Thursday, September 17, 2009

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The Media Consortium: Weekly Immigration Wire: Race to the Bottom Top
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger The immigration debate seems to be rushing forward on its own timetable--and without a structured frame to guide it, the effort is damaged from the start. As Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr., of Esperanza USA said during a call with media members yesterday, Democrats and Republicans are "running toward the harshest positions to show they can be the hardest on those who are the weakest." Worse yet, silence from the White House has left the stage empty for "Right wing and anti-immigrant groups to shape this conversation," according to Eric Rodriguez, Vice President of National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Now, "politics are driving policy" conversations, thanks to radical pundits, teabaggers, and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC). On September 9, Wilson heckled President Obama during a joint session of congress. " It was the shout heard 'round the world (at least the country) ," according to Versha Sharma of Talking Points Memo. What spurred this blatant display of hostility and disrespect? The President's truthful statement that undocumented persons would not be covered as part of health care reform. Wilson has since apologized, albeit insincerely: He continues to appear before cameras to defend his outburst. Not only that, but Wilson has lied about his professional expertise : He was never an immigration lawyer, despite his claims to the contrary. Oddly, the White House didn't rebuke Wilson-- it capitulated . The Washington Monthly reports that "The White House on Friday said it would bar illegal immigrants from purchasing health coverage through a proposed insurance marketplace," a measure the author, Steve Benen, categorizes as "wildly unnecessary." Obama won't please the likes of Wilson even if he outlaws the Spanish language. Creating a roadblock to health care by "preventing people who are already here from buying their own insurance with their own money" will simply shift the debt to the public at large. The truth of the matter is that preventative and regular treatment is much less costly than emergency room visits, where all taxpayers will shoulder the cost. It's a puzzling move that has already spurred strong reaction from groups like NCLR, America's Voice and individuals like Cortés, who asserted in yesterday's call that "Congress has lost its moral barometer." In a piece for New America Media, Marcelo Ballve calls Wilson's outburst " quite appropriate ," in the sense that his words, intention and energy are harbingers of the coming debate about immigration reform. No matter the issue, no matter how civilly Democrats approach it, "Republicans, and not a few Democrats, will scapegoat illegal immigrants for many of the nation's problems." But is the White House prepared for a debate that is bound to be "even more rancorous than the bile-filled health care fight"? Given how rapidly the White House retreated in the face a red-faced liar, it's an important question. Continuing along their apparent strategy to meet political process with inanity, Republicans chose ex-Birther Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La) to respond to the President's speech. Birthers are a fringe element of anti-Obama activists that claim the President was not born in the U.S. When questioned on his beliefs, Boustany initally replied that in terms of Obama's citizenship, " I think there are questions, we'll have to see ," but has since retracted his words. Once again, Republicans are feeding destructive and negative energies in a volatile political landscape, rather than working for change. Channing Kennedy , writing for RaceWire, asks "Why is our conversation around immigration so often driven to extremes, both of language and of policy?" Highlighting another extreme use of language seemingly embedded in the immigration dialogue, the post features a video from Rinku Sen's "Word" series, which touches on how the term Illegal , when used to referenced the undocumented, is a "gateway to racism and exploitation." Sen has a question of her own: "What terrible, scary things have these people done to deserve having their entire being replaced by a single word?" Sen touches on an important point: The conversation about immigation, a issue that is so far-reaching in our culture, has been ludicrously reduced to one-word epithets ( Illegal ) and playground diction ( You lie! ). This obscures the very complex and social issues that must be addressed if we are to consider ourselves a sane and modern society in the world. New America Media reports on the results of a study of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement's detention process. The study, which was conducted by the Detention Watch Network, reveals what many feared : "We don't know who's detained or why, that they don't have a release process, that they don't track family ties or make legal immigrants available for alternatives to detention." This is not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable that humans who sacrificed their bodies and health to help dig Manhattan out of the toxic rubble in September 2001 are being ignored. In " Eight Years Later, Undocumented Ground Zero Laborers At Greater Risk ," New America Media reports on another tragic consequence of ignoring immigration reform. The undocumented laborers who worked at Ground Zero "are at greater risk of chronic health problems because they are excluded from federally funded programs to treat ground zero workers." As Jose Loja, who cleaned pipes at the site says, "We're all suffering from the same diseases." And yet since our current take on the undocumented is that they deserve less than the rest of us, we don't all suffer the same fate when struck by those diseases. Nor are we to have a clear idea of who even makes up the current social body, if the rift between those who feel the undocumented should boycott the 2010 census and those who feel the idea is "insulting" or even "stupid" continues to grow. Nor will 30,000 Haitians who live here have their case heard for why " Undocumented Haitians Deserve to Stay Here ." Until we address the needs of the immigrant community that lives in shadows that President Obama pledged to banish, people will continue to suffer. Until the White House steps up as boldly as Joe Wilson, who will guide the immigration discussion in a humane fashion? The national immigration dialogue, if delayed, will continue to degrade. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration and is free to reprint. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter . And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net . This is a project of The Media Consortium , a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder . More on Immigration
 
Moody's Stock Slides On Probes In Credit Ratings Agencies Top
DES MOINES, Iowa — Shares of rating agency Moody's Corp. fell Thursday as government agencies began looking into credit rating companies' actions during the financial crisis. Shares slid $1.13, or 4.4 percent, to $24.79 in morning trading. Shares of McGraw-Hill, which owns credit rating agency Standard & Poor's, declined 82 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $27.38. The Securities and Exchange Commission scheduled an afternoon meeting to discuss possible regulatory changes that could affect ratings services. William Blair & Co. analyst John Neff maintained his "Market Perform" rating on the stock in a note to investors released Wednesday. He said the issues scheduled to be discussed by the SEC do not change his long-term positive outlook for Moody's stock. Among the issues the SEC has planned to discuss include additional disclosure requirements around ratings history and performance and conflicts of interest. The commission also is considering rescinding an expert opinion exemption that protects ratings services from legal liability for the accuracy of its credit ratings. Neff said regulatory and legislative calls for increased legal liability are ill-advised. Any changes would likely be procedural, he said. "Whatever the requirements, we believe Moody's and other rating agencies would simply follow and document the required steps, thus avoiding any real increase in liability, and would do so with little incremental cost," he wrote. California Attorney General Jerry Brown also said in a statement Wednesday that he plans to launch an investigation into the role credit rating agencies played in fueling the financial crisis. He was to discuss the probe in a statement planned for Thursday morning.
 
Lisa Solod Warren: Big News? Women Over 50 Less Likely to Remarry Top
Duh. Okay, perhaps the New York Times article that graced the front page of the Style section recently deserves a little more parsing than that. But really. Like that other scary statistic that turned out to be wrong--remember the one about women over forty being as likely to get hit by a terrorist's bomb as to marry? That one had women running like banshees to get hitched to anyone they could or contemplating that perhaps marrying out of terror was pretty much the same as getting killed by a terrorist--I suspect this one will somehow be debunked in some way, too. Or perhaps not, as it hasn't gotten nearly the play as the last scare tactic. According to the Times, "the 'remarriage gap' for women is far wider than it is for men...the biggest gap of any age group." That may well be because men have a tendency to marry down, both in age and intelligence, while women marry up. Or it could be due to the simple fact that when a woman divorces in middle age, the very last thing she wants to do is get married again. Of course that theory is never explored. Instead, the Times interviews a very sincere woman minister (who is appropriately photographed with her hands folded as if in prayer) who spends much of her time cooking splendid meals for herself and calling her daughter to tell her about them. She tried the usual internet dating sites and has had only middling success; she is apparently too tall, too serious, and not willing to lie about her age. In other words she sounds like a normal, healthy, middle aged woman; she's not willing to play games just to get a date. I divorced the first time at 49 and had a pretty good time dating. That might have been because I got in under the wire of the dreaded Five O. I'll never know. But then, two-and-a-half years ago, I met a man with whom I fell in love. Rather than just going with that wonderful feeling, however, I accepted his proposal. Looking out the rear window of being separated yet again and heading for my second divorce, I know full well I should have stuck with the relationship as love affair. I won't go into my reasons for marrying, except to say that all things considered it seemed like a good idea at the time. But what I found out is that I don't much like the married state any more than I did the first time. And I suspect that now I am not very good at it. The first time I was not yet thirty and wanted children. I married and had them and tried my best to make the relationship work. It ultimately didn't. The second time I don't think I realized how much I need my own space and a certain amount of quiet and privacy every day. As much as I might love a man, I really really do not want him around 24-7. I don't want to sleep beside a man who snores. I do not want to cook dinner every night. I do not want conversation when I want to read. I want nights out with girlfriends without explanation, I want alone time with my daughter in the house, I want to eat apples and peanut butter and watch HGTV. I also, of course, would very much like a lover. A man in my bed. Sometimes. Someone to see a flick and catch a meal with. Someone to travel with. And definitely someone to rub my feet while we watch television. But I don't think at this point in my life that means marriage. And I know a large amount of single and married women in their fifties who feel the same way. They decry the lack of alone time, the bed wars, and the daily dinners. They are tired of not being able to just drop down on the couch after a long day and flip the remote themselves. They are very tired of not being appreciated for all they do by the men who promised--some long time ago--to do just that. I married my lover and for a hundred reasons, some of which had to do with being married and many which did not, it all went to hell. It might well have gone to hell anyway--in fact I feel that it would have--but getting out of a marriage is a whole lot harder than getting out of a relationship. The pain and the guilt are worse, too. When I divorced my first husband I said I would never marry again. But I did. Now both my lawyer and my therapist have made me promise to call them if I get a cockamamie idea like that again--at least in the next five years. On the other hand, I don't think I have to worry: According to research, I am now into my fifties and part of the statistical norm. It's unlikely to happen which takes a load off my mind.
 
Leslie Pratch, Ph.D.: Job Fit 6: Circumventing the Boss Top
Now let's look at a situation in middle management. Jeff was his boss's star direct report. He generated useful ideas and his boss, Ken, didn't mind giving him credit for them. He was grooming Jeff to succeed him and hoped that Jeff's potential would encourage higher management to promote him. Then Ken's boss, Bill, the general manager of marketing, died suddenly and a new manager took over. Ken resolved to make a good impression on his new boss. Ken's chance came when Bill decided to have each of his direct reports prepare a report on trends in the business and what the division should do about them. Ken turned the task over to Jeff, as Jeff had been his most creative subordinate. Jeff tried but found himself in over his head. Clever improvements he could make; analyzing trends was beyond him. Jeff spoke to Ken about his difficulty. Ken was satisfied with Jeff's results but Jeff wasn't. He knew that his report was still a mishmash of shallow observations. Jeff occasionally worked with another manager, Simon, who was higher up than Ken. Jeff found a way to initiate a project with Simon and then tried to coax Simon's ideas about trends in the organization hoping that he could adapt some of Simon's ideas for his own report without its looking as though Ken had stolen them. The problem was that Jeff, a Stratum IV person, had been given a Stratum V task. Ken was also a Stratum IV person, which is why he couldn't add value to Jeff's work and why he relied so heavily on his ideas. Simon was a Stratum V. Although Jeff knew nothing of organizational strata, time horizons, or cognitive levels, he could tell the difference between Simon's ability to conceptualize and that of Ken. If the organization were arranged according to Jaques's principles, Ken wouldn't be Jeff's boss. They would be peers. Furthermore, Bill wouldn't have given that assignment to Ken (or to Jeff) knowing that neither was at the proper cognitive level to carry it out. Upward Trajectory Flattens Out Henry came into a service firm at age 24 as a manager. The company's founder and CEO held out the promise of rapid advancement for his most talented employees. Henry did well and in his second year began to display such an interest in and grasp of his boss's work that when his boss was promoted at the end of the year, Henry got his job. The new role worked out well. Henry was swamped at first, as he now had to handle several different work groups at once, and had to plan farther ahead. But after a year he got the hang of it and in his second and third years had affairs well under control. Meanwhile, he embarked on an evening MBA program. The CEO soon rewarded Henry with another promotion to head a task force assigned to assimilate three acquisitions the company had made. Henry was to have all systems of the newly acquired firms unified within a single system within four years. Two years into that assignment, Henry was in deep trouble. His reports were vague and he couldn't keep the pieces together. It seemed to him as though every time he had a plan, elements in it changed -- new equipment became available or customers of the acquired businesses left. How could he plan four years ahead? He felt he was juggling too much. Despite being swamped, he refused to delegate to subordinates. Many of the tasks he should have assigned to subordinates so that he could spend his time drawing conclusions from the information they generated he tried to do himself. His subordinates complained they weren't given enough to challenge them. What went wrong? Let's look at where Henry was in his second year with the organization. He was performing well as a first-line manager (Stratum II) and starting to think like a department manager (Stratum III). He was making the transition from Stratum II to Stratum III. At that point, he was given a Stratum III role. It was difficult initially but he could do it. That transition in his career occurred when he was 25 years old. He was in Mode Five. That clarifies his problem: He did so well in a Stratum III job that he was promoted to a Stratum IV role at age 28, over a decade before reaching cognitive level four. No wonder he couldn't handle it. He should have been given special projects at the Stratum III level, to broaden his expertise and increase his visibility and his connections to others in the organization. By about age 42, he would then have both the cognitive power and the experience to thrive in a Stratum IV role. He wouldn't delegate to protect himself from disgrace. If he assigned parts of the overall task to subordinates, they would expect him to tell them the results, which he knew he wasn't producing. He was paralyzed because he felt he didn't know the rules of the game any more. Henry's delegation problem is a clue to a mismatch of an individual's cognitive power and the role he is trying to fill. But failure to delegate doesn't always indicate such a mismatch. Often the refusal to delegate is rooted in character: the manager has an unconscious need to prove to himself that he can do anything and everything. In such cases, he will often be overworked and get behind. The difference is that for the most part the work he does will be done competently, unlike Henry's vague progress reports. Of course, Henry had a strong need to prove he could do everything and everything, or he would have asked for help. To know to what degree his failure to delegate was characterological, we would have to see how he responded to help were his boss to realize the need and offer to revise his responsibilities. But Henry's main problem remains the fact that he was promoted to a job beyond his current cognitive capacity. Despite everyone's best intentions, Henry was guided into failure. One of the benefits of Stratified Systems Theory is to avoid the occurrence of such failures. The capacity to function in a given role is the result of several factors. Cognitive capacity is a necessary but insufficient one. Just as important are temperament, skill, knowledge, values, experience, and motivation. Understanding complexity of information processing is an important dimension of assessing an individual's readiness for a given role. For example, the managing general partner ("MGP") of a private equity firm was criticized by his partners as unwilling to share his strategy for the firm with them. The MGP's stated reason was he wanted them to stay focused on their respective areas. His partners attributed it to the MGP's characteristic of sowing divisiveness among his partners as a way of consolidating his own power. The fundamental reason was that the MGP was functioning at a lower level of cognitive complexity than his partners. He was incapable of pulling together the disparate kinds of information needed to articulate a coherent vision for the future of the firm, its strategy. Although his partners sensed he was not as bright as they, they assumed he had the capability to formulate strategy. He did not. Of course, individuals who depend for their success on the work of those who are much brighter than they find it difficult to add value to the work of the others. If the MGP is incapable of articulating strategy, he is unlikely to keep the partnership together for long (unless everyone is dysfunctional). For more, read page 10-11 of " Understanding Executive Personality ." Other references include Jaques, E., & Cason, K. (1994). Human capability. Arlington, VA: Cason Hall; and Jaques, E. (1996). Requisite organization: The CEO's guide to creative structure and leadership. Arlington, VA: Cason Hall.
 
Dr. Josh Dines and Dr. Rock Positano: Achilles tendon tears can end a season quickly... Top
Football is starting and we have already seen several season-ending injuries. The Cincinati Bengals' tight end, Reggie Kelly, suffered an Achilles tendon rupture at the beginning of training camp, which meant that his 2009 season was over before it began. The achiles tendon is a tendon at the back of the leg that attaches the calf muscles (gastrocsoleus muscle complex) to the heel bone (or calcaneous). The tendon functions to help plantarflex the foot (foot/toes point down towards ground), which is crucial during walking, running and jumping. It is one of the thickest and strongest tendons in the body. During running it can experience loads 6-8x one's body weight. About 80% of the time, Achilles tendon tears occur during sporting activities. In older patients, the Achilles tendon can tear as a result of chronic weakening due to overuse. Certain medical condition or medications have also been associated with Achilles tendon tears due to their effect on tendon composition. In younger patients, if is often an acute event that occurs when one starts to run. Athletes will feel an extreme pain in the back of their ankle. Oftentimes they feel like they have been shot or hit with a bat in the back but when they look around, no one is near them. The diagnosis is usually easy to make as the patients have a palpable defect in the back of their ankle where the tendon has split in half. They will have weakness pushing off with that foot. MRI or ultrasound can be used to confirm the diagnosis. Once the diagnosis of an Achilles tendon tear is made, the patient has two treatment options: surgery or casting. In patients who are older, lower demand, or unable to undergo surgery, casting can provide good results. The goal of casting is to hold the foot and ankle in a position to bring the torn ends of the tendon next to each other. This allows the tendon to then slowly heal over time. Casting or bracing for up to 3 months or more is often necessary, but it does obviate the need for surgery Again, the results with this treatment can be good, but there is a slight increased risk of rerupture and the tendon typically isn't as strong as it was before the injury. Surgery can have some benefits over cast treatment. The first is that it results in a significantly lower rate of rereupture. The second is that it better establishes normal strength in the tendon. Surgery is not without risks though. Infection, wound breakdown, and scar tissue formation are all real concerns after surgery. Wound breakdown and infection can occur due to the swelling and the relatively poor vascularity to the area. When treating patients, it is imperative to present them with the risks and benefits of each treatment option then make a decision based on what is best in their case. That being said, high performance athletes with Achilles tendon tears are almost always treated with surgery. Again, because this provides a stronger tendon that is less likely to re-rupture. Recovery after surgery takes a few months. Weightbearing is protected, to a certain extent, in the immediate postoperative period. The patient is then progressed to full weightbearing followed by strengthing over the next few weeks and months. Based on reports, Reggie Kelly had surgery a few weeks ago, which means this season is over for him. Good news is that players often do well after such a procedure so he should be ready to go for next years training camp.
 
"Say You're One Of Them": Distributor Leaks Oprah's Book Club Pick Top
Uwem Akpan's 2008 short story collection, "Say You're One of Them," will be the latest pick for Oprah's Book Club, according to information leaked unintentionally this morning from Ingram International, a book distribution company.
 
Grant Cardone: Health Care Fight Distraction to Real Issues Top
Health care is the concern of politics and not the major concern of Americans and is being used as a distraction to those issues that most weigh on Americans. While President Obama delivered another rousing speech in favor of what his generalized plan for increasing health care coverage by increasing government involvement in medical care. The major concern of Americans today is jobs, home values, safety of their money, and the future of the US economy . This health care issue is the concern of politics not the priority concern of the American people. Is it a concern yes, but not the main one! The concern of 26m Americans is employment! There are almost as many people out of work as they are without health coverage! What good is health care if I can't feed my family? This issue affects those with jobs and without! How do we grow our economy and protect our dollar if people can not work? How do we restore confidence in our economy if people can not spend money because they don't have income! Washington put your attention on what the American people want handled and today it is jobs! Nearly 40% of all Americans who own a home today are concerned with the value of their homes where most of their net worth remains. Foreclosures are estimated to hit record levels never seen before with one in every 357 U.S. households with loans got a foreclosure filing in August alone. Foreclosures are affecting all of us not just those foreclosed on. The value of every homeowner is affected with every foreclosure, tax revenues are negatively impacted and confidence further deteriorates. There are approximately 40 million elderly in this country that are concerned about the little bit of remaining money they have in the banks and whether it is safe and then trying to figure out how to survive on their savings while it earns .03% in banks they are no longer confident in. Who is not concerned about the future condition of the economy and value of the US dollar? I assure you there are more concerned with these issues than they are with health care! The issue of health care is being forced on the American public to distract it from those things that are of the most concern to Americans. This focus on health care is like making a Christmas gift list while your house is burning down. Jobs, the value of homes, the safety of our money, the trillions of dollars in debt this country is taking on, and the future of the American economy is of more concern to the Americans I talk to than health care! Is health coverage important? Absolutely. But when you are challenged it is critical that you take care of problems in the proper priority and make the main things the main thing. Ask the American public about what most concerns them today most and solve those problems first. Once you get people employed again, stop the dropping value of homes, get the banks lending the money we gave them and restore the economy then lets get everyone health insurance. Grant Cardone, Author of Sell to Survive More on Health Care
 
Joe Peyronnin: Anger in America Top
Former President Jimmy Carter has always had a knack to say things that are uncomfortable and ill timed. With his remarks to NBC News, and repeated yesterday, he has highlighted a problem as old as America itself and, in so doing, has complicated the debate over President Obama's agenda. At issue has been the growing lack of civility in protests across the country and before a joint session of Congress directed at President Obama and the U.S. Government. Most appalling examples include signs carried by protesters comparing President Obama a monkey or a Nazi, or Congressman Joe Wilson's inappropriate outburst on the floor of the House calling the president a liar. They also include multimedia entertainer Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist toward whites, or radio show host Rush Limbaugh saying the president's birthplace is Kenya. Some of these acts and comments are so outrageous that they turn off many Americans, even conservative Republicans. So to broadly paint all dissenters with the malignant brush of racism will only drive the country further apart. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," President Carter said. "And I think it's bubbled up to the surface, because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country." Sadly there remain plenty of people in the United States who are racists. And the fact that President Obama received less that 15% of the white vote in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is troubling. But it is a mistake to suggest that most of the 75,000 protesters who gathered in Washington last weekend were racists. It is equally wrong to say that most protesters who attended the recent "tea parties" were all racists. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell also sees it differently than President Carter. "The issue is not race, it's civility," Powell said, "This is not to say that we are suddenly racially pure, but constantly talking about it and reducing everything to black versus white is not helpful to the cause of restoring civility to public dialog." President Obama made history when he became the first African American elected to the nation's top office with 53% of the vote, or nearly 67 million voters. Early on in his presidency he enjoyed a 70% approval rating. That number has now fallen to about 50%. Is President Carter suggesting that the defectors are largely racists? The simple fact is that there is a lot of anger and frustration out there aimed squarely at Washington, and with good reason. Unemployment continues to grow, although the rate of increase is slowing. But unemployment is on track to surpass 10% in the very near future and many economists predict the nation is most likely to have a "jobless" recovery. At the same time the government has rescued the U.S. automobile industry with billions of American taxpayer dollars. One year ago Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail and then the world economy collapsed. Government regulators missed all of the obvious warning signs, as bankers over-leveraged their companies and were richly paid in return. This forced the government to pump billions of taxpayer dollars into the financial industry. Today the financial industry is stable, bankers are being paid bonuses (Goldman Sachs paid out $11 billion) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is approaching 10,000. But most banks are sitting on their toxic assets, there has been no meaningful regulatory reform and some experts warn we a poised for another economic crisis. Meanwhile, comparatively little help has made it to the people on main streets where stores are boarded up and business is awful. And a frighteningly huge number of homes face foreclosure across the country. Millions of Americans are "under water." As Rome burns members of Congress are mud wrestling over health care. Many proposals are confusing and complicated; take end of life counseling or a "public option." They lend themselves to demagoguery and preposterous claims, like "death panels," government run health care and cuts in Medicare services. Everyone agrees that health care costs are out of control, but insurance companies and their lobbyists are fiercely fighting to protect their profit margins. Adding to the noise and mendacity Glenn Beck accuses President Obama of favoring "eugenics" and Rush Limbaugh calls him a "Nazi. But it is "the economy stupid." Deficits from growing health care costs, government stimulus packages, bank and auto bailouts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are adding trillions to the national debt. The last President to have a budget surplus was Bill Clinton and it there is no plan in place to repeat that rare feat. Can you name a single president who has actually made substantial cuts to the federal budget? They always speak of "waste, fraud and abuse" but nothing happens. Why do we still have troops based all over the world? Why do we still pay out so much in foreign aid? Huge deficits are likely to lead to serious inflation and higher taxes. They are being underwritten by China and Japan, and threaten to severely weaken America globally. Our children and grandchildren will be left with a legacy of debt and serious problems. "The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual." So said President Carter in a speech to the nation in July 1979. It was his so-called "malaise" speech, a word he never used but was successfully pinned to it by candidate Ronald Reagan. Nonetheless, rather than talking about racism, President Carter might have been more constructive if he pointed to his comments given in that summer of long gas lines and high inflation. For instance: "What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends." Yes, sadly racism is alive in America and we have a long way to go, but conditions for most people of all races have improved and, with more minorities achieving influential positions, it will thankfully continue to do so. On the other hand Washington hasn't changed. It's the same old smash mouth politics. In fact, the explosion of media outlets, multi-platform distribution and instant bloggers and Twitterers has exacerbated the problem. Politicians are too focused on scoring short term political points and securing corporate donations for their campaign. This is the most serious political problem facing our nation today, and there is no incentive or willingness to change the status quo. No wonder everyone is so angry. More on Glenn Beck
 
Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: Praying for Prosperity: Young Men in Saudi Arabia Top
Originally published on Youthradio.org , the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. By Ali Zafar, Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia Rippling-golden sand dunes and rocky fields surround the sleepy city of Al Kharj, located in the Riyadh province of Saudi Arabia. Everything shuts down here five times a day when the call to prayer blares from the city's many minarets as worshipers flock to mosques. These days, those flocks have grown larger with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in full gear. Among those Muslims is 26-year-old Ryed Sunaid, a resident of Al Kharj who is using this month to pray for not only a place in heaven, but also for prosperity here on earth. Sunaid was born in Dilliam, a Bedouin village located just outside of Al Kharj. Sunaid comes from a large family with 10 siblings--five of them sisters who are all married now. His father is an elementary school teacher and his mother a homemaker. Paying the bills is a difficult task. Living in an economy dented by the global recession, Sunaid juggles college and a part-time job greasing agricultural irrigation machines, which he will go back to once the Ramadan vacation ends this Sunday. "Can you imagine greasing those machines under 120 degree weather? Wow. It's like hell," Sunaid says. He's been working this job for the past three years, earning $720 a month--most of which goes to his parents. Since such positions typically are held by South Asian or Philipino contract workers, Sunaid is an anomaly in the Saudi workforce, according to writer Saeed Al-Yami. In a recent op-ed in The Arab News, Saudi Arabia's most widely circulated English-language newspaper, Al-Yami discusses why young Saudi men continue to remain unemployed. "We have unemployed Saudis searching for the right job when the right job they are searching for does not fit them. Sadly this is a reality...Our fathers and grandfathers worked in cleaning, construction, farming and many other jobs that young Saudis these days deem unfit for them." According to a report compiled by the General Department of Statistics and the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning, 9.8 per cent of young Saudis remain unemployed, while unofficial estimates stand at 20 percent. "Saudi youth can't work as cleaners or drivers, the community won't accept them. I think it's a shame the way our society thinks because even the Prophet [Muhammad] said you have to work to live and not depend on other people, like how most Saudis depend on their parents even when they're old," Sunaid says. At the Al-Kharj Technical College--where Sunaid is studying accounting--student advisor Salah Alanzi says even though post-secondary education is free in the Kingdom, many students from poor households drop out simply because they can't afford to take a taxi to college everyday. This is besides the fact most students get a monthly allowance of $260 a month from the college, money that is instead used for paying the bills at home, Alanzi says, noting that for most students, school isn't seen as a way of getting a job. According to Alanzi, other more well-off students drop out because they don't want to wait three to five years for a diploma or a degree, choosing instead to remain unemployed and live off of their parents. "I can't do that. I want to have a good future, I want to study as much as I can--keep studying until I get my doctoral degree," Sunaid says, who has a GPA of 4.45 out of 5. He has a year and a half left until he completes his diploma. After that, he says he wants to study abroad to complete his degree in accounting. "When I want to do something, I do it no matter what it takes," he says, adding that this month of Ramadan is definitely giving him a boost in achieving his goals. "Without my faith, I would be hopeless to be honest. It feels good to pray, it keeps me optimistic." Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org More on Saudi Arabia
 
Credit Rating Agencies: New Rules Proposed By SEC Top
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators on Thursday proposed new rules designed to stem conflicts of interest and provide more transparency for Wall Street's credit rating industry, which was widely faulted for its role in the subprime mortgage debacle and the financial crisis. The five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission voted at a public meeting to propose rules that could reshape an industry dominated by three firms: Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. Their practices would be opened wider to public view and subject to some restraints. Regulators say they also hope to spur more competition in the rating industry, with new entrants challenging the dominant firms. The proposed rules, which were opened to public comment, could eventually be adopted by the agency, possibly with revisions. The SEC commissioners also proposed a ban on "flash orders" – a practice that gives some traders a split-second advantage in buying or selling stocks. It has become a hot-button issue in recent weeks amid questions about transparency and fairness on Wall Street. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., which operates the Nasdaq Stock Market, and the BATS exchange have voluntarily stopped using flash orders, which made up an estimated 3 percent of stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange has never used them. The credit rating agencies have been widely criticized for failing to identify risks in securities backed by subprime mortgages. They had to downgrade thousands of the securities last year as home-loan delinquencies soared and the value of those investments plummeted. The downgrades contributed to hundreds of billions in losses and writedowns at big banks and investment firms. One SEC proposal discussed Thursday is intended to bar companies from "shopping" for favorable ratings of their securities. "These proposals are needed because investors often consider ratings when evaluating whether to purchase or sell a particular security," SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said before the vote. "That reliance did not serve them well over the last several years, and it is incumbent upon us to do all that we can to improve the reliability and integrity of the ratings process." The SEC commissioners took their action during a week when memories of the collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago were fresh in Washington. "There is general consensus that the rating agencies contributed significantly to the damage and the widespread loss of confidence," said Commissioner Luis Aguilar. In July, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called on the SEC to ban flash orders, threatening legislation if it failed to act. "This proposal will once and for all get rid of flash trading, which if left untouched, could seriously undermine the fairness and transparency of our markets," Schumer said in a statement Thursday. In California, Attorney General Jerry Brown launched an investigation into the three big agencies to determine what role they might have played in the collapse of the financial markets. Brown said he had subpoenaed the three firms to determine whether they violated state law in "recklessly giving stellar ratings to shaky assets." Word of the probe came after the California Public Employees' Retirement System sued the agencies, blaming them for more than $1 billion in investment losses.
 
Paul Abrams: Ignored by All Media: Major Healthcare Provider Organizations Testify in Support of House Bill Top
The most important meeting held thusfar on healthcare reform was totally ignored by the media. I mean totally. Even Rachel, Olbermann and Ed. The meeting was the most important because the witnesses are the healthcare providers, representing those who actually deliver healthcare to patients. Imagine, this is America, and people who actually know what they are talking about were asked to inform policy decisions! The American Medical Association. The American Nurses Association. The American Hospital Association. The AARP representing all who consume socialist medicine, the Medicare population. Only that other socialist medicine group, the Veterans Administration, was not present. They all testified before the House Democratic Steering & Policy Committee. It was televised on CSPAN. They were asked relevant and intelligent questions by House members concerning the specifics of healthcare reform. Amazingly, they responded to the questions with cogent, concrete answers. They were addressing HR 3200, the bill portrayed by the 'news-as-Jerry Springer' outlets as the government "taking over" healthcare...and yet, and yet, they all supported it. The providers all support it. And, the AARP, there to defend Medicare, where some of the savings are to come from, also supported it. Certainly, there were comments about the bill's implications, that is why they were testifying. For example, the AMA pointed out that the Congress froze intern/residency positions in 1997; thus, while medical schools could--and are--expanding to produce more people with medical degrees, the critical part of physicians' training, when they learn patient care, is during internships and residencies that need to be expanded as well. That's a good, and very important point. [What party controlled Congress in 1997,hmmm?]. The American Nursing Association pointed out that there were insufficient numbers of Nursing faculty to train more nurses. That's another good, and very important point because HR 3200 has money to train more nurses, but the authors apparently did not realize the need for more people to teach nursing. [No one suggested that nursing faculty were too busy serving on death panels to attend to teaching]. I have been one of the most severe and persistent critics of Democrats' assuming that correct policies sell themselves, and I do not suggest that digging into these details would help the cause. But, people still trust their physicians and nurses. Imagine, therefore, a YouTube and TV ad, with the table of witnesses as they appeared identified by profession and organization-- with cutaways to nurses, doctors, hospitals and elderly patients--using a key sound bite from each witness indicating support... something like that, done by a pro, could be very effective because the witness table and the House panel come across as genuine, and compare well to all the contrived, actor-laden pieces. And, it might do the media well--from the major evening and morning news, to the Ed/Olbermann/Rachel cable groups--to devote more than one segment, on more than one night, to the reality that the major healthcare providers and established patient organizations support the President's healthcare reform. If they need something startling and frightening and outrageous to enliven the presentation, try this: in 1999 healthcare costs were 8% of the median family's income, today they are 18% and, if nothing is done, will be 35% in less than a decade. Now, that's something to scream about.
 
Janet Murguía: Join NCLR and the Drop Dobbs Campaign Top
This Tuesday, my organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), joined with several national advocacy organizations to launch the Drop Dobbs campaign , an appeal to advertisers to withhold their advertising support for CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight program. We came to this decision in the wake of Dobbs' participation at an anti-immigrant rally in Washington, DC sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate group. According to SPLC: - FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who also operates a racist publishing company and has compared immigrants to "bacteria." - FAIR has employed members of white supremacist groups in key positions. - FAIR has promoted racist conspiracy theories. - FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation devoted to eugenics and to proving a connection between race and IQ. - FAIR president Dan Stein once suggested that Asians and Hispanics were engaged in "competitive breeding." For two years, I have tried working behind the scenes with CNN to bring some fairness to the relentless bias of CNN programming due to Dobbs' show. I have documented a litany of issues involving Lou Dobbs, including: - His regular use of guests representing hate groups, vigilantes, and nativists as experts on immigration - His relentless repetition of stories on immigrants and crime that project an impression far from reality - His association of immigrants as carriers of disease that has been both inaccurate and pejorative I have appeared on the Lou Dobbs show to ask him to curtail his bias and distance himself from the vigilantes and nativists who have appeared on his show. I have also partnered with CNN to address the levels of diversity before and behind the camera in hopes that this would help. CNN's disregard for Dobbs' alarming appearance at the hate group's rally this week has forced us to reconsider our behind-the-scenes approach. Words have consequences. The Latino community knows all too well the effect that extreme and polarizing rhetoric can have. Over the past five years, the often vitriolic debate surrounding immigration has created a toxic climate for our communities. During that time, we have seen a double digit increase in the number of hate crimes against Latinos and substantial growth in the number of hate groups targeting Latinos. As was illustrated less than one year ago by the murders of Marcelo Lucero and Jose Sucuzhanay, lives are literally at stake. Lou Dobbs, as a private citizen, has every right to speak at whatever event he pleases. As a representative of CNN's "best political news team in America," however, Dobbs' appearance at this rally provides FAIR the legitimacy of the CNN brand and signals an intensification of the lopsided coverage Dobbs has provided during the debate over immigration reform. This should be of deep concern to CNN and every one of its advertisers. The credibility of all of their brands is at stake. The Drop Dobbs coalition is compiling a list of those advertisers supporting the Lou Dobbs show and will be reaching out to educate them about this issue. We recognize that many advertisers may be unaware that FAIR has been designated as a hate group, so we are contacting those companies before publicly releasing the list. However, unless and until Dobbs and CNN disassociate themselves from this hate group, we will be asking advertisers to withhold their support. Join us online at the Drop Dobbs campaign and ask U.S. corporations to drop their advertising from the Lou Dobbs Tonight show. Together we can make a difference and bring accountability back to CNN. More on Washington D.C.
 
Katherine Jackson Receiving Massive Monthly Allowance For His Kids Top
Michael Jackson's mother and the singer's three children are being well taken care of, financially speaking, after the singer's death. Court documents released Thursday in Los Angeles show that Katherine Jackson is receiving $86,804 per month from her son's estate to support herself and her three grandchildren. A judge approved the payments last month. More on Michael Jackson
 
What Show Should Win Best Comedy At The 2009 Emmys? (VOTE) Top
The Emmy Awards are this Sunday and with SEVEN nominees for best comedy they can use all the help they can get. Vote for your favorite and tell us why you love or hate the shows nominated in the comments section! Also, let us know who you think got snubbed. More on Photo Galleries
 
VH1 Divas Concert Tonight: Paula Hosts Miley, Kelly, Sheryl & More Top
***COME BACK AT 7:30 PM EST FOR LIVE STREAMING OF THE RED CARPET AND 9 PM WHEN WE LIVEBLOG THE VH1 DIVAS CONCERT FROM THE AUDIENCE*** Paula's back! Tonight she makes her first post-'Idol' television appearance on 'VH1 Divas,' a live concert featuring performances by Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus, Jordin Sparks, Leona Lewis and Adele. Special guests include established divas Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Martina McBride and Cyndi Lauper. And pop culture icons Bethenny Frankel, Lauren Conrad, Kathy Griffin and Whitney Port will be there. Basically it's a pretty amazing lineup. Paula is not only hosting the show, but she performs. She dances! And she's still got the moves! Watch a clip of her dancing in rehearsal yesterday to her vintage hit 'Straight Up' and come back at 9 pm to participate in the live blog. We'll be tweeting from the audience. Watch Paula's ad for 'VH1 Divas' here. DIVAS LIVE BLOG: Watch Divas on VH1 at 9PM EST WATCH Paula dance to 'Straight Up': VH1 Divas | Divas Video | Celebrity Photos Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Miley Cyrus
 
Ari Solomon: Who You Callin' Vegangelical? Top
Recently I've heard some perplexing criticisms of veganism. They go something like this: vegans are extremists, vegans are so preachy, veganism is like some fanatical religion, veganism is a cult.. There obviously is some misunderstanding going on and I'd like to try and stamp out this issue once and for all. I realize I can't possibly speak for all vegans, but this is how I see it: First of all, veganism is clearly not some religion or cult. There is no Church of Vegan. Veganism is a philosophy. Donald Watson first coined the term "vegan" in 1944. This was how he defined it: The word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude -- as far as is possible and practical -- all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals. Sounds pretty simple right? Well, nowadays people become vegan for all different reasons. They might go vegan because of health reasons, or perhaps they've read that animal agriculture is the number one cause of global warming. But, if someone is an ethical vegan, that means they've chosen to open their mind and heart to the suffering of animals. They want to alleviate unnecessary suffering where they can. (There are actually some people who feel that unless you go vegan for ethical reasons that you're not really "vegan", but that's a whole other story.) Here's where things get interesting. While many of us may feel a certain attachment to the food we eat (cheese, anyone?), there is actually no human dietary requirement for animal foods. It's true. You don't need to eat meat, dairy or eggs to live. In fact, Dr. Colin Campbell, who conducted the foremost study on human nutrition for over 40 years, detailed in his book The China Study how a vegan diet is actually better suited for optimal human health. This means that people eat animals not because they have to, but because they want to. Now, of course I'm not talking about people who live in countries where food is scarce and they'll die unless they eat animal foods. I'm talking about you and me. People who shop at the supermarket where tofu, beans, rice, grains, fruits and vegetables are mere feet from meat, dairy and eggs. We have a choice. In case you're not up to speed, over 98% of all meat, dairy, and eggs produced in the US comes from factory farms. The conditions in these places are truly horrendous. Animals are crammed in spaces so tight they can't turn around. They literally go insane, lying around all day and night in their own feces. They never see sunlight, have their beaks, horns and genitals cut off (without anesthetic) and are horribly abused by stressed and desensitized farm workers. We kill 10 billion animals for "food" a year in this country, that's over 27 million animals a day. Most of those animals are birds, and all poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, and rabbits... yes, rabbits are considered poultry under the law) are excluded from the barely enforced Humane Slaughter Act. Now, before you start at me with some "humane meat" "happy meat" bullshit please take note that all animals, whether they are raised in the nastiest of factory farms or grass-fed, free-range, blah blah blah, are all sent to the same slaughterhouses. That's right, your organic steer is being sent to the same hell as a downer cow and will meet the same ghastly end. If you are a "humane meat" consumer, please take a moment and meditate on the whole concept of humane killing... bloody, fearful, struggling, screaming, despairing humane killing. It's never pretty and it certainly isn't "humane." There is a video making rounds on YouTube that shows a lone cow shaking in terror as she contemplates walking down the kill chute. She walks forward, then back. Animals can hear and smell the violence and death that awaits them. Their last moments are ones of abject horror and suffering. If you wouldn't condemn your dog or cat to such a fate, how can you pay for others do it to these poor animals? So. When a vegan is talking to a meat-eater about these issues, he or she is not "preaching", "trying to convert", or any such thing. We're not telling you what to eat. We're telling you what you're eating. Since animals can't speak a language humans can understand (though I think the screams and terrified moans that fill slaughterhouses should be pretty much universal -- all living beings want to live) it's up to us to tell their stories and inform people of the suffering that goes on conveniently out of the public eye. If, as a meat-eater, being exposed to this reality bothers you, it is not the fault of the vegan. Lashing out or making up endless excuses doesn't change the stark scientific fact that animals are suffering because of our taste buds. Your neatly packaged chicken breast, all wrapped in pristine plastic, was once part of an animal that felt fear and pain. It's called responsibility and culpability, and we're all to blame. Now, you may try to argue that eating animals is a matter of personal opinion or choice, but again I'd have to disagree -- this is not about your opinion versus my opinion, this is about animal suffering. You can't discuss your "personal choice" of eating animals while leaving animals completely out of the conversation. Think of it this way, if you were walking down the street and saw someone beating their dog, would you try to do something to stop it? The same principle applies here. Since eating animal foods is a question of want and like versus need, killing a sentient being, when there is absolutely no need -- except for someone's pleasure -- becomes simply unnecessary and merciless. And if we say we care about cruelty to animals then it's time we start caring about all animals. Yes, dogs and cats are companion animals but in terms of suffering our canine and feline friends feel the same as a pig, cow, chicken, lamb, or turkey. To pick and choose species in terms of whose pain we care about is incredibly hypocritical and inconsistent. Sorry, but if you're eating veal parmigiana or turkey sandwiches, you don't really care about animals. You may care about dogs and cats but you certainly don't care about birds and baby cows. So, who's the real extremist? The person who tries to stop unnecessary suffering by cutting out animal products, or the person who says, "I like the way that tastes, so a sentient being needs suffer and die?" Who's the real fundamentalist? The person who simply speaks the truth about where food comes from, or the person who knowingly chooses to ignore it, listening only to the falsehoods of the meat and dairy clergy? Isn't the latter more akin to choosing to believe the earth is 5,000 years old despite clear evidence to the contrary? The reality is that veganism couldn't be more different from religion. While religion is based on faith, veganism is based on facts. Animal suffering is not some ethereal concept, it's very real. All animals deserve to be free from unnecessary pain, fear, and suffering at the hands of humans. How can anything less claim to be humane? Do I want more people to go vegan, is that why I talk and write about it? Of course, but it has nothing to do with me or some group that I belong to. It has to do with the animals who suffer everyday so that we can eat them, wear them, and do whatever we want to them simply because we can. Veganism is the practical response to a social injustice. Instead of vegangelical, the word should be veganlogical.
 
Prosecutors Subpoena Stroger Administration Financial Records Top
Cook County prosecutors have recently subpoenaed 2008 financial records from the administration of County Board President Todd Stroger, the Tribune has learned.
 
Josh Nelson: Time Misses the Mark with Glenn Beck Cover Story Top
This week's Time Magazine cover story is dedicated to an in-depth profile of Glenn Beck . One could reasonably expect Time to do an accurate piece on Beck, documenting his endless lies and distortions , or perhaps even his history of anti-science rhetoric and blatant racism . Indeed, Time's Managing Editor Rick Stengel hints at such an angle in the editor's note in the print edition of the magazine: "One of our jobs as journalists is to be the referee, the honest broker who sorts through the accusations and says, This is fact, and this is fantasy." Greg Mitchell has already taken on the piece as a whole , taking particular issue with the he-said she-said style of journalism Stengel implies the piece would avoid. I'd like to focus specifically on the short paragraph dedicated to Beck's recent -- and ultimately successful -- smear campaign against former White House green jobs adviser Van Jones. He is having an impact. Along with St. Louis, Mo., blogger Jim Hoft, whose site is called Gateway Pundit, Beck pushed one of Obama's so-called czars, Van Jones, to resign during Labor Day weekend. Jones, whose task was to oversee a green-jobs initiative, turned out to be as enchanted by conspiracies as Beck -- he once theorized that "white polluters and the white environmentalists" are "steering poison into the people-of-color's communities" and signed a petition demanding an investigation into whether the Bush Administration had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. Distortion 1: Van Jones "turned out to be as enchanted by conspiracies as Beck". This is absurd. Glenn Beck is a well-known conspiracy theorist. Here are a few examples of the crazy shit this guy believes: Cash for Clunkers was a secret plot to let the government take control of your computer. President Barack Obama is racist. The Obama Administration appointed the Dean of Yale Law School to be a State Department Lawyer as part of a secret plot to let international law supersede U.S. law. The goal of legislation to reduce the impacts of climate change is actually to allow the United Nations to "run the world." Media Matters has much more on Glenn Beck's history of promoting delusional conspiracy theories . Van Jones, on the other hand, is a well-respected activist and best-selling author. Time Magazine itself saw fit to name Glenn Beck an Environmental Hero of 2008 and one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. Distortion 2: Time's justification for claiming Jones was "as enchanted by conspiracy theories as Beck" was a statement Jones made prior to joining the Obama administration: "The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities because they don't have a racial justice frame." This statement is largely true. United States history is filled with examples of corporations, state/local governments, and the Environmental Protection Agency -- all run by white people -- intentionally steering toxic and hazardous materials into impoverished communities of color. The Institute for Southern Studies recently documented some of this history . Here are just a few examples: Sumter County, Alabama (1974) In 1974, EPA nominated Sumter County, Alabama as a possible hazardous waste landfill site. The county, located in the heart of Alabama's Black Belt, is 71.8 percent is black. Over 35.9 percent of the county's population is below poverty. In 1977, Resource Industries Inc. purchased a 300-acre tract of land just outside of Emelle, Ala. where over 90 percent of the residents are black. The permit for the facility was approved by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) and EPA Region 4 over opposition of local residents who thought they were getting a brick factory. In 1978, Chemical Waste Management, a subsidiary of Waste Management Inc. bought the permit from Resource Industries Inc. and opened the nation's largest hazardous was landfill, often tagged the Cadillac of Dumps. Warren County, North Carolina (1979) Between June 1978 and August 1978, over 30,000 gallons of waste transformer oil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were illegally discharged on roadsides in fourteen North Carolina counties. The PCBs resulted in the U.S. EPA designating the roadsides as a superfund site to protect public health. North Carolina needed a place to dispose of the PCB-contaminated soil that was scraped up from 210 miles of roadside shoulders. In 1979, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) along with EPA Region 4 selected rural, poor, and mostly black Warren County as the site for the PCB landfill. In 1982, the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit in district court to block the landfill. The residents lost their case in court despite the fact that the Warren County PCB Landfill site was not scientifically the most suitable because the water table at the landfill is very shallow, only 5-10 feet below the surface and where the residents of the community get all of their drinking water from local wells. William Sanjour, head of the EPA's hazardous waste implementation branch, questioned the Warren County landfill siting decision. The first truckload of contaminated soil that arrived at the landfill in September 1982 was met protesters. More than 500 demonstrators were jailed protesting landfill, sparking the national Environmental Justice Movement. While an individual reporter for Time Magazine can be excused for complete unfamiliarity with the environmental justice movement , the magazine's editorial staff can not. Portraying an accurate expression of environmental justice concerns as a conspiracy on par with Glenn Beck's consistently hysterical lunacy is just not credible. Distortion 3: Van Jones "signed a petition demanding an investigation into whether the Bush Administration had a hand in the 9/11 attacks." Reporting on this claim without so much as noting the questions surrounding the claim's veracity is the height of irresponsible journalism. Consider these facts: Jones' statement on the petition : As for the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever. Several of the other supposed signatories of the petition have disputed the method in which signatures were collected. Rabbi Michael Lerner: "I did not authorize my name to be used for all the other stuff that I now see was included surrounding the letter." Howard Zinn: "I did not sign a statement suggesting that 'Bush had prior knowledge.' I signed a statement calling for an investigation." I will never cease to be amazed by the corporate media's ability to cram three blatant distortions into one short paragraph. I'd accuse Time of printing such distortions intentionally but they would probably respond by calling me a conspiracy theorist and comparing me to Glenn Beck -- a fate I'd rather avoid if at all possible. Looking for further evidence that the Time profile of Beck was way off the mark? Glenn Beck himself has deemed it fair . This alone should make it clear to the casual observer that it is in fact anything but. More on Glenn Beck
 
Michelle Obama Gets Lei'd On Thursday (PHOTOS) Top
First Lady Michelle Obama wore pinstriped pants, flat shoes, and a big smile--despite the drizzle--for the opening of FRESHFARM, a new farmer's market in Washington DC. "I have never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables," she said to wild cheers. Read more about the event here. Earlier in the day, the first lady wore a sleeveless printed dress to present a Medal of Honor to the late U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti at the White House. Last night the first lady stepped out in an elegant sequin sheath. See photos here. Want more Michelle Obama style? Visit the Michelle Obama Style Big News page. Follow HuffPost Style on Twitter and become a fan of HuffPost Style on Facebook ! More on Michelle Obama Style
 
Bob Dinneen: News Flash - All Fuels Have Indirect Effects Top
Why is it that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) have a blind spot when it comes to assessing indirect land use effects or any kind of indirect effects for oil? And how is it fair to just focus on biofuels and ignore petroleum when the effects of petroleum production and use are so very obvious? Biofuel producers and the scientific community are very troubled, as others should be as well, by the unproven theory of indirect impacts, and particularly indirect land use change (ILUC). This is the notion that an acre of land used in biofuel production in U.S. must be replaced by an acre of land elsewhere in the world, often assumed to be a previously unused acre. More troubling than the theory is assumption that it only applies to biofuels and not to say, oil. EPA, the state of California, and some environmental activists make the claim that only biofuels result in indirect impacts. As the video below demonstrates, that assumption is just plain wrong. If EPA insists on counting the angels on the head of a pin, it needs to do so on every pin and that includes the indirect impacts of petroleum production and use. All of our energy choices come with trade-offs, whether we're talking about, oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind or biofuels. By focusing solely on the impacts of biofuels, however, the EPA has created a shell game only petroleum can win. This is both bad science and bad public policy. Clearly, the EPA is going in the wrong direction and must revisit its proposed rule, make its methodologies and calculations transparent, and redraft a program that is fair and workable for all parties. EPA's current version fails on all counts. To learn more about the shortcomings in EPA's proposed and to comment before the September 25 deadline, visit Choose Ethanol's website. Recently, a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted American farmers would produce record corn yields per acre and possibly a record corn crop - all on fewer acres than just 15 years. Such advancements in productivity not only underscore the fallacy of EPA's assumptions about land use change, but also point to the potential for agriculture in other parts of the world to become more productive. No credible research can conclude that ethanol production in the U.S. is the driving force behind deforestation and other land use changes in other sovereign nations. American farmers can produce enough food and feed to meet our needs while simultaneously helping end our addiction to oil. EPA, Congress and other regulators need to recognize and help foster this productivity, not stand in its way. More on Green Energy
 
Joe Territo: Smoking Ban May Cross Hudson To New Jersey Beaches, Parks Top
Following New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement of a smoking ban in city beaches and parks, State Sen. Barbara Buono today proposed doing the same in New Jersey. Some Jersey Shore towns already limit smoking to designated areas, and Belmar already had been considering a beach and boardwalk ban. Get the full story and related links on NJ.com.
 
Carol Hoenig: How One Author Makes a Story Important Top
The summer of '08, I was the Director and Writer-in-Residence for the Adirondack Summer Workshop in Old Forge. It was such fun and I enjoyed meeting those who participated in the class, most who wanted to make their work-in-progress better. However, there was one student who came to the class and wanted me to assign weekly topics and when I didn't, she was clearly frustrated. I couldn't understand this, especially since I felt writers became writers because they had something to say. Why was she there if she wanted me to tell her what she should write about? I couldn't help but think of this student while I was reading Michael Greenberg's, Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life , which is a collection of engrossing essays covering all sorts of topics, topics that, in less skillful hands, could be mundane, but I knew I was in for a treat early on when I came across the following intriguing sentence: "I could hear the tuxedo in his voice." Those words excited me and similar, delightful storytelling unfolded page after page, some making me laugh aloud, especially the scene where the author worked as a waiter and had no experience opening a bottle of wine, but attempted it just the same to embarrassing results. After having a number of curious jobs, Greenberg writes about his career as an author, from closely watching his Amazon ratings to doing the author tour for his memoir, Hurry Down Sunshine . And, I had no idea how taxing, not to mention humorous, it could be doing a reading for an audio book. Then there is the eponymous chapter where Greenberg is reminded of an elementary teacher who refused to let the students break God's second commandment by taking art class and how that memory was the springboard for writing about his high school friend. All the essays work as stand alone pieces and yet there is cohesion, but more significantly Greenberg's book is an important reminder to writers that they don't need to write "important" stories, but rather, they need to give each story importance. With that in mind, I do hope my former student takes this under consideration.
 
Brandon Shaffer: What Kind of Colorado Do You Want? Top
"If you could make or change one law for Colorado what would it be?" It's not an easy question, but it's the first question I ask people on our state-wide tour of Colorado. We're on a listening tour and we want to hear peoples' ideas, questions, and concerns. As leaders of the Senate, Majority Leader John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and I are traveling to all four corners of the state to get a better understanding of the issues and concerns of everyone in Colorado, not just the people at the Capitol, or those in the districts we represent. As leadership of the Colorado Senate, our constituents are all the citizens of Colorado. When I ask people in my district what the most important issues are to them, they do not say "forest health" or "tourism funding." But those were the top issues for people on our Northwest Tour. Next week, when we leave on the second leg of our tour in Southwest Colorado, I'm sure we will hear about water and agriculture issues. With the diversity of Colorado, it is important that we listen to people in all areas of the state. In Southwest Colorado, we will tour the Animas La Plata Water Project, the largest joint water project between tribes and the federal government. This water rights settlement has been in existence for 100 years. Water issues are central to the economy of Southwest Colorado and the people from this part of the state depend on the state's natural resources so we are thrilled to welcome Senator Bruce Whitehead, a leading water expert, to the caucus. He was selected this summer to replace Senator Jim Isgar in Senate District 6. Senator Whitehead and Senator Suzanne Williams, who is the only senator with official Native American heritage, will take us to meet with tribal leaders at the Southern Ute reservation after the La Plata tour. We will also spend time with Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Snowmass), a leader in new energy legislation, who will introduce us to her constituents in Alamosa. As we travel the state and ask people what kind of Colorado they want, we need to ask ourselves that same question. We want Colorado to be the best place in America to raise a child. That means supporting education from preschool through post-graduate education, greater access to health care so if someone gets sick they can afford to go to the doctor for treatment, and providing stability and predictability in our economy so if you take out a loan, you can have confidence you can make your payments five, 10, 30 years down the road. It is in this frame that we are developing a positive policy agenda for the legislature. And we are listening to you. We will be in Southwest Colorado September 22 through the 24. Our schedule will be on our website . We will ask the people we meet on the tour, and we ask you to think about what kind of Colorado you want. Please help us develop our legislative agenda by answering this question: "If you could change a Colorado law, or make an entirely new law, what would it be?" Click here to leave a response.
 
Holocaust Survivor Fights Protesters Comparing Obama To Hitler Top
As a child in Armenia, Henry Gasparian witnessed firsthand the horrors of Nazi Germany. Two uncles were killed, his father wounded and a brother starved to death during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union. So when Gasparian, 70, of Edmonds, saw a poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache near the entrance to the Edmonds Farmers Market on Sept. 5, he admits that his reaction was "personal and emotional."
 
Acne May Be Helped By Changes In Diet Top
Researchers in Norway have made associations between acne, high intake of chocolate and chips and low intake of vegetables. More on Food
 
Yuna Shin: Organizers for an NC Festival Featuring Conservative Speakers Assure the Event Is Not Political Top
A controversy is brewing in the little town of Wilmington, NC. It involves an event to take the main stage on Saturday, October 3, from 11 to 2 during the very popular Wilmington Riverfest, which draws thousands from near and far. It is being called "I Love America Rally 2009." One local resident has voiced her concern with the lineup of the event to the local newspaper, Star News . Louise Horne, who lives in downtown, recalls never having seen something so political in her years of living there. "If it's straight patriotic it's fine, (but) to me, it sounded a little Tea Party-ish," she told the reporter. Her concern lies with the featured speakers during the event. They are: a local conservative talk show host, Curtis Wright; two members of FairTax.org; a representative from The John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank in Raleigh; and other local Republicans including an attendee at last weekend's "Tax Payers' March" in DC. Paul Knight, the vice-president and general manager of Sea-Comm Media, one of the event's main sponsors and the host of the I Love America rally, said of the event that it "is not a political rally because no one will up be there saying, 'Vote for me.'" Knight also happens to be running against the mayor, Bill Saffo, a Democrat, in the upcoming local November elections. Likewise, two of the featured speakers have also stated that they are running against Democratic incumbents in 2010. Betty Fennell plans to run against the incumbent R.C. Soles for the state Senate seat from the neighboring Brunswick County. Thom Goolsby plans to run against the incumbent Julia Boseman for the state Senate seat from New Hanover County, for which Wilmington is the county seat. Monica Caison, president of this year's Riverfest celebration, said she's been assured by Paul Knight "that this is not a political [event]." Letters are already pouring in into the local newspaper, Star News . Today, Star News , one of this year's sponsors, has published an editorial questioning the judgment of the board as well .
 
Robbie Gennet: Defending Unpatriotic Racism Top
Jimmy Carter recently told MSNBC the following regarding Joe Wilson's disrespectful outburst: "I think it's based on racism," Carter said at a town hall held at his presidential center in Atlanta. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president." Ah, racism. Part of our country's history and unfortunately, part of our current problem. And awfully hard to defend yourself against, much like being unpatriotic or un-American. The Right Wingers in this country have been great at making Democrats and otherwise sane people defend things that they shouldn't have to defend and for good reason: By putting people on the defensive, you take away their offense as well. With this in mind, the sane majority of this country must put the anti-Obama looneys on the defensive with a simple narrative: YOU ARE ALL UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Period. Being against our President- during wartime no less!- is UNPATRIOTIC (see reaction to public criticism of Bush during 2001-2008). Being against a Black President during wartime or anytime? RACIST as well. No matter what they say, no matter what reasoning they give, no matter what conspiracy they muster, it is all because of a simple fact: THEY ARE ALL UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Why are there are NO "people of color" at any town hall rally, just angry white people? And why are they angry at Obama? Because THEY ARE ALL UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Glenn Beck? UNPATRIOTIC RACIST. Michelle Bachmann? UNPATRIOTIC RACIST. If you are against our President, YOU ARE AN UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Sure these people hid in the ranks of the Religious Right but now that the RR has lost its muscle, they are out in the open. And guess what? THEY ARE ALL UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. They don't care if you call them nutty, loony, crackpots or what have you; they don't have to defend schoolyard taunts. But watch them defend their Unpatriotic Racism. Watch them try to go back to their Fox-approved talking points, which do nothing to answer the fact that THEY ARE ALL UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Defend that, or try to, and you have lost the narrative you have been putting out there. Whatever they are for or against stems from the fact that they are hate-filled UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS. Shove that narrative down their throats til they choke on their own pitiful excuses, non-truths and superstitious conspiracies. Shove it down their throats until they are so busy defending their hate, racism and un-American beliefs that the rest of us can get back to actually repairing our country from the vast wreckage of Republican rule. They are like spoiled teens who demolished the family car and still want driving privileges and a new car. Screw that and screw them. HATE-FILLED UNPATRIOTIC RACISTS deserve no part of this "debate", no seat at the table, no voice for their intolerant trash talk and bigoted drivel. They say the best offense is a good defense. Our only real defense against this right wing insanity is to put them on the defense and keep them there. More on Health Care
 
Phil Bronstein: Where Does Social Media Start, and a Mainstream Media News Cycle Die? Top
By the time Jimmy Carter weighs in, with all due respect to the former President, home builder and Nobel Laureate, you can bet that's pretty much the end of the news cycle for that story. When I watched Mr. Carter offer an opinion about South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson the other day, his face as dour and reproachful as always, it just struck me that this had to be the last nail in the information surge coffin about Mr. Wilson's kinetic outburst and the chewed-over subject of growing societal incivility. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy My former newspaper nostalgia tour partner at the NYTimes, Maureen Dowd, also took it up in her column Tuesday, but she gets an extension because at least she's funny. What's a little less clear and more interesting is the question of when and how a news story begins, and what the steps are in between that moment and Mr. Carter offering his final, funereal judgment. The architecture of news cycles has changed dramatically, of course. These days, by the time traditional print and broadcast news outlets present stories of the day, they're more likely feeding back to us what we've already heard than they are giving us something brand new. The exceptions include investigative reporting, scoops or what we've vaguely called in the journalism biz, "enterprise" work -- now known as "unique content" when we want to try to charge people for it. But general news, like "ideas and products and messages and behaviors, spread like viruses," says Malcolm Gladwell, the hip Christopher Columbus of modern trends. In his book on big changes, " Tipping Point ", Mr. Gladwell mirrors what's happened to our media consumption sequence. He says tectonic shifts are spurred by three different types of people (I'm bending his definitions a little here): mavens -- early adoptors, who get the information first; connectors, who know tons of people and spread the information around; and salesmen -- persuasive and charismatic types who convince you things are authentic. Now that every human being with an electronic device is a potential recorder of events, the early adopter mavens in news cycles slam information up on Twitter, Facebook status updates and other social media, dialed-in connectors spread it around, and salesmen give it credibility. Covering the aftermath of the Iranian election was its own Tipping Point of social media as reporting trigger. The cycle spins from there. Breaking stories like the Joe Wilson/Kanye meltdowns, the celebrity death marches of Jacko, Ted Kennedy, and Patrick Swayze, have all been scooped, spread, and confirmed before the MSM gets a chance What's left for tradition? Too often it's dubious analysis and reheating of topics-as-trends, like the USA Today cover story on the Death of Civility. They know you know, but they want you to KNOW they know you know. Still, in that last step there's room for a good Salesmen, and that's where the media dinos can come in. Gladwell himself cites the late ABC anchor Peter Jennings as a salesman example. 140 characters and web buzz don't give you the whole story and, fortunately for all of us, people are still ravenous for information. The Most Trusted Man In America may be dead. But reliable, credible and even trusted news sources still exist -- places where you're more likely to land if you want context and accuracy. Sometimes that's the National Enquirer (John Edwards), but it can still be the more traditional journalism pros, online or print, start-up or established outlet. One trick, however, is injecting that professional check and balance while people are still searching for it, not three days later. And the real puzzle in the future of news, journalism and information, is figuring out how all this best fits together. But it's not over till Jimmy Carter talks. More on Twitter
 
Waylon Lewis: Should Boulder limit homeowners' ability to build McMansions? Top
Tonight, in Boulder, the City Council gathers once again in an effort to come to a decision regarding an issue that inspiring environmentalists, neighborhoods and developers alike. The complete tweet that inspired this post: "@PQBoulder If the City of Boulder railroads their home size limits, we may have to move. Too bad ego and insecurity play such big roles." Is it a case of Big Brother--or good ol'fashioned green common sense--for Boulder to limit the construction huge homes? Boulder, Colorado and the Case of the Ever-Expanding Home. Why do we need huge homes? In 1970, only four years before I was born, 1,400 sq ft was America's national average. My green-renovated Victorian, " Hotelephant ," in downtown Boulder , Colorado, built in 1904, is 2,100 square feet--it feels big, and yet is less than half the size of your average " McMansion ." Do we need super-sized homes? Why? If you got five dogs, two parrots and a Kennedy -size family, okay. But if not...why don't you give a go at giving a care about the next seven generations? Hear about this thing called " green ?" It's not just a fad: it's about living a good life that also happens to be good for others, and our planet. Living a responsible, yet meaningful and fun life. You can do that in 2,100 square feet, I promise you--and studies have shown that, no matter the size of your home, the vast majority of your time is spent in just one or two rooms. Disagree? Fine. Let me know why in the comments section, below. Always happy to have a dialogue! Via the Daily Camera:
 
Robert Fuller: What Shall I Do with the Rest of My Life? Top
Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else. - Tennessee Williams This question comes from an old friend in response to Quests and Questions--A Path to Your Self . When a Facebook friend said she was struggling with the same question, I decided to put off blogging on "Why do we procrastinate?" and grapple with this one instead. If you have to stick with your job to pay the bills, then you may feel that asking this question of yourself is pointless. But it's not. Rich or poor, young and old, we all dream of something different, something better, if only when we gaze at the stars. And, regardless of our lot in life, we can give this perennial question a new answer -- either by doing differently what we've been doing, or by pursuing something else on the side. To those "nine to fivers" who feel stuck in their jobs, I want to say that what you're doing with your life isn't just what you're being paid for. No matter how humdrum or even hateful your job, "what you're doing" consists not only of the tangible product of your labor, but also of the effects you're having on others as you go about your work and life. The actual contribution made by people emptying bedpans is less the clean pans and more the dignity or indignity sown among those for whom they're working. The indelible contribution of a teacher is less the knowledge she imparts than the confidence she builds in her students. What you give a child is not your time, but your self. Even for those who love their work, a job has two aspects: what we do and how we do it. The "how" may trump the "what" and so displace it as a truer description of the impact your life is having on others. And, in the end, isn't our effect on others the best measure of what we're doing with our lives? A " nobody " janitor may spread wellbeing among his co-workers, while his " somebody " boss makes his subordinates ill. If finances require you to put up with work you'd never choose of your own accord, you can nonetheless begin doing your job in a manner that endows your life with renewed purpose. We all know people who, while coping with personal hardship, bring out the best in everyone they touch. Like many of the questions listed in Quests and Questions, this one benefits from tweaking. If you say to yourself, "Yipes! I probably have only twenty years left! I better get going and do something significant," then you've raised the bar on yourself and made it all the harder to risk a new venture. Every quest begins with a single step, and baby steps are wobbly. Moreover, we never know if we've got twenty or forty years, or ten minutes. It seems to take most of us about ten years to get good at anything, but typically we have a lot more time than that. Even at seventy, age is not a convincing excuse for standing pat, because when you stop growing you start dying. So, let's recast the question in age-independent form, and simply ask "What shall I do with my life?" Where to look for the answer? How to identify your quest? I know of no better advice than that of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: Look back upon your life and ask: What up to now have you truly loved, what has raised up your soul, what ruled it and at the same time made it happy? Line up these objects of reverence before you, and see how they form a ladder on which you have so far climbed up toward your true self. In our formative years, we fancy ourselves doing this or that, but life may have led us to do neither. Later, in maturity, what draws our attention is usually something that has bid for it on previous occasions. Our early loves keep calling out to us: Don't forget me, please don't forget. Even when we've labeled a relationship a disaster, there is usually something about a spontaneous affinity that remains pertinent to our present predicament -- if we could only locate the baby in the bathwater. If we can but give our loves their due, they will guide and motivate us for a lifetime. This is not as easy and painless as it might sound, however, because becoming a novice and revisiting virgin terrain means dropping the pretense of being in control. This should not be surprising: a quest is not a quest if the end is known; a question's not a question if the answer's given. We love certain things and people -- books, ideas, films, music, art, characters in literature, and the special people in our lives -- because they offer hints to realizing the dreams of our youth. Each of those dreams is a rung in the ladder of love on which we've climbed toward our self. But the self towards which our loves lead does not pre-exist. Rather, we build it as we climb the ladder in pursuit of our quest. Step by step we forge a more integral identity, a more selfless self. To figure out what to do with your life, take stock of your past enthusiasms and passions. Line up the objects you've revered, the things and people you've loved, and then extrapolate love's arrow. It won't point to the end of your quest, but it may suggest your next step. Risk that step. Then another. Three steps and you won't look back. You can't know where your quest will take you, but as you go forward, the bridge that connects your old and emergent selves will rise out of the mist, like a developing Polaroid, and come into sharp focus. Not only you, but others, too, will recognize and acknowledge your new vocation. The price you have to pay for the vitality and joys of the questing life is uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes the certainty of multiple failures. As Samuel Beckett says, "Fail. Fail again. Fail better." And then, fail better still, until, little by little, you come up with something you want to share with others. As it happens, that's enough. More on Facebook
 
Scott Downes: A Beautiful State With an Ugly Fiscal Landscape Top
There are too many wonderful attributes about Colorado to list in my inaugural contribution to this space, but a quick rundown might look something like: lots of friendly people and fast friends to be made, M&D's barbeque, skiing in May, biking in December, the view atop most any peak or mountain pass, no humidity, no doubt that Colorado is a beautiful place, and no question that people who live here care deeply about our state. But we have an ugly side too. Thy name is revenue. For years and years, investment in Colorado's future has been slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) eroding , in large part because of a tendency to relinquish revenue through tax credits, tax expenditures, corporate loopholes, and a variety of other exemptions that have not been measured for effectiveness, held accountable, or thoroughly examined in fifty years. We were hit hard in this recession because we hadn't fully recovered from the last recession in 2001. Why? Revenue, or rather, the lack of it. We're 47th in the country in investing in key areas like education, health care, higher education, and transportation. Why? Probably because we're 49th in taxation. A tangled web of statutory and constitutional provisions have long undermined our fiscal strength and prevented investments in our future -- investments that fuel job creation and economic growth. The more immediate and perhaps more important challenge is that there is not enough revenue to fund the kind of public sector our state has created. There are some folks who think this is a good thing, that a lean government is a good government. But this isn't about size, it's about service. Large or lean, good government is government that works for those it serves. When you contrast what works in Colorado with what doesn't, the matchups are, well, mismatched. Our economy relies heavily on tourism and the moving of people from DIA to the mountains, yet we have awful road and infrastructure problems. Our state is home to one of the highest number of college graduates in the country, yet compared to other states, we have limited early childhood learning opportunities, we're 48th in investing in K-12 education, and Colorado families pay more to get their kids to college than many other neighboring states. We have tremendous open spaces, city parks galore, terrific municipal multi-use paths, and world-class state and national parks and wilderness areas; yet oil and gas companies are basically bleeding the land dry in the Western Slope, and getting a $300+ million tax break each year to do it. We are home to a burgeoning high-tech and renewable energy economy, but our own state government can't get people the food stamp benefits or health care assistance they need because of a lack of resources and its own failed efforts to computerize how people receive those benefits. We're the 7th wealthiest state in the country, yet we rank in the bottom ten states in five out of six safety net areas (unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance, health insurance for poor adults, and health insurance for poor kids), one in five households can't afford to make ends meet, and from 2000-2006 we had the fastest growing rate of child poverty in the country. There are many beautiful things in Colorado. We have great people, terrific communities, innovative businesses, world-renowned natural resources, and for the most part a Mile High standard of living. We are also home to an incredibly engaged and active electorate that includes a startling number of organizations dedicated to critical issues like education, health care, higher education, and advancing opportunity for all. But we also need to face some ugly facts. Despite all the beauty that blanket brochures and the affluence visible in many areas, there are an awful lot of people who can't make ends meet, who don't get the care they need, who won't have the opportunities they should, and who simply never get a fair shake. For many, there are barriers abound -- geographic, generational, cultural, racial -- to getting that fair shake. And some of those barriers are tied directly or indirectly to revenue. The good news? Growing recognition by an unprecedented coalition spanning various interests is coalescing around the need for a new direction on how we fund our future. Hopefully this will lead to a lot of coherent and constructive conversation in this space and elsewhere about what kind of Colorado we want. Maybe we can have a comprehensive tax study for the first time in 50 years, to figure out if our revenue system is fair, equitable, and sustainable. Maybe we can put aside hyper-partisanship and TABOR worshiping, and figure out a fiscal system that makes sense. Maybe we can modernize how we invest in our kids, our communities, and our future. And maybe, we can shape a government -- big or small -- that works for all Coloradans. More on Poverty
 
Charles Warner: What I Learned From Jay Leno's Prime Time Debut: Part I Top
Monday night I watched the Yankee game on the Yes network in New York. It was an exciting game highlighted by good pitching, timely hitting, excellent base running, and savvy managing. It was great television because it was unscripted and, thus, had an unknown and surprising outcome. During commercials and pitching changes in the Yankees game, I switched to ESPN's "Monday Night Football," which featured another unscripted and, thus, unknown and surprising outcome as Tom Brady of the New England Patriots coolly and confidently brought his team from behind to beat a tough Buffalo Bills team with only two minutes left in the game. I then remembered that Jay Leno was making his prime time debut at 10:00 p.m. on NBC, so I quickly switched to Channel 4. I caught Jay introducing his first guest, Jerry Seinfeld. I haven't watched Jay Leno's "Tonight" show in over 15 years and the last time I watched a prime time regularly scheduled network comedy or drama program was the last episode of "Seinfeld" in May of 1998. I now know why I stopped watching prime time terrestrial network TV programs (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) - they're boring, scripted, and totally predictable. The new Jay Leno show was no exception. The interview with Seinfeld was stiff and overly scripted; even the phony pre-taped appearance of Oprah was stiff, boring, and predictable. The apology by Kanye West was maudlin and gave unnecessary exposure to a clearly troubled young man. Jay's faux interview with Obama was way too cute and disingenuously self-deprecating - a suit that does not fit Leno, who looks uncomfortable in any suit. And his final bit of showing goofy headlines and ads was a tired rehash of his old "Tonight Show" routine. It featured lowest-common-denominator, puerile, smutty humor - exactly the kind of dumb material that appeals to the majority of people who still watch prime time terrestrial network TV programs: the poorly educated, the poorly informed, and the culturally and intellectually barren. Therefore, Leno's prime time debut got great ratings, according to the NY Times' Bill Carter in his Media Decoder blog , by attracting 18 million viewers, which "exceeded expectations." I'm baffled by the notion that NBC "expected" fewer than 18 million people to watch Leno's debut program after the incredible hype NBC produced for the show. It must have forgotten H. L. Menken's line "that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Leno's new program was touted to be "the future of television" by Time magazine. Of course, this quote was featured in a story in the NY Times by the constantly error-prone Alessandra Stanley, who, once again, in spite of being caught making serial mistakes in her obit of Walter Cronkite, was wrong in her facts once again. Her squadron of fact checkers were asleep at the switch again (they must be members of the NY Times union - the New York Newspaper Guild - and, like Stanley, can't be fired). In her story she writes, "the reading of goofy misprints taken from newspaper headlines." Leno's final bit did not consist of all misprints. Many were merely headlines that could be read in an unintended and different way, and they were not all from newspaper headlines. Many were from stupid ads, such as the final one, an ad for a Chinese restaurant - The House of Poon - which Leno leered at. Stanley also gave the Leno debut show a tepid (and insipid) review that made a big deal out of the Kanye West apology, which was apparently serendipitous, and never mentioned the much longer and more substantial faux Obama interview. Did she watch the program? Not only was Stanley's review poorly written and inaccurate (which has become her MO), it had no bite, which I'm sad to say has become de rigeur for NY Times TV coverage - it was taken on the personality and characteristics of the medium it covers. So what did I learn from watching Jay Leno's debut and reading about it in the NY Times? 1) Don't watch Jay Leno's new prime time show; it's dull and overly scripted. 2) Don't watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it's not entertaining. 3) Don't read about TV in the NY Times; its coverage is insipid and inaccurate. In other words, as always, I didn't learn anything new on network TV. But what did I learn by watching WBNC-TV's local news right after the Leno show? I'll tell you in Part II. And what did I learn by going to WNBC-TV's Web site after I watched the local news? I'll tell you in Part III. More on Jay Leno
 
Marshall Auerback: Obama's Financial Reform Speech Fizzles Top
The President has marked the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers with a new speech designed to breathe new life into his financial reform proposals. But the Obama administration already forfeited its best chance to reform the banking system when the crisis was at its height. For all of the lofty talk about establishing "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression," Obama's reforms amount to nothing more than a reshuffling of the deckchairs on the Titanic. Why? Because Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks have grown even more bloated in the past 2 years. And because leverage has increased across the board. Bank of America, the biggest of the "TBTF" institutions, now holds 12% of all US deposits. The top four (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) now have 46% of the assets of all FDIC-insured banks, up from 37.7% a year ago. Goldman Sachs, the biggest securities firm before it was handed a bank charter, has plunged into even riskier business and upped its trading and investment profits by two-thirds over the past year. Systemic banks benefit from implicit and explicit government backstops. But a resolution regime for all systemically large and complex institutions like Fannie and Freddie -- arguably one of the most important measures -- is stalling in Congress amid waning political support. And -- surprise! -- lobbyist are gearing up to fight the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, whose fate is unclear as the bill works its way through Congress. We haven't yet even determined who will be the systemic risk regulator. Could be the Fed. Or it could be the Systemic Risk Council (a new body proposed to keep an eye of financial markets). Given the Federal Reserve's dismal record in anticipating this crisis and promoting the wrong-headed economic models that blew up the bubble, it is extraordinary that we are even discussing the notion of providing the central bank with yet more power. But is a Systemic Risk Council really the answer? Why reinvent the wheel, when the obvious alternative is the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation (FDIC)? Our key recommendations: • Banks should not be allowed to have subsidiaries of any kind.... • Banks should not be allowed to buy (or sell) credit default insurance.... • The FDIC should be directed to examine the books of the largest insured banks to uncover all CDS contracts held.... To read Marshall Auerback's full argument, including analysis on the recommendations, visit NewDeal2.0 .
 
Dr. Erika Schwartz: Why Stress Makes You Fat Top
A recent study in the American Journal of Epidemiology looked at data on 1,355 men and women who had their weight and stress levels measured in 1995 and again in 2004. The findings showed that those who were overweight and obese packed on the pounds even more as time went by and stressors continued and increased. Those who were thin stayed thin and according to the lead author, Jason Block, on faculty at Harvard, "The stress effect didn't appear to impact normal-weight people, just those who were overweight and obese from the beginning of the study." The results of this study may be true but as Americans are getting fatter and sicker, we are faced with more problems than ever before. We are suffering ever-growing rates of obesity and worsening health caused by weight problems. Stress is a leading cause of this modern-day epidemic -- brought about by our frenetic lifestyles or by financial worries from the economic recession. Stress comes in two varieties: Acute stress is when you are running to catch a plane, your work is past deadline, the kids are calling for help and you feel like the world is crashing down on your little shoulders. Chronic stress is what we live with every day without any hope of it loosening its grip on us. Doctors and scientists analyze the metabolic and hormonal basis for our stress reactions. Nutritionists, exercise experts and other clinicians help us deal with its undesirable effects. One thing that doesn't work is being told that the problem is in our head and that if we watch our diet we will lose weight. The second is when doctors discard the problem and recommend a blood test at some point in our downward spiral. The best way to deal with problems from my perspective of 30+ years of practicing medicine and experiencing stress first hand is to understand the causes of the problem. So here is a primer on what stress does to our body and soul: 1. Metabolism - Stress stimulates the production of the hormone cortisol, which slows down metabolic function. Normal, healthy metabolism helps us digest process and detoxify our system from foods while absorbing the nutrients we need. 2. Blood sugar levels and Insulin - Stress causes insulin levels to fluctuate wildly and the blood sugar levels follow. When insulin levels are high and sugar levels are low we crave foods -- fatty, salty and sugary ones in particular. 3. Cravings regardless- Our desire to eat junk is directly connected to hormone levels and chronic stress worsens the problem. When stress is the core issue, people do not run for vegetables and fruit, they hit the chips, fast food and junk. 4. Fat storage especially around the belly and hips - When you are stressed, you eat junk which accumulates in fatty deposits around the waist and abdomen. As women age the middle section of the body becomes heavier -- an esthetically displeasing sight with dangerous health consequences: higher risk for heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. 5. Emotional Eating - Stress and increased levels of cortisol plunge us into a cycle of eating badly, drinking too much caffeine and alcohol, not exercising and being unable to sleep. But there is always a way to take control of our lives. If you let stress make get you down, you won't be able to enjoy the upside of life. Here are a few ways to NOT let stress make you fat: 1. Don't isolate yourself. Reach out to friends, family and others who are truly doing well and who have positive recommendations and are a positive example. 2. Stay away from critical and negative people. Pay attention and you will figure out who is good for your health and who isn't. Sarcasm is always a negative. 3. Exercise. Unless you find that you feel worse after exercising, which is usually a sign of illness, start a serious daily little-at-first, build as you go, program. You will feel better and crave more exercise not junk food. 4. Relax. When I hear someone say relax, I immediately tighten up. The best way to relax is to focus on beautiful times and places. Imagine a place and time when things worked well for you. Stay with that thought for a while and see how quickly you really relax. 5. Sleep is the key ingredient to feeling better and losing weight. During sleep, hormones are made that help your entire system renew and strengthen. Get 8 hours of sleep a night and watch the weight drop. 6. Balance your hormones. If you are over 40, male or female, your hormones need help. Menopause and low thyroid are major contributing factors to our inability to deal with stress. Find an experienced doctor who knows about hormones and listens to you. Take bioidentical hormones if you need them, get your thyroid treated, take the right supplements to support your immune system and hormones and watch how quickly you shed stress and lose weight. 7. Do not focus on diet alone. When trying to loose weight incorporate all the above into a healthy diet, exercise and stress management program.
 
Lisa Napoli: Abundance of Tubes Top
I had lunch with a lovely new friend today, a woman who is new to LA. Her husband is a TV critic. As much as she and I had in common as female humans who worked in and around media all our lives, what we didn't have in common were the cultural references. I told her that the Fashion Institute was up the street from where we were having lunch, and she said, eagerly, Oh yes, Project Runway . (I had no idea the two places were linked.) We talked about the inevitable comparisons between LA and the east coast, and how new everything seemed here, and she referenced a scene from Mad Men . Etc. etc. I had to keep saying, Ugh, umm, I don't know those things, or rather, I know those things but I have never seen them. And now I have no excuse. But first I have to figure out when these things are actually on. I know that's not hard to do but I just haven't got the inclination yet. T. came over for dinner tonight. It was the first time he'd been here since I got the TV. Helicopters were swirling about my downtown apartment. Not just one but several, for what seemed like hours. Menacing noise above. At one point there was a march of police cars screeching through the streets. What to do? Retreat to the television to find out what was going on, naturally. There wasn't a word, of course. The local news headlines had to do with that poor girl in Connecticut who was murdered. T. felt compelled to take out the computer to search a bit more, with no luck, no answers. Then he wanted to show me the Kanye apology I had slept through on Leno the night before. We'd both seen clips during the day but he wanted to "watch it together." And while we were at it, Taylor Swift on The View . Here I am watching YouTube with the original Tube behind me. An abundance of tubes. For that matter, we could have watched these videos on our iPhones. The Leno commercial said all episodes would be online for free. Surely there is no reason to be paying for this cable. By the time Leno came on, T. was falling asleep. He was alert enough to keep me from taking the laptop out to check whether Michael Moore really had lost weight, as he claimed to have. He looked larger than ever to me. Soon it was 11 p.m. and Leno was tossing to the local news, and there was still no information on the helicopters overhead. The best part of the night was when we talked about the Peer Pressure Happiness article in the NY Times Magazine this past week, how who you keep company with influences what you do, how you behave, how you feel. Of course it just seems logical, doesn't it? Which is why I think it's been a bit of a public service all this time for me not to have television, a bit of a good influence, perhaps, on the people around me. More on Mad Men
 
House Votes To End Federal Funding For ACORN Top
WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to deny all federal funds for ACORN in a GOP-led strike against the scandal-tainted community organizing group that comes just three days after the Senate took similar action. "ACORN has violated serious federal laws, and today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization," said second-ranked House Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia. The vote, on a provision attached to a student aid bill, was 345-75, with Democrats supplying all the "no" votes. On Monday the Senate voted 83-7 to deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Republicans accelerated their attacks on the liberal-leaning group a year ago when ACORN, in conducting a massive voter registration drive, was accused of submitting some false registration forms. On a hidden-camera video released on Monday, two ACORN employees are seen apparently advising a couple that was posing as a prostitute and her pimp to lie about her profession and launder her earnings. The video was the latest in a series that has already led to the firing of four ACORN employees in Baltimore and Washington. It was created by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles and posted on BigGovernment.com, where O'Keefe identifies himself as an activist filmmaker. ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson blasted the video shot at the organization's Brooklyn office, saying the group believes the voices of the couple were dubbed over to alter the conversation and make the interaction appear more objectionable than it may have been. ACORN said Wednesday that it is ordering its own independent investigation of the incidents, while stressing that they were isolated cases. The Census Bureau, meanwhile, also has severed its ties with the group for the 2010 national census. Republicans have urged federal officials to go further by launching a comprehensive investigation of how ACORN spends and manages federal money. "As long as taxpayers are subsidizing ACORN and its affiliates, we need to use every measure possible to ensure that those dollars are being spent and managed appropriately," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sponsor of the measure that passed the House. The Senate and House initiatives to cut funding for ACORN won't take effect until the bills to which they are attached clear Congress and are signed by President Barack Obama. The Senate measure is attached to a fiscal 2010 spending bill. "President Obama needs to indicate whether he'll sign this bill and join us in ending all taxpayer funds for this corrupt organization," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said after the vote. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday said the conduct seen on the tapes "is completely unacceptable." He said the Obama administration "takes accountability extremely seriously" and noted that the Census Bureau had determined that ACORN could not meet its goal for conducting a fair and accurate count next year.
 
DANMELL NDONYE: Hofstra Rape Accuser Dropped Claim After Hearing Of Video Recording Top
MINEOLA, N.Y. — An official says the woman who claimed she was gang-raped in a New York college bathroom recanted her story after prosecutors told her a video of the liaison might exist. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said Thursday that consensual sex took place in the bathroom. Rice declined to identify the woman, citing concern for her safety and an investigation into whether to charge her. The woman had said she was tied up and assaulted by five men early Sunday. Four were arrested. She changed her story Wednesday night and they have been released. An attorney for one of the men has said the encounter was recorded on a cell phone. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) – A prosecutor was considering Thursday whether to file criminal charges against a Hofstra University freshman who recanted claims that she was gang-raped by five men in a dormitory bathroom. The student, whom officials have declined to identify, has been suspended from school pending a disciplinary hearing, said Hofstra spokeswoman Melissa Connolly. The spokeswoman also said that a suspension against Rondell Bedward – the only Hofstra student among the five men implicated – had been lifted. The attorney for another of the accused men, 20-year-old Kevin Taveras, said a video of the sexual encounter confirms reports that the victim was not forcibly attacked. "It looks more like a porn movie," Victor Daly-Rivera said. "It showed just the opposite of what the allegations were. There was no tying up, there was no bruising, there was no screaming." On Wednesday night, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice revealed that the 18-year-old accuser had recanted and said the sex with the five men had been consensual. Rice immediately got a judge to release four of the men from the Nassau County Jail. A fifth man was still being sought when the hoax was revealed. "It's crazy, the system is supposed to prevent these things from happening," Taveras said outside the jail late Wednesday "It's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent," he said. "Inside I thought I was going to do a bit for something I didn't do." Bedward, 21, declined comment after he was released. Rice said in a statement that after the woman changed her story, her office began investigating possible charges against the woman for making a false statement to police. The woman first told police she was lured to the dormitory and raped after her cell phone was stolen by a man she'd met at a dance party. She said she was bound with rope while the five men took turns sexually assaulting her in a men's bathroom stall. On campus, students were shaking their heads at the latest twist in the case. "It's definitely a shock," said Megan Michler, a junior from Pen Argyl, Pa. "I guess she completely lied about it and it's not fair to the guys that were involved. Everyone was shaken up by the whole thing, and now we were shaken up for nothing." Hofstra, a private university of 12,600 students on Long Island, played host to the final presidential debate of the 2008 election. More on Crime
 
O'Reilly Endorses Public Option, Which He Previously Called 'Socialism' Top
Last night on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly actually told a Heritage Foundation scholar who was fear-mongering government-backed health care that he favors a public option, More on Health Care
 
Rohrabacher To Iraqis: Be More Grateful! Top
The House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight met today to discuss issues of sovereignty and stability in Iraq ranging from the country's longstanding financial obligation to neighboring Kuwait to its even longer-standing issues with the Kurdish people. But Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) seemed mostly interested in berating the Iraqis for their lack of gratitude More on Iraq
 
Comedy Central Revives 'American Comedy Awards' Top
NEW YORK — Comedy Central says it is reviving the defunct American Comedy Awards. The awards show took place for 15 years, the last time in 2001 and televised by Comedy Central. The network said Thursday it plans to bring the awards show back to life and is teaming with prominent awards show producer Don Mischer. It will honor a year's worth of best comedy writing and performance in film, television and over the Internet. Comedy Central says it expects the first new American Comedy Awards to air near the end of next year, simultaneously on its network and corporate partners Spike TV and TV Land. More on Comedy Central
 
Rita Allison Files Suit Over Letter Alleging Sanford Affair Top
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina legislator has filed a defamation lawsuit over an anonymous letter mailed to her Spartanburg County constituents that suggests she had an affair with Gov. Mark Sanford. State Rep. Rita Allison of Lyman and the state Republican Party filed the lawsuit Thursday against an unnamed "John Doe." The 69-year-old grandmother says the letter mailed to voters Aug. 10 crossed the line beyond dirty politics and into character assassination. Allison says she filed the lawsuit to make a stand that spreading lies is unacceptable, especially anonymously. Allison is a six-term lawmaker and former education adviser to Sanford. She said the governor should resign after he revealed his extramarital affair with an Argentine woman in June. More on Mark Sanford
 
Airport Carbon Offset Kiosks Coming To A City Near You? Top
Personally, while carbon offsets may not be an ideal solution in the long-term, nor a substitute for developing ways to avoid the carbon emissions being offset in the first place, I like the idea of having a kiosk in the airport itself.
 
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.: "It is What It Is" is the Only Truth, the Rest is Interpretation Top
By trying to avoid mistakes and trying to do the "right" thing, we are using a set of personal commandments of what should and should not be. The problem is that by accepting one part of reality and rejecting the other part of reality, we are creating two realities out of one: one being the reality that you approve of, and the other being the reality that you reject. This dualistic, dichotomous perspective results in two truths. This, here, is perfect. And that, over there, is imperfect. But this and that are part of one and the same reality! Katz (2007) writes that a view of the world as one, not two, is what "describes our relationship to truth" since "the nature of truth is not two" (i.e. non-dual). And, indeed, when you and I look at one and the same object of reality, say a hat, and you think it is great looking and I think it's heinous, the only thing that both of us can agree on is that "it is what it is" - and this "it is what it is" is the only truth that allows both of us to be right. By proclaiming that "it is what it is" we both rise above our subjective aesthetics and acknowledge the objective suchness of the object that we were previously trying to judge. We are acknowledging its true nature - that it is the kind of hat that you see as perfect and I see as imperfect. Thus, this hat is both great looking and heinous, depending on whose mind is appraising it, and, at the same time, this hat is neither good looking nor heinous (when no one is looking) but is a "thing in itself," such as it is. All truths are relative, i.e. related to one and the same truth, the truth of suchness, the truth that "it" (whatever the "it" may be) is what it is. But to say that something "is what it is" is to say nothing. Functionally, the phrase "it is what it is" is a form of interpretive silence, a form of informational silence. In saying nothing, we are saying nothing false - and that is, perhaps, the closest we come to expressing that ultimate (one, non-dual) truth that we can all agree upon! Copyright, 2009 Pavel Somov, Ph.D. is the author of Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time (New Harbinger, 2008) and of Present Perfect: From Mindless Pursuit of What Should Be to Mindful Acceptance of What Is (in press, New Harbinger, 2010).
 
Alafair Burke: In Real Life, Violence Hits Close to Home...And Work Top
Last month, crime story watchers like me sat riveted as police announced the eighteen-year-delayed discovery of missing child turned grown woman and mother, Jaycee Dugard . Why the fascination? Maybe it was the human desire to celebrate something that resembled a happy ending. Even after nearly two decades of captivity and abuse, the release of Dugard and her daughters back to her family was at least happy-ish compared to the more familiar endings to these stories. Or maybe the source of fascination was less noble: a prurient curiosity about lives lived in a Rube Goldberg backyard-compound ; the derangement of a sex offender who insists the case is " a powerful, heartwarming story ;" the role of a wife who not only condoned but participated in her husband's crimes. But certainly part of the story's appeal was the closure it brought in a case that epitomized the kind of violence we fear most: wholly random, unpredictable, uncontrollable, predatory. Jaycee was abducted before her stepfather's eyes as she walked up a hill toward her school bus stop. Like the 1993 abduction of Polly Klaas from a slumber party in her own home, the case chilled us to the bones at least in part because of its arbitrariness. Organizers of a parade to celebrate Dugard's return -- many of them children at the time of Jaycee's kidnapping -- said they lost their innocence when she disappeared. They were haunted by a boogeyman whose face they couldn't conjure. But now a few short weeks later, we watch what began as another missing person case -this one without the happy ending, and this one reminding us that most crimes aren't random and most predators aren't faceless strangers. Yale graduate student Annie Le disappeared less than a week before she was to be married. Her body was found stuffed behind a wall of a university research building on what was supposed to be her wedding day. Although only time (and evidence) will tell the full story of what happened, police have arrested Raymond Clark, a Yale lab technician who worked in the building. They have executed search warrants at Clark's home and seized DNA from him to compare to physical evidence in the case. Several news sources have reported Clark had defensive wounds and failed a lie detector test. More recently, whispers have emerged that Clark had an unrequited romantic interest in Le. The media are comparing Le's murder to that of Suzanne Jovin , who was stabbed on the Yale campus in 1998. But the case brought to my mind the July murder of Eridania Rodriguez . Rodriguez disappeared while working her evening cleaning shift at a downtown New York office highrise. Her body was found stuffed inside the skyscraper's air conditioning shaft, her head wrapped like a mummy in construction tape. The building's elevator operator has been charged. I also find myself thinking about actress and director Adrienne Shelly , whose body was found in her Greenwich Village office after a chain of tragic events the commenced with an ordinary complaint about construction noise and ended with a fatal blow to the head. I find myself remembering that Elizabeth Smart was snatched from her Salt Lake City bedroom not by a total stranger, but by a drifter who'd worked for her family as a handyman for one day a year earlier. According to FBI statistics for 2008, only twenty-two percent of murder victims were killed by strangers. More than thirty percent were slain by family members, boyfriends, and girlfriends. Nearly half of all murders were committed by friends, neighbors, and casual acquaintances. And even as violent crime rates decrease, workplace homicides are on the rise -- up thirteen percent in 2007. As New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said this morning , "[T]his is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country." With no shortage of sad details to emerge from Le's death, as a writer and as a woman, I shook my head as I read about an article Le penned in February for a campus magazine. The article was called " Crime and Safety in New Haven ." Not unlike pieces I've authored myself, the story extolled the values of street smarts when living in a city with crime. She interviewed the Yale campus police chief, who advised women, "pay attention to where you are," and "avoid portraying yourself as a potential victim." In summary, she wrote, "New Haven is a city, and all cities have their perils, but with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic." This story has no happy ending, and Le did become a statistic. Her death reminds us: As much as we fear the stranger on a city street -- the faceless predator who can strike out of nowhere -- crime is more likely to strike closer to home or work. And the predator could be a friend, neighbor, or the seemingly harmless lab technician down the hall.
 
Egg-Shaped Penis: Jeffrey Epstein's Embarrassing Deposition (VIDEO) Top
Disgraced money manager - and former Bill Clinton associate - Jeffrey Epstein appeared at a deposition earlier this month (Hat tip to Cityfile ). Epstein's facing a claim from a 15-year-old girl who says, among other things, that Epstein promised to pay her $200 for a massage. Epstein recently got out of jail six months early after receiving an eight-month sentence after pleading guilty to a procuring teen girls for prostitution. In the deposition, Epstein faces what might be the mother-of-all-ice-breakers. The opposing counsel asks: "Is it true that you've have what's been described as an egg-shaped penis?" WATCH the awkwardness for your self: Get HuffPost Business On Facebook and Twitter !
 
Marcia G. Yerman: Emma Thompson, Featured in Fatal Promises, Speaks Out on Human Trafficking Top
Human trafficking...the statistics are overwhelming. Approximately 800,000 people are illegally trafficked through international borders annually. 1.39 million people are trafficked into sexual exploitation. There are 16,600 people trafficked into the United States yearly, with America being one of the top ten destinations. New York City serves as a major portal for this activity. A new film documentary, Fatal Promises directed by Kat Rohrer, will be screening from September 16th - September 24th at the Cinema Village in Manhattan. Rohrer partnered with her mother, Anneliese Rohrer , a 30-year veteran of Austrian journalism, to examine the various facets of human trafficking. The film, four years in the making, follows the stories of five people - three women and two men. They relate how they were lured by promises of employment, and lacking opportunities sought job solutions abroad. Their harrowing nightmares ended in relief brought about by rescue or through escape. Their personal narratives fulfill the need to put a face to an issue that is perceived as overwhelming. As Gloria Steinem points out in her on-camera comments, "What we need are stories." In tandem with these visceral accounts are interviews with activists, government officials, and legislators. Antonio Maria Costa , Executive Director of UNODC, discusses the "moral imperative" of getting human trafficking on the political agenda positing that the world is "dismissing [a] tragedy of enormous dimension." The culmination of a seven-year effort to push through legislation that became the New York State Anti-Trafficking Law is shown as Eliot Spitzer signs the bill into law. The follow up scene is his resignation as Governor, after being exposed as a patron of a prostitution service. The juxtaposition exemplifies the dichotomies in a culture that is rife with contradictions and subtexts about sex. Prominently featured in Fatal Promises is actress and activist Emma Thompson. In addition to making powerful public service announcements , Thompson is the co-curator (with Elena, a trafficking survivor), of the interactive art installation Journey . The work puts the viewer directly into the experience of a sexually trafficked woman. Journey traveled to Vienna, where it was showcased outside the 2008 U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking conference . There is a mordant episode in the documentary conveying the limitations of the U.N. gathering where 2,000 "official" participants met. The price tag of the four days comes to a cool $2,9000,000. It is noted that the conference was "proudly" sponsored by the United Arab Emirates - a country that is listed with the United States Department of State as being on the " Tier 2 Watch List " of nations (The tier structure is examined in one of the film's interviews.). A frustrated Thompson speaking on-camera asks, "What is the point of us all traveling to Vienna if we haven't got a plan?" While recruitment is accomplished on a person-to-person basis and individuals are translated into goods and services, corruption is rampant - from law enforcement officials to the visa process. Thompson emphasizes, "There needs to be a real chain of decision, command, and action." While Thompson was in New York City to attend previews of Fatal Promises , I was able to interview her via proxy. Below are excerpts from the conversation. What are the plans for the installation of Journey in New York City and America? "The plan is that we bring Journey over to New York on November the 9th until November 16th. I'm not entirely sure where it will be yet, because we haven't yet chosen our site. But it means that it will be sitting there open to the public all of that time and I will be there, and Helen ( Helen Bamber Foundation ) will be there, and Michael Korzinski, the other director of the foundation, will be there. It [ Journey ] is immensely expensive to travel, so we're hoping that we can get help from Homeland Security to take it to Washington next. That's what we're hoping for." Do you see the film and art installation as having potential to make the problem of human trafficking more visceral and of higher visibility? "Of course, yes. I mean this is one of those problems that is going to have to be spoken about and talked about and shouted about for a long time to come. We're not going to be bashing this out of existence just by producing a film and an installation. But what we can do is start to make it very clear that there is a big problem. The film is fantastically well researched and very interesting, and put together in such a way that you don't feel as though you are being sort of hammered. You can really take in the information and walk away with it. It's very cleverly done. The installation is an art installation, so it is a completely different kind of experience. But the two things together are pretty effective. After that, you know a lot...and you can go and get on and do something." You have become an activist in this cause, but your frustration with the Vienna Forum was quite apparent. As you asked, "What is the point of us all traveling to Vienna if we haven't got a plan?" Can you speak to the difference between the on-the-ground realities and the world of diplomats and legislation? "The world of diplomats and legislation is a highly bureaucratized, very slow moving thing - a bit like a glacier. Diplomats, and certainly home office civil servants and that type of personnel, are famously unbudgeable. So they're the people I want to come to the installation, because it's very important for people who work within the civil sector of society to see what's going on and connect with it in a visceral way, rather than just receiving facts. There is a huge disconnect between what is understood by persons in authority about trafficking, and what actually occurs to people. It is getting better, but it is very, very slow. As for what politicians really understand about it? Unless they've made it a particular interest, it is not something I've found people to be very informed about at all... at all . So at the moment it is an issue that I think is very much sidelined and not put at the top of any agendas, which I think reflects very ill upon us. I think that to start the 21st century with a huge new slave trade flourishing does not reflect well on any of our governments. I mean, it is absolutely appalling that we have allowed this to happen - because we have allowed this to happen. We knew this was happening a long time ago and we didn't take steps. We didn't inform, we didn't think to ourselves, 'Oh, women are being bought and sold. What does that mean? I wonder if that means they are commodified. And what do we do about that?' There's been no rhetoric about that. There's been no discussion even. It's as though because prostitution is the oldest profession - blah, blah, blah - everyone thinks, 'Oh, well. This is just another manifestation of that.' And it's not. It's something quite else. It's a new slave trade." How do you respond to the irony that the conference was sponsored by the UAE, when they are on the list of offenders? "Well, you know, people will take money from anyone! (hearty laugh) The U.N. has become its own worse enemy. I think it's bedeviled by bureaucracy. I think it's been declawed in every conceivable way. And I think in its corridors misogyny holds tremendous sway - at least that's what I've witnessed...I know what the problems are. Again, that's a question of self-examination for the U.N. to say, 'What can we do to become more effective?'" Is part of the problem that anti-trafficking activists are on a continuum, and they don't agree with each other on core beliefs and strategies? "Sure. All NGOs are on collision courses because they all need money, and they all need money from the same sources...In relation to prostitution or not prostitution, that's a whole debate of its own. And it is of course connected, because what this is also about is our relationship to sex. Which is something we're going to have to start talking about much, much more honestly and in much greater detail... We've got to find out why we have a huge customer base for this service. Why? What's going on? What is it about us at the moment that makes us so keen to buy people? Those questions must be asked. As for prostitution or not prostitution - and everyone takes a view - it doesn't really make any difference to the customer whether a woman has chosen to be a prostitute or not. So it's not necessarily going to change the customer. And it's certainly not going to change the experience of a trafficked person whether prostitution is legal or not in their country. So it's not a question of saying legalize it all and that will make them safer because that does not work, actually. Prostitution is legal in Austria. Prostitution is legal in Holland. And in Amsterdam, they have one of the worst problems with trafficking imaginable. It's just awful. So legalizing doesn't necessarily stop trafficking...But in relation to this particular slave trade that is going on, the buying of people and selling of people, it doesn't really matter whether you believe prostitution should be legalized or not. You've got to get behind a movement that stops people being sold for whatever reason they're going to be sold. I think that's probably where I stand on it." When I contacted Kat Rohrer by e-mail for a statement about the goals of her documentary she responded, "My film is about the survivors' stories. I want the public to hear their anger. Their voices are too seldom heard on an international, or even local, platform. It is precisely because I understand that the world community is faced with a myriad of seemingly never-ending issues - from economic and environmental disasters to hunger and war - that I spent four years making this film. Human trafficking is modern-day slavery. To ignore it is to ignore our humanity. How can we, as a conscientious society, tolerate slavery in 21st century? Simply put, we can not, we must not." Rohrer will be partnering with anti-trafficking organizations including Equality Now , Nomi Network , History Starts Now , CATW and NOW to get wider visibility for the topic. Panel discussions are going on throughout the film's run, and plans are in the works to take the documentary to universities nationwide. There will be a DVD available in the future. Those who have been "bought, sold, and discarded" will finally have listeners. Photos courtesy of GreenKat Productions Technorati Profile More on Eliot Spitzer
 
Malou Innocent: U.S. Must Narrow Objectives in Afghanistan Top
Eight years ago, a small number of U.S. personnel, working in tandem with local Afghan leaders, entered Afghanistan with a defined aim: to punish al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban regime that harbored them. Over the past year, that mission has morphed into the much broader objective of rebuilding the Afghan state and protecting Afghan villages. Most recently, America's top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said a new strategy must be forged to "earn the support of the [Afghan] people . . . regardless of how many militants are killed or captured." Such an undertaking, amounting to a large-scale social-engineering project, is unwarranted. The cost in blood and treasure that we would have to incur -- coming on top of what we have already paid -- far outweighs any possible benefits, even accepting the most optimistic estimates for the likelihood of success. The essential question now is not whether the war is winnable, but whether the mission is vital to U.S. national security interests. From this perspective the current open-ended strategy fails. The United States and its allies must instead narrow their objectives. A long-term, large-scale presence is not necessary to disrupt al-Qaida. Indeed, that limited aim has largely been achieved, with the exception of capturing Osama bin Laden. What we have seen over the past eight years is a classic case of mission creep. U.S. military operations today draw from the "clear-hold-build" model offered in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, a volume that didn't even exist in 2001. It states, "Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors rebuilding infrastructure and basic services." But for how long? Afghanistan has not made any progress toward being able to function without the assistance of the U.S. and its allies. Congress mandated that the Obama administration come up with a set of benchmarks to measure progress, but this list -- supposedly 50-items long -- has still not been presented publicly. And no wonder. These metrics, due by Sept. 24, will surely raise questions about whether such ambitious objectives can be achieved within costs acceptable to the American public. The United States does not have the patience, cultural knowledge or legitimacy to transform what is a deeply divided, poverty stricken, tribal-based society into a self-sufficient, non-corrupt, and stable electoral democracy. And even if Americans did commit several hundred thousand troops and decades of armed nation-building, success would hardly be guaranteed, especially in a country notoriously suspicious of outsiders and largely devoid of central authority. It is, of course, unreasonable for any administration to guarantee success in times of war. Planning will always fall short of our expectations, and no one can reliably predict the future. But we should be especially wary of nation-building. In a study of seven nation-building projects carried out since the end of World War II, the RAND corporation concluded that only two, Germany and Japan, could be characterized as unalloyed successes -- a failure rate of 71 percent. The prospects in Afghanistan are worse. As the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stated in an August 2009 report (.pdf), "Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction project -- it is a construction project, starting almost from scratch in a country that will probably remain poverty-stricken no matter how much the U.S. and the international community accomplish in the coming years." Washington's hope for nation-building and counterinsurgency, particularly in the context of Afghanistan, is not so much misguided as it is misplaced. Containing al-Qaida and disrupting its ability to carry out future terrorist attacks does not require a massive troop presence on the ground. Committing still more U.S. personnel to Afghanistan undermines the already weak authority of Afghan leaders, interferes with our ability to deal with other security challenges, and pulls us deeper into a bloody and protracted guerilla war with no end in sight. As Robert Jervis, a professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, recently noted, "[President Obama] has devoted much more attention to how to wage the war than to whether we need to wage it." It is becoming clear that going after al-Qaida neither requires a large-scale, long-term military presence in Afghanistan, nor does such a mission constitute a vital national security interest. Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst and Christopher Preble is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C. This article appeared in World Politics Review on September 16, 2009. More on Afghanistan
 
Naveen Naqvi: Taliban Returns To Pakistan; Immediate New Offensive By Pak Army In Waziristan Unlikely Top
For a couple of months, the world has seen pictures of Pakistani men, women and children with flushed faces stuffed in buses, braving oppressive heat and winding roads. Their mission was to return to the scenic Swat Valley, known as the Switzerland of Pakistan. Newspaper headlines have read: 'The long journey back home.' The Pakistan military has been lauded and applauded for beating back the Taliban. Even the displacement of three million people in the process was forgiven, though criticzed. The Pakistani people, after being under attack for at least two years from its most dangerous enemy yet - one that lies within - were celebrating victory against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. All the while, the crucial question hung in the air unanswered, casting a dark shadow over the self-congratulatory military: Will the Taliban re-emerge? It appears they have. There have been two spectacular attacks over the last few weeks. They came after the 'end' of the Swat military operation, and after Baitullah Mehsud's was killed in a suspected drone attack. (Notably, Mehsud was not killed by the Pakistan army, but by the United States. None of the Taliban leadership was killed or apprehended in the Swat operation.) The most recent manifestation of the 'return' of the Pakistan Taliban is the audacious attack on the Religious Affairs Minister, Hamid Saeed Kazmi, in the federal capital earlier this month. A sniper on a motorbike opened fire at the minister's car in broad daylight, chased him on a main road of Islamabad, and riddled the car with at least 25 bullets. The minister was injured, his driver killed and a police guard injured in the stunning assassination attempt. However, Islamabad-based analyst, Farhan Bokhari of the Financial Times is less than shocked. 'No one should be surprised,' he says. 'A military victory in Swat just took back the territory but the militants are still out there. The Pakistan army will have to go all the way.' Bokhari also accredits the attack to the minister's political beliefs. He points out that Kazmi was a vocal opponent of hardline Taliban militants. 'He condemned suicide attacks,' he says. 'If you recall, Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi was assassinated for condemning suicide attacks.' The Taliban do not stand for dissenting views even from those committed to Islamic teachings, as was Mufti Naeemi, who ran a madrassah in Lahore. Before the attack on Kazmi, a suicide bomber sneaked into a police training centre in Mingora, Swat, on August 30 and detonated explosives, killing 16 new recruits and injuring four others. Targeting new police recruits has been a strategy of the Taliban as it demoralises young people who may be eager to serve in the security apparatus and discourages others from joining the forces. Now if the Pakistani Taliban have regrouped and found a leader in the newly elected Hakeemullah Mehsud, is it a good time for the Pakistan military to launch a new offensive in Waziristan? Defence analyst and retired General Talat Masood doubts if the Pakistan army would launch a massive ground operation in the Waziristan agencies. He claims, 'For one, it would unite the entire FATA and the tribes would be up in arms against the state, even if they don't like the Taliban. Secondly, winter is approaching and holding ground may be exacting on the army.' General Masood predicts that the Pakistan army would instead keep the pressure on the Taliban by blocking their routes, hitting them with missiles, rockets and artillery shelling. The additional support from US drones would keep them unhinged. More and more Pakistani experts are acknowledging the usefulness of US drone missile attacks, but asserting that they remain unpopular with the local people. Zafar Hilaly, a former ambassador, answers the question of whether the Pakistan army should strike Waziristan now with a resounding 'yes'. But he makes an argument that is not very different from General Masood and cautions, 'In Swat, the insurgents were an invading, external force. In Waziristan, the insurgents are from within. They are of the indigenous tribes. So if anything, the people of the area will fear the army.' If the natives of Waziristan see the Pakistan military as the invading force, it would be a tougher battle to 'win.' Perhaps the way to woo the people would be through a hearts-and-minds campaign. Security expert, Rustam Shah, suggests a revision in the military tactic that would serve to alienate less people. 'In Swat, there was too much reliance on the air force which resulted in massive displacement. It would do the army well to do less of that in Waziristan.' As I said in the beginning of this peace, there were close to three million displaced as a result of the military offensive in Swat. According to latest reports, about a million have returned, leaving well over a million still in refugee status. And those who have made the long journey home have not returned to much at all, as illustrated by this slideshow from The New York Times. The photographs on the website show what is meant by 'normal life' in Swat. What you see is distressing to say the least, and very far from being normal. This is part of HuffPost's Spotlight On Pakistan . Eyes & Ears and HuffPost World are building a network of people living in Pakistan who can help us understand what is happening there. These individuals will send us reports -- either snippets of information or full-length stories -- about how the political crisis affects life in Pakistan. This is an opportunity to have a continued conversation with Americans about what's happening in your country. If you would like to participate, please sign up here. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Pakistan
 
Iran Can Make Nuclear Bomb: Atomic Watchdog Top
VIENNA — Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press. The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency's leaders share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities. It appears to be the so-called "secret annex" on Iran's nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA's chief. The document says Iran has "sufficient information" to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system. More on Nuclear Weapons
 
Robert Maday Manhunt: Police Hunt Escaped Armed Convict In Suburbs Top
Police have surrounded an apartment complex in Northwest suburban Chicago in search of an armed prisoner who overpowered his guards and escaped from the vehicle transporting him to court in Rolling Meadows Thursday. Dozens of police cars, SWAT team members, police dogs and snipers are reportedly on the scene. The Tribune report on the escape: According to authorities, Robert Maday, 39, a federal bank robbery suspect, overpowered the officers in a sedan bringing him to the courthouse near Arlington Heights and Central Roads. Maday drove off in their vehicle and dumped it in Mt. Prospect, authorities said. Watch live video of the search from CBS 2.
 
Tom Engelhardt: Is America Hooked on War? Top
Cross-posted with tomdispatch.com . "War is peace" was one of the memorable slogans on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, Minitrue in "Newspeak," the language invented by George Orwell in 1948 for his dystopian novel 1984 . Some 60 years later, a quarter-century after Orwell's imagined future bit the dust, the phrase is, in a number of ways, eerily applicable to the United States. Last week, for instance, a New York Times front-page story by Eric Schmitt and David Sanger was headlined "Obama Is Facing Doubts in Party on Afghanistan, Troop Buildup at Issue." It offered a modern version of journalistic Newspeak. "Doubts," of course, imply dissent, and in fact just the week before there had been a major break in Washington's ranks, though not among Democrats. The conservative columnist George Will wrote a piece offering blunt advice to the Obama administration, summed up in its headline : "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." In our age of political and audience fragmentation and polarization, think of this as the Afghan version of Vietnam's Cronkite moment . The Times report on those Democratic doubts, on the other hand, represented a more typical Washington moment. Ignored, for instance, was Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's end-of-August call for the president to develop an Afghan withdrawal timetable. The focus of the piece was instead an upcoming speech by Michigan Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He was, Schmitt and Sanger reported, planning to push back against well-placed leaks (in the Times , among other places) indicating that war commander General Stanley McChrystal was urging the president to commit 15,000 to 45,000 more American troops to the Afghan War. Here, according to the two reporters, was the gist of Levin's message about what everyone agrees is a "deteriorating" U.S. position: "[H]e was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces." Think of this as the line in the sand within the Democratic Party, and be assured that the debates within the halls of power over McChrystal's troop requests and Levin's proposal are likely to be fierce this fall. Thought about for a moment, however, both positions can be summed up with the same word: More. The essence of this "debate" comes down to: More of them versus more of us (and keep in mind that more of them -- an expanded training program for the Afghan National Army -- actually means more of "us" in the form of extra trainers and advisors). In other words, however contentious the disputes in Washington, however dismally the public now views the war, however much the president's war coalition might threaten to crack open, the only choices will be between more and more. No alternatives are likely to get a real hearing. Few alternative policy proposals even exist because alternatives that don't fit with "more" have ceased to be part of Washington's war culture. No serious thought, effort, or investment goes into them. Clearly referring to Will's column, one of the unnamed "senior officials" who swarm through our major newspapers made the administration's position clear, saying sardonically, according to the Washington Post , "I don't anticipate that the briefing books for the [administration] principals on these debates over the next weeks and months will be filled with submissions from opinion columnists... I do anticipate they will be filled with vigorous discussion... of how successful we've been to date." State of War Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment. Similarly, we've become used to the idea that, when various forms of force (or threats of force) don't work, our response, as in Afghanistan, is to recalibrate and apply some alternate version of the same under a new or rebranded name -- the hot one now being "counterinsurgency" or COIN -- in a marginally different manner. When it comes to war, as well as preparations for war, more is now generally the order of the day. This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror. The question is: What kind of country do we actually live in when the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) lists 16 intelligence services ranging from Air Force Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency? What could "intelligence" mean once spread over 16 sizeable, bureaucratic, often competing outfits with a cumulative 2009 budget estimated at more than $55 billion (a startling percentage of which is controlled by the Pentagon)? What exactly is so intelligent about all that? And why does no one think it even mildly strange or in any way out of the ordinary? What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who has now submitted an even larger Pentagon budget ? What does this tell you about Washington and about the viability of non-militarized alternatives to the path George W. Bush took? What does it mean when the new administration, surveying nearly eight years and two wars' worth of disasters, decides to expand the U.S. Armed Forces rather than shrink the U.S. global mission? What kind of a world do we inhabit when, with an official unemployment rate of 9.7% and an underemployment rate of 16.8%, the American taxpayer is financing the building of a three-story, exceedingly permanent-looking $17 million troop barracks at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan? This, in turn, is part of a taxpayer-funded $220 million upgrade of the base that includes new "water treatment plants, headquarters buildings, fuel farms, and power generating plants." And what about the U.S. air base built at Balad, north of Baghdad, that now has 15 bus routes, two fire stations, two water treatment plants, two sewage treatment plants, two power plants, a water bottling plant, and the requisite set of fast-food outlets, PXes, and so on, as well as air traffic levels sometimes compared to those at Chicago's O'Hare International? What kind of American world are we living in when a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq involves the removal of more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment? Or in which the possibility of withdrawal leads the Pentagon to issue nearly billion-dollar contracts (new ones!) to increase the number of private security contractors in that country? What do you make of a world in which the U.S. has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones, 24/7, and the "pilots" who control them from thousands of miles away are ready on a moment's notice to launch missiles -- "Hellfire" missiles at that -- into Pashtun peasant villages in the wild, mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? What does it mean when American pilots can be at war "in" Afghanistan, 9 to 5, by remote control, while their bodies remain at a base outside Las Vegas and then can head home past a sign that warns them to drive carefully because this is "the most dangerous part of your day"? What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels? Take, for example, Boeing's advanced coordinated system of hand-held drones, robots, sensors, and other battlefield surveillance equipment slated for seven Army brigades within the next two years at a cost of $2 billion and for the full Army by 2025; or the Next Generation Bomber , an advanced "platform" slated for 2018; or a truly futuristic bomber , "a suborbital semi-spacecraft able to move at hypersonic speed along the edge of the atmosphere," for 2035? What does it mean about our world when those people in our government peering deepest into a blue-skies future are planning ways to send armed "platforms" up into those skies and kill more than a quarter century from now? And do you ever wonder about this: If such weaponry is being endlessly developed for our safety and security, and that of our children and grandchildren, why is it that one of our most successful businesses involves the sale of the same weaponry to other countries? Few Americans are comfortable thinking about this, which may explain why global-arms-trade pieces don't tend to make it onto the front pages of our newspapers. Recently, the Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker, for instance, wrote a piece on the subject which appeared inside the paper on a quiet Labor Day. "Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows" was the headline. Perhaps Shanker, too, felt uncomfortable with his subject, because he included the following generic description: "In the highly competitive global arms market, nations vie for both profit and political influence through weapons sales, in particular to developing nations..." The figures he cited from a new congressional study of that "highly competitive" market told a different story: The U.S., with $37.8 billion in arms sales (up $12.4 billion from 2007), controlled 68.4% of the global arms market in 2008. Highly competitively speaking, Italy came "a distant second" with $3.7 billion. In sales to "developing nations," the U.S. inked $29.6 billion in weapons agreements or 70.1% of the market. Russia was a vanishingly distant second at $3.3 billion or 7.8% of the market. In other words, with 70% of the market, the U.S. actually has what, in any other field, would qualify as a monopoly position -- in this case, in things that go boom in the night. With the American car industry in a ditch, it seems that this (along with Hollywood films that go boom in the night) is what we now do best, as befits a war, if not warrior, state. Is that an American accomplishment you're comfortable with? On the day I'm writing this piece, "Names of the Dead," a feature which appears almost daily in my hometown newspaper, records the death of an Army private from DeKalb, Illinois, in Afghanistan. Among the spare facts offered: he was 20 years old, which means he was probably born not long before the First Gulf War was launched in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. If you include that war, which never really ended -- low-level U.S. military actions against Saddam Hussein's regime continued until the invasion of 2003 -- as well as U.S. actions in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, not to speak of the steady warfare underway since November 2001, in his short life, there was hardly a moment in which the U.S. wasn't engaged in military operations somewhere on the planet (invariably thousands of miles from home). If that private left a one-year-old baby behind in the States, and you believe the statements of various military officials, that child could pass her tenth birthday before the war in which her father died comes to an end. Given the record of these last years, and the present military talk about being better prepared for "the next war," she could reach 2025, the age when she, too, might join the military without ever spending a warless day. Is that the future you had in mind? Consider this: War is now the American way, even if peace is what most Americans experience while their proxies fight in distant lands. Any serious alternative to war, which means our "security," is increasingly inconceivable. In Orwellian terms then, war is indeed peace in the United States and peace, war. American Newspeak Newspeak, as Orwell imagined it, was an ever more constricted form of English that would, sooner or later, make "all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended," he wrote in an appendix to his novel, "that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought... should be literally unthinkable." When it comes to war (and peace), we live in a world of American Newspeak in which alternatives to a state of war are not only ever more unacceptable, but ever harder to imagine. If war is now our permanent situation, in good Orwellian fashion it has also been sundered from a set of words that once accompanied it. It lacks, for instance, "victory." After all, when was the last time the U.S. actually won a war (unless you
 

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