Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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Amb. Marc Ginsberg: "Mabruk" Mubarak Top
Ironically, the temperature in Cairo today was a balmy 94 degrees compared to Washington's oppressively steamy 97 degrees. But that did not deter 81 year old Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from winging into DC for encouraging meetings with President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton to reinvigorate Egypt's pivotal diplomatic role in forging the outlines of an Obama doctrine for the Middle East. The timing of Mubarak's visit is somewhat unusual. Mubarak has not visited Washington in over 5 years because of an icy relationship with the Bush Administration, and the Capital is pretty well empty what with Congress on summer break along with many of the 4th estate who would normally cover the visit. However, President Obama is anxious to leverage his outreach to the Muslim world with strategic policy initiatives that would reinvigorate America's role in forging a durable peace. Mubarak, for both domestic and regional reasons, shares the President's goal of moving the Middle East peace process off dead center, and is as well positioned now as any Arab leader to be Washington's go-to guy in the Arab world, once again. Despite Egypt's internal travails and concern over its human rights record, particularly toward Mubarak's domestic opponents, few in Washington would argue that Egypt and its stable leadership succession are essential to American security in the Middle East. With the Ramadan holy month beginning next week, both leaders were eager to assess their regional diplomatic options, particularly with respect to Iran's nuclear program pending President Obama's September deadline for assessing Tehran's compliance with UN Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear program. It was just a little over two months ago when President Obama traveled to Cairo to deliver his landmark address to the Muslim world. By all accounts, Mubarak and Obama were then able to establish the beginnings of a comfortable and warm working relationship, especially following Obama's very disappointing visit to Saudi Arabia just twenty four hours before landing in Cairo. During Obama's brief stopover in Riyadh Saudi King Abdullah unexpectedly cold-shouldered the President's entreaties to undertake several confidence building gestures toward Israel in order to reinvigorate Israeli public support for a two state solution. As the promoter of the Arab League's peace initiative, the Obama Administration was counting on the Saudis to begin walking the walk of peace, rather than merely talking a big talk about a peace plan the King has yet to risk anything for. Obama had devoted considerable effort courting the Saudi monarch and the Saudis knew full well what president Obama was hoping to achieve, so the unexpected Saudi diplomatic brush-off was not received well at all within the Administration and Egypt became the intended beneficiary -- not that Egypt was in any more of a mood to push the Saudis or other Arab states into such gestures. Saudi hesitancy is not completely without reason even if the Saudis owed it to Obama to avoid a pre-Cairo speech diplomatic dead zone. After all, with Israel's leadership ever reluctant to fully embrace the concept of a two state solution and shut down all settlement construction activity, the Saudis are holding out for more tangible evidence of Israel's good faith, as well. The low-key nature of Mubarak's late August visit belies a critical moment in the Middle East and Egypt's increasingly central role as a lynchpin in Washington's diplomatic initiatives. Mubarak's able intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was instrumental in forging a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and facilitating talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Mubarak has maintained respectful, if not cordial, bilateral relations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government, and has kept an open line with Jerusalem. Moreover, below the diplomatic radar, Mubarak and Presidential Envoy George Mitchell have been quietly working with Team Obama to develop an Obama Middle East peace initiative which the U.S. would like to unveil to a receptive Arab AND Israeli audience. But conditions are not yet ripe in the region for an American-sponsored peace proposal to emerge, and remains very much a work in progress, complicated by an inopportune chill in U.S. -Israeli relations and ominous developments inside Iran. Meanwhile, final status issues grow more complicated by the day. Israel is insisting on a completely demilitarized Palestinian state with a withdrawal of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by the Palestinians. And the recently concluded Fatah policy conference triggered statements that further alienated Israeli public opinion as the Palestinian leadership boycotts talks with Israel until Washington is able to extract a complete settlement freeze from Netanyahu. Add to that the rift between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and Israeli disenchantment with the Palestinian leadership (and vice versa), any positive development has to be seen as good news. Moreover, Israelis are far more focused on events inside Iran and Iran's nuclear weapons program and less on the Palestinian situation in their midst, and waiting to see what the Obama Administration is prepared and able to do to turn the screws tighter on Tehran to avoid a further deterioration in the region's precarious stability. This is Israel's real test of Obama's credibility in the region. Regarding Iran, Obama and Mubarak also see eye-to-eye. Along with Israel and other Arab states, Egypt opposes Iran's inexorable march to nuclear weapons capability and its support for regional terrorist organizations. Mubarak will probably want assurances from the White House that the Obama Administration has a contingency plan to deal with Iran's nuclear program should the President's self-imposed September deadline produce a diplomatic dead end. As pleased as Washington may be with Egypt's newly invigorated regional role, Mubarak faces daunting domestic challenges that could impair Egypt's re-emergence and America's go-to Arab ally. It is an article of faith both in Cairo and in Washington that Mubarak would like to position his son, Gamal, as his successor. But there is considerable domestic opposition to such a succession plan, and it is highly uncertain whether Mubarak may be able to pull the inheritance off even though Gamal is a polished, thoughtful leader in his own right. As Mubarak emerged from the White House this afternoon he urged Israel to implement a complete freeze on all settlement activity and avoid the temptation to seek "temporary solutions" with respect to the Palestinians. Not coincidentally, the Israelis signaled some additional flexibility on settlement construction by acknowledging that there is a de facto freeze on new construction, which President Obama positively referenced as the two leaders wrapped up their discussions. Come September and post Ramadan Middle East diplomatic re-engagement, all eyes will be focused on President Obama's decisions regarding Iran, and whether the U.S. will unveil an Obama peace initiative. How the White House positions itself on both crucial issues will in no small part depend on what Mubarak does to line up other Arab states in support of the President's regional aspirations. So we wish Hosni Mubarak "Mabruk" (good fortune) as he reestablishes a closer diplomatic partnership with Washington to further President Obama's Middle East diplomacy. More on Saudi Arabia
 
Eric Schurenberg: Fidelity (Accidentally) Makes the Case Against the 401(k) Top
Fidelity just released its quarterly analysis of accounts in the 17,500 401(k) plans it administers . The nation's number one administrator and manager of 401(k) assets reports that the balance in its average account rose 13.5% to $53,900--a nice jump. Then, in an odd follow-up feature, it listed what its analysts had identified as "key behaviors that are hindering savings for workers at different life stages." It reads (inadvertently, of course) like a behavioral economist's textbook indictment of the problems with the 401(k) concept. The language in quotes is Fidelity's: Young workers don't participate . "Less than half (44%) of eligible workers in their 20s contribute to their workplace plans today." People in their 30s and 40s borrow too much from the plans . The report notes that people in this age group have pressing needs for their money that are closer at hand than retirement, including starting a family and acquiring a home. As a result, they tend to borrow heavily from their 401(k)s. "... [N]early one in four workers (23%) in this age group has one or more outstanding loans, and more than one in 10 (10.6%) initiated a loan over the past 12 months...workers in this age group also tend to be repeat loan users. Nearly one third (31 percent) of continuous active participants in this age group who took a loan last year also took one this year." Older workers either take too little or too much investment risk. "Over a quarter (26%) of pre-retirees either have no exposure to equities or hold 100 percent equities in their 401(k) plan. More than one in 10 (11.4%) pre-retirees holds no equities in their 401(k) plan, a strategy that has historically resulted in significantly lower returns on an inflation-adjusted basis than those of more diversified portfolios." People mis-time the market While Fidelity didn't describe it as a life-stage-related problem, it did note that its plans' participants had begun investing more conservatively as the market went down. Usually the stock allocation in the accounts averages around 75% (it toppped out at 80% at the top of the tech stock bubble). It's now down to 68%, just in time to miss the biggest rebound rally since the Great Depression. It's the view of the 401(k) industry (see the comment from the Investment Company Institute on my previous post and Nathan Hale's passionate response ), it's the job of well-intentioned employers and plan administrators to educate participants not to make errors like these. As if a few hours in a room with a whiteboard and pie charts would put everyone on track to retire prosperously. But seriously, folks. It's not a lack of financial literacy that makes a majority of 20-year-olds not participate in a 401(k). It's human nature. How many at that age are thinking 40 years into the future? Similarly, when are 30- and 40-year-old householders not going to put the immediate needs of their growing family before the still highly theoretical needs of their retired selves, 25 or 40 years off? As long as the plans permit people to take loans for what they consider more pressing needs, or to spend the money between jobs, or not participate in the plans in the first place, they will. As for 401(k) investors' tendency to get too conservative or too aggressive at just the wrong time, when in recorded history have investors not done that? Yes, we need a retirement savings plan in this country that, like the 401(k), combines the efforts of government, employers and employees to help build a source of adequate income in retirement. But it needs to be realistic about people's behavior. If you give people the freedom to put short-term needs ahead of their long-term savings needs, they will, and they will wind up short of retirement money as a result. Fidelity's report is pretty clear evidence. Continue on CBS MoneyWatch.com :
 
Megan Carpentier: Anti-Choice Groups Raking in Dough by Promoting Civil Rights of Zygotes Top
If the anti-choice movement has its way, the moment one sperm eats its way through an egg's outer shell would be the last moment in human development that wouldn't be covered by the Constitution. Unsurprisingly, it's a rather lucrative racket. Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check reports that the various "personhood" amendments popping up around the country -- which would define fertilized eggs as "people" for the purpose of criminalizing abortion -- are a major moneymaker for the anti-choice movement. In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the "personhood" of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause. In fact, that's only the money amassed by five anti-choice, pro-personhood groups: the American Life League, Colorado Right to Life, Human Life International, the Life Legal Defense Fund and Students for Life. There are plenty of other anti-choice groups that continue to raise money to push straight anti-abortion legislation, blockade clinics, harass women's health care providers (as well as their employees and contractors), operate crisis pregnancy centers to guilt women into carrying their pregnancies to term and disseminate misleading information about pregnancy, fetal development and abortion. And while these organizations continue to rake in the dough -- and, in many cases, spend it on lucrative salary packages for their leaders while decrying the salaries of women's health care providers that perform abortions -- there are no apparent plans to restore to Dr. Leroy Carhart the protection of federal marshalls . With the news that Carhart won't be under federal protection, Operation Rescue will use some of its hard-earned cash to protest at Dr. Carhart's clinic on August 29th , according to Jen Nedeau on Change.org. But I'm sure that timing is just a coincidence. Originally posted at Air America .
 
Leslie Harris: Debunking the Half-Baked "Cookie Conspiracy" Top
Lately it seems that any policy put forward by the Administration is immediately suspected of a carrying some kind of hidden agenda. When President Obama asked supporters of health care reform to forward emails to him, which made outlandish claims about the pending bills, the wing nuts were out in force, claiming that a Nixon-era enemies list was in the offing, while other opponents decried the practice as having a chilling effect on free speech. Now comes a similar ill-informed outcry, from friend and foe alike, in response to proposed changes in the government's "cookie policy." The Obama Administration has made a strong commitment to making the government more open and transparent and to better engage citizens in key decisions. Upgrading government web sites is key to that agenda. The White House Office of Management and Budget is retooling the current federal policy that governs how federal agencies are allowed to place "cookies" on citizens' computers to track their visits to agency web sites. These small cookie files can be used to identify all sorts of information about you to whoever placed the cookie there in the first place. Under the current policy, cookies are banned unless a head of an agency signs off on their use. That makes it all but impossible for government websites to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies that have been developed in the last decade. The Obama Administration understood that it could not simply lift the ban on cookies; the use of these tools must be deployed within a context that would ensure the privacy of citizens. And any new policy must continue to cover all web tracking technologies, not just cookies. The irony here is that while the new policy is likely to build in new privacy protections and give citizens choices about the use of cookies, the policy that it will replace had no such safeguards. Under the current policy, once an agency head approved the use of cookies, it was all you can eat. By contrast the recently proposed framework sets out general principles governing agency website use of tracking technologies and contemplates an escalating set of privacy protections based on the potential privacy impact. It's a good start. But as my organization, the Center for Democracy & Technology, outlined in comments to OMB, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, there is still room for improvement. Among our recommendations to make sure the new policy has the best privacy protections: requiring agencies to provide detailed disclosures about their web tracking intentions in the form of a Privacy Impact Assessment that must be verified by the agency privacy office prior to deploying a tracking technology; requiring that agencies retain tracking data only as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, and deleting certain information (such as IP addresses) immediately; and giving citizens choices about whether to allow cookies for a range of purposes. So now that the cookie policy is in the oven, let's concentrate on making sure this Administration makes good on its promises to make government more open, transparent and accessible to each of us and that in doing so, privacy is fully protected.
 
Kase Wickman: Obama Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth on DOMA Top
President Obama threw a bone Monday to the LGBT activists he first pissed off in June by filing a brief arguing that the Defense of Marriage Act is both constitutional and a defense against incest and pedophilia. The concession took the form of a new brief in Smelt v. United States that now says his administration is committed to a DOMA repeal but -- don't get too excited -- also argues that DOMA itself is constitutional and Smelt should be dismissed. Obama is going through the motions of finally making good on the campaigning that won him the gay and lesbian vote. However, while it may look like Obama is making an actual move toward overturning DOMA, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth and letting the status quo go on unchanged, saying that while he does not agree with DOMA, it is still constitutional. Obama has been criticized for his lack of action on repealing both DOMA and the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy banning openly gay people from serving in the military. And the criticism was earned: while Obama has treaded water on empty promises and Pride Month receptions , Sen. Kristen Gillibrand has actually secured hearings for the potential repeal of DADT , while the best Obama has been able to do for gay rights is file a brief that doesn't say that legalization of gay marriage leads to pedophilia. Congratulations, Mr. President! The brief , which is the second Obama has filed in reply to DOMA since he took office seven months ago, once again gives the president the opportunity to pass the buck to Congress. The Associated Press reports : "The administration believes the Defense of Marriage Act is discriminatory and should be repealed," said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler, because it prevents equal rights and benefits. The Justice Department, she added, is obligated "to defend federal statutes when they are challenged in court. The Justice Department cannot pick and choose which federal laws it will defend based on any one administration's policy preferences." Yahoo News reports : Monday's court filing was in response to a lawsuit by Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, who are challenging the federal law, which prevents couples in states that recognize same-sex unions from securing Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint taxes and benefiting from other federal rights connected to marriage. Justice lawyers have argued that the act is constitutional and contend that awarding federal marriage benefits to gays would infringe on the rights of taxpayers in the 30 states that specifically prohibit same-sex marriages. While the most horrifying part of the situation is that Obama is still completely failing to take any action on GLBT issues , it is also shocking that no media outlets seem to be calling him out on his puppetry. Headlines are positive , and none of the so-called journalistic watchdogs are even raising an eyebrow at whether Obama's intentions actually have any muscle behind them. People: intent is not the same as actual legislation! We're all in the same boat hoping that Obama's campaign critics weren't right, and that there's no shoulder behind the powerful rhetoric and charm, but so far, we're still waiting to see Obama really make a push for gay issues. Read more of Air America's coverage of Obama and the GLBT community . More on Barack Obama
 
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Why Michael Vick Should Be Forgiven Top
America has a real opportunity to gauge its capacity for forgiveness in Michael Vick. Americans love their pets and especially their dogs. But here was a man who ran an illegal dog fighting operation that engaged in the most horrific treatment of pitbulls imaginable, including electrocuting them, shooting them, and drowning them. Few of us can even comprehend such barbarism. But he went to prison for two years, paid a million dollar fine, found G-d through Tony Dungy, the former head coach of the Baltimore Colts, devotes himself to spreading the message of ethical treatment of animals, and sounds genuinely repentant. And we ought to accept his repentance. The ability to change one's way, to be forgiven for one's past errors, is the hallmark of every world faith. Without a belief that people can fundamentally reorient their lives, most of us would be done in. On a regular basis, I counsel men who have been abusive to their families, women who have been unfaithful to their husbands, and children who told their parents they wanted them to die. I meet businessmen who have gone to prison for theft, politicians who abused the public trust, and journalists who fabricated stories. They seek a new path, forgiveness for their sins, an opportunity to heal the pain they have caused, a chance to be born anew. And in each situation our response ought to be the same. Repentance is meaningless as a verbal commitment. Telling us you regret your actions is only a start. Real redemption comes about through positive and sustained action. In essence, you can be forgiven for the bad you did once you have shown a capacity to reorient your life and practice ongoing good, particularly in the area where you caused harm. But to deny to any of these people the opportunity to start anew is to deny the simple truth that each of us is comprised of angelic and demonic inclinations and that with real effort the former can finally triumph over the latter. America is generally becoming a harsher, more judgmental society. Turn on the radio on any given day and you'll hear the mortal combat of left versus right, liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican that has come to define the American political discourse. When I spoke to a conservative political group recently about President Obama, I explained my principled opposition to many of the President's policies, especially toward Israel. I said I found the President to be mature, charismatic, highly intelligent, and well-intentioned. But his pressure on Israel for a unilateral ban on settlements was prejudicial, misguided, ill-informed, and ultimately destructive to any possibility of peace. Pressure on the Arabs to accept Israel's existence and respect their own people's rights is what was necessary, and Obama was simply too soft on tyrants. I was astonished at the response. 'The President is none of those things. He's a fool and he's a fraud.' Okay. We can resort to character assassination. We certainly witnessed the lengths to which some on the left were prepared to go in destroying the good name of George W. Bush. And we can continue to divide this country along political lines. But are any of us properly served when we can find no good in our fellow Americans? It was even sadder listening to Israelis last week when leading a trip for Mayanot-Birthright. The secular-religious divide in Israel is simply out of control. So many of the secular Israelis I spoke to hate the religious. They characterize them as freeloaders who refuse to serve in the army and live off the public purse. They are backward Neanderthals who preach intolerance and hate. And it affects their views of Judaism. While the American participants on the trip were thrilled to be Bar Mitzva'd at the Wall (only a handful of our men and women had even had that central rite of passage), our Israeli participants mostly sat and watched, refusing to be touched by the light of Jewish life. Conversely, many of the religious spoke of secular Israelis as hedonists who have no morality and are deeply ashamed of their Jewishness. What seems astonishing is how neither group accepts the absolute necessity of the other. Without secular Israelis who largely built the country and work so hard to defend and maintain it, religious Jews would not have the security and freedom that is the hallmark of Israeli democracy. Conversely, without religious Jews sustaining Jewish commitment and observance there might be precious little to fight for, as Israel becomes more and more like any other decadent Western nation. But judging and dismissing is so much easier than forgiving and embracing one another. I am not so naïve as to believe that the simple story of an American athlete seeking redemption will heal these vast divides. And yet, there is something to learn from the fall from grace of a man who had once had the most lucrative contract in NFL history and whom few ever expected to see redeemed. The lesson is this: with rare exceptions, there is always a way back. True, there are some sins for which there is no repentance, and I have long believed that Israel ought to have the same death penalty for cold-hearted terrorists that we have here in the United States. But for the vast majority of human sin, there is always a way to repent. It involves a genuine acknowledgment and admission of error, restitution for the crime, acceptance of a harsh but just penalty, and a lifelong commitment to positive action that will negate the harm done. More than anything else, it involves turning to G-d, the source of life and renewal. For a man who has been unfaithful it means showing his wife extravagant affection. For someone guilty of theft on Wall Street it would mean educating business school graduates on the importance of honor and ethics in the market. For Israeli society it means having the Yeshivas take out a few hours a week to practice acts of gratitude and thanks to the brave soldiers, the majority secular, who defend them, such as raising money to build swimming pools to mitigate the sweltering heat of some of the army bases that we visited. And for secular Israelis it would mean volunteering, maybe once a month, to assist religious families, say, build a new room to accommodate their ever-growing families. Yes, one might say that their children are their own responsibilities. But then one of the Jewish people's greatest challenges is simple demographic survival and every Jewish child born is another brick in the edifice of an eternally-challenged people. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network. In September he will release his new book, The Blessing of Enough . * Follow Shmuley on Twitter! * Shmuley's on Facebook! *Buy Rabbi Shmuley's newest book The Kosher Sutra here . *Join the national "Turn Friday Night Into Family Night" initiative. * See Shmuley on the web.
 
GM To Reinstate About 1,350 Workers Due To "Clunkers," Increased Demand Top
DETROIT (AP) -- Higher sales, in part from the government's Cash for Clunkers program, are spurring General Motors Co. to boost production at several of its factories. The automaker said Tuesday it will add 60,000 vehicles to its production in the third and mainly the fourth quarter. It will also bring back about 1,350 laid-off workers in the U.S. and Canada. GM will add a shift to its CAMI factory in Ingersoll, Ontario, where the new Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain midsize crossover vehicles are made. The company's Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, where the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 are made, also will see additional shifts. The Lordstown plant is now running at one shift for 10 hours per day from Monday through Thursday, but the company will add the next two Fridays to the schedule, said plant spokesman Tom Mock. GM's plant in Orion Township, Michigan, which makes the Chevrolet Malibu and Pontiac G6 midsize sedans, also will see a production increase. Production also may be boosted at other factories, including those that make the Chevrolet HHR small wagon, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickups, the Chevrolet Camaro muscle car, Buick LaCrosse sedan and the Cadillac SRX and CTS Wagon, GM said. The Cobalt and Malibu has been popular with people trading in older less-efficient models under the clunkers program, which offers up to $4,500 to people to scrap vehicles with gas mileage of 18 mpg (7.6 kpl) or less. At the end of July, GM had 70 days worth of Cobalts on dealer lots, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. A 60-day supply is ideal to maintain a good selection for buyers without overstocking dealers. But since the clunkers program began in late July, dealers have reported spot shortages of both vehicles. At Randy Wise Buick-Pontiac-Chevrolet in Milan, Michigan, southwest of Detroit, there were 22 Cobalts and 26 Malibus on the lot before the clunkers rebates started, said Mark Jarrait, general sales manager. The dealership now has two Cobalts and four Malibus, and Jarrait has ordered more. All of the sudden they disappeared," he said. The Cobalt, GM's highest-mileage car at up to 37 mpg (16 kpl) on the highway, once was among the top 10 vehicles on the "cash for clunkers" purchase list. Dealers say shortages have bumped it from the top 10 list. As of last week, the Toyota Corolla small car was the top new vehicle purchased by people trading in clunkers, followed by the Honda Civic and Ford Focus compacts. Toyota's midsize Camry was fourth, while its gas-electric hybrid Prius was fifth, according to the government. Interest in Cash for Clunkers may be waning, though, according to the Edmunds.com automotive Web site, because many customers waiting to buy have made their moves and because inventories have dropped and prices have risen. Inquiries on the Web site were down 15 percent last week from this year's peak in late July. "Now that there is plenty of money in the program and the most eager shoppers have already participated, the sense of urgency is gone," Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl said in a statement. "Inventories are getting lean and prices are climbing, giving consumers reasons to sit back." Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., Hyundai Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC all have announced production increases due to the clunkers program. Get HuffPost Business On Facebook and Twitter ! I
 
Past Presidential Vacations: See Where And How Former Presidents Relaxed (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
WASHINGTON - Early U.S. presidents went home to their farms. Later ones scattered to the seashore. Presidents have been bailing out of Washington's steamy summers ever since Thomas Jefferson gazed out the White House windows and watched a white fog roll in, widely believed to be toxic. Presidents need vacations as much as the next guy, maybe more so. Harry Truman played poker on the porch in Key West, Florida. Ronald Reagan rode horses at his mountain ranch in California. John Kennedy sailed the Atlantic. (Photos and captions by AP) Vacations give presidents a break from the pressures of Washington and -- sometimes -- a fresh way to connect with voters. It was no coincidence that Bill Clinton and his family went hiking in Yellowstone National Park when he needed to shore up his appeal in the West. Or that Woodrow Wilson kicked back in Pass Christian on Mississippi's Gulf Coast when he needed southern Democrats. There doesn't appear to be any big political strategy behind Barack Obama's decision to head for Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, an island playground for the rich frequented in years past by presidents Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant. Obama, whose vacation on the island begins Sunday, has visited twice before. More typically he has vacationed in Hawaii, where he was born and spent time as a child. For president-watchers, his choice of a Vineyard vacation marks a change from the eight-year Texodus. George W. Bush spent 490 days of his presidency at his secluded ranch in Crawford, Texas. While Bush's trips to the ranch may not have been politically calculated, they helped shape his image as a boots-wearing everyman rather than an Ivy League graduate with a New England pedigree. "Most Americans don't sit in Martha's Vineyard, swilling white wine," Bush once said, when asked why he vacationed in one of the hottest spots in the nation in the hottest month of the year. The Clintons couldn't get enough of the vineyard. They were island regulars through the highs and lows of Clinton's presidency. On their first presidential vacation there in 1993, they were photographed happily sailing, golfing and exploring the island's restaurants and scenery together. Five years later, it was a different story. The Clintons headed for the island just hours after the president publicly confessed to an inappropriate relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. This time, photographers snapped pictures of Chelsea Clinton walking to the helicopter hand-in-hand with her two parents, serving as a buffer of sorts between an unhappy husband and wife. When the family reached the vineyard, Hillary slept in the bedroom; Bill on the couch. "Buddy, the dog, came along to keep Bill company," Mrs. Clinton wrote in her memoir. "He was the only member of our family who was still willing to." Vacations may offer a respite from Washington's heat, but they can't erase the burdens of a president's job. As Bush observed early in his tenure: "The funny thing about his job, is that the job seems to follow you around." That was as he left the golf course in Maine for an intelligence briefing and staff meeting. White House historian William Seale said presidential getaways invariably turn into working vacations. "You get the ocean and the breeze, but you've still got the work," Seale said. "You're not going to be un-president for a while, as appealing as that might be." Teddy Roosevelt ambitiously mixed work and play, becoming the first president to vacation with an extensive White House staff and communications. It was at his annual summer getaway, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York, that he secured a peace deal between Japan and Russia that won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. An ardent sailor who gave up the presidential yacht in World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt retreated to Shangri-La, now Camp David, in Maryland to work on his stamp collection -- and plans for the Normandy invasion with his guest, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. For some presidents, even a trip across town has provided a welcome break: For three summers, Abraham Lincoln and his family retreated to a cottage at a military complex on the outskirts of Washington. Anderson Cottage at the Soldiers' Home is where Lincoln spent a full quarter of his presidency, sometimes meeting with visitors there in his slippers. It is believed he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves there, and it is where he got word of the triumph at the decisive battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln commuted the three miles (five kilometers) to the White House daily, visiting the cottage for the last time on April 13, 1865, the day before his assassination. Seale said the earliest presidents were mostly farmers, and would head home during the summers to check on their crops. Jefferson's frequent trips to his Monticello plantation in Virginia made it perhaps the most famous "second White House." Victorian era presidents favored the Jersey shore -- James A. Garfield died there in 1881, two months after being shot at the Washington train station as he prepared to depart for a seaside resort. Early on, Seale said, leaving Washington in the summer was considered a necessity for health reasons. The fog that formed on the marshes near the White House was called the "White Lot," and believed to be lethal. "Washington pretty much closed down in June until mid or late September," Seale said. James K. Polk was a rare exception who decided to stick it out through Washington's summers, according to Seale. He died just months after retiring, his death widely blamed on the "white gases." Follow HuffPost Style on Twitter and become a fan of HuffPost Style on Facebook !
 
Lindsay's New Hand-In-Mouth Pose: The New Marilyn? (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
Lindsay Lohan has a strange new fetish: sticking her fingers in her mouth. In what appears to be a look inspired by her idol Marilyn Monroe, Lindsay has taken to putting her fingers in and around her mouth whenever a camera is present, undoubtedly trying to add to her naughty girl demeanor. Take a look at the gallery of her latest new trend and vote. PHOTOS: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Lindsay Lohan
 
David Roberts: Netroots Nation Frustration and the Impediments to Progressive Change Top
grist.org I just returned to Seattle from Netroots Nation , the yearly gathering of progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists. Last year , in Austin, the atmosphere was absolutely electric, with the election approaching and a clear sense of battle lines drawn, victory within reach. Also, lots of great parties. This year, at least from my limited perspective, the atmosphere was more muted, the panels less exciting, and the parties both fewer and less fun. Some of this could just be me getting to be an old fart, but others I spoke to had similar experiences. The tone of the conference was, in part, related to a general frustration among progressives. I wouldn't say the "netroots" (I hate that damn word) have turned on Obama, this sensationalistic HuffPo story notwithstanding. New pieces from Robert Kuttner and Jane Smiley represent a growing frustration with Obama's pursuit of bipartisanship, but overall, Obama's personal popularity is still plenty in evidence. The sense, rather, is that we are witnessing a tsunami of progressive enthusiasm, organizing, and, um, Hope crash on the shoals of the status quo ... and the status quo isn't budging. Bit by bit, the giddy high of those days following Obama's election is dissipating. It's dispiriting. The dynamic is most obvious around health care, and in my panel Thursday morning , one of the things I discussed was what that battle portends for the battle over climate legislation when it resumes in the Senate this Fall. Depending on who you believe, heath care is going to come to a vote anywhere between the end of September and Thanksgiving. I'd say there's around a 30-40% chance that enough conservative Democratic Senators defect that the whole project crashes and burns in a cloture vote (60 votes are needed to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster). There's around a 60-70% chance that the Senate produces a watered-down, incrementalist bill that doesn't come anywhere close to the fundamental changes needed in U.S. health care insurance and delivery. (It looks like the public option is the latest thing to be compromised away .) And there's about a 1% chance of a genuinely good bill passing. How did this craptastic state of affairs come to be? Without dragging this post out forever, here's a short list: NO is easy. The Republican opposition does not have to do any education of its activist base. The grounds for opposing every Democratic initiative are the same: fear of creeping socialism, with an undercurrent of racial and revanchist sentiment. So there's this large army of wingnuts that can be mobilized quickly and easily, on any issue that comes up. By contrast, explaining the public option, or co-ops, or cap-and-trade, or offsets requires a patient campaign. And even then, it's hard to work up passion for that kind of technocratic detail. Long story short: on the ground, in terms of tangible grassroots activity -- calls to Congressional offices, presence at public town halls -- the right is kicking the left's ass. The filibuster. This "process issue" is difficult to make sexy, but it's absolutely central to the difficulty in advancing the Dem agenda. It's only in recent decades that 60 votes has become the default threshold in the Senate; it has fundamentally changed the political landscape. I asked Rep. Jay Inslee about it at NN, and his answer didn't contain much cause for hope: Blue Dogs Senate Dems are bad people. Partly thanks the new 60-vote requirement, "centrist" Democratic Senators like Max Baucus and Ben Nelson have accrued enormous power. Their states went for McCain; they face no serious challenge (no election until 2006 for Nelson; 2008 for Baucus); they receive lavish support from special interests; and finally, importantly, they are not good people. It's important to speak about this directly, without euphemism. They could decide to use their political power to insure better healthcare for millions of people or prevent catastrophe for low-lying developing countries. Instead they slow the process to a crawl with substanceless, affective appeals to "fiscal conservatism" for the "folks back home," thin cover for acting on behalf of their corporate funders. Two notable features of these lamentable facts. First, they are structural . It's really hard to see what Obama or progressives can do to change them except at the margins. Too frequently people talk as though Obama or Waxman just aren't trying hard enough -- the Green Lantern theory of domestic politics. They aren't powerless, of course, and it would be nice if the progressive caucus learned to throw its weight around more. But the fact that the US system of government is riddled with procedural chokepoints is not something one can will away. The filibuster could theoretically be fought, but we seem to be a long way from that being a live possibility. And finally, it's hard to see what leverage Obama has over conservative Dem senators whose states didn't vote for him. Secondly, on virtually every score, climate is worse off than health care . The right-wing is just as motivated and organized as they are on health, but the progressive coalition is fragmented. The policy options aren't as well understood; there isn't single rallying point equivalent to the public option. On climate/energy there are far more "centrists" in positions of power to appease to get to 60 votes. (And it's important to understand that "centrist" is a situational description. When Dems are in power, it means "a little weaker than whatever the Dems come up with" -- see: stimulus bill. When Republicans are in power, it means "a little closer to the Republicans than the other Dems" -- see: Bush tax cuts.) There's even less credible leverage over Dem senators; voting against Obama's climate agenda will not threaten the reelection of a single Southern or Midwestern Dem. I'm afraid this is a depressing post, but it's just become clear that structural features of American politics make it so change averse that virtually no progressive electoral sweep is enough to do the job. And however difficult those features may be for health care, they're worse for climate. At this point, chances seem to be split pretty evenly between total failure and the passage of an utterly defanged bill. Or as Jon Stewart put it : "And now, cap-and-trade -- naked, bruised, and humiliated -- is off to the Senate to get skull-f*cked." More on Health Care
 
Kevin Smokler: John Hughes: "The Audacity of Empathy" Top
Director John Hughes died on my 36th birthday, which means I'm now the age he was when Ferris Bueller took his day off. Hughes reportedly wrote Ferris based on the high school adventures of his best friend, himself, and his girlfriend, whom Hughes married shortly after their graduation in 1968. By the film's release in 1986, when John Hughes was the reigning master of what Courtney Love called "the defining moments of the alternative generation," he was also a father to two young children, a boomer family man and the demographic against which his audience saw their identity as an "alternative". Following his fatal heart attack at age 59, that audience (now family men and women ourselves) hurried to claim Hughes as ours. Director Kevin Smith called him "Our J.D. Salinger." Jud Apatow: "None of what I do would exist without him." Diablo Cody: "An idol to this magna-zoom-dweebie." I went ahead and emailed my parents, explaining that this passing meant to me what John Lennon's death meant to them. "We liked John Hughes movies too," my mom wrote back. Of course they did. The same way they liked American Graffiti and Splendor in Grass as late-youth fables from at a time long ago. My 13-year-old cousin Zoe probably files Pretty in Pink or Weird Science next to Mean Girls and She's all That , befitting the endless now adolescence feels like when you're in the middle of it. With the petulance then of an overlooked middle child, wedged between Boomers and Millennials, my generational urge to lock up Hughes's children up in the library then stand out outside the door screaming "Mine! Mine!" isn't just a personalization of loss. It's also an endowment of cultural legacy, a declaration that Duckie, Watts, Cameron Frye and Jake Ryan belong yes, to history, but really to us. Every generation slams the door on the one behind it. We can only grant Tie Dye, The Muppet Show , Pearl Jam or Facebook to those borne of one age by implying everyone else is too old to "get it" or too young to understand. As if by nature, generational identity seems a fierce melding of two unequal parts -- what it is and everything else it isn't. With John Hughes, this had the unintended consequence of turning appreciations of his work into a nostalgic land grab, relegating it to the same garage shelf as New Coke or the Atari 2600. Michael Jackson, another recently deceased '80s icon, had the benefit of a career with his brothers the decade before and presence in the tabloids until the day he died. Hughes last directed in 1991. It's easy then to confine his contributions to his heyday, the middle years of the Reagan administration, to shoulder pads and Spandau Ballet . But if that were the whole story, would there have been this kind of outpouring? We return to John Hughes's movies because they didn't just speak to a moment in time -- they also transcended it. Remove the floppy disk jokes and Sixteen Candles is ageless as a Hudson/Day romantic comedy. Ferris Bueller may as well be subtitled Chicago! Chicago! It's a Wonderful Town! Call the Breakfast Club an adolescent Iceman Cometh , a chorus of characters imprisoned and waiting for something to happen who realize they are the only something that will. Hughes's are not just movies about the mid-1980s, but movies set in the mid-1980s that now live as archetype and fable. I know this because, last year, I threw myself a "Come Dressed as Your Seventh Grade Self" birthday last year and guests from ages 20 to 55 all showed looking like his characters. I didn't ask them to. They assumed "John Hughes Movie" and adolescence meant the same thing. None of my friends, however, dressed like The Athlete, Brain, Basket Case, Princess and Criminal of The Breakfast Club , perhaps because the lessons of that film are too painful for a celebration: The world wants to separate us with labels. If we look past those labels, at least we have each other. It's garden-variety adolescent alienation, sure, but of a very different kind than the majority of Hughes's work. Which is probably why fans regard The Breakfast Club as his greatest achievement and a generational touchstone in a way that, say, Weird Science is not. Courtney Love and her cohorts would spend the early '90s glorifying the alienation Hughes offers up in The Breakfast Club . But amid his filmography, it's a rare exception. Overwhelmingly, The Hughsian hero does not question the rules of adolescence but tries to find their place within them. Samantha Baker wants to be cool like Jake Ryan and they meet somewhere in the middle sitting atop a dining room table. The lovers of Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful accept that money and class divide them but make a go of it anyway. Ferris Bueller most likely walked in his high school graduation while the parents he loved applauded, then went to a good college. He most likely did not drop out, form a band and never speak to them again. If the cinema of the 1990s was all about the created family in absence of the biological one ( Goodfellas , Boogie Nights , Reality Bites ), Hughes venerated the traditional family in a manner both of and ahead of his time. Remember the mid-1980s was the era of The Parents Music Resource Center , the Satanic Panic and a cinematic alternative to the Hughesian Mainstream ( The Legend of Billie Jean , The River's Edge ) about generational hostility and its violent consequences. The message? Parents and kids don't understand each other, don't want to and never will. But that's not what happens outside of Shermer High School. In rest of Hughes's teenage canon, venerable character actors like Harry Dean Stanton, Paul Dooley, and John Ashton play fathers whose arcs end in sympathy and understanding for their teenage children. John Ashton relents and lets Keith, the hero of Some Kind of Wonderful , not go to college. Harry Dean Stanton gives Molly Ringwald the pink dress she wears to the prom. And Paul Dooley, as Samantha Baker's dad in Sixteen Candles , has one of best parent/teenager scenes in recent memory. "If he can't see all the beautiful and wonderful things I see in you" he tells his grieving daughter, exiled from her room on her birthday and ignored by the popular boy she likes, "then he's got the problem." He finishes by telling her "not to let him boss you around," a proto-feminist idea a half-decade before Riot Grrls. Jim Baker, Jack Walsh, Cliff Nelson and Tom Bueller represent the value Hughes placed on intergenerational tolerance, where dads like him admitted their mistakes and struggled with empathy over judgment. We don't see much of it in The Breakfast Club , where detention is a lonely island surrounded by adult misunderstanding. Fast forward and we can imagine that long Saturday inspiring the cultural mileposts of the 1990s -- grunge, strong coffee, Quentin Tarantino, and Napster. But it would be the "nice" Hughes families whom would have the last laugh. Another son of Illinois would mirror their attempts at open communication and declare moving beyond the psychodrama of generational warfare his highest priority. It got him elected president. I'll be married next spring, shortly after The Breakfast Club 's 25th birthday, where friends, parents and grandparents will all dance to "Don't You Forget About Me." Perhaps if I were in my early 20s when John Hughes died, I too would have eulogized him as the poet laureate of my youth. But I'm an adult now, maybe a parent someday. Sam, Duckie, Ferris and Keith have all grown up and so have we. Part of that means remembering John Hughes for all that he was instead of just all that he was for us. And what he captured onscreen was an adolescence to be learned from instead of suffered through and forgotten, where parents and their teenagers tried to do right, even though they couldn't always do good, and, in the end, understood that We Are Not Alone. It's an adolescence I wish I had. Thanks to John Hughes, it is an adulthood I can imagine and make real.
 
Chicago Tribune Hires Scott Stantis As Editorial Cartoonist Top
Bucking a trend in newspapers in which editorial cartoonists have become something of an endangered species, the Chicago Tribune has hired Birmingham News cartoonist Scott Stantis for its editorial board, effect Sept. 1.
 
Gibbs: Only A "Handful" Of GOPers Seem Interested In Health Care Reform Top
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged on Tuesday that there are only a "handful" of Republicans who seem interested in health care reform -- the closest any senior official has come to admitting that a major bipartisan effort is not in the cards. Gibbs told reporters that Obama wasn't yet ready to give up on recruiting broad Republican support to a cause. Such a determination, he said, had not "ultimately been made." But the White House's chief spokesman did admit that "only a handful" of Republicans seemed "interested in the type of comprehensive reform so many believe is necessary." Among many Democrats outside the White House, such an assessment of the health care landscape has already become abundantly clear. Hours before Gibbs spoke, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, (R-Ariz.) said that the GOP would likely oppose a bill even if it was deficit neutral and included co-ops as opposed to a public option for insurance coverage, Inside the White House, however, the administration has gone to great lengths to insist that all avenues for bipartisanship remain wide open. In early August, the president told a gathering of Democratic Senators that he remained committed to working with Republicans on health care. Slightly more than a week later, Gibbs stressed that Obama still wanted to work with Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), even after the senator had falsely declared that the Democratic agenda would allow the government to "pull the plug on grandma." The extent to which the White House is willing to continue to search for Republican support on health care continues to be a thorny issue within the Democratic Party. It certainly raises important questions such as: Does compromising on major issues like a public option actually yield tangible bipartisan gains? Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Scott Lachut: Information Addiction and Our Quest for Relevancy Top
This article originally appeared on PSFK.com . Turns out there might be a biological imperative to explain our addiction to information that leads us to obsessively check our Facebook profiles for updates and inexplicably lose hours at a time searching for obscure bits of information on Google. Scientists refer to this desire as seeking or wanting, a practice that affects the dopamine centers of our brains and causes us to chase the potential reward just around the corner rather than settle for the tangible one right in front of us. This quest for what might be, creates a seemingly infinite feedback loop where consumption continuously renews the appetite. Slate explains how this idea is fueled by our culture of increasing immediacy and mobility, where small cues that some new piece of data might be coming -- a buzz before a text message or a bell prompting a new email -- make the prospect even more enticing: Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one. Panksepp says the dopamine system is activated by finding something unexpected or by the anticipation of something new. If the rewards come unpredictably -- as e-mail, texts, updates do -- we get even more carried away. And while we may be predisposed to rely on a constant stream of information, apparently not all bits are created equal. To continue reading this article, please visit PSFK.com .
 
Citizen Report From Grand Junction Health Care Protests (VIDEO) Top
Protesters on both sides of the health care debate gathered in large numbers in Grand Junction on Saturday to protest outside President Obama's town hall event. HuffPost citizen journalist Jenny Hatch interviewed attendees and compiled their responses into a short video. Take a look. Jenny also wrote about her experience riding to the event in the Democrat bus despite being a free market conservative. She wrote an extensive post along with a photo essay . More on Health Care
 
Steve Kirsch: Add a Gigawatt a Day to Keep the Climate Crisis at Bay Top
You'd think that after all the press coverage that global warming has received that the public would be pretty well educated on exactly how fast we need to install clean power to avert an irreversible climate disaster. But the public has no clue. As far as I know, only one member of the press has asked the right questions to figure it out: Joshua Green , a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly . Green wrote a great piece in the current issue entitled " The Elusive Green Economy ." It's long but it's a great read. Green points out that the IPCC set 450ppm as a level we shouldn't exceed because otherwise climate change becomes both irreversible and catastrophic. But at the very end of his article is the real gem: he points out that we need to develop 13,000 GWe of carbon-free power (within the next 25 years) if we're to limit atmospheric carbon concentration to 450 ppm. Australian climate scientist Barry Brook was kind enough to double check the math and came up with a similar figure. I also ran it by a top scientist at DOE and he didn't even raise an eyebrow when I quoted that figure. It is also about the same as the 11,500 GWe that Saul Griffith derived . Green next points out that current global solar-power production today is only 10 GWe. In fact, in 2008, the peak solar capacity was 13.4GWe , but the average powered delivered was only 2 GWe. Yikes! Compare that 2 GWe to the 13,000 GWe we need and you get a sense for the magnitude of the task ahead of us. The point is this: after decades of installing renewable power, we are nowhere close to making a small dent in the problem. In other words, if we think we are going to make the goal from solar, wind, and other renewables alone, we must be smoking something. And even if we added the big elephant of clean power, nuclear power, which can be installed in huge capacities relatively quickly when the political winds are blowing in the right direction, this is still an almost insurmountable goal. That's why at the Aspen Energy Forum held earlier this year, all of the renewable experts agreed that every clean power technology, including nuclear, has to play a role in solving the climate crisis. I'd like to give you a sense for what that 13,000 GWe figure means. Let's be generous and assume we have 30 years to install the 13 GWe of power we need. If we were to build a large nuclear plant every single day for the next 30 years, that would still not be enough to avert the 450ppm limit. Without nuclear as part of the mix, it's even harder and it's also a lot more expensive to meet the goal. We would have to be installing more than 1,500 large (2 MW, with enormous 100m diameter blades) wind turbines every day for 30 years. If we used desert-based concentrated solar thermal (which is much more efficient than solar photovoltaic), we'd have to install 80,000 huge 37 foot diameter dishes covering over 100 square miles every day for 30 years. Or some combination of those two. And then we'd have to cost-effectively store a lot of that power and deliver it when it is needed so you have reliable base load power all without generating any CO2 emissions. Storage is less of a problem with wind if you have a huge geographic area (which we have in the US), you massively overbuild to account for the unpredictability of wind, and you have a national transmission grid so you can move huge amounts of power when and where it is needed (which we don't have). And even with all of that in place, it's still not a guarantee that you won't have power outages when the wind is particularly low. With solar, to supply base load power, you'd need something like what Ausra is doing where they store power for up to 16 hours . Andasol uses such a thermal storage system and its electricity will cost 38 cents per kWh to produce, which makes it nearly 10 times more expensive than nuclear or coal. We aren't anywhere close to installing clean power of any type that fast. Not only are we not doing it, but we aren't even close to just talking about the need to install power that fast! Furthermore, our best nuclear technology, according to a multi-year multi-national study commissioned by the DOE, is the technology Clinton canceled in 1994. This design (the Integral Fast Reactor) remains on the shelf today, collecting dust, despite the fact that it can produce power cheaper than coal, is 100 times more efficient than today's nuclear technology, and can consume our nuclear waste and generate power from it (virtually solving our nuclear waste problem). Other countries want to build that design because it is safer, cheaper, and more proliferation resistant than the nuclear plants they have now (and because it gets rid of their nuclear waste). But we won't let them. Where is our sense of urgency? Doesn't anyone get it?!?! Have you ever in your life heard any politician mention how insanely fast we need to install new clean power on the planet to meet the 450ppm goal? I sure haven't. And none of the environmental groups will tell you that. They don't give you any numbers at all. Al Gore never mentioned it either. The best job of public truth telling on how aggressively we have to build clean power that I've seen so far doesn't come from an environmental group at all. Saul Griffith's Wattzon Game Plan does a great job of giving concrete examples of how fast we need to move to save the planet. Just watch the last 14 minutes of his highly entertaining Scarcity and Abundance video . The " Climate Change" page of the upcoming State of the World Forum also does a great job of laying out the need to act a lot more aggressively than our political leaders would have us believe. Here are a couple of excerpts from their climate change page: It is for these and other reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Head of the IPCC, said "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown states bluntly that we are facing the demise of human civilization itself if we do not take action now. Even more troubling is that reality that even if the governments are successful reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, this accomplishment would be essentially irrelevant to dealing with global warming in any meaningful way. A recent study by MIT states that if all the governments completely fulfill their current promises, which essentially are pointed toward reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, we will have reached over 600 ppm of CO2 by then and global temperatures will have risen at least 4 degrees Celsius. This contradiction between what the governments are negotiating and what the science says is the most crucial fact in the climate change crisis today. We do not have until 2050 to reduce our carbon emissions by 80%. We need to do this by 2020 and we only have until 2012 to make perhaps the most obvious decision in human history. Yet not a single government in the world is willing to recognize the obvious.  Dr. Pachauri recently stated that the governments are engaging in "tragic inaction."  Never before has there been a such a dearth of imagination, courage and leadership. We believe that the world must mobilize around what is scientifically urgent, not around what is politically expedient. What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020.   So let me be real clear. Here are five key things that I think every American should know about the climate crisis: 1. If we are to have any hope of avoiding a climate crisis, we have to be installing about 1 GW of new clean power somewhere in the world every single day for the next 30 years. 2. We are nowhere close to that rate today. 3. All options for clean power have to be on the table. 4. Based on today's technologies and costs, our best chance of getting anywhere close to that rate (and at a cost we can afford) is to aggressively install lots of nuclear power as the centerpiece of that strategy. 5. Our single best clean power technology, the Integral Fast Reactor, remains sitting on the shelf in a government research lab in Idaho, collecting dust. Ray Hunter, the former Deputy Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology at DOE is furious about this. If the US wants to be a world leader in clean tech, suppressing our best clean tech technology is not a good strategy to get there. The sooner we realize the magnitude of the solution and start acting on it, the better our chances of saving the planet. It's time to stop putting our head in the sand thinking that cap and trade and the House energy bill is going to solve the climate crisis. It's not going to make much of a dent. In fact, because it allows existing coal plants to continue operating, it actually makes things worse, not better. Japan adopted cap and trade and their emissions have continued to increase. Canada adopted a straightforward carbon tax and it's working. Yet our Congress thinks it is better for the country to adopt a system that hasn't worked anywhere in the world for reducing CO2 emissions than to copy a system that actually works. Go figure. Senator Lamar Alexander is the member of Congress who is the closest to advocating what is needed. He's advocating building 100 new nuclear power plants in the US over the next 20 years. That's still not nearly enough, but it would be a good start. Nobody else in Congress is advocating anything close to that. I'm waiting for a member of Congress to tell Senator Alexander that he's seriously underestimating the magnitude of the problem; that there are over 1,500 coal power plants in America and we need to put the pedal to the metal and install at least 1,000 new nuclear power plants in the US over the next 20 years, not 100. When that happens, we'll have a chance. Today, we have complacency where we should be having a sense of urgency. After all, even if we deploy all the King's soldiers and and all the King's men, it's not clear at all we can run fast enough to save the planet. One thing's for sure: we are never ever going to get there at the snail's pace we are on now. Who will be the first one to tell America the truth about how fast we need to be installing clean power to save our planet? More on Climate Change
 
Adam Hanft: Anniversary Irony: How the Woodstock Generation is Sabotaging Health Care Reform Top
The anniversary forensics into the lasting implications of Woodstock were completed this weekend, with one critical oversight. There was no commentary about the utter absence of baby boomer support for health care reform. The generation that sought to spread peace and love throughout society seems completely disinterested in spreading mammographies and diabetes screenings. Where the hell are they? The boomers, after all, were the demographic cohort that turned protest against inequity into a generational branding statement. There are roughly 70 million of them, so imagine what would happen if they adopted the fight for the extension of health care as another civil right - as part of the ongoing struggle for social justice, no different than civil rights and women's rights? The entire national dialogue would be different. If you were 25 at Woodstock, you're 65 today - one year past Paul McCartney's archetypal Age of the Elderly. You should be on the vanguard of change. Boomer endorsement of health care reform would be a powerful validator. But times pass and hypocrisy hardens. Consider the visual picture of the debate: young families and middle-aged people telling heart-wrenching stories of lost insurance, or no insurance, and the ghetto of pre-existing conditions versus older people ranting about government bureaucrats making decisions for them. How many of those objecting seniors looked back nostalgically on Woodstock this weekend?Now, they are reacting just like their frightened, defenders-of-the-status-quo parents back in the sainted 60s. So the synchronicity of the Woodstock anniversary and the raging health care debate shouldn't be overlooked. Much has been written about the narcissism and self-involvement of the boomers, and the way in which the undisciplined indulgences of the sixties - sex, drugs, rock and roll -- became sublimated into a parallel consumer world of undisciplined, indulgent consumption. If you're going to reward yourself with everything NOW, and scorn the future (just take a look at the dismal stats about boomer savings) - then you're going to have an equally selfish view of health care. Which means a reluctance to share it; a very anti-Woodstockian value Indeed, the boomers consume health care in the same guzzling fashion that they bought homes and cars and electronics and designer everything. And they're worried that their God-given right to consume often and endlessly is being threatened by the Obama plan. Can we blame them for this expectation of everything? From the time they were born, and their Spock-trained parents catered to their every whim, boomers were spoiled and privileged. Society existed to dandle them and indulge their fantasies. They also grew up as children (and adults) during the largest expansion of employer-based health care in history. Corporations may have been boring (and sometimes evil), but they were generous. Boomers' white-collar and blue-collar parents had great benefits. They never had to deal with scarcity, with limits, with tough resource decisions. They always had plenty of toys, plenty of jobs, plenty of choices. So when opponents of reform use trigger words like "rationing", boomers get all twitchy and shrill. Then there's the "Unplug Granny" distortion. The reason it's so contagious is that it strikes at the essence of boomer anxiety, the inevitable march to mortality. They want to go on forever. They see themselves as adolescents, they dress like adolescents,they listen to oldies music that suspends them in adolescent amber. The free-love, communal mud-spirit of Woodstock has wizened and twisted into an forever young ideology that is making it difficult to have any intelligent conversation about end-of-life decisions. If it's going to cost a million dollars to keep me alive for another month, that's my boomer right. Of course, there are yowls of protest about health care reform from the generation that precedes the boomers. But I haven't seen any meaningful segment of boomers talk about the need for reform, even if it means some degree of sacrifice. Talk to physicians in any area with a high concentration of those on Medicare and you'll hear the same refrain: every little ache and pain is an occasion (even a social occasion) for a trip to doctor, since Medicare pays anyway. That's the boomer ontology. Gen X and Gen Y, as we know, have very little patience with the boomers. They see them as a self-involved generation that's leaving them a sick planet and a distorted set of values. Health care reform is the last chance the boomers have to live up to the promise of Woodstock, but it seems like they're still stuck in the mud. More on Health Care
 
Leighton Woodhouse: The Insurance Lobby's Strategy: Class Warfare from Above Top
One of the most timeworn and tiresome tactics of the right is to accuse anyone who talks publicly about the widening gap between rich and poor, the tax privileges of the affluent, or any other morally significant economic issue of engaging in "class warfare." The device usually achieves its desired effect: the perpetrator cowers in fear and never makes the same mistake again. Last month, Senator Ben Nelson borrowed from his Republican colleagues' playbook when he referred to the proposal out of the House to raise taxes on wealthy Americans to fund healthcare reform as "class warfare." If class antagonism is really a concern of Senator Nelson's, then he should take another look at the campaign being conducted by his friends in the insurance industry. The right wingers and their corporate backers are waging a political battle over healthcare reform that is socially divisive, rhetorically caustic, and possibly physically dangerous. Call it "class warfare from above." At a recent town hall, Congressman Paul Broun, Republican of Georgia, stoked up the angry crowd before him by referring to a "socialistic elite" in Washington, DC conspiring to use pandemic disease or natural disaster as a pretext to declare martial law. It's easy to dismiss this kind of idiotic showmanship as fringe lunacy. But it benefits us more to understand it. Whenever corporations have found themselves faced with real threats to their profit-making power, they have responded by fomenting social division and turning worker upon worker. It happened throughout the early history of the American labor movement, when politicians conspired with bosses to brand striking union workers as Communist agents of the Soviet Union. It happened in the 1970s when grape growers in California recruited Teamsters to break the picket lines of Cesar Chavez' farm workers. The tactic continues today, as right-wing Republicans and their corporate benefactors point to immigrant labor as the source of the economic insecurity of the working class, instead of the Wall Street magnates who have bankrupted the U.S. economy. These town hall fiascos are simply more of the same. The insurance lobby and their proxies in the GOP are using red-baiting techniques that are as old as Communism itself to brand working Americans who support reform as "un-American." They're deliberately conflating the narrow interests of corporate behemoths with the cherished values of our American heritage, implying that those who threaten those corporate interests are in the service of some insidious and non-American ideology. As throughout history, rather than speak for themselves, these insurance companies are channeling their propaganda through the more "credible" messengers of supposedly regular, everyday, outraged Americans. But as hostile and odious as many of these "protesters" are, they are not the real enemies of American working families. By the looks of them, most of these provocateurs are workers themselves, and will benefit greatly from reform, whether they know it or not. Rather, it is the billionaire insurance executives who are bankrolling the effort who deserve our scrutiny. It is these corporate moguls who stand to gain by maintaining a system that generates profits by denying patients care, not uninsured town hall protesters who have to pass the hat to pay for their own care . Whatever you think of the White House's approach to healthcare reform, President Obama has provided us with the chance to have a real national discussion on an issue of profound importance that has been neglected for 15 years. This is a far more important topic than the lunatic rants of misinformed zealots funded by corporate lobbying firms. We can't let the insurance lobby's latest tactic of distraction-by-proxy prevent us from reaching the working families of America. They stand to suffer too greatly from the failure of reform for us to be fooled by this ridiculous charade.
 
Robert Reich: How Tough is Our President? Top
Latest word from the White House is that the President still supports a public option but is also standing by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's remark last weekend that a public insurance plan is "not the essential element" of health-care reform. So where, exactly, is the White House on the public option? Just about where it is on the question of whether it agreed with Big Pharma to bar Medicare from using its bargaining clout to get lower drug prices -- or didn't. In other words, we don't know. Universal health care is President Obama's biggest issue, and he needs strong public support if he's going to overcome the vested money interests in Washington. Which brings us to the question of where the people who voted for Obama stand on all this. As I just wrote in The American Prospect , my friend Fred voted for Obama and trusts him to do the right thing. "He's the brightest and most decent person who's occupied the Oval Office in my lifetime," Fred says. His trust for the man extends to Obama's agenda. "I don't have time to wade into the details of the economy or health care or climate change legislation or anything else, but I know he's got my interests at heart." My friend Sally also voted for Obama and still likes him, but she's increasingly upset about his policies. "He's giving away the store," she complains, pointing to his penchant for compromise. "He gave Wall Street $600 billion in bailouts and doesn't even want to regulate it, gave big polluters 85 percent of the cap-and-trade permits, and has promised the American Medical Association, Big Pharma, and private insurers whatever they want in return for their support of universal health care." Sally says she voted for Obama because he promised to change American politics, but she thinks corporate interests are more powerful than ever. Sally also doesn't see why Obama is so bent on bipartisanship. "Republicans haven't helped him a bit so far, won't help him, and he doesn't need their votes, so why compromise with them?" Fred and Sally offer a fairly good sampling of Obama voters at this juncture, almost nine months after Election Day. Fred represents the trusters; Sally, the cynics. Some cynicism is to be expected in the post-honeymoon phase of any presidency, once the idealism of a campaign has crashed into the realities of governing. What seems unusual this time is how popular the president remains even as many of his supporters become uneasy about what he's actually doing. The apparent paradox may be the byproduct of the very qualities that put him into office. The President's centeredness, calm, and dignity inspire trust but also suggest a certain lack of combativeness, a reluctance to express indignation, and an unwillingness to identify enemies -- resulting in a tendency toward compromise even at the early stages of controversy. Pollsters are fascinated that Obama's personal popularity endures -- his "favorables" have fallen a bit, but still hover over 50 percent -- even as support has declined for much of what he broadly endorses, notably universal health care. Republican pollsters, alert to this discrepancy between person and policy, have advised the GOP accordingly: Trying to get the public to distrust Obama is more difficult than arousing distrust for the platoons of government bureaucrats they say his policies are unleashing. Obama's political advisers are trying to do exactly the reverse -- using the president's personal popularity to sell policies, much as Madison Avenue uses trusted personalities to promote products. Obama's town meetings have been enormously successful; he's fielded questions well, and showed himself to be every bit as thoughtful and engaging as he was during the presidential campaign. But the politics of product endorsement aren't working terribly well nonetheless. This is partly because Americans have sealed off the man from his agenda. For most Americans, the more they see of Obama (and the rest of his family) the more they like him. But likeability isn't rubbing off on specific policies. The longer universal health care hangs out there, for example, the more vulnerable it has become. It's also because Obama hasn't yet taken full responsibility for detailed policies, such as the public option, or, on environmental legislation, whether cap-and-trade pollution permits should go to polluting industries free of charge. Keeping distance from the specifics has been a wise tactic -- both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter got too far into specifics and paid a high price on health care when Congress wrested back ownership. And it helps Obama to separate his own approval ratings from public worries about legislation. But it has also made his policies more vulnerable to scare tactics and caused the Sallies in the Democratic base to worry about Obama's willingness to fight. Obama may be temperamentally incapable of being more combative and identifying enemies. But surely he can state less equivocally what he does and does not want -- and, with regard to key matters such as the public option, what he'll sign and what he won't. The widening gap between admiration for Obama and cynicism about his policies also reinforces passivity in Obama's base, which makes it even harder to advance a specific agenda. His presidential campaign strengthened the nation's political grass roots and spawned hope for a new era of public engagement, but Obama's reluctance to fight for any specifics is causing the base to lose interest. Neither the Freds who trust him nor the Sallies who have become cynical are motivated to do much of anything. But their activism is crucial. If it comes to a choice between trust and cynicism, America will never achieve lasting change. Cross-posted at Robert Reich's Blog. More on Barack Obama
 
William Fisher: The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse:Limbaugh. Beck. O'Reilly. Hannity. Dobbs Top
Rush Limbaugh. Glenn Beck. Bill O'Reilly. Sean Hannity. Lou Dobbs: Five now-household names made rich and famous by those wonderful folks who brought us cable and talk radio. All were gung-go for that grotesquely-misnamed government euphemism known as "enhanced interrogation techniques." All were joined at Dubya's hip as cheerleaders for "Democratizing" Iraq. All were megaphones for the CIA's "black sites" and "extraordinary renditions." And all were eager to tell us all about the superb cuisine and exquisite personal service accorded the guests at GITMO-by-the-Sea. Until the lies and uselessness of these misadventures became so obvious that they lost their ratings value. Another headline-grabber had to be found! And, Eureka, our five horsemen found their Holy Grail: A new cottage industry called: Immigration. Undocumented workers were every bit as evil as Al Qaeda. Terrorists were crossing our borders with "dirty bombs" concealed under their fruit-pickers' farmhand garb and waiters' uniforms. IEDs were being secreted among the tools they brought in to build our homes. They pushed for 3,000-mile-long fences between us and Mexico. They attacked the Department of Homeland Security for failing to enforce our laws of entry. They proposed sending the National Guard to our Southern border. They opposed public education and health care for the undocumented, including their children - many of whom were American citizens, born in the U.S.A. They backed The Minutemen's brand of vigilante justice. They cheered when the government raided workplaces and took fathers and mothers away from their families. They cried out for the arrest and "expedited removal" of some twelve million illegals, though they never quite got around to telling us how they were going to do that and what effect that might have on the U.S. economy. They perpetuated the fear-mongering myths of the RNC and the Yahoos on the wingnut right. Like this one: Myth: Immigrants are driving up our health care costs and bankrupting our emergency rooms because they have no insurance. Fact: Non-citizens are significantly less likely to use emergency room services than U.S. citizens. Insured immigrants have much lower medical expenses than insured U.S.-born citizens. Insured immigrants' per-person medical expenditures are 1/2 to 2/3 less than the U.S.-born with similar characteristics. Recent immigrants constitute 5% of the non-elderly adult population, but are responsible for 2% of adults' total health care costs, making their share disproportionately low. Four out of five people in America who have no insurance are U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens make up the majority of the uninsured (78%), while immigrants account for 22% of the non-elderly uninsured. But predictably, in thousands of hours of bloviating on TV and radio, not a single one of these five horsemen has ever uttered the first word about what is arguably the most shameful aspect of the immigration issue. That word is: Detention. But then, why should we have expected to ever hear that word? Hell, if black sites were hunky-dory with these guys, why not for other Enemies of the State? And what are those detention conditions they never mention? ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency - part of the sprawling and dysfunctional Department of Homeland Security -- owns and operates its own detention facilities, and also rents bed space from county and city prisons and jails. ICE locks up about 32,000 civil immigration detainees each day -- 400,000 a year. Most of these are pursuing their immigration cases in the courts, if they can wangle access to a lawyer. This is a system that puts little children in prison scrubs, that regularly denies detainees basic needs, like contact with lawyers and loved ones, like soap and sanitary napkins. It is a system that incarcerates whole families. It is also a system that separates parents from children. It is a system where people who are not dangerous criminals - in case you don't know, alleged immigration violations are civil, not criminal, offenses -- get injured, sick and die because of indifference or the lack of availability of timely medical care. It is a system that has produced more than 90 detainee deaths since 2003. And just this week, prompted by an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking previously unreleased documents related to the deaths of immigration detainees in U.S. custody, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials revealed 11 deaths that have occurred at detention facilities since 2004 that the government had previously failed to publicly disclose. ICE's city, county and private prisons and jails also house serious criminals. Yet immigration detainees -- including asylum seekers, legal immigrants, victims of human trafficking, and immigrants with no criminal records -- are mixed in with the general prison population. They are stashed away in penal-like facilities for months and sometimes years, with virtually no due process and often without the most basic safeguards -- like hearings to assess the need for continued detention. Many illegal immigrants who will be deported cannot leave the U.S. due to the fact that their country of origin will not accept them, so they must stay in the immigration jails for years or even life until a country will agree to take them. Some immigrants cannot go back to their original country out of fear of persecution and death. So we keep them locked up. At the T. Don Hutto detention center in Texas, 26 immigrant children between the ages of one and 17 were detained with their parents who, in almost all cases, were seeking asylum. More than 60 detainees have recently been on hunger strikes to protest conditions at the immigration detention center in Basile, Louisiana. Authorities there retaliated by putting the hunger strikers in solitary confinement. In California, detainees are held in a private facility in San Diego, a government-run center in El Centro and at 13 local jails throughout the state. There has been a ton of well-documented violations of normal standards for legal and family visits at both San Pedro and at a Lancaster facility run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Among the findings of one reliable study, there were that at least 41 facilities did not give detainees the minimum number of hours and days of recreation required by their own standards and that 19 centers did not offer any outdoor recreation time at all. The report also found deficiencies in access to phones and legal information. For example, at least 29 detention facilities had no law library, and 30 centers failed to provide reasonable privacy for legal calls. In addition, detainees were often placed in solitary confinement without justification. We're not talking about some bizarre fiction like "Death Panels." You just can't make this stuff up! Think I'm kidding? Read on. One 23-year-old was found not guilty of transporting explosives during a road trip with a friend who had packed model rocket propellants in the trunk of his car. But three days later, in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Tampa, he was arrested again by immigration authorities. The new charge was that he "is engaged in or is likely to engage in" terrorist activities, a violation of his legal residency in the U.S. A 26-year-old Chinese woman told Amnesty researchers that she fled to the U.S. after she and her mother were beaten in China for handing out religious fliers. She arrived in America seeking asylum in 2008 and was detained at the airport, then transferred to a county jail. No one told her why she was being held. Without explanation, ICE ordered her to remain in detention unless she could pay a $50,000 bond, which neither neither her relatives in the U.S. nor her family in China was able to raise. After almost a year in detention, they were able to post the bond and win her release. Wait. It gets worse. One young man was deported and then caught when he tried to sneak back in over the Canadian border. He was convicted and spent five years in jail. As he was about to be released, a prison official looked at his file and discovered that he was a natural-born U.S. citizen! How did this happen? Well, it's been happening for many years. Since back when ICE was the INS - the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But, after 9/11, Bush officials ramped it all up, cobbling together a network of federal centers, state and county lockups and private, for-profit prisons. They needed lots of beds to warehouse the tens of thousands of people its raiders and local police were flushing out of the shadows. Thanks to reports on the secretive system, particularly those by Nina Bernstein in The New York Times, folks who were paying attention learned that detainees were being locked up and forgotten and denied access to lawyers and their families. They languished, sickened and died without medical attention. And speaking of the New York Times, please note that it's one of the few MSM newspapers that have published anything on this issue. Others include the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Ditto, radio and television - even among the few progressive outlets. For example, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have commented on immigration matters from time to time, but have never, ever, not once, tackled the detention issue. What is the Obama Administration doing about this outrage? Is our President still committed to his campaign promises to "secure our borders, fix our dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, increase the number of legal immigrants in order to keep families together, and bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows." Well, the President has told us comprehensive immigration reform will have to wait until next year. But, meanwhile, the Obama administration has refused to promulgate regulations that would require immigration detention facilities to adhere to basic standards of care. It rejected a petition by former detainees and civil rights organizations requesting a rule-making procedure in the wake of public reports detailing the humanitarian crisis in the facilities. The new overseer of ICE, John Morton, said he wanted to turn immigration detention into a "truly civil detention system," one focused on safely and humanely holding people accused of civil immigration violations until they are deported or released. The announced reforms include creating offices and advisory boards to focus on medical care and the management of centers, reviewing contracts with private prisons and local jails, and installing managers at the 23 largest centers to make sure complaints are heard and problems fixed. He said Centers would face random inspections. Community groups and immigrant advocates would be invited to offer advice and comment. And the government would stop sending parents with children to a notorious prison near Austin, Texas, as it seeks alternatives to the Bush-era tactic of putting whole families behind bars. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Christian Science Monitor that the administration is not waiting for Congress to revamp immigration detention programs. "These major changes in detention ... will result in a system that deals with detainees in an efficient, transparent, and humane manner," she said. Doubtless we should find some encouragement in these proposed changes. At least, our government has acknowledged that we have a problem. But don't break out the champagne just yet. These kinds of promises have been made before, and nothing's changed. My online friend, Mark Dow, wrote a book on the subject - American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. That was in 2004, but what he described could have happened this morning. And even if the DHS is now serious, the changes they're proposing will take many years to achieve. Maybe it will help that Congress is also getting into the act: Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate that would change the laws governing immigration detention and increase oversight and enforceability of detention standards. But given the lawmakers' cluttered calendar, don't hold your breath waiting. Meanwhile, the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse are using the current debate on health care reform to whip up more of their toxic brew. Daphne Eviatar of The Washington Independent reports that, "As the heat gets turned up on the health care reform debate, anti-immigrant activists are using the issue to whip up fear and anger toward immigrants, portraying them as a costly and burdensome drain on any taxpayer-supported U.S. health care system. Angry questions about illegal immigrants getting health care at town hall meetings across the country have put many lawmakers on the defensive." Why are we not surprised? And why don't the American people know more about what's being done in our name? There are a number of explanations, but they all come down to power, money, politics, and fear. Immigration has become one of the third rails of American politics. With their principles totally eclipsed by the 2010 mid-term elections, politicians are terrified by the tsunami of jingoistic populism currently sweeping our country. (Witness, the "death panels" town halls.) At the same time, their political skins are vulnerable because they know that Hispanics are the country's fastest-growing voter demographic - and Hispanics happen to be the largest slice of those in ICE custody. Maybe they can console themselves in the knowledge that illegal immigrants and resident aliens can't vote. Also, detention is but a sub-set of Immigration, writ large. Most lawmakers think it's too far down in the weeds for the American public to grasp. Then too, the playing field ain't exactly level. Advocates for changes in our detention system have limited clout and little money. And they're being opposed by interests that have lots of clout and virtually unlimited money. Included is the well-organized lobbying apparatus opposed to any version of immigration reform. Also included are the companies that have reaped a post-9/11 profits bonanza by operating private for-profit prisons. Finally, the detention issue has been marked by a series of head-scratching decisions by the Obama Administration. While the DHS's Napolitano was announcing sweeping future reforms in ICE's detention practices, she was also committing to an expansion of a little-known statutory provision that allows DHS to deputize local law enforcement authorities to arrest and detain alleged immigration violators. These "partnerships" now exist all over the country. That has resulted in a highly complex legal specialty being administered by cops who have no knowledge or experience in this discipline - and siphoning off people-power and resources needed to do the important work cops are trained to do. That program happens to be opposed by most law enforcement authorities in the U.S. But not all. Some think it's just dandy. That's how we end up with people like Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed "Toughest Sheriff in America," who is one of the DHS's "partners" in this program. Arpaio and his merry men are busily rounding up anything that moves in Maricopa County (Pheonix, etc.), Arizona - while at the same time being investigated by the Justice Department for violating his victims' civil rights. But, lest I leave you in a state of clinical depression, let me sign off here on a slightly more encouraging note. Lou Dobbs, one of the "Five Horsemen," has recently experienced some kind of epiphany (or else he finally got the memo from his bosses at CNN). After his endless tirades against immigration and immigrants - spiced more recently by the large megaphone he's handed the "birthers" and the "deathers" - Dobbs has begun what is being billed as a year-long series of reports on the health care systems of other
 
Bob Guccione's Strangest Auction Items (PHOTOS) Top
On Monday, what was left of former Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione 's seized mansion was put up for auction in Connecticut. Braswell Galleries offered 374 lots of the "architectural contents" of Guccione's former residence to bidders, with proceeds going to charity. While the townhouse was famed for its decadence and sexcapades, what ended up at auction was lackluster, if not bizarre. Check out the photos below for some of the strangest items for sale: More on Photo Galleries
 
Nick Rosen: Pot-Smoking Israeli Sold Kidney For $20K In U.S. Black Market Top
NEW YORK — In 2005, a rebellious and sporadically employed Israeli man flew to New York to give up a kidney to save an American businessman. For that, he says he was paid $20,000, which appeared in a brown envelope on his hospital bed after the operation. That payoff would be illegal. But the kidney donor, 39-year-old Nick Rosen of Tel Aviv, says that doesn't matter. "I smoke pot. That's also against the law." Rosen believes he did a good deed and that organ donors like him should be compensated. Much of his story can be confirmed, and the case gives new resonance to claims that a black market for kidneys has thrived even in the United States. Rosen made a video about his transplant experience, and near the end of it, he is seen reclining on a bed piled with cash. A subtitle says: "This is what $20,000 looks like." It's hard to tell the amount, but the $100 face of Ben Franklin is visible on the bills. His tale of organ trafficking might be incredible if he had not made the video – and if the issue of black market organs had not burst into public view with the recent arrest of a New Yorker accused of brokering a kidney sale. Rosen does not know that man, who as far as he knows, had nothing to do with his own transaction. For years, kidneys have been available on a thriving international black market, but evidence of organ trafficking in the United States is harder to find. However, doctors and others in the transplant field have long suspected an illegal organ market exists here. Nick Rosen's story – which he says began when he answered a "Kidney Donor Wanted" ad in an Israeli newspaper – may open a window into that world. ___ Last year, 4,540 Americans died while on transplant lists, waiting for kidneys. The man who got Rosen's kidney says he almost died, too. "I was on death's doorstep," says Brad Gursky, a 51-year-old balding, beefy man whose left arm vein is thick and hardened from years of intravenous dialysis treatments. Gursky confirms much of Rosen's story – except for the $20,000 payment. "It's an embellishment," he said in an interview on his front porch in Woodbury, a suburb on Long Island. Is he happy Rosen made a video that essentially accuses him of participating in illegal organ trafficking? "I have to give the man a pass on the video. He saved my life, and he did a mitzvah," a good deed. A month before he got Rosen's kidney, Gursky was in end-stage renal failure and had just endured a huge disappointment: One week before Father's Day 2005, this father of three got the happy news that Mount Sinai Medical Center had a kidney for him, a perfect match. He and his whole family went to the hospital. But 24 hours later, all joy was snatched away. A mistake had been made by the donor network, and the kidney was going to someone else. "Any hope he had of a healthy life was crushed," reads a letter of complaint written by Gursky's wife, Gwen, to the New York Organ Donor Network. A reply from the national organ donation network acknowledges the "unfortunate situation" and mentions "corrective actions." A month later, in Rosen's video, Gursky is smiling and happy. His hope of a healthy life had been restored by a stranger, Nick Rosen, who Gursky says he found through "a friend of a friend." In one scene, Gursky's sister visits Rosen in the hospital. "It's such a mitzvah," Leslie Gursky tells him. She had donated a kidney to her brother years earlier but it soon failed. In the video, she tells Rosen the experience changed her life for the better. ___ Nick Rosen's disjointed, fuzzy video of his transplant experience has been viewable online for several months, if you know where to look. The Associated Press tracked him down through Facebook, the social networking site where Rosen lists his religious views as "jubu," slang for Jewish with an interest in Buddhism. He has 225 friends, including Brad Gursky. Rosen says he was born in New York, and his family moved to Israel when he was a toddler. In adulthood, he became friends with a playwright who needed a kidney and was writing a play about dialysis. He says he translated the play for her into English and offered to donate his kidney, but she refused. Rosen was nearing his 35th birthday. So when he saw an ad in an Israeli newspaper seeking a kidney donor, it seemed an appropriate gesture. "I wanted to make a difference." He says he called a phone number and was told he would be paid the equivalent of $20,000 for his kidney. A man who called himself Moti, "an ugly guy" whom Rosen believed to be in charge of brokering the sale, sent him for medical tests in Israel. "I told him I want to film my story because I'm a video producer-director, and I think this has value," Rosen says. Moti refused "so I don't have him on film." Rosen says his U.S. passport and universal-donor Type O blood made him an appealing match to the kidney broker. After months of medical tests in Tel Aviv, Rosen videotaped a meal with his family a few days before his trip to New York for surgery. His father scolds him loudly, shouting, according to subtitles, "You should stand on your own two feet and not ask others to support you! I told you, don't film me about this thing or else." Ellen Simich, now of New York, was a friend of Rosen's in Israel at the time. She says she knew him to be "extremely intelligent, very open, very resourceful, very creative, a free spirit." She knew he intended to sell his kidney and "no matter how noble his idea ... it was a huge illegal kind of business behind this thing." At first, she tried to talk him out of it, she says, but eventually she accepted that he was not going to change his mind. "I was very concerned about his safety," she says. She happened to be visiting a friend in New York when Rosen arrived for the transplant. She made Rosen promise to call her after he met with his connection, an escort he knew only as Arik who took him for more medical tests. Arik is shown in the video. Rosen says he met Brad Gursky for the first time a few weeks later in an outdoor parking lot in Queens. ___ The transplant was done at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and some of its doctors appear on Rosen's video. One doctor says, "There are a lot of very important kind of life-or-death issues that we need to discuss." The doctor pauses. "And honestly I don't think we can have a really ..." The doctor gestures with his hand until Rosen says, "You want me to put this down?" The camera goes off. Mount Sinai officials refuse to discuss the case and details of their kidney donor screening process. Dr. Daniel Herron, a surgeon who appears to be on Rosen's video, said he was aware of the video but that he could not talk without checking with the Mount Sinai press office. The next day, the press office said Herron was away and not available for an interview. Hospital spokeswoman Brenda Perez issued a statement describing Mount Sinai's transplant screening process as "rigorous and comprehensive." The process "assesses each donor's motivation," the statement says, and all donors are "clearly advised" that it's illegal to receive money or gifts for being an organ donor. "The pretransplant evaluation may not detect premeditated and skillful attempts to subvert and defraud the evaluation process," the statement concludes. On its Web site, Mount Sinai says people may not donate a kidney if they were solicited by advertising or if they have a financial incentive. Transplant centers in the United States are mostly free to devise their own rules for screening donors to make sure they are not selling organs. Experts suggest that some hospitals do little to block black-market kidneys because transplant procedures bring in so much money. Apart from detecting black-market organ transactions, donor screening is intended to make sure the donor understands the implications of the surgery, and is not being coerced by social pressure or other means. Rosen says he and "the recipient" (he rarely mentions Gursky by name) made up a story to convince Mount Sinai doctors they were cousins and that no money was changing hands. Rosen says the screening process at Mount Sinai "seemed OK," and he has no way of knowing whether the hospital or doctors suspected anything was amiss. Rosen told his story in interviews with The Associated Press by phone, through messages on Facebook, and in a television interview in a park in Cologne, Germany, where he was traveling. He says his video makes the case that organ donors should be "compensated," the word he prefers over "paid." Some doctors and kidney patients believe a legal system for compensating living donors should be created. They believe better incentives for donors could increase the supply of organs and save lives. Rosen says he counts himself among those advocates and derides opponents as moralists who offer no alternative for kidney patients and potential donors like him who want to help but cannot afford to do so without payment. "This is months of tests and recuperation. And you can't work, and it makes a lot of sense to compensate," Rosen says. In addition to the agreed-upon price, Rosen says, he asked for and got another $1,000 for a friend he stayed with in New York while having tests and the surgery. Questioned by the AP, the friend denied getting any money. Rosen refuses to say who paid him but says the cash was left in a brown manila envelope on his hospital bed. In the video, Rosen and Gursky are together more than once: at a coffee shop where Rosen gives him a small book of Psalms and posing for a snapshot together at a restaurant, a celebration after the transplant. Gursky says he is grateful. "Nick is an awesome guy," he says. "He saved my life." Rosen says he spent the last of the $20,000 a year or two ago and has no regrets. "I thought what I was doing was right." ___ Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson reported from Chicago. Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report. ___ Nick Rosen's video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid5691300010353256717&hlen More on Israel
 
Jake Steinfeld: The Real Truth About Exercise Top
John Cloud, senior writer with Time Magazine, dropped a bombshell -- or was it a "dumb" bell -- with his August 17 cover story, " The Myth About Exercise ." Not only is the logic behind Cloud's article flawed, his message is dangerously irresponsible. What's the next cover of Time going to be, "Hard work proven not to work"? Cloud should be ashamed of putting this drivel forward, especially now. He's telling the American people that exercise doesn't really matter at the time when our country's leaders are wrestling with how to incentivize preventative medicine as a means of promoting good health and reducing overwhelming health care costs. Cloud points to various studies indicating that by exercising, one may want to eat more. BIG DEAL, I love to eat and one of the main reasons I exercise is so I can indulge myself from time to time. This doesn't mean I go rushing out to buy french fries every time I work out like some sort of heroin addict. I also exercise to feel good, to look good and to keep my brain alert -- and exercise does the trick for me and millions of Americans in all three of these areas. To imply that we shouldn't be working out or playing sports because exercising alone won't help us get thin is missing the point of exercise entirely. Yes, of course we should be exercising and eating healthy nutritious foods so we can have active minds and healthy bodies -- that is the message that the California Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports puts forward and that is the message that the media should be putting forward to our fellow Americans. Our doctors get it, our nutritionists get it, our moms and dads get it -- why doesn't John "my head is in the Clouds" get it? Is it perhaps because he really wants to sell magazines more than he wants to be a responsible journalist? Cloud states that the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association's guidelines regarding weight loss and exercise are unrealistic, especially for those with jobs or those looking for jobs. The guidelines encourage exercise for 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week. What he fails to mention is that they also say that "research shows that moderate-intensity physical activity can be accumulated throughout the day in 10-minute bouts, which can be just as effective as exercising for 30 minutes straight. This can be useful when trying to fit physical activity into a busy schedule." "If exercise were a pharmaceutical it would be the most potent drug ever invented," says my friend Dr. Robert Sallis, past president of the American College of Sports Medicine. "Exercise has been clearly proven to prevent and treat chronic diseases and lower mortality rates. From a scientific perspective, any attempt to discredit the value of exercise is just laughable and potentially very harmful to the public. As a physician who works hard to get patients more active, I find it very irresponsible for Time magazine to run a story that so misrepresents the facts." While exercise alone won't make you thin, it does play a significant role in helping to keep one fit, and helping to avoid a host of chronic diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease and more. Exercise, coupled with the intake of fewer calories, is just what the doctor ordered to help keep this nation healthy... and the best solution to helping Americans lose weight. Unfortunately, a great number of Americans do not regularly exercise, resulting in a nation of children and adults who are overweight or obese and suffering from health problems that can be avoided with proper diet and exercise. Lack of exercise has led to more than 20 million Americans living with Type 2 Diabetes. This will only get worse if we give up on exercise. In fact, for this generation of children, if things don't drastically change, they may be the first in history to have a shorter life-span than their parents. Health care expenditures in the United States exceeded $2.2 trillion as of 2007 and are continuing to spiral out of control. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases account for 75% of the national health care expenditures. One thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that exercise is good for the mind and body. While the Obama administration is actively working to deliver a sustainable health care reform package that will provide health care insurance to all Americans, a significant way to reduce health care costs is through preventative measures, which includes exercise. You don't have to take my word for it. Here is what Rear Admiral Steven Galson M.D., M.P.H, Acting Surgeon General of the United States has to say: "For the past two years I've been crisscrossing our country talking about the value of exercise and diet in prevention of chronic disease. I'm worried that the Time magazine article could discourage Americans from engaging in physical activity. We know from hundreds of scientific studies that physical activity is linked to good health. If more Americans engaged in exercise, over time we could save lives and health care dollars." Those who exercise regularly are fitter, feel better about themselves, have less propensity for developing a chronic disease, and ultimately do lose weight. I was a fat kid with a bad stutter growing up. Exercise helped me lose weight while boosting my confidence and self-esteem. Exercise changed my whole life. Cloud's article interweaves some of the positive outcomes of exercise but overall he has gone to great lengths to disavow the correlation between exercise and weight loss and in turn could provide couch potato Americans with one more excuse for sitting around instead of getting out and exercising. Not only is an "exercise doesn't work" mentality detrimental to adults, it will be disastrous for our children. Today's kids already have to be reminded to get off the computer, put down their handheld videogames and get outside and play. Suggesting that exercise will do nothing for weight loss could put the future health of our entire country in peril. I'll give the last word on this subject to my friend Dan Broughton, pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic: As I watch political leaders wrestle with how to improve the quality of care in this country and lower our overwhelming healthcare costs, it is clear that reasonable people from both sides of the aisle have different opinions on the best way to proceed. In contrast, medical professionals ALL agree that exercise, as part of a healthy lifestyle, improves one's health and lowers costs to the health care system. Americans should be encouraged to do more of it, not less. Of this there can be no debate. Jake Steinfeld is the Chairman of the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting physical activity and fitness for all Californians especially children and youth. More on Wellness
 
Bob Pargament: Hypnosis: Beyond Mumbo-Jumbo Top
Arianna Huffington, while speaking on Bill Maher's show last week, made a wonderful point about the over-medication of kids today and I couldn't agree more. In this pharma-crazed culture we are overlooking some of the most effective means of natural calming and focusing and the best of all may be hypnosis. That's what I do as my life's work and it's great for kids. Many people unfortunately are completely confused by this amazing modality. Whenever I speak before a large corporation I begin with the same "gotcha" question. I start by asking the audience to raise their hands if they've experienced hypnosis. Invariably, a few hands go up. Some people explain that they were hypnotized for smoking or weight loss. I then proceed to point out that in fact, everyone in the audience has been hypnotized many times in their lives, maybe tens of thousands of times in actuality. We have all experienced hypnosis. Quizzical expressions follow, as the audience attempts to understand. And that is my perfect opportunity to start the dialogue about this most misunderstood of mental and physical health subjects. Most people don't realize that hypnosis is a naturally occurring state, and that all of us by necessity enter into a level of what I call organic trance at different times of the day. It is necessary for us because thinking tires our minds and we need to take an occasional break and conserve energy. Every time you daydream or immerse yourself in the storyline of a good book or movie to the exclusion of everything around you, you are in light hypnosis. Or, perhaps you're driving and get to your regular exit -- but have no idea how you got there. There you were, flawlessly operating a heavy piece of machinery but unaware of your time in that vehicle. Familiar? Mumbo-Jumbo? Hypnosis. The very word conjures up misconceptions; the average person may believe that hypnosis lies somewhere between Vegas and Voodoo. Nothing could be further from the truth. First recognized by the American Medical Association in the 1950s, hypnosis is the most under-appreciated and misunderstood mental and physical health modality, yet it offers amazing hope for extremely powerful physical and emotional transformations for adults and kids alike. It's not just for weight loss and smoking. It can help your kids concentrate, remove fears, be better athletes, and improve social skills, to name a few. The definition of hypnosis I use most often is "a state of deep relaxation coupled with intense focus and concentration." Sounds oxymoronic, right? How can one be relaxed and focused at the same time? It seems as if one must display deep concentration to do certain things well. But think of the times you played tennis as perfectly as you ever had, or were at that party and were in that wonderful charismatic state of "being on". Everything came together. You were in the "zone", a place of simultaneous relaxation and concentration -- a light site of hypnosis. Hypnosis results from a process that relaxes the conscious, analytical rational part of our thinking, and that allows the subconscious or the "hard drive" of the bio-computer to absorb positive suggestions that can alter our behavior and attitudes -- if those suggestions are in agreement with our belief system. The subconscious accepts all that it sees, hears, feels and experiences without any critical filtering. In other words, it simply records and never sorts through what it records to see if those recordings make sense for our happiness or health. Emotions often get intertwined with these "tapes" -- and voila! Irrational behaviors that may be antithetical to our self-interest show up. We then explain or "rationalize" them away with our rational thinking part. How Hypnosis Can Help Kids Hypnosis works wonderfully for kids. Because children have less subconscious clutter on their "hard drives" by virtue of being younger, they can derive major benefits that can be long-lasting. Kids are frequently in a hypnosis-like state of free association as they pretend play and have stream-of-consciousness fun. They all love the experience. Here are some examples of kid subjects I've worked with recently: A couple who read of my work with kids came to me with their six-year-old son, Ryan (all names have been changed), who was having serious difficulties at school. Ryan was fighting and biting other kids in his kindergarten class. The teachers at his private school were so frustrated with his behavior, they were close to removing him from school. Medication was being considered. Upon meeting Ryan, I saw a delightful child who needed some strong and positive self-imagery to alter this pattern. Ted, Ryan's dad, described the change. Simply put, Ryan's behavior turned around almost immediately. A year of other therapy didn't put a dent in his aggression. Hypnosis worked amazingly well. How did I do it? After finding out that his favorite superheroes were the Power Rangers, I easily placed Ryan in hypnosis, and within a few minutes I had him in the fantasy of a Power Rangers conference in which they were discussing the addition of a new team member. The Rangers, I told him, wanted a new member who had to be well behaved and play nicely with all. This obviously lit Ryan up, and I had him hypnotically repeat that he would play nicely with everybody. The fantasy worked. Ryan's teachers (unaware of the hypnosis) immediately reported a dramatic change in his attitude, and he's been great ever since. He's cooperating because he knew the Rangers want him in the group. Then there's Richard who, though bright, was flunking out of his senior year in high school. His mother said he was at the lowest emotional point that she had ever seen him. He had been diagnosed with ADD and was on Concerta. After a few empowering sessions that helped him see himself as a powerful individual, he immediately went on to finish his schoolwork. On his own he asked to stop taking Concerta, and now he feels focused, in charge and relaxed. According to his mom, Maria, "He's not the same kid I saw before hypnosis. Now he's happier, more self-confident and much less argumentative. He's working with himself, not against himself." This case and others give rise to the question of whether certain kids may experience improvements in focus and concentration by seeking alternative means. The great thing about hypnosis is that it can help a kid improve without a drop of medicine. I often wonder if a young Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, would he be labeled with ADD and put on Ritalin? Bright multi-level thinkers are often confused with those who cannot think "properly" and we may be doing a disservice to them and their physical health. I do not believe that all ADD diagnoses are wrong, but many may be. It's tempting to think that serious problems, especially those that affect the happiness of the children we love, must by necessity have complicated solutions. Contrary to that idea, however, my work in the field of hypnosis has convinced me that many of these challenges can be overcome easily and in a long lasting way by this very simple approach, tapping into a natural power that resides in each one of us -- even the youngest boys and girls. On a personal level, and as a proud father myself, I find it enormously fulfilling to be able to help these wonderful children overcome daunting problems and to achieve the happiness they deserve in life without chemistry and its side effects. ROBERT PARGAMENT is a Certified Hypnotist and a Faculty member of The National Guild of Hypnotists and lectures on stress reduction and motivation with Hypnosis. He has appeared on WABC TV's Eyewitness News on radio and in many major publications including Parenting magazines. www.hypnosiswestchester.com .
 
Mozambique Ferry Sinks, 17 Feared Dead Top
MAPUTO, Mozambique — Mozambique's government says an overcrowded ferry went down off the coast in a northern province, and 17 people are feared drowned. Government spokesman Abudo Momade says the ferry with a capacity of 40 set off from Niassa province in the southeastern African nation with 50 people early Tuesday. After it sank, 26 passengers were rescued. So far, seven bodies have been recovered and the remaining 17 are feared drowned. More on Africa
 
Leslie Pratch, Ph.D.: Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Top
The title of course refers to a question by a tourist to New York City a century ago. Admiring the yachts in the harbor owned by the bankers and brokers, he asks the guide, "Where are all the customers' yachts?" There are still none. The New York Times reported, "Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year" , an outrage to many ordinary taxpayers like me who helped bail out the companies who employed them. Morally, as Robert Skidelsky points out in his review of Martin Wolf's book, Fixing Global Finance , "the U.S. financial community has been living well beyond its means." The 2008 financial crisis came because of the failure of too many senior managers in too many sectors to do their jobs. They failed to address core values and change corporate culture. Many in the financial sector still are not doing anything curative about the gaping flaws in culture and values in their enterprises. Apparently, they think this is just fine. They made the meltdown possible, in fact inevitable, because they turned a blind eye to reality. And they still yearn for an unregulated and opaque market in "some" derivatives. It is astounding. After the Hindenburg exploded in flames, we began in the US to think it was not such a good idea to use hydrogen in airships. To this day the Goodyear blimp is not sailing around filled with hydrogen -- if there is, indeed, still a Goodyear blimp. Our major financial institutions seem to be floating still on hydrogen. The $5 billion in bonuses awarded by Citi (closely followed by its fellow blimp pilots) based on very short-term gains (and suspect gains at that, to my mind) is an affront to ordinary taxpayers like me -- it is our money that bailed out the blimps. There are plenty of executives out of work; there are far more worker bees out of work -- 5 million since the financial meltdown. That meltdown was a result of bad, reckless, irresponsible, greedy behavior, egged on by cheerleaders like a senior executive at the National Association of Realtors who in 2004 predicted that real estate prices were going to continue to rise (apparently without end). There are plenty of executives who deserve to be fired. I am fed up with bonuses paid to retain the sort of "talent" that worked as the sorcerers' apprentices to push us to the edge of the abyss. Not that this was something that happened overnight -- it took time for the best and brightest to build this house of cards. The Fed Chairman now says that we have to get rid of "too big to fail" and have an orderly process of taking over and gently, carefully dismantling toxic institutions in an "orderly" fashion (so as not to scare the markets -- Heaven forbid) -- means, he claims, that were not in place when Lehmann, AIG, and etc. had their little liquidity problems and "counter-parties" were engaged in a desperate game of trying to make sure that the hot potato wasn't in their paws. There are plenty of Hindenburg pilots and enablers still in place. I have a glimmering understanding of the complex macroeconomic and geopolitical forces that contributed to our recent economic crisis. But not for a minute do I concede that I am naive in laying the blame at the door of CEOs who lived quarter to quarter and paid no attention to reality -- just to keep the analysts happy, to keep market value rising. If agents like Sandy Weil, Bob Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, et (many) al., and their personalities and values, and deregulatory cheerleading aren't responsible for our financial crisis, then do we just blame it on the gullible and fleeced public?
 
India: Boy, Age 9, Arrested For Rape Of Girl, Age 6 Top
INDORA(Kangra): In a shocking incident, a nine-year-old boy earned the dubious tag of being the country's youngest rape suspect after he was booked for the alleged rape of a six-year-old girl after subjecting her to violent assault. More on India
 
Andy Borowitz: Favre Retires Again; Says He Will Reconsider After Lunch Top
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre stunned the sports world by retiring again today, just hours after announcing that he was coming out of retirement. Choking back tears, Mr. Favre told a packed press conference in Minneapolis that he was hanging up his cleats once again, adding, "This decision is semifinal." Reporters pounced on Mr. Favre's response as an indication that he was leaving the door open to coming out of retirement once more. "That's something I'm going to reconsider after lunch," he said. Football insiders offered a variety of theories to explain Mr. Favre's mercurial behavior, with some suggesting that he merely wanted to be a trending topic on Twitter. More here . More on Twitter
 
Roni Zeiger: My Doctor Says: Get a Boob Job Top
My wife, my children, and I are all patients at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF). I am grateful for the world-class care that we all receive there, and I continue to refer many friends and colleagues there. We recently received a mailer from PAMF, addressed to my wife and personalized with her name showing what they think her summer to do list should include. (I've blacked out her name in the photo of the mailer below.) The list ends with: "Do something REALLY special for myself!" Cute, I thought, and wondered what would be inside. Perhaps some tips on exercise or eating smart, or a reminder to get caught up on important screening tests. My jaw dropped when I opened the pamphlet and saw: "To look and feel your best, you don't have to look far", and listed the following services: - Breast Reshaping - Tummy Tuck - Face, Eye, and Neck Lift - Liposuction - Rhinoplasty (Nose Reshaping) - Laser Skin Rejuvination I think it is entirely appropriate that PAMF offers these services. However, I am deeply concerned that they are advertising them as the way -- for a woman in particular -- to do something really special for herself and feel her best. Body image issues aside, what does this say about our physicians? PAMF represents my wife's primary care doctor (and mine), and I suspect many patients see this type of promotion as coming from their doctor. Did she approve this, we wondered? If so, what should we think when she recommends a mammogram or a colonoscopy? It begs the question of whether the primary goal is my health or profit for the health care provider. I've commented previously on Atul Gawande's eye-opening piece in the New Yorker about McAllen, Texas, a town where health care costs are among the highest in the country, while the quality of care is no better than average. Gawande explains: About fifteen years ago, it seems, something began to change in McAllen. A few leaders of local institutions took profit growth to be a legitimate ethic in the practice of medicine. Not all the doctors accepted this. But they failed to discourage those who did. So here, along the banks of the Rio Grande, in the Square Dance Capital of the World, a medical community came to treat patients the way subprime-mortgage lenders treated home buyers: as profit centers. Perhaps we are asking too much of physicians. They should have only my well-being in mind, while at the same time their decisions about my care often impact whether they can afford to send their kids to college. In case you're worried about your own bills, don't worry -- as you see in the screenshot below, for these procedures you can get a FREE private consultation and financing options are available. Ideally, it won't be long before we get much better at measuring the quality of care, and physicians will get payed for delivering quality. In the meantime, demand the facts and make informed decisions . More on Health Care
 
Ron Mwangaguhunga: RIP Robert Novak Top
Robert Novak was a sour man. He had a fixation on three-piece suits and capital gains tax cuts. Novak often spat when he talked. He must have been thoroughly unpleasant company if you did not agree with him philosophically. These factors made him ripe for satire. Robert Novak looked and acted like a Dickensian villain come to life. But there was more to him. Robert Novak, despite the high quotient of funny that he brought to any conversation, was not evil. He was, I believe, a good, if misguided man. The Prince of Darkness lacked a natural empathy at the outset for the poor, the weakest members of the human society. It is not inconceivable that the virtues that make a good Republican -- that go-go competitive edge, the high productiveness, the aggression -- they come at the expense of human empathy and compassion. Could that be why George W. Bush -- a born-again Christian -- touted, often, a "compassionate conservatism" on the campaign trail and throughout his Presidency? Did he intuit that robust libertarianism is as imbalanced, philosophically, as the liberty crushing, ultra-egalitarianism of the left? I believe so. Novak, aware of that natural weakness in his personality, never tired of seeking a more harmonious sense of being. That, I think, is what made Novak ultimately a good man. He was aware of his deficiencies, and he worked to correct them. How many people at that age work to change their lives? Late in his life, Novak became a Roman Catholic. That, I think, is in itself an heroic gesture. Most people stop growing -- or stop giving a damn about growing -- after middle age. The sour, disharmonious souls who scream -- pink faced -- at Town Hall meetings are a testament to that sad truism. But Robert Novak was different. Through his discovery of Roman Catholicism, Robert Novak tried to offset his natural sourness towards the weak and society's less fortunate. This from CatholicOnline , on his conversion process: "A friend gave Novak Catholic literature after he came close to dying from spinal meningitis in the early 1980s. About a decade later, the columnist's wife, Geraldine, also not a Catholic, persuaded him to join her at Mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Washington. The celebrant was a former source of Novak's. "Father Peter Vaghi, now Msgr. Vaghi and pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md., was a former Republican lawyer and adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. He had been a source for the Evans and Novak column that Novak wrote with Rowland Evans. "Novak started to go to Mass regularly, but it wasn't until a few years later that he decided to convert to Catholicism. The turning point, as he recounts in his book, happened when he went to Syracuse University in New York to give a lecture. Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner table near a young woman who was wearing a necklace with a cross. Novak asked her if she was Catholic, and she posed the same question to him. "Novak replied that he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but that he had not converted. "Her response -- 'Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever' -- motivated him to start the process of becoming a Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. He was baptized at St. Patrick's Church in 1998. His wife was also baptized a Catholic." Catholicism added a missing dimension to Novak's personality. It lifted him beyond a hard materialism that, in his case, made him an almost comically cruel political commentator. That sense of metaphysics led him to work with fellow "bleeding heart conservative" Jack Kemp on a rather strange -- but politically interesting -- collaboration to bring Louis Farrakhan's fringe group of disenfranchised Americans into the Republican party . Catholicism clearly worked a miracle in making Bob Novak care about poor African-Americans. One cannot memorialize the life of Robert Novak without noting that he was a tremendous reporter. His scoops were legendary. Especially during Republican administrations -- Reagan's, in particular -- his inside information and contacts were second to none. To be sure, Novak's column was used by Republican administration officials with an agenda. But like any good journalist, Novak tried to provide context. This blog quoted his column often and we will miss the extremely inside information that he brought to light. I am not a religious man, so I will not attempt to predict the future of Novak. But here, on this planet, his legacy will be that of a solid journalist, an interesting human being, a searcher after the Truth, a man who tried to be compassionate -- even though it was not a natural component of his personality -- and an advocate for growth and wealth. May he rest in peace. More on Robert Novak
 
Mary Wald: Kim Dae Jung: A Hero for Peace Top
There is a generation of leaders in the world, students of Gandhi, who used non-violent means to change their regions of the world. They are passing before our eyes. One of them was lost yesterday. These are leaders who watched the Kennedys break all tradition and publicly stand up for the rights of Africans to rule themselves. They watched with fascination as Martin Luther King marched in Birmingham and changed the face of the US. And they said "if he can do it, maybe I can." Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu in South Africa, John Hume in Northern Ireland, José Ramos-Horta in East Timor, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Oscar Arias in Costa Rica. Many of them went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung was one of those. He was first elected to South Korea's National Assembly in 1961. One month later, Gen. Park Chung-hee voided the election, staged a coup and seized control of the government. Kim Dae Jung's career was launched as a pro-democracy, popular, fiery opposition leader, gathering people in parks for rallies and generally being a thorn in the side of the military dictators. In 1971, in his first presidential race, Kim won 46 percent of the vote running against Park. It was close enough - a little over 900,000 votes short of a victory - that he posed a threat. Within a month, a truck appeared from nowhere and tried to run him down in the road. He had a limp the rest of his life as a reminder. In 1973 Korean intelligence agents abducted him from a hotel room in Tokyo and took him back to Korea. He was taken to sea and literally had weights attached to his ankles as they prepared to throw him overboard and be done with him once and for all. The Japanese, however, had pursued the boat and foiled the plan. Kim showed up alive at his house in Seoul five days later. During the next few years he was sentenced to death, spared by diplomatic pressure (including from Pope John) and lived under house arrest. Finally, in 1997, after the military dictators had collapsed, he was elected President. As President he instigated the "Sunshine Policy," a policy of engagement and exchange with North Korea. He said the name came from one of Aesop's fables, a story of the sun and wind having a contest to get a man to remove his coat. The wind tried to blow it off. The man clutched the coat even harder. The sun shone warmly on the man, and he voluntarily removed his coat. Kim was the first Korean President to travel to North Korea, holding the historic summit with Kim Jong-Il in 2000. After decades of propaganda against the Southern "puppets of imperialism", North Koreans saw their leader and the South Korean President talking. The South starting sending aid to the North. Bags of rice started being distributed with South Korea imprinted on the bags. Families that had been separated since the Korean War were reuniting. There was talk of a train between the two Koreas. Things were changing. The world changed. The US elected George W. Bush President. Bush, with unforgettable irony, called Kim Dae Jung "naive" and negated the Sunshine Policy in its entirety, marginalizing Kim. We know the rest of the story. 9/11. The Axis of Evil. And today, new missile tests and an atom bomb out of North Korea. I had the extraordinary opportunity to sit and chat privately with President Kim in his suite in a San Francisco hotel a few years ago. Our paths crossed at events with the Nobel Laureates since. Elegant is the first word that comes to mind. He was warm, with an IQ that kept you mentally running to keep up. And he had something that is nearly invariable in the Nobel Laureates of this ilk, the ones who have gone into the face of oppression, who have defied death, who have been willing to give it all - he had humor. We talked about my coming to South Korea to film an interview with him for a series we were producing. Today I couldn't be more sorry that we didn't make it in time. Because his is a story much more dramatic than most of what comes out of Hollywood. It's one that actually means something, one that applies right now, to the kind of world we can make - with our action, and with our inaction. And it's one that should not be allowed to just pass with an obituary. More on South Korea
 
WaPo's Kornblut Goes From Belittling To Praising Hillary Clinton In Three Days Top
This afternoon on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell was joined by the Washington Post 's Ann Kornblut, to talk about the goings on between President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here's how they ended their exchange: MITCHELL: And we have to say, for all of the talk of Bill versus Hillary and all of that, we shouldn't lose sight of what she did. She really has elevated as Mary Beth Sheridan wrote in the Washington Post today, really has elevated the whole aspect of women. I talked to Richard Engel about the women in Afghanistan, but women around the world is very much a part of Hillary Clinton's diplomatic mission. KORNBLUT: Yeah, absolutely, and has been in her life for a long time. Going back to the famous speech she gave in 1995 in Beijing when she was First Lady and she said women's rights are human rights and vice versa. She has been an international celebrity. And even though there have been two previous female Secretaries of State, she's elevated that role, she's given women around the world someone that they're familiar with to look to and this trip to Africa, that was a great deal of her focus and has been at the State Department since she's been there. This was, in a word, jarring, considering the take Kornblut offered this past Sunday on ABC's This Week , which, for my money, was some of the most asinine and belittling analysis I've heard in a long time. It all stemmed from Hillary Clinton's now-endlessly repeated, "My husband is not the Secretary of State, I am," statement. Purely the stuff of silly seasons and slow news Augusts! Here's how Kornblut summed up Clinton's trip. KORNBLUT: [W]e reported out that there was no mistranslation. That she was asked about her husband. The reporters who were there said it was very hot. She was very tired. So maybe her demeanor is not the one she would have wanted, but that the underlining sentiment that she's the secretary of state is one that she intended to convey, especially in a region of the world that is so male dominated. But the incident is kind of bigger than that. It's sort of the perfect encapsulation of the burden of being Hillary Clinton. That you are seen in relation to your husband wherever you go, not just by the media, but by the world and asked questions about him. And it reminded me a lot of the campaign, when she was seen in relation to him and having to respond and trying to be her own person. But it also raises the question of what kind of secretary of state she is going to be. And if she is going to be able to harness the celebrity, which of course is the reason we're all talking about it, in a - to a larger purpose. Some people, when this whole incident happened said to me, you know, she looks kind of like a first lady on this trip. She's out there. She's been gone for 11 days, 7 countries. She's away from the center of action here. So I expect we may see some shorter trips from her, ones where she's not going to get as tired when she's on the road. But at the end of the day, I think her, again the underlining sentiment is one that certainly the White House and she defend that she had the right to say that. Oh, my stars and garters! An adult woman responds, with strength and confidence, to what she perceives to be a belittling, sexist remark, and I'm supposed to believe that this is a career-defining oddity that calls into question whether she will effectively "harness her celebrity?" And that maybe she needs to take shorter trips, to maybe keep her hysteria in check? And so she doesn't end up looking "like a first lady" to some unnamed hosebag that Ann Kornblut happened to talk to, one day? Yes, truly this incident alone "raises the question" of "what kind of Secretary of State she is going to be." Because surely this one statement entirely offsets whatever work Hillary Clinton has done as secretary of state for the past two hundred days, work that Kornblut demonstrates no awareness of, at all! Thankfully, if her comments today are any guide, Kornblut is now certain that Clinton has used her "celebrity" to "elevate" her "role," and that she's been diligently raising the profile of women in the world as "a great deal of her focus...at the State Department since she's been there." I have to wonder: maybe it's because MSNBC's Chris Matthews, of all people, put the mad kibosh on the silly talk over Clinton on Hardball yesterday: MATTHEWS: Also, I think one story that's been overlooked recently is Hillary Clinton's terrific work in Africa. We'll give her the credit she's due...tonight. Remarkable turnaround for Kornblut, one day to the next, one network to the next! [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Chris Matthews
 
India: Muslim Student Leaves College Over Headscarf Row Top
A Muslim girl who was asked by her college near Mangalore, India, to stop wearing her headscarf to class due to classmates' complaints has left her studies as a result, NDTV reports. The Mangalore College has defended its request, saying it did so not on the basis of any personal issues but because they wish to quell tensions between Muslim and Hindu students. The college principal said, "It is one rule for all students. She is the only one not following the rule." There have been an increasing number of reports about Hindus and Muslims being asked not to speak to one another or to eat together in restaurants, NDTV reports. Confrontations between Muslim and non-Muslims revolving around traditional Muslim dress have been surfacing in recent weeks. A Paris pool refused entry to a Muslim woman recently for showing up in a burqini, swimwear resembling a wetsuit which covers the body from head to toe and incorporates a hood. She had been previously admitted to the same pool but on the latter occasion was told she could not enter unless wearing traditional swimming attire. Earlier this summer, young pregnant Muslim woman Marwa al-Sherbini was stabbed to death in a German courtroom by a man who had previously called her a "terrorist" and tried to take her headscarf. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on India
 
Mozart Killed By Strep Throat: Study Top
PHILADELPHIA — For more than two centuries, the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has endured – as has the speculation about what led to his sudden death at age 35 on Dec. 5, 1791. Was the wunderkind composer poisoned by a jealous rival? Did he have an intestinal parasite from an undercooked pork chop? Could he have accidentally poisoned himself with mercury used to treat an alleged bout of syphilis? A report in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine suggests the exalted Austrian composer might have succumbed to something far more commonplace: a streptococcal infection – possibly strep throat – that led to kidney failure. The researchers looked at death records in Vienna during the months surrounding Mozart's death – November and December 1791 and January 1792, and compared causes of death with the previous and following years. "We saw that at the time of Mozart's death there was a minor epidemic in deaths involving edema (swelling), which also happened to be the hallmark of Mozart's final disease," said Dr. Richard Zegers of the University of Amsterdam, one of the study's authors. There was a spike in swelling-related deaths among younger men in Vienna at the time of Mozart's death compared to the other years studied, suggesting a minor epidemic of streptococcal disease, Zegers said. The cause of death recorded in Vienna's official death register was "fever and rash," though even in Mozart's time those were recognized to be merely symptoms and not an actual disease. His surviving letters and creative output suggest that he was feeling well in the months before his death and was not suffering from any chronic ailment. Many accounts note that he fell ill not long before he died – suffering from swelling so severe, his sister-in-law recalled three decades later, that the composer was unable to turn in bed. Others who reported to have been witnesses to Mozart's final days also described swelling, as well as back pain, malaise and rash – all symptoms that indicate Mozart may have died of kidney disease brought on by a strep infection. "It's not definitive, but it's certainly food for thought," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who was not involved in the study. He said it was not unreasonable to presume that Mozart died from strep complications, based on the information presented, but he pointed out that the authors had scant data to go on. "Serious streptococcal infections were much more common than they are now and, indeed, they had very serious complications," he said. "This is sure to set off many discussions going forward." ___ On the Net: Annals of Internal Medicine: http://annals.org
 
Maggie Van Ostrand: Obama Talks Mozart on Maddow Top
In a debate with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, President Obama said, "If only we had had the Public Option in our health overhaul, Wolfgang Mozart would be alive today." "With all due respect, Mr. President," Maddow responded, "How do you figure that?" "Reuters just announced that Mozart died of strep throat," answered the President, "and if he had had my proposed Public Option, he would've had health coverage, and would have lived to write more masterpieces." "But, Mr. President, Mozart wasn't an American, and he wouldn't have been eligible to receive treatment for an alleged strep throat, if indeed strep throat was the cause of his suffering and subsequent death." "Yes, he would have had coverage under my Universal Health Care Program, which covered the universe and included a Public Health Option. We know that Mozart was without funds at the time he died so Number 1: the government would have picked up the tab for Mozart, and Number 2: for him, even a doctor would make house calls." "Mr. President, I appreciate your noble ideals, I really do, and I share them, but I talked with John McCain, who knew Mozart personally and well enough to call him Wolfie. He said that Mozart tried to get your universal health coverage but was turned down." "On what basis?" "Your universal health care plan, including public option, was thwarted as being unEuropean by American lobbyists who had infested Vienna and other First World Countries with their rallying cry of 'Obama wants to kill geniuses, your grandparents, and all your babies.'" [shows clip of Michele Bachmann, passionately clutching a Hitler blow-up doll, and shrieking "He's not dead! He's not dead! I had sex with him last night!!!"] "It seems I had not been prepared for such violent and unusual challenges from the opposing party, and could not stop them in time." "Mr. President, I have to ask you this: Are you prepared to stop them here and now in the United States?" President Obama's response will air in Part 2 of this interview, scheduled at a later date. More on Rachel Maddow
 
Elephant Gets Prosthetic Leg 10 Years After Landmine Injury (VIDEO) Top
An elephant in Thailand is walking again after receiving a new prosthetic leg. Motala lost her leg after a landmine explosion ten years ago. Motala's new leg was created using plastic, an iron bar and a rubber foot. ITN News reports on the Indian elephant's first steps: It took the elephant around ten minutes to take her first step, and an hour to complete a 30 metre track as she hesitated to put all of her weight her new limb. More on Thailand
 
Tony Newman: Is It Okay to Fire People Who Smoke or Are Obese? Top
Two years ago, as part of their "wellness initiative," the Cleveland Clinic stopped hiring smokers. When the Clinic's CEO, Delos M. Cosgrove, was asked about the program for an article in last weekend's New York Times Magazine , he said that if it were up to him, he would also stop hiring obese people as well. Clearly, lifestyle decisions lead to huge medical and financial costs to both the hospital and the country. The logic, according to Mr. Cosgrove and others who justify not hiring smokers and people who are obese, is that punitive sanctions will coerce smokers and overweight folks to live healthier lives. Not hiring them or charging them more money for insurance, according to their logic, would effectively persuade people to change harmful health practices. These arguments and rationale were explored in the August 16th New York Times Magazine piece "Fat Tax." Since public health campaigns have been successful in reducing smoking, the article asks, shouldn't we use similar tactics to rein in obesity? A few years ago, the Drug Policy Alliance anticipated that arguments used against smokers today could be used against overweight people tomorrow. We spoke out against a Michigan heath care company that fired four employees for refusing to take a test to determine whether they smoked cigarettes. The company, Weyco Inc., adopted a policy that allowed them to fire employees who smoke, even if the smoking happens after business hours or at home. The company justified the firings because smokers were costing their company more money for health insurance. At the time, the Drug Policy Alliance created a flash animation that asked viewers to vote on whether the company should be allowed to fire employees who smoke. The flash animation laid out compelling arguments for both sides, explaining that smoking results in 400,000 premature deaths each year. But it also pointed out that smoking is not the only activity that increases health risks and costs. Smokers may be the target today, but who will be next? People who are overweight? People who ride motorcycles? Most importantly, the animation raised a powerful question: should people's private lives be subject to oversight by their employers? Like most people, I support campaigns to reduce smoking and obesity. I believe in public education campaigns and policies that offer help to people who are trying to quit smoking or unhealthy eating. Positive incentives like gym membership reimbursements, or cessation aids like the smoking patch or Nicorette gum, can be valuable aids to those who struggle with addiction. But by firing workers for smoking or being overweight -- and penalizing them when it comes to their health care -- we will be demonizing and marginalizing those to whom we should be reaching out. They fired the smokers first. Now they are talking about not hiring obese people. Your personal struggle or lifestyle choice may be next! Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. More on Health Care
 
Donald Sutherland: Stand Up, Max Baucus Top
It must finally be clear to us all that the stumbling block to successful health/disease care reform has been definitively reduced to two words. They're not "public option" or "single payer", they're "Max Baucus". He was not elected to eliminate the Democratic Majority in the Finance Committee, but that's what he's done. It was not mandated that he exclude a representative expert on single payer from his 15-person advisory board but that's what he did. More than that, he's filled his campaign coffers with millions of dollars of Insurance Company money, for heaven's sake. Fine that he sits there holding the president's suit coat at that town hall meeting, great that he gets identified by the president a bunch of times. Great, because now we can all have a good look at who he is, sitting there squirming in the spotlight. Enough sitting. It's time Max Baucus stand up and be counted, and if he can't get up on his own then Rahm Emanuel and someone hefty should go grab him by the scruff of his neck, stand him up and shake some sense into him. Standing by the likes of Grassley only counts with the insurance profiteers. It doesn't count with us. Stand up, Max Baucus, stand up for what's right or you'll be sitting down for a long, long time!
 
Dave Johnson: China Is Being Smart On Trade. Will We? Top
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF. Trade is not complicated. Trade is just an exchange of goods. You trade something for something. I buy something from you, and in exchange you buy something from me. It is simple. It is a win-win bargain because we both end up with something we needed. The wealth of each of us is increased. In modern times we use money as an intermediary instead of making a direct and immediate trade of one good for another. You have the money I used to buy from you, and you can use it to buy from me in the future. Of course, we both have to agree on what to use as money and its value for exchanges, but once we do our transactions proceed smoothly. Trade between countries works the same way: we buy tings made in Factorystan and Factorystan gets richer, then the Factorystanis buy from us and we get richer. Both of us have things we didn't have before. Add in additional countries and the equations become more complicated. But it comes back to the same principle. Goods are exchanged. Each side benefits. So obviously the more goods a country makes or grows, the stronger its position in this global system. Just as the intermediary of money enable individuals to trade more easily, it introduces ways for international transactions to proceed. We agree on the value of the money using "exchange rates." This allows a balancing mechanism. As countries accumulate an excess of the money without exchanging it for goods made elsewhere the exchange rates fluctuate according to the rules of supply and demand, making their goods more expensive to others. Therefore goods made in the other countries become less expensive and the exchange flows should come into balance. In free markets things come back into balance. But this natural balancing is not occurring today. China has been building up their economic power for some time. China should be the economic powerhouse now. According to the rules of currency and balance its currency should be extremely strong. Its products should be the most expensive on the planet. Its people should be rich, enjoying the consumption of things made elsewhere. This should be providing strong incentives to open factories in our own country. This is not what is happening. Instead China's currency is not strong, so the prices for their goods continue to undercut everyone else's. China is manipulating the exchange rate so that its currency stays low. This keeps the price of its goods low, and keeps the business flowing to its factories. They are not buying from us. In fact they are even requiring that internally they buy Chinese. This is occurring under the current rules described as "free trade." Of course this is not free trade. It is manipulated and enables China to capture much of the world's manufacturing. China is rising up and seizing the world's means of production. China is just being smart. The problem is that we are not responding and protecting our own interests. Our country's leadership appears to be hamstrung, unable or unwilling to challenge this and develop a long-term economic and manufacturing plan. Part of the reason for this is that a wealthy Wall Street few profits from this in the short term, as we bleed away our country's long-term interests. Our country's decision-making processes appear to be under the control of that wealthy Wall Street few. And they are selling China the rope with which it is hanging us. Theorists tell us that eventually economic forces should force a rebalancing of China's currency and a shift in the world economic order. But there are a number of problems with sitting back and waiting for this to occur. It could take decades, and things could get (and may already be) so far out of whack that any rebalancing will be "disorderly," meaning another - and worse - chaotic economic crash. And there is no guarantee that a rebalancing will ever occur. As China increases its economic power it increases its ability to bend the rules in its favor. The lesson learned so far is that manipulating the rules is highly profitable and brings few, if any, consequences. Even if a rebalancing does eventually occur there is no guarantee that it will help us. When a factory closes we lose more than the jobs. We lose the know-how - the intellectual infrastructure that supports modern technological processes. We lose the supply chain. We lose the customer base. We lose the economic power that could enable us to rebuild. We lose more of our manufacturing capacity every day this situation is allowed to continue. Our country's leadership must engage and develop policies to fight this and restore our economic power. We need an economic plan. We need a manufacturing plan. We need an accountability plan, holding Wall Street and China accountable, making them follow the rules . We need to know that our leadership is on our side and is fighting for us . Trade is a two-way street and it is time that the goods flow in both directions. "Free" trade is not "free" if only one side plays by the rules. More on China
 
9/11 Memorial Preview Site Opening Near World Trade Center Site Top
NEW YORK — Tourists coming to ground zero to see the Sept. 11 memorial often peer through a fenced-off construction site for a glimpse and ask street vendors when it will be built. It will be at least two years before the memorial to the 2001 terrorist attacks opens to the public. But in an old camera shop northeast of the World Trade Center site, visitors will be able to watch live video of the construction, record their 9/11 memories and even leave with a souvenir. The foundation that will run the finished memorial and museum built the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, hoping to attract the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year who come to ground zero looking for a 9/11 story and finding a giant construction site. The Tribute WTC Visitor Center, a small gallery on the south side of the site, charges $10 admission and says it brings in 300,000 tourists a year. It won't cost anything to get into the preview site, although the foundation will sell memorabilia, including 9/11 memorial pins, books and DVDs, to raise money for the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. The foundation also wants to present an alternative to stories tourists hear on the street about the plans for the site, president Joseph Daniels said. "Every single day, I'm walking by these guys who are selling the flip books to tourists," Daniels said. "These tourists are asking questions about what's getting built. ... We see a tremendous interest in what's happening here." The 3,000-square-foot space will feature models and renderings of "Reflecting Absence," the design for twin reflecting pools with cascading waterfalls where the trade center towers had stood, surrounded by nearly 3,000 victims' names. Live webcam video of the construction will be displayed on a giant screen. In a recording booth, visitors will be able to speak for 3 minutes about where they were, and what they remember of Sept. 11, 2001. The recordings – visitors can share their stories in any language – will enter the permanent collection of the 9/11 museum and become part of an introductory exhibit. Laurie Arrow, an Auckland, New Zealand, tourist who peered into the site on Liberty Street, said he'd like to record his 9/11 story. "I was due to fly to America the day after," he said. "It never happened." Arrow was surprised to see the level of construction activity at the site. "There's quite a lot of activity going on." Builders say the first skyscraper will be completed by 2013; a transit hub, the memorial and a second tower are under construction. Although the site will focus on the memorial plans, there will be renderings of the office towers and transit hub as well. A few pieces from the museum's permanent collection also will be on display, including a 7-foot Statue of Liberty covered with photos, dried flowers and 9/11 condolence cards that stood for months outside a midtown Manhattan firehouse after the attacks. The site cost $600,000 to build, funded as part of a $1 million gift from the Starr International Foundation, a Swiss charitable organization. More than $350 million has been raised privately for the 8-acre memorial, which would set the waterfall-filled pools in a cobblestoned, tree-covered plaza. Builders said the memorial will open to the public on the attacks' 10th anniversary, although some parts of the aboveground plaza won't be finished. The museum, being built underneath the memorial, is slated to open a year later. ___ Associated Press writer Karen Matthews contributed to this report. ___ On the Net: National 9/11 Memorial & Museum: http://www.national911memorial.org Tribute WTC Visitor Center: http://www.tributewtc.org Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: http://www.wtcprogress.com (This version CORRECTS that $600,000 cost of site was part of a $1 million donation, not in addition to a $1 million donation.)
 
Nicole Williams: 7 Facebook Status Updates Not to Make at Work Top
It's one thing to peruse Facebook for a few minutes at work every now and then. It's another to use it as a way to communicate to the outside world how hungover, miserable, or bored you are during office hours. If your friend list contains one or two co-workers, those comments could ruin your status at the office. Here, seven off-limits updates. 1) _____ wonders why everyone is so incompetent. Chances are, a few of those "incompetent" people are on your friend list. And if you just finished working on a project with one of them, they might have an inkling you're referring to them. Not only will this make for some awkward moments at work, but they could follow your lead and get back at you via Facebook... and a raging Internet war could ensue for all of your co-workers to see. 2) _____ is still waiting for my car service to the airport! So glad I have my new iPhone and that my meeting with the CEO isn't until four. If anyone else is in L.A., e-mail me and we'll meet at the Ivy for lunch tomorrow! These kind of updates just make you look smug, self-absorbed, and like you have delusions of being a celebrity. It's great if you have a fabulous job where you get to travel, get chauffeured around in fancy cars, and take meetings with bigwigs. But it's a lot cooler if you don't broadcast it. (Although, please post if you do happen to have any good celeb sightings while you're lunching in La-La Land.) In fact, it's so obnoxious, one anonymous blogger started Facebragthis.com, a site dedicated to cringeworthy clue-ins. 3) _____ wishes her boss would go on vacation with no Blackberry reception. While you may secretly wish this (and spend half your day trying to send telepathic messages that she should book a one-way ticket to Antarctica), it just makes you look unprofessional and immature. Sounds like you could really use a break from technology after posting this one! 4) _____ is contemplating calling out sick tomorrow. "Sniffle Sniffle" The only reason you should be taking a sick day after writing this one is to regain some lost brain cells. While your best friend may find this hysterical, remember that this will show up in your colleagues News Feed, too, and it will spread like wildfire that you're scheming to play hooky. Unless you find the time to craft some Ferris Bueller-style decoys, you're in trouble. And if you're actually sick one day in the future, no one will believe you. Haven't you heard that old wives tale, "The Account Executive Who Cried Wolf"? 5) _____ is sneaking out for the Marc Jacobs sample sale! Meet me there! You may be known as the office fashionista, but save your sample-sale shout-outs for the weekend or your lunch hour. Everyone has to pop out of the office for a doctor's appointment here and there, and if you just so happen to pass a great sale after receiving a clean bill of health, then by all means treat yourself to the half-priced, distressed leather tote you've wanted since last season. But don't blast it to all 565 of your friends that you're not at work, doing your job. It's bad for business. 6) _____ wants to know how people get to be managers with no actual skills. This one falls into the same category as status update No. 3. Everyone gets frustrated with their boss from time to time. And while you may find yourself stewing with resentment that they appear too leisurely by making their 15th coffee run of the day while you're slaving away over spreadsheets, don't make it public. Vent to your real-life friends, in person, preferably at happy hour. 7) _____ wonders if her co-workers noticed that she's wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Well, if they didn't, they do now, genius! If you were out on the town and pulled an all-night party session, please, pretty please, do whatever you can to make it home for a quick change before work. Even if you're five minutes late, your co-workers will thank you for not making your entire cubicle area smell like vodka and french fries all day long. And the fact that you're posting this on Facebook makes others think you want them to know about your late-night shenanigans. Not a good move for earning respect at work. More on Facebook
 
John Feffer: Global Spin Doctors Top
We endure, ignore, or fall prey to as many as 20,000 ads a day. That's one ad every three seconds of our waking hours. We wear ads on our shirts, forward commercials via email, sing jingles with our friends, and even brand corporate icons on our bodies. We've developed vaccines to address this particular virus. There's Naomi Klein's No Logo and the cheeky magazine Adbusters . There's Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's radio program Counterspin and the ad-stripping features of TiVo. But the virus continues to mutate and spread. Geopolitics is not immune to this disease. Flip through any foreign policy magazine and you'll find plenty of advertising. Governments, desperate for foreign investment and tourists, take out glossy "sponsored sections" in Foreign Affairs and "special advertising supplements" in Foreign Policy . The recent news from Nigeria has been pretty bleak: endemic corruption, bloody insurgency in the Niger Delta, fraudulent elections in 2007. The 10-page spread in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs , however, mentions none of that: It's all about growth, transparency, and investor confidence. Angola hired a slicker PR firm to design its recent 24-page section in Foreign Policy : nice pictures and graphics, upbeat interviews, and the repeated message that the country has lots and lots of oil. None of the smiling interview subjects mentions that the country hasn't had a democratic election in two decades or that two-thirds of Angolans live on less than $2 a day . Some of the spinning borders on the surreal. Equatorial Guinea paid the PR firm Cassidy & Associates $120,000 a month for an image makeover, which required transforming an oil-rich dictatorship ruled by the ultra-corrupt Teodoro Obiang into a palatable U.S. ally. All that loot translated into a prominent photo op with Condi Rice and her comment that Obiang was a "good friend." When celebrities say stupid things in public or get nabbed for shoplifting, their agents shift into overdrive. The same thing happens to countries that get nailed in public for their horrendous human rights abuses. This is what Cassidy & Associates calls crisis communications : "[W]e put this strength to work on behalf of clients that require immediate communications support to protect themselves in the face of unexpected public image challenges." What takes place behind the scenes is perhaps the most pernicious. After all, we congratulate ourselves on seeing through the obvious advertisements. We would never fall for Nigeria's third-rate spread in Foreign Affairs . We would never succumb to the seductions of a TV infomercial. We would never click on the ubiquitous pop-ups. But what about all the money that governments circulate through the media universe to grease wheels, influence politicians, or secure prized appearances on the TV talk shows? Indeed, the PR race is not that different from the arms race. Russia, for instance, recently paid nearly $3 million to Ketchum for a six-month media blitz to promote the country's leaders and policies. Georgia has retained Public Strategies, Inc. at $50,000 a month. And the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have hired Mark Saylor Co. at $30,000 a month. An uptick of spending on one side will inevitably lead to an increase on the other side, as PR becomes war by other means. The firms hope that the spin they set in motion will, through the alchemy of the media, turn into "facts" in an editorial, or an op-ed, or even a reporter's dispatch. Since 1938 and the Foreign Agents Registration Act, U.S. firms must disclose their relationships with foreign governments and entities. According to Kevin McCauley of O'Dwyer's Public Relations News, these relationships began to snowball after the end of the Cold War. Kuwait's government-in-exile put Hill and Knowlton on a princely retainer; Mexico hired several firms during the NAFTA negotiations; China launched a media blitz around the Hong Kong handover. "Post-9/11," McCauley points out, "Saudi Arabia hired a number of firms to send out the message that it is a good ally, to stress the point that there is more moderation in Saudi Arabia." Riyadh spends around $12 million a year to make sure that the U.S. media stays on this message. With all this spin - overt and covert - what's a poor reader to do? The last thing we should do is sit and spin with it. So, after all this decrying of advertising, let me end with a plug: for our very own Foreign Policy In Focus. We don't take handouts from the Nigerian or Georgian governments. We rely on the support of foundations and individuals like you to provide unvarnished news, features, and analysis. Hah, what did I tell you? Advertising is everywhere. Crossposted from Foreign Policy In Focus , where you can read the full post. To subscribe to FPIF's e-zine World Beat, click here . More on Advertising
 
18th Century Violin Found In Taxi Cab By GPS Top
NEW YORK — A musician is reunited with his 18th-century violin after he mistakenly left in a New York City cab. City taxi officials say a GPS device in the cab led to the quick return of the instrument to Korean violinist Hanh-Bin on Monday. The violin is valued at around $600,000. The musician had taken a cab from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to his Chinatown apartment early Monday morning. He inadvertently left behind the violin and a credit card. Hanh-Bin's violin wasn't the most expensive instrument ever to have been left in a New York City taxi. In 2001, musician Lynn Harrell left behind a 328-year-old Stradivarius cello worth $4 million. In 1999, cellist Yo-Yo Ma forgot his $2.5 million, 266-year-old cello. Both instruments were eventually returned to their owners. __ On the Net: http://hahn-bin.com
 
Sestak: I'd Have A Hard Time Voting For A Health Care Bill Without A Public Option Top
He left himself some wiggle room, but, in what appeared to be a challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) said he'd have a hard time voting for a health care bill without a public option.
 
Antonio Villaraigosa: Real Progress in My Partnership Schools Top
Today is a big day for the schools in California and of course, for the ten Partnership Schools here in Los Angeles that I oversee. Test scores in English, Math, Science and other subject areas are being released. So how did we do? Test Scores are up. In just one short year we have changed the culture of low expectations at ten of the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles. We have shown that even in schools that have been neglected for decades, when you raise standards and hold schools accountable, the kids will respond. In English, nine out of ten Partnership schools improved their scores. And in Math and Science, eight out of ten schools improved. Half of our schools out-paced the district in English scores and four out-paced the district in Math. Our elementary schools soared, improving their English scores at a rate of 8.5% while the LAUSD elementary schools improved by 4.9%. Math scores improved by 3.9% compared to LAUSD elementary schools improving by 2.5%. This is real progress and real change where it is absolutely the hardest to achieve. While we are very encouraged by this improved achievement, we are not satisfied. We have a long way to go to get our middle schools and high schools on the path to achievement. Congratulations to all of our schools - 99th Street, Figueroa, Ritter, Sunrise, Gompers, Hollenbeck, Markham, Stevenson, Roosevelt and Santee. Watch out next year, here we come.
 
Phil Bronstein: Robert Novak, the Prince of Darkness for better or worse... Top
Criticizing the recently deceased is as rude as punking the Queen of England at an official event: it's bad form both in terms of timing and reasonable respect. As a journalist, I know I should revere Bob Novak, whose death from brain cancer was announced this morning, almost as much as the genuflecting and genuinely saddened colleagues are now doing on his alma mater, CNN. I doubt this mourning will reach Cronkite proportions, but Mr. Novak did have lots of influence over many years, was seemingly fearless in his views , straddled print and broadcast reporting successfully and made it nearly fashionable for TV guys to have combovers (see: David Gergen .) Someone noted in one of the black-bordered eulogy TV segments this morning that he was called " The Prince of Darkness ," not by his enemies but by his friends because of his contacts and his power to move the D.C. discussion. I remember once being at dinner in a capital steak house when Bob Novak came in. He had that invisible wake around him that surrounds celebrities, that sense that the molecules in the room bend when someone famous arrives. There was a line-up to shake his hand, adulation he accepted graciously but that seemed to make him grow larger and more luminescent with each fawning comment. But the Darkness thing reminds me of a very different Novak moment. I was covering the bloody conflict in El Salvador in the late '90s. I'm not an either/or person, generally, and I had good relations with colonels on the right and guerrillas on the left. As in most of real life, the situation was more complicated than slogans or sound bites. So I go to a disinterment of a couple of murder victims on the dusty outskirts of town. The grave re-diggers were, as they mostly were for these things, drunk, so it took a painfully long time. The few of us who were witnesses had to put some kind of cloth over our noses and mouths because there's nothing as horribly ripe as a decomposing human body. The two dead men had been buried hastily in a shallow grave. Their thumbs were tied together behind their backs and there were other infamous signatures of a Salvadoran death squad hit that are too gruesome to describe even for this blog. The fact that the victims were seen being hustled into a Cherokee Chief with smoked windows, the signature Death Squad vehicle of choice, and that they were leftist labor organizers made it clear what was up. (The guerrillas had their own killing apparatus, but it was mostly aimed at mayors in rural villages.) Once they were dug up and carted off for more examination, I left, the stench of the grim, hazy afternoon event still in my nostrils. I was sure it was also on my clothes and in my pores. How could such a vital and vile thing not be? I went to my rented house in the Escalon district of Salvador and slumped in a chair in front of an old TV set with rabbit ears. At certain times in the late afternoon, if the weather was just right and you fiddled with the antennae, we could get a few minutes of CNN. There was Robert Novak, screaming at someone -- probably Michael Kinsley on "Crossfire" -- like an enraged health care town hall meeting participant: "Death squads in El Salvador is a liberal MYTH!" I haven't been accused of being a liberal all that much, and, as Christiane Amanpour said so wonderfully in Iraq , "Wolf, I can only tell you what I can see," but I can tell you reliably that Salvadoran death squads were as real as Scooter Libby and Evans and Novak. At the time, I wanted to reach through the TV screen and strangle the guy into sensibility. Or have the two tragic dead men delivered, without benefit of makeup, on his front lawn. It wasn't a liberal-conservative thing. Death squads were a fact. Whatever else Bob Novak did well, even superbly in his professional life -- a great deal, I don't doubt -- at that moment he did a huge disservice to the truth and to the memory of thousands of people who died violently, painfully and without justification in El Salvador. Now, please let's return to our ritual of respectful remembrance. More on Robert Novak
 
Sheryl Weinstein Reveals Madoff Not "Well-Endowed" In Revenge Book Top
Bernie Madoff may have been the biggest con man in history. In the sack, not so much. In a blockbuster new book, Madoff's married mistress, Sheryl Weinstein, gets some very public revenge on the old lover who swooned her with one hand and stole her money with the other. More on Bernard Madoff
 

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