . More on Harsh Interrogations
 
Abe Silk: Al Franken Gets the Last Laugh Top
Well the " Land of 10,000 Lakes " took what seemed like 10,000 years, but the Minnesota Supreme Court finally ruled yesterday in a unanimous decision to certify Al Franken's election victory last November. The final margin of victory for Franken was 312 votes out of 2.9 million cast, which translates to a whopping .01%. So, if anyone tells you that your vote doesn't count -- they're still probably right, I don't even think I know 312 people, although Facebook tells me otherwise. Franken's victory now gives the Democrats a 60 vote filibuster-proof majority in the senate, at least theoretically. The very fragile supermajority assumes that the two independents who caucus with the Democrats (Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman) will actually vote with the Democrats, not to mention the 56 other Democrats, two of whom (Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd) are in poor health. Republicans have traditionally been better at getting their congresspeople to march in lock step with the party agenda, so just how filibuster-proof the Democratic majority turns out to be is, as yet, completely unknown. At any rate, a hearty congratulations to Al Franken. I think we can all agree that it'll be nice to never have to hear the following again: More on Arlen Specter
 
ExxonMobil Funds "Misleading And Inaccurate Information" About Climate Change Top
The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows. Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
 
In-N-Out Burger Sues Bronzeville Restaurant Top
A Bronzeville restaurant has run afoul of In-N-Out Burger for using a name and logo that the popular California-based burger chain says is a little too familiar. More on Food
 
Stephen Zunes: Iran's Do-It-Yourself Revolution Top
Facing an unprecedented popular uprising against his autocratic rule and his apparently fraudulent re-election, Iran's right-wing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attempted to blame the United States. A surprising number of bloggers on the left have rushed to the defense of the right-wing fundamentalist leader. Citing presidential directives under the Bush administration, they argue that the uprising isn't as much about a stolen election, the oppression of women, censorship, severe restrictions on political liberties, growing economic inequality, and other grievances, as it is about the result of U.S. interference. Meanwhile, critics on the right — who have shown little concern about democracy in other countries in the region that are just as oppressive yet more willing to support U.S. military and economic objectives  have rushed to attack Obama for not intervening enough in Iran. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), for instance, insisted that the president should "come out more strongly" in support of the protesters. The sordid history of U.S. intervention in Iran has made it easy for that country's hard-line theocratic leadership to blame the United States for the unrest. Indeed, the United States is guilty of many crimes against that country. It overthrew Iran's last democratic government back in1953. Subsequently, the United States armed and trained the Shah's dreaded SAVAK secret police. In the 1980s, Washington supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran and, in the "tanker war" of 1987-88, the United States bombed Iranian coastal facilities, targeted ships, and shot down a civilian airliner. There was the arming of Kurdish and Baluchi separatists as well as the threats of war over Iran's civilian nuclear program (even as Washington continued to support neighboring states that have developed nuclear weapons arsenals). And in recent years, the United States allocated tens of millions of dollars to opposition groups for the express purpose of "regime change." Despite this record of intervention, the United States has had nothing to do with the massive unarmed insurrection against the Iranian regime. Not 1953 The Iranian regime and some of its apologists have tried to connect the homegrown protests now occurring in Iran with the U.S.-sponsored coup of 1953. At that time, CIA operatives bribed local leaders in South Tehran to lead riots in an effort to destabilize the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq. This is a totally spurious analogy, however. First of all, the CIA operatives on the ground in Iran today are mostly likely involved in efforts to infiltrate the intelligence service and nuclear program, and engage in other kinds of espionage and intelligence gathering. The CIA is a poor vehicle for fomenting revolution from below. It has been notoriously poor at understanding developments on the ground in Iran. Just weeks ago, U.S. officials dismissed Mir Houssein Mousavi, whose suspicious loss in the recent elections prompted the uprising, as simply a less provocative face of the same old regime. Indeed, the degree of protests has clearly caught U.S. officials off guard. In any case, no foreign intelligence agency has ever demonstrated such an ability to provoke such a mass uprising. The CIA-inspired mob actions in 1953 consisted of thousands of people, but was well short of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since the apparent stolen election. These recent large demonstrations have been overwhelmingly nonviolent, while the 1953 unrest largely consisted of rioting, with widespread vandalism, arson, and assaults against civilians. The riots of 56 years ago took place exclusively in Tehran, while the recent demonstrations have taken place in cities and towns across the country for well over a week, despite often-brutal oppression. More critically, the 1953 coup itself did not result from massive protests, but because armed police and military units seized key buildings and the government radio station, and attacked Mossadeq's home. There were heavy exchanges of gunfire and artillery throughout Tehran neighborhoods that housed government facilities; over 100 people died in the battle in front of the prime minister's house. Mossadeq finally surrendered as tank columns moved into the city and General Zahedi installed himself as prime minister, calling for the return of the Shah. In short, the circumstances surrounding the 1953 coup have little in common with the events of 2009. Blaming the Other When popular armed socialist revolutionary movements swept Central America in the 1980s, U.S. officials and their right-wing allies insisted that these uprisings were not about resisting oppressive military-dominated regimes, death squads, endemic poverty, or social injustice. Rather, they argued, the Soviet Union was pulling the strings of what they considered puppet movements to seize control of these countries, as part of their grand communist plot to take over the world. According to this theory — constantly repeated on the floor of Congress, on op-ed pages, and in reports from conservative think tanks — Moscow and their Cuban allies were "exporting revolution" by forcing otherwise content peasants, workers, and others to rebel against legitimate governments. In a similar manner, since the end of the Cold War Washington has tried to blame Iran for a wide range of activities: attacks on U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, unrest in Bahrain against that island's autocratic monarchy, the rise of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, growing support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Generally the left, through its understanding of broader structural causes for social and political problems, has recognized that popular uprisings against repressive governments grow out of certain objective social conditions rather than as a result of outsiders stirring up trouble. Unfortunately, a surprising number of leftists in the United States and other Western countries, aware of very real imperialist machinations by the U.S. government elsewhere, have argued that popular civil insurrections against autocratic regimes are part of some grand U.S. conspiracy. Anticipating a similar challenge to their increasingly unpopular rule, Iranian leaders began insisting a couple years ago that the popular pro-democracy uprisings in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine earlier this decade were an American plot to advance U.S. imperialism. In a broadcast on state television in July 2007, for instance, the Iranian regime claimed that Serbian student activist Ivan Marovic, one of the leaders of the successful nonviolent uprising against Milosevic in 2000, had met with President George W. Bush in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava in 2005 to plot the overthrow of the Iranian government. In reality, their "meeting" — which was photographed and widely circulated in Iran — consisted of a three-minute conversation in the midst of a group reception and didn't include any mention of Iran. Marovic, an outspoken left-wing critic of U.S. imperialism, later described how he found Bush to be profoundly ignorant of and apparently disinterested in nonviolent resistance of the kind he and his Serbian colleagues successfully utilized in their pro-democracy movement. In another bizarre episode, in February last year, Iranian government television informed viewers that Gene Sharp, the elderly theorist of strategic nonviolent action who works out of his tiny home office in a working-class neighborhood in Boston, was "one of the CIA agents in charge of America's infiltration into other countries." It included a computer-animated sequence of Sharp with John McCain and other officials in a White House conference room plotting the overthrow of the Iranian regime. In reality, Sharp has never worked with the CIA, has never met McCain, and has never even been to the White House. U.S. Funding for Opposition Movements The U.S. government has provided financial support for opposition groups in a number of countries, including Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. It has also provided seminars and other training for opposition leaders in campaign strategies. However, in none of these cases did the U.S. government provide any training, advice, or strategic support that resulted in overturning these regimes. Nor did the U.S. government or any U.S. government-funded entity ever provide operational funding or subsidies for any nonviolent action campaign. In any case, this limited amount of outside financial support cannot cause nonviolent liberal democratic revolutions to take place any more than the limited Soviet financial and material support for leftist movements in previous decades caused armed socialist revolutions to take place. No amount of money could force hundreds of thousands of people to leave their jobs, homes, schools, and families to face down heavily armed police and tanks, unless they had a sincere motivation to do so. The Bush administration certainly did attempt to subvert and destabilize Iran through funding opposition groups. While continuing to back repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries, Congress approved the administration's request for $75 million in funding to support "regime change" in Iran. However, few serious dissident organizations within the country accepted such support money from the U.S. government. Indeed, more than two dozen Iranian-American and human rights groups formally protested the program, arguing that "Iranian reformers believe democracy cannot be imported and must be based on indigenous institutions and values. Intended beneficiaries of the funding — human rights advocates, civil society activists and others — uniformly denounce the program." As president of the National Iranian American Council Trita Parsi noted , "While the Iranian government has not needed a pretext to harass its own population, it would behoove Congress not to provide it with one." Virtually the only ones to accept such funding were exiles who had very few followers within Iran and no experience with the kinds of grassroots mobilization necessary to build a popular movement that could threaten the regime's survival. In an even more counterproductive venture, the Bush administration began arming and supporting Kurdish and Baluchi separatists. The Obama administration ceased its support for these groups within days of taking office, formally labeling them terrorist groups. Ironically, Republicans are now attacking the administration for thus abandoning Iran's pro-democracy struggle at the same time that Ahmadinejad and his supporters are citing these now-discarded efforts as proof of U.S. complicity in the current uprising. Learning from History, Nor Foreigners Uprisings like the one witnessed in recent weeks have occurred with some regularity in Iran since the late 1800s. Indeed, the idea of Americans having to teach Iranians about massive nonviolent resistance is like Americans teaching Iranians to cook the Persian stew fesenjan. Iranians successfully rose up against economic concessions to the British in 1890. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905 against the corrupt rule of the Shah and regional nobles led to the emergence of an elected parliament and financial reforms. The uprising against the U.S.-backed Shah in the late 1970s brought down that autocratic monarchy. In each of these cases, the tactics were remarkably similar to those used in the weeks following the contested elections: strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and other forms of nonviolent action. The Iranians are learning from their history, not from Americans. Though the subsequent Islamist regime has proven to be at least as repressive, the legacy of the largely nonviolent overthrow of the Shah remains an inspiration for Iranians still struggling for their freedom. Indeed, the current movement has consciously adopted many of the symbols and tactics of the 1978-79 period. There is the use of green (the color of Islam) as the movement's identifying color. Demonstrators in Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and other cities have gathered at the same locations of anti-Shah rallies. Protesters chant "Death to the Dictatorship" during demonstrations and shout "Allah Akbar" (God is Great!) from the rooftops. Demonstrators place their palms in the blood spilled by a killed or injured comrade and pressing the red palm print on a nearby wall as a sign of martyrdom.   Yet scores of leftist bloggers are trying to convince people that all this was something planned and organized by Americans over the past few months. There is something profoundly ethnocentric in refusing to recognize that civil insurrections and other pro-democracy campaigns have to be launched from Washington and that Iranians (like Eastern Europeans) are incapable of organizing a popular movement on their own. This argument simply adds weight to the neocons' insistence that democracy can only take hold in Middle Eastern countries through U.S. intervention. The future of Iran belongs in the hands of the Iranians. The best thing the United States can do to support a more open and pluralistic society in that country is to stay out of the way. It does a gross disservice to those putting their lives on the line in towns and cities across Iran to fail to recognize the genuine indigenous origins of this popular movement. More on Iranian Election
 
CA Court: MySpace, Internet Servers Not Liable For Assault Top
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Internet servers like MySpace cannot be held liable when minors are sexually assaulted by people they first meet on a website, a California appeals court ruled in an opinion filed late on Tuesday.
 
Carolynn Carreño: A Burger That Is Proud to Be American Top
Today's New York Times article about burgers struck me as odd. Not because there was an article about burgers. Burger stories is what food publications do for the Fourth of July, which might as well be called: National Burger and Hot Dog Day because four out of five Americans probably couldn't tell you: Independence from what? But I digress... There's only so much you can say about burgers and the author pretty much covered the bases. She even tried to go national on the story. But here in Los Angeles , she chose to cover, of all places, the French bistro, Comme Ca. Huh? Okay, so evidently they serve one, but... does anyone in this town talk about the Comme Ca burger or wonder about the secrets behind it? In L.A., when it comes to burgers, people talk about the Pug Burger at the Hungry Cat, Nancy Silverton's burgers , based on her signature fatty burger grind sold at Huntington Meats , and the have-it-their-way burger at Father's Office, and that new joint on La Brea whose name I can't remember that offers nothing but burgers -- including nothing in the way of ambiance. When people ask me what my favorite burger is in Los Angeles, my standard response is that the best burger in L.A. is in San Diego. The one I'm referring to is the Drugstore Style Hamburger made by chef Jeff Jackson at the Lodge at Torrey Pines , an Arts & Crafts style architectural wonder perched over what many say is the nation's best public golf course on the cliffs of La Jolla that may also be my favorite hotel on the planet. Jeff is from Oklahoma, and he named his burger after those you buy at drugstores. You know? All those burgers you've eaten at drugstores!? I don't have the heart to tell him that those of us who grew up in Southern California (or maybe anywhere but Oklahoma) did not eat burgers in drugstores, and what's the point, really? Because his burger is just so good. Chef Jeff uses all the best ingredients, of course -- good meat, makes his own mayonnaise, farmers market veggies, and all that. But what I like best about this burger is that it is just a burger. Nothing fancy. No foie gras. No short ribs. It looks pretty much exactly like Big Mac without the useless third slice -- right down to the shredded lettuce, pickles, and soft, sesame seed bun. You can even pick it up with your hands and put it in your mouth. Try doing that with a Pug Burger. Or at a French restaurant for that matter. God bless America.
 
Andrew Kimbrell: The Obama Organic Family Garden: Swimming in Sludge? Top
When Michelle Obama created an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn earlier this year, the move was greeted with positive headlines and excitement among the food advocacy community. Here, we thought, was a First Lady who understood the importance of locally grown, whole and organic foods in her family's diet. Unfortunately, something happened on the way to the realization of the First Lady's good intentions. Recently the National Park Service discovered that the White House lawn, where the garden was planted, contains highly elevated levels of lead -- 93 parts per million. It's enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children's developing organs and brain functions. What caused this alarming contamination of the White House lawn? Some news outlets speculated that residue from lead paint might have caused the toxicity. However an article running on Mother Jones online http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/06/did-sludge-lace-obamas-veggie-garden-lead has a more probable explanation. During the 1990s, the Clintons agreed to have the South Lawn of the White House "fertilized" with ComPRO, a commercially available "compost made from a nearby wastewater plant's solid effluent, a.k.a. sewage sludge." So, the White House lawn became a highly visible example of a little-known, widely conducted practice, "land application". This means disposing of sewage sludge by spraying it over public lands, including parks, and also on an untold number of acres of farmland where our food is grown. Sadly, it's completely legal under current, grossly inadequate EPA rules. Apparently, the spreading of sewage sludge at the White House was a public relations ploy by the Environmental Protection Agency and, no doubt, the sludge industry to convince the public that using sludge in gardens and farms is as safe as using normal compost. The promotion didn't stop there; as part of its PR effort, EPA offered a $150,000 prize to the winner of a contest to re-brand sludge with a more benign sounding name. The chosen euphemism?: "biosolid". It's a term the agency and the industry consistently use to hide the reality of what sludge is. So what is sludge, really? A stinking, sticky, dark-grey to black paste, it's everything homeowners, hospitals and industries put down their toilets and drains. Every material-turned-waste that our society produces (including prescription drugs and the sweepings of slaughterhouses), and that wastewater treatment plants are capable of removing from sewage, becomes sludge. The end product is a concentrated mass of heavy metals and carcinogenic, teratogenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, replete with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There are some 80,000 to 90,000 industrial chemicals, including a host of dioxin-like deadly substances, which are allowed to be present in sludge under current EPA rules. What's worse, there's no way of knowing which toxic chemicals and heavy metals are entering the wastewater stream at any given time or in what concentrations. Sludge is always an unknown quantity, and therefore, assessing whether sludge is safe to use for growing food, is -- in practice -- impossible. Farmers who care about what they grow know this, and -- despite the best efforts of government and the sludge industry -- growing food in sewage sludge is prohibited under the federal organic regulations. Still, sludge is still widely used as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, and unless you're buying organic produce, it's impossible to know if the food you eat was grown in it. Remarkably, the EPA creators of the sludge program claim they didn't anticipate any health problems to be associated with spraying sludge near people's homes or on their food. They assumed that natural conditions would disperse the toxins, and that bad bacteria would die as they naturally do in rich, aerobic soil and in compost. But sewage sludge is not soil; no matter how you treat it, it will never have the characteristics, either physical or biological, that make good soil and good compost so effective at killing human pathogens. It's toxic, and it lays there for years, still toxic. So when people living or working in the vicinity of sludged fields and when diary cows and other farm animals grazing on sludged land have gotten sick from heavy metal, chemical or pathogen based maladies, the EPA has either ignored, denied or, in some cases, even fraudulently covered it up. However it's getting harder for the agency to ignore the toll of sludged land as we see increasing reports in adjacent communities of elevated levels of cancer or deaths believed to be related to sludge exposure. In some areas where sludge has been heavily used, whole families are evincing the same symptoms: sores in their nasal passages, chronic staph infections, crippling headaches and sinus troubles. Yet -- despite the mounting evidence -- EPA wants to continue to promote sludge as a benign alternative to fertilizer. The Obamas may be the newest sludge victims. Certainly Michelle Obama's hopes of having a truly organic garden and healthy vegetables for her own children and other children who visit the White House have been dashed. The impact on their lives is symbolic; it's not just the Obamas under threat, it's all of us. Municipalities around the country have jumped on the bandwagon to sell their "biosolids" to sludge companies, a convenient solution to profitably rid themselves of hazardous waste. Over the last several years, we have all become unwilling guinea pigs, testing the safety of foods raised on sewage-sludged land. We're also unknowing guinea pigs, since none of this produce is labeled to show how it was grown. What can you do about this? Buying certified organic produce raised under rules that forbid this practice is a safe start. Next, let's urge the EPA to place a permanent ban on "land application" of sewage sludge; our foods should never be grown in hazardous waste. And in the best spirit of NIMBY, the Obamas, after removing that contaminated soil from their lawn, should be the first family to push the EPA to halt the sludging of our public lands and farmlands. More on Michelle Obama
 
Chris Weigant: Obama Poll Watch [June 2009] -- Obama v. Clinton (Second Term) Top
Welcome back to our monthly peek into President Barack Obama's poll numbers. And what a change from last month, when I jokingly started off the column "As a new month dawns with Al Franken still not seated in the Senate...." Franken is still not seated, but that is merely due to the fact that Congress is on one of its weeklong vacations (which they take regularly, after every two or three weeks of actual "work"). Once they return to Washington, Franken will become Senator Al Franken and the election of 2008 will finally be over. But enough about Al. Because this column is about Barack, and (later) Bill. Every month, we've been charting Obama's approval ratings (as averaged by RealClearPolitics.com on their presidential poll-of-polls page ). For a full explanation of why we choose these numbers over others, refer to the first Obama Poll Watch column . As always, at the bottom of the column are links to the full series, and the actual data points used, for anyone interested. Obama's June poll numbers were down a bit. But not by much. If you had nothing but the inside-the-Beltway pundits to listen to (as opposed to actual data, that is), you might be pretty worried about Obama's standing in the polls right now. Dire warnings that "Obama's dropping in the polls" or "Obama's poll numbers are tanking" or even "Obama has lost the public" and other such tommyrot has been a common theme for a few weeks now. Obama's poll numbers have dropped this month -- a whopping one-and-a-half percentage points. In other words, reports that the sky is falling may have been overblown. Or pure bilgewater in the first place. Ahem. But before we get into analyzing the numbers for the month, let's start out with Obama's new approval ratings chart: [ Click on the graph to see a larger version of it. ] As you can see, his numbers are down slightly, but in no way have fallen off any sort of cliff. Later, we'll compare his numbers to Bill Clinton's, and you can see for yourselves the difference.   June 2009 But before we do that, let's examine Obama's month in detail. June was scheduled to be the beginning of the healthcare fight in Congress, and it lived up to its billing. Well, actually, the month started off with critics trying to tear down Obama's first Supreme Court pick, Sonia Sotomayor. The car companies continued their march to bankruptcy (except for Ford, it should be noted). Obama gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt, which showed (once again) that America has changed its face to the world, for the better. Analog television went off the air permanently. Obama was criticized by gay rights groups for not moving fast enough (or far enough) on gay rights, and backed it up by hitting Democrats where it hurts -- fundraising. But even after boycotts were called, the fundraiser in question went off without much of a hitch, and raised a million bucks (more than last year's event). Obama met with gay rights leaders in the White House later, and tried to assuage their fears a bit. Iran had an election, and the aftermath captivated the world, but in the end accomplished little towards the goal of "regime change" or even just "presidential change." The theocrats are still firmly in power, which would also have been true even if the challenger had won, it should be noted. Obama, once again showed that he was "not on a 24-hour news cycle," much to the frustration of the news media (who do live on a 24-hour news cycle). A cap-and-trade bill made it through the House (barely), and faces a stiff headwind in the Senate. But, among all of these distractions, the main story all month was healthcare reform. So what did all of this mean for Obama's approval ratings? Obama's approval rating crossed a boundary this month, and dipped below 60 percent for the first time. Not much below, as he finished the month with an average of 59.8 percent, but his numbers all month were lower than they have been. They ranged from a high at the beginning of the month of only 61.0 percent down to a new all-time daily low of 58.7 percent in the last third of the month. Not surprisingly, his disapproval numbers were up. His average disapproval for the month was 33.6 percent. Obama's disapproval started the month at the low of 32.5 percent, and went as high as 34.7 percent before settling back down a bit. This put his approval rating for the month down 1.6 percent from last month's 61.4 percent, and moved his disapproval up a full two percent from last month's 31.6 percent.   Overall Trends Even though his numbers are down a bit, Barack Obama's overall performance is still marked by its stability. In his first six months of polling, he's had two months where his numbers went down, and three months where they went up. But, up or down, the movement is so slight that grand sweeping conclusions simply cannot be drawn. In six months, Obama's approval numbers have varied only a total of 3.6 percentage points -- which is probably within the margin of polling error. His disapproval numbers are continuing to trend upward, but most of this comes from undecideds making up their minds, rather than approvals changing to disapprovals. So, while the pundits will cheerfully tell you that Obama's honeymoon is over, that gay people don't support Obama anymore, that ultraliberal voters are completely disillusioned with Obama, that people opposed to specific policies Obama has adapted are turning away from him in disgust, that (insert issue here) was just the straw that broke the camel's back, that Obama is no longer popular, that the people no longer support him, and all the other endless blah blah blah -- don't believe them. There may be slight movements at the margins away from Obama, and some of this can probably be attributed to one or more of the favorite themes conservative commentators have been espousing. But the problem is nowhere near as large as they would have you believe, and six out of ten Americans still approve of the job Obama is doing as our president. Which is a pretty comfortable place for any president to be in -- especially one who appears to be riding a "honeymoon" wave that may now show signs of ebbing slightly, but certainly does not show signs of disappearing altogether.   Obama v. Clinton Last month, we took a look at Obama's poll numbers versus Bill Clinton's first term. This month, we take a look at Obama versus Clinton's second term. Now, there is an inherent apples-and-oranges problem comparing any first-term president to the second term of any other president, but I had the data and the charts ready to go, so that's what we're looking at this month (next month: Obama versus George W. Bush's first term -- the Bush data was harder to crunch, so it had to wait, sorry about that). Speaking of the data, for both Bush and Clinton, I have to once again thank the helpful folks over at Pollster.com for providing me with the raw data to create these charts. Having said all of that, a quick review of Clinton's first term chart (which I am reproducing here because I changed the colors a bit -- you'll see why in a moment): [ Click on the graph to see a larger version of it. ] As I said, this was fully discussed in last month's column, so go check it out if you missed it. Now let's take a look at Clinton's second term graph, which is one whale of a lot happier than his first term numbers: [ Click on the graph to see a larger version of it. ] That sharp spike upwards in early 1998 is when the Monica Lewinsky news first broke (now that I've got the basic charts created, in upcoming months I'll update them with such key events to provide more context). But what is astonishing is that Clinton's numbers stayed extremely high for four years, and stayed remarkably steady during the entire time period. When compared to George W. Bush (tune in next month), whose presidency had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, Clinton's numbers -- during the term he was impeached by the House and tried in the Senate, no less -- are phenomenally consistent. The lowest point in Clinton's second term, measured by his approval rating, came in April of 1997 (only a few months in). This low, which would turn out to be the low point for his entire second term, was 55.4 percent. The highest disapproval rating in his whole term, in June 1999, was only 37.4 percent. That's a pretty good record for four years, you have to admit. In his first term, Clinton hit a low in his approval ratings of 41.2 percent, exactly where Obama is now (in June of 1993, five months in). Clinton's disapproval rating topped 50 percent (50.6) in the last half of 1994 -- dangerous territory for any politician to be in. Clinton's whole second term averaged in the low 60s, and never got too far away from this average, in either direction. But now, at the risk of introducing information overload, I offer a chart of Obama's current numbers stacked up against Clinton's first and second terms. This chart has a lot of data lines, so I kept the colors the same as the above charts to help you sort them out. [ Click on the graph to see a larger version of it. ] This, as promised, puts Obama's current dip in the polls into some needed perspective. Obama's slide last month just wasn't that much to be concerned about. Even in Clinton's rock-steady second term, he had a few four-point drops in one month's time. Obama's drop last month wasn't even the biggest of his presidency so far -- and he's only got six data points on the graph! Of course, falling below 60 percent is something to be concerned about, but it's certainly not time to panic yet. Comparing Clinton in his first term to Obama at this point shows what poll numbers falling off a cliff look like (which, incidentally, didn't stop him from eventually being re-elected). At this point in his first term, Clinton had weaseled out of a strong stance with his "Don't Ask / Don't Tell" policy on gays serving in the military, had his stimulus plan blocked by a Democratic Congress, and was fighting for ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA was popular with big business, but not so much with rank-and-file Democrats (such as union members). Between April and May of his first term, Clinton saw his poll numbers drop almost eleven points -- in one month. Obama's one-and-a-half point drop doesn't look so scary now, does it? Clinton went from a high point of 56.6 percent (in February) to a low of 41.2 percent (in June) in his first term. That is more than a fifteen-point spread, within four months -- including a 10.8 percent drop in a single month. But this month in Clinton's term (exactly where Obama is now) was his lowest point not only of his first term, but of his entire presidency . In other words, you can't always judge the success of a president by the end of his initial honeymoon with the public. And, I have to say, I have just about lost count of the number of times the Washington pundits have declared unequivocally that "Obama's honeymoon is over." While Obama's numbers are down a bit this month, it is such a gradual slide that it should cause Obama fans not a whole lot of worry. The astounding amount of problems and issues Obama has tackled at this point, and the speed of the Democrats in Congress in passing his agenda, have kept his numbers high enough, at this point in his presidency, for Obama to be pretty pleased with the job he's done and the public's approval of same. One thing that astonished me during June was that -- briefly -- the numbers for "direction the country's headed in" (either "right direction" or "off on the wrong track") actually tied at one point . This is notable because right after the election, the "right direction" number dipped below eight percent, while the "wrong track" number climbed above 87 percent. But this month, they both hit 45.8 percent, which is an enormous turnaround of public opinion in such a short period of time. Later in the month, the news wasn't as positive, as the wrong track numbers climbed again, but it is still a milestone to remember. And perhaps explains why Obama's numbers continue to stay so high at this point in his term.   [ Note: This is a fledgling column series, so I'm looking for feedback as to what you like and don't like. Was the last chart too complicated to understand? Is there anything else you'd like to see covered here? Let me know in the comments, or drop me an email . Don't be shy! ]   [Obama Poll Watch Data:] Obama Poll Watch column archive (by month covered): [ May 09 ], [ Apr 09 ], [ Mar 09 ]   Obama's All-Time Statistics Monthly Highest Monthly Approval -- 2/09 -- 63.4% Lowest Monthly Approval -- 6/09 -- 59.8% Highest Monthly Disapproval -- 6/09 -- 33.6% Lowest Monthly Disapproval -- 1/09 -- 19.6% Daily Highest Daily Approval -- 2/15/09 -- 65.5% Lowest Daily Approval -- 6/21/09 -- 58.7% Highest Daily Disapproval -- 6/7/09 -- 34.7% Lowest Daily Disapproval -- 1/29/09 -- 19.3%   Obama's Raw Monthly Data [All-time high in bold , all-time low underlined .] Month -- (Approval / Disapproval / Undecided) 06/09 -- 59.8 / 33.6 / 6.6 05/09 -- 61.4 / 31.6 / 7.0 04/09 -- 61.0 / 30.8 / 8.1 03/09 -- 60.9 / 29.9 / 9.1 02/09 -- 63.4 / 24.4 / 12.2 01/09 -- 63.1 / 19.6 / 17.3   Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com   More on Barack Obama
 
Dan Dorfman: The Return of Gordon Gekko Top
The villainous Gordon Gekko in the film, Wall Street , who illegally traded on inside information and won an academy award for actor Michael Douglas, may have been fictional, but apparently he has spawned a flock of real-life disciples. Indicative of this, the Securities and Exchange Commission -- which has been roasted by the media and a host of investors for ignoring repeated early warnings about the fraudulent actions of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff -- has become a more aggressive cop on the securities beat, bombarding the brokerage community in recent weeks with at least 40 trading stock trading investigations. The SEC's thrust: to determine who traded in the securities of those 40 companies both here and abroad and whether they did so by illegally capitalizing on non-public information. That, at least, is what the agency is signaling it suspects, based on its bombardment of inquiries to the brokerage firms. "I don't know whether their screw-up with Madoff is what's prompting all these SEC investigations, but I can't recall so many of them popping up in such a short period of time," a compliance official at one brokerage told me. In some cases, the latest information-seeking SEC's inquiries are a follow-up to previous trading probes, particularly in the banking arena. Prominent in these trading probes are a goodly number of the country's best known financial names, such as the Goldman Sachs Group; JP Morgan Chase; Citigroup; Bank of America; Wells Fargo, and SunTrust Banks. Also piquing SEC interest is the trading that took place in such other financials as Meridian Interstate Bancorp, Colonial Bank National Association, Malvern Federal Bancorp. and Regions Financial Corp. Wall Street speculation has it that some investors may have been privy to government actions involving a number of these banks at the outset of the financial crisis or to their financial results. It should be duly noted these are not investigations of the companies themselves, but rather focus on the trading in their securities. An SEC spokesman, Kevin Callahan, said the commission would neither confirm nor deny the existence of any trading investigations. But there's no question of their authenticity since I have obtained copies of private internal SEC documents that identify the 40 names. Those highly volatile energy stocks are also conspicuous in the latest batch of SEC investigations. These include Valero Energy, Petrohawk Energy, Hercules Offshore, Delta Petroleum and Energy Infrastructure Corp. Additional investigations, according to copies of the SEC documents, include Pepsiamericas, Pepsi Bottling Group., Cypress Semiconductor Corp., EMC Corp., Emulex Corp., Sun Microsystems, Hartford Financial Services Group, Genzyme and Centex Corp. Rounding out the SEC's 40 trading investigations are American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Lincoln National Corp., Data Domain, NetApp, Gildan Activewear, Metlogic Microsystems, Novelous Therapeutics, Mf Global, Ltd., Tongxin Pharmaceuticals, Advanced Materials Group, Genta, Emisphere Technologies, Cypress Biosciences, Hana Biosciences and Indevus Pharmaceuticals and Cardiome Pharma Corp. More on Financial Crisis
 
It's An Eat The Press Canada Day (And The Rest Of Your Scritti Politti) Top
Hmm. It's July 1st! Somewhere, out in the recesses of memory, a strange, clarion call is sounding, reminding me of a hallowed Eat The Press tradition. But what can it be? OMGZ, of course! It's CANADA DAY, and on this day, Eat The Press remembers and celebrates all things Canadian, in keeping with the rituals handed down by this blog's founder and blogmother, Rachel Sklar. She is Canadian and she walks among us, in plain sight, but do not be afraid! She probably has cookies for you! As Rachel would remind you, the media is filled with Canadians , and no, not all of them are Conrad Black! My personal favorites include the Daily Show's Samantha Bee and Jason Jones, Slate 's legal eagle Dahlia Lithwick, NY1 's Zen-master Pat Kiernan, Rachel's platonic life-partner, Glynnis MacNicol, and Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, who quaintly spells his name "C-O-R-Y," resisting the runaway-popular American variant, " C-H-O-I-R-E ." Also, Catherine Collins, who has been offering spiritual advice to the Huffington Post's DC Office, is Canadian. She buys us beer on Fridays, in keeping with the traditions of a proud nation. I would remind you that Canada has, for a long while, been a key source of fine rock music. Metric's new album, Fantasies , is likely to vie for my own personal Album of the Year this year. It's awesome and you should buy a million copies, for your friends. As always, I remind you that I think the best band in the world is an outfit from Montreal, called Stars. Here's their video for "Take Me To The Riot," off of their 2007 album In Our Bedroom After The War . Canadians On Canadian Stuff : The New York Times had eleven Canadians weigh in on what they most miss about Canada . Breath mints, crosswalk etiquette, freezing to death in Winnipeg, Coffee Crisps, and "fugitive logs" rate pretty high. Oh, also, there's that whole universal health care stuff, that's pretty awesome. Speaking Of : You know what conservative senators in Canada love ? SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE! Love it to bits and bits! I tell you, it's like bizarro-land up there! When Will Meghan McCain Hold An Encounter Group For Her Father's Advisers : And when will McCain campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace make s'mores with me? These are but a few of the questions raised by the aftermath of Todd Purdum's Sarah Palin profile, and answered by Megan Carpentier and I in a special Canada Day edition of Crappy Hour . (Did I mention that Crappy Hour is back? Because it is.) [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 Canada
 
Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: Sex Tape To Success: Does It Work? Top
Originally published on Youthradio.org , the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. By: Orlando Campbell Sextapes. They've worked for young celebrities like Paris Hilton, Ray J, Kim Kardashian, and have even kept old schoolers like Pamela Anderson from having their fame go flaccid. So, you want to be superstar famous, huh? It's easier thought (dreamt), then done. Hold on, don't feel down and out yet, there is still one last glimmer of stardom hope, release a sex tape! True, it works best if you're already a little well-known, or at least "mediocre-ly" famous. However, that's not always the case. Read the entire story... Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org More on Sex
 
Ant Mega-Colony Takes Over World Top
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
 

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