Wednesday, August 26, 2009

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Kevin Grandia: Bonner & Associates: the long and undemocratic history of astroturfing Top
With a history that could surprise the most jaded Beltway insider, Jack Bonner, head of the D.C. public relations firm Bonner & Associates, might just be the king of corporate Astroturf in the nation's capital. Whether its on the health care debate or the proposed clean energy bill, a notorious public relations tactic known as  astroturfing is heavily influencing the public conversation. Astroturfing, the manufacturing of a fake grassroots uprising, is a big money service offered by some very powerful Washington public relations companies. One of the more successful of these is Bonner & Associates, which boasts of a long history of manufacturing fake grassroots movements for corporate America.  A 1993 New York Times article, A New Breed of Hired Hands Cultivates Grass-Roots Anger , profiles Jack Bonner and his company as a "new breed of Washington firms that has turned grass-roots organizing to the advantage of its high-paying clients, generally trade associations and corporations." As the Times rightly puts it: "the rise of this industry has made it hard to tell the difference between manufactured public opinion and genuine explosions of popular sentiment." If the name Bonner & Associates sounds familiar, it's because they were busted recently for sending fake letters on fake letterhead to House representatives in opposition to the Waxman-Markey clean energy and climate change bill. This latest failed Astroturf attempt by Bonner was on behalf of the coal industry, but it is only one small example of the empire Jack Bonner has built in his 20-plus years of manufactuing dissent on progressive health and energy legislation. Some of Bonner's earliest Astroturfing efforts were on behalf of big tobacco companies. A 1986 strategic document titled "Proposal to Defeat Current Legislation on Banning Tobacco Advertising" touts Jack Bonner and his company as experts in coalition building and grassroots. The document points to Bonner's past work on behalf of major chemical producers to defeat amendments to the Toxic Air section of the Clean Air Act as an example of Bonner's expertise in the area of grassroots campaigning. If you want to see how an astroturf campaign is built, it's worth reading the whole document, but for a taste, here are some highlights:  " Goal: defeat federal legislation to ban tobacco advertising and prevent similar state and local initiatives through a grass-roots campaign. Objective: to identify and mobilize leading national and local leaders (i.e. business and community leaders, newspaper owners and journalists) to actively participate in a targeted grass-roots campaign directly with members of Congress). And, "... utilizing the expertise of Bonner and Associates and through our paid state coordinators, will undertake the following activities as part of a proposed grass-roots strategy: - identify local/state community and business leaders through telephone and on-site communication efforts and develop a data base of supporters - select chairmen to be responsible for the statewide and local efforts - participate in association meetings and conventions and sponsor specific events - coordinate meetings between state and local chairmen and their legislators - conduct statewide tours in major cities with business and community leaders from the state - place editorials in newspapers throughout the country - enlist and coordinate support of state and local organizations - compile and deliver resolutions signed by state and local organizations - conduct a letter-writing campaign, telegram effort and phone-in day The summary of tactics confidently concludes that: "The grass-roots support generated by our campaign will defeat legislative attempts to ban tobacco advertising." Another memo dated August 27, 1986 by tobacco's main front group in the 1980's and 90's, the Tobacco Institute (think, Thank You for Smoking ), lists "grassroots expert" Jack Bonner as being available to discuss communications efforts and help the Tobacco Institute focus more clearly on their grassroots capabilities and needs. Bonner follows this memo up with a thank you letter to the Tobacco Institute dated Sept. 26, 1986 that reads in part: "I would like to express my appreciation for your kind attention at the field staff meeting last week I hope you found our discussion to be helpful and informative. The tobacco industry has many tough battles ahead of it and I am firmly convinced that the only chance for victories is by broadening your base of supporters." Bonner's thank you letter includes a brag sheet of the services his company provides: "What really influences a member of Congress on an issue? In our democracy, it is the constituent - the voter - or, rather, large numbers of them, who have the most influence on the way a Representative or Senator will vote. "Lobbyists know it is one thing to tell a Congressman his voters care about an issue, but it is much more important to prove they care - and care enough to get involved." That's true, of course. When politicians run into a crowd of engaged citizens, they tend to react. But they also tend to mistake those citizens for disinterested third parties who actually care about the issue - not as paid activists working for an affected industry. Fast-forward to today where we have both clean energy and health care bills weaving their way through Capitol Hill corridors. One bill would provide better, more affordable health care for millions of Americans and the other would unleash an economic clean energy and green job revolution. In an ideal form of democracy we would see a national conversation on the pros and cons of both these important pieces of legislation where average citizens would meet face-to-face with their local representative or go to Town Hall meeting and ask questions and get frank and honest answers. Instead, we get PR firms like Adfero organizing phony protests and Bonner whipping up fraudulent letter s misrepresenting the position of charitiable organizations that didn't even know they were being dragged into the public debate. We get the American Petroleum Institute creating and coordinating faked-up events in which energy companies bus their employees over for lunchtime rallies that masquerade as spontaneous outbursts of public enthusiasm. This isn't an expression of public opinion, it is an highly organized (and shamelessly well-funded) attack on democracy and, as the tobacco documents quoted above prove, it has been typical of the Bonner style for far too long. If someone is participating in a "grassroots" campaign, their free t-shirts and baseball caps should all say "sponsored by (name your self-interested corporation here)." Those companies have every right to participate in the public conversation. But we should have every right to know when our elected representatives are getting bamboozled by a "spontaneous" campaign that was ordered up in a corporate boardroom and delivered by people who (if the Bonner example can be extrapolated) really don't care if the truth gets in the way of their messaging.
 
Steve Kirsch: Cash for Coal Anyone? Top
Since the "Cash for Clunkers" program was so successful in stimulating demand for new autos, why not use the same concept to stimulate the demand for new clean power plants to replace our dirty coal plants? How about a "Cash for Coal" program? The government will pay you for the residual economic value of your coal plant and offer to finance the construction of a new, carbon-free base load power replacement plant of equal or greater capacity provided the cost of the plant is under $2,000 per KW of average capacity (not nameplate capacity). Nuclear power (such as the CANDU reactor) has recently been installed in China for less than this, so the numbers are reasonable. Of course, any clean power technology would qualify so long as the price target is met; I'm just using nuclear here as an example. We are installing clean power in the world at least 100 times slower than we need to avert a climate crisis (350ppm being the new goal which we've already exceeded). Cap and trade isn't going to get us there fast enough. In fact, some influential thinkers, such as James Hansen, will tell you that that Waxman-Markey will actually slow down the rate we install new clean power. To give you some idea of how far behind we are, consider that in 2008, for technosolar, peak capacity for solar was 13.5 GW and wind was 122 GW. The amount of wave power and hot dry rock geothermal is trivial (small scale demonstration only). Volcanic vent geothermal is 10.5 GW. Based on average capacity factors of 0.15 for solar, 0.25 for wind and 0.75 for geyser-derived geothermal, that represents a total average 'renewable energy' power (excluding biomass) of 40 GW, globally, in 2008. We need about a GW of new clean power each day for the next 25 years to avert disaster. So in our entire history, we're 40 days into it. Let's say we installed all that power in the last 4 years to be aggressive. So that's 10GW /year or about 36 times slower than we should be. But a "Cash for Coal" option could get us there at a rate of our choosing. If it doesn't work fast enough, all Congress has to do is raise the incentive price until it does. What could be simpler? If we are serious about saving the planet and achieving 350ppm, this may be the most economical way to accelerate the rate of retiring coal plants. If we cannot virtually eliminate the CO2 emissions from coal plants (either by replacing them or capturing all their CO2 emissions), then it is IMPOSSIBLE to hit 350ppm or even 450ppm no matter what else we do. The planet is lost. If we develop new technologies to suck massive amounts of CO2 from the air and sequester it and then require all power plant operators to be carbon neutral, that would work too. In the absence of a proven technology to do this economically, at large scale for all coal plants, and without risk of accidental release, the Cash for Coal option may be our cheapest solution since it doesn't generate the CO2 in the first place and ultimately is more cost effective. More on Climate Change
 
Meredith Lopez: Meet My Mom Top
This Friday, August 28, my mom celebrates her 60th birthday. In honor of her milestone, I'm handing this week's post over to her. She's a much nicer person than I am, so please be kind in your comments. Mom, meet my HuffPo audience. HuffPo audience, meet my mom. Take it away, Mommy! *** When my children were small, other parents would complain about the behavior of their children at various ages. I would say to them, rather arrogantly it seems looking back, "Enjoy each stage of your child's life, because you will never have this moment again." I like to think that's how I have lived my life, enjoying every moment. This year I turn 60, the same year my first grandchild, the Juban Princeling, celebrates his first birthday. And my youngest child, Mr. Funny, turns 30. People keep asking me how it feels to be the "Big 6-0." I'm not sure how to answer that question. Yes, it is a milestone, but it is also another stage of my life. I intend to enter my seventh decade on this earth with the same optimism and love of life I have always embraced. As a " Boomer " I have seen so many technological changes -- more so than any other generation before me, although less so than my children's generation have seen and will see. I have watched as television grew from a small box with a black and white screen , to big screen, to digital flat screen. Telephones have gone from having " party lines ," which required sharing the line with one or more of your neighbors, to cordless private lines, to cell phones. Public pay phones? Dinosaurs. Have you seen one lately? Computers have gone from the size of an entire room for commercial use only , to desktop, to laptop. And pretty much everyone has at least one computer in their home. The internet has gone from a way to communicate by e-mail to a portal where you can find out pretty much anything you need to know in seconds. And, you can "chat" with people through the computer. Who would have thought? I witnessed the struggle for rights for blacks , women and gays . I watched women burn their bras - symbolic, yes, but really for some of us, kind of pointless and dumb. I also know that, in spite of the long way women have come, we still earn less in most jobs than men doing the same work . For the most part, it is still the mother who is expected to take time off work for the sick child. For the most part, it is still the mother who is expected to choose between career and raising their children. However, that's not always automatically the case anymore , and that is a good thing. Another question people ask is how it feels to be a grandmother. Really?? I guess it is not a given that every woman embraces grandmotherhood. For me it is a complete blessing. I love the Juban Princeling so much that it is a physical presence for me. Sadly, I live 1304.7 miles away from my grandson. (I Mapquested it for accuracy - another great advance!) Happily, it is only a three hour plane trip to visit him in person. Happily, the existence of the Web Cam makes it easy to see him "live" as often as possible between visits. I don't want to be the hip, glamorous grandmother . Nor do I wish to be the rocking chair granny with a bun in her hair who knits all day long. I just want to be "Grandma." And what do I wish for my relationship with the Princeling? Just that he love me with a fraction of the intensity that I love him - and that the love never ends. That he always feels a connection with me that cannot be broken. I have no intention of telling my daughter and son-in-law how to raise their son. My husband and I have observed that they are doing a wonderful job all on their own. And clearly, he loves them the best and the most. I am ecstatic that they involve me in their son's life. Believe me, I have heard stories, and that is not necessarily a given either. So, here I am, on the threshold of my 60th birthday and a first time Grandmother, and I love all of it. The 60s were a great time for me in my youth, and now the 60s will be a great time for this stage of my life. Bring on the 60s! More on Computers
 
Aubrey Sarvis: Remembering Senator Kennedy Top
A civil rights giant and champion of the underdog has died. Yes, we knew death might come any day. Still, it left me feeling very sad, and I suspect it did most Americans. You pause, you reflect. Many of us have Kennedy memories and stories, and I have mine. Some thirty years ago, as a young lawyer just out of law school , I worked with the Senator on airline and trucking legislation. I met him at the White House for more than one bill-signing ceremony, I took my old boss Ray Smith, then Bell Atlantic CEO, to talk about ENDA legislation with him, and later telecommunications legislation. He was invariably courteous but more than that he was also welcoming and friendly, especially to staff. He was also a jovial man and he was a smart man. Just look at his extraordinary and lasting legislative accomplishments in civil rights, health care, education, transportation, and on down the line. He did all that with great gusto and a great sense of humor, maybe because he was Irish. Most of his life was lived on the public stage, and he demonstrated that one person can make a difference. Ted Kennedy did indeed make a difference. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network joins the country in extending our sincere condolences to the Kennedy family and the Senator's staff, and in honoring and recognizing his vast contributions over his decades in public life. The loss of this great American leader and legislator marks the end of an era. The LGBT community has lost one of its most committed champions. Everyone in the LGBT community understood that this generous man was the go-to senator if we wanted to move a major piece of legislation impacting our community. More than a year ago, Senator Kennedy told SLDN that he would like to take the lead in the Senate as the main author of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." He insisted that the bill's introduction and debate be bi-partisan. We were honored that he volunteered to lead this debate in the Senate. Several senators have been ready to introduce the bill, but they have held back out of respect for Senator Kennedy's wishes. As a key member of the Senate Armed Service Committee and longtime opponent of DADT, Senator Kennedy was a formidable advocate in this debate. We knew we had a fighter with us. His leadership and caring will be deeply missed, but he will remain a great inspiration for us as we continue the fight for justice. I deeply regret that Senator Kennedy will not be participating in the first DADT hearing in sixteen years in the Senate Armed Services Committee this fall. We will miss the unique passion, intensity, and common sense that he would have brought into the hearing room. It would certainly be appropriate if Senate leaders, Democrats and Republicans, and the new authors of the Senate's repeal legislation would move Ted Kennedy's "Military Readiness Enhancement Act" as a tribute to his leadership in civil rights. That would surely be an appropriate way to honor the Senator and his commitment to equality for all, and it would make all of those who have been leading and fighting for repeal over the past sixteen years extremely proud. We will miss Senator Kennedy terribly. More on Civil Rights
 
GOP Rep. Smiles, Nods As Man Declares Himself A "Proud Right Wing Terrorist" (VIDEO) Top
Earlier this week, it was reported that Rep. Wally Herger, (R-Cali.) had hosted a town meeting during which he praised an attendee for declaring himself a "proud right-wing terrorist." "Amen, God bless you," Herger told the man, named Bert Stead. "There is a great American." In light of the angry protests sprouting up at townhalls throughout the country -- with several of the protesters toting guns -- the scene was clearly noteworthy. But questions remained as to how just how sincere the man was in registering his anger and Herger in his response. Pretty sincere, it turns out. A Democratic source passed along video of the event to the Huffington Post and it shows, quite clearly, that Herger offered not just sympathetic laughter and a hearty smile but also a full-throat endorsement of the Stead's position. Here's the video: Herger's remarks, when first reported, were criticized by some in the media for fanning the flames of politically-motivated violence. "This is the dangerous edge, in which these people, including some elected officials are now dancing," said Chris Matthews . "We've been here before. Words lead to actions, words create the national mood, the mood creates a license. People take that license and use it." The congressman, however, stands by what he said. "Congressman Herger stands by his statement in support of his constituent," read a statement from his office. "Mr. Bert Stead is a taxpayer and veteran, who, like so many others, is rightfully fed up with being called 'un-American', or 'extremist' or a 'political terrorist' by liberals in Washington, for simply exercising his First Amendment rights. Mr. Stead served his country and therefore he is a great American. The Congressman doesn't at all regret commending him for standing up, exercising his free speech rights, and expressing his strong concerns with the direction liberals in Washington are taking our country." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Andrea Jaeger: A Match Made in Heaven Goes to Hell Top
This is the story of how an Orthodox Rabbi's and an Anglican Nun's deal to support hope and community exposed the soullessness of wealth in the American West. I hope after reading this piece you will give of your voice and actions to provide a better ending. Aspen Chabad and Little Star Foundation, which for 20 years has provided long term care and a better quality of life for desperately ill, poverty stricken children, came together, each providing something perfectly suited to the other to fulfill its mission. "It was a match made in heaven. This was a win win in every aspect," said Aspen Chabad's Rabbi Mendel Mintz. Now, this perfect fit has disintegrated into a land use dispute with five wealthy property owners in Aspen. What went wrong? Little Star contracted to sell its 6.5-acre Silver Lining Ranch to Aspen's Chabad. The deal gave Chabad a beautiful home in Aspen for its Jewish Community Center. It gave Little Star $13.5 million from the sale to go towards the care and scholarships for children with cancer as well as food and medicine to impoverished children around the world. The deal allowed us to use the ranch for cancer camps a few times a year. Chabad was happy. Little Star was happy. The City of Aspen was happy because it zoned the Silver Lining ranch land for non-profit, community enrichment, medical or educational use. Chabad clearly fit with this zoning. The City Counsel unanimously approved Chabad's use application. Then, the combination of selfishness and money reared its powerful head. Months after Chabad and Little Star entered into an escrow agreement, three of the six property owners in the Stillwater HOA that includes the Silver Lining Ranch, changed the covenants (without calling a meeting) in a transparent and single minded effort to block the sale to Chabad. The threat of litigation has prevented the close of escrow and has slowly drained Little Star's resources. Our kids are suffering and our foundation is dying. HOA President Thomas P. Reagan told the New York Times that "We've always maintained that the homeowner covenants do not allow (Chabad's use). We haven't changed our position ... the covenants are black and white." Another HOA member, Peter Gerson, told the NY Times. "We're powerless to do anything (to fix the situation)." That's not true! These people feign blindness to the fact that the so-called covenant they claim restricts Chabad's use was CREATED AND ADOPTED BY THEM, after escrow opened, without a meeting of the HOA. These same wealthy individuals could simply rescind their covenant, but they will not even discuss it. As former City Councilman Jack Johnson, who voted with a unanimous council in favor of the sale to Chabad, pointed out, the homeowners' association is not powerless. "If they continue to bully and block, there's no doubt of their intentions," Johnson said. One HOA member, Charles Bellock, is a developer who has built thousands of houses around golf courses. Another, Jeff Verschleiser, made his fortune as the head of mortgage-backed securities for Bear Stearns before the Wall Street collapse. Neither live in Aspen nor have they built homes on their HOA lots. Two other members who live there -- across the river and an open space away from our ranch -- have admitted they never heard or saw anyone on our property. None of them use our access roads to get to their properties. When the City Council unanimously approved Chabad's bid for our property in May, the HOA ramped up its threats of litigation while refusing to negotiate. At the annual HOA meeting August 2, 2009, I tried to raise the issue, but was denied the chance to speak. Instead, two of the members escorted me from the meeting. I learned then that this nightmare for our kids and our foundation was not going to end through negotiation. Consequently, we've had to cut programs, with kids suffering immeasurably. I started Little Star Foundation in my early 20s, when I left my career as a professional tennis player. At 16, I was ranked the No. 2 women's player in the world. I used the millions I made to aid children in need. Little Star Foundation has helped thousands of children like Lindsay Belt . Diagnosed with brain cancer, Lindsay has spent her youth in hospital beds, chemotherapy and operating rooms. We have supported her for 14 years. Frail and on a feeding tube at night, Lindsay reflects on the HOA's actions: "Kids now and children in the future are losing out on help. They are the victims. This is too important. Five people should not force Little Star to shut its doors or lose their facility." Good and selfless people exist and have supported us. We need that kind of urgent help now. With bankruptcy looming, with no money for our kids' programs and for the court battle that our pro bono attorney is confident we will win, we need your help. Our children face more uncertainty, more anguish and less opportunity. Children whose very lives are in danger should not be put through this injustice. At the end of your day, ask yourself how it would feel to know, "I changed lives." What a gift it is to come to the rescue and provide a miracle. We need that gift now. News Links: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/2009908259998 http://nightly.newsvine.com/_video/2009/08/18/3166148-andrea-jaeger-battles-in-not-on-court http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13186095 www.littlestar.org http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/us/03aspen.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Aspen%20%20Chabad&st=cse
 
Gauri van Gulik: A Different Kind of Gag: Europe's Reproductive Health Fatigue Top
(Brussels) -- After almost a decade of dismay at U.S. policy, it was wonderful for those of us in Europe who work on women's rights to witness the U.S. Secretary of State stand up in Congress and say, "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health," and, "Keeping women and men in ignorance and denied access to services actually increases the rate of abortion." This new, refreshing tide of realism and sense of priority in Washington should spur us urgently to reflect on our own countries' records. This will be a lot harder than just blaming Bush. During the past months, I have been meeting here about women's issues with European Union countries. In general, the future looks bright, with the EU presidency coming up for both Sweden and Spain, which have given priority to some of these issues. However, general attitudes can still be sexist as the remark by one diplomat -- "I like women's rights, because I like women" -- indicates. More important, sexual and reproductive health rights remain a huge problem for European policy makers. Whenever the topics "gender," "women," or even "health" come up in development aid council discussions in Brussels, the session inevitably turns into a fight about abortion. Some countries have made ending maternal mortality their priority, and they push for services like family planning, safe and legal abortion and obstetric care both at home and in their development policy. Several European countries, the UK and the Netherlands, for instance -- saved thousands of women's lives during the years of the Bush administration by filling what we called the "decency-gap." They provided money and political support to fill the gap left because of the withdrawal by the U.S. of all funds for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and its global gag rule, requiring non-governmental organizations that received US funding to refrain from even discussing abortion services. Many organizations, including some of the largest family planning providers, had to close much needed clinics in rural areas from Sierra Leone to Ethiopia. European countries made it possible for some to remain open. Other countries however, including Poland, Ireland and Malta, don't want to address the issue in the EU's development aid budget, on which a majority of countries must agree, because their own domestic policies limit access to safe and legal abortions. There is therefore a deadlock in the Council of the European Union, the most important decision-making body of the EU that brings together the 27 EU countries. A diplomat from a progressive country expressed the tension last month: "I am so sick of this topic. I know it's bad, but I'd rather not talk about it at all." This may sound flippant to women who are this issue and live it every day, but the discussions are painful. Every comma is debated, every country has its "line to take" and position to defend and everyone knows how the debate will end: Without any change. In fact, according to the latest data, funding for family planning and basic reproductive health services in poor countries fell by 7.8 percent, a loss of more than $160 million. Unfortunately, this debate affects people far from the halls of Brussels. It is about Lisa, whom I saw about a year ago in a clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was 12 years old and came into the small facility with excruciating pains and high fever. She had been raped by a family member and wanted to have an abortion. She was told to by a local "doctor" to swallow acid and rub it all over her genital area. The skin on her thighs, vagina, and stomach was stripped off completely and seriously infected. Lisa died the next day. Girls like her do not have a voice in this debate. Funding, knowledge and political support from European and US donors can help girls like Lisa to make more informed decisions and to have access to affordable and safe abortion services if necessary. The same goes for the 500,000 women who die every year from giving birth. The U.S. has the opportunity and duty now to turn the tables and urge the Europeans to unite in the struggle to prevent women from dying for no reason other than discrimination, lack of information and lack of funds. The US has been in shamefully painful labor when it comes to maternal health and abortion for almost a decade; now it is time to push. More on Women's Rights
 
Rafael Nadal Not In Peak Condition Heading Into US Open Top
NEW YORK — Rafael Nadal concedes he probably isn't in peak condition heading into the U.S. Open. The Spanish star returned to competition this month after taking off more than two months because of tendinitis in both knees. Now he's seeking the one major title he hasn't won. "Well, I am No. 3 in the world. And the No. 3 in the world should have a chance to win, no?" Nadal told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "But I don't know if I arrive in best condition." Nadal and Serena Williams hit tennis balls for charity on a makeshift court on Broadway in the middle of Manhattan. They showed off the Nike outfits they'll wear during the day at the Open: a hot pink dress for Williams, a bright yellow shirt with teal headband for Nadal. One of the reasons Nadal decided not to defend his Wimbledon title was that he found himself thinking too much about his knees. "After an injury, sure, you think a little bit," he said Wednesday. "But I am much better, I feel." Nadal made his comeback at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, losing to Juan Martin del Potro in the quarterfinals. He then fell to Novak Djokovic in the semifinals at the Cincinnati Masters. Nadal had rested his knees since a fourth-round defeat to Robin Soderling at the French Open on May 31 ended his streak of four consecutive championships at Roland Garros. He lost his No. 1 ranking to Roger Federer and later dropped to No. 3 behind Andy Murray. Nadal has never advanced beyond the semifinals at the U.S. Open. "It's very special. I've won the other three, so if I win that it's going to be a complete cycle," he said. "It will be amazing."
 
The Barclays To Feature Tiger Woods For The First Time In Six Years Top
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — No matter what players think of the golf course, Liberty National gets universal praise for its intimate view of the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty, so close to the shore she looks as if she could tend a flag on the green. Equally impressive is the view of Tiger Woods suited up for the opening of the PGA Tour Playoffs. Woods has not played The Barclays in six years, and this will be the first time he competes in all four of the playoff events for the FedEx Cup. At a time when PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is asking players to do more for sponsors in a tough economy, the world's No. 1 player is pulling his weight. "Tiger Woods playing is really good," Geoff Ogilvy said. "He's been very good for golf lately, not just because of the TV ratings, but he's playing a lot more. Our tour is always better when he's here. Golf is getting spoiled." Golf went eight months without Woods as he recovered from knee surgery. Now it can't get rid of him. The Barclays, which gets under way Thursday, is part of a nine-week stretch in which Woods will be playing seven times. He hasn't played that much in such a short period since the end of the 2006 season, when he missed nine weeks because of his father's death. Asked why he was playing this year, Woods replied, "I qualified." That he did, winning five times in 13 starts to be the top seed among 125 players who qualified for this $65 million bonanza at the end of the year – a $7.5 million purse at each of the four events, with $35 million in bonus money for the FedEx Cup. The points system has been tweaked to put more emphasis on the eight months that comprise the regular season, with quintuple the value of points during the playoff events, then a reset of the points that allows for a shootout at the Tour Championship for the $10 million prize. Woods could have skipped The Barclays and won the FedEx Cup, as he did in 2007. He learned Wednesday that it was possible for him to win the next three tournaments, finish second at the Tour Championship and not capture the FedEx Cup. Or that someone could win the big prize without having won a single tournament this year. "It is different, there's no doubt," he said. "But then again, this is what we're playing for. This is our opportunity to play well. You play well at the right time, you should be all right." Whether the system works to everyone's satisfaction this year, the playoffs is off to a solid start, mainly because Woods is playing. "It's great that everyone is here," Steve Stricker said. "It gets this off on the right foot." For Woods, it is a continuation of quiet support. In March, he hosted 16 chief executives of companies that sponsor the PGA Tour for lunch and golf at Isleworth, some of them trying to decide whether to renew contracts. After the second round at Firestone this month, Woods hopped into a cart and headed for a meeting with sponsors. "Corporate duty," he said with a smile. He played the Buick Open, even though his endorsement contract with the automaker ended late last year. That meant playing three straight weeks, the final tournament being a major, and Woods said Wednesday that being in contention three straight weeks – two victories and blowing a two-shot lead at the PGA Championship to Y.E. Yang – took its toll. And now The Barclays. "I think we have to support the tour, especially in this economy right now," Woods said. "That's one of the reasons why I played Flint, to show my support and my 'thank you' to Buick, and a lot of guys did the same thing. ... And certainly, Barclays has been just a great sponsor over the year, and hopefully, they will continue and we can continue building the partnership." Woods conceded that he felt a greater responsibility as the sport's top player. He said he couldn't play more earlier in the year because he didn't want to push himself physically while returning from reconstructive knee surgery. As for his responsibility to tee it up when the playoffs begin? "You want to be here. You want to be in the playoffs," he said. "And ultimately, this is our opportunity to get in the Tour Championship. So it starts here." It will end at Liberty National for 25 players who don't finish among the top 100 and advance to the next week at TPC Boston for the Deutsche Bank Championship. No one has played the golf course in competition, and while the architecture isn't overwhelming anyone, the length has their attention. Liberty National is 7,419 yards and plays as a par 71. The meat of the course is in the middle, with three par 4s at least 474 yards, a par 5 that is 611 yards and the par-3 11th that is 250 yards. The 18th hole is a par 4 at 508 yards, and another great view of New York. Adding to the difficulty are the undulating greens, with some of the most severe on the long par 4s. "The holes that are 480 and above," Woods said. "It's going to be hard to get the ball close. But everyone has got to play them." (This version CORRECTS SUBS 8th graf to correct purse size)
 
Stanley Kutler: Why Rendition? Top
Two front-page New York Times (August 25, 2009) stories appeared concerning our treatment of alleged terrorists and past practices of torture. First, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the naming of a special prosecutor to investigate the long-ignored, long-suppressed, and now much redacted Inspector General's report of the Central Intelligence Agency's physical and mental abuses of detainees. (May we say, "torture?") The news emphasized the attorney general's agreement with the president's oft-repeated insistence that he was unwilling to investigate and prosecute past misdeeds that occurred under the previous administration. But Holder stated he was compelled to "follow the law" and appoint a prosecutor. Attorneys general are not noted for their courage in acting contrary to the president's wishes. Perhaps Holder is signaling that the president wants us to know that his heart is in the right place. But more consistent with President Obama's zigs and zags of late, the Times 's second story reported that the administration will maintain the Bush-Cheney policy of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation. The Times quickly added the administration's press release, stating its pledge "to closely monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured." Apparently, the FBI will do the monitoring -- which should be interesting. The qualification of monitoring is at odds with the president's statement in 2007, just after he announced his candidacy for president. We must, he then insisted, "end the practice of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off counties, ... [and] of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law." Several months ago, the president announced that the secret network of CIA-run prisons would end, but the news now is to continue the harsh interrogations in foreign-run prisons. A distinction with no difference. Common sense is in order here: why bother with the time and expense of dispatching suspects to third countries for further interrogation -- if not because we prefer that others dirty their hands, and not our folks. If they are going to be properly questioned, why not in the United States? What will we monitor abroad -- Syrians serving coffee to their prisoners, or Egyptians serving tea? Must we continue to use unemployed eastern European secret police from the Communist past to facilitate our interrogations? The administration's obvious contradiction probably will be ignored by reporters covering the White House or the Department of Justice. Will they dare ask such questions in the face of their imagined fears of losing "access?" The president should be challenged. His campaign words on torture are empty, rendered meaningless with his "new" policy on rendition. Stanley Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate and other writings. More on Eric Holder
 
Julia Plevin: Notes on Hanoi, Vietnam Top
Just a few months ago I was a senior at Dartmouth College. Like the majority of my peers, I was stressed about my post-college plans. I applied for all sorts of communications, consulting, new media, and teaching jobs in a disorganized frenzy. I even considered posting my resume on The Huffington Post in the hope that someone would be intrigued and hire me. And then, at the last minute, I received a fellowship to work for a year in Hanoi, Vietnam. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I decided to take the opportunity. When people asked me why I was moving to Asia, I responded, only half-jokingly, "because I could not get a job in the U.S." Once I started reading about Hanoi, my mind became filled with romantic visions. The city is called "the Paris of the east" because of its French influences. There is French architecture, French bread, and definitely a coffee culture. I started to compare Hanoi in 2009 to Paris after World War I. I have always been enamored with Gertrude Stein and her clan of influential writers and artists, like Hemingway, Picasso, Matisse, and Steinbeck, who would gather and swap observations and ideas. The creative Americans came to Paris because they were disillusioned by what America was becoming -- a country of big business without any cosmopolitan culture. Granted, it is has been about 40 years since the Vietnam War ended, while the Lost Generation was in Paris right after the war. But I have only been in Hanoi for two weeks and already I have found an enclave of creative, ambitious Americans. As one young American writer I recently met said, "I could never afford to live in New York City and spend my days writing at coffee shops, but in Hanoi I can be in a cosmopolitan city and do exactly that." When rent for a room in a nice house costs about $200 and delicious hot food from a street vendor costs one dollar, 20-somethings can actually afford to indulge themselves in the thinking and creativity that their liberal arts educations bestowed upon them. Just like New York City, Hanoi is bursting with creative energy. There is an incredible amount of change occurring in this country at a rapid pace. There is an ever-apparent juxtaposition between old and new. For example, old men practice their ancient martial arts in the early morning hours and old women wear rice hats and pedal around on rusty bikes selling fruit, while the young fashion-conscious generation zooms around the city on motorbikes. I find myself walking around with both a digital camera and a Flip video camera because there is always something I need to capture. So many thoughts swirl around in my head that when I finally get home after a long day, I have to run to my computer and write them all down. The profound flux is readily visible. Fancy businessmen still sit on little stools on the street and eat bowls of bun cha for lunch and, although supermarkets are sprouting up, most people still buy food in little markets along the streets. Change is easy to spot, but to see remnants of the war is harder for the untrained, pacifistic western eye. About a third of Vietnam's population is under the age of 15. Most Vietnamese were not alive during the war. Unlike places in the Middle East where young children are taught to hate their enemies from birth, the Vietnamese did not seem to pass any enmity against Americans to their children. While I would not go so far as to say that they love Americans on the whole, I do not feel ostracized here because of events that happened long before I was born. It is apparent that Vietnamese people are tough and resourceful. When an American friend mentioned that he lost in tennis to his Vietnamese opponent even though the American had all the right gear and the big forehand, I joked casually that that was just like the war, when the Americans, for all their learned skills and equipment, could not overcome the Vietnamese. While I was able to casually joke, I know there are some people for whom the war here is still so real. I respect both Americans and Vietnamese who had hard war experiences and I am grateful that I can be part of this new generation that has lost sight of the war and wants to form friendships and alliances. I have not been in Hanoi long enough to know my way around, but already I feel as though I have found a place where both history and the future are so alive. I am sure my thoughts will continue to evolve. I do not claim to be an expert, but just an observer of a very interesting place in a pivotal time. And luckily for me, I am not a lone observer. I have met other Americans with whom I can ponder and conspire. For more observations and photos, follow my blog: www.profoundflux.blogspot.com . More on Vietnam
 
Bailed-Out Financial Firms Forked Over $6 Million To Members Of Congress Since November Top
Lobbyists representing seven of Wall Street's top ten bailout beneficiaries and their trade associations made more than $6 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress -- and hosted no fewer than 70 fundraising parties between Election Day and June, according to a new analysis by Public Citizen . "This is what [Senator Dick] Durbin probably meant when he said the banks own the place," said Public Citizen's Taylor Lincoln in an interview with the Huffington Post. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, remarked that banks "frankly own the place" as he struggled to drum up support for bankruptcy reform among his Senate colleagues back in April. He called banks "the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill." Public Citizen analyzed campaign contributions and details about political fundraisers gleaned from invitations obtained by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation and posted on its website, www.politicalpartytime.org . There's no requirement to disclose details about fundraising events, so there might have been a lot more than 70 fundraisers for the industry. (The Huffington Post makes use of the Sunlight Foundation's invitations as well, visiting these fundraisers in an effort to cover lobbying as it happens.) Here's a list showing the industry's biggest party animals: Lobbyists representing the American Bankers Association gave the most of any one group, dishing out nearly $1.96 million to members of Congress from the fall to the summer, followed by Citigroup at just over $1 million and Goldman Sachs at $777,476. The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Banking Committee were the top targets, with ten and seven members, respectively, being toasted at fundraisers. Superlobbyist Tony Podesta and employees of his fast-growing firm, the Podesta Group, hosted 14 parties -- more than anyone else. Public Citizen's report notes that there would have been one more, but Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) canceled an event after it came out that the invitation listed "the Select Committee on Intelligence for the first course" for dinner and the "choice of Appropriations, Judiciary or Rules committees" for the other courses. "This study shows how the lobbyists who party with Congress are doing it for a reason -- they have a lot at stake financially," said the Sunlight Foundation's Nancy Watzman. Click here for a PDF of Public Citizen's report. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Transparency
 
Lucia Brawley: Health Care Reform? Yes We Can! Top
Twelve strangers - a cross-section of ages, races, professions and tax brackets - assembled Monday of last week in the lobby of the Westwood office building where Dianne Feinstein has her L.A. headquarters. We were there to share our personal stories with the senator's District Director, Trevor J. Daley, and to express our fervent desire for a robust public health care option. The ubiquity of our national health care crisis exhibited itself right there in the lobby. Manny, the security guard in the senator's office building asked me why our diverse group had gathered. When I told him it was for health care, he volunteered that his own sister had had to wait 14 hours in an E.R. with a dislocated knee because she lacked insurance. In my arms, I brandished several hundred signed letters asking for health care reform, some containing harrowing health care stories like Manny's. A group of former Obama campaign volunteers, Congressional District 33 North for Change (headed by Lyn Goldfarb and Carol Newton of Los Feliz), tables every Sunday at the Hollywood Farmer's Market on Ivar and Selma. Weekend after weekend, concerned citizens line up shoulder-to-shoulder to sign letters to local representatives, as well as Senators Boxer and Feinstein, demanding universal health care. The day before my trip to the latter's office, we collected 777 letters. I hereby formally invite CNN and MSNBC, along with any other news outlet, to meet us at the farmer's market and see where the real health care grassroots movement happens. Why have apoplectic anti-health-care "activists" (some paid by insurance lobbyists) received so much airtime for acting badly? A couple of weeks ago, at Rep. Adam Schiff's town hall, Venice for Change activist Marta Evry was head butted by a right-wing protester. Across this country, equally passionate citizens follow democratic protocol in asking for health care and receive no attention. I also invite the press to join us at any of the upcoming town halls in LA - Rep. Diane Watson on Thursday, Rep. Judy Chu on Saturday and many more to come. Over and over again, CD33 North for Change and other groups brave the ire of anti-reform activists, as they Schiff's town hall: Watch Health Care Town Halls: A Battlefield of Opposing Views in News   |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com We are the majority - those of us demanding reform. However, we don't grab the same level of publicity as the right - unless Howard Dean attends an event - because we agitate rationally. Perhaps it's time for us to get a tad more theatrical, while remaining respectful. I had the idea - and please feel free to use it if you like it - that we attend town halls dressed up in bandages, leaning on crutches, wearing neck braces, symbolizing America's disenfranchised sick and wounded. I am trying to figure out how to make a suit out of insulin syringes, accompanied by a sign that reads, "Don't let the health insurance companies stick it to us anymore!" Judi Laing of Obamawood - a group I helped found in '07 which collaborates with CD33 North for Change - thought of everyone wearing hospital gowns to town halls (probably easier than the syringe suit). We have the right-wing fringe to thank for adding fuel to our fire. For one, I found nothing more incendiary than those hideous Obama-as-Joker flyers posted on streetlamps and telephone poles in my neighborhood. Then a few days later, much to my chagrin, our fellow progressive of all people, Kathleen Sebelius, galvanized still further legions to our cause by laughably suggesting that a public option was a mere "sliver" of the health care reform necessary to make this country livable for millions of uninsured Americans. The twelve Southern Californians gathering last Monday in Feinstein's lobby beg to differ. One older woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, worked three jobs as a single mom raising three kids - one of those jobs was just to pay for health care for the family. Sometimes she'd had to choose between health insurance payments and food for her kids or herself. Now grown, one of her daughters suffers from untimely cancer and is unable to afford all of her treatments, the stress of which is accelerating the spread of the disease. Chris Robson of Long Beach, our ringleader - a youthful sixty-four-year-old former executive, recently the casualty of health care industry lay-offs - has suffered a severe decline in income, while incurring a drastic increase in health care costs, forcing him to dip into his retirement savings to pay for immediate needs. Meanwhile, he just discovered that Medicare doesn't cover dental costs, which thus far have become his biggest health expense. Meanwhile, his ex-wife is unable to work due to a terrible accident. Without a job and its requisite health insurance, she's shopping around for a new policy to no avail, due to the pre-existing condition of having been hit by a car! Jackie Potts, a beautiful, red-headed journalist from Hollywood, had to quit her job, with its health care benefits, to nurse her mother who was dying of cancer. Now, Jackie lives not only without her mother but without health care, continually receiving notification that she's uninsurable due to being "underweight." I met her - Jackie is slender, in a healthy, attractive way. And what if she were underweight - wouldn't she therefore need health care all the more? With a history of cancer in her family, she understandably wants the best medical attention money can buy, but has none at all. Cyndy Fowler, a small business owner from Long Beach, had to lay off three of her employees because she could no longer afford to insure all of them. She spoke eloquently to the fact that the current health care system in this country stifles the very entrepreneurial spirit that supposedly characterizes our nation, by preventing small business owners from expanding, due to the prohibitive cost of purchasing insurance for employees. David Hennage, another of our contingent, who has worked on all sides of health care - for unions, advocacy groups and health centers - praises the work done by the Remote Area Medical (RAM) volunteers who offered free health care last week to teeming throngs of uninsured Angelenos. However, he adds that: [I]t really did not address the issue of providing ongoing health care to those who fall through the cracks of the current support system or to the uninsured in general. I believe that only real health care reform, including a single payer or at least the public option guaranteed by the Federal Government can do this. I agree with Mr. Hennage that a public option, at the very least, is the only way to proceed. Co-ops and non-profits, for all their best intentions, cannot compete with major corporations, bringing down costs and expanding coverage, the way the federal government can. To his credit, Senator Feinstein's District Director Trevor Daley listened attentively to every one's health care story and responded with empathy, understanding and good humor. He suggested that activist groups like CD33 North for Change will most effectively grab the attention of our elected officials with personal stories, rather than just signatures, on our letters. In a sadly apropos turn of events, I discovered a couple of days after our delegation to Feinstein's office that my 95-year-old grandfather's health is seriously declining. He has reached the "donut hole" in Medicare drug coverage, meaning that he's passed his fixed spending limit on drugs and now faces exponential cost increases for his prescriptions each month. Since I was a little girl, I've called my grandpa "Big Bear" because he is my hero, a man who served 20 years in the FDNY, fighting the fire in the Empire State Building caused by a plane crash in 1944. It breaks my heart to see our system fail my Big Bear at the end of his life of service. In the richest country in the world, our weakest citizens are falling by the wayside. At a time when morality continually emerges as a hot-button issue, this moral failure requires our urgent attention and action. Although health care nightmare stories abound across the United States, we don't have to focus simply on the negative. Why not cultivate a positive vision for the kind of health care we deserve as a nation? Here are a few slogan ideas: how about Health Care Reform? Yes We Can! Or Campaign for a Healthy America. Or The Greatest Country in the World Deserves to be #1`in Health Care (rather than #37). Or Our Moon Landing: Health Care for All . Or Just Because We're the Last Industrialized Country to Get National Health Care Doesn't Mean We Can't Be the Best. I'm only partly joking. Ms. Fowler very viably recommended we say, Medicare for All, since many Americans know that Medicare is a federally run health care program that operates with extraordinary efficiency - and will be even better if we add dental and better drug coverage. However we label it, we must find a way to inspire those now more afraid of "the heaven they don't know than the devil they know," as Salon.com Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh recently said on MSNBC's "The Ed Show." Our challenge is to show our fellow Americans that we share common values, such as entrepreneurship, choice, fairness, debt reduction - both nationally and individually, and good health. Yes we can. More on Health Care
 
Democratic Headquarters Vandal A Transgendered Anarchist Angry With Obama Over Gay Rights Top
DENVER -- The suspect arrested Tuesday morning on charges of smashing 11 windows at the state Democratic Party headquarters is a transgendered "Denver-based anarchist" who goes by the name "Ariel Attack," according to postings on numerous anarchist and radical gay-rights websites. A fundraising plea circulated by the self-described "radical queer group" Denver Bash Back! seeks donations to raise the $5,000 bail set for 24-year-old Maurice Schwenkler, who is "listed in the jail records and media under her birth name."
 
Anti-Health Care Reform Group Pulls Ads, Citing Respect For Kennedy Top
One of the most vociferous opponents of Democratic health care legislation, led by former hospital executive Rick Scott, has pulled its anti-health care ads, saying that it wanted to respect the death of Edward Kennedy. The well-funded group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, has been a polarizing force in the debate. Its most recent ads mocked President Obama for going on vacation. "With the sad news of Senator Kennedy's passing Conservatives for Patients Rights is immediately suspending our ad campaign for health care reform out of respect to the Kennedy family as well as the Senator's colleagues and supporters, to whom we extend our condolences," said Scott in a statement. The move may have not just be about class, since it also saves the group a chunk of money it can deploy in the fall. Kennedy's passing has the potential to lower the temperature of the health care debate, which heated up in August at town halls and has descended into dueling conference calls, with both parties accusing the other of negotiating in bad faith. (One party, however, admits to negotiating in bad faith, so at least one of the charges is fair.) The reprieve may be brief, but gives the administration a chance to catch its breath. Scott, whose hospital chain was convicted of defrauding the government, won't stay down for long, however. "We know the debate will continue -- a debate Senator Kennedy embraced with vigor -- and we look forward to engaging in the debate in the months ahead," he said. "But now is a time for respect, reflection and remembrance. Senator Kennedy's lifetime of dedicated public service transcended multiple generations. His devotion to many issues and his relentless passion made him a hero to his supporters and worthy adversary to his opponents. His voice and presence will be missed." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Ted Kennedy
 
Gilles Dorronsoro: Filling the Void: Dispatch from Afghanistan Top
The United States chose President Hamid Karzai to succeed the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 mainly because of his closeness to the Bush administration. Karzai is believed to have won another term in a disputed election last week, but the results are still unclear, and he may face a run-off in October. When he became head of the government, he had no appreciable political base in the country, and he sought to eliminate local powers who could threaten his control of the periphery. Karzai relied on a narrow coterie to fill important positions in his administration, and nominated political allies as governors. His strategy backfired, in large part because he made poor choices--based more on personal relations than competence--and weakening or eliminating local leaders produced further political fragmentation. As a result, few local leaders can control any significant part of Afghanistan today. The main problem is the absence of security and law enforcement structures, notably police and judges. Too little money has been directed toward institution-building and the justice and police programs have been a total failure. In practice, there are no state judges. The few police officers are poorly paid, prone to corruption, and poorly trained and armed. In Kunduz Province, for example, a population of one million is policed (in theory) by 1,000 men, though the actual figure is said to be closer to 500. In most cases, people seek to resolve disputes by going to local jirga (when effective) or ulema for Sharia justice. The Afghan National Army (ANA) is unable to deploy large units, despite better training and, according to some anecdotal evidence, a better fighting spirit. Command and control is weak and the ANA still cannot operate without International Coalition leadership. Observers in direct contact with the ANA report that operations involving more than 100 troops cannot be effectively conducted autonomously. Given the vacuum left by the absence of the state, local leaders are (re)arming quickly. In 2003 and 2004, the International Coalition pursued a disarmament program that paid people for surrendering weapons to the authorities. Its main effect, unfortunately, was to enable local commanders to upgrade their arsenals, buying new weapons with the money they got for the old. Since 2006, when the momentum of the insurgency became apparent, Afghans have been convinced that the government and the International Coalition are not going to prevail. To provide their own security, local groups have been buying significant quantities of weapons. The demand has driven up the prices of weapons considerably, especially in the south. Even in Kabul, buying weapons is extremely easy, in quantities as large as dozens of Kalashnikov rifles. In this void, the Taliban are discrediting the Afghan central government and destroying its presence, isolating the International Coalition, building an alternative administration, and extending their influence into areas where they initially had no support. The Taliban are systematically destroying the local administrations at the district level, with the objective of eliminating the government's contact with the population. As they succeed, they show Afghans that the state is unable to protect them or provide services, compelling them to accept the order and justice the Taliban provide. This situation forces the United States to take charge of local security and governance, which in turn enables the Taliban to call attention to the foreign occupation and recruit resistance to it. The Taliban are now the dominant political force in numerous regions of Afghanistan, including Pashtun-majority provinces in the east and the south. In these provinces, the situation of the International Coalition is comparable to that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, in that the International Coalition, largely isolated at its outposts, is operating with neither the support nor the acceptance of the Afghan population. The insurgents control the countryside, and have a strong presence even inside cities like Kandahar and Ghazni. Outside the major cities, Afghan administration is nonexistent. As President Obama must realize, whether Afghanistan is led by Hamid Karzai or anyone else, the problem for the International Coalition is not one of insufficient force; it is insufficient government. Cross-posted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . More on Afghanistan
 
Joseph Gregory, Former Lehman President, Seeks $233M From Bank's Estate Top
Joseph Gregory, Lehman's former president. Gregory, once second in command at the investment bank, has filed a claim against Lehman's bankruptcy estate for a whopping $233 million in deferred compensation in the form of performance- and restricted-stock grants. More on Lehman Brothers
 
Nena Baker: Why I'll Swig From My Sigg No More Top
After I finished my talk about the hazards of bisphenol A at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon last week, I immediately reached beneath the podium and took a swig from my reusable Sigg water bottle. The polite applause subsided, and one of the first to ask questions was a middle-aged man in the front row. "What's that blue thing you're drinking from? Does it have BPA in it?" As it turns out, the good man's questions require an answer far more nuanced than the one I gave him the other night. If you've not heard, BPA is a chemical used for making polycarbonate plastic baby bottles and sippy cups. It's also a material in the resin linings that coat metal food cans (think soup, beans and the fruits and veggies in your pantry) and beverage containers, (think Coke, Pepsi and all the brands that wish they were). No one, not even BPA manufacturers, disputes that BPA, which mimics the hormone estrogen, leaches from polycarbonate containers and metal-can linings into what we eat and drink. So, in light of dozens of independent, peer-reviewed laboratory studies that show BPA causes troubling effects, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found, in nine out of 10 Americans, the Food and Drug Administration has promised a new safety assessment of BPA by Nov. 30. In the meantime, Connecticut and Michigan, the city of Chicago, three counties in New York and the entire country of Canada have banned BPA in certain products intended for children. Nearly two dozen jurisdictions -- including the U.S. Congress -- are currently considering bans. Personally, I'd rather be safe than sorry. So I got rid of my reusable polycarbonate plastic water bottle three years ago as I was researching my book , The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being (North Point Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). I learned how stacks of peer-reviewed studies plausibly link BPA to infertility, prostate and breast cancers, a decline in semen quality, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. And I saw chemical manufacturers using tricks straight out of Big Tobacco's playbook in an attempt to downplay the hazards of BPA. When I purchased a new reusable water container, I chose an aluminum Sigg bottle festooned in a cheery, blue-plaid pattern. Any concern that the shiny coppery-bronze interiors of Sigg bottles might contain and leach BPA was allayed by the company's assurances that its "proprietary" lining was "totally inert and imparts absolutely no chemicals into the beverage." Soon, my editor, my agent, my friends and my family were sipping from colorful Siggs, too. So imagine my outrage when I learned last Friday that the closely guarded secret ingredients of the lining inside all Sigg bottles made before August 2008 contain traces of BPA. Sigg posted the information on its web site along with an announcement about its new BPA-free lining, which Sigg said has been in development since 2006 at a cost of $1 million. To reassure consumers like me who adapted early to Sigg bottles, the company stated that its BPA-containing bottles "were thoroughly and regularly tested...and all tests revealed absolutely no migration or leaching of BPA or any other substance." This is greenwashing at its worst. Sigg rode a wave of growing concerns about BPA, selling lot after lot of its products to people who believed they were reducing the risk of exposure to BPA by switching from reusable polycarbonate plastic drinking bottles. Then, in order to tout its new BPA-free product (as many of its competitors already are doing), Sigg copped to the presence of BPA in its older products, and asked customers to take its word that testing (paid for by the company) confirms that the old linings don't leach BPA. If you write to Sigg to complain, the company is offering a free replacement -- providing you pay the postage to send in your old BPA-containing bottle. "We want our current and potential customers to have the facts," said Steve Wasik, CEO of Sigg. Well, Mr. Wasik, this former customer wishes you'd been straight with the facts from the beginning. As much as I admire Sigg's hip graphics and commitment to weening us off throwaway water bottles, I won't be sending in my old Sigg bottle for a replacement. Why should I condone corporate doublespeak or claims of "proprietary" business information that conveniently cloud the facts? Instead, I'll be applying the cost of postage to the purchase of a BPA-free product from one of Sigg's competitors. Good-bye Sigg. Hello Klean Kanteen .
 
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Senior Iranian Cleric, Calls System A Dictatorship Top
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's most senior dissident cleric on Wednesday criticized the ruling system under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a dictatorship in the name of Islam, the most serious attack on the country's top official following the disputed presidential election. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said the ruling system showed its true nature with the violent crackdown against the hundreds of thousands who protested President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election and the torture of detainees that led to at least three deaths. "The biggest oppression ... is despotic treatment of the people in the name of Islam," Montazeri said in a written response to some 300 activists that was posted on his Web site. "I hope the responsible authorities give up the deviant path they are pursuing and restore the trampled rights of the people." Montazeri's comments are significant because although criticism of ruling figures has increased following the June election, which the opposition claims was stolen through vote fraud, public attacks against Khamenei are rare. Montazeri's opinion carries weight because the 87-year-old cleric was once tapped to succeed the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader. He was denied the post in the late 1980s because of his criticism of the excesses of the ruling system and his differences with Khomeini. The turmoil following the presidential election has presented the current supreme leader, Khamenei, with the most serious challenge to the country's cleric-led system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khamenei and other hard-liners have attempted to paint the post-election turmoil as a plot by Iran's foreign enemies to overthrow the country's Islamic system through a "velvet revolution." The government is holding a mass trial of more than 100 political activists and protesters who it claims provoked the mass demonstrations. The opposition has called the trial a "sham," and Montazeri said it has "ridiculed Islamic justice." "I hope authorities ... have the courage to announce that this ruling system is neither a republic nor Islamic and that nobody has the right to express opinion or criticism," said Montazeri. The government has confirmed that at least 30 people were killed in the post-election crackdown, but the opposition says at least 69 died and many more were tortured in prison. The abuse of detainees has also prompted criticism from conservatives, complicating Khamenei's efforts to end the turmoil. Montazeri has called for curtailing the powers of Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters and is considered by hard-liners to be answerable only to God. The dissident cleric spent five years under house arrest after saying in 1997 that Khamenei wasn't qualified to rule. The punishment has not silenced Montazeri, who has repeatedly said that the freedom that was promised after the Islamic revolution never materialized. Montazeri is one of just a few grand ayatollahs, the most senior theologians of the Shiite Muslim faith. But after he was placed under house arrest, state-run media stopped referring to Montazeri by his religious title, describing him instead as a "simple-minded" cleric. More on Iran
 
Elisa Massimino: Edward Kennedy: A Lifelong Champion of Human Rights Top
I, all of us at Human Rights First , and the broader international human rights community mourn the passing of our cherished friend Senator Ted Kennedy, and extend our deepest condolences to his family, his colleagues, and his many friends. Senator Kennedy spent nearly 50 years championing the cause of human rights. He was a voice for the voiceless and a true advocate for the fundamental rights of all people--Americans, as well as those beyond our shores, including refugees and immigrants, victims of armed conflict and political prisoners in all corners of the globe. Senator Kennedy's belief in the inherent dignity of all people, combined with his drive to ensure that the United States lived up to its potential to advance that concept at home and throughout the world, animated every battle he fought in his long and distinguished career. We have lost a tireless ally, but the lessons we all learned from him--about perseverance, principle, and how to make progress towards a world in which all people can live in dignity and freedom--will ensure that his legacy lasts forever. Last year, Human Rights First honored Senator Kennedy for his unwavering and courageous leadership in advancing human rights at home and abroad. We showed this video at our annual dinner. As we mourn his death, we would like to share this tribute to his life and work.
 
Fran Barrett: Benefits of Working at a Nonprofit Top
If you work for a nonprofit, you more than likely would have said to friends: "The salary isn't the greatest, but the benefits are good." In 30 years of working with community based organizations, I would say that providing health coverage is part of a social contract that many nonprofit organizations have made with their staff. Increasingly over the last few years, more and more nonprofits have asked staff to share costs, and while we have no numbers yet, we hear frequently about nonprofits that fear they will have to eliminate health coverage as a benefit. Keep in mind, over 500,000 people work in nonprofits in New York. What happens to these individuals as workers, the largest private sector workforce in the city, and as participants in the health care system is a matter of public policy. It is not just a note in red ink on the margins of the health care legislation. In a recent Colorado town meeting, President Obama took a question from a local small business person, and he assured her that "a tax credit" would be given to enable her to provide benefits to her staff and herself. Noting that tax credits would not necessarily provide any advantage to nonprofits, the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee in New York, in collaboration with the National Council on Nonprofits, presents a different option: "a payment credit that would potentially enable more than 70% of nonprofits to offer benefits, more affordable health insurance to, or reduce the (shared) costs" to their employees. Our staffs pay a price for doing good. The average salary in the nonprofit sector in New York is about $40,000, despite what you may have read about six-figure salaries at large nonprofits. The hours are long. The work is demanding, and while there are nonmaterial rewards for doing good, there are not many financial ones -- pensions are rare, even matches to deferred income plans are not common. There isn't a lot of glory or name recognition involved, and since most nonprofits are small, upward mobility is a challenge. Even those who do move up in their organizations, find that their old jobs and responsibilities stick to them like barnacles. The sophisticated and effective service delivery network that exists in New York City is the result of millions of dollars of investment by New York's philanthropists and government. Hundreds of New York's best leaders have spent hours in planning and piloting needed services. New York may have the strongest social network in the country. That did not happen by accident. We are city that cares about its citizens, and we have been purposeful about building a full scale social service delivery network. Mayor Bloomberg has recognized the importance of the nonprofit sector, by creating a city policy focused on strengthening and assisting nonprofits. The New York Community Trust has stepped up to invest in the network, giving a series of extraordinary grants to allow "lifeline" nonprofit services to continue. The Mayor and the New York Community Trust recognize that this is a time of great need. The unemployment rate in New York City is 9.6% with just about 100% "feeling the pressure." It's bad enough that revenues are down, but loss of health benefits for this hard working work force, is simply unthinkable. The Health Care reform package should include credits to "all small employers," not just small businesses. There is great resilience in the nonprofit sector. People keep asking me if I can give any examples of how many organizations are going out of business. The truth is that the real story is how many organizations -- despite less funding, despite more demand for service -- are not even thinking of going out of business. You've got to love these guys, and they must have health insurance.
 
Kevin Robert Frost: An Unrivaled Ally In the Fight Against AIDS Top
With the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy early this morning, the U.S. Senate -- indeed, the world -- has lost a champion on a host of important social issues, including HIV/AIDS. Senator Kennedy's work on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS is unrivaled in the Senate. My organization -- amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research -- honored Senator Kennedy twice for his tireless work on this issue: the first time, in 1990, for his co-sponsorship of the Ryan White CARE Act, along with Senator Orrin Hatch; and the second time, at our Capitol Hill conference in May of this year, for his career-spanning work that has helped millions of people living with HIV and AIDS. ( Read amfAR's statement about Senator Kennedy's passing. ) But while Senator Kennedy's work on AIDS policy is unrivaled, what I remember most about him was my meeting with him in his Senate office in Washington last year. amfAR was putting together a short film titled "amfAR Stands For..." and the Senator graciously agreed to be interviewed after our founding chairman, Dr. Mathilde Krim, arranged the meeting. We promised his staff that we would take no more than 20 minutes of the Senator's time. Senator Kennedy entered the room with his two Portuguese Water Dogs in tow, and he ended up speaking with us for nearly an hour about amfAR, the political fights around the Ryan White CARE Act and Jesse Helms' hateful attempts to block it, his friendship with Dr. Krim and her late husband, Arthur, and Terry Beirn, his former Senate staffer and an early amfAR employee who died of AIDS in 1991. He was gracious and engaging and made us all feel incredibly comfortable in his presence - even as I couldn't stop thinking about how close I was at that moment to so much history, especially when he casually referred to his brother Jack. What was clear to me in that meeting was how much he genuinely cared about fighting -- and winning -- our battle against the AIDS epidemic. When Senator Kennedy took over the leadership of the Senate Committee on Health in 1987 and made AIDS the committee's top priority at a time when there was still so much stigma surrounding the disease, he took a political risk that few politicians would have been willing to take. And when he pushed for the Ryan White CARE Act in 1990, he did so not only because he believed in what he was doing, but because he had come to personally know Ryan White. That dedication to a cause, and that kind of compassion for citizens who may not have previously had such strong representation in the Senate, made Senator Kennedy a special sort of person. His presence in the Senate -- and in the AIDS research and activist communities -- will be sorely missed, but I hope that his legacy of good work, smart policy, and, above all, compassion, will continue in Congress as we embark on a new era of AIDS prevention and research. More on HIV/AIDS
 
Ted Kennedy's Death A Loss For Dems' Health Care Push Top
Ted Kennedy made affordable health care for all Americans the goal of his Senate career and hoped to see that reform achieved in his lifetime. But the political giant's death raises the question of whether a Congressional bipartisan solution can be achieved. More on Ted Kennedy
 
Britney Spears & Russell Brand Read Each Other's Naughty Minds In VMA Spot (VIDEO) Top
Britney Spears and Russell Brand did their best to ignore the sexual tension elephant in the room in a 2008 Video Music Awards spot , and now they're conveying their desire for one another telepathically in a promotion for this year's VMAs. "Should I have played it up more when he was flirting with me last year?" Spears, poolside in a white bikini, asks herself. "I have to admit, there is something sexy about his dangerous ways." Back in his hotel room, Brand can hear her lustful thoughts! "Britney," he thinks, hoping she can read his mind. "This is the voice of your mind. Go to Russell's hotel room and abandon yourself. Give yourself to him, Britney. Sleep with Russell!" Brand's off-color monologue ruffled some feathers when he hosted the VMAs last year, but he will be back this year for a repeat performance live from NYC on Sunday, September 13. WATCH: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Celebrity Skin
 
Steven Weber: The Kennedys: A Human Legacy Top
Ted Kennedy exemplified all of privilege's promise and all of its detriments. In him, the inspiring mix of soaring rhetoric and devotion to public service encouraged by the unyielding faith of his mother gave way to frustrating and self defeating episodes inherited from his shrewd but profligate father. That portrait, so publicly etched, is the real lesson of the Kennedy legacy. For along with their genuine attractiveness was a repellence of equal proportion, a dichotomy borne from power's temptation to encourage inbreeding and fealty to the mythos writ upon the nation's psyche. But within this particular myth is actual heroism and betrayal, glory and despair, death and resurrection. It is compelling in the dramatic sense, the one preferred by the media and those who favor a simple telling of a complex story. But the reality of the Kennedys' service to the citizens of this country cannot be denied, whether by their incessantly obstructionist detractors or by their own liability. They were equal parts ambition and altruism, a reflection of America itself. But in a culture that enjoys cleaning its claws on scandal, a veritable cottage industry arose from their hijinks, which at times threatened to obscure any of their good works and turn their once adoring public towards snide contempt. They had it all and lost much. Being human, the Kennedys had no choice but to pay the price of admission regardless of their status and were thus regularly felled and foiled. And in recent years, almost everyone's become an Oswald, a Sirhan, a Kopechne, murdering their heroes and in turn being themselves left for dead. It's all too easy to sit back and judge history with the effortlessness with which we navigate the remote or surf the gossamer web, taking history for granted and rendering life itself suspect if unaccompanied by easy profit or dumbed-down accessibility. The Kennedys ultimately defied that tendency. Their charitable and legislative efforts have improved the lives of millions of people, as well as being instrumental in adding a new dynamism to an old game, one which energized the masses and introduced intoxicating feelings of pride and vigor into the dull desert of politics. What Ted Kennedy managed to do was hang on. Having navigated through many a morass, he was, in the end, able to do more good than the average politician and less bad than the average wealthy, powerful paterfamilias. Eventually he succeeded where his lionized brothers failed: he survived the Kennedy curse long enough to see the birth of a new era, one that promises the kind of hope and change his brothers only dreamed of. And our country is better for it.
 
David Sirota: How to Talk About the Renomination of Ben Bernanke Top
Here's a good template from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for how Senate Democrats might want to talk about Ben Bernanke: "As a result of the greed, irresponsibility and illegal behavior of Wall Street our country has experienced the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. Mr. Bernanke was head of the Fed and the nation's chief economist as this crisis, driven by reckless speculation, developed. Tragically, like the rest of the Bush administration, he was asleep at the wheel during this period and did nothing to move our financial system onto safer grounds. "As the middle class of this country continues to shrink, we need a chairman of the Federal Reserve who is more concerned about expanding the productive economy - increasing decent-paying jobs for all Americans - than continuing to fan the flames of Wall Street greed and outrageous compensation packages." Saying nothing about another Democratic president helping preserve two decades of uninterrupted Republican Party rule at the Fed, consider the nonpartisan argument. Reappointing one of the key people A) who fell asleep at the regulatory wheel in the lead up to the financial meltdown B) who responded to the meltdown by handing over trillions of no-strings-attached taxpayer dollars to his bank industry friends and C) who has refused to let the public even know who is getting taxpayer bailout money is abominable. The idea that he showed some kind of "brilliance" or "smarts" in throwing trillions of dollars at the banking industry is positively absurd - as is the idea that his scheme has miraculously saved the economy (it ain't a shock that when you shovel trillions of dollars at banks, they will report temporary short-term profits - and those profits don't mean anything is saved for the long-term). Now, I know the standard sycophant's response: Forget the details, forget the substance - because Paul Krugman and some other economists with shiny awards and fancy plaques who originally cheered on Bernanke's bailouts say Bernanke is great, then Obama is teh awesome for reappointing Bernanke. It's a pathetic rejoinder - and even calling it that is an insult to pathetic rejoinders. Those who offer that rationale as reason to cheer on Bernanke's renomination are acknowledging the severely debilitating limitations of their own cognition. Simply saying "well, if X person says its great, then it's great" is not an argument - it's an admission of individual ignorance/laziness in that the speaker is saying they can't actually muster the tiny amount of intelligence it requires to make a minimally substantive argument. The bottom line is clear: In a nation of 300 million people, there are obviously at least a few better qualified souls out there who have been saying for years that Bernanke-style laissez faire would bring on a disaster. That is to say, there are at least a few people with better credentials to run the Fed than the Bush-appointed Bernanke - and certainly there are many better qualified to fulfill President Obama's promise of "change we can believe in." ADDENDUM: To those regurgitating the talking point that Bernanke is responsible for "avoiding a depression," here's a challenge: either substantiate that argument with facts explaining how he had no role in creating the very crisis he supposedly averted and how his policies uniquely helped stabilize the economy for the long haul. Or try - and I know it's hard - to muster the intelligence to overcome sockpuppetry. That is, try to take a moment and think for yourself - and not simply parrot back what you are hearing from above. In short, just because the media and Obama say Bernanke was responsible for "avoiding a depression," don't simply accept that as truth. Try asking A) what Bernanke's role was in creating the very real potential for depression in the first place and B) whether his policies to "avoid" a depression were ultimately stupid, mishandled and larcenous - and could be improved on with a new chairperson. Simply accepting talking points from your favored politicians or media stars is yet another sign of sycophancy/cultism - and a lack of cognition. In this case, it's the same as regurgitating the Republican talking point that said because there was no terrorist attack after 9/11, George W. Bush was responsible for doing a great job of protecting America after 9/11 - and never asking A) what Bush did to allow 9/11 to happen or B) how Bush's policies nonetheless endangered us after 9/11. Giving Bernanke the credit for "saving" us, without asking what he did to endanger us in the first place or what his policies have done to further endanger us after the crisis - and giving him that credit just because someone on your television told you to - is a pretty solid definition of cultism. And it is exactly the kind of power/celebrity-worshiping genuflection the most cynical spinners, politicians and pundits in Washington, D.C. expect from a lobotomized public. More on Ben Bernanke
 
Mike Ragogna: Songwriting Legend Ellie Greenwich Gone At 69 Top
Rock 'n' roll songwriter Ellie Greenwich has passed away from a heart attack this morning in St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York where she had been treated for pneumonia. Greenwich became one of the U.S.'s top songwriters in the sixties, and she is most famous for having co-penned classics such as "Be My Baby," "Chapel Of Love," "River Deep, Mountain High," and "Maybe I Know." With her Brill Building contemporaries--Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Carole King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Neil Sedaka, and former husband Jeff Barry--she supplied the soundtrack for half a decade, heavily contributing to and influencing what would become known as the "Girl Group" sound. Born in Levittown, Long Island, Ellie Greenwich first dabbled with music on the accordion, switching to piano on which she started writing in her teens. She scored a record contract with RCA Records at seventeen, and under the pseudonym "Ellie Gaye," her first single was the original "Silly Isn't It?" released in 1958. It never became a national hit, but it was the beginning of a career that continued well into the nineties. Her future husband and writing partner Jeff Barry entered the picture while she was attending Hofstra University, their having shared a Thanksgiving dinner at which the pair played their first music together. Romance eventually bloomed, but the pair pursued separate careers with Greenwich getting her songwriting break in 1962. Visiting New York's famed Brill Building at 1619 Broadway--an address containing successful music publishing companies that embraced workshop environments among its staffs--Greenwich lucked into a meeting with writer John Gluck, Jr. (co-writer of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party") who kept the ambitious songstress waiting in an adjoining office with a piano. Passing her time, Greenwich began playing the instrument, and Jerry Leiber (of Leiber and Stoller fame) came into the area expecting Carole King to be at the keyboard. She explained she was a songwriter, and after being introduced to Mike Stoller and auditioning some tunes for the industry moguls, she was offered the use of their musical facility in exchange for a right of first refusal on her songs. She agreed, and after some time, Ellie Greenwich was signed as a staff member to Leiber and Stoller's publishing company Trio Music. With her father driving her between Manhattan and Levittown, she began writing and co-writing, especially with Tony Powers, their biggest hits being "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" and "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?" (songwriting credit also extended to producer Phil Spector). But she also was a great singer, and behind the scenes, she was given the nickname "New York's Demo Queen" for singing on everything she could get her voice on. In fact, she became the go-to background singer, along with her pal Mikey Harris, in the seventies and eighties--most notably appearing on Blondie and Cyndi Lauper records (including "Girls Just Want To Have Fun") and with Tasha Thomas and producer/songwriter Tommy West as the soulful "crowd" that backed Jim Croce's hits such as "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." "It's a terrible loss for the industry," West commented today after receiving the news. On her fateful years with Jeff Barry, West's liner notes for Ellie Greenwich's anthology I Can Hear Music: The Ellie Greenwich Collection continues the story in her own words: "At this time, I was dating Jeff Barry and we were planning to marry, so I had a feeling that we would work together. We wrote 'Hanky Panky' but didn't seriously collaborate until I began to work with Phil Spector. We wrote 'What A Guy' with The Sensations in mind while riding the 'E' train from Queens and Lefrak City, and went straight to Associated Studio B to demo it. Jeff played drums, I played piano, we did some vocals, and brought the tune back to Leiber and Stoller who loved it, as did Spector. They liked our demo so much that a deal was made with Jubilee Records, and we became the group The Raindrops." Though The Raindrops only recorded a few tracks such as "The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget," Greenwich and Barry also covered "Doo Doo Ron Ron" and "Hanky Panky" as well as other future staples. And their relationship with Phil Spector grew, resulting in the producer employing his wall of sound techniques to the Barry-Greenwich original "Be My Baby" with his Ronettes. A string of hits with various artists both in and out of the Spector camp followed, including the aforementioned titles, plus instant classics like "Leader Of The Pack," "Then He Kissed Me," "Wait 'Til My Bobby Gets Home," "If You Loved Me Once," "I Can Hear Music," "Do-Wah-Diddy," and "The Sunshine After Then Rain." After the British Invasion occurred and "Chapel Of Love" hit #1, Leiber and Stoller teamed with George Goldner to create Red Bird Records, a company where Greenwich would bloom as a record producer. "Ellie was a real pioneer both as a songwriter and producer," Tommy West explained. "She was one of the first women to break through the exclusive men's production club. Sometimes she had to get down to a man's level to get them to listen, and there were times when she would cry after a session because they wouldn't listen to her as readily as they would a man. But her legacy is one that will never be duplicated." In West's liner notes, Greenwich explained her production experience further: "Men had problems taking direction from a woman...it was difficult not knowing if they took me seriously, listening to the jokes, etc. But sometimes it would work to my advantage. I could use my femininity. My mother...gave me a bit of advice. 'When you walk into a session your whole attitude will change if you picture all the musicians sitting around nude.' So I became one of the guys. I'd tell a joke. I bought this lipstick in the shape of a penis and I would 'freshen-up.' They would crack up laughing. It would break the ice." Some of her most famous productions included records by Neil Diamond. With her husband/partner Jeff Barry, Greenwich "...went to Bang Records where Bert Berns gave us a budget to cut two sides, 'Solitary Man' and 'Cherry Cherry.' I played piano and sang backup, Neil played acoustic piano." Another interesting contribution she made to pop music is her background vocal arrangement using the Sweet Inspirations on Aretha Franklin's "Chain Of Fools." She was hired after Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler asked her to fix the track. Ellie Greenwich was a hit machine behind the scenes, but Ellie Greenwich the recording artist never really took off. She released many singles and two albums-- Composes, Produces & Sings for United Artists in 1968, and Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung... for MGM/Verve in 1973. Between songwriting and singing, her schedule never allowed for her to fully commit. "She was a phenomenal singer," West remembered. "She never realized her full potential as an artist because she never concentrated on it." But it also was partly due to her attitude following her being sold by Leiber and Stoller to UA for her first album. Greenwich revealed in West's liner notes that she "felt like a piece of meat" even though she continued with her session work to complete the project. However, after fellow former Brill Building writer Carole King had a mega-hit with Tapestry , an album that included her versions of hits written for others, Greenwich recalled, "...my phone began to ring. Companies thought I should take a similar approach with some of my old songs and some new ones." That resulted in Let It be Written, Let It Be Done... , and in West's notes, the artist revealed one more puzzle piece as to why her own recording career might have suffered: "I think this album would have done pretty well but I was afraid to perform." Twenty years later, The Leader Of The Pack musical was created based on Greenwich's hit songs. "I agreed to do the show for three nights in January 1984 and again for one month" she stated in West's notes. But it was a huge success, and after debuting at The Bottom Line, it ran on Broadway for another five months. "It was very exciting. I had become recognizable to people after years behind the scene." As to how she saw the future in 1999, Greenwich told West, "I didn't know what I was doing when I came into this business and I still don't. But if it feels good and right, you just do it. Music has been my best friend. It doesn't lie. I don't have much of an ego except when you try to take what I've done away from me. I'm very proud of what I've done."
 
Joseph Romm: Michael Lynch, who predicted in 1996 "real oil prices FLAT for the next two decades," now says don't worry about peak oil Top
A guy who has been wrong on oil prices longer than most has managed to convince the New York Times to give him some of their precious op-ed space to issue yet another sure-to-be-wrong prediction. That would be energy consultant Michael Lynch, with his remarkably content-free piece, " ' Peak Oil' Is a Waste of Energy ," asserting: Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward.... Here's my bet to Lynch. Let's take the average price of oil from 2010 to 2015. For every $1 a barrel it is below $40, I'll pay you $200, if you pay me a mere $100 for every $1 a barrel it is above $40. That should be a no-brainer since I am giving him 2-to-1 and spotting him $10 a barrel off of what he says the right price is. I am happy to offer the same bet to Raymond Learsy, who endorsed Lynch's nonsensical prediction on here HufPost yesterday . I assume he'll jump all over it, so eagerly does he diss the McPeaksters. I wasn't going to post on this since I have blogged endlessly on the painfully obvious reality that we are at or near the peak (see " Peak Oil? Bring it on! "). It is so obvious that the International Energy Agency, which until recently had been a bastion of relatively staid and conservative and hence useless energy prognostication, has begun desperately trying to warn people of what is happening -- see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us." Heck, half of the most cautious "show me the money" people in the entire energy business agree (see " Half of oil & gas CFOs say we are peaking "). But a congressional staffers sent me something I didn't know existed -- an online transcript of a 1996 Congressional hearing "U.S. energy outlook and implications for energy R&D : hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, second session, March 14, 1996" (hard to read HTML here , massive PDF here ). I was Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, at DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and the House GOP were basically putting me on trial for Predicting that oil prices were going to rise in the future because of our growing reliance on oil from unstable regions and Using that as an argument for why we needed to dramatically increase funding for clean energy R&D. That prediction and argument were published at length the next month in my Atlantic Monthly piece (coauthored with Deputy Secretary Charles Curtis), " Mideast oil forever: Congressional budget-cutters threaten to end America's leadership in new energy technologies that could generate hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs, reduce damage to the environment, and limit our costly, dangerous dependency on oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region" (see also here ). And who did the Republicans drag in as their witness to rebut me -- one "Michael C. Lynch, Research Affiliate, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology." Even back then, in the good old days of $17 oil (1995 average nominal price or $24 in 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars ), Lynch was predicting flat oil prices for decades: In previous work, I have shown that past oil market forecasts were biased towards rising prices and declining non-OPEC production. Correcting for the supply pessimism leaves a forecast in which oil markets remain in surplus over the long-term, suggesting that oil prices will remain weak for the indefinite future.... Conclusions: Prices are much more likely to be weak than strong.... ... the ongoing technological revolution in the industry, combined with managerial improvements and a more friendly fiscal environment in oil exporting countries, will keep real oil prices flat for the next two decades. ... a flat oil price forecast appears to be much more consistent with historical behavior than the rising price forecasts of DOE and the lEA. A declining price, or flat at a lower level, would hardly be unrealistic. Not clear how an energy consultant can keep making the same predictions with his track record. Not clear just how wrong your past predictions have to be before the NYT won't publish your op-ed where you repeat the same exact wrong predictions. For the record, here is in fact what happened in the decade after Lynch's prediction of flat real prices: Real prices more than double in the subsequent decade. Lynch's analytical worldview is that "a flat oil price forecast appears to be much more consistent with historical behavior." Well, the future is just like the past, until, of course, it isn't. We aren't making more oil, we are, however, consuming more and more. For completeness sake, and with apologies to my regular readers, as Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently explained: Dr. Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years - at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated. The IEA's work makes clear that for oil to stay significantly below $200 a barrel (and U.S. gasoline to be significantly below $5 a gallon) by 2020 would take a miracle -- or rather 6 miracles see " Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias! " See also " Merrill: Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015 ," which noted, Steep falls in oil production means the world now needed to replace an amount of oil output equivalent to Saudi Arabia's production every two years, Merrill Lynch said in a research report. So how about that bet? Michael Lynch? Raymond Learsy? Anyone? One final note: The conservatives in Congress thwarted efforts to ramp up clean energy R&D in the 1990s, and the situation has become so dire now, that increased R&D, while useful, is quite secondary to the urgent need to massively deploy clean energy technology, as Obama and Congress have done in the stimulus and the major fuel economy deal earlier this year, and as they hope to do in the climate and clean energy bill. More on Energy
 
Sarah E. Jones: Mental Health Consumers Lose Vital Advocate Top
Ted Kennedy leaves a remarkable legacy of advocacy. From his earliest days in the United States Senate, he showed a sensitivity toward the plight of Americans often marginalized by the political machine. These Americans include the millions suffering from a major mental illness. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) estimates that one in seventeen adult Americans experience a major mental illness like bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. A study recently released by the National Institute of Mental Health reveals that mental illness costs the nation $193 million in unearned income per year. It is undeniable that mental health care is an issue that should concern legislators, yet the needs of mental health consumers are often ignored. The American mental health care system continues to fail. This year, NAMI gave the nation a grade of D for its treatment of mental health concerns. Kennedy was one of several legislators who did not ignore the crisis. He was familiar with the issue of mental health care: his older sister Rosemary underwent a lobotomy in 1941. The operation left her incapacitated. His son Patrick Jr., who serves the 1st Congressional District of Rhode Island, has been public about his struggle with bipolar disorder and substance abuse. It is no surprise, then, that Kennedy extended his record of advocacy to the issue of mental health care reform. He became a key sponsor of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007. The act, which requires insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health care, began life in 1996 as an amendment to a larger health bill. Originally sponsored by Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN), the act passed the Senate but was cut by the House. Kennedy became a key sponsor of the act and reintroduced it in 2007. This time, it passed both the Senate and the House and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 3rd, 2007. Kennedy's formidable skill as a statesman was instrumental to the passage of an act that he described as "a major breakthrough for those with mental health needs." Although the mental health care system continues to require reform, mental health parity represents a significant improvement. As the health care debate rages on, Kennedy's bipartisan efforts on behalf of sick Americans should be remembered, indeed imitated, by his colleagues. More on Health Care
 
Scott Lilly: You May Need a Score Card for Health Care Reform Top
This article first appeared at AmericanProgress.org . If you want to understand the extraordinary events taking place in the fight over health care reform, you should take Deep Throat's advice to Bob Woodward many years ago during Woodward's coverage of the Watergate story: follow the money. Massive amounts of cash are flowing into all types of activities aimed at influencing the final outcome. The stakes are high for doctors, hospitals, drug companies, nursing homes, and a host of other industries. But no industry has as much to gain or lose as private, for-profit health insurance companies. It's impossible to fashion a health care system that does not have doctors, medications, and hospitals--but it is quite easy to imagine a system without private insurers. In fact, private insurers play little if any role in the health care systems of most countries in the world, including many that enjoy strong and prosperous free enterprise economies. On the other hand it is entirely possible that the United States could move to a system in which private health insurance companies could become even more profitable than they are today. If doctors and hospitals are forced to make concessions on the amounts they charge patients and the government succeeds in extending coverage to a substantial portion of the currently uninsured 47 million Americans, insurers could be in the cat bird seat. They could gain a huge new customer base and simultaneously cut their costs while maintaining high premiums. It's not clear which direction Congress will take. But it is clear that Wall Street is watching the legislative maneuvering with great interest. The equity analysts at Credit Suisse, an international financial services group, are very upbeat on the prospects for insurers and in particular the largest among them, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group: Recent events in Washington reinforce our view that health care reform will include a substantial expansion of the Medicaid program and the creation of an insurance exchange with either no public plan option or a fallback public plan option. We believe UNH is best positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunities that will emerge through reform. Specifically, we conservatively estimate that Medicaid expansion can add $0.05 to annualized earnings per share and that the creation of an exchange and/or increased employer-based coverage would add $0.25 in annualized EPS. Independent equity research firm Argus Research Group has a decidedly more pessimistic view on UnitedHealth Group: Moreover, we take a cautious stance on the managed care sector in general as we wait to see what form the final legislation on universal coverage will take. One proposal, a government-run public plan, would pose serious risk and competition to commercial plans currently offered by private insurers such as UnitedHealth. Standard and Poor's Stock Report offered a similar assessment: ...We think investors see health care reform, currently being addressed by President [Barack] Obama and Congress, as helping to reduce medical cost trends... But we suggest investors remain cautious, on our view that the idea of a public plan is still alive. Shareholders have a lot at stake. If the cloud of health care reform is lifted and earnings rise even marginally the value of these stocks could soar. The 1.1 billion shares of UnitedHealth Group are divided amongst 14,000 institutional and individual shareholders. Credit Suisse projects the shares to rise from near $27 a share level where they have traded at for most of the summer to $33 in the reasonably near future. Analysts for Morningstar see potential appreciation in the shares of 66 percent, or to about $48. But even at $33 the total increase in the value of UnitedHealth Group shares will increase by nearly $7 billion. But the personal financial implications for many insurance executives are much greater. Because of the widespread use of stock options in compensating executives in this industry, even slight changes in the stock's value can have a massive impact on the executives' personal net worth. If, for instance, an executive receives an option to buy 20,000 shares of his company at the current share price of say, $30, and he later exercises the option when the stock reaches $31 he will make $20,000. If, however, it reaches $32 his take will be $40,000 and if it rises by $10 to $40 the same options would yield $200,000. In practice, the option packages awarded by the health insurance industry are far more generous. Stephen J. Hemsley joined UnitedHealth Group in 1997 and has been the company's chief executive officer since 2006. As CEO of UnitedHealth he receives an annual salary of $1.3 million and "incentive pay" worth about another $2 million a year. But his real compensation is in stock options as evidenced by a report the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this past February. Hemsley exercised options that were nearing their 10-year expiration date (options that he was awarded in 1999 when he was still chief financial officer and had been with the company only two years). The options allowed him to purchase 4.9 million shares of the company for $42 million or at an average share price of $8.72. He sold 2.9 million of those shares for $84 million or almost $29 a share and kept almost 2 million shares worth about $56 million. His net gain on the deal was in excess of $98 million. Options are a sore subject at UNH. A shareholder suit brought against the company and Hemsley's predecessor, William McGuire, for backdating option grants--granting a stock option dated prior to the date that the company actually granted the option--resulted not only in McGuire's resignation but his repayment to shareholders of an estimated $468 million in ill gotten profits. Bloomberg News estimated that the profits McGuire retained from the option after the settlement exceeded $800 million. While the backdating of options at UNH may have ceased, the practice of awarding them is still thriving. Forms filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the past week indicate that company executives were granted options to buy more than 14.5 million shares in just the past quarter. Previous reports indicate that the company maintains that pace throughout the year providing its executives with options to buy about 60 million shares a year. These reports also indicate that company officials now hold options to buy more than 140 million shares of the corporation. How can insurance companies afford such lavish compensation packages? An analysis of their revenues and expenses provides a good deal of insight. A key measure used by investors to determine the worth of a health insurance company is known as the medical cost ratio or sometimes the medical loss ratio. This ratio is basically the portion of insurance premiums collected by the company that must be used to pay the medical bills of policy holders. In the early 1990s insurance companies paid health care providers about 90 to 95 percent of the amount they collected in premiums. By the middle of this decade the average had dropped to a little above 80 percent. In 2007, for instance, UnitedHealth Group collected $69 billion in premiums and $6 billion for other fees and services but paid only $55 billion in medical bills. Of the nearly $14 billion in premium receipts that did not go to pay medical bills about 57 percent went for operating costs, which included among other things executive compensation, leaving around 43 percent for profits. Before-tax profits from premiums, services, and products totaled more than $7.8 billion and operating costs totaled $10.5 billion. Assuming that UNH's use of its revenue is fairly typical of the industry at large (UNH actually pays slightly a higher portion of its premiums back for the medical care of its customers than most other large health insurers) a family that paid insurance premiums of $8,000 to a private insurance company in 2007 could expect that about $6,400 would have gone to cover medical bills, $900 for insurance company operations and compensation, and $700 to profits. One perspective on the reasonableness of the "operations" or administrative costs charged by private insurers such as UNH is to compare them with the administrative costs of the Medicare program. In 2007, Medicare paid out $434 billion in benefits or nearly eight times the amount paid by UNH. But according to the budget justification that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS sent to the Congress in 2008, the cost to the government of processing the claims, determining the appropriateness of the billings, and administering the reimbursements in 2007 was less than $2.3 billion. In other words, Medicare was covering nearly eight times as much medical care for less than a quarter of the administrative cost. In addition, Medicare's administrative costs in 2007 equaled less than a third of UNH's before-tax profits. Nationwide there are 4,400 government employees who work for CMS (including those who work to administer the federal share of the Medicaid program). Their annual salaries totaled $383 million in 2007. The profits that Stephen Hemsley reaped from the exercise of one year's worth of stock options this past February would not only pay the salary of the administrator of CMS but of every employee in the agency for more than three months. Last month Wendell Potter, a former executive with Cigna Insurance Company, explained how investors keep pressure on the insurance industry to lower the medical loss ratio. ...Investors want that to keep shrinking. And if they see that an insurance company has not done what they think meets their expectations with the medical loss ratio, they'll punish them... I've seen a company stock price fall 20 percent in a single day, when it did not meet Wall Street's expectations with this medical loss ratio. They think that this company has not done a good job of managing medical expenses. It has not denied enough claims. It has not kicked enough people off the rolls. The 10 largest private publically traded insurance companies had combined revenues last year of about $280 billion, of which more than $50 billion went to executive compensation, other operation expenses, and profits, leaving less than $230 billion for paying medical bills. That means that expenses other than paying medical bills equal about 23 percent of the amount that is paid in medical bills. By comparison Medicare operational costs equal 0.5 percent of benefits paid. If only the 10 largest private insurers could cut their operational costs (administration and profits) to just 5.0 percent of the benefits they pay (the level that they were at in 1993 and 10 times the administrative overhead of Medicare) it would produce a 10-year savings of nearly half a trillion dollars or about half the amount needed to finance health care reform. If they were able to hold those expenses to 10 percent of the amount they pay in benefits the savings for just the top 10 for-profit insurers would total a quarter of a trillion over 10 years. The allegations that have been launched against health care reform often border on the bizarre. Allies of the health insurance industry have charged that legislation now pending would establish "death panels" that would be empowered to terminate patients whose care had become too expensive. Others have said that individuals such as Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) would not receive appropriate care because of the terminal nature of his illness. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has asserted that 100 million Americans would be forced to give up their current insurance policies. Conservative economist and hedge fund consultant Arthur Laffer has argued that the legislation will create a huge bureaucracy making a visit to a doctor similar to visiting the DMV. And Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has argued that the price of health reform will be paid by senior citizens as the result of cuts that will be made in Medicare benefits. All of these allegations are patently false but they have had a remarkable shelf life because of the vast sums that have been pumped into free and paid media, mailings, online communications, and grassroots organizing. No one knows how much of this has been funded directly by the insurance industry and how much by other opponents of reform, but as the preceding discussion makes clear the insurance industry does not want this to become a debate about the facts. It is impossible to justify a reform proposal that demands sacrifices from all components of the health care delivery system and simultaneously allows the kinds of excesses that have become commonplace in the insurance industry to continue. If the United States wishes to gain control over the rampant inflation in health care costs that is destroying businesses, bankrupting individuals, and wrecking havoc with state and federal budgets, it cannot leave an industry that has contributed so much to the escalation of health care costs in an even stronger position to expand margins at the expense of health care providers, employers, and individuals. That is currently the goal of the health insurance industry and they have made remarkable progress toward that goal given the quality of the case they have to argue. If Congress cannot agree on a public option they must find some other method of protecting American consumers and employers from the costly and predatory practices of the health insurance industry. One would be a cap on the medical loss ratio. Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He previously served as clerk and staff director of the House Appropriations Committee and executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. More on Health Care
 
Bill Scher: Yes. Get Health Care Done. For Ted. Top
Last month, Sen. Ted Kennedy wrote in Newsweek: "quality care shouldn't depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to. This is the cause of my life ... I am resolved to see to it this year that we create a system to ensure that someday, when there is a cure for the disease I now have, no American who needs it will be denied it." For all the legislative accomplishments of Sen. Kennedy's life, health care for all is the one that he won't be able to see through to its completion. It's up to us to finish the job, as he wrote in Newsweek, "this year." The fact that progressives have a natural motivation to carry out the final wishes of a long-time friend and ally should not be cause for controversy. Yet conservatives are already attacking those who simply seek to follow in Kennedy's footsteps. One blogger for the conservative religious journal First Things writes, "Someone emailed me a moment ago wondering how long it would take for Kennedy's death to be politicized - specifically by the left, specifically in order to push through the rapidly souring Obamacare, and 'wouldn't that be a dreadful and classless thing?' The answers, at least on Twitter, are 'immediately,' and 'yes, dreadful and classless, but nothing less than Kennedy himself would have expected and participated in.'" Conservative law professor William Jacobson blogged, "I will take to task the people who are seeking to use Kennedy's death to their political advantage." Hot Air blogger Allahpundit wrote on Twitter: "Is the response to 'Do it for Ted' on health care, 'Block it for Reagan'? Since we're now investing dead pols with moral authority and all." These conservatives have an interesting concept of "politicization." The implication is that it is somehow inappropriate, illegitimate, cheap emotionally to take inspiration from a fallen leader or to pick up the baton he had no choice but to drop. But it is not "politicization" to demand we not mention the fact that the recently deceased cared deeply about a pressing issue. I give these conservatives this much: The fact that a politician is deceased does not make him or her any more correct than when living. And as a general rule, it is not right or wise to legislate on the basis of raw emotion (see Act, Patriot). But when we say "Do It For Ted," that is not what we are asking. We are, for one, simply rallying our own progressive troops. For whatever concerns progressives have about the particulars of the compromise health care bills (and yes, they are all compromises, far short of the "Medicare for All" vision Kennedy himself had championed), we should heed what the Liberal Lion said about compromise, as well as what he said was "vital" to reform. From his Newsweek piece: I long ago learned that you have to be a realist as you pursue your ideals. But whatever the compromises, there are several elements that are essential to any health-reform plan worthy of the name. First, we have to cover the uninsured ... All Americans should be required to have insurance. For those who can't afford the premiums, we can provide subsidies. We'll make it illegal to deny coverage due to preexisting conditions. We'll also prohibit the practice of charging women higher premiums than men, and the elderly far higher premiums than anyone else. The bill drafted by the Senate health committee will let children be covered by their parents' policy until the age of 26, since first jobs after high school or college often don't offer health benefits. To accomplish all of this, we have to cut the costs of health care. For families who've seen health-insurance premiums more than double--from an average of less than $6,000 a year to nearly $13,000 since 1999--one of the most controversial features of reform is one of the most vital. It's been called the "public plan." Despite what its detractors allege, it's not "socialism." It could take a number of different forms. Our bill favors a "community health-insurance option." In short, this means that the federal government would negotiate rates--in keeping with local economic conditions--for a plan that would be offered alongside private insurance options. This will foster competition in pricing and services. It will be a safety net, giving Americans a place to go when they can't find or afford private insurance, and it's critical to holding costs down for everyone. Secondly, we are calling on those in the Senate who say they are Kennedy's friend to not let cheap politics stand in the way of their friend's greatest dream. It is not appropriate to make a litmus test of friendship the casting of a vote that conflicts with one's principles. No one is asking a die-hard conservative who rejects the principle of universal health care coverage to suddenly back it for emotional reasons. But it is appropriate to expect Senators who do embrace that basic principle, and who claim to love and respect Sen. Kennedy, not to let fear-mongering and smear-mongering compel them to junk what Kennedy fought so hard for in name of selfish, small, short-sighted political interest. I would also go one step farther. It is also appropriate to expect those conservatives who repeatedly tout their friendship with Sen. Kennedy -- such as Sens. John McCain and Orrin Hatch -- to at least speak out against the lies and distortions coming from their fellow conservatives about their friend's cherished legislation. And not echo them. Both repeatedly wished Kennedy could be here to ferry the legislation through Congress. Yet both have falsely attacked his legislation as leading to a "government takeover" of health care , when Kennedy's bill merely gives people the choice between public and private plans. If anything, Kennedy's compromise legislation creates a playing field too favorable to private insurers , in order to mollify those concerned that the public plan will have an unfair advantage. But so far, such actual policy details have not stopped Kennedy's "friends" from besmirching his work. So yes, we should "Do It For Ted." Progressives should work twice hard to protect and extend Kennedy's legislative legacy. Moderate senators should act on principle and not let selfish interest "politicize" their vote, in deference to their fallen colleague. And conservative senators willing to embrace the man should not abet "politicizing" lies about the man's most precious work. We should not let our political process be dictated by the emotion of moment. And we are not. By looking back at Kennedy's legacy, we are recognizing that if we heeded Sen. Kennedy's call four decades ago, we would not have the health care and fiscal crisis we urgently need to resolve today. And we are calling on all who revere the dignity Kennedy brought to the legislative process, to treat the cause of his life with that same dignity. Originally posted at OurFuture.org More on Health Care
 
Roger Wolfson: A Former Counsel to Ted Kennedy, on Kennedy Top
The longest I've ever worked for anyone in my professional career was for Ted Kennedy. I was joint Labor Committee staff to him and Paul Wellstone for four years. Here's some of what I took away from that experience. For all forty-six years Kennedy has been a Senator, he's kept the same office. Third floor Russell, facing the Capitol. It had been his brother Jack's office and he wanted to keep it. (He also kept his JFK's desk on the Senate Floor, even though that meant sitting among Junior Senators for his entire career, instead of moving closer to the center of the Chamber). Every time I walked into Kennedy's reception office -- contrary to what you might expect -- I grew depressed. Because every square inch of the walls of his reception office are blanketed with spectacularly intimate, private photographs of Ted's beautiful, powerful, principled -- and dead family. Joe Jr., Jack, Bobby, JFK Jr. Giving speeches, hugging, being sworn in to offices, mulling the issues of their day, loving their children. I walked into Ted's office and saw the photos and wanted to cry. When I would be ushered into his conference room or his personal office, it got worse. The photos grew larger and more imposing and even more candid. Immeasurably poignant glimpses into a family dedicated to principled and intelligent public service. By the time I got the chance to talk with the Senator -- which was not that often, because Wellstone hired me and I spent the greater part of my time with him -- I was usually despondent. But the Senator never was. My experience of Ted was that he had two typical states of mind: jovial and light-hearted, or focused and pissed. He either wanted to talk about me or his staff and laugh and joke, or he wanted to talk about work, in which case he was all business. No one who worked for Ted doubted that legislation was his life's work. He was more committed to politics than anyone I've ever known. Which is why, when I started working for Ted, I had theory about those photographs. I figured that he kept them nearby to remind him of the banner that had fallen from his family's hands to his. Those photos reminded him, to paraphrase Lincoln, that from these honored dead he should take increased devotion to the causes for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, and resolve that they shall not have died in vain. But then I spent years working for his Labor Committee. Bill after bill, hearing after hearing, speech after speech. A lifetime of work in four years. I watched Kennedy encounter what felt like unbearable challenges. And while I always admired how hard he worked and how intensely he drove his staff, I also grew to admire how well he treated his staff. Certainly he could be brutal and demanding at times. But he never lost his temper without apologizing for it. And, as the Washington Post reports today, Kennedy's "aides stayed longer than most assistants in other offices, in part because Kennedy entrusted them with responsibility and relied on their expertise. Occasionally, he supplemented their salaries from his own funds to keep them from leaving." That's just the half of it. Kennedy was committed to his staff's advancement. With all due respect to Harvard, he considered his office to be "the Real Kennedy School of Government" and he wanted all of us to have careers of their own. He parented us. When we left -- and over so many years, all of us of course had to -- he was sad about it. I saw him cry about a trusted employee's departure more than once. When some of his top staffers left his office, he would throw them lavish farewell parties at his own expense. And even paint them paintings, sweet and delicate watercolors, often of the sea, and sailing. By the time I left Kennedy's service, I had an entirely different theory of why he kept all those photographs of his family so prominently displayed. I think he just loved the people in those pictures. I think he just missed them and wanted, in any way possible, to keep them around. Keep them alive. So many people came and went in his life, and Ted was the only constant. I think it weighed on him, and the photos gave him a measure of comfort. Those photos, frozen impressions of a history so painful to me when Kennedy was alive, will cause my heart to ache that much more now. Especially since we've lost Wellstone, too. But I'll keep a few photos around, too, nonetheless. More on Death & Dying
 
Colorado GOP Calls For Apology After Democratic Office Vandalism Top
The chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is calling on his Democratic counterpart to apologize for suggesting that an act of vandalism at Democratic Party headquarters was linked to opposition to President Obama's push for health care reform. More on GOP
 
Snow Leopard: Mac's New Operating System Disappoints Top
(AP) NEW YORK -While Microsoft Corp. prepares to release the next incarnation of Windows on Oct. 22, Apple Inc. is cutting ahead, launching a new version of its operating system for Mac computers on Friday. Apple's new Snow Leopard software isn't as big of a step forward from its predecessor as Windows 7 will be from Windows Vista. The most important changes in the Apple operating system are under the hood, allowing software developers to rewrite their programs to run much faster. Snow Leopard is a relatively cheap upgrade, costing $29 for an individual user who has Leopard, the previous operating system. A "family pack" for five users costs $49. For Mac owners using the older Tiger operating system, switching to Snow Leopard costs $169, or $229 for a family pack. That "box set" includes the latest iLife and iWork software for such tasks as movie editing, photo organizing and word processing. Buying the DVD is the only upgrade option for consumers you can't download the software. What's the catch? Well, part of the reason Snow Leopard can promise faster, better applications is that it's designed for Macs with Intel chips, which Apple started using in early 2006. It won't run on older Macs with the previous PowerPC family of chips. The launch of the new operating system is a hint to get a new computer. In an Apple's demonstration of the software to The Associated Press, these were some of the most obvious changes that stood out in Snow Leopard: The built-in e-mail, calendar and address book applications will support Microsoft Exchange servers, the kind used by most companies. That means it will be easier to get company e-mail without using dedicated programs like Entourage or Outlook, which Microsoft is releasing for Macs late next year. However, Snow Leopard supports only the most recent release of Exchange. Moving the mouse cursor over a program icon in the "dock" at the bottom of the screen reveals all the windows open in that program, tiled side by side. This is an extension of the "expose" feature, which shows all windows in all programs side by side. Right-clicking in a window should bring up more relevant choices, bringing this function closer to its Windows equivalent. The new standard version of the QuickTime video-playing software will now convert clips for playing on iPhones or iPods, or upload them to YouTube. You will also be able to trim clips. Previously, you had to buy QuickTime Pro to convert videos or fire up the more time-consuming iMovie. You can make the file thumbnails even bigger, giving you a better idea of the contents of your hard drive at glance. The operating system is more compact, freeing about 7 gigabytes of hard drive space previously claimed by Leopard. Ejecting disks should be easier. Sometimes, Macs won't let you eject a disk or disconnect a drive because the operating system believes it's reading or writing to it. Apple says Snow Leopard will be better about freeing up the disk, or if it can't, it will give a reason. Web browsing and image and document previews should be noticeably faster. This is because more of the software now processes data in 64-bit chunks, twice as big as before. Other applications should benefit from this change as well, once developers start writing them in 64-bit versions. Developers will also be helped by a new system called Grand Central Dispatch, which makes it easier to take advantage of the multiple "cores" in today's processors, boosting the speed of heavy-duty applications like video editing. It will also be easier to take advantage of more system memory. Lastly, Apple is making it easier to tap into what can be the most powerful computing engine in a desktop PC: the graphics chip. While the central processing unit does most of the heavy lifting, the graphics chip is mostly called upon to generate screen images. Developers will now be able to expand the uses of the graphics chip, which could make for smarter enemies in video games and more realistic simulations of real-life objects. So how does Snow Leopard compare to Windows 7? Snow Leopard's benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff. Windows 7 combines a bigger revamping of the user interface of Microsoft's last effort, Vista, with a series of smaller under-the-hood changes. It even can work on many older PCs in fact, Windows 7 is supposed to run better on modest hardware than Vista did. Apple's share of the U.S. personal-computer market nearly tripled from 2004 to 2008 but hasn't gone up significantly since then, and now stands at around 8.5 percent, according to IDC. So Apple could use a fresh reason for buyers to get excited about Macs. Snow Leopard is unlikely to provide that. People already have a high opinion of Apple's software. What holds them back from switching from Windows is still the relatively high price and limited selection of Macs and third-party software. Coming in as the underdog in the public-perception contest, Microsoft has more to gain from these software revamps. For most Mac users, Snow Leopard will likely be a no-brainer upgrade, given the low price. But early upgraders often face minor bugs and installation problems, so unless you're dying for one of the new features, waiting a month or so is a safer course.
 
Revisiting The 10 Most Expensive Buildings In New York: NY Observer Top
In April 2007, during those blindered days of economic bluster, The Observer published an article naming New York's 10 most expensive towers, according to prominent real estate professionals. They agreed on the most valuable single building: the GM Building. That rocket of marble and black glass, considered then and now the most coveted skyscraper in Manhattan, if not the country, was, said one, "worth $4 billion--plus."
 
Dominick Dunne Dead At 83 Top
NEW YORK — Author Dominick Dunne, who told stories of shocking crimes among the rich and famous through his magazine articles and best-selling novels such as "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles," died Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 83. Actor-director Griffin Dunne said in a statement released by Vanity Fair that his father had been battling bladder cancer for some time. But the cancer did not prevent Dunne from working and socializing, his twin passions. In September 2008, against the orders of his doctor and the wishes of his family, he flew to Las Vegas to attend the kidnap-robbery trial of O.J. Simpson, a postscript to his coverage of Simpson's 1995 murder trial that spiked Dunne's considerable fame. In the past year, Dunne had traveled to Germany and The Dominican Republic for experimental stem cell treatments to fight his cancer. At one point, he wrote that he and Farrah Fawcett were in the same cancer clinic in Bavaria but did not see each other. He discontinued his column at Vanity Fair to concentrate on finishing another novel, "Too Much Money," which is to come out in December. He also made a number of appearances to promote a documentary film about his life, "After the Party," which was being released on DVD. Dunne was beginning to write his memoirs and, until close to the end of his life, he posted online messages on his own Web site commenting on events in his life and thanking his fans for their constant support. Earlier this summer, he was well enough to attend a Manhattan party hosted by Tina Brown. Chatting with an Associated Press reporter, Dunne recalled being treated for cancer at a hospital in Germany where Fawcett was also a patient. He also spoke of Michael Jackson, who had recently died, and remembered lunching with the singer and Elizabeth Taylor. Jackson was so excited to see her, Dunne said, he presented her with a diamond necklace just for the occasion. Dunne was part of a famous family that also included his brother, novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne; his brother's wife, author Joan Didion; and his son, Griffin. A one-time movie producer, Dunne carved a new career starting in the 1980s as a chronicler of the problems of the wealthy and powerful. Tragedy struck his own life in 1982 when his actress daughter, Dominique, was slain – and that experience informed his fiction and his journalistic efforts from then on. "If you go through what I went through, losing my daughter, you have strong, strong feelings of revenge," Dunne said in 1990 in discussing his novel, "People Like Us," in which the protagonist shoots the man convicted of killing his daughter. "As a novelist, I could create a situation in which I could do in the book what I couldn't do in real life. I intended for Gus (the character in the book) to kill the guy. But when I got to that part I couldn't write it. He wounds him and goes to prison himself for a couple of years." He was as successful as a journalist as he was as a novelist and spent many of his later years in courtrooms covering high profile trials. Writing for Vanity Fair, he covered such cases as the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991 and the trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, accused of murdering their millionaire parents, in 1993. "You're talking about kids who had everything – the cars, the tennis courts, swimming pools, credit cards. And yet this happened," he said at the time of the Menendez trial. As much as those trials riveted the nation, they were far overshadowed in 1994 when football great O.J. Simpson was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. With a trial that stretched out over a year and cable TV outlets providing endless coverage, the bespectacled Dunne became a familiar face to millions. "I especially like to watch the jurors," Dunne explained to Fox TV during the trial. "I always pick out about four jurors who become my favorites. I sort of try to anticipate what they are thinking and how they are reacting." He called his book on the Simpson trial, "Another City, Not My Own," "a novel in the form of a memoir." It, too, reached the best-seller lists. "Every word is true, but it's written in the style of a novel," he said. From the gritty world of the courtroom during the day, he would move into the glamorous realm of high society at night, dining with the rich and famous, charming them with his inside stories of the Simpson trial. He was a colorful raconteur and his stories mesmerized listeners. He was a much sought after dinner guest on both coasts and in the glamour capitals of Europe where he frequently traveled. He was a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, interviewing members of royalty and movie stars. His assignments took him to London to cover the inquest into Princess Diana's death and to Monaco to look into the mysterious death of billionaire Edmond Safra. He continued appearing regularly on television, and in 2002 debuted a weekly program on Court TV, "Power, Privilege and Justice." "I am openly pro-prosecution and make no bones about it," he told the San Francisco Chronicle that year. "I don't think there are enough people out there sticking up for victims." The show gave him an added dose of celebrity when it was distributed in foreign countries. He had already been working on "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles," a fictionalized retelling of a sensational 1950s society murder, when his 22-year-old daughter Dominique was strangled by her former boyfriend, John Sweeney, in 1982, shortly after she had completed her first movie, "Poltergeist." Sweeney was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, and was freed after serving less than four years of a six-year sentence. The verdict was seen as a major victory for the defense, and Dunne bitterly told the judge in court, "you withheld important information from this jury about this man's history of violent behavior." He later told the Los Angeles Times the sentence was "a tap on the wrist." In a 1985 AP interview, Dunne said he nearly stopped writing when Dominique was slain. "I was going to stop the book," Dunne said. "I didn't want to do a book that dealt with a murder. But my book editor wouldn't let me quit. She was incredibly sympathetic and lenient on time. I'm glad now that she didn't let me quit." "People Like Us" and "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles" were both turned into miniseries, and he stressed he had nothing to do with the changes the TV scriptwriters made. "If I had wanted it that way, I would have written it that way," Dunne told TV Guide, referring to changes made in the key character in "People Like Us" to make him more sympathetic. Among his other books were the 1993 "A Season in Purgatory," that helped revive interest in the 1975 slaying of teenager Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn. A Kennedy relative, Michael Skakel, was convicted in the killing in 2002. He also wrote "An Inconvenient Woman" and "The Mansions of Limbo." In 1999, Dunne published a memoir called, "The Way We Lived Then," a compliation of photographs of him and his family with famous people and his recollections of the glamour life he and his wife Lenny enjoyed for many years. Dunne was born in 1925 in Hartford, Conn., to a wealthy Roman Catholic family and grew up in some of the same social circles as the Kennedys. In his memoir, he traced his fascination with Hollywood to a childhood trip he took "out West" with an aunt. They took one of those home of the stars bus tours and he vowed to come back and be part of the glamorous world he had glimpsed. He served in the Army during World War II and graduated from Williams College in 1949. While in the Army, he was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in 1944 for carrying two wounded men to safety at the Battle of Merz in Feisberg, Germany. He wrote that, "Winning a medal was the only thing I can ever remember doing that won any admiration from my father." At Williams College in Massachusetts, he and a fellow student, Stephen Sondheim, appeared in plays together. After college, he went to New York where he landed a job in the fledgling TV industry as stage manager of the "Howdy Doody" children's show. NBC brought him to Hollywood to stage manage the famous TV version of "The Petrified Forest' with Humphrey Bogart. Among his credits as a producer were the TV series "Adventures in Paradise" and "The Boys in the Band," a pioneering 1970 drama about gay life. Two of his films, "The Panic in Needle Park" and "Play It As It Lays," were written or co-written by his brother John and sister-in-law Didion. He was invited to celebrity parties and said he decided then, "This is how I want to live." But Dunne said his years living the high life in Hollywood left him divorced, broke and addicted, and he moved to a cabin in Oregon to dry out and to start over as a novelist. While his brother was the famous Dunne at that time, the Times said, "nowadays, (Dominick) Dunne is far better known." John Gregory Dunne died in 2003. Dunne and his wife, Ellen Griffin Dunne, known as Lenny, were married in 1954. They divorced in the 1960s but he wrote that afterward they remained close nonetheless. She died in 1997. Beside Dominique, they had two sons, Alexander and Griffin. Griffin has acted in such films as "An American Werewolf in London" and "After Hours." He branched into directing and producing as well, with "Fierce People" and "Practical Magic" among his credits. ___ Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch in Los Angeles and AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
 
Jesse Kornbluth: Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners -- Starting with Himself Top
Dominick Dunne, who died last night, was Vanity Fair's brightest star for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is how you'll remember him. A success. A winner. The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser --- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party . [To see a three-minute clip, click here .] He's on a stage, giving what others would call a lecture and he'd call telling stories. This one is about Frank Sinatra, in a time long past, when Dunne was married and living in Beverly Hills and working in the movie business. "Frank Sinatra picked on me," Dunne begins. The audience titters. Dunne goes on to recall a night at the Daisy, a club in Beverly Hills. He and his wife Lenny are there. Frank Sinatra and his crew show up. Nick and Frank go way back, but they're no longer friends -- Sinatra, says Dunne, likes to tell Lenny Dunne that she's married to a "loser". Now Sinatra sends the maitre d' over. "I'm so sorry about this, Mr. Dunne," the man says, "but Mr. Sinatra made me do it." And with that he punches Dunne in the face. The audience laughs. "I was the amusement for Sinatra," Dunne continues. "My humiliation was his fun." The audience, still not getting it, laughs again. I can understand that laughter -- these fans of his articles and novels don't know how to process the information they're being given. That's because they're clueless about the first half century of his life, which is about out-of-control ambition, deep insecurity and the constant threat of humiliation. And they have no idea how his worst fears came to pass, how he drank and drugged and lost everything. So they laugh. "I hated him from that moment on," Dunne says, and now the audience is with him, because they are very familiar with Dominick Dunne as a professional hater, a scourge of the rich and criminal, a judge with a pen. O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Phil Spector -- regardless of the legal verdict, Dunne convicted them all. The big surprise of this documentary: Dunne convicts himself. "The reason I can write assholes so well," he says, looking right into the camera, "is that I used to be an asshole." This is riveting viewing -- I dare you to look away --- but that is not to say After the Party is amusing. It's something else: a man coming clean, ripping off layer after layer of pretense, telling the truth about himself in a way you never expect from any member of the America celebrity class. The story is no puzzle -- if Dunne's account is remotely accurate, the recipe for early success and midlife failure was developed at home. Here's Dunne: My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man...but there was something about me that drove him crazy. He mimicked me, he called me sissy. It may seem like nothing now but it's awful to hurt a child. It's a terrible thing. My opinion of myself was nothing...I believed I was everything he said. Dunne was, by his own account, an unlikely hero in World War II -- could that have anything to do with the memory of his father whipping him? And his obsession with being accepted at the highest level of Hollywood -- could there be any better way to show his father he was worthy? And the movies he produced -- who wouldn't be proud of making Al Pacino's first movie and the adaptation of the best-known novel of his sister-in-law, Joan Didion? When the crash came, it was total: no marriage, no career, no money. Dunne retreated to a one-room cabin, without telephone or television, in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, and, at 50, began to write. A few years later, his daughter, Dominique, was strangled to death by a former boyfriend. A chance meeting with Tina Brown led to an invitation to write about the trial for Vanity Fair . Here's Dunne: I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me. It wouldn't be necessary to hire a killer to kill the killer of my daughter, as I had contemplated. I could write about it. Tina Brown published that piece and offered Dunne a job. "I couldn't sign that contract with Vanity Fair quick enough," he says. "I was 59 at the time." For most of the film, the camera stays tight on Dunne, as the Irish Catholic raconteur builds the case against himself. There are a few witnesses for spice -- his son Griffin, Liz Smith, Tina Brown, producer Bob Evans, Joan Didion -- but they don't exonerate him so much as they confirm the accuracy of his memories. "I had to admit, I cried a lot," Dunne said after his first viewing of the film. "It really shows my life completely, the fakery of the early me --- and I'm not embarrassed a bit." I met Dominick Dunne in 1975, just before he took a high dive into the failure pool. We re-connected after his daughter's murder, were colleagues at Vanity Fair, friends since. I mention our relationship not as a name-drop, but because it means I knew pretty much everything in this documentary. Knowing and seeing are very different, however, and the movie hit me hard. But if I cried -- and I did, and you will too -- I also laughed and cheered. Because as much as we like the Rocky myth of a nobody getting somewhere, we also thrill to the story of a guy who got somewhere, lost it and fought his way back -- and then, until almost his dying day, made his living and his life by trying, as best he could, to tell the truth.
 
Robbie Gennet: Who Isn't John Galt? Top
Watching the recent attention given to Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy has been bittersweet. I must admit that I was shocked years back finding out that Dick Cheney loved her books, because what he represents is the polar opposite of what I thought the books were really about. You see, I'm not a raging Capitalist dickhead, I'm an Artist. Not that I don't want to make a good living doing what I do, but I was affected in a radically different way by Rand's writings and philosophy and feel strongly that "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" were by far the two most important books I've ever read. Their impact on my own beliefs still resonates today in every aspect of my life, which is why I've found myself rather horrified by the vitriol spewed towards Rand in the general media. But I would posit that there are two very different books in each of her novels and, depending on the reader, you get one or the other, but not both. They both have to do with selfishness but one veers towards Evil while the other, towards Salvation. Let me explain. If you are a Capitalist or fan of Capitalism in general, then Rand's books speak to your inherent desire to make as much money as possible, pay as little taxes as possible and basically get yours regardless of others. The Dick Cheneys of the world douse their selfish mantle with the hot cologne of "Fuck You" hovering around their every move, their vision and purpose focused on the almighty dollar while ignoring the human chattel crushed beneath their Panzer tank mentality. However, if you are an Artist, Rand's books free you from the opinions of others and put ironclad gates around your sense of purpose, unlocking the freedom to create your art unencumbered by the opinions or judgments of the rest of humanity. This is a profound and enlightening freedom available to those who choose it and denied to those who are taught to think they never could. The boldest of artists work not just outside the lines but with disregard to the existence of lines at all, with impunity from critics and the pearl-sniffing swine. They are able to release the purist visions from their unchained minds and create unabashedly personal work that exists solely as a manifestation of their will and desire, regardless of whether the world takes notice or regards it as such. Great art and music can enlighten the world, lift the masses and stimulate the senses, as it has countless times in the evolution of humanity. But rampant deregulated Capitalism can (and always does) spawn a greed-fueled Hell on Earth, if you are among the 99.99% that are not reaping the financial rewards. You cannot cure humanity of greed, which is why laws and regulation exist in the first place. In essence, there are two kinds of Selfish that can find their roots in Rand's writings. The first is the Dick Cheney/Alan Greenspan selfishness, inherent in Right wing think tank philosophy and spewed by the foaming mouths of Red State Republicans everywhere. Basically, it's the inherent selfishness, self-interest and self-righteousness of the Aristocracy as they pee on the Proles and count their ducats. Not to say that every rich person is that self-consumed; one only need look at the efforts of Bill and Melinda Gates to see that making and having money doesn't mean you have to be arrogant and self-consumed. Rand understood that Ethics was a separate concern than Selfishness, even though your sense of ethical rights and wrongs ultimately fuels the direction and intent of your selfishness. The other kind of Selfish available in Rand's writings is not Left or Right, nor is it really political at all. It has more to do with one's sense of purpose, ownership of self and being true to ones core ideals. And not just as an Artist, though this is where Rand's philosophy has manifested itself most effectively in my own life. It goes down to the core of humanity and our own nature: whether you love or hate other people. And that relies on whether you see others as yourself, or whether you see them as separate and unequal. You know, Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Do I think Dick Cheney or Alan Greenspan understand and share the feelings of others? Perhaps only each other, but certainly not the rest of "us." One can be totally selfish and still have empathy for others, to feel the bond of human brotherhood while being true to ones life purpose. I feel that way 100% and have been able to be true and uncompromising to my ideals and creativity while caring for and bonding with my brethren on the Planet Earth. For those of you familiar with the Bible (the only book cited as more influential than "Atlas Shrugged" in a Library of Congress survey) there is a quote from Matthew 7:12 that reads "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Meaning in essence, treat others like you want to be treated. Therefore in theory, the more empathetic you are towards others, the more selfish you actually are towards yourself. Most people think of the "Do unto others" quote in the case of things that we shalt not do, but it's really more powerful when we think of what we can and should do. If you love yourself, you will love others accordingly. If you hate yourself, you will have nothing but contempt and disdain for the rest of humanity and will take it out on them individually and collectively whenever possible. And if you happen to have the power of VP or Head of the Fed, for instance, your chances for global self-destruction are certainly amplified. So is Selfishness a black and white issue? Hardly. We can think in absolutes but all theories are subject to the vagaries of reality, where things don't always go as planned and nothing is truly perfect. But we can easily see how ones sense of self and purpose- and ones inherent good or evil nature- can be affected in radically different ways by Rand's words. For instance, Atlas Shrugged's self-stated theme is "the role of the mind in man's existence- and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest." To the Capitalist, rational self-interest is far different than the musician or painter honing their craft. Same goes for Rand's quote about the essence of Objectivism being "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." One could see how this rationale gives entirely different purpose to Dick Cheney or Alan Greenspan as it does to Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon. Indeed, imagine what the world would be like without Cheney, Bush or Greenspan, and reflect on what the world is already like without Lennon, Bob Marley or Hendrix. The latter group a gigantic loss for art and humanity; the former, a blight and pox on the world and it's occupants. When you look at Rand's acolytes in the world of Capitalism, you see a group of people who believe that they are better than the rest of the world and have every right to suck and horde every dollar they can from anyone stupid enough to part with it. In laissez-faire Capitalism, you see the worst side of Selfishness: unencumbered by humility and empathy, with no connection to the planet and the people who inhabit it other than cash flow. Resources are for plundering, people are suckers and Money is Everything. The last few decades of greed and the bursting of bubbles have shown us the dark side of this mentality and the core problem of Selfishness without Empathy. But to look at Rand's influence in the world of Art, simply turn up any Rush album and listen to the Objectivist prose of lyricist and master drummer Neil Peart. Being true to one's nature, one's mind and one's sense of purpose doesn't have to mean screwing over anyone in your path, nor does it mean letting anyone sway your core artistic beliefs. Indeed, the celebrated exchange between The Fountainhead's indelible architect Howard Roarke and his antagonist Ellsworth Toohey is instructive in this regard. When Toohey finally meets Roark, he asks "Why don't you tell me what you think of me, Mr. Roark?" to which Roark replies, "But I don't think of you." Roark isn't bent on destroying Toohey or even replying to his taunts and criticisms. He has no need to even acknowledge Toohey's vendetta-like critique of his work because he has no need for outside approval. Roark needs only his own reason and rationale for creating his work. The power of this freedom on the artist is immeasurable. But building a building or writing a song or painting a painting in all it's selfish glory doesn't screw people over in any consequential way, while true selfishness in Capitalism has proved to be an unfettered disaster for most of humanity, aside from the choice few who have benefitted financially (talking to you Goldman Sachs). And so it goes, the worst of Capitalism is destructive on a human scale. Consequently, badly made art is simply ignored. I guarantee you Bernie Madoff's victims are far worse off than those who bought the last Prince album. The individual "must exist for his own sake", Rand wrote in 1962, "neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself." This belief fuels individuals like Lennon, Marley and Hendrix to speak truths that are not just freeing to them but to any other being they touch. Think of "Imagine." "Get Up Stand Up." "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. Empathy for the brotherhood of man, the rights of human dignity, the horrors of war. This is not about any political system but about a human system, the interconnected nature of people and the planet. Selfishness is supposed to be the opposite of altruism, but why can't you be both? To be altruistically selfish, where you can care and have empathy for all others while maintaining a strong sense of self-purpose? Absolutely. Once again, look at Bill and Melinda Gates, rich beyond any of our wildest dreams and yet, donating billions to combat malaria and improve education around the world. I suppose one could say that Bill Gates is an altruistic Capitalist as well, making those two terms not so incongruous. But find me one altruistic Capitalist on Wall Street, giving up his bonuses to help his coworkers and sacrificing for the greater good. So far, it feels like Wall Street was the Titanic and when everyone rushed for the lifeboats, they had already sailed away to the Hamptons with Top Level Management and all the good champagne. If your heart and soul are empathetic and altruistic, no amount of selfishness can break that bond you feel with others. Ayn Rand may have spawned some coldblooded Capitalists hellbent on raping the world, but she also gave enlightenment and freedom to those who would save and protect it. In the words of Jimi Hendrix, "When the power of love conquers the love of power then the world will know peace." I say bring it on! The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. - Ayn Rand Freedom, freedom, give to me; That's what I need. Freedom, freedom to live Freedom, freedom, so I can give. - Jimi Hendrix "Freedom" A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. - Ayn Rand Live for yourself; there's no one else more worth living for. - Neil Peart/Rush "Freewill" What's the most depraved type of human being? The man without a purpose. - Ayn Rand Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up: dont give up the fight! - Bob Marley "Get Up Stand Up" Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. - Ayn Rand Imagine all the people Living for today... Imagine all the people Living life in peace... Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... - John Lennon "Imagine" The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. - Ayn Rand ---------------- The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics ... are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride. - Ayn Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness More on Financial Crisis
 
James Zogby: What Ted Kennedy Gave to Me Top
Ted Kennedy will rightly be remembered by generations of Americans for the values he espoused, and his legislative accomplishments which translated those values into action. I have a number of memories of the Senator, but one, in particular, will remain with me forever. In the horrifying days after 9/11, I received death threats from a few wretched souls who assumed that, because of my Arab ancestry and advocacy, I shared responsibility for the terrorist attacks on our country. All this created a double trauma for me, my staff and family. We were Americans and our nation had been attacked. We, too, wanted to grieve, but were pulled away from our grief by these threats and told, in effect, "you are not part of us". We reported these calls and received police protection. And then, out of the blue, came a different kind of call. I answered and heard a voice so instantly recognizable. It was the Senator calling to tell me of his concern for me and my family and to offer his support. It was an act of grace: spontaneous, uplifting and undeserved. Shortly thereafter, I received calls from other Senators also expressing the same concern and offering the same support (I didn't know then, but discovered later, that it was Senator Kennedy who had urged them to call). And so I will remember Ted Kennedy, not only for what he has given to our nation, but what, in the most trying of times, he gave to me--a restored sense of belonging. More on Ted Kennedy
 
Deborah Weinstein: Senator Kennedy Made Me Do This Top
Some who are born to privilege spend their lives blind to the hardships of others. A few, like Senator Kennedy, become giants because they reach outside their good fortune to insist that all should be able to count on opportunity and economic security. Senator Kennedy understood the blessings of practical service in his own life and expanded opportunities like Americorps for millions of others. His career was marked by a decades-long commitment to help those with the least political power - the poor, children, immigrants, and the uninsured were some of the many he championed. Looking back on his legislative achievements, his work for those least likely to command the assistance of expensive lobbyists is remarkable. In 1965, he sponsored legislation to drop immigration quotas that discriminated against non-white immigrants. In 1968, he shepherded legislation for bilingual education. In 1990, he co-sponsored the Ryan White CARE act to provide health care for HIV/AIDS patients. He was a champion of civil rights, women's rights, for legislation to assist the poor, and for increases in the minimum wage. Especially now, when we see the power of the insurance and finance industries working its way in Congress, it should be clear to all that Senator Kennedy's constant focus on the needs of the most vulnerable is a model of what leaders should do. His abiding concern led to an unrivaled record of accomplishment for the poor and vulnerable. Senator Kennedy's record demonstrates that with unswerving priorities, determination and savvy attention to detail, it is possible to make progress even in unlikely times. He teaches us not to give up, but to keep reaching out to persuade those with needed votes or power. He worked with Senator Hatch (R-UT) to provide health care to millions of children through the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, despite a Republican majority in Congress not seen as hospitable to expanded health insurance. So that is what Senator Kennedy will make me do - redouble concrete acts to reach out, persuade, seek opportunities to make real improvements in the lives of the poor, vulnerable, and uninsured. Extending health coverage for all Americans was the work of his life, as has been frequently quoted. It must be our work, too. Raising the minimum wage, helping those out of work, improving the lives of families with children, reducing poverty - these were all personal commitments for Senator Kennedy; they must be ours, too. More than 30 years ago, I worked for the Massachusetts chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, and had to speak at a dinner at which Senator Kennedy made the featured presentation. It was the largest crowd I had ever addressed. My uncle, with an unorthodox approach to calming my nerves, predicted that my "knees would be knocking together like Jewish maracas." He was right. The lesson, then as now, is that following in the footsteps and joining in the fight of a genuine leader is the right path to take. We will badly miss Senator Kennedy's leadership. But all of us can do more to follow in his path. More on Health Care
 
Jon Chattman: Taylor Hanson Isn't Burning Down Any Hotel Rooms Top
Imagine if Chewbacca left the Millennium Falcon on good terms in favor of hanging on the Enterprise with Cpt. Kirk. Sure, the Wookiee would have a blast and would likely lead the Starship to great things, but ultimately, one would sense he'd miss his pal Han Solo and head back home. That's sort of what happened to Taylor Hanson. Far-fetched, non-sensical intro aside, the musician has had an awesome run of late fronting pop rock supergoup Tinted Windows but this fall he's rejoining his brothers Zac and Isaac for a new Hanson tour (a new album's on the way). Truth is, the 26 year old said Tinted Windows, which put him alongside former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and Fountains Of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, was always just a side project and never intended to replace Hanson. But you knew that. Hanson's become much more than the "MMMBop" boy band from 1997 on a personal and professional note. The boys and their music have evolved. The music's gotten more soulful, and the boys have families of their own. As a matter of fact the Hansons (three of seven siblings) have six kids combined and expect that to grow. "We're trying to build our county," Hanson joked. As he and his brothers hit the road, I spoke with Taylor on the new record and tour, what Tinted Windows meant for him and his brothers, and how he's managed to stay out of trouble for so long. Did you learn anything out of the Tinted Windows experience? A couple of things. I honestly learned to appreciate the fans that have followed us. I've seen a lot of fans who supported Tinted Windows and that means a lot. I see people buy tickets and show up. The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar...whatever it is. So you're excited to get back to Hanson obviously.... I'm really excited to premiere some new music for fans. It's been about a year since we've been doing shows. With this tour, we're ramping up to the new album coming out in the spring. There's still this stigma about Hanson being teen bopper, right? Hanson has rapid female fans, which I'm completely proud of, but a lot of fans are a contingent that have grown up with us really - our peers. There's younger fans. More and more guys are Hanson fans [but they're] musicians or kind of guys who were into a Beatles record. There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the '50's and '60's and we all love the music from that era across the board. What's the difference between Tinted and Hanson in that regard? The difference between Tinted Windows and Hanson shows is a lot of just repertoire. Hanson has been a band for years - we have a lot of songs to pull from and it's a different dynamic - a common kind of thread. With Tinted Windows - it's kind of a little like "hey, we're this new band." We've done less than 20 shows. Were your brothers concerned you'd make Tinted Windows more permanent No, they weren't worried. It definitely was odd when you've been in a band forever to do band gigs with other guys. It's like [you'll be talking] and be like "remember that time...oh wait, you weren't there." But, they were totally supportive. They always knew it was something I was doing in addition to. It wasn't really a competition. You guys still get along? It's probably just more a band than the family thing. There's something about being a family no question that adds a level of intensity because the people know each other so well. We're kind of invested in one another at a different level and so comfortavle, and there's a common bond that keeps it from falling apart. I mean look at the Black Crows and the infamous Gallagher brothers relationship - you hear they're going at it or hate each other but they still make music together. Why is that? They have a connection that's unique. We do get along quite well but believe me there's a lot of hairiness in the background. We just don't air our dirty laundry publicly. How do you stay out of the headlines. I mean with Tinted Windows, were you at least tempted to set a hotel room on fire? [Laughs] You know it's funny but people don't talk about [how] you have to pay for that and that sucks...then your band usually gets pissed off because they're in the hotel and they have to evacuate. You know it's interesting. I feel like our life is the true rock and roll lifestyle - we've lived out of a suitcase most of our lives. We've experienced incredible adrenaline - things a tiny group of people in the population have experiencd. I feel we've just lived it fully. As far as going off the wagon and having incredible drug addictions or actually setting hotel rooms on fire, I guess we get that out in other ways. The true rebelliion is surviving and that's rock and roll. To be together and stick it out. We're a traveling circus that's been doing this 15 years. And you're only 26. Exactly. Sometimes you don't know what age you are because your experiences make you feel 30 or 40.
 
Trip Van Noppen: In Harm's Way - The Arctic Wild Top
Just a few weeks ago, a German ship left on a voyage seeking a sea route across the frozen top of the world -- something mariners have sought for 500 years. Because of global warming, the ship likely will succeed. Satellite images show that, for the first time in recorded history, there is an ice-free passage through the Arctic north of both Canada and Russia. International merchants see the prospect of an Arctic shipping route as a shortcut to increased profits. But it actually is an alarming piece of the global push to exploit the once-pristine Far North. Finally unlocked by the warming effects of climate change, these waters and lands -- and the people and creatures whose survival depends on them -- are under assault by corporations and nations eager to turn them into industrial zones. And unfortunately, the United States is no exception. In the next few weeks the Obama administration faces a series of crucial decisions that will determine whether America's Arctic will survive and thrive or be sacrificed to destructive and dangerous oil and gas drilling. At stake are the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas -- also known as the Polar Bear Seas, home to 1 in 5 of the world's remaining polar bears -- as well as the rich fishing grounds of Bristol Bay. During the last eight years, the oil and gas industry and the Bush administration pushed hard to open these fragile waters to industrial-scale oil and gas exploration and drilling. The rush to drill ignored the fact that the Arctic is perhaps the least-understood region on Earth, and that the most basic scientific research is lacking to guide decisions that could alter the Arctic ecosystem forever. An oil spill in icy waters, which is likely if drilling goes forward, would be a disaster we have no idea how to clean up The Arctic is ground zero of the global warming crisis. Its seas, its wildlife and its people are already suffering the harmful effects of a warming world. Extracting more oil and gas will directly damage the Arctic ecosystem, while burning those fossil fuels will accelerate global warming -- without doing a thing to satisfy the nation's need for clean energy. The Arctic's places, species and people are too precious to allow destructive oil and gas activity without a rigorous, objective scientific review of what may be lost. Until September 21, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is asking for Americans' opinions on a Bush-era plan for selling Arctic oil and gas leases in the coming years. At the same time, he is deciding whether to permit Shell to drill in the Arctic Ocean in 2010 and whether to defend a Bush-era sale in the Chukchi Sea that offered the pristine area to oil companies without complying with environmental laws. Sec. Salazar should throw out the Bush-era leasing plan and cancel the illegal Chukchi Sea leases.. He should call a "time-out" on all new oil and gas activity in the Arctic Ocean -- including pending drilling plans -- until he develops a science-based, comprehensive approach to managing the region that will ensure a legacy of a healthy, living Arctic for future generations." No less than the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, the Arctic is a national treasure. Just as American leaders of previous generations had the vision and foresight to preserve national parks and wilderness areas, President Obama and Sec. Salazar can protect the Arctic as a legacy for future generations. If they don't? Once it's gone, it's gone forever. TAKE ACTION: Tell Interior Secretary Salazar to throw out the Bush-era leasing plan and cancel the illegal Chukchi Sea leases.
 
Carol Peasley: The Unfinished Agenda on Women's Equality Day Top
Eighty-nine years ago today the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, finally giving women full voting rights. Thanks to Congresswoman Bella Abzug , since the early 1970s we have commemorated the anniversary as Women's Equality Day. It is indeed a day to step back and reflect on how far--or not far--women have come in achieving political equality over these nearly 90 years. I am especially reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago with Dr. Massouda Jalal , a CEDPA training alumna who was also the first woman to run for president in Afghanistan in 2004. She summed up the most basic political reality for women in Afghanistan: "without power, there can be no equality." As we look around the globe, we see expanded political participation and leadership by women in many countries. Certainly there have been important gains in the United States, but I am especially encouraged by the examples of Ellen Sirleaf Johnson in Liberia and the countless brave women in Rwanda who helped bring that country back from the depths of genocide and now hold 56 percent of the seats in Rwanda's lower parliament-- the highest percentage of parliamentary seats held by women in any part of the world. Last week's election in Afghanistan provides some important signs of hope. This time around there were two women candidates for president , as well as record numbers of women running for provincial level offices. This level of participation is encouraging, but most of the female candidates encountered serious difficulties and were not able to campaign openly. Those who did too often faced threats against themselves or their families. "Women leaders in Afghanistan need support from the international community," explained Dr. Jalal during her March 2009 visit to CEDPA. As I write this, the results are not yet available, so we are unable to see how many women actually won seats in the provincial elections. But, even if the results turn out to be disappointing, we can all take heart that there were so many women willing to take a stand to fight for power and for equality. In order to promote greater political participation by women, many countries have mandated that certain percentages of legislative seats be held by women. One of the most interesting experiments has been in India where the Women's Reservation Bill mandates that women hold one-third of all seats in the village-level legislative bodies, the Panchayat Raj. While the merits of political quotas can be debated, surveys show that 95 percent of women representatives claimed they would never have acquired positions in Panchayats if there were no reserved seats. I was impressed when I visited a group of newly elected village Panchayat members in the outskirts of Patna, India earlier this year. CEDPA is working with a local organization to train these women as leaders and advocates. Their enthusiasm was infectious--and several seemed ready to engage fully in the political process and to run for re-election even when the seat was no longer "reserved" for a woman. This, in fact, has been an important part of the experience in India. As a result, some 43 percent of village Panchayat seats are now held by women, well above the 33 percent reservation. Most importantly, the women are making a difference in grassroots politics in India. They prioritize development needs differently than men; they are much more likely to push for better schools and better health centers. They are also increasingly being asked to take on broader political responsibilities at higher levels of the Panchayat system. They are gaining power, strengthening their communities, and helping women throughout India achieve true equality. Finally, as we think back on August 26, 1920 , we should also look forward. We've come a long way towards achieving equality for women, but we are not yet there. A major part of the unfinished agenda should be U.S. ratification of the CEDAW women's treaty , formally known as the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The treaty provides a universal standard for women's human rights. It addresses discrimination in areas such as education, employment, marriage and family relations, health care, politics, finance and law. The United States remains the only democracy in the world that has not ratified the CEDAW treaty. One hundred eighty-six countries, over 95 percent of United Nations members, have ratified CEDAW. U.S. ratification of the CEDAW women's treaty would clearly demonstrate our commitment to achieving full rights for women in every area of life. I hope that the U.S. Senate will ratify CEDAW before we celebrate the 90th anniversary of our 19th Amendment next summer. Then, we can truly celebrate my favorite CEDPA slogan : "Every Woman a Leader." Together, we can make it happen. More on Afghanistan
 
London police 'steal' from unlocked cars Top
LONDON — British police are combing the upscale London neighborhood of Richmond, looking for things to steal. Scotland Yard said Tuesday that officers in the southwest London borough would be checking unlocked cars for precious items – and sometimes taking them – as a reminder to owners to keep their doors locked, their windows closed and their valuables with them. "The message to car owners is: 'Help us to help you,'" Richmond Police Chief Inspector Duncan Slade said in a statement. The force said officers would either write to owners of the unsecured vehicles telling them to be more careful or – if they spotted high-value items in the car – "remove the property for safekeeping." A note would be left for the owners explaining what had happened. Scotland Yard said the exercise was meant to keep a lid on car crime in the borough, which has experienced a spike in thefts from inside vehicles. The force said that in many cases cars had been left unlocked. One local lawyer warned that the stunt could get police into trouble. "It undoubtedly is a trespass and there could be civil proceedings if a person shows a damage or loss has resulted from the trespass," lawyer and Richmond resident Orlando Pownall was quoted as saying by the BBC. He told the broadcaster that officers should make sure none of the items they took were damaged. Police said the program, which has been running since the beginning of last month, has so far resulted in the seizure of only one piece of property. In the two dozen other cases in which cars with valuables in them were targeted, their owners showed up in the nick of time.
 
Joe Cirincione: Ted Kennedy: A Lion for Nuclear Disarmament Top
Senator Ted Kennedy worked tirelessly to protect America from the threats of nuclear terrorism and proliferation and to reduce and eliminate all nuclear arsenals. In June 2004, I had the honor of introducing Senator Kennedy as a keynote speaker at the Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference. He was warm, gracious and generous in his praise of our work at Carnegie. He was also ferocious in his criticism of the failed policies that had led the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq and that had increased the nuclear threats. On that sunny June day, he spoke eloquently of the challenges, the failed policies, and of our joint responsibility to continue the work President Kennedy had begun. Re-reading his speech, it could have been given yesterday, not five years ago. Below, a few excerpts convey something of his power and vision and illustrate why the nation will miss his leadership on this critical issue. [ The entire speech is available here. ] On Nuclear Disarmament Any discussion of nuclear weapons must start with one basic fact. These weapons have the power to destroy everything humanity has ever created across the centuries.... If there is one thing the world today should be able to agree on, it's that nuclear weapons should never again be used and nuclear war should never again be fought. We cannot simply wish away the existence of these dangerous weapons in this dangerous time. We have a duty to do all we can to work with other nations to limit, reduce, and eliminate the existing nuclear arsenals, and the sooner the better. Now, with the specter of nuclear terrorism very real, and high on the minds of every American since 9/11, this effort is a matter of the highest practical importance for our own national security. All who lived through those traumatic thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 recall the sudden horror that gripped the nation. Families prayed for their safety. Children were taught to hide under their desks in schools, as leaders in Washington and Moscow struggled over how to avoid the mutually assured destruction that our policies in those days had suddenly made so vivid. As President Kennedy wrote to Chairman Khrushchev after the immediate crisis ended, "Perhaps now, as we step back from danger, we can together make real progress in [the] vital field" of disarmament. Surviving the brink underscored in my brother's mind the necessity of cooperation, even with the most difficult adversary, so that no American president would ever again be faced with the same impossible dilemma. On Nuclear Terrorism and Proliferation The attempt to rid Iraq of nuclear weapons it didn't have has damaged our credibility, set back our nuclear non-proliferation policy, and become one of the most serious blunders in the entire history of American foreign policy. While the Administration has focused its attention on Iraq, a country without nuclear weapons, North Korea and Iran have continued their pursuit of these weapons, and untold amounts of nuclear materials have remained under little or no security in the nations of the former Soviet Union... Each neglected threat is an opportunity for terrorists to obtain the material they need to attack us with nuclear weapons.... The great and overwhelming danger we face in the months ahead is a nuclear 9/11, and we hope and pray that it is not already too late to prevent. The war in Iraq may well have made it more likely, not less likely. Because we are no longer threatened by the specter of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, many have been content to put aside our drive toward nuclear disarmament. But this attitude is a mistake and a missed opportunity. We no longer stare across the oceans at a hostile Soviet enemy, but nuclear weapons still remain the greatest threat we face... On the Folly of New Nuclear Weapons If we build them, the costs are clear. No one will believe we are serious about nuclear non-proliferation. We are trying to persuade the world to "do as we say, not as we do," and few countries will oblige.... Some proponents of new nuclear programs in this country believe that building these weapons is acceptable, because they don't see a link between U.S. nuclear weapons policy and other countries' nuclear decision-making. This simply doesn't make sense. Each of America's decisions on its nuclear arsenal is based on our calculations of risks and opportunities around the world. The status of other countries' nuclear programs plays an important role in those calculations. No one has ever provided any evidence that other countries make these calculations any differently than we do. Our military has no need for these weapons - they're being developed exclusively for the hawks in the White House and the Pentagon who insist we need nuclear weapons that are more usable. What world are they living in? How can any sane person today possibly want nuclear weapons that are more usable? On Our Joint Enterprise Together over the last half-century, Democratic and Republican Presidents alike have pursued sensible arms control agreements and a global commitment to non-proliferation.... Many of you here today have worked long and hard and well on these vital issues. With your help, we can and will prevail in this all-important mission to prevent nuclear terrorism and to limit, reduce and eliminate the world's nuclear arsenals. In his address on disarmament at American University forty-one springs ago, President Kennedy called us to action, urging us to "do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just." A strong and just America is the nation we need. We've lost ground in the past four years. We need new leadership to regain it and move ahead, and we don't have the luxury of wasting any time. Thank you very much. More on Nuclear Weapons
 
Surprise, Surprise! Teens Not Tweeting Top
Just 11 percent of its users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore. Instead, Twitter's unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. More on Twitter
 
David Vines: Don't Stoop to Conquer Top
As a high school student with serious interests in journalism and politics, cable news has fascinated me for quite some time. Some of what we see on the news has merit, but most of it I find far more disturbing than informative. Now, I am a fairly liberal guy. I wouldn't consider myself a "radical," but I'm plenty liberal enough for Bill O'Reilly to consider me a " loon ." And therein lies what bothers me most about this cable news culture that I've grown up in and been exposed to all my life. I was obviously not around back in the early days of television news, but could anybody imagine Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite calling people they disagree with "loons" or "pinheads" on live television? Heck, I could hardly picture Howard Beale or Ron Burgundy lacking that kind of simple decency in the pre-cable news era. Unfortunately, the shortcomings of modern news don't end at Fox. With a quick turn of the dial, over to the left-leaning MSNBC, I still see things night in and night out that make me shudder. Full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Keith Olbermann and I share many of his political viewpoints. His special comment on prosecuting torture was one of the most well thought out, informative, and well-researched commentaries I've ever seen on television. Aside from the news, I also share many of his personal interests. I, like him, also happen to love baseball, read the Huffington Post, and spend way too much of my free time on Deadspin . However, Olbermann is guilty of nearly as much self-promotion, and unconstructive drivel during his broadcasts as his foes over at Fox. He is practically shoving down the bar for civil discourse when he displays that cartoonish figure of Bill O'Reilly with an oversized head up on the screen and reads his quotes in an almost clownish voice. While it's good to call the other side out on their lies and misinformation, there has to be a way to do it without stooping down to their level. The more the left continues to blur the line between news and entertainment, the less credibility they have. When that happens, they just begin to look like a mirror image of the very networks they are denouncing. Since the days of Murrow and Cronkite, the news has turned into a for-profit business, and the profit motive has poisoned the content. It's easy to see why this happened: more controversy and screaming means more viewers. More viewers mean more advertisers. More advertisers mean more money. But how do we fix this and break the cycle? Unfortunately, I don't have a simple 10-point plan to offer to the media establishment. All I know is that if you put smart and entertaining hosts on television, they can get plenty good ratings without stirring controversy and making themselves look like fools. Rachel Maddow is a great example. This is why, despite all of the craziness, fear-mongering, and name-calling that dominate today's most popular news shows, I'm hopeful that this trend can eventually turn around. If it does, people may just begin to get more informed, and our country will be much better off for it. More on Keith Olbermann
 
Gov. Corzine, Sen. Menendez Say Gadhafi Should Be 'Barred' From New Jersey Top
NEWARK, N.J. — Gov. Jon Corzine and New Jersey federal legislators joined an angry chorus of opposition Wednesday to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's expected stay in the state, where 38 victims of the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, lived before their deaths in 1988. Corzine and Democrats U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and U.S. Rep. John Adler protested anticipated plans by Gadhafi to stay in the northern New Jersey community of Englewood when he addresses the United Nations General Assembly next month. Menendez said he should be "barred" from New Jersey. The Libyan government is renovating a sprawling estate in the upscale community, and Gadhafi's expected to pitch a ceremonial Bedouin-style tent on the grounds, after a request to erect it in Manhattan's Central Park was rejected, according to elected officials. Fifty-nine of the Pan Am victims were New York state residents. Opposition to the ruler of the oil-rich North African nation has surged since he welcomed Abdel Baset al-Megrahi home last week. Al-Megrahi is the only man convicted in the bombing, which is widely thought to be the work of Libyan intelligence. In all, 259 people aboard the plane and 11 on the ground were killed. "I want him barred from New Jersey," Adler said Wednesday at a gathering at the Victims of Terrorism Memorial in the southern New Jersey community of Pennsauken. "Let him land at the U.N. by helicopter, do his business and get out of the country." Adler plans to introduce a resolution condemning Al-Megrahi's release at the U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 8. "Gadhafi is not welcome in New Jersey," Corzine said. "I am angry, like every other New Jerseyan and every other American, about the release of Abdel Beset al-Megrahi." Gadhafi's expected U.N. appearance – his first U.S. visit – is the culmination of a years-long effort to rehabilitate his image and thaw relations between the West and Libya. He has ruled Libya the past 40 years, and was a steadfast critic of the United States early in his regime. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gadhafi renounced terrorism, dismantled Libya's secret nuclear program, accepted his government's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the victims' families. But he and his son drew criticism for what some have described as a hero's welcome for al-Megrahi, who was released from a life sentence by Scotland on Aug. 20 and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds because he is dying of cancer. Critics view that welcome as a step backward. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown broke his silence on Al-Megrahi on Wednesday, saying he was repulsed by the welcome Libya gave the convicted killer. Under its host nation agreement with the United Nations, the U.S. is obligated to allow foreign leaders, other officials and diplomats into the country to visit or work at the U.N. with limited exceptions. But the provisions allow U.S. authorities to restrict their movement to a 25-mile radius around U.N. headquarters. Englewood is about 12 miles north of Manhattan, apparently placing it within the 25-mile radius. Menendez urged the State Department to limit Gadhafi's stay to the immediate area around the U.N., echoing a previous request from Democratic U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The Englewood estate is one of several possible sites being considered for Gadhafi and his entourage, according to the U.S. State Department and the Libyan Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Obama administration has said it will keep in mind the "raw sensitivities" of the families of Lockerbie bombing victims as it tries to find a place for him. More on United Nations
 
Cara Parks: The Long, Slow Death of American Triumphalism Top
Crossposted with tomdispatch.com The Prequel: In my childhood, I played endlessly with toy soldiers -- a crew of cowboys and bluecoats to defeat the Indians and win the West; a bag or two of tiny olive-green plastic Marines to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima. Alternately, I grabbed my toy six-guns, or simply picked up a suitable stick in the park, and with friends replayed scenes from the movies of World War II, my father's war. It was second nature to do so. No instruction was necessary. After all, a script involving a heady version of American triumphalism was already firmly in place not just in popular culture, but in the ether, as it had been long before my grandfather made it to this land in steerage in the 1890s. My sunny fantasies of war play were intimately connected to the wars Americans had actually fought by an elaborate mythology of American goodness and ultimate victory. If my father tended to be silent about the war he had taken part in, it made no difference. I already knew what he had done. I had seen it at the movies, in comic books, and sooner or later in shows like Victory at Sea on that new entertainment medium, television. And when, in the 1960s, countless demonstrators from my generation went into opposition to a brutal American war in Vietnam, they did so still garbed in cast-off "Good War" paraphernalia -- secondhand Army jackets and bombardier coats -- or they formed themselves into "tribes" and turned goodness and victory over to the former enemies in their childhood war stories. They transformed the V for Victory into a peace sign and made themselves into beings recognizable from thousands of westerns. They wore the Pancho Villa mustache, sombrero, and serape, or the Native American headband and moccasins. They painted their faces and grew long hair in the manner of the formerly "savage" foe, and smoked the peace (now, hash) pipe. American mytho-history, even when turned upside down, was deeply embedded in their lives. How could they have known that they would be its undertakers, that their six-shooters would become eBayable relics? You can bet on one thing today: in those streets, fields, parks, or rooms, children in significant numbers are not playing G.I. versus Sunni insurgent, or Special Op soldier versus Taliban fighter; and if those kids are wielding toy guns, they're not replicas from the current arsenal, but flashingly neon weaponry from some fantasy future. As it happens, G.I. Joe -- then dubbed a "real American hero" -- proved to be my introduction to this new world of child's war play. I had, of course, grown up years too early for the original G.I. Joe (b. 1964), but one spring in the mid-1980s, during his second heyday, I paid a journalistic visit to the Toy Fair, a yearly industry bash for toy-store buyers held in New York City. Hasbro, which produced the popular G.I. Joe action figures, was one of the Big Two in the toy business. Mattel, the maker of Joe's original inspiration and big sister, Barbie, was the other. Hasbro had its own building and, on arriving, I soon found myself being led by a company minder through a labyrinthine exhibit hall in the deeply gender segregated world of toys. Featured were blond models dressed in white holding baby dolls and fashion dolls of every imaginable sort, set against an environment done up in nothing but pink and robin's egg blue. Here, the hum of the world seemed to lower to a selling hush, a baby-doll whisper, but somewhere off in the distance, you could faintly hear the high-pitched whistle of an incoming mortar round amid brief bursts of machine-gun fire. And then, suddenly, you stepped across a threshold and out of a world of pastels into a kingdom of darkness, of netting and camouflage, of blasting music and a soundtrack of destruction, as well-muscled male models in camo performed battle routines while displaying the upcoming line of little G.I. Joe action figures or their evil Cobra counterparts. It was energizing. It was electric. If you were a toy buyer you wanted in. You wanted Joe, then the rage in the boy's world of war play, as well as on children's TV where an animated series of syndicated half-hour shows was nothing but a toy commercial. I was as riveted as any buyer and yet the world I had just been plunged into seemed alien. These figures bore no relation to my toy soldiers. On first sight, it was hard even to tell the good guys from the bad guys or to figure out who was fighting whom, where, and for what reason. And that, it turned out, was just the beginning. The Sequel (August 2009): Nobody's mentioned it, but the most impressive thing about the new movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra , comes last -- the eight minutes or so of credits which make it clear that, to produce a twenty-first century shoot-em-up, you need to mobilize a veritable army of experts. There may be more "compositors" than actors and more movie units (Prague Unit, Prague Second Unit, Paris Unit) than units of Joes. As the movie theater empties, those credits still scroll inexorably onward, like a beachhead in eternity, the very eternity in American cultural life that G.I. Joe already seems to inhabit. The credits do, of course, finally end -- and on a note of gratitude that, almost uniquely in the film, evokes an actual history. "The producers also wish to thank the following," it says, and the list that follows is headed by the Department of Defense, which has been "advising" Hollywood on how to make war movies -- with generous loans of equipment, troops, consultants, and weaponry in return for script "supervision" -- since the silent era . Undead Joe Think of G.I. Joe as a modern American zombie. "He" may never have existed, but he just won't die. More on that later. As a start, I'm sure you want to know about the new Joe movie which was meant, like Star Trek earlier in the summer, to reinvigorate a semi-comatose brand by retelling its ur-story. In the process, the hope is to create a prequel to endless sequels that, like the Transformers series (also from a toy that was an eighties hit), will prove to be Hollywood's Holy Grail of endless summer, bringing in global mega-profits forever after. I caught G.I. Joe, the Rise of Cobra , one sunny afternoon in a multiplex theater empty of customers except for a few clusters of teenage boys. So where to start? How about with the Joes' futuristic military base, all flashing screens, hi-tech weaponry, and next generation surveillance equipment, built under the Egyptian desert. (How this most postmodern of bases got under Pharaonic sands or what kind of Status of Forces Agreement the Joes have with the government of Egypt are not questions this film considers.) But here's the thing: well-protected as the base is, spectacularly armed and trained as the Joes are, it turns out to be a snap to break into -- if you happen to be a dame in the black cat suit of a dominatrix and a ninja dressed in white . And then there's that even spiffier ultra-evil base under the Arctic ice (a location only slightly less busy than Times Square in movies like this). It's the sort of set-up that would have made Captain Nemo salivate. Oh, and don't let me forget the introductory scene about a Scottish arms dealer in seventeenth century France condemned to having a molten mask fitted over his face for selling weapons to all sides -- and his great-great-great-something-or-other who's doing the same thing in our world. Then there are those weaponized exoskeletons lifted from Iron Man (which also had its own two-faced arms dealer), the X-wing-fighter-style space battle from Star Wars but transposed under the ocean (à la James Bond in Thunderball ), not to speak of the Bond-ish scene in which the evildoer, having captured the hero, introduces him to a fate so much worse than death and so time-consuming it can't possibly work. And how can there not be a scene in which a famous landmark (in this case, the Eiffel Tower) is destroyed by the forces of evil, collapsing on panicked crowds below -- as in Independence Day or just about any disaster film you'd care to mention? Throw in the sort of car chase introduced a zillion years ago in Bullitt , but now pumped up beyond all recognition, and, oh yes, there's someone who wants to control the world and will do anything, including killing millions, to achieve his purpose (ha-ha-ha!). Is that clear enough? If not, it doesn't matter in the least. Movies like this are Hollywood's version of recombinant DNA. They can be written in the dark or, as in the case of this film, in a terrible hurry because of an impending writers' strike. All that matters is that they deliver the chases and explosions, the fake blood and weird experiments, the wild weaponry and futuristic sets, the madmen and heroes at such a pace and decibel level that your nervous system is brought fully to life jangling like a fire alarm. These, today, are the son et lumière of American youthful screen life. Their sole raison d'être is to deliver boys and young men -- and so the franchise -- to studios like Paramount (and, in cases like Joe, to the Department of Defense as well): the Batman franchise, the Bond franchise, the Terminator franchise, the X-Men franchise, the Bourne franchise, the Iron Man franchise , the Transformers franchise. And now -- if it works -- the G.I. Joe franchise. After all, the first word that appears on screen without explanation in this latest junior epic is, appropriately enough, Hasbro. We're talking about the toy company that is G.I. Joe and, in a synergistic fury, is just now releasing an endless range of toys ( G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra Night Raven with Air-Viper v1 ), action figures , video games , board games , Burger King give-aways , and who knows what else as synergistic accompaniments to this elaborate "advertainment." Barbie's Little Brother Hasbro first brought Joe to market in 1964. He was then 12 inches tall and essentially a Barbie for boys, a soldier doll you could dress in that "Ike" jacket with the red scarf or a "beachhead assault fatigue shirt," then undress, and take into that pup tent with you for the night. Of course, nobody could say such a thing. Officially, the doll was declared a "poseable action figure for boys," and that phrase, "action figure," for a new boy toy, like Joe himself, never went away. He had no "backstory" (a word still to be invented), and no name. (G.I. -- for "Government Issue" -- Joe was a generic term for an American foot soldier, redolent of the last American war in which total victory had been possible.) Nor did he have an enemy, in part because young boys still knew a version of American history, of World War II and the Cold War. They still knew who the enemy was without a backstory or a guide book. Though born on the cusp of the Vietnam War, Joe prospered for almost a decade until antiwar sentiment began to turn war toys into the personae non gratae of the toy world and, in 1973, the first oil crunch hit, making the 12-inch Joe far more expensive to produce. First, he shrank and then, like so many of his warring kin, he was (as Hasbro put it) "furloughed." He left the scene, in part a casualty, like much of war play then, of Vietnam distaste and of an American victory that never came. Despite being in his grave for a number of years, as the undead of the toy world he would rise again. In 1977, paving the way for his return, George Lucas brought the war flick and war play back into the child's world via the surprise hit Star Wars and its accompanying 3¾-inch high action figures that landed on Earth with an enormous commercial bang. Between them, they introduced the child to a self-enclosed world of play (in a galaxy "far, far away") shorn of Vietnam's defeat. In 1982, seeing an opening, Hasbro's planners tagged Joe "a real American hero" (which once wouldn't have had to be spelled out), and reintroduced him as a set of Star-Wars-sized action figures, each with its own little bio/backstory. Hundreds of millions of these would subsequently be sold. The Joe team now had an enemy as well, another team, of course, and in this case, though the Cold War was still going full blast in those early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, it wasn't the Russians. As it happened, Hasbro's toymakers did a better job of predicting the direction of the Cold War than the CIA or the rest of our government. They sensed that the Russians wouldn't last and so chose a vaguer, more potentially long-lasting enemy -- and in this, too, they were prescient. That enemy was a bogeyman called "terrorism" embodied in Cobra, an organization of super-bad guys who lived not in Moscow, but in -- gasp -- Springfield, U.S.A. (Hasbro researchers had discovered that a Springfield existed in every state except Rhode Island, where the company was located.) In story and style, the Joes and their enemies now left history and the battlefields of this planet behind for some alternate Earth. There, they disported themselves with bulked-up weaponry and a look that befitted not so much "real American heroes" as a set of superheroes and supervillains in any futuristic space epic. And so, catching the zeitgeist of their moment, at a child's level, the crew at Hasbro created the most successful boy's toy of that era by divorcing war play from war American-style. The Next War, On-Screen and Off Twenty-seven years later, Joe, who lost his luster a second time in the 1990s but never quite left the toy scene, is back yet again with his new movie and assorted products. Whether this iteration proves to be another lucrative round for the franchise depends not just on whether enough American boys turn out to see him, but on whether his version of explosive action, special effects, and up-muscled futuristic conflict is beloved by Saudis, Poles, Indians, and Japanese. Today, for Hollywood, when it comes to shoot-em-ups, the international market means everything. Abroad, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened smashingly in South Korea and, in its first week, hit number one in less-than-all-American China and Russia as well. It took in nearly $100 million overseas in its first 12 days, putting its U.S. take in the shade. Here, it started
 
Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Playing Shortstop for the Boston "Ted" Sox Top
Ted Kennedy was my boss and my mentor. More than anyone in my life, he inspired me as he inspired all of the many hundreds of staffers who served him on his senate staff. I began volunteering as a freshman in college in his mailroom in 1969 when I was 20 years old. In those first months I ran errands, drove him to appointments, babysat his children Kara, Teddy Jr. and Patrick, and wrote many speeches and Congressional Record statements that he would insert for every conceivable cause, event and person who merited having "The Senator's" support. I was also a short-stop on his Senate office softball team affectionately known as the "Boston Ted Sox." Senator Kennedy would come out several times each summer to play softball with his staff and summer interns. He captained the team, yelled us on, and then jumped in to play first base when it looked like his staff could inconceivably lose to another senate office team. Lose! A Kennedy nor his staff could lose a softball game! So The Senator would grab a bat. And he hit many a ball out of the ballpark. He always, always was hitting them out of the ballpark. My most cherished photo is of us standing out in a baseball field in DC soaking wet from a rainstorm that had interrupted a game. He was as muddy and wet as the rest of us were. For the many generations of staff who had the honor to serve him during his Senate tenure, all of us were proud members of the "Boston Ted Sox." The staff either respectfully referred to him as "The Senator" or "EMK." It was never appropriate for us to call him by his first or last name. To this day -- especially this day, I always just called him "The Senator." After a year volunteering, I was hired by Senator Kennedy to be a legislative assistant on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees, which he chaired. It was The Senator's mini-State Department. He chaired this Subcommittee with courage and conviction on behalf of millions of the world's hungry and destitute refugees. It was from this vantage point that I came to see a side of Senator Kennedy which few in America appreciate -- a tireless globe-trotting champion of the downtrodden victims of war and natural disaster whose passion, concern and commitment saved countless thousands from certain death. It is a legacy that deserves to be better known as he is honored by so many today and in the weeks ahead. During the Vietnam War, Senator Kennedy (a veteran himself), trudged through countless refugees camps in Vietnam and Cambodia to shed light on the plight of the innocent war victims who were left homeless, caught in the incessant crossfire. He railed against President Nixon and his administration for failing to do more to come to the aid of these hundred of thousands of Vietnamese. Kennedy did everything humanly possible to convince his colleagues in the Senate to support greater aid to help Vietnam's displaced. He single-handedly compelled the Nixon administration to devote more foreign assistance to the refugee organizations working in the refugee camps, and strengthened the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees by mobilizing global humanitarian support for Vietnamese victims of the war. We always knew that the world's refugee crisis was a 24/7 commitment, and Senator Kennedy was determined to make a difference. When Bangladesh declared its independence in 1971 and Pakistan's military invaded it, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into India. Kennedy came to their rescue. He personally galvanized the U.S. military to airlift relief supplies to the refugee camps around squalid Calcutta, spent over a week among the refugees working with international relief organizations to organize their donor needs from the U.S. government and the generosity of the American people. When he returned to the Senate, he used the gavel of his Subcommittee chairmanship to enlist his colleagues in supporting new changes to the Foreign Assistance Act and the Food for Peace program to enable massive airlifts of food for the starving refugees in India. Kennedy took great personal risks as Chairman of the Senate Refugee Subcommittee. He courageously traveled with UN personnel into war zones to investigate and attempt to protect refugees. When the breakaway region of Nigeria known as Biafra broke away, Kennedy implored the Nigerian Army to enable international relief agencies to begin protecting the innocent civilians caught in the civil strife. The Senator sent me to the Middle East one year to investigate the plight of Palestinian refugees following the 1973 Middle East war. After visiting almost 20 refugee camps, I returned to Washington to write the first report about Palestinian refugees as a junior staffer for the Subcommittee. Kennedy read every page, and then convinced his colleagues to support more social, medical and welfare support for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides funding for many of the Palestinians. Kennedy introduced an amendment to the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act to speed more humanitarian relief to Palestinians In the face of some critics at home. Kennedy never backed down from his support to find a permanent home for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, which he considered absolutely essential to the cause of peace as a passionate supporter of Israel. When Soviet Jews were being persecuted by the Kremlin, Kennedy traveled repeatedly to Moscow with lists of names in his hand to appeal to Soviet leaders to gain their release. By his own legacy and persistence, hundreds of Soviet Jews personally gained their freedom because of his intervention. I know I am not doing adequate justice to all Senator Kennedy did for refugees around the world with these few, short paragraphs. Where there was war, Senator Kennedy believed someone had to protect the innocent victims. When you next travel to Vietnam or Cambodia, to Laos or to East Timor, to Bangladesh or to Sudan, to Nigeria or Jordan, to Algeria or Russia, Senator Kennedy's legacy will endure as a savior of refugees. In the four decades that Senator Kennedy chaired or served on the Refugee Subcommittee, there is not one U.S. or international relief organization that did not benefit from his professional or personal generosity. The United Nations is a much stronger global relief organization because of his enduring support. Congress has become far more amenable to supporting a strong, vital U.S. foreign aid program because of his leadership. The cause of refugees has become a critical issue among global diplomats in international forums because of lion-like devotion to humanitarian causes around the world. Surely JFK is remembered around the world for his presidency and RFK is admired among his generation for his compassion. Tonight, by candlelight or lantern, EMK will be quietly remembered and honored in thousands of tents, huts and homes of refugees around the world who owe their lives and the lives of their children to his generous devotion to their safety and security. Ted Kennedy was as much a home run king around the world as he was to so many millions of Americans at home. More on Refugees
 

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