Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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Jeana Lee Tahnk: Am I Doing This Parenting Thing Right? Top
It's an age-old question that moms (and dads, but mostly moms) ask themselves on a daily basis -- am I doing this right? Whether it's about disciplining tactics or sleep training or if the organic cheez-puffs are really that much better for your kids, motherhood to most is a type of training-in-progress, we learn as we go along. Life as a mom and "CEO" of a household is challenging enough. Throw a career on top of that and you're bound to find a woman who is always stretched, sometimes guilt-ridden and never satisfied. I find that between juggling work, seeking inner peace, wondering if I'm parenting in a way that my kids will need therapy for, and trying to look presentable at the same time, I'm always asking myself this very question. As moms, we are always making choices, some we are happy with, some not. Do you forgo pursuing the promotion because you know it will inevitably take more time away from your kids? Do you let your baby cry it out so you can get just a couple more minutes of time alone? Do you close your eyes and pretend to be asleep when your husband climbs into bed because after cleaning the house, making lunches and paying the bills, that is the last thing on your mind? Parenting is about making decisions completely on someone else's behalf. And sometimes, there is no right answer, but merely a process of figuring out what works. What I keep trying to reminding myself is that I'm doing the best that I can with what I know and what I have. I'm not always sure that the decisions I'm making for my kids are the best ones, but some of the ways I have confidence in my parenting is by knowing that I: Put the needs of my kids before my own. Put my needs before my kids', if at least minimally. The old adage, "if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" speaks volumes. Feel adequate guilt about something at some point of each day - isn't that inherent to motherhood, for better or for worse? Make decisions that I think will benefit my kids in the long-term and not just the short. Follow through on what I say to them. (Try my hardest to) Retain a sense of humor and keep calm despite complete chaos around me. Am proficient at being on conference calls and keeping kid noises at bay. Treat the relationship with my husband with equal importance as the relationship with my kids. Am weird and wacky with my kids and love to make them laugh. Think about their futures constantly. I've learned over the years that motherhood is about the moment-to-moment. It's about making the decisions that I think are right at the time and believing in them. I know I'll look back and have regrets about certain ways I handled situations, or things I could have said differently, but it is in the collection of these moments that I define myself. Millions of women face this challenge head-on and somehow manage to make it work. Whether you're a working mom of three or stay-at-home mom of one, we all share a common bond and can relate to the many joys, hardships and discoveries of raising kids (and husbands!) while still trying to raise ourselves. No one said it would be easy and no one said it would be fun all the time, but what I've learned so far is that a big part of being a good mom is believing, yes, I AM doing this right. What are some of the ways that give you the confidence to believe that you are doing it right?
 
Paul Szep: The Daily Szep- The Republicans Top
 
Stephen M. Davidson: Why the Public Option is Critical Top
The health reform proposals being considered by Congress depend on private insurance companies competing. Proponents of this strategy believe that to win subscribers from competitors, insurers will need to find innovative ways to keep costs down at the same time they provide good coverage. To keep them focused on providing good value to the public, some of the proposals, including the President's original one, include a public plan to compete with the private firms. If retained in the bills, this contentious provision may sink the reform effort. So, how important is it to achieving reform's goals? The answer is no mystery: The competition strategy is so weak that the public option is essential. The fact is that competition is a good thing only when it produces innovation that leads to better, less expensive things for sale. The new computer we bought a year ago was faster, more powerful, and less expensive than the one it replaced -- in part, at least, because of competition. The U.S. already has the most competitive health insurance system in the world. Many insurers make lots of money. How do they do it? My colleague, Jim Post, who has studied the industry, reports insurers have only 3 factors to work with: who is covered (availability), what they are covered for (quality), and price. So, among other things, in the present, badly broken system, they refuse to cover people with pre-existing conditions or make coverage so expensive for such people that they cannot afford it. They provide coverage that excludes some of the services their subscribers need. They charge cost-sharing amounts that make doctor-recommended services unaffordable for many covered patients. They introduce administrative procedures that make it difficult for patients to receive and doctors to provide covered services. And with it all, instead of falling, premiums keep rising and lead increasing numbers of employers and employees to drop coverage. So, given this history, how do policy makers arrange for a competition-based strategy that will cover everyone and keep costs under control? The president and his allies in Congress have proposed 2 main strategies. One is to impose regulations that prohibit the firms from using the tactics just described. Guaranteed issue and renewal, community-rated premiums, and limits to cost-sharing would be required. But if private insurers can no longer engage in the tactics that got them to profitability, what methods are left to them? How will they keep spending under control at the same time they provide value to the public? That is a question they should be forced to answer. To protect the public against the possibility that they will find ways to vary the 3 factors in their control in ways that undermine the reform goals, the second proposed strategy is to introduce a publicly operated plan to compete with the private firms. The primary mission of this government-run insurer would be to offer affordable coverage for people who could not find it from private firms. It would not need to earn a profit for shareholders, nor to engage in expensive marketing campaigns to win subscribers. In order to avoid losing too many subscribers to it, the idea is that private insurers would need to respond to its offerings. The coops that are suggested as a substitute pale in comparison. The best hope insurers -- and the public -- have to achieve the goals of reform is to change the incentives on providers by ending fee-for-service payment and to promote the development of integrated group practices which would have the means to furnish better, more efficient care. This being the case, should we expect insurers to contract selectively with physicians and pay capitation rates? Will they encourage creation of integrated delivery systems which, being fewer in number and larger than most of today's practices, would have more bargaining clout over rates and terms? If we are stuck with a competition-based strategy, the public option is the last, best chance for private insurers to show us they can provide better value at lower cost. The public option is needed because the insurers have already demonstrated that they do not do that on their own. Supporters of reform should demand that Senator Conrad and his like-minded colleagues who oppose the public option answer these questions: In the absence of the public option, what actions will insurers take to accomplish the goals of reform? And why they have not used them until now? Advocates of the public option should not allow themselves to be put on the defensive. Instead, they should insist that opponents explain what innovations insurers will introduce to provide good value at affordable prices. Davidson, a Boston University School of Management professor, is author of the forthcoming book, In Urgent Need of Reform: The U. S. Health Care System .
 
David Paterson's New York Struggle Top
ALBANY--"Governor Paterson is having a rough time," State Senator Liz Krueger, a liberal, loyal Democrat, told The Observer during a break before a legislative hearing at the Capitol last week. When asked if she supported him for reelection, Ms. Krueger said, "I don't know yet." Mr. Paterson and his surrogates had hoped the summer would provide him time to recuperate. He would beat up on the increasingly unpopular legislators; travel the state, leaving stimulus funding in his wake; and remind the public that they like him, because he really is a likable guy.
 
Mike Lux: I'm For the Obama Health Plan, Are Anonymous White House Staffers? Top
Barack Obama put together the outlines of a really solid health insurance reform plan in his 2008 campaign, and sent a similar package of ideas to Congress earlier this year. While not everything I would have wanted, I have strongly supported him in getting those basic ideas passed, as have three House committees and one Senate committee, and the overwhelming number of Democratic activists and voters. He has said he would remain flexible about specifics, but that to him, health care reform needed to achieve certain goals, including dramatically expanded coverage of the uninsured, serious cost containment, and providing enough choice and competition to keep health insurers honest. I agree 100%. My question now is why are certain anonymous White House officials trying to undermine the President? I ask this question in all seriousness, because this is exactly what happened in the Clinton fight for health care reform. We would do these terrific, thoughtful, complex policy meetings where we go over various options on the health care bill but make no firm decisions. The next day in the New York Times or Washington Post, some particularly controversial aspect of the bill would be headlined as in "High-ranking administration officials say Clinton is considering X." It was without question one of the things that eventually killed health care reform. What I discovered when I worked in the White House was that there were plenty of people who work in that building whose primary loyalty is not to the President but to themselves. They leak things to reporters to cultivate them and make sure they write puff job articles about them. They help certain lobbyists because they might want a job in their firm someday. They empower certain powerful Senators or members of Congress because they are personally close to them, and/or because they might want to get paid big money to lobby them someday soon. Maybe they want to run for office themselves one day, and so they cultivate certain donors. So while it is possible that all the back-tracking on the President's bill from anonymous staffers is all a carefully laid-out strategy, since it's a strategy that is really not working, I think it is also quite possible it is just classic disloyalty from self-interested staffers. In part I say this because what kind of brain-dead strategy would it be for an anonymous staffer to say on the front page of the Washington Post "I don't understand why the left of the left has decided this (the public option, a core part of Obama's health care plan) is their Waterloo." I mean, why would you undermine and attack the people who are actually fighting for the President's plan? Talk about a dumb strategic move. And the Obama people are smart, so I have to assume that his is just pure disloyalty, perhaps someone trying to suck up to Max Baucus, for example. I am going to keep fighting for the President's plan and goals. I will not give in until the fight is done. I just hope all the anonymous White House staffers will keep fighting with me. More on Wash Post
 
Senate Guru: Joe Sestak Leads on Health Care Reform Top
{ Originally posted at my blog Senate Guru . } Congressman Joe Sestak has been an unwavering voice for real health care reform. Check out his latest diary on Daily Kos : We have to bring health care costs down, while covering all Americans. To do this, all Americans need access to preventive care, and all health insurance providers need competition. The best way to accomplish this goal is through a strong "public health insurance option." A public health insurance option is a choice - a choice that is subsidized only by the co-pays and premiums of those who choose to join it - just like a private health care plan. But it is less expensive - and forces private insurance companies to lower costs because of this competition - by not having to pay CEOs $20 million salaries, or $50 million severance pay, for example. Congressman Sestak also put together this video on health care reform, following him on the stump and on cable news, advocating for a public option. It's only three and a half minutes long, and I encourage you to watch the entire video: Congressman Sestak's leadership has seemingly been the only thing pulling recent Republican Arlen Specter to the left on key issues (emphasis added by me): Sen. Arlen Specter just posted on his Twitter account: "People who like their current insurance ought to be able to keep it -- but let's have one more choice: a public option." And this comes just after his Democratic primary opponent in the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race, Rep. Joe Sestak, said Tuesday he would "find it hard" to support a health care bill without a public option. After becoming a Democrat in April, Specter has marched to the left (he initially opposed a public option) and will likely continue to do so in the face of what could be a tough primary challenge. But will that include opposing a Senate health care bill if it lacks the public option -- and if Sestak comes out opposed to it? Specter initially opposed a public option. Congressman Sestak is fighting for a public option. So Specter disingenuously tacks left. While Specter panders and postures, Congressman Sestak displays genuine conviction and real leadership. You can support Congressman Sestak's campaign with a contribution via the Expand the Map! ActBlue page . More on Arlen Specter
 
Marilyn Barrett: UBS Deals Cause Switzerland To Back Down on Bank Secrecy Top
While we Americans are rightfully angry with our banks for taking us down the subprime road to unemployment, foreclosure, devastated retirement savings and all of the other trappings of recession, the Swiss must be furious with UBS for the havoc it has wrecked on the famous Swiss banking industry which relied on its stringent bank secrecy policies for much of its success. UBS helped more than 52,000 Americans evade US tax by helping them set up Swiss bank accounts through off-shore entities. Impressively, the IRS started investigating in May 2008 and has already racked up four guilty pleas and has publicly disclosed that it is actively pursuing more than 150 other criminal investigations in UBS-related cases. Through the information obtained from taxpayers pleading guilty, the US has learned much more about how the system worked. Through the help of UBS representatives and Swiss lawyers, the Americans who purchased their services used entities formed in Hong Kong and other countries to funnel money through and did not report billions of dollars of reportable income. Some of the defendants have disclosed that UBS executives would travel to the US dressed as tourists in an attempt to avoid detection. One of the taxpayers who admitted guilt apparently got cold feet at one time and wanted to come clean with the IRS. To help reduce his anxiety, UBS helped move some of his funds to a smaller Swiss bank assuring him that, because the bank was smaller, it would not be subject to the same amount of scrutiny as UBS. A Swiss lawyer working with UBS also assured him that a high-ranking Swiss government official had provided assurances that his name had not been turned over to the IRS and that the official had been paid $45,000 for this information. In February 2009, UBS and the US entered into a settlement agreement wherein UBS paid $780 million in fines and turned over 255 names of Americans who had committed tax fraud. Since then, the IRS has been battling UBS for the additional 52,000 names of evading taxpayers, but Switzerland told UBS that it would violate Swiss privacy rules if it turned the names over. Switzerland apparently felt that this demand so threatened its bank industry that it took over the negotiations with the US from UBS. At least 10 other Swiss and European banks have been identified as having held some of US tax evader funds and whether they too were engaged in wrongdoing will likely be pursued by the IRS. Last week, the US and Switzerland reached an agreement under which Switzerland has agreed that UBS will disclose an estimated 4,450 names of Americans who evaded tax with its help and about 10,000 accounts. However, there has been no disclosure about what parameters will be used to determine which names will be released. This puts these US tax evaders in a real dilemma. Several months ago, the IRS introduced a program to allow UBS tax evaders to come clean and generally avoid jail time so long as they paid all past due taxes and substantial penalties. This program ends September 23, so the evaders now must decide whether to come clean, pay most of the hidden money to the IRS through taxes and penalties, but at least be able to sleep at night knowing that orange jumpsuits are not in their future or take the chance that they are one of the lucky ones whose name will not be revealed and their Swiss account holdings will remain secret and intact. As a result of the UBS case, Switzerland has agreed to amend amend its tax treaty with the US. Historically, Switzerland distinguished between tax fraud and tax evasion, which enabled its banks to assure depositors that their accounts would remain secret. While the basis for the Switzerland's unique distinction between tax fraud and tax evasion is not entirely clear, it appears that Switzerland defined tax fraud as taking some active and deliberate action to defraud the tax authorities - like falsifying a document - whereas omitting things, like millions of dollars of income, was only tax evasion. And in Switzerland, tax fraud was a crime but tax evasion was only a civil matter and not of much consequence. Its tax treaties with other countries required Switzerland to cooperate with the other country in investigating tax fraud, but Switzerland thought tax evasion did not fall within these treaty obligations and the Swiss banks could assure depositors who committed only tax evasion of bank secrecy. Most other nations don't take the same lax attitude toward tax evasion that Switzerland did and the OECD, an international organization, threatened to put Switzerland on the tax haven list. Switzerland capitulated and is adopting the OECD's definition which makes tax evasion as well as tax fraud a crime. This means that Switzerland, by treaty, will be obligated to cooperate with the IRS to catch US taxpayers cheating on their taxes, i.e., turn over names, account numbers, account information, etc. Swiss banks reportedly are now hawking Switzerland's famous stability to potential depositors instead of its historic bank secrecy laws.
 
Esther Dyson: Release 0.9: Washing Health Care Clean Top
Health care is too expensive, and the problem is not who pays for it. It's what they pay for. Just imagine that we paid for housecleaning the way we pay for health care -- by load of laundry, for example. And that homeowners weren't generally responsible for the costs. It would change everything. Housekeepers would suddenly respond to a whole different set of incentives. First of all, they'd do a lot of laundry. Every time you left a shirt on a chair -- whoosh, into the washer! They would probably encourage you to get washable rugs instead of carpets -- for easier cleaning. The kids... well, the housekeepers would be happy to see the kids track dirt into the house -- more laundry to do! Pretty soon the housekeepers would notice that there's too much laundry to do it at home -- and so many special kinds of cleaning possible -- that they would start sending it out to commercial services. Next thing you know, you'd discover that your housekeeper has an interest in the local laundry, and a consulting contract with a detergent maker... Sounds like health care, doesn't it? So how do we solve it? We don't throw out the insurance companies and private health providers, but we start paying them to keep us healthy -- not to perform (or pay for) procedures. Then they can make money not on the volume of care, but on the difference between what we pay them and the cost of keeping us healthy (including necessary procedures but also low-cost prevention measures). To be sure, that will require a lot of record-keeping and actuarial tables and predictions and comparisons of outcomes to predictions and some oversight to ensure that the cost savings come from keeping us healthy, not from denying care. But we're going to do all this record-keeping and monitoring anyway (including consumer feedback), so let's do it in a system where the incentives of the payers and the patients are aligned. There are some good examples out there, and they come in two overlapping forms. The first are Integrated Delivery Networks (or IDNs), in which an entity comprises all the major cost centers including primary care physicians, specialists, hospitals, and imaging centers. These include Mayo, Lahey, Kaiser Permanente and Cleveland Clinic. They typically employ physicians on salary and use systems-design principles to enable doctors to enjoy more of a "9-to-5" existence. Many of them favor long-term relationships with patients and focus on their health rather than charging for instances of care. The second form is in an emerging crop of new health maintenance organizations (or HMOs). These organizations deliver the coordinated care of the IDN in the open, heterogeneous marketplace. Call them commodity concierges. They use contracts that pay per-head (capitation) rather than per-procedure, and make heavy use of information technology to weave together a "virtual IDN" comprised of primary-care physician group practices, specialists and hospitals. Their contracts reward the primary-care physicians for leading and coordinating prevention and management of chronic conditions as well as care, resulting in more health (as opposed to just care). The HMOs got a terrible reputation among policy people and consumers in the 80's and 90's for two principal reasons. First, neither academia nor the government had developed a practical risk adjustment system prior to the work of NancyAnn DeParle at Health and Human Services that was at the core of the original Medicare Advantage model produced under Clinton (in a second try at health care reform!) in 1999. Without risk adjustment, which would give the HMO more money to fund the care of a chronic patient and less for the septuagenarian marathoner (at a zero-sum impact to society at large), the HMOs quite sensibly served only the lean and healthy (since they were paid the same for every patient). Thus, early HMOs went to great and unethical lengths to reject diabetics, the overweight, smokers, cancer patients, etc. Once you set up a system that properly compensates an IDN or HMO for taking care of sicker people, you can fix that problem. Unfortunately, the re-design of Medicare Advantage enacted by the Republican congress in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 went too far. It adopted the Clinton/DeParle risk-adjustment model but gave the HMOs an additional average 14 percent overpayment above the government's own per-person cost of care, presumably to attract more consumers to the managed-care model. This 14 percent was partly used to fund attractive additional benefits to base Medicare, such as preventive vision and dental care -- which stuck (and sticks) in the craw of Democrats who think taxpayers should not subsidize better benefits via private insurance than they can get through plain old Medicare. But little of it was spent on creative, preventive efforts rather than just more care. That has led to the current conundrum: Medicare Advantage is probably the best model we have for what Obama wants, but it's poison to mention until the 14 percent premium is eliminated. Nonetheless, an innovative crop of insurers and clinicians are using MA as the vehicle to fund coordinated, technology-enabled, evidence-based care, and many believe they will be able to do so even when they are paid at parity with traditional Medicare. They provide risk-adjusted subsidies for Medicare patients who prefer to get their health care from a private HMO such as Healthspring or Essence Healthcare; they deal with the inequities of fate (or behavior) that make some people sicker and costlier to care for than others, yet still allow for individual choice. Around 10 million seniors have chosen MA plans, out of more than 40 million overall on the Medicare rolls. Wash the system clean! It's clear that government can and should get more involved in ensuring that everyone can get appropriate care and that the care should be effective. Insurance coverage is not the issue; it's what the insurance actually delivers in the way of health. Nowadays, there is more data available to manage risk adjustment, with increasing regulation and the rise of "evidence-based medicine." So let's use all the data to enhance the market with proper incentives, rather than to create a data-bound bureaucracy. We could do this right easily enough. We need to pay for health and we need to find a way to get insurers and providers to think longer-term by compensating them for keeping healthy populations (not individuals who move from place to place) over time. A different alignment of incentives won't solve every problem - including individuals' own propensity to ruin their own health through eating and drinking too much and exercising too little - but it would go a long way to reversing the perverse rise in costs that has done little to improve the nation's health. Esther Dyson is involved with a variety of health-care companies, none of them an insurer or general health-care provider. They include 23andMe, HealthDataRights.org, Organized Wisdom, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest, ReliefInsite and Voxiva. More on Health Care
 
Lakefront Parking Won't Be Free Anymore Top
Free lakefront parking will be gone after the summer, if not a little before, Chicago Park District officials said Tuesday. The private operator Standard Parking will take over the roughly 4,400 parking spots along the lakefront in four to six weeks, the Tribune reports . Park District Supt. Tim Mitchell said the privatization plan "was a done deal back in November," in response to City Council questioning. The currently free spots will cost $1 an hour once the deal is complete. Park District officials estimate the deal will bring around $700,000 in its first year. "[I]f you spend the whole day there, it's $8. You can't go see a movie for that," Mitchell said in defense of the plan back in May .
 
Stephen Viscusi: Buyout...Just Another Word for 'You're Fired...Don't Sue Us!' Top
Readers always ask me, "When should I take a buy-out?" or, "When is a buy-out worth it?" Before I answer their questions, I always need to know the following factors: How old are they? How long have they worked at the employer offering the buy-out? What are they planning to do afterwards, work-wise? -- this question is relevant to your age. Retire? Or, as I am notorious for saying, "Expire!" If they plan to continue working, what other jobs are available to them where they are currently living? My advice today is relevant specifically to the deep recession, in which we are currently experiencing. In spite of the unemployment rate leveling off, new jobs are not yet being created, and most economists tell me that will not happen until the end of the second quarter of 2010. So, that's 8 more months of very few new jobs, and certainly a risky time to consider giving up a job you already have, no matter what your next career change dream may be. To me, the word, "buyout", "package"-- or anything of the sort, is a white-collar slight of hand. Translated in layman's terms, it simply means "You are fired. Take some dough from us if you sign this 'legal release,' so you won't sue us." It's is a dirty trick of smoke and mirrors. Evil. A buy-out is almost never a good thing unless you're about to retire, have a "sure thing" on the back burner, or you're going to be fired anyway within the next year, if you don't voluntarily leave now. Let's not forget that the buy-out is often just a disguise for the big "push," or "force-out". You need to do your best to weigh out if you have any other real options. Sometimes the choice of being bought out is really no choice at all. Right? Do you personally know anyone that took the famous "package" or "buy-out" and got a equal or better paying job? I don't. Oh, they land jobs alright, but not at the same salary or position they were in. If you can hold on to your job and not be forced out, it is always better, especially during a downturn to keep the job you have. It is very doubtful that there are that many equal paying jobs for you, just waiting around the corner. Once again, your age is a big factor, as is money in the bank as well as where you live. I will tell you one thing that is even more important than the "money" from a buy-out, which are the medical benefits. Negotiate with your employer to pay for the cost of continuing your coverage for as long as possible. Do you know what contributing to COBRA costs today? Dangling cash in front of anyone to make a decision is a no-brainer. It's why prostitution is called the "oldest profession in the world". Bosses know that money talks and influences people to make decisions they might not ordinarily make. If the offer comes, take your time and speak to people whose opinion matters to you. Then, ask if there is any room to negotiate or if there are any other options. And by all means, let me know what you think. ________________________________________ You're always welcome to write me with your career dilemmas, and I'll answer you on this column. Follow me on Twitter @ Workplace Guru and add me on Facebook or email me at: stephen@viscusi.com. Disclaimer: The scenarios and events portrayed in this article are products of the author's imagination. © Stephen Viscusi. All rights reserved. Article can be duplicated in part of full without author's permission. ________________________________________ Stephen Viscusi is the author of two books about jobs and the workplace. Charles Gibson from ABC's World News calls Viscusi, "America's Workplace Guru". Viscusi is a TV broadcast journalist on jobs, a headhunter and resume spin doctor. His latest book, Bulletproof Your Job: 4 Simple Strategies to Ride Out the Rough Times and Come Out On Top at Work (HarperCollins) has been published around the globe in at least 9 languages including Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese. Viscusi is also the founder of www.BulletproofYourResume.com. Viscusi's headhunting and workplace advice is usually considered counter-intuitive to the conventional wisdom. Viscusi is not a career or life coach. To the contrary, his current book, Bulletproof Your Job has been described as the New Millennium's The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, and that's how Viscusi sees the workplace. He's your workplace General. Each week, Stephen Viscusi volunteers his headhunting career advice to the world. His disciples can be celebrities, politico, world leaders, heads of industry, and some are just ordinary people who write him for advice. It's like Tony Robbins advising Al Gore or Deepak Chopra advising Michael Jackson (wait, scratch that one). Even you can get your own advice by writing to Stephen at stephen@viscusi.com, Facebook him or Twitter him at WorkplaceGuru. More on Careers
 
Yvonne R. Davis: The Uninsured Has a Black Face -- White Ambivalence Is Obama's Struggle Top
Yale University Professor of Psychology, and a highly recognized and award winning research expert on racism, John Dovidio does not feel the ongoing protests, yelling, name calling and Hitler labels by white protesters are hate. Instead, what he sees is a fight by whites desperately struggling to defend and maintain their position and status in America before it goes down the tubes to blacks and other colored people. "I don't think we are at the point of hate yet," Says the author of more than 250 academic research articles on racial discrimination. "I see it as a kind of threat. People are sensitive to being threatened and it makes them passionate. I don't think most whites articulate it as hate." A co-author of several books, over the last 30-years, Dovidio has delved into areas of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination towards Blacks and other disadvantaged groups. He has analyzed social power and nonverbal communication. "There is a very real increase in hate crimes and hate group activity that has been going on for a long time, but we have to distinguish between an extremist engaged in a hate crime versus people who are so argumentative in terms of issues like health," points out Prof. Dovidio. Dovidio admits even if he does not see the screamers and gun posers as hate mongers at-this-point, they are heading in this direction - the swastikas and defamed Rosa Parks' poster are hateful acts and bridges between hateful act and feeling threatened. The threat he says however is primarily rooted in racism. "Race permeates so much of our politics and is a part of our history; even if people say race has nothing to do with it. Healthcare is one of those examples," states the Prof. "We're obsessed with race. One drop of black blood will determine someone's destiny in America. Code words for whites are welfare, unemployment and now health care reform - race is one of the main elements in health. While the majority of the people in poverty in America are white, when we talk about welfare, race is what begins to dominate it." On the other side words and phrases such as, "I have a right to carry a weapon in public at an Obama speech," sends a bloody coded message in response to his Presidency. Dovidio says those with the resources want to have a superior position over those who don't have resources. Talking about poverty is talking about black folks. The uninsured has a black face with a public option. "A shifting of resources is not only wealth, but health to make it "more equitable" is threatening...the extreme response is why should we give up our privileges?" Viewing racism as functional, Dovidio argues it benefits whites by providing them with more opportunities, resources, and power to shape their lives and the country, if not immediately than in the long run. He also says with what is going on right now since President Obama has been elected is a pulling back and feelings of uncertainty and insecurity about where white people sit on the totem pole in this health care debate, economic recession and immigration issue (which is more perplexing to many whites because of so many more cultures are now involved) - hence the notion of the redistribution of wealth, socialism and other words related to equality received such a negative response. When African Americans tout that the new Civil Rights movement is about health care reform and education for all, it may now be seen by a growing number of whites as a warning that they will lose what they have been privileged to since the Pilgrims. "Our research shows that a small group of people in America who are openly hateful to blacks," says Dovidio. "There is also a small group of white people who are not prejudice. However, the majority of whites have ambivalence. On the one hand we believe in fairness, justice and equality. We think all of the right thoughts, but on the other hand our socialization experiences and our history, whites have negative feelings about blacks; this creates ambivalence for potentially strong feelings one way or the other. Whites who supported Obama for President, supported him more passionately than they have any Democratic candidate. That energy was channeled in a positive direction. Everything was fine." Many of these voters were the Independents MSNBC's Chris Matthews constantly yaps about. The polls show Obama support is eroding fast. The question is how does he get them back to feeling good about their decision to support him in the first place? Dovidio is brave enough to admit that a black person walks a very thin because it is easier for whites to fall back on stereotypes or what he calls "the unconscious negative feelings," but he still refuses to call it "hatred" by whites. Actually Dovidio admits that he runs away from saying there is hatred, but it seems ironic that he however believes many opponents of healthcare reform who are white have racially based feelings, but to call them haters only stops the discussion. Whites are very uncomfortable with Obama at the moment and while Dovidio believes Obama has the capability to shift the negative energy around him, the President's biggest challenge is changing the perception that the Government (despite the majority being white) is black because of a his Black Presidency; and it is the Black Government echoed by Glenn Beck that is the problem -- Obama hates whites, health care if a form of reparations, etc. Government is out to get the whites and according to Dovidio, "does not take whites much to jump to that conclusion." Dovidio makes a third rail statement when he says what Obama might need to help him come out of this malaise of white discomfort and uncertainty is a "Great White Hope?" During the campaign when President Obama talked about issues of "race," it was in the context of unity and everyone being treated well -it was only talk. Now, Dovidio says, he is in a real decision making position that directly impacts the lives of white people; thus bringing more white people into the conversation who are "credible" and "comfortable" for whites to get things back on track. Dovidio says there needs to be a "calming down." Beyond that, he calls on Faith based and community leaders from all racial and ethnic backgrounds to make a definitive statement about these issues so that the reset button is hit; Obama can't do it alone. If what Prof. Dovidio is saying is accurate about what white people need, and he would know since he is white, it is more than quite troubling that an African American President who has the best boot strap story in history; words many white folks like to use as well as the word "articulate" would need whites to rescue him. While it is realistic that a harsh reality surrounds this suggestion, it also points an even more insidious problem involving liberal racism which maintains the system the way it is - which in some ways is much worse than what the right wing who are at least open about how they feel. Here's to the Post Racial Society. Yeah Right! We've got such a longer way to go. More on Health Care
 
Fred Silberberg: The Unnoticed Effects of DOMA Top
I am in the midst of negotiating the settlement of some issues in a case on behalf of my client. My client and the soon-to-be-ex have been together for 17 years and have two very young children. There is a substantial amount of property involved. There are businesses, a residence, rental properties, retirement benefits and the like. There are arguments over what the custody arrangements should be. There are arguments over who should control what assets, and what the amount of child and spousal support should be. This case has the same trappings as many other divorces. A long-term relationship which, for any number of reasons, has reached its end point. It is time for both parties to move on, and the question is how to enable that while fairly addressing the division of property, support arrangements, and the custody of their children. In trying to work through the issues with my opposing counsel the other day, we ran into a stumbling block. His client would be the one to pay spousal support to my client. As most lawyers know, according to Federal tax law, spousal support when paid pursuant to a court order or written agreement is tax deductible to the spouse who pays it, and is included in the taxable income of the spouse who receives it. It is the tax-deductibility aspect of spousal support that allows us, as lawyers, to try to come up with creative ways to address the issue if at all possible. We try to maximize the tax benefit and use it in a way that reduces overall income tax liability to maximize the dollars that exist to benefit the now-separated family. In this case, however, there is a problem: My client is a man, and the other party is also a man. Therefore, under the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA), we cannot apply the same principles to this arrangement as we would to every other divorce. While the alimony would be deductible under California law, it is not deductible under Federal law and that is where the most significant benefit comes because these parties are at an income level where they would pay the maximum federal tax rate. Up until this last paragraph, you probably thought that this was, in many ways, a "run-of-the-mill" divorce. And the truth of the matter is that this is exactly what it is. Both of the parties involved have been productive members of our society all of their adult lives. Through hard work, they have acquired a fairly sizable estate. They set up a household, they had children, and they arranged both their domestic roles and their financial affairs in a way intended to benefit those children. Through all of this they did the same thing that we all do: They paid taxes on the income that they earned. Those taxes contributed to the cost of running our enormous government, and they provided benefits to other Americans in other parts of the country. By paying their taxes, they contributed to the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they provided funds for police protection for their fellow citizens, they provided welfare benefits to indigent people. They did exactly what every other couple does who acquired wealth during the course of their relationship and legally paid their taxes. Yet, now that they are getting a divorce, they are not entitled to this benefit that is available to any heterosexual married couple that is getting divorced in this country. They are not entitled to it for only one reason: they are both men. On Monday, the Justice Department filed a brief in a pending California Federal District Court lawsuit wherein it took the position that the 13-year-old Defense of Marriage Act should be repealed because it is discriminatory. The act prevents the Federal Government from recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages. It prevents Federal employees' spouses (if they are of the same gender) or domestic partners from receiving benefits, the same benefits that are offered to opposite sex domestic partners and spouses. In an unusual deviation from the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution, it allows one state to decline recognition of a marriage between people of the same gender which is valid in another state which allows same sex marriages. The effects of the Defense of Marriage Act are often far-reaching and unrealized by many. Some of the effects are more obvious than others. The issue in this case is probably not one that many would even think of. However, each and every day there are American citizens who productively contribute to our nation, comply with our laws, and who are not treated equally solely based upon their sexual orientation. If we intend to accept the benefits of their contributions to society, we must extend to them the protections of our society. Until DOMA is repealed, "Equal Justice Under Law," the inscription on the building which houses the United States Supreme Court, will have no meaning. As Americans, we should not wait until that court hears the issues, to give every American equal justice. More on Gay Marriage
 
Bush Still Gets Most Blame for Recession Top
Criticism of President Obama's efforts to overhaul the nation's health care system may be growing, but a new Rasmussen poll indicates that most Americans still blame his predecessor, George W. Bush, for the nation's economic woes. More on The Recession
 
Rick Horowitz: The Health Club at the Corner of Chimera and Mirage Top
Obama the Developer, he wants to build a health club. Something classy, that's what he's thinking, with all the latest equipment, and enough room so everyone in town can join. He's still kind of vague on the details -- what goes where and all that -- but he's sure about the basics. Thing is, he can't do it by himself. First he has to get the financing. Grassley the Banker, he's the go-to guy on the financing. That's what everybody says, anyway -- you want a build a health club in Bipartisan Acres, you need to see Grassley. That's the other thing: Obama the Developer has got his heart set on Bipartisan Acres. There's plenty of other places available, his friends keep telling him. The old union hall downtown. The mill over on Partyline Road. But he's got his heart set on Bipartisan Acres. Which means he has to go through Grassley. So one morning bright and early, there's Obama the Developer on the other side of Grassley's great big desk, and he's spilling all his ideas for this health club right out onto the desk. Grassley the Banker, he's nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling. "That's a great location, Bipartisan Acres," Grassley the Banker is saying. "I'm sure we can work something out." Those are exactly the words Obama the Developer wants to hear. Working something out is what he's famous for. "When can we start?" "Not so fast," says Grassley the Banker. Turns out Bipartisan Acres has a bunch of rules for building things, and the first rule is: Let's talk about it. That's also the second rule. So they start talking, and eventually Grassley the Banker makes it clear that this health club of Obama's is way too expensive for Grassley's taste. If Obama wants the financing, he has to cut things back. Obama the Developer, he says sure -- it's only details. So he agrees to get rid of the wood paneling. The thick carpets. Grassley the Banker, he's nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling. "That's a lot better," he says. "So we can start?" "Not so fast." Turns out being expensive isn't Grassley the Banker's only problem. He's got problems with some of the equipment, too -- turns out he knows a guy who knows a guy who sells a different brand. Every bit as good, says Grassley, and the guy could use the business. Obama the Developer, he says sure -- it's only details. Grassley the Banker, he's nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling. "I've got the perfect spot for you," he says. "Smack in the middle of Bipartisan Acres -- corner of Chimera and Mirage." "Sounds great!" says Obama. "Knew you'd like it," says Grassley. "So we can start?" "Not so fast." Turns out the fancy touches and the brand of equipment aren't the only other problems Grassley the Banker's got with Obama's health club. He's got problems with the entranceway. With the lighting. He's even got problems with the water coolers. "What if somebody puts cyanide in the water?" Grassley says. "People could die!" "Nobody's going to put cyanide in the water!" Obama says. "But they could! " Grassley says. So the water coolers have to go. So do the lights, and the entranceway. By the time they're finished, you couldn't pick the plans out of a lineup, that's how much they've changed. But it's been worth all the compromising, that's how Obama sees it, because now he's got the go-ahead to build in Bipartisan Acres. Now he -- The stamp hits the desk so hard it makes Obama jump. "REJECTED!" it says, in big red letters. "But I thought -- " says Obama. "We couldn't possibly," says Grassley. He's still smiling. Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com. More on Health Care
 
Mike Nellis: Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) Has a Secret Plan to Fix Health Care Top
...but she won't tell anyone! Last week, Republican Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins was in true form, and pandering to her base. Jenkins, a self-proclaimed member of the "party of no", is pledging to do all she can to defeat any Democratic proposal in the House. But when the media wanted to know her alternative plan to the health insurance crisis, things got a little weird. As I wrote last week : Lynn Jenkins says she has the solution for our broken health insurance system. The only problem? It's a secret -- and she won't share it with us... Rep. Jenkins told her constituents she had an alternative plan but that she "hasn't been invited" to share. In Kansas the health care crisis is real. Over 350,000 Kansans don't have coverage and that number is rising every single day while Rep. Lynn Jenkins hedges her bets on partisan politics. That's why we've set up a hub on the website for folks to send their message directly to Lynn Jenkins because we won't let her get away with this. Over a thousand messages have already been sent! Below is the email we sent out earlier today from our Field Director: Friend -- It's working! Because of you, media outlets like the Wichita Eagle have taken note of Jenkins' do-nothing attitude on health insurance reform and have begun to question the existence of her so-called plan to fix health care. They took her to task yesterday by chastising her "hands-off approach" to leadership as a Congresswoman. But the hard work isn't over. Keep the momentum -- tell Jenkins to stop playings politics and share her secret plan! This crisis continues to get worse; every day 70 more Kansans lose their health insurance. In times of crisis you can either lead, follow, or get out of the way. Let's tell Lynn Jenkins if she isn't going to lead then she needs to get out of the way. We need to flood Lynn Jenkins' office with emails this week and let her know we won't allow her to keep her plan secret. Send your personal message to Jenkins and demand she make her plan public: http://ksdp.org/secretJENKINS More on Health Care
 
Brooklyn Decker Strips And Speaks: Andy Roddick Stalked Me Before We Married (PHOTOS) Top
*Scroll down for photos* The US Open is about to start, and that means courtside sightings of Brooklyn Decker, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model who married Andy Roddick in April . Brooklyn, 22, strips down for this month's GQ and talks about how she met the tennis superstar. She met her husband when his agent called hers to arrange a date. "That happens all the time to girls," Decker says, blushing a little, "but his was the one number I kept." For their first get-together, Roddick took her to dinner, then an Upright Citizens Brigade comedy show. "He was the first to admit that he kind of stalked me," Decker says. "But his line was 'It's only stalking if the other person doesn't like it.'" You can read the GQ story here. PHOTOS: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Photo Galleries
 
Len Berman: Top 5 Sports Stories Top
Happy Wednesday everyone, here's my Top 5 for August 19, 2009 from www.LenBermanSports.com 1. Quick Hits Brett Favre (yawn) signed with the Minnesota Vikings. I'd be more excited if George Brett ended his retirement. Jets coach Rex Ryan fired another salvo at Patriots coach Bill Belichick. A few months ago Ryan said he didn't come to New York to kiss Belichick's rings. Yesterday he said "I'm not intimidated by him." He added the Jets aren't going to tiptoe around the Patriots. Take that Mr. Hoodie! A Buffalo grand jury is expected to announce charges today against Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane. He allegedly attacked a cabbie when he didn't have 20-cents change. Lovely. 2. Enough Already Is anyone else Favred out? He retires, unretires, plays for the Jets, retires, unretires, signs with the Vikings. Is this the classic "I won't quit until they tear the uniform off my back?" Hey he's free to do whatever he wants. It's his legacy. Tarnish away. 3. Jail Birds Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb says he wouldn't be opposed to adding Plaxico Burress to the roster. He could catch passes from Michael Vick. Now, if only they could coax O.J. Simpson out of retirement. 4. Crunching the Numbers Subscriber Eric G. already has his defense lined up should anyone accuse the Yankees of "buying a championship." He says the highest payrolls that have won a World Series are the 2007 Red Sox, followed by the 2004 Red Sox, then the 2008 Phillies. He asks, "how come nobody complains about the Red Sox buying their last two championships?" We have the makings of a new TV reality show here: "Battle of the Network CPA's" 5. Target Audience Advertisers know their audience. Beer commercials during NFL games, feminine hygiene commercials on Lifetime. And during the Little League World Series? I'm told they ran commercials for Extenze, an all natural male enhancement tablet. Well, what Little Leaguer wouldn't want to have a larger penis? Happy Birthday: Former Mets pitcher and current announcer Ron Darling. 49. Bonus Birthday: Bubba himself, Bill Clinton. 63. Today in Sports: The first car race was run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Speeds reached over 50 mph!) 100 years ago today. 1909. Bonus Event: Google first appeared on the New York Stock Exchange offered at $85 a share. Now it's around $445. 2004.
 
Helen Benedict: Women Soldiers Finally Get the Attention They Deserve? Top
Nearly six and a half years into the Iraq War, women soldiers are finally getting some attention in the mainstream press. Last Sunday and Monday, August 16 and 17, the New York Times ran two front page articles on the subject: "G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier as War Evolves," by Lizette Alvarez, and "Living and Fighting Alongside Men, and Fitting In" by Steven Lee Myers. In fact, women have been fighting in combat in Iraq since the very first days of the war in 2003, and doing so in unprecedented numbers. By 2006, more female troops had been wounded or killed in the Iraq War alone than in all American wars put together since World War II. Back in November 2006, I began several years of interviewing some 40 women in the Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy for my book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq . What these women told me was shocking. Not only were they breaking the Pentagon's ban against women in ground combat by serving as gunners, engaging in firefights, raiding houses, working checkpoints and fighting alongside the infantry under the guise of "combat support," they were being sexually persecuted and abused at terrifying rates -- by their fellow soldiers. In surveying all the research I could find on military sexual assault --and there has been a lot of it -- I found a 30 percent rate of rape of military women by their comrades, a 74 percent rate of sexual assault, and a 90 percent rate of sexual harassment. (These figures come from surveys of veterans.) Part of the problem for women is their isolation. In Iraq, women comprise only 1 in 10 troops and often serve with few or no other women at all. This, combined with the traditional, age-old misogyny of military culture, leaves them vulnerable to persecution. As I was told by Army Specialist Chantelle Henneberry, a Montanan who served in Iraq from 2005-6 with the 172nd Stryker Brigade out of Alaska, "I was the only female in my platoon of 50 to 60 men. My company consisted of 1,500 men -- Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Army - and under 18 women. I was fresh meat to hungry men. The mortar rounds that came in daily did less damage to me than the men with whom I shared my food." Recognition of our female troops is overdue and appropriate, and I am glad to see women soldiers getting it from papers like the Times at last. But it is important to know that, while women are serving, many of them are suffering horrendous disrespect and abuse. When this is not adequately acknowledged or addressed, women soldiers are being denied the very respect and justice they so richly deserve. Helen Benedict is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009). Her work on women soldiers won the 2008 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting. More on War Wire
 
Obama To Use Biden To Twist Senate Arms On Health Care Top
Even as the White House concedes that its options for recruiting Republican support on health care have dwindled, if not passed altogether, administration officials say they have one last weapon in an effort to curry elusive bipartisan support. Vice President Joseph Biden has, to this point, been noticeably silent in the health care debate, his time consumed primarily with overseeing the stimulus and consulting on foreign policy matters. Now, however, the assets he brings to the debate are of increasing importance and White House aides say he will be deployed by the president in a more strategic matter -- primarily as a bridge between the administration and those recalcitrant Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans critical to reform's passage. "He has pretty substantial relationships with most members of the Senate who didn't come in this year," said one administration official. "He knows [Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max] Baucus (D-Mont.) well, he knows [Sen. Chuck] Grassley (R-Iowa). He knows [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid (D-Nev.). It is going to depend on what the issues are and who he needs to talk to but there is no one who is currently playing a major role that he doesn't have a long relationship with." Jay Carney, a chief spokesman for Biden, noted that the vice president is set to hold a roundtable discussion with health care professionals and Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius this Friday in Chicago. In addition, Carney said, the vice president has been advising Obama privately on the matter over the past few months. "He serves the president as a confidential adviser who brings a lot of perspective and experience," Carney said. "Because of his years in the Senate and his relationships there, he is also in frequent contact with his former colleagues on the issue. I'm sure that will continue as the process moves forward in Congress." Biden could also play an important role beyond Capitol Hill. Part of the reason he was chosen as vice president was for his appeal to elderly and white working class communities -- two major constituencies that have soured on the White House's approach to the health care debate. He can also publicly identify with consumers of medical services. During the primary campaign he routinely would make light of the fact that he had "acquired more health care bills than anyone." "I have consumed more of your practice than most of you will ever, ever have to do," he told a group of medical students and personnel in Des Moines, Iowa, in October 2007. "After having spent seven months in the hospital with a couple craniotomies, a few cranial aneurisms, a major embolism, watching my kids recover for a couple years I came to say, thank God y'all are deciding to be doctors we need you badly." And yet, Biden is not expected to take the stump in an effort to drum up support for health care's passage. There is the continued concern among some that the vice president's penchant for verbal gaffes could cause problems. Mainly, however, White House officials and political observers stress that there is more bang for the buck by sticking him on his former Senate colleagues. "I'm not sure you want him out there as a spokesman, though in front of the elderly they might," said Norm Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "His talent is suited to working with the colleagues he had for 36 years. I suspect that will be the role he's going to play." Whether Biden can succeed on this front is another question altogether. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the White House was increasingly of the mindset that it needs to get health care done without Republican support. Spokesman Robert Gibbs, the day before, acknowledged that the pool of GOPers with which the craft legislation had grown quite small. But Biden's main pitch during the campaign was that he could succeed on the bipartisan front in a way his competitors couldn't. And it was health care reform where he promised to have particular sway. "It's about whether or not you're going to be able to, as President, generate a National consensus," he said during a presidential candidate forum in October 2007. "Because if you're a Democrat you're going to have to go out there and get 15, 20 percent of those Republicans to vote for it. You can't do it with just Democrats. And you're going to have to be able to convince the American people that this is understandable, soluble." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Barack Obama
 
Reporters Uncensored: Iran's Dark Secret: Child Prostitution and Sex Slaves Top
Reporters Uncensored (RUTV) : Behind the Global Web series -- Zach Schubert While the world was watching the election battle in Iran, unspeakable things were happening behind many doors in towns and cities across the country. The election got out attention and Iran's impassioned citizens kept it. Now secrets are starting to seep out from an overflowing cesspool of vile where miscreants thrive. As part of our continuing focus on Iran, this week RUTV will explore the sexual trafficking of girls. In a recent report by the U.S. State Department, Iran was listed among the dozen countries with the poorest record of human trafficking . In recent years, child prostitution has risen 635 percent in the country, and dozens of Iranian girls are brought to Arab countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh to be sold as sex slaves every day. Most of these girls are raped within 24 hours of their departure, according to government officials. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the Streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the City . Thousands more are trafficked abroad, landing as far away as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Many of these are runaways from Afghanistan and Pakistan who flee abuse and poverty at home in search of legitimate work in Iran. Other girls are sold into prostitution under the guise of a short-term marriage, or sigheh , which is permitted under Shari'a law in certain Shia schools. These marriages can last anywhere from one hour to several years, depending on a fixed contract. Under Shari'a, these marriages require the written consent of both parties. The reality, however, is that the contract is often brokered on behalf of the husband. So far, Iran has demonstrated an abysmal lack of effort towards reigning in sexual trafficking. When brothels are brought down, the people most often punished are the girls themselves. Unwilling to distinguish between consensual intercourse and rape, officials will torture and execute girls for violating Iran's standards of behavior. In one particular case cited in the State Department report, a 16 year old girl was hanged after being accused of "engaging in acts incompatible with chastity." Says the report, the religious judge who ordered the execution later received a letter of congratulations from the town's governor, thanking him for his "firm approach." Further, officials themselves have been accused of running child prostitution rings. In one prominent sting operation, several government officials and security officers were arrested during raids on at least five houses used as brothels around the town of Neka in northern Iran. Officers from Iran's State Security Forces and Islamic Revolutionary Council have been arrested in brothels on multiple occasions. One tragic consequence of prostitution in Iran has been a spike of HIV/AIDS infection in recent years. HIV awareness education is minimal there compared to in the West, and many who become infected are afraid to seek help. The Iranian government has vastly undertreated and under-reported cases, considering the disease a taboo that points towards sex outside of marriage. Joining us via Skype this week is Nahid Persson, director of the documentary Prostitution Behind the Veil . The film features the story of two young prostitutes in her native Iran. It has been widely honored, recieving an International Emmy nomination, as well as the Golden Dragon at the Krakow Film Festival and Best International News Documentary at the TV-festival 2005 in Monte Carlo. Tala will be asking her perspective on the situation of child prostitution in Iran, as well as ways to get involved in stopping it. We're live at 6pm (EDT) Wednesday and on demand a www.livestream.com/reportersuncensored. More on Iran
 
Candidates Lining Up For Lieutenant Governor: Why? Top
Blame it on Pat Quinn: the job formerly known as Lieutenant Governor of Bored Out-of-My-Mindistan is suddenly drawing interest from a wide-range of pols vying for a post once seen as a booby prize.
 
The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: Public Option on Life Support Top
Weekly Pulse: Public Option on Life Support By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger Will healthcare reform include a public health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance? President Obama campaigned on the promise of a public option, but over the past week he and his top advisers have repeatedly signaled that they aren't willing to fight for it. On Saturday, Obama told a town hall meeting in Colorado: "Whether we have it or we don't have it, [the public option] is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it." "I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," an unnamed senior White House official gripes in this morning's Washington Post . The White House is sorely mistaken if it thinks that the public option belongs in the "nice but not necessary" category. Josh Holland of AlterNet explains why the public option is the pillar of healthcare reform . Without it, there's little hope of containing costs or reigning in the power of insurance companies: It may be just one "aspect" of health reform, but without it, the legislation promises to be a massive rip-off; a taxpayer give-away of hundreds of billions of dollars to an unreformed 'disease care' industry. The industry would get millions of new customers thanks to generous government subsidies and a law requiring that (almost) everyone carry insurance. And that windfall would come without the structural changes needed to bend the medical "cost curve" in years to come -- without any provisions that might endanger the industry's bottom line. In Salon, Robert Reich agrees. Competition between private insurance companies and the public option is the only hope to controlling costs . A public plan could bargain with providers to reduce costs and pass the savings on to taxpayers. The private insurance industry would have to slash its prices to compete. Without a public option, "reform" would likely involve subsidies to private insurance companies, temporarily dulling the pain as premiums rise unchecked. That's the worst of both worlds. Progressives shouldn't be surprised at the White House's noncommittal stance, though. Obama campaigned on a public option, but he has always framed it a darned good idea, not as a non-negotiable demand. Why is it so difficult to get a healthcare bill through the Senate with the supposedly filibuster-proof majority? The simple answer is that the Dems need 100% of their delegation to cooperate in order to break a filibuster. So, the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate but no way to advance their agenda without capitulating to the conservative Blue Dogs. The Republicans can be counted on to filibuster whatever the Democrats come up with. Which means that conservative Democrats like Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) hold the balance of power. As Ari Melber of The Nation explains, Baucus and his Republican counterpart Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also rule over the powerful and conservative Senate Finance Committee , which has been tasked with writing the Senate version of the healthcare bill. Also in The Nation, Tom Geoghegan argues that it's time to break the stranglehold by abolishing the procedural filibuster . Unlimited debate in the Senate is enshrined in the constitution. In an old school filibuster, senators simply refuse to shut up until the session ends and the bill dies without a vote. In 1975, a group of liberals wrote a rule of Senate procedure that effectively allows senators to "filibuster" simply by saying they want to. In the old days, a filibuster was a grueling public ordeal. Senators slept on cots and spelled each other off. Today, "filibustering" means signing a form. It's private, easy and cost-free. The Republicans can, and will, filibuster all major Democratic legislation without having to stand in public and risk being branded as obstructionists. As a result, 60 is the new 50 in the Senate. Since it's just a rule, the procedural filibuster could be abolished by a simple majority vote. Friends of the filibuster defend it as a bulwark against tyranny. Abolishing the procedural filibuster would discourage frivolous obstructionism, but keep the filibuster for cases when legislators actually care enough to lose sleep over it. Ever wonder why the strongest public option, single-payer, was never on the table? Maybe because even the strongest proponents of the public plan are taking money from the insurance and biomedical industries. Mother Jones Rachel Morris wants to know why UNITEDHealth consultant Tom Daschle was on Meet the Press Sunday. A former Democratic senator, Daschle is a senior adviser to Obama on healthcare reform and a leading advocate of a public plan. However, he recently resumed a private consulting arrangement with UNITEDHealth, America's largest health insurer. Even public plan champion Howard Dean is a strategic adviser on healthcare policy to the lobby firm of McKenna, Long, and Aldridge. Dean won't disclose his clients, but McKenna represents a number of clients in the biomedical and health science industries. The prospects of a public option are dimming, but not necessarily because of any rapid about-face by the White House. The Senate bill is in the hands of the Blue Dogs, who say they won't have legislation until November. Obama won't put the screws to the Blue Dogs, but there's still plenty of time to for citizens to make their voices heard. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net . This is a project of The Media Consortium , a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder . More on Health
 
Reese Schonfeld: Healthcare and the Ratings Top
If one believes, as I do, that people watch television news when they're pleased with the news and avoid it when it displeases them, last week wasn't a good week for the President's health care bill. You must also accept as fact that FoxNews viewers tend to detest Obama's bill, while CNN and MSNBC viewers tend to support it. If you accept both of the above propositions, the indications are popular support for the health care bill is waning. In primetime, FoxNews had 33% more viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined. Among 18-49 year olds, Fox beat the other two by almost 20%, and with older viewers, 25-54s, Fox was 29% ahead of their combined competitors. In total day, total audience, Fox had 30% more viewers than the CNN/MSNBC total. In 18-49s, Fox had a 27% edge, and in 25-54s, Fox won by almost 22%. To my recollection, this is the biggest lead that FoxNews has ever had over the other two networks since I started doing this almost a decade ago. Health care seems to be the topic of the day, the week, the month and maybe the rest of the year. I hasten to make clear that the huge Fox lead does not mean that between 20% and 30% of Americans do not want a health care bill. It means that Republican opponents of the bill have been far more effective than Democrats in getting their message across. The Obama people seem lost in a jumble of their varying points of view in contradictory statements. Republicans have adopted a simple, no-no-never strategy that that is readily understandable and that seems to have convinced conservatives and independents that this health care bill, whatever it is, is not worthy of their support. In short, if Obama and his people want to get a health care bill out of this Congress, they better get their act together. Even liberals are too embarrassed to watch the Democrats' lame TV efforts as they struggle to get their health care message across. More on Barack Obama
 
Tamsen Fadal and Matt Titus: The Morning After Sex Top
Dear Matt and Tamsen, I finally spent the night over at the guy's apartment I've been seeing and everything went really well. But the next morning, the conversation was weird. Any advice to keeping the sleepovers less than awkward the morning after? Answer : The sun comes up and suddenly it's all clear. He sees your bedhead and you notice his place isn't quite as cool as it looked at 1am. The next morning after the first sleepover can be awkward no matter how relaxed and confident both people are. Here are a few things that might keep the sleepovers as simple as the night before. Don't feel the need to have a witty conversation ready and waiting. Keep it low key. You don't have to have plans for the next rendevous, before you leave. Exit gracefully. Just because you spent the night together, it doesn't mean he wants to see you for the next eight hours. Let him miss you when you leave and let him call you before you return. Let us know how it goes! If you have a question send it to us at: www.AskMattAndTamsen.com Matt and Tamsen More on Sex
 
Dr. Hendrie Weisinger: Are You a Beauty or a Beast? Top
Beauty attracts, beast repels. The fact is, all the universal things we term beauty, that we deem attractive, can be traced to survival. When fruit is immature and useless as seed, it is green and inconspicuous against the foliage. When it ripens, it colors and gives off a sweet fragrance to attract birds and insects that will transport its seeds to fertile soil. While the fruit tree was evolving its color and sent signals, we were evolving the response that the contrast of red or peach against the green was beautiful, and the sweet scent told us it would be ripe and juicy. Beauty's evolutionary function is to pull living things toward it. A fruit tree evolved to attract pollinators. We evolved to notice and appreciate fruit when it is ripe so we could feast on it. Symmetry, too, is a universal component of beauty. Symmetrical dwelling is a sturdier dwelling and a more attractive dwelling. People with symmetrical facial features and bodies are more beautiful than those with asymmetrical bodies, so it is only natural that those who preferred symmetry had healthier children and lived longer in their safe shelters. At the biological level, beauty serves a natural selection sexual function. If members of a species were not attracted to each other, there would be no sexual behavior, and extinction would be swift and final. More broadly, the evolutionary idea behind our attractive instincts contemporized is to present ourselves/work/organizations in such a way that others re drawn toward us/our work/our organizations and help secure our ecological niche, our place in the world. Deftly applied, the genius of your attractive instincts helps you do this. All things being equal, the more attractive job candidate makes the score. More to the point, if you don't want the job, make yourself as unattractive as possible. Presentation using the latest technology is typically rather higher than the same content presented in a less eye catching format. It speaks to primal likability. For example, during a cutback, your boss it told to eliminate 20 percent of the staff who are performing the same level. You can bet the ones to stay on the payroll are the ones when likes the most. Thus, check your likability quotient. The ability to beautify , maximize one's attractiveness, gives us an edge, whether it is in a job interview, at a party, during a presentation, or while building a business. How do we connect with our attractive instincts ? Start wtih your personal best. Your Personal Best. Silverback gorillas, both male and female, spend a good amount of their day in grooming activities to look and smell good. They bathe in the river, clean and polish their teeth with their nails, and spend hours grooming their pelts. The clear message from nature is that maximizing your attractiveness begins with your physical grooming. Forget about looking like movie star-few of us do. But you can all present yourself in the best light possible-your physical best. You might be significantly overweight, but you can still tuck in your shirt and wear clothes that flatter you. You hair might not be like Goldilocks' but you can still style it so it looks less beastly. You might not have to attend a meeting with your staff or see a client, but when you walk around the office, you might be smart to ask yourself how others perceive your appearance--is it the professional image you want to project? Be like the financial advisor who told me that every time he goes out, he asks himself, "If I bumped into a client, would I look successful?" From this point on, begin to structure some "beauty up" time into your day, even if it is brushing your teeth in the afternoon before a meeting or having a shoe shine at least once a week. Help your kids develop attractive habits by making sure they have enough time to beauty up before school. And when you see your partner making the effort to dress and style his hair , praise him for doing so, unless you want to be with a partner who lets himself go. When you see one another attempt to make the home more beautiful, also praise, unless you want to live in a pig stye Spending time and effort (it requires both) is mandatory to being your physical best. Silverback gorillas spend the time and make the effort, and this is a good lesson to take from them. It is true that, "all that glitters is not gold," but it is also true that the glitter makes us look for the gold. In Part 11, I will share 4 more Mother Nature tips for helping you beautify so that you can get others to desire you! www.drhankw.com More on Marriage
 
Jeff Rivera: Young Hollywood: Ugly Betty Fans Alert: Michael Indelicato! Top
Hey Ugly Betty fans, so this Friday I will be interviewing Michael Indelicato at a secret location in New York City. I can't wait because I'm a huge fan of the show and I love his character. I have so many questions for him, but my question for you is this: If you could ask Michael one question what would it be? Post it below and maybe Michael will answer your question. Make sure to tell us what city and state your from too! Jeff Rivera is an entertainment reporter who blogs about Young Hollywood . He is also the author of the novel, Forever My Lady (Grand Central Publishing). For more celebrity interviews, visit: www.JeffRivera.com
 
Youth Set Tourist's Hair On Fire On London Train Top
A group of four English youth set a Swedish tourist's hair on fire in an unprovoked attack on a train from Hastings to London's Charing Cross, the Press Association reports . One of the guys held out his lighter and burned the woman's hair as she was walking through the train. The woman, a teacher on a school trip, patted out the flames, after one of her students screamed upon seeing the incident. The Press Association said: British Transport Police (BTP) Inspector Gary Ancell, who is leading the inquiry, said the woman escaped injury but was "extremely distressed". He said police are hunting the four youths, two of whom were thrown off the train by a conductor who found them hiding in a toilet. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on England
 
Bella DePaulo: Romantic Relationships Are Hotbeds for Serious Lies Top
Mark Sanford. John Ensign. Newt Gingrich. Silvio Berlusconi. Bill Clinton. John Edwards. James McGreevey. Rudy Giuliani... They are a diverse cast of characters, all tied together by their affairs and their lies about them. They may never tell us the unvarnished truth about what they were thinking (or not thinking) or feeling when they engaged in their infidelities. For years, though, I asked ordinary people to tell me and my research team about the most serious lies they told in their lives, and the most serious lies that were ever told to them. They did so, often at length, knowing that their real names would never be associated with their stories. What my colleagues and I found was that romantic relationships -- both of the married and the unmarried variety -- are hotbeds for serious lies. When we categorized the lies according to the topics that people were lying about, we found that more serious lies were about infidelity than about any other matter. The people in our studies lied to their partners about lots of other things, too. Money, for instance, as in the story of the man who promised his wife that he would not invest in the stock market the money they were saving for a down payment on a house; he did and they lost it all. The participants also lied about their relationships and marriages; one woman, for decades, lived the lie of pretending to be married because she did not want anyone to know that she wasn't. For someone like me who loves single life , that is just so sad. As I explained briefly here , the little lies of everyday life are not told any more often to the people we care about the most. It is the BIG lies, the ones we consider most serious, that are told by and to the people with whom we are most intimate. My colleagues and I published the results of our serious lies research in an academic journal a few years ago. (That publication and related ones are listed here .) In journal articles, though, there is no room to relate the stories of people's most serious lies in any detail, nor to speculate at any length about what it all might mean. So I decided to make some of the back-stories of the serious lies available, along with some of the lessons I've learned about the biggest liars and their lies from my years of studying them. The book is called Behind the Door of Deceit: Understanding the Biggest Liars in Our Lives . It is a very short book, and I hope you find it engaging. You can order the paperback here or from Amazon . A Kindle version is available, too. Behind the Door of Deceit: Table of Contents Part 1: Stories from the Dupes 1. Lies about love and sex 2. Deadly lies 3. Lies that are a matter of honor 4. Whose flesh and blood? Lies about kinship 5. Lies about fortune and livelihood Part 2: Deeper into Deceit 6. The why and how of serious lies, and what happens afterwards Part 3: Stories from the Liars 7. The most primitive lie: Avoiding punishment and blame 8. Entitlement lies: Lying for what you think you deserve 9. Instrumental lies 10. Lies about passions 11. Identity lies: Becoming a different person 12. Taking a fall: Lies told to cover for someone else 13. Living a lie Part 4: Lessons for Liars and Dupes 14. Tips for turning down the heat on deceit A. Lies that liars tell themselves B. Lie no longer: How to come clean C. Tips for truth-tellers: How to help yourself avoid the temptation to tell serious lies D. How to be a dupe without really trying: Some warnings A different version of this post first appeared here on my Living Single blog at Psychology Today . To read other Living Single posts, click here . More on Mark Sanford
 
Pollster Behind Controversial Public Option Poll Has Long Ties To Insurance Industry Top
The Republican half of the bipartisan team of pollsters behind a new, controversial poll on health care has longstanding ties to the health insurance industry that critics say biased the results. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday , authored by Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democratic pollster Peter Hart, showed a majority of respondents opposing a public option for insurance coverage. McInturff is one of the most respected pollsters in Washington, and his work is often treated as straightforward and honest. But the pollsters' decision to alter the language of their August survey has raised the eyebrows of industry observers. Instead of asking whether people should be given a choice between a public and private plan -- as NBC/WSJ had done in its June 2009 survey -- the pollsters dropped the word "choice" and asked whether people favored or opposed creating a public plan to compete with private insurers. Whereas two months ago, 76 percent of respondents said they felt it was either extremely or quite important to have a public option, in August that number was down to 43 percent. "I think it's a very big deal to drop the word," said Wendell Potter, a former vice president at the insurance giant CIGNA. "This has been a strategy the industry has had for many years. They ask questions in many ways, knowing the way they are asking the questions will skew the result. Dropping the word choice is very important. It plays into some of the fears some of the people have been hearing lately, that the government would leave them without an option." As Potter pointed out, McInturff has done extensive work on behalf of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) -- a major reform opponent. His firm, Public Opinion Strategies, played a leading role in crafting the industry's message and "voter empowerment" programs during the 2004 election. He himself has done fieldwork on AHIP's behalf and lists the insurance giant as a health care client. His work for AHIP, Potter says, extends back more than a decade. "I think absolutely [McInturff's] work would be influenced," Potter said. "It's difficult not having a bias working for the industry. He knows a lot about word choice, he knows a lot about word choices the industry would want to use." McInturff could not immediately return a request for comment, but said he'd have a response later in the day. In a statement on Tuesday night both he and Hart said that the "only agenda that we have is to accurately measure changes in public opinion." Contemporaries of McInturff said that while his reputation as a pollster was outstanding, it was valid to look critically at his clientele. Along those lines, Hart Research has done work on behalf of a host of unions who support the public option, including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union. "Both McIntruff and Hart are always hugely conflicted in terms of partisan clients but almost always in opposite directions," said Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal. "The long standing assumption is that each serves as a check on the other." The debate sparked by McInturff and Hart's decision to drop the word "choice" from their survey extends well beyond questions of conflict of interests. Progressive proponents of health care reform insist that the change unfairly prejudiced the results. "Poll after poll shows that large majorities of Americans support reform that offers a choice of a public health insurance plan or private insurance," said Celinda Lake, the president of Lake Research Partners. "In fact, Americans strongly support having that choice rather than access to only private insurance. Choice is a key value." Even conservative pollsters -- while arguing that "choice" should never have been included in the survey in the first place -- acknowledged that switching the language likely had an effect. "Absolutely," said Michael Maslansky, CEO of Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research. "Effectively, in the first question they asked people if it was important to have a choice. That was the end of the question for all intents and purposes. People like choice. Most people likely didn't even value the back half of the question." "To the core question of whether or not the use of the word choice matters, I think they made the right decision to drop it," he added. In an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday afternoon, NBC News's White House Correspondent Chuck Todd echoed Maslanksy's remarks, arguing that "if you add the word 'choice' it can bias a poll question." But some non-partisan experts on polling argue that the issue is not so cut and dried. While the wording the pollsters used may have been a suitable replacement for "choice," changing the language now would make it much harder to accurately chart the evolution of opinion towards the public option. "Everybody is right," said Barry Sussman, editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project and a former Washington Post polling director. "First off, these surveys are not exact parallels, and they should be. But the second version of the question is not exactly unfair. "The word 'choice' in the poll is like a trigger word. It draws people in. It just calls for support. Even if it wasn't valid [to include it], it would draw more support. But, in this case," Sussman said, "it is valid." UPDATE : Chuck Todd writes in to note that McInturff's clients also include AARP, which has been generally supportive of Obama's health agenda. For the sake of complete transparency, McInturff's website lists the following health care clients, many of whom are critical of a public option. The American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Pfizer, Inc., and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His work on behalf of Health Insurance Association of America included conducting the message and advertising testing for their series of 'Harry and Louise' television commercials, called by Advertising Age "among the best conceived and executed public affairs advertising programs in history. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Insurance Companies
 
Jeff Rivera: (VIDEO) Young Hollywood: More Video with Dancing with the Stars Celebrity, Karina Smirnoff Top
You asked for it, so here it is! More video from my interview with Dancing with the Stars Celebrity , Karina Smirnoff. She's what I like to call, "a real cool chick". She's just very down-to-earth, genuine, smart, strong and hey guys, she can cook too! She likes to joke around as well. For example: when she bet everyone on the set $5 bucks that I would mess up my line. Thanks a lot, Karina! Good luck on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars ! Jeff Rivera is an entertainment reporter who blogs about Young Hollywood . He is also the author of the novel, Forever My Lady (Grand Central Publishing). For more celebrity interviews, visit: www.JeffRivera.com More on ABC
 
Sophia Yin: The Father's Day Gift Top
Many of my friends may have wondered why I have disappeared over the last two months. No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth. Rather, I bought my dad a puppy. Which means that, although it's his, I'm the one who's busy. If you'd asked me a year ago what I'd be doing this summer, I guarantee I would not have guessed I'd be training a pup for my dad. But about 6 months ago, I had some premonitions that this might be coming up. First, my parents' Scottie, Meggie, had gotten lymphosarcoma of the spleen. She then had a splenectomy and for several months seemed perfectly healthy, but the initial scare put the idea in my dad's head. When I would visit my parents--they live nearly 100 miles away--with my long-legged, wire-haired Jack Russell Terrier, Jonesy, my dad would slip in statements like, "Let me keep Jonesy." Or "Jonesy's mine." Ok, anyone who knows Jonesy, the behavior problem dog I adopted, knows that the only way he would live with someone else would be over my dead body. Jonesy is known by those close to us as the $300,000 dog because of the number of hours of training I've put into him , just so that he can function like a well-behaved dog in day-to-day life . And anyone--such as my training assistants-- who actually worked with Jonesy during first 1.5 years I had him, has decided they will never get a JRT. Now fast-forward several months. We eventually had to put poor Meggie to sleep at 13 years of age. Her lymphosarcoma had come back. Not a week had gone by and my dad was demanding, "Get me an Australian Cattledog. One just like Roody." An Australian Cattledog Just LIke Roody Why an Australian Cattledog--a breed known for aggression? To give you an idea of their reputation, my veterinary colleague, who worked in Australia, once told me, "When you drive to a farm never get out of the car if there's a goose or an Australian Cattledog. It's not safe." So why was Australian Cattledog my dad's choice? Because 20 years ago, when I didn't know any better, I'd bought him an Australian Cattledog (ACD) puppy that we named Roody. If I had known then what I know now as a veterinarian and animal behavior consultant, I would have chosen something with a reputation for being easier to train than an ACD, like a pitbull, or a Rottweiler---get the picture? According to my Dad, Roody was the perfect dog, like a canine cross between Einstein and Ghandi. I have to admit that Roody was fantastic. He always stuck close to us, even at 12 weeks of age, was magically calm as a puppy--no mouthing or incessant playing--and he practically self-potty trained. On top of that, he was comically eager to play and learn, which made him appear pretty smart. He could stare, eyes practically popping out of his head, at a tennis ball in your hand for minutes without blinking. Poised to spring, swaying side to side as you waved the ball in slow motion from left to right. And finding something to occupy him was easy. We played: drop the ball, he'd pick it up and spit it in your hand, stare at you bulgy-eyed until you drop the ball again and the cycle would repeat. A toss of the ball was a bonus but not actually needed for his style of fetch. Yes, Roody was always ready to play or learn new tricks and, because my dad was willing to do both, Roody was an okay match for him. But what my dad forgets is that Roody used to bark ballistically when people or dogs approached the car and snapped at dogs that came close--at least until he came to live with me permanently during the last quarter of his life from 13-17 years of age. Once I had him regularly, it was pretty easy to train him to focus on me and associate other dogs with all the fun things that happened to him when he was around them. He quickly developed a friendly attitude around unfamiliar dogs and learned to remain quiet and calm when people or dogs approached the car. Even my roommate from veterinary school remembers that Roody wasn't perfect. When he was about 2 years of age she borrowed Roody for the UC Davis Picnic Day Parade to walk alongside our veterinary school class float. Although Roody knew how to heel nicely for me, due to inconsistent training from my parents, for everyone else he walked as straight as a bouncing Kong toy. The walking with the float was a minor ordeal for my roommate, causing us to both roll our eyes. So I'm not the only one who remembers Roody's flaws. My veterinary school roommate can vouch for me. And then there was the description a friend of the family's once gave when referring to Roody's rude treat-grabbing skills trained by my dad, "Everyone knows, when giving treats to Roody, he gets the whole beef jerky if you want to keep your fingers intact." Of course, there was no way my dad would listen to me or my mom warning him that another cattledog wouldn't be just like Roody and that Roody wasn't as perfect as he remembered. I'd even owned a second Australian Cattledog, Zoe, who was clearly very different from Roody. She was great with people and dogs, for one, but also more independent. But my dad had only Roody in his mind when he thought Australian Cattledog. I knew at 81 years of age, my dad wasn't about to change his mind or ways. Either I was going to get him a cattledog or I was sure he was going to get one on a whim himself. He wanted a cattledog and he wanted one now. The Puppy Search Begins So, I and my assistant, Melissa, perused the web for available Australian Cattledogs, assuming I wouldn't find one that looked just like Roody for months. And then out of the blue, hey, there was one available nearby. She was the only one available in her litter, her parents had had their hips OFA certified fair or good, and they had been tested for progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), a genetic eye disease that runs in some lines of cattledogs. Additionally that puppies had already been hearing tested since deafness is hereditary in cattledogs and they were all clear. So the puppies appeared to have everything going from them healthwise. On top of all this, the photo posted on the web page looked close enough to Roody to be acceptable to my dad. Even more important to me, when I visited the breeder, was the puppy's behavioral health. Her parents were friendly to humans--no crazy barking or nipping at heels or defensive posturing. And she, as well as all of the other puppies, was outgoing and friendly. They immediately ran over to be petted and followed us around as we walked through the pasture. The puppy was also good with the test dog I brought for her to greet. She politely greeted the test puppy instead of bombarding him and then she played. At nearly 8 weeks of age, she showed no harbingers of fear or aggression or any of the other problem issues I see daily in my canine behavior consult patients, so I took her. In fact, I got her several days before my dad knew so that I would have several extra days to start training her without listening to his incessant nagging to drop everything I was doing and drive the puppy nearly 100 miles to him. My goal was to start her socialization to people and dogs and to train her through the Puppy Learn to Earn Program in a week so that she would already have good habits before my dad got her. That way he'd have less chance to mess her up. The Puppy Starts Out as a Stellar Learner I have to admit, I was not looking forward to having a pup. Dealing with potty training and the energy of a pup can be a pain, especially when you have a busy schedule. But it turned out that in her first week, Lucy--that's the name my Dad chose even before I had purchased her--was perfect . By the end of the week, she was automatically sitting to greet people , to go in and out of the house, to get her leash on, and basically every time she wanted something from me, or when we were walking and I stopped. She met about 10 dogs and played politely with them but also came when called away from play. And she loved all people she met. She was so easy that I couldn't believe my luck. Of course, Melissa, who fosters puppies and adult dogs all the time said, no, Lucy wasn't better than a normal pup. She was just good from the training and careful schedule I'd set up and I perceived that she was great because I like Australian Cattledogs. So about a week after I had adopted Lucy, I brought her to my dad. How did she do with him? Pups Early Learning Takes a Hairpin Turn Well, let me give you a hint. She's came back to me for several more weeks of training. Even with the 25-page, photo-illustrated, instruction manual I made for them and several lessons over the two days I stayed with them, I could tell she might be a handful for them. My parents followed the instructions as best they could but the fact is, to accomplish what I had in a week on a puppy like Lucy, they would have needed a coach living with them for at least a month. Add to that, a puppy socialization class that brought out some poor play skills and when I next visited about 18 days later, Lucy had turned into a brewing aggression problem. She mobbed other puppies during play, got overly aroused, and then growled at adult dogs and people who gave her the cues that she should calm down. And she couldn't focus on my parents when other dogs and sometimes people, were around. Her profile read like a textbook on how puppies develop into aggressive dogs . A Reversal After Several More Weeks? It's been several weeks of regular training sessions around people, puppies, and dogs in many puppy-safe environments, plus weekly visits back to my parents' house so they could practice. It's taken a while to get back to the calm, focused, but playful pup with the great come when called, even away from other dogs. But now, at 14 weeks, I think she's almost there. She's been back with my parents for almost 5 days, so I'll find out first hand, when I visit later this week. The first installment of this article first appeared in my blog at www.AskDrYin.com. For a more detailed description as well as well as updates to the story, go to www.AskDrYin.com/blog. Here is Lucy being trained at 7.5 weeks of age. And here is the puppy Learn to Earn Program .
 
Terrorist Facebook: Intelligence Agencies Adopt Controversial New Technique To Identify Terrorists Top
By Steve Connor, Science Editor | The Independent Intelligence agencies are building up a Facebook-style databank of international terrorists in order to sift through it with complex computer programs aimed at identifying key figures and predicting terrorist attacks before they happen. By analysing the social networks that exist between known terrorists, suspects and even innocent bystanders arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, military intelligence chiefs hope to open a new front in their "war on terror". The idea is to amass huge quantities of intelligence data on people - no matter how obscure or irrelevant - and feed it into computers that are programmed to make associations and connections that would otherwise be missed by human agents, scientists said. The doctrine is already being actively pursued in Iraq and Afghanistan where thousands of people have been arrested and interrogated for information that could be fed into vast computerised databanks for analysis by social network programs. In addition to information gleaned from interviews with suspects captured in the field, intelligence agencies are also mining the vast amounts of telecommunications data collected from emails and telephone calls with the same surveillance technology. In the US alone, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on developing the data-mining techniques. "Social network analysis is analysing information about who knows who or who talks to whom," said Professor Kathleen Carley of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the civilian scientists hoping to benefit from the new military funding earmarked for research into social network analysis. "Facebook and Google are doing social networking, which is the technology for helping you find out who to talk to and for finding out what your friends know about a person," Professor Carley said. "What social network analysis is about is giving me the whole of the 'Facebook-style' data and saying that I'm going to analyse it mathematically to tell you who the critical people are," she said. The doctrine, however, has been criticised as time consuming, wasteful and counterproductive. Critics have also suggested that it has led to gross violations of human rights, with hundreds and possibly thousands of innocent people being detained and interrogated for longer than necessary to provide social network information. In its most extreme form, the doctrine has led to what is known within US military circles as the "mosaic philosophy". The philosophy behind the mosaic theory is that a piece of intelligence data may not mean anything to the interrogator or even the person who is being interrogated but it can suddenly seem relevant and crucial when placed as a "tile on the mosaic," he said. It has led, the critics argue, to the arrest and interrogation of many thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan in the hope of gleaning any titbits of intelligence that could be fed into computers programmed with social-network algorithms. "It's not a new philosophy, but computers and data processing have given it a new impetus and a new emphasis," said Professor Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to the US Secretary of State Colin Powell until 2005. "You fuse little bits and pieces of information, which to the interrogator in the field are basically meaningless, but they come in and you put them together to paint this bigger picture," said Professor Wilkerson, who is critical of the doctrine. "[The mosaic philosophy] is not incredibly well-known. It's arcane, it's esoteric, it's limited to a very few people," he told The Independent. Joseph Margulies, professor of law at Northwestern University in Chicago, who has studied the mosaic philosophy in relation to the detainees at Guantanamo, said that the technological and mathematical developments in social network analysis go hand in glove with the rationale behind the mosaic theory. "The former feeds on the latter. It's the myth that the computer can know everything, the belief in the omnipotent algorithm, encouraging you to embrace for longer than necessary the mistakes of the mosaic theory," Professor Margulies said. And the collation of vast databanks has another downside. "It also has the potential to bury you in inane data, where quantity is substituted for quality," Professor Margulies said. Nevertheless, senior intelligence officials as well as academic experts in social network analysis believe that terrorist cells can be monitored effectively by the techniques, especially in theatres of conflict such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr Ian McCulloh, a US Army major at West Point Military Academy in New York, said that he has used social network analysis to work out relationships between the many hundreds of videos of American deaths filmed by insurgents in Iraq. "The rationale for how they were related is classified so I can't give away methods [but] the interpretation was that the cluster of videos were likely to have been done by the same group... It allowed us to look at the structure between terrorist groups and actual attacks," he said. Dr McCulloh is collaborating with Professor Carley on "metanetwork" analysis, a more sophisticated form of social network analysis. He hopes to be able to monitor terrorist networks in real time and detect any changes to indicate that an attack is imminent. "Before a terrorist event is going to occur there is usually a change in that organisation as it begins to prepare and plan and resource the event. In that context I can monitor a network in real time and monitor the change in behaviour before an event occurs," Dr McCulloh said. "Social network analysis is to old-fashioned detective work what statistics is to intuition. It's applying mathematical rigour to what people have done before," he said. "It's already taken off in the military structure. Where it's going to go or how successful it's going to be, I'd be hesitant to say. Social network analysis is included in the counter-insurgency document of the US Army. It's in the vernacular and military intelligence people are using it," Dr McCulloh said. Related article: Steve Connor: Run the program, join the dots and find the terrorist Read more from the Independent. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Terrorism
 
Top 10 World Stories You Need To Know From This Summer (SLIDESHOW) Top
Have you been spending the summer sipping margaritas on the beach, or joining friends and fam for countless bar-b-ques? While you've been relaxing, we've been keeping a close eye on what is happening around the world this summer. Here is HuffPost's list of top 10 world stories from this summer that you don't want to miss. What big events or compelling stories have we left out? Leave your suggestions in the comments section below. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Afghanistan
 
Mort Gerberg: Out of Line: Lack the Coverage Top
 
John Geyman: Health Care "Reform" 2009: The Fallacy of Affordability and Cost Containment Top
Now that we're into the recess period of bitter and distorted controversy over the shape of health care reform when Congress re-convenes in September, it is timely to reassess the extent to which legislation this year may or may not meet the goals for reform. Recall that the three major objectives are to provide near-universal access to affordable health care, contain health care costs, and improve quality of care. It seems certain that the House bill (H.R. 3200) will be the most generous bill to come out of Congress to help people afford medical care. The Senate Finance Committee opposes a public option, favoring instead co-ops, which are unlikely to work. The Senate is also more likely to restrict eligibility for subsidies to help lower-income people purchase health insurance under the individual mandate. And we can expect that any conference committee between the House and Senate bills will further attenuate whatever comes out of the House. But even H.R.3200 in its present form, even if it could overcome strong opposition by Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, will not make health insurance more affordable or contain health care costs, two of its essential goals. How can we say that? Here are some of the reasons: 1. It leaves a dying private health insurance industry in place. The nation's 1,300 plus insurers are mostly for-profit and investor-owned, are beholden to shareholders to maximize their revenues, limit their "losses" (payments for medical care), and provide the best returns to investors. They take about one-fifth of the health care dollar for providing mostly administrative services, with overhead and profit-taking five to nine times larger than public financing through Medicare's three percent overhead. The two largest insurers, WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group, made profits in 2007 of $3.3 and $4.6 billion, respectively. Annual compensation for insurer CEO's in 2007 ranged up to $23 million (Aetna). As described in my recent book, Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry Is Dying, and How We Must Replace It , we have never been able to effectively regulate this industry, which has many ways to game any system by cherry-picking the market. In exchange for their pledge to stop denying patients coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions, the industry gains employer and individual mandates, together with new federal subsidies, to increase its market by up to 50 million people. AHIP and its lobbyists have already succeeded in neutering the public option to a small program without enough potential market share or flexibility to set its own premiums to effectively compete with private insurers. Moreover, the industry has been lobbying behind the scenes to restrict whatever definition of minimal coverage benefits ends up in any final reform package. Thus, private insurers stand to gain millions of new enrollees, many subsidized by government. We can also expect that coverage will be limited and that premiums, cost-sharing and out-of-pocket costs for patients and their family will continue to go up. 2. None of the reform bills have effective mechanisms to rein in costs of health care in our market-based system. Reimbursement policies are not likely to be changed enough to reduce incentives for providers and hospitals to provide unnecessary or limited benefit services. Providers and facilities will still have wide latitude to set their own prices. And although H.R. 3200 does include a provision to establish a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, an E & C Committee amendment prohibits the use of comparative effectiveness findings "to deny or ration care or to make coverage decisions in Medicare." 3. Government subsidies to prop up the private insurance industry come at a high price. If the House bill's eligibility criteria prevail (subsidies for people making less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level), the CBO estimates that their costs will be $773 billion between 2013 and 2019. In addition, the CBO projects that Medicaid expansion for families of four with incomes up to $33,000 a year would cost about $500 billion over ten years. On the other hand, if the Senate and a House-Senate conference committee further limit eligibility for subsidies and levels of coverage, as seems certain, we can anticipate that patients and families will pay even more for health insurance and care than they do now. Recall that the average costs of insurance and care already exceed 19 percent of family income for a family of four, considered by the Commonwealth Fund to be a hardship level. 4. If anything, we'll end up with a mandate for underinsurance, whether through employers or individuals. H.R. 3200 already calls for four levels of coverage to be offered through the Exchange, ranging from 70 to 95 percent of the costs of benefit costs). In an effort to shave costs of a reform package, Senate committees are considering coverage plans down to only 60 percent of benefit costs. So people will end up paying more for less coverage. 5. Though touted by their advocates for their potential to save money, there is solid research that tells us that programs emphasizing prevention and wellness, as well as expanded use of information technology, are instead likely to add to the cost of health care. To be fair, H.R. 3200, as a work in progress, still has some potentially very useful provisions. For example, the recent amendment to H.R. 3200 passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would allow the government to negotiate the prices of drugs for Medicare patients. This came as a shock to PhRMA and the White House, who thought that assurance of no price controls would be the quid pro quo for the industry's pledge to kick in $80 billion over the next 10 years toward health care reform. As another example, H.R. 3200 calls for the Secretary of Health and Human Services "to limit health plans' medical loss ratios to a specified percentage, to be enforced through a rebate back to consumers." But if you think that the battle over health care reform is wild now, just imagine the response from AHIP if such a goal is established at five or ten percent (compared to three percent for Medicare)! Despite some useful provisions, however, it is wishful thinking to believe that health care "reform", as projected by current proposals being considered in Congress, can actually make health insurance more affordable and "bend the cost curve" sufficiently to make a real difference to people already burdened by their spiraling costs. That raises an interesting question as the political forces advance to the next stage in the battle: Since there is a paygo bill in the House with 85 co-sponsors, H.R. 676, the Conyers bill) that would assure universal coverage and save money for government, employers, taxpayers, patients and families, and since Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised that it will come to a floor vote in the House this Fall, can we imagine that it could be passed with bipartisan support of fiscally conservative Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and other liberal and progressive Democrats? If the debate is all about saving money (either for the government, taxpayers or patients) that's a logical question that we'll consider more in our next post. John Geyman, M.D. is the author of The Cancer Generation and Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It , 2008 by John Geyman. With permission of the publisher, Common Courage Press. Buy John Geyman's Books at: http://www.commoncouragepress.com
 
Colorado Minimum Wage May Drop As Living Costs Fall Top
DENVER — Colorado's lowest-paid workers could make even less money next year. That's because the state has an adjustable minimum wage that may become the first in the nation to drop slightly along with the cost of living. Colorado is one of 10 states where the minimum wage is tied to inflation. The indexing is thought to protect low-wage workers from having flat wages as the cost of living goes up. But because Colorado's provision allows wage declines, the minimum wage could actually drop 3 cents an hour next year. If the wage is reduced by state labor officials in September as expected, it would be the first minimum wage decrease in any state since the federal minimum wage law was passed in 1938. It's a small drop, but the prospect has Colorado's minimum-wage workers fearing times are about to get worse. "I'm just scratching by now," said Denver's Raul Ramirez, 42, who works two minimum-wage jobs, selling ice cream from a cart in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter. Ramirez said he takes home about $900 a month and can't imagine how he could get by on less. "I work seven days a week," he said. "I can't do any more." An estimate released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Colorado's cost of living fell 0.6 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. The drop, attributed to falling fuel prices, means Colorado's minimum wage of $7.28 an hour could go down in January, though it can't go lower than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Colorado labor officials concede the 3-cent drop is probable, because the amendment passed by voters says only that the wage "shall be adjusted annually for inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index used for Colorado." But a spokesman for the state labor department said the drop won't be certain until an official announcement due by late September. Advocacy groups that pushed for the inflation indexing anticipate a drop and are already turning to employers with appeals not to cut their wages next year. "Every single penny helps. When you're surviving on the minimum wage, it makes a huge difference," said Lorena Garcia, director of the Colorado chapter of the 9 to 5 National Coalition of Working Women. The group helped push for the amendment to the state constitution that links the minimum wage to the cost of living. "They shouldn't be allowed to do that, pull the wage down," said Josette Koger, 34, an out-of-work paralegal looking for a job in Denver. "It's hard enough to get by now. You can't make it on minimum wage, so the minimum wage needs to go up a lot regardless of what they say about the cost of living." The minimum wage isn't expected to drop in any other state next year. Most states that tie the wage to inflation make no provision for lowering the amount, so the minimum wage stays flat if the cost of living falls. In other states with adjustable wages, the cost of living hasn't dropped, or the wage is already at the federal minimum. In Florida, for example, a declining consumer price index would put the wage at $7.21. But that's less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, so paychecks won't change for Florida minimum-wage workers. Other states with adjustable minimum wages are Arizona, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Advocates who pushed for Colorado's adjustable minimum wage said they didn't intend for the wage to fall – but they say the provision that lets the wage fall was crucial to persuading Colorado voters to approve the amendment in 2006. "This was how the law was designed, to be somewhat flexible," said Ben Hanna, Colorado organizer for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Hanna pointed out that the declining cost of living means the Colorado minimum wage would still have the same buying power if it goes down a few cents. Besides, he said, most of the estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Coloradans earning the minimum wage likely wouldn't see drops. "I can't imagine many employers would see this as an opportunity to lower wages," he said. Maybe not, but the possibility has low-wage workers dismayed. Many said they doubted the cost of living has really declined. "That's a shocker. It's just sad," said Phyllis Jackson, 46, who is looking for work as a telemarketer. "I'd like to see whoever's making this decision try to scrape by on that. Cause you just can't do it." ___ On the Net: Federal price index for Colorado: http://www.bls.gov/ro7/cpiden.pdf More on Small Business
 
Aldo Civico: Colombia: In Memoriam of Luis Carlos Galan Top
When Jose Saramago wrote that a benevolent Tsunami swept Barack Obama into the White House allowing him to become the first black president of the United States, the Portuguese author defined the wave of change that brushed the entire country from west to east. During the Bush-Cheney era, thick and obscure clouds had dimmed the soul of America. Now a new leader promised to disperse the darkness and restore a blue sky. This time this benevolent hurricane was not stopped by violence. Too often history has recorded the savage and abrupt end of hope for renewal embodied by an enlightened leader. This is what the country of Colombia honors today; the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of Luis Carlos Galan , killed by a still unpunished hand while he was running for president. Before a country perilously engulfed in corruption and narco trafficking, Galán, like a prophet screaming out the truth in the desert, not only alerted his fellow citizens about a public sphere increasingly eroded by cocaine but proposed also as a remedy the renewal of the political culture. Politics not as a means to consolidate and reinforce the privileges of the few, but as a way to expand rights and opportunities for all. Politics not to exclude the majority, but to include the disenfranchised. Democracy, an inclusive and deep democracy, was his revolutionary idea. Revolutionary? What did men like Galán, Gandhi, Luther King want? Actually nothing really extraordinary. A normal society is all what they envisioned, dreamed and gave the life for. Normal is what is good for an entire society. Normal is to have access to education, to wake up in the morning and go to work, to go to a shrine and worship God, to get sick and seeing a doctor, and to feel that one belongs to the society in which one lives. To envision such a society has become extraordinary and so have men who defended with intransigency the right for all to normality. Galán affirmed that men pass away but ideas keep on living. The hope for Colombia, a country still scourged by inequalities and violence, is that Galán's sacrifice is the seed that will rise a wave eventually turning into a benevolent Tsunami sweeping away politics as a continuation of war and restore peace.
 
Chez Pazienza: Fighting Words Top
There's been quite a bit of controversy throughout the liberal blogosphere pegged off a couple of comments made recently by Rolling Stone columnist and avowed prick Matt Taibbi. As a writer Taibbi's always had strong opinions, and despite being regularly left-leaning, he's never shied away from taking those who typically embrace him to task when he thinks their adherence to stereotypical dogma amounts to shooting themselves in the foot. This is one of the qualities I've always admired in him: He's an honest-to-God individual and doesn't really give a crap what either side of the aisle thinks of him; he seems to revel in pissing down the back of everyone. The comments that have some of the usual suspects on the left in such a tizzy come from Taibbi's blog (which as far as I'm concerned is required reading) and have to do with the current battle over health care reform. At first glance, they seem to defend the tactics of the Bush administration. The most recent: I'll say this for George Bush: you'd never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer. Can you imagine Bush and Karl Rove allowing themselves to be paraded through Washington on a leash by some dimwit Republican Senator of a state with six people in it the way the Obama White House this summer is allowing Max Baucus (favorite son of the mighty state of Montana) to frog-march them to a one-term presidency? Then there's this one: Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds. It goes without saying that to think Taibbi is suggesting that the Bush White House had its merits is to miss the point completely. What he's expressing, rightfully and angrily, is frustration . For eight years we watched George W. Bush and his band of corrupt cronies get away, almost literally, with murder. When the GOP held absolute control over every arm of the government, it abused that authority thoroughly -- not only cutting out but publicly belittling the political minority that it knew didn't have the numbers to make a successful stand against it. The Republicans truly were the Evil Empire in Washington, DC; they treated the Democrats as a non-entity, annoying gnats to be swatted away with the wave of a fat, sweaty hand. Here's the thing, though: Like it or not, agree with their sickening platform or disagree, the Republicans got things done. They got things done because they did what they always do: get behind a person or simply a set of obscene and ridiculous talking points and stay there. True, if you were on the other side during this dark period in our nation's history, you likely shouted to the heavens about how unfair the whole thing was -- how unconscionable repugnant turds like, say, Jim Sensenbrenner were for literally standing up and shutting off the lights and walking out of the room while their Democratic counterparts were trying to speak on the Hill. You no doubt despised the special brand of GOP thuggery. Once again, though -- these tactics, as deplorable and antithetical to the spirit of the American political system as they were, pushed the Republican agenda through with unsurprising ease. It's not right, but it worked -- in the sense that it accomplished what it set out to. And to this day, there have been no negative, lasting repercussions for those who chose to undertake this course. Bitch all you want, these assholes are still walking around free -- and they will be from now until they die fat and happy on a set of 1,000-thread-count sheets somewhere. George W. Bush is already preparing his memoirs; Dick Cheney isn't up against a wall behind the Hague; Tom DeLay's on Dancing with the Stars for fuck's sake. They got away with it. And now that the tables are turned and the other side has near-complete control of the White House and the Hill, what do we get? We get spineless waffling, pathetic half-measures, a supposed push for bipartisanship in deference to a group that giddily trampled its political opponents underfoot for nearly a decade and have no compunction about continuing to, despite the fact that it's in no position whatsoever to exert such force -- not anymore. And that's what Taibbi's getting at. His comments pose an interesting question: Is it better to be able to say that you were completely "fair," or that you got things done? This becomes especially thorny when you consider that, despite all your attempts at being obliging and conciliatory, the other side isn't really interested in bipartisanship. The Republicans are only pretending to give a shit about fairness; the reality is that they'll never bend to the will of the Democrats -- they'll block Obama at every turn and by any means necessary. Try to appease them all you want, it'll get you nowhere. By now, the Democrats should've realized this and should be rolling over the GOP obfuscation, misdirection and conspiracy machine with a tank. They have the power and the numbers, and yet they continue to behave as if the other side would show them the same courtesy were the roles reversed -- as if the last eight years never happened. It's time to lay down the gauntlet and not fight back -- since the Democrats should in no way be on the defensive right now -- but fight . This is what Taibbi's getting at, and he's 100% right. Being able to say that at least you played fair will be little consolation four years from now when nothing's been accomplished and a Republican president is back in office. More on Barack Obama
 
World In Photos: August 19, 2009 Top
Here is the HuffPost's selection of photos of today's news and events from every corner of the globe. Check back Monday through Friday for this HuffPost World feature. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Harry Moroz: Forget The Squeeze: The Middle Class Is In A Choke Hold Top
The news is a muddle. The economy is showing signs of improvement - the unemployment rate decreased last month - or it is stagnant - retail sales fell. The housing market is perking up - housing starts for single family homes increased in July - but 13 million homes are likely to default in the next five years. Health care reform's public option is at once indispensable and a meaningless litmus test for the left. There are no certainties in the current economic and political climate. Except one: that the current downturn is hurting middle-class Americans more than the wealthiest households. Two new analyses of the American consumer, one by Bank of America and one by Zero Hedge , paint grim pictures. As is well known by now, in recent years American households accumulated much more debt than was healthy for the economy. They took out large mortgages, home equity loans, and racked up credit card debt. They did this, in great measure, to finance a middle-class living, as higher education prices increased, health care costs skyrocketed, and wages stagnated. Unfortunately, the quantity - and type - of debt that middle-class consumers accumulated over this period left them particularly vulnerable. Zero Hedge notes that the "debt-to-income ratio for the middle class is on average more than 200%, almost double that of the highest decile, 'Upper Class'." Furthermore, low- and middle-class consumers hold a disproportionate share of their assets in residential housing, the market hit hardest by the recent downturn, while the "upper class" holds most of its assets in stocks and other financial instruments, which have performed better recently. Along with wages that have dropped this year, this means that: [I]t is once again the top decile, or the 'Upper' Class [that] benefited consistently over the past 15 years, to the detriment of both the low-income and the middle-classes, which represent 90% of the population...The double whammy joke of holding a greater proportion of new wealth in disproportionately more deflating assets is likely not lost on the lower and middle classes. Zero Hedge and Bank of America both argue that the superior position of the "upper class" at this point in the downturn means that the federal government must cultivate the consumption power of wealthy consumers and, most importantly, not raise their taxes, which could stifle recovery. This suggests a rather cheerless view of economic recovery: a return to GDP growth absent government intervention. Yet, the federal government should be paying more attention to ensuring a broader recovery in which Americans no longer have to use debt to finance a middle-class standard of living, a state of affairs far from inconsistent with economic recovery. Currently, the federal government has done little to address the housing crisis. Foreclosures continue to set records each month and millions more are on their way. One in ten homeowners is underwater. The Bush and Obama administrations have both failed to take broad steps to stabilize housing prices and keep homeowners in their homes. Allowing bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages , including principal write downs, would cost the government nothing while keeping millions of Americans in their homes. Allowing foreclosed homeowners to remain in their residences as renters would provide households an option for stable housing while incentivizing mortgage modifications. Both policies would stabilize housing prices without subsidizing homeownership. And both would help reduce the debt burden on middle-class households, which would free up resources for consumption elsewhere. Health care reform that took significant steps to cut costs would similarly shift middle-class households' consumption patterns away from expensive care to other, more productive uses. Pro-union policies, as well, could help boost the income of middle-class households. The story of the squeezed middle class is not over. In fact, it has gotten worse. Using this continued crunch to argue only against "anti-wealthy" taxes instead of for policies that can strengthen the middle-class both now and for the future is perverse. More on Health Care
 
Chase Introduces New "Sapphire" Credit Card For Wealthiest Customers Top
WILMINGTON, Del. — Chase Card Services, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Wednesday it will now offer a rewards card designed for wealthy customers. The new card, called Chase Sapphire, is designed for the top-earning 15 percent of U.S. households. It offers travel services, access to round-the-clock customer service and a rewards program. JPMorgan shares fell 52 cents to $41.18 in late morning trading, amid a broader pullback in the market.
 
NYTimes' Distorted "Public Opinion" Reporting On Health Care Expands Top
Paul Krugman may be the liberal voice of the New York Times, but the paper is guilty of reporting about an America that doesn't exist--one that is opposed to health care reform. It is guilty of giving aide and comfort to the insurance industry. More on Paul Krugman
 
Will The White House Use Hillary on Health Care? Top
No one's talking about what exactly went on in yesterday's Oval Office meetings with the Clintons, but Administration officials are thinking about how to use the former First Couple on the subject they know so much about: health care. In the wake of President Clinton's passionate pitch to the "Netroots" convention last week, officials are debating whether to deploy Hillary too. No one may have more credibility than her in convincing Democrats that failure to compromise for the sake of getting something done has real consequences. But will weighing in detract from her current responsibilities as Secretary of State? More on Hillary Clinton
 

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