Thursday, September 17, 2009

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Mark Konkol and Todd Fooks: Keeping Score in Chicago Episode 22: This Podcast Was Interrupted By Kanye West Top
Amid the Soldier Field statue controversy, Walter Payton's son shares memories of his famous father a decade after Sweetness' death. Fook and Konkol go in depth on what really killed Blago-boy Chris Kelly, and who is MJ's new arm candy? The debut edition of "Fill in the blank" with Sun-Times know-it-all Joe Cowley answers the questions, "What do Jay Cutler's new drinking buddies on the White Sox think of him?" "Where can you see Gordon Beckham's girlfriend in her panties?" Keep listening to find out if Walter Payton's son can actually bust a rhyme. There's another hilariously amazing round of Speed Score and so much more. Be sure to check out Keeping Score in Chicago for more information and previous episodes.
 
Julie Packard: An Ocean of Inspiration Top
People often ask me how I came to be so committed to ocean conservation. Did I have a life-changing ocean experience as a young child? Did my family spend a lot of time at the shore? Was I an avid diver at a young age? The truth is, I rarely went to the ocean as a child and didn't get interested in it until college, when I took a course in marine algal ecology. There I discovered the tide pools, a new and intriguing part of a natural world that already had become my life passion. People who are making a difference for conservation invariably say they found their passion for nature by spending time outdoors or in museums: sometimes observing, sometimes hiking, hunting or fishing, but always sharing the energizing experience of discovering something new and hidden. It could be a bird's nest in the tall grass, a colorful tide pool sponge under a rocky ledge, or a silver fish revealed in the dark water. Being inspired by nature is what the Monterey Bay Aquarium is all about. As we prepare to celebrate our 25th anniversary , it is so encouraging to realize how many people we've touched -- people who are taking the inspiration they found here and making a difference for ocean wildlife. It's a reminder that each of us has the power to create positive change in the world. I'm certain that every one of the 46 million visitors we've attracted has a story to tell about how their visit affected their view of the world. I'd like to share just three of them with you, as a reminder that your visit to an aquarium, zoo or museum can change a life -- and change the world. * * * Will Jones is just a little boy. But he has had a big impact. In 2005, he was just six years old when he visited the Aquarium's sea otter exhibit with his family. When he heard about the threats that otters face in the wild, his heart went out to them. "Dad, you've got to do something to help," he said. "The otters are dying." Will's dad took his young son seriously. "It was sort of a neat moment," said Dave Jones, "because I'm there in the aquarium with the kids, the kids are upset and I thought, 'There is something I can do. I can learn about this, and I can try to see if there's something we can do about it.'" Will's dad was a member of the California state legislature. After talking with staff at our Sea Otter Research and Conservation program, he and a colleague co-authored a bill to provide significant new protections for otters: stiffer fines for harming sea otters, a provision for increased research funding to discover why the sea otters recovery has stalled, and an income tax check-off to support the research. The bill was signed into law and took effect in 2007. Since then, the voluntary tax check-off has raised $750,000 to support sea otter research. Few of us will inspire landmark legislation the way Will Jones did. But all of us can help protect sea otters. And it's inspiring to know that a visit to the Aquarium can have such a lasting impact. * * * Discovering his passion for the oceans prompted Gerhard Kuska to change the course of his life. It set him on a path from visitor to Aquarium volunteer, to serving as the ocean policy adviser to the President of the United States. Years ago -- another lifetime, really -- Gerhard was the successful manager of an international cargo transportation company in San Francisco. He enjoyed his job, but the stress level became unbearable. To relax, he and his wife took weekend trips to Monterey and the Aquarium. "It was like a sanctuary -- a place to get away and enjoy myself more than I did at work," Gerhard said. He also realized how happy everyone was, from staff and volunteers to the visitors. "It brought a change in me so profound that I had to question what I was doing in my life," he said. "So I went on a mission to investigate how I could work toward better stewardship of the oceans." Gerhard quit his job and moved East to pursue a doctorate in marine studies. And he began to live his dream -- crafting ocean policy for government officials and the United Nations, working on fisheries management issues and joining staff of the U. S. Commission on Ocean Policy. Ultimately he served for two and a half years as Director of Ocean and Coastal Policy under President George W. Bush. "People don't think about the impact a single individual can have; we all see ourselves as one among millions," Gerhard said. "But for me to go from being a volunteer at the Aquarium to being able to affect change and help others effect change makes me want to tell everyone to get involved, to demonstrate their passion. Because it's only through individual action that we have an opportunity to make big changes." * * * For four-year-old Darcy Taniguchi, her first visit to the Aquarium was a life-changing experience. It provided a connection with a world she'd never seen before -- a world that's now the focus of her studies and her career. Darcy lives in California's great Central Valley, far from the coast. But when her parents brought her to the Monterey Peninsula and took her to the Aquarium and the beach nearby, she was transformed. They returned on family trips a half-dozen times a year. And the animals and exhibits left a deep impression. She remembers colorful comb jellies in a special exhibition in 1990. She was absorbed by the touch pool and especially the gumboot chiton (which resembles a fleshy marine pillbug). She enjoyed the soft feel of the sea cucumbers, which looked as if they'd be so much rougher. By the time she was in fourth grade, she knew that she wanted to be a marine biologist. "I knew I needed to be near the ocean, to make it part of my life and have a job that involved the ocean," Darcy said. In applying to the doctoral program in marine biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography , she recalled her early inspiration. "Staring, completely absorbed, at the striking exhibits of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and wetting my feet and hands in the tide pools of Asilomar Beach, instilled in me a lasting curiosity about the ocean," she wrote. This August, she brought her skills to sea as part of a scientific expedition exploring the ecological impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an area of the ocean where plastic debris concentrates, and where plastic fragments may outnumber living plankton. For Darcy, it's the latest chapter in a life's passion sparked nearly 20 years ago when a little girl first visited the Aquarium.
 
200 Dead Walruses Found On Alaska Coast Top
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Federal wildlife researchers report that up to 200 dead walruses were spotted from the air along the northwest coast of Alaska. Researchers spotted 100 to 200 carcasses near Icy Cape, which juts into the Chukchi Sea about 140 miles southwest of Barrow. For the second time in three years, thousands of walruses have congregated on the northwest coast as Arctic sea ice has receded beyond the shallow continental shelf, where the animals dive for clams and other food. Why the walruses died is not known, but experts say young animals can be crushed in stampedes when the animals are startled. About 3,500 walruses were reported last week near Icy Cape. More on Climate Change
 
Tiny T-Rex: Small Tyrannosaurus Discovered (PHOTO) Top
WASHINGTON — About 125 million years ago a tiny version of Tyrannosaurus rex roamed what is now northeastern China. Tiny, that is, by T. rex standards – you still wouldn't want to meet it face to face. Described by paleontologist Paul Sereno as "punk size," this early predator stood about nine feet tall. It just seems small compared to the giant T. rex that evolved millions of years later and was as much as 100 times more massive. "It really is the blueprint for the later (T. rex) dinosaurs," Sereno said, "it was a blueprint that was scalable." Described for the first time in Thursday's ScienceExpress, the online edition of the journal Science, the new dinosaur has been named Raptorex kriegsteini. Sereno reports that Raptorex has all the hallmarks of T. rex, including a large head, tiny arms and lanky feet – just in a smaller size. "What we're looking at is a blueprint for a fast-running set of jaws," Sereno said at a briefing arranged by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The giant T. rex dominated much of the planet from about 90 million years ago until the great extinction 65 million years ago. Raptorex would have weighed only about 150 pounds, said Sereno, of the University of Chicago and also a National Geographic explorer in residence. The newly described remains were found by fossil hunters in northern China, smuggled out of that country and offered for sale to collector Henry Kriegstein of Higham, Mass., Sereno said. Kriegstein, for whom the animal is now named, donated the materials to science and they will be returned to China. The fossil was encased in a single block of stone, Sereno said. That stone allowed the researchers to trace the find to its original location. The way the bones were fused indicates the animal died at the age of five or six, which is nearly adult. It would have matured at eight or 10 and been old by 20, added co-author Stephen Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History. The find also shows that features such as the animal's tiny arms did not evolve as T. rex grew larger, but were present in the much earlier forms, Brusatte said. "Much of what we thought we knew about T. rex turns out to be simplistic or out-and-out wrong," Brusatte said. Sereno said Raptorex was a predator. Some scientists debate whether T. rex was a predator or scavenger. Dinosaur expert John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University was cautious about the find. "It's hard to evaluate their conclusions," he said, calling the report interesting but adding that the drawing in the paper shows some differences from a T. rex in addition to being smaller. However, he added, he didn't see anything that would disprove their theory that Raptorex was an ancestor of T. rex. The research was funded by the Whitten-Newman Foundation and the National Geographic Society. ___ On the Net: Science: http://www.sciencemag.org More on Animals
 
Nancy Leigh: Katherine Heigl Adopts Korean Baby Girl Top
LOS ANGELES — Katherine Heigl and husband Josh Kelley have completed their adoption of a baby girl from Korea. Heigl spokeswoman Melissa Kates says the couple named the 10-month-old Nancy Leigh, after the actress's mother Nancy and her sister Margaret Leigh. The girl will go by the nickname Naleigh. Kates says both parents and Naleigh are together and doing well. The couple is putting photos of their daughter up on , the Web site of Heigl's animal-rescue foundation. http://www.jasonheiglfoundation.org Heigl plays Dr. Izzie Stevens on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and is currently shooting the film "Life as We Know It." She and Kelley, a singer-songwriter, have been married since 2007. More on Celebrity Kids
 
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
 
Cute/Ridiculous Animal Thing Of The Day: Panda On The Playground (PIC) Top
Oh. My. God. Why are pandas so amazing? I mean, they are so much cuter than other bears. Is it the fact that they're vegetarians? Or that the black circles around their eyes make them look baleful? Whatever the reason, pandas plus playground equal amazing. Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on Animals
 
Donna Baranski-Walker: Will Egypt Allow Rachel Corrie's Parents and Friends to Enter Gaza? Top
Not unexpectedly, our shipment of gently worn soccer shoes for Gaza was held-up in Cairo.  We've learned the shoes were transferred to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, as yet without release for transit to Gaza.   Meanwhile, the Rachel Corrie Foundation's delegation of 10 were delayed at the Rafah, Gaza border, then allowed to enter with a whole bunch of soccer uniforms in their luggage! I called the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to ask their help in resolving the hold-up so that the shoes can arrive at the Rafah, Gaza crossing in time for the Festival of Eid al Fitr.    It is a significant challenge to open a blockade for 16 boxes of gently worn sports shoes -- would you like to help?    In my experience, embassies and consulates respond better to U.S. Senators and Representatives than they do to mere mortals like us.  I'm posting a guide below, describing how to reach senior staffers at your senators' and representative's offices to tell them about the soccer delegation and ask them to make two calls on your behalf. Please tell them that the delegation of Americans who just entered Gaza are the family and friends of the late Rachel Corrie.  They were invited by Rachel's friends in Gaza who are organizing the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament, to attend the kids open day at the Unity Club Soccer Field in Rafah.   One of the organizers wrote in the letter of invitation, "With so much bad news in the media about the situation in Gaza, we wanted to let you know about a positive event that is under way thanks to collaborative efforts of people throughout our community, along with participation of individuals and groups in the United States and United Kingdom. We are talking about the Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament for Youth. The soccer tournament is in celebration of community. It's about bringing people together to create a window of opportunity for positive community interaction with all, regardless of politics or ideology."                                                   -- Adnan, Rachel Corrie Sports Intiative In the past, State Department officials have privately told me it is best not to mention Rachel Corrie because she is "too controversial to do our cause much good. " I hope our State Department will reconsider this approach and instead draw upon the broad network of trust and understanding inspired by the integrity of this brave American. This delegation of Americans deserves the support of the State Department because they will touch hearts in Gaza as only they can.   Add the arrival of our sports shoes to show the goodwill of hundreds more Americans who care. In the years since their daughter, Rachel, was killed Cindy and Craig Corrie have made a tangible difference in many people's lives, especially in Israel and Palestine.  These photos show their work with the Rebuilding Alliance since 2003.   In the fall of that year, during their first visit to the Israeli and Palestine, Cindy and Craig Corrie joined in the groundbreaking ceremony for the kindergarten we built in the West Bank village of Al Aqaba -- today it serves 130 children, with moms in a sewing cooperative upstairs!  In 2005, the Rebuilding Alliance brought members of the Nasrallah family whom Rachel sought to protect, to the U.S. to join the Corries in a seven state speaking tour to raise funds to rebuild their home -- that family is among the co-founders of the Rachel Corrie Sports Initiative in Gaza.   Click the photo of Craig on the phone to hear his moving words in the “Homecoming Teleconference” we held in 2007 with the Nasrallah family when the Rebuilding Alliance completed rebuilding their home.  In 2006, Cindy and Craig went back to Gaza, and Craig took Cindy's picture with the smallest Nasrallah children whom Rachel had once joined for Friday-morning cartoons "in a puddle of blankets."  Rachel knew these children were inside the home behind her when she stood her ground before the bulldozer -- their lives and their future is part of her legacy. Please do what you can to help lift the blockade that prevents gently worn shoes, and so much more, from entering Gaza. In Rebuilding Peace, Donna Baranski-Walker Executive Director of the Rebuilding Alliance         ___________________________________________________________________________________ How to Call Your Senators and Representative: No matter how old you are, your congressman and senators represent you and are there to help. When you call, 1. Ask the receptionist to connect you with the senior staffer for foreign policy (be sure to write down their name); 2. Tell them you are calling to thank them for any help they may have lent in helping get the Rachel Corrie Foundation delegation into Gaza and tell them that you need their help now to lift the blockade to get getting gently worn soccer shoes to Gaza before the Rachel Corrie Ramadan Soccer Tournament ends. 3. Ask each staffer to call the State Department and the Egyptian Embassy on your behalf -- and to call you back to tell you what they learned; 4. Be sure to ask for their email and send them a confirmation email as soon as you put down the phone, writing your message in your own words, and providing your contact info for their return call. Be polite. Give them the opportunity to help. Good luck!   Feel free to call the Rebuilding Alliance if you would like some coaching: 1-650-325-4663 More on Soccer
 
Phil Angelides: Financial Crisis Panel To Begin Inquiry Top
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Robert Naiman: A Winnable Fight: No More U.S. Troops to Afghanistan Top
The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops. It should be winnable, because: the public is against sending more troops, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are against sending more troops, key Democrats in Congress have begun to speak out against sending more troops, the Obama Administration is divided, President Obama hasn't taken a public position, and the Obama Administration has signaled that it will not take a public position for several weeks. The delay gives opponents time to mobilize, more Members of Congress the opportunity to speak out before the Administration solidifies its position. It's a worthwhile fight, among other reasons, because if we want the U.S. government to seriously pursue diplomatic efforts to resolve the Afghanistan conflict politically, we have to jam them up on the "military option." On October 1, the U.S. plans to talk to Iran. This is happening, in part, because Washington doesn't see a "military option" in Iran now. Part of the reason Washington doesn't see a military option in Iran is because they don't perceive the U.S. public as supporting a military option. Denying the Pentagon access to more U.S. troops isn't the most subtle, nuanced way to influence U.S. policy. But it's the main lever that the public has. The political battle over more U.S. troops isn't a battle over what's going to happen in Afghanistan next month. The troop increase that President Obama approved earlier this year has not yet been completed. It's a political battle about what's going to happen in the next several years. Indeed, if President Obama were to approve 10,000 more troops beyond the increase already approved, the likely effect over time would be simply to replace the troops from other countries that are almost certain to leave. Canada's Prime Minister has recently reaffirmed that Canada's 2,500 troops are leaving in 2011. Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi says Italy's 2,800 troops should leave Afghanistan " soon ." A key coalition partner says they should leave in three months. British Prime Minister Brown has told the US he wants to cut UK troop numbers from more than 9,000 to fewer than 5,000 in " three to five years, maximum ," the Independent recently reported. That's about 10,000 troops right there. Of course, these withdrawals are likely to spur others. In 2011, the "foreign" military forces in Afghanistan will be overwhelmingly U.S. forces, even more so than today. That's the world that would be put in place by the U.S. troop increase that's being proposed. Now is the time for Congress and the American people to speak up. If the Administration publicly commits itself to sending more troops, it will be much harder for Democrats in Congress to oppose. More on Afghanistan
 
Rohrabacher Berates 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 United Nations
 
Athena Andreadis, Ph.D.: America, Then and Now Top
Three and a half decades ago, I chose to come to this country to attend Harvard, then MIT, a journey made possible by perfect test scores and full scholarships. Though my father was a top-flight engineer, our income could never have afforded the astronomical (for Greeks) fees. I was well aware that the US was far from perfect and saw more warts while I lived and traveled here - although, as I tell European friends who ask me how I endure it, I live in Cambridge, not the US. Yet this nation was still a beacon for those of us who were hopeful romantics, who dreamed of achieving and contributing in an accepting meritocracy. When I first came, the prevailing attitude in the US was that of an engineer. Failure was not an option. Competence and problem solving were gods. The infrastructure was superb, along with the civic attitudes and shared goals that go with such a context. The society was generous, curious, friendly, outward-looking. I encountered other cultures mingling in the not-quite-melting pot, other ways of thinking that I would have never discovered in the homogeneous culture of my birth. Then came the Republican interregnum, culminating in the eight nightmarish years of the Bush administration. During those years, this country and its people turned into something sickeningly reminiscent of imperial Rome in its dotage. Persons and institutions became incurious, willfully ignorant, sanctimonious, petulant, small-minded, small-hearted, irrational, inhumane. They turned inward, stopped thinking of the future and the world - even as US corporations and armies laid waste to much of it - and concentrated exclusively on narrowly defined individual concerns with an attitude of "I got mine, Jack, and the devil take the rest". Efficiency and acountability gave way to ass-covering policies (from religiosity to convenient memory lapses) and "gotcha" economics; exploration yielded to forms in quintuplicate and small print. Empathy, compassion, finesse, courtesy, eloquence, reasoning, learning became suspect. Plans for great advances in knowledge and social justice dwindled to the tunnel vision of making enough money to escape to a Tyvek Macmansion with a 50-inch plasma TV in a gated community. The facts around the Challenger explosion of January 1986 illustrate the beginning of the mindset that led to what we have become now. The launch didn't serve science but politics: it was meant to serve as a triumphal exclamation point to Reagan's state of address; the civilian in the mission was deliberately chosen for mediocrity and in fact failed most of the NASA routine tests (the overriding criterion was that s/he should be a complacent, unquestioning Republican - a criterion later expanded for choices of key people, including the position of president); the administrators and contractors bullied the scientists into a risky launch, reversing the traditional decision policy; after the disaster, every involved party pointed at each other in a circle instead of taking responsibility or proposing useful solutions; and during the investigation, the opinions of qualified scientists were ignored - in fact, denigrated - in favor of an amorphous miasma of fake piety and indignation. In the thirty years following, the Overton window steadily moved to the right and the bottom, resulting in today's baboon shrieks from talk show hosts, financiers and politicians who use fear, hatred and ignorance as banners and prodding sticks. In short, a nation that once was at least trying to be progressive devolved into a horde of atomized, disenfranchised people who behave like spoiled children and allow their financial and political institutions to treat them like serfs - except that, individually and collectively, this country has an excess of "lawyers, guns and money". In a frightening parallel to the Weimar Republic of the thirties, people are encouraged to collude in their own enslavement and to vent unfocused anger on any convenient target - from the non-existent threat in Iraq to people who point out that anthropogenic global warming is with us or that healthcare in today's US is an abject (though preventable) moral, financial, political and scientific failure. Now, this nation has been granted another chance - perhaps the last chance to arrest the decline before it becomes irreversible. Its people elected someone who embodies the signature outstanding qualities of this society: a mixed-race, multicultural, pragmatic meritocrat, a flexible and principled doer who, in political fact, is about as socialist as Eisenhower. But one swallow doesn't bring the spring. And the tendency to put Others belatedly and grudgingly in positions of power during crises is a common ploy of those who want to maintain the status quo without consequences to themselves. The unprecedented, unreasoning hatred and disrespect towards Obama is emblematic of the country trampling on its own best principles and representatives. I chose this country as my home - and as a cultural half-breed I'm profoundly aware of its unique makeup and its still great potential. As an immigrant, a citizen, a cosmopolitan, a scientist, a writer, a human being, I won't give up the vision that brought me here and made me who I am. And I call upon all who dream and think likewise to join me: Let's dig her out and rekindle her light! More on Health Care
 
Michelle Childers: Impaled By Tree Limb, Now Recovering Top
KAMIAH, Idaho — An Idaho woman who was skewered in the neck by a tree limb while driving with her husband along the Lochsa River is recovering at home. KHQ-TV reports 20-year-old Michelle Childers and her husband, Daniel, were taking a recreational drive on a rural road Sept. 5 when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of the vehicle. Childers says she then felt a "strange" pressure on her neck and shoulder. Her husband told her that the tree limb had impaled her. The couple drove to the Lochsa Lodge near the Idaho-Montana border to call for help and was flown by helicopter to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont. Childers says the 13-inch tree limb was removed from her neck during a six-hour surgery. ___ Information from: KHQ-TV, http://www.khq.com/
 
Max Cleland Memoir: Former Senator Unloads On Enemies, Dishes Lewinsky Dirt Top
In his upcoming book, "Heart of a Patriot" , former Senator and decorated Vietnam War veteran Max Cleland unloads on his political nemeses and dishes some details on his friend Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. After the inauguration of George W. Bush, Cleland used to joke with colleagues that the nation was about to get "screwed" -- and during the Bush presidency he says he suffered "the darkest days of my life." For me, the inauguration of George W. Bush as president ushered in a period I can only describe as unshirted hell. In his detailed recounting of that hellish time, Cleland in particular expresses outrage at the negative ads that cost him his Senate seat. Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss ran TV commercials featuring Cleland alongside photos of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, falsely implying that the Senator had voted against the proposed Department of Homeland Security, Soon after the ad started running, GOP Senators John McCain and Chuck Hagel expressed their outrage at the dirty tactics. Cleland says that Hagel approached him and went so far as to offer to do a TV spot rebutting the hateful Chambliss ad "even though it was being aired by his own party." Saxby Chambliss got wind of what Hagel had proposed. He called Chuck seven times in one day begging him not to side with me. Hagel asked him to take the ad down. Instead, Chambliss modified the ad somewhat, but still ran it. Cleland still burns with indignation when the recalls the campaign and the negative ads that hurt McCain during the 2000 primary in South Carolina and the Swift Boat Veterans ads that helped defeat John Kerry in 2004: The attacks on McCain, Kerry and me, all decorated wounded combat veterans, are a shameful legacy of the Bush administration, and among the most shameful political stunts in the nation's history. One of Cleland's aides, Trey Ragsdale, was in the same intern class as Lewinsky and Cleland writes that Ragsdale told him that Lewinsky was on the prowl for the president from the moment she arrived in Washington, D.C. Soon after arriving in the capital, Ragsdale, Lewinsky and other interns started going out to a local bar for drinks where the conversation turned to what they'd all like to do in Washington from visiting museums to padding resumes. According to Cleland, Lewinksy's response stunned the group: "I want to earn my presidential knee pads." Later, Ragsdale realized that he was being used by Lewinsky to facilitate her intentions and then to serve as cover during the affair. Cleland relates that his aide was constantly being invited by Lewinsky to snacks in the White House mess hall because Ragsdale could escort her into the White House - she lacked the proper credentials. The first time she came for snacks with Trey, the president made an appearance. Mysteriously, President Clinton was always there in the mess on the days Monica asked Trey to bring her for snacks. And each time the leader of the free world visited this pair of lowly interns. After this scenario played out several times, Trey became suspicious. He ultimately came to realize he was only being used as a cover to set up meetings between Monica and the president. In effect, Trey was being used to get Monica signed in to the White House without involving anyone on the president's staff. During the Clinton impeachment vote, which Cleland opposed, the former Senator was suffering mono and he claims that one of his former colleagues ended up making him sicker. "I wrapped a green scarf around my neck, trying to keep warm. Pete Domenici, the senator from New Mexico, insisted I remove my scarf, as it 'violated the decorum of the Senate.'" Cleland took it off and says he soon felt that he could hardly hold his head up and eventually came down with a massive sinus infection. An aide to Domenici did not return calls from Huffington Post to respond to Cleland's claim.
 
Robert Koehler: The Tossed Shoe Award Top
"Businesses exist to serve the general welfare. Profit is the means, not the end. It is the reward a business receives for serving the general welfare. When a business fails to serve the general welfare, it forfeits its right to exist." Do Adam Smith's famously forgotten words of caution for capitalists apply to journalism? Is this why, when I go to the newsstand these days, I see my city's two great newspapers sitting there like twin anorexics, panhandling (I mean pandering) for quarters? Taking my inspiration from University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen, who has written a manifesto challenging J-schools to become relevant again, I see that the time has come to engage in the envisioning of the future of my beloved, gasping profession. What kind of newspapers will, or should, rise from the wreckage of today's collapsing empires? What principles should they embody that incorporate the best of the old tradition -- fairness, accuracy, jargon-free language, fearlessness in seeking the truth wherever it may lead -- and at the same time move beyond that tradition and establish crucial, indeed, spiritual relevance to today's far more dangerous and complex world? No small task -- moving these great entities away from their cynical certainties and commitment to the special interests of money and power. How do newspapers begin serving the general welfare more effectively than they do now? It will take courage from journalists at every level: beat reporters, editors, executives. "The best traditions of journalism are based in resistance to the illegitimate structures of authority at the heart of our problems," Jensen writes at Common Dreams ("Can Journalism Schools Be Relevant in a World on the Brink?"). ". . . the most revered journalists have had the courage to take a stand for ordinary people and against arrogant concentrations of power." And the Tossed Shoe Award goes to . . . Jensen's words made me think immediately of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the reporter for Al-Baghdadiya TV who threw his shoes at George Bush at a press conference during the president's final visit to Iraq last December. Al-Zeidi, released from prison a few days ago, declared: "Here I am, free, but my country remains captive." I guess, technically, hurled shoes don't count as journalism, but they set a standard for courage in speaking truth to power. Men and women of the press, go out and do that with your laptops and your cameras! Those flying shoes certainly stand in contrast to the timidity of mainstream reporters over here on the power side of the war equation, who, with a few notable exceptions, exercised no independence from the Bush White House and the lies that made the war on terror, and the ensuing suffering of Afghans and Iraqis, a done deal. But courage and passion are only the starting place if we are to rebuild -- re-envision -- the media. Here are a few more principles that I believe are crucial for a revitalized media to embrace: 1. As Jensen notes, journalism's great heroes and role models took a stand for ordinary people. I would push this thought further: This is not merely a political matter, a demand for justice or redress. To take a stand for "ordinary people" means, first of all, to listen to them -- to dig, in one's reporting, for the soul of their hopes -- and to celebrate their lives. When I began my career as a reporter, my first big surprise was the rush of gratitude I felt from people simply because I had listened to them. 2. A re-envisioned media must learn how to tell complex stories, simply and compellingly. This requires a reorientation toward truth and away from lowest-common-denominator journalism: fear-mongering, celebrity fawning and other forms of know-nothingism that have only gotten worse in recent years, as the reeling media empires grow ever more desperate for quick, cheap profits. 3. The media must grow up. Reporters must stop flailing the good-vs.-evil, winner-vs.-loser narrative, which explains nothing, justifies everything and only fuels the moneyed status quo. My friend Jake Lynch, an Australian journalist and director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, talks about "peace journalism": journalism that looks at all sides of a conflict, examines all consequences of military violence, and pursues the "why" of a story beyond the official sources (usually anonymous) who turn most war reportage into propaganda. 4. The media must expand their horizons and find an intelligence independent of the "experts" they so often quote to avoid saying anything. They must try to understand and learn to write about the real news people crave, sometimes unknowingly. This is the news about social and environmental healing. Right now, the media doesn't even recognize healing as news, yet without it we have no future. (Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.) © 2009 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
 
James Moore: The Roses of October Top
When we lived in our little white rented house a few miles north of the big river there were two bushes that grew in a corner of the back yard. They struggled because an old cottonwood and two orange trees took most of the sun and when the slanted rain came in off of the gulf the water mostly missed the roots of those scrawny bushes. We were living in the tropics, though, and all of the plants were expected to bloom but I did not anticipate roses in October. What kind of place was this where we were living that roses bloomed in October? In the morning, the little red-haired girl cranked a window open over the sink and snatched fresh oranges from a bended branch and squeezed them into a glass for me. In Michigan, where we were raised, the first snows were flying and the trees had gone bare but we were living beneath palm and fruit trees and wondering if there might ever be clouds. I had fallen in love with Texas by reading about cowboys and cattle drives in children's books. I thought the most about the west when the weather was the coldest and the days were the shortest in Michigan and I wondered if there truly were places where the land and the sky were as frightening as they were inspiring. My father believed in this even though he had never seen any evidence beyond the television. Daddy always seemed to be able to find a western movie on our second-hand Zenith when he got home from the factory and he lay on the couch in silent marvel as Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford rode through Monument Valley in Southern Utah. When the picture began to flicker and roll he gave me instructions to slap the big box on the side in hopes that it would lock in the horizontal hold. "Look at that, buddy boy," he said. "They got them table-topped mesas out yonder. I'm gonna go see some of that country some day." My father was the archetype of the soul born too late and ought to have been riding west with his dreams in an earlier century. While working on an assembly line and lifting bumpers to be attached to cars he was unable to afford Daddy spoke of horses with a familiarity that made it sound like he had checked on the remuda before he had punched a time clock. "I had the prettiest Appaloosa you ever did see when I was a boy in Mississippi," he told me. "I don't even remember how many hands high she was but she stood as tall as any healthy stallion in the county." There was a kind of inevitability and some destiny involved when I bought a Honda 450 motorcycle and went westward after high school. The bike was too small for the open road but my impatience overcame any mechanical failings and in a few nights I was sleeping in a tent along the Big Thompson River in Rocky Mountain National Park. A few days later I rode down the Front Range against a quartering wind and the little motor wailed until I crossed the cap rock into the South Plains of Texas. The green rows of the dry land cotton wheeled past my periphery and then the giant center pivots rose up and sprayed rainbows of nitrate and water across the bolls. In a few decades I was to return with a camera crew and prepare reports on the falling depth of the Ogallala Aquifer and the great retreat of water. Because I was eager to get further south I rode up to the edge of Palo Duro Canyon and looked down over the precipice without riding to the bottom. There were glories in the rock and the wind and things easy to feel but hard to see. I hurried away down through the Big Country toward Marathon and the Big Bend and slept off the side of the road and when the sun rose I understood why they called the nearby range the Glass Mountains. The road rolled out across the bottom of an ancient sea that had been turned by time into a great desert, which lifted up to the alpine coolness of the Chisos Basin. More than a thousand feet below me later that day on the South Rim the Rio Grande made an arc back toward the northeast before resuming a languorous flow to Boca Chica Beach and Brownsville. When I left I pushed my coughing motorcycle over the Davis Mountains past the old Buffalo Solider outpost in Fort Davis and imagined the remote and unfair lives that had been lived in that box canyon. At the top of Wild Rose Pass I saw the Permian Basin spilling toward the horizon and in a few hours I was riding through a forest of pump jacks that appeared to be giant insects gnawing at the desert floor. Before nightfall, I had made the hill country and thought that I might not ever understand the complexities of Texas and after I had spent a few days in Austin I knew there was no point in trying. There was music being made behind almost every door. These memories were with me in a phone booth along a toll road outside of Chicago one November in 1975. Snow was above my knees and I was hardly able to see the lights on the building twenty feet distant because the blizzard was not weakening. Above the wind I heard the little red-haired girl say on the other line that a man had called from a radio station in a place named McAllen, Texas and he had a job for me. "He said it's 80 degrees and sunny and he has a cottage in an orange grove he can rent us," she told me. "Call him back and tell him I accept and we'll be there as soon as the snow stops." I did not know where McAllen was and I did not know the man's name or how much he was willing to pay but I knew we were going to live in Texas. We sat out blindly for the border with our compact Opel Kadett station wagon loaded with modest belongings and our optimism. When we were finally able to afford the little white rented house for $230 a month we were convinced we had no further needs. Even when we moved to Laredo to live in a trailer on a ranch and work in television we believed we were on an adventure in Texas. The river was visible from our back door and some times the immigrants stopped for water with their clothes wet and their children crying and we gave them what we could before they walked back north into the desert, keeping their distance from the highway. In the years that have followed I have not yet found a reason to leave. I have now seen all of Texas and I know what fall looks like at Lost Maples and in McKittrick Canyon of the Guadalupe Mountains and I've been mystified by the petroglyphs at Hueco Tanks. My work as a journalist seemed to have placed me in every small town under the Lone Star. I've stood on the national seashore and watched as gulls landed and pointed their beaks at an approaching hurricane and I've seen bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes speckling the highways south of San Antonio in late January while Chicago's ice is months from cracking. I might tell you about canoeing the upper Guadalupe for three days without seeing another human or sleeping in the Big Thicket National Forest and listening to all the live things knocking around in the night woods but I will never be able to finish describing the history and the geography that have enticed all Texas immigrants. We are a people who are close to our state's history and in love with its diverse geography and we have failed as much as we have succeeded but we have never stopped being interesting. I hate the prevailing politics of Texas but I believe in the power of right and fairness and that justice is an unrelenting force for change. Anger and vitriol in the public discourse continue to nudge me toward looking elsewhere for a place to live but I cannot go. When we finally settled in the hill country the builder of our tract house put two bushes beneath the window of the master bedroom. They stayed green but never flowered through most of that first year and then when the fall came and the wind turned to the west and came across the desert those bushes gave up bright red roses to the weakened sun. I am as amazed now as I was my first autumn in Texas. I will never leave a place that has roses in October. Also at www.moorethink.com .
 
Colo. man faces more questioning in terror probe Top
DENVER — A man identified by law enforcement as having a possible link to al-Qaida met with his attorney Thursday before a second round of questioning by federal agents. Najibullah Zazi planned to meet with FBI agents later in the day, said the attorney, Arthur Folsom. Agents questioned Zazi for hours on Wednesday. They also searched Zazi's apartment and the home of his aunt and uncle, both in the east Denver suburb of Aurora. Folsom said Zazi has never met with al-Qaida operatives and isn't involved in terrorism. "He's simply somebody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Folsom said. Folsom said he believes the FBI would have arrested Zazi if agents had found anything suspicious his apartment, but Zazi is still free. "They wouldn't have taken a chance on his appearing (Thursday)," Folsom said. Folsom says Zazi, 24, was born in Afghanistan in 1985, moved to Pakistan at age 7 and emigrated to the United States in 1999. Zazi's aunt had said earlier that he was born in Pakistan and grew up in Queens, N.Y. Folsom said Zazi has returned to Pakistan four times in recent years: in 2004 because his grandfather was sick and dying, in 2006 to get married and in 2007 and 2008 to visit his wife. Two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday that a joint FBI-New York Police Department task force had put Zazi under surveillance because of suspected links to al-Qaida. The task force also feared Zazi may be involved in a potential plot involving homemade hydrogen peroxide-based explosives like those cited in an intelligence warning issued Monday, said the officials, who spoke on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation. After Zazi traveled to New York City over the weekend, FBI agents and police officers armed with search warrants seeking bomb materials searched three apartments and questioned residents in a predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens. ___ Associated Press Writer Steven K. Paulson contributed to this report.
 
SmearBuster: Media Matters Defends Progressives Against Witch Hunts Top
Media Matters Action Network announced the launch of SmearBuster.org, a new website fighting back against the right-wing smear machine's progressive witch hunt. Oozing with desperation, conservatives in the media and on Capitol Hill have resorted to spouting fringe-inspired lies and paranoid conspiracy theories in their ongoing vendetta against high-profile progressives. Conservatives have launched a war against progressives such as Cass Sunstein, Carol Browner, Mark Lloyd, John Holdren and Van Jones. Through SmearBuster.org, Media Matters Action Network will expose the false smears spread by conservatives attempting to halt progressive change. More on Glenn Beck
 
Farouk Hosni, UNESCO Candidate, Causes Deep Concern Among Jewish Activists Top
PARIS — He's an Egyptian culture minister who once threatened to burn Israeli books – and he might soon become the face of the United Nations' arm for learning and culture. Paris-based UNESCO began voting for its new secretary-general on Thursday in secret balloting that could take days and go up to five rounds. There was no clear-cut winner, and a new vote was due on Friday. Farouk Hosni, a painter and Egyptian culture minister for over two decades, is considered a leading candidate, despite the concerns of activists who question whether he would deal fairly with Israel and whether a man who oversees censorship at home should be entrusted with high international office. There are eight others running for the four-year term, including European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Many UNESCO members, including the United States and France, have not officially stated their favorites. Hosni is often cited as the front-runner because he has support from the Arab League, the Organization of African Unity and the Organization of the Islamic Conference – though countries belonging to those groups aren't bound by those endorsements. The winner needs 30 votes from the agency's 58-seat executive board. Whoever wins, UNESCO's newly restored reputation is at stake. The organization was troubled by cronyism and mismanagement until the current leader, Koichiro Matsuura of Japan, was elected in 1999. His work helped lure back the United States, which had quit UNESCO in 1984, calling it corrupt and anti-Western. UNESCO, or the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has never had a leader from the Arab world since its founding in 1945. Egypt has been pushing Hosni's candidacy hard, and when Israel dropped its objection, it seemingly cleared a path for him. Yet Hosni has for months been fighting accusations of anti-Semitism. He has apologized for his famous book-burning threat last year, saying it was off-the-cuff and should be viewed in the context of his anger at the suffering of the Palestinian people. In 2008, speaking before Egyptian lawmakers and trying to defend himself against charges of being soft on Israel, he vowed to burn any Israeli books in Egypt's famed Library of Alexandria. Asked Wednesday by France 24 television if he was anti-Semitic, Hosni responded, "Of course not." As one example of his open-mindedness, he said he had restored the country's synagogues. The theme of his candidacy is reconciliation, Hosni said, "between religions, between mankind and nature, and of course reconciliation between all those who are divided." It can be hard to pin Hosni down – to survive so long in an authoritarian nation like Egypt, he has had to please both liberals and conservatives. Last year, he criticized the prevalence of the Muslim headscarf as a sign of "backwardness." But for the benefit of Egyptian Islamic hard-liners, he has implemented censorship of some books and movies. Hosni's critics say that when he decided to seek the UNESCO post he changed his tune for the international community. In April, for example, Hosni dropped his steadfast opposition to cultural normalization with Israel and backed the invitation of Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to Cairo. "It's not on the eve of an election that one can change one's whole personality and one's whole approach to life," said Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, who says Hosni's election would "sink" UNESCO. Many Jewish activists, including Samuels, say the book-burning comment was far from Hosni's only transgression. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann wrote a protest letter listing comments they took issue with, including Hosni's 2001 description of Israeli culture as "inhumane" and "racist." Yet Hosni has convinced at least one influential Jewish activist of his sincerity – Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld. "Mr. Hosni has shown his repentance for comments that were unacceptable," Klarsfeld said, adding that Hosni, at his request, wrote a statement decrying Holocaust denial. Klarsfeld said he would welcome a leader from Egypt, "a country that played an important role in civilization, and today." ___ Associated Press Writer Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report. More on Egypt
 
David Sirota: Obsessive Compulsive Bipartisanship Disease Top
In the blogosphere, we've often discussed Washington's sick fetishization of bipartisanship. Whether it's pundits or politicians, the entire D.C. Establishment has made abundantly clear that it is first and foremost interested in bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake before it is interested in the ramifications of public policy. The logic (or, really, illogic) of this fetishization essentially posits that anything that can pass with bipartisan votes in Congress is good, and anything that can only pass with Democratic votes must be bad.* There are numerous examples of this fetishization - but none have been as blatant as what we see today from Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (D). I would argue that the behavior exhibited in this New York Times article goes beyond fetishization and to Obsessive Compulsive Bipartisanship (OCB): Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, typically one of the hardest votes for Democratic leaders to corral, is looming as a particularly tough sell [on health care]. "At the end of the day, I want to see everything before I commit to anything," said Mr. Nelson, who added that he would have trouble backing a bill that did not have some Republican support . (emphasis added) This is stunning, really. It's one thing for a legislator to talk in platitudes about pursuing policies that could create bipartisanship. It's quite another thing for a legislator to openly say his vote will be explicitly contingent on the votes of the other party irrespective of the policy he's voting on . The latter takes bipartisanship from a mere fetish to an obsessive compulsive fixation, as if the legislator was elected not to judge policy, write legislation or represent constituents, but to only hand out his vote if the other party hands out theirs. Based on this logic, a bill could meet every single one of Nelson's substantive policy demands, but if all Republicans in the Senate said they were going to vote against it, Nelson would probably vote against it (or, at minimum, he is saying "he would have trouble backing" it). That's beyond extreme - it's into the realm of what was formerly taboo. Remember, politicians of both parties always get criticized for being a "rubber stamp" for their parties, and always made sure to justify their legislative moves with substance, so as to prove their deliberative independence. Indeed, even Republican lawmakers have been loathe to say they might vote against bills just because the rest of their caucus was going to. But not Nelson - he's a Democrat effectively saying he's may take orders from the GOP conference regardless of what's actually in the bill. For Democrats, OCB (as opposed to run-of-the-mill bipartisan fetishization) assumes as concrete fact that if there is any GOP support for a bill, it supposedly means the national Republican Party will not attack those voting for that bill during their reelection campaigns. That's an absurd and silly delusion, of course. But it at least explains why someone like Nelson - electorally afraid of Republicans in GOP-leaning Nebraska - would be the first to show signs of acute OCB. The question is whether anyone can talk any sense into him. My guess is no - someone showing such symptoms of such an acute affliction is probably beyond cure. * Interestingly, this bipartisan standard never applied to stuff passed with only Republican votes - that was deemed perfectly fine by the same Establishment that fetishizes bipartisanship today. More on Health Care
 
Former Cops To Plead Guilty In Major Police Corruption Probe Top
Four former Chicago police officers implicated in the Special Operations Section scandal have made deals to plead guilty in exchange for cooperating with the investigation, a sign that the state and federal probes of one of the city's biggest police corruption scandals ever is coming to a head ...
 
Glenn W. Smith: We hanged him because there was a tree there. Top
Republicans outraged at criticism of some of their racist loyalists are acting like a lynch mob explaining away the rope. “We didn’t hang him because of race. We hanged him because there was a tree there.” The party’s faithful, which sadly includes many angry racists, continue to engage in hate talk. Birther idiocy about Obama’s alleged alien illegitimacy, automatic weapons brought to presidential appearances, back-to-Africa posters, Southern governors talking of secession, ugly photos, Joe Wilson’s tacit assumption of white supremacy with his public show of disrespect – these aren’t spontaneous outbursts of emotion. They are well-executed strategies by dangerous elements of Republican party – and their hand-washing enablers. But when someone calls them out on the racism, Republicans accuse the truth tellers of “playing the race card.”  Many – not, thankfully, all – in the mainstream media are the ultimate not-my-problem bystanders, afraid to get involved, shaking their heads at the belligerents as if there was not a profound moral principle at stake. Talking about race in America is playing with fire, they say. They are willing and even eager to cover the real fires when they come, but they will not participate in prevention. GOP strategists assume all talk about racism probably helps their cause. It keeps their base fired up; it distracts from the issues at hand, like health care reform. For different reasons, the White House must try to keep the focus elsewhere. Obama is everyone’s president, and he is right to lead by example, to prove wrong by action the dehumanizing, racist ideology still alive in America. But we can’t be silent in the face of mindless bullies. They must be forcefully confronted. I hope it is true that America is slowly approaching a post-racial era. Most young people I know, at least those that grew up outside bigoted families who taught the fourth “R” of racism, are way ahead of their elders on matters of prejudice. Nixon once pointed to extremists and asked a great, Silent Majority to join him in opposing them. I believe a silent (and, not-so-silent) America  is opposed to today's right-wing extremists. They need to know we are standing up to protect them. On the other hand, what will it take to ease the tension between the worldviews in collision in America today? White racists believe non-whites are subhuman. The election of Barack Obama has shaken them in a way far different from progressives' reaction to George W. Bush. The pre-Civil War era is called the ante-bellum period, the time before the war. Like that time, there is talk of secession from Southern governors like Rick Perry. Like that time, there is a growing “tenth amendment” movement based in part on the idea that Obama’s presidency is illegitimate. Is this America's new ante-bellum era? No, there won’t be a shooting Civil War. But I have to ask:  don't many of us have the sense that the racist anger will continue to grow, or to grow louder, until some tragedy occurs? Will it take the deaths of young innocents? For once, can’t we confront a menace like this head-on before the tragedy of the last act? The old saying from the theater is, a gun introduced in the first act is fired before the play is done. Well, guns have been introduced again – on the street – in the opening acts of this awful drama. If we are the civilized people we say we are, we will bring the curtain down now. We cannot wait. Cross-posted at DogCanyon.org More on GOP
 
Rick Warren Crowdsources New Book Cover on 99designs.com Top
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--99designs.com, the largest marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design, today announced that Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life, is running an open design project to design the cover of his new book, The Hope You Need. More on Books
 
Gov. Paterson Tried To Boot Paul McCartney's Lover From MTA Board Top
Gov. Paterson tried to boot Paul McCartney's girlfriend from the MTA board, The Post has learned -- because she apparently favors globetrotting with her Beatle beau over taking care of business. The rift between Paterson and trucking heiress Nancy Shevell was revealed after she cast a surprise dissenting vote yesterday to incoming MTA chief Jay Walder's salary package. More on Paul McCartney
 
Pat Choate: Jobs for America's Unemployed Teenagers Top
The unemployment rate for Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 reached a Depression era level of 25.5 percent in August -- the highest point since the Labor Department began keeping those records more than a half century ago. Most of these 1.5 million unemployed young people live in urban areas where few jobs exist and are unlikely to be created in the foreseeable future. If, as many economists predict, the national unemployment rate reaches double-digit levels and remains high for three or four years, the United States risks losing a major portion of this new generation to drift, sloth and crime. Direct government employment is the fastest, surest and least expensive - if not the only - way to create enough new jobs for them. The problem is similar to the one that FDR faced in 1933 when half the nation's young men aged 15 to 25 had only part-time work or none at all. FDR's response was to quickly initiate a jobs program for them that ultimately became one of the most popular New Deal programs - the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC "boys," as they often called themselves, were mostly school dropouts who never had held a full-time job. In the CCC, they received room, board, clothing and one dollar a day. Of the $30 per month, they were required to send $25 home, which kept many families from starvation during the Great Depression. Later, the CCC boys wrote scores of books and articles describing how the experience had changed their lives, giving them a purpose and a way out of crime-ridden neighborhoods, enabling them to be productive, responsible men. During the CCC's 9-years (1933-1942), the federal government created 4,000 work camps and employed a total of more than 3 million young men. A typical CCC project was work on Skyline Drive, in what was to become the 200,000-acre Shenandoah National Park, which stretches 105 miles through Virginia along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. More than 1,000 workers graded roadways, installed guardrails and walls, constructed overlooks and landscaped the park with hundreds of thousands of trees and shrubs and acres of grass. They also built picnic areas and campgrounds, comfort stations and visitor and maintenance buildings and installed the signs that guided visitors. The CCC did similar work in every state, including what became the states of Alaska and Hawaii. Overall, the CCC's reforestation program planted more than 3 billion trees -- more than half the reforestation, public and private, done in all of U.S. history. Its inventory of other completed projects include, 1. Bridges - 46,854 2. Lodges and museums - 204 3. Historic structures restored - 3,980 4. Drinking Fountains - 1,865 5. Fire lookout towers - 3,116 6. Well and pump houses - 8,065 7. Forest Roads - 2,500 miles 8. Roads and truck trails - 2,500 miles 9. Cabins - 1,477 10. Bathhouses - 165 11. Large dams - 197 12. Water supply lines - 5,000 miles 13. Fences - 27,191 miles 14. Fish-rearing ponds - 4,622 15. Beaches improved - 3,462 16. Fires Fought - 6.5 million days at a loss of 47 lives Many of today's 1.5 million jobless teenagers, like their Depression-era predecessors, are also school dropouts, have no job experience and are already in or headed toward criminal activities or gang life. Putting them to work rehabilitating America's federal, state and local parks and forests is a perfect match-up. These public facilities have more than one billion visitors annually and, after years of neglect, many are in terrible shape, creating a huge backlog of maintenance and conservation projects. The National Park system alone faces a $7 billion maintenance backlog. State and local parks, which handle three times the number of visitors as the federal parks, have even greater requirements. A modern CCC, employing both men and women, can make our public parks and national forests sparkle again. More important, with full-time, paying jobs, exposure to the magnificence of our parks and forestlands and the realization that they are contributing to the nation, these young workers will have a chance to figure out what they want to do with their lives, test their abilities, and develop confidence in themselves. A modern CCC can do for America now what FDR's program did 75 years ago. More on Economy
 
Celebrating Dolphins (PHOTOS) Top
We were feeling the love for dolphins this week -- In honor of plans for The Cove to show at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October, check out some awesomely adorable dolphin images. Don't forget to vote on your favorite. Get HuffPost Green On Facebook and Twitter! More on Photo Galleries
 
Jane Smiley: HuffPost Book Review: Republican Gomorrah Top
About twenty years ago, I read an article about a death row inmate who had shot a clerk in a convenience store. The way the murder was presented by the man on death row was mysterious--his hand just rose up and the gun went off. Shooting the clerk in the face in the midst of a robbery wasn't in fact his fault. He never said, "I shot a man." It just happened. I thought of that man while reading Max Blumenthal's terrific, but also, of course, appalling new book, Republican Gomorrah . Apparently there isn't a single person in the present incarnation of the Republican party who does anything. Things happen--God does it. Satan does it. No Republican is an agent of his or her own success or failure, sin or redemption. It just happens. The consequences of this lack of responsibility are there for all to see--screaming threats, guns at rallies, unhinged behavior every time a Republican doesn't feel the way he or she wants to feel, absolute sense of powerlessness leading directly to an absolute will to power. Because that was the thing that struck me about the murderer in the 7-11--he had the power and in his own last moments, the clerk knew it. But the killer, no matter how well armed, never felt it. Republican Gomorrah is a frightening book because it is clear to all of us on the outside that the various Republican operatives who surround James Dobson and his ilk have no consciences and will stop at nothing. They invoke the name of God for purposes that shame God absolutely--hurting, destroying, maiming, and damning others who either don't accept their beliefs or don't acknowledge their power and righteousness. Of course that is frightening. But Blumenthal's cast of characters, beginning with Dobson and his prodigal son, Ryan, and including John Hagee, Sarah Palin, Ralph Reed, Charles Colson, Judith Reisman, Christina Regnery, Donald Wildmon, et al. strike the reader as above all else very small--egocentric, narrow minded, uneducated, selfish, and resentful. Each of these qualities is destructive in and of itself. The combination is turning out to be coercive. Even those of us who are immune to the emotions these people play upon are getting more and more nervous about the power that they wish to exert. Blumenthal does two things that no one else I have read manages to do--the first of these is that he organizes the network. He shows how Ted Bundy is connected to James Dobson is connected to Gary Bauer is connected to Erik Prince is connected to Ralph Reed is connected to Jack Abramoff is connected to Tom Delay is connected to Tony Perkins is connected to David Duke is connected to Mel Gibson, and so forth, and in the course of tracing these connections, he informs us, or reminds us, of the crimes and misdemeanors these people have committed. Two of my favorites are James Dobson's son Ryan's messy divorce (Dad seems to have paid the settlement--did he not dare to discipline? Or did he discipline too much?) and David Vitter's habitual recourse to a brothel in New Orleans where Republicans "wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings--Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings" (the madam is talking about men). Republican Gomorrah is full of crimes--both those we've already heard of, such as Abramoff's and Ted Haggard's, and those we haven't (there is good evidence that Texas billionaire T. Cullen Davis, funder of the right wing Council For National Policy, ordered hits on his estranged wife, and succeeded in murdering his step-daughter and the wife's boyfriend). This aspect of the book reminds me of a Scottish novel called The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner by James Hogg, in which, once a man believes he is among the saved, he can commit any sin he wants to and be sure he will go to heaven. Once Davis was "saved," for example, he said, "My goal is to get to heaven. I'll do anything it takes to get there, and I'm not going to let anything stand in my way." He must have thought getting to heaven was just another power play. And power plays are the key to right wing psychology. Right wing psychology is the other thing that Blumenthal has to offer. At the periphery of this world is your run-of-the-mill bully, a man like Jack Abramoff, whose brutality is well remembered by his high school classmates, but who sang like a bird once he was caught. At the center of is James Dobson, a much more destructive figure than Abramoff, who advocates, in the strongest terms, child beating, and not only child-beating, but dog-beating. At one point he brags about going after the family canine (who weighed twelve pounds) and engaging in "the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast." As for children, the goal is to keep beating the child until "he wants(s) to crumple on the breast of his parent." In other words, Dobson is a proud sadist who thinks sadism is kind of funny, and who, over the years, has successfully advocated sadism as the only workable form of child-rearing. It order to understand the deeply disturbing effect Dobson and his theories have had on our culture, Blumenthal cites Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom , about the psychology of Nazism and authoritarianism, and Eric Hoffer's The True Believer . Insofar as he finds the documentation, Blumenthal points out how many of these powerful Evangelical Christians were beaten and abused as children (including Dobson). It's a high number. The beatings, often arbitrary, cruel, and frequent, were then, in many cases, backed up with constant lessons about God--that he is arbitrary, that he is cruel, that he demands obedience above all things, and that he surpasseth understanding. The point of these exercises is to establish the powerlessness of the child, his shame and guilt as a worthless sinner, and his absolute fear of thinking for himself. He will then take his place in the hierarchy and thereby reinforce the existence of the hierarchy. Blumenthal goes pretty far with this psychology, but, in my view, not far enough. I'm sure he was reared by liberal parents, who gave him a sense of responsibility, curiosity, and autonomy, and since he is only in his thirties, I don't think that he really empathizes with the tortured and damaged souls that he has been interviewing and watching for the last few years. I don't think he understands their fear--how deep it is, how constant it is, and how arousing it is. I don't think, in fact, that Max Blumenthal looks within and sees evil. I think he looks within, and says, "I'm okay; you're okay." That's the goal of liberal parenting, and as we can tell by statistics he cites concerning unwed pregnancy, divorce, and occurrence of STDs, liberal parenting works--atheists and agnostics, for example, have a much lower rate of divorce than Evangelicals, and states that have sex education in the schools, rather than abstinence-only education, have lower rates of teen pregnancy. But a child who is beaten enough eventually comes to understand two things above all--that the world makes no sense (and so why try to make sense of it?) and that the world is so dangerous that to be oneself, or even to try to figure out what oneself might be, is a death-defying exercise. There is safety only in two things--conforming to a group and, as a part of that group, dominating and even destroying other groups. The rules of the group can be anything at all, as long as the members of the group abide by them. And other groups have to abide by them, too, or the painful and arbitrary rules that group abides by are meaningless. The beaten child's sense of terror can only be assuaged by evanescent feelings of power, because in relation to his parents and to God, he is defined as powerless. When he "crumples" on the "loving" breast of his parent (and in my view a person who administers a beating to a living being who is 1/16th his size doesn't know what love is) he accepts his powerlessness and he also accepts that power is what defines this life. That's where your freedom and mine come in. Many of the Evangelicals Blumenthal discusses are Christian Dominionists--that is, they differ from the Taliban only in their choice of doctrine. Their uses of that doctrine (to dehumanize women and other groups, to never share power, to control every aspect of every life within their power, and to create society as a steeply hierarchical structure with them at the top) are those of the Taliban. It's an eye-opener to read about R.J. Rushdoony, son of Armenian immigrants who fled the Armenian genocide of 1915. You would think that a man whose family escaped mass murder would go on to espouse peace, love, and understanding, but Rushdoony went the other way, taking literally the 613 laws in the Book of Leviticus. In his book, The Institutes of Biblical Law , he advocates capital punishment for "disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, adulterers," and homosexuals. Gary North, the Presbyterian Christian Reconstructionist, is his son-in-law, and, while not backing down on the mass death penalty, advocates stoning rather than burning at the stake, because stoning is cheaper (and of course that is a factor, because there would be a lot of people to exterminate). As for who would be doing the killing (of you and me, if they could catch us), well, Christians would, but not because they wanted to. Ever unable to accept responsibility, they assign agency to God, who wants us killed, who will beat us until we "crumple" on his "loving" breast, a God who has given us all sorts of talents, skills, and interests, but is, like these Christian Dominionists, interested only in power. I believe his motto is "Adore me or I will hurt you." Can you believe in a God so small? When I was a parent of young children, I, too, got frustrated, and I, too, thought a spanking might be a good thing. I soon realized that my motives for administering physical punishment were highly suspect--more anger and frustration than care for the child or knowledge about effective methods. I then saw a show about child-rearing, in which a woman who firmly believed in child-beating aroused far more resistance in her beaten daughter, and had much more family disruption, than the parents who ignored the tantrum and then used the technique of redirection to train their toddlers. Works with horses, dogs, and other animals, too. It was then I decided that if I, in my human weakness, could put two and two together concerning free will and proper behavior, surely God could, also. I didn't want to believe in a God who was a smaller being than myself. And I don't. The ray of hope in Blumenthal's book is that the right-wingers he talks about tend to be so psychologically unstable that they don't have much staying power--think Ted Haggard. But they have numbers. The bad thing about that is that they could take control. The defeat of Sarah Palin, Conrad Burns (R-MT), George Allen (R-VA), Rick Santorum (R-PA), James Talent (R-MO), and Mike DeWine (R-OH) brought us "back from the brink" according to the website Theocracy Watch. But only back from the brink. The good thing is that they would not be able to maintain what we call a government for very long (see George W. Bush). The bad thing is that they would destroy the country as we know it while they were trying. If I take the long view, well, I think, Stalinism lasted about 25 years, Nazism 12. The Iranian Mullahs have been at it for 30 years. Russia and Germany survived, Iran might, as well. But generations were lost in all these places. And Stalin and Hitler didn't have nuclear weapons. I think about the 22-year-old clerk in that convenience store, looking down the barrel of that pistol. He probably had no idea that his killer had no sense of agency, hardly even knew what he was doing, was seeing his hand as separate from himself. But I have to feel sorry for the killer, too, subject to feelings that he could not label that were terrifying and overpowering. I bet he was beaten, shamed, and neglected as a child. I bet, afterward, he wished someone, somehow, had stopped him. Don't forget to buy one: Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah , Nationbooks, available at your local bookstore and anywhere else that books are sold. More on Sarah Palin
 
Rick Horowitz: The Gang of Six: An Epic of Futility Top
The Baucus Caucus came to town one morning in the early spring, They said, "You want a health-care bill? Don't sweat -- we'll handle ev'rything!" Then off they went, inside a room, and huddled there both day and night, They promised they'd produce one soon, but first they had to get it right. This Gang of Six -- three Democrats, and three more from the GOP -- Debated every line and phrase in constant search of harmony. "Bipartisan" -- that was the goal, the finish line, the Golden Rule, While others fumed that anyone who thought so was an utter fool. For weeks and weeks the Gang plowed on, while others were more quickly done, Four versions of the bill appeared, but no sign of that final one. The Baucus Caucus wouldn't rush -- the chairman made it very clear, He'll take whatever time it takes. Could be a month. (Could be a year.) So deadlines came and deadlines went, and still the Caucus dithered on, Still questing after unity, but looking slightly woebegone. Old Grassley wouldn't climb aboard, and Enzi was a constant foe, The only one who seemed inclined to deal was gentle Mrs. Snowe. The chairman could have said, "That's it! You're playing me! This makes me sore!" Instead the chairman trimmed his bill, then looked around, then trimmed some more. With ev'ry trim he hoped he'd find his Caucus fully unified, With ev'ry trim he found again that some were never satisfied. He strengthened this, he tightened that, he moved the numbers 'round and 'round, He huffed and puffed "Bipartisan" -- he couldn't get it off the ground. "I need more time!" the chairman cried. "Don't rush me! This is vital stuff!" Until the Chief Exec himself decided that he'd had enough. " I've got a plan," Obama said, "and now it's time to push it through." "I'm very nearly almost there!" the chairman cried -- "A day or two?" And so at last a bill appears, but wait: He stands there all alone! His Gang of Six was just a dream, while others fume, "He should have known." So learn from this, bipartisans, that good intentions won't suffice When people on the other side are out for blood and won't play nice. Beware delay, which only turns momentum into sloggy mess, And get it done! You're on your own! That's why you were elected, yes? Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com . More on Max Baucus
 
Bill Scher: CBO: Dumping Public Option For Co-Ops Does Not Save Money Top
The Congressional Budget Office gave Sen. Max Baucus' bill the best scoring yet for a health care bill. But his removal of a public health insurance option in favor of seed money for non-profit co-ops has nothing to do with it. Baucus' bill costs less in the eyes of the CBO because 1) Baucus covers less people than the other proposed bills and 2) CBO really likes the tax on generous insurance plans . (And as I noted before, CBO is biased against crediting new ideas with generating savings , short-changing the other bills.) But none of that has to do with the debate between a public option and co-ops. In fact, CBO didn't think much of Baucus' co-op proposal, concluding: The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country... Whereas, the CBO responded to a public option query from GOP Baucus Caucus holdout Sen. Mike Enzi and said the public option wouldn't change federal spending, while lowering insurance premiums for individuals: ...a public plan as structured in the introduced bill would probably attract a substantial minority of enrollees (in part because it would include a relatively broad network of providers and would be likely to engage in only limited management of its health care benefits). As a result, it would add some competitive pressure in many insurance markets that are currently served by a limited number of private insurers. That competitive pressure would probably lower private premiums in the insurance exchanges to a small degree ... net federal outlays on health care would not be appreciably different... For those so-called moderates who claim this is all about spending and cutting the deficit, and who bow to the CBO in making such determinations, there is no reason to reject the public option on those grounds. Originally posted at OurFuture.org More on Health Care
 
Peter Mehlman: Let Us Drive In Peace Top
First, drinking. Then talking on the phone. Then text messaging. You'd think the government would cut back on its probes into highway accident-causing activities, but... no dice. The National Highway Traffic Safety Board is now set to release a study claiming that undergoing reconstructive knee surgery while driving is "dicey at best." At this time, the report doesn't reveal the annual number of accidents/deaths attributable to motorists having their knees operated on behind the wheel but it states that "even one is too many." The testing, performed on 244 red-shirt college football players, concluded that reconstructive knee surgery performed on a motorist is equivalent to a 72.3 blood alcohol reading in its impairment of basic driving skills. Depending on the state, this reading is roughly 91 times the legal limit. The study reportedly took place on a closed course behind New York's Columbia Agnostic Hospital and showed that 54% of test subjects repeatedly drifted across clearly marked lanes just moments after their surgeons made their initial incisions. Equally alarming, at the stage of the operation where an Achilles' tendon donated from a cryo-lab was grafted into the driver's knew, he frequently knocked over bright orange cones before careening head-on into the hospital's valet parking stand. One NHTSB official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he hates his name, revealed that the impact of these collisions was frequently strong enough to cause serious head and neck trauma to not only the driver, but to the orthopedist and anaesthesiologist as well. Even attending nurses, relegated to the back seat, experienced discomfort and became ether addicts. However, the official surmised that the results could be somewhat skewed by subjects being under the influence of general anaesthesia. Curiously, according to the testing, regardless of which knee was being surgically repaired, the results were virtually indistinguishable. Coupled with a thirty-year study recently conducted by General Motors that found that the right knee often plays a more active role in driving than the left, this statistical anomaly may warrant further study. Another potentially inflammatory result of the study concluded that , when undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery -- a less invasive procedure often requiring only a local anaesthetic and half a Klonopin -- the impact on the driver was only slightly less debilitating. Usually the driver's skills only rose to the equivalent of a subject with 74.3 blood alcohol content, a level many states still classify as "legally shit-faced." In any case, the study is certain to draw intense criticism from the medical establishment and the American Automobile Association. Already, the release date of the study, set to coincide with National Anterior Cruciate Week, is raising eyebrows. Dr. Ronald Miniscus was reached by phone so it was difficult to know if his eyebrows were raised, but as social chairman of the American Orthopedist Association, he swiftly refuted the study's findings. "Reconstructive knee surgery performed on a motorist allows the physician to stop during surgery and purchase gauze pads." The NHTSB counters that the study was commissioned with no ulterior motive beyond not knowing what to so with $975 million that was left over after its probe into the effects of driving a Miata in the company of an underfed anaconda. ####
 
Richard Levin: What Happened at Yale and the Dark Side of the Human Soul Top
The New Haven Chief of Police has just announced that Raymond Clark has been arrested in connection with the death of Annie Le. We are relieved and encouraged by this progress in the investigation, but, of course, we must resist the temptation to rush to judgment until a full and fair prosecution of this case brings a just resolution. As with every development in this tragic story, we think first of Annie's family, her fiancé and his family, and her friends, and our hearts go out to them. Mr. Clark has been a lab technician at Yale since December 2004. His supervisor reports that nothing in the history of his employment at the University gave an indication that his involvement in such a crime might be possible. It is frightening that a member of our own community might have committed this terrible crime. But we must not let this incident shatter our trust in one another. We must reaffirm our deepest values as an institution -- our commitment to the search for truth, undertaken in a spirit of openness, tolerance, and civility. The work of the University requires us to engage with each other in the classroom, to collaborate in the laboratory, and to trust one another in workplaces across the campus. In many, even most respects, this University is a model of citizenship and civility. It will take the efforts of everyone to maintain that standard. In the days and weeks ahead, we will redouble our efforts to educate the community about Yale's zero tolerance policy for violent, threatening, and abusive behavior. We have formal policies in place covering employees and students, and effective grievance procedures to bring forth complaints. This incident could have happened in any city, in any university, or in any workplace. It says more about the dark side of the human soul than it does about the extent of security measures. Nevertheless, safety is a very high priority, and we will shortly be soliciting suggestions from the community about how we might further improve campus security. We are all deeply indebted to the men and women of the FBI, Connecticut State Police, New Haven Police, Yale Police, and Yale Security. They have worked tirelessly and cooperatively since Annie's disappearance last Tuesday. Yale will continue to provide all needed assistance to the State's Attorney as the case proceeds. As is our practice when an employee is charged with a serious crime, Mr. Clark is being suspended from employment at Yale and barred from the campus. His ID card no longer allows him access to any Yale building. We are a close community with deeply shared values. Monday night's candlelight vigil gave moving testimony to the caring and compassion of this place. Let us continue to offer comfort and consolation to Annie's family and friends, and let us honor her memory by rededicating ourselves to the search for truth to which she herself was so deeply devoted. More on Crime
 
Mike Shea: (VIDEO) Despite News Reports ACORN Housing Did Call Police Top
Today, ACORN Housing Corporation released the following statement: ACORN Housing called the cops on 'filmmaker' ACORN Housing responds to recent allegations, releases video interview with staff Washington, DC - ACORN Housing today released a video of one of its staff giving her side of what happened when 'filmmaker' James O'Keefe visited the Philadelphia office. Ms. Katherine Conway Russell was approached by O'Keefe and when she realized he was not asking about a valid housing issue, she asked him to leave and called the police. "Last July James O'Keefe who has been in the news lately with videos from other ACORN offices came into our office," said Russell, "Unlike the videos he has been showing on the internet, we refused to help him and called the police and filed a report." That can now be seen here . A copy of the police report can be seen here . "We were appalled and angry to see the video of employees offering advice on how to operate an illegal enterprise. While no transaction took place - no loan documents were signed or submitted, no bank loans were arranged, no new business was established - this is not how our staff should behave. All ACORN Housing staff members undergo rigorous training and are expected to comply with high standards for ethical behavior and compliance with the law," said Mike Shea, Executive Director of ACORN Housing, "but the video tape is slanted to misinform the public about ACORN Housing. The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police." ACORN Housing has taken the following steps: • A new copy of our guidelines and standards has been sent to all staff, everyone is required to sign a form acknowledging they have read and understand our standards and will comply with them. • Group intake classes for first-time homebuyers have been suspended until all staff have had a chance to complete an enhanced training on our procedures and standards. • A quality control team is being assembled that will visit all ACORN Housing offices nationwide to insure their policies and procedures meet our standards. • The Washington, DC staff members have been fired and the New York employees have been suspended while we are conducting an internal investigation. • We have initiated an internal review of our policies and materials to insure all staff knows how to handle sensitive situations. • All ACORN Housing training materials will be re-evaluated and expanded to include an enhanced ethics section to provide more guidance. Founded in 1986, ACORN Housing has counseled more than 350,000 low and moderate income families across the U.S., over 100,000 of which have become homeowners. ACORN Housing has 29 offices in 24 states.
 
Andy Ostroy: Thank You Jimmy Carter Top
Jimmy Carter is America's 39th president, a respected elder statesman, and a lifelong resident of the deep South. He's clearly not just some crafty ideologue who's talking out of school. So when the Georgia native says the animosity directed towards President Barack Obama is rooted in racism, it raises yet another serious flag in this increasingly heated debate. Speaking to NBC's Brian Williams in Atlanta Tuesday, Carter said: "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. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans....And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the 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. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply." Of the angry opposition the president's been facing, Carter said: "I think it's based on racism. There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president." Bravo, President Carter, for having the guts to stand up and say what many believe but are afraid to say publicly for fear of being accused of playing the un-PC race card. But the reality is, much of the vitriol directed at Obama is indeed because he's in a very powerful job that's been held by rich white men for 220 years. It's an ugly truth, and we may not be willing to accept it, but there are a lot of whites in this country who, as Carter's comments basically imply, are repulsed by a black man calling the shots from the Oval Office. To be sure, the hatred we're seeing towards Obama is rooted in generations of deep-seeded ignorance, fear and insecurity. These racists are trying to delegitimize Obama's presidency in any way they can -- no matter how irrational, illogical or offensive -- and further fan the "he's not one of us" flames which serve to turn people rabidly against him. Whether it's the "birthers" who claim Obama's not a U.S. citizen; those who've labeled him a socialist, communist, fascist or terrorist; those who kept their kids home last week rather than have them hear his back to school speech; or South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" outburst at Obama's address to Congress, there's a raging disdain and disrespect for this president unseen in U.S. political history. And it's because he's black. I'll say it again: it's because he's black. Carter has served America well by calling us as a nation out on it.
 
Robert Reich: Why Olympia Snowe Should Vote Against the Baucus Plan Top
How is it that a decision next week by a single senator from Maine will almost certainly determine whether America's future healthcare system is still in the hands of private for-profit insurance companies and Big Pharma or enables more Americans to get better health care at lower cost? Bear with me, because you need to know what's likely to happen if she signs on, and if she doesn't. The next few weeks are crucial. Scenario One : If Olympia Snowe votes in favor of Max Baucus's plan -- which is favored by the medical-industrial complex because it dramatically increases their customer base without a public option that squeezes their profits -- the Baucus plan will be the bill that goes to the Senate floor. Why? Because her vote will give enough political cover to waivering Dems Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Jim Webb, and Evan Bayh to gain their support for the Baucus plan. Which means the White House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate will have a good chance to get the 60 votes they need when the bill goes to the Senate floor in a few weeks. That Senate vote will push Nancy Pelosi and the House Dems toward the right. That's because it will embolden conservative and Blue Dog House Dems to threaten to vote against the far stronger bill that's already emerged from House committees -- which, in contrast to the Senate Finance bill, includes a public option, an employer mandate, significant expansion of Medicaid, and larger government subsidies to others with lower incomes. Pelosi knows she can't get a single Republican vote, so has to count on the support of at least 218 out of 256 Democrats. That means winning over at least 38 conservatives and Blue Dog Dems-- many of whom were elected from swing districts and some of whom face strong Republican challengers in 2010. With Baucus's bill gaining momentum, or perhaps already having been passed, the conservatives and Blue Dogs in the House will demand a bill that's closer to it. House progressives will put up a fight but there's little question that the emerging compromise will be to the right of where the House is right now. The two bills then go to a reconciliation committee where the White House can put some final touches on it before it goes back to the two chambers for a final vote. The White House likes this scenario because it keeps private insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the AMA from bolting. It enables the President to call the resulting bill "bipartisan," and to claim that it marks real reform. And maintains the possibility of Republican support for financial reform and environmental legislation next year. Scnenario Two : If Snowe decides not to sign on, history moves in a very different direction. Most importantly, the Senate Dems know they won't possibly have 60 votes they need. So they'll have to say goodbye to bipartisanship -- perhaps even farewell to Nelson, Landrieu, Webb, and Bayh -- and bundle healthcare reform into a "reconciliation" bill that can pass with 51. This new goal post strengthens the hand of Senate progressives on the Finance Committee, like Rockefeller. It also gives more weight to the version of health care reported out by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension committee -- which includes a public insurance option, employer mandate, and more generous subisidies to the poor and lower middle class. Hence, the bill that goes to the Senate floor is much more progressive, and the final Senate's vote (with 51 votes) better reflects the values of the Democratic base. This Senate vote, moreover, gives more momentum and legitimacy to the House version of health care -- which also includes the public option, employer mandate, broader Medicaid coverage, and more generous subsidies to the lower middle class. That Senate vote thereby reduces the power of House Blue Dogs and conservative Dems to influence the bill that goes to the House floor. It also enables Pelosi to say to them: It's either this or nothing. If you vote against this bill you're voting against health care reform. The more progressive Senate bill, plus the stark choice Pelosi poses, garners enough votes from the conservative and Blue Dog Dems to pass a strong bill. The White House doesn't like this scenario because the use of a reconciliation bill in the Senate poisons relations with Republicans and risks their support for financial reform and cap-and-trade. It may even make it more difficult for Obama to rely on Republican support for more troops in Afghanistan. But as we move into the gravitational pull of the 2010 midterms, congressional Republicans won't support Obama anyway, on anything. And remember, George W. Bush used reconciliation early in his first term to enact his huge tax cuts, mostly for the very wealthy. It's a tried-and-true strategy. I don't know about you, but I'm hoping the Senator from Maine votes no next week. If she does, America has a fighting chance of getting real healthcare reform. Cross-posted from Robert Reich's Blog. More on Health Care
 
Ann Curry Asks Ahmadinejad: Did You Steal This Election? (VIDEO) Top
NBC News' Ann Curry traveled to Tehran for an exclusive interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is the president's first interview since the disputed June election. Curry summed up the summer-long debate on the political atmosphere in Iran by asking Ahmadinejad one key question: "Did you steal this election?" Ahmadinejad responded by asserting that any person in Iran is free to express his or her opinion, and that he does not "see any problems." Watch here: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy The interview will air Thursday, September 17, on "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" and Friday, September 18 on "Today." MSNBC will air an hour-long special "Iran's President Speaks: The Ann Curry Interview," Sunday at 1 PM. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Iran
 
Lisa Petrides: You Say You Want a Virtual Revolution? Top
In a provocative commentary published in Sunday’s Washington Post , frequent Huffington Post blogger Zephyr Teachout predicts that “a virtual revolution is brewing for colleges.” What digital technology has done to the newspaper business, it will soon do to higher education, she argues. Increasingly, notes Teachout, college students are assembling courses and credits in much the same way that they assemble the news, stitching together bits and pieces from around the Web. Just as The New York Times and The Economist will have their niche subscribers, a handful of elite schools will continue to attract young people who want the traditional, four-year campus experience, complete with dorm rooms, dining halls, and 8:00 AM seminars. Sooner or later, though—within a generation, Teachout predicts—consumer demand will force the majority of colleges to replace live classroom instruction with videotaped lectures, self-guided Web sites, and on-line chats moderated by adjuncts. For the most part, Teachout gets the story right. When it comes to providing students with low-cost courses, credits, and credentials, virtual institutions have a tremendous advantage. Traditional colleges can’t hope to compete with them unless they become more like them, cutting back on facilities and tenured faculty and taking other major steps to reduce and reallocate expenses. But there are a couple of important caveats to add to Teachout’s argument.  While it’s true that the Web-based economy poses tough new challenges for higher education, we shouldn’t let ourselves get too sentimental about the way things were in the old days. For example, Teachout concludes her piece by lamenting that if tenured faculty go the way of the dinosaurs, so too will “academic freedom, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking,” and all of us will “lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced.” Let’s remember, though, that this is the same precious tradition that has given us canned lectures that remain unchanged year after year, delivered to 800 students at a time, with discussion sections led by untrained graduate students. It has also given us inflexible class schedules that make it difficult for parents and people with full-time jobs to attend. It has given us nonsensical policies on credit transfer, incoherent curricular requirements, and student advising and support services unaligned with academic needs. It has rewarded faculty for publishing in seldom read journals but not for their teaching and service. And it has prized institutional rankings, departmental reputations, and athletic victories over and above public needs. In short, let’s not assume that the University of Phoenix and other for-profit and virtual institutions are putting the screws on a grand academic tradition. Colleges and universities did that all on their own, long before the Internet came along. On-line higher education isn’t replacing good academic practices with bad ones. It’s just providing certain kinds of cookie-cutter instruction more efficiently, offering students more convenient and affordable ways to pursue specific kinds of training, certificates, and degrees.   My takeaway from Teachout’s article isn’t that we should be saddened and alarmed by the impending decline of higher education. Rather, I think that the moment is a hopeful one for the type of learning that could take place in academe. Teachout assumes that if virtual institutions seize the market for delivering particular sorts of courses and credentials, then traditional colleges will have no choice but to become more like them. However, they do in fact have another choice—they can cede that part of the market to the competition, and they can make it a priority to differentiate themselves by investing in the kind of high-quality undergraduate education that should have been their focus all along. Moreover, if colleges make that choice, they’ll find digital technology to be more friend than foe. On-line, videotaped lectures don’t have to replace faculty—they can free up those faculty to do more valuable work, such as providing students with individualized instruction, personally engaging them in discussion, and giving them intensive help with their writing, research projects, and lab work. Likewise, open-source curricular materials don’t have to undermine professors’ autonomy—they can save them the time and energy they used to spend re-inventing courses, re-designing assignments and exams, and tracking down materials. And electronic record-keeping doesn’t have to become yet another means of squeezing profit out of students—rather, it can be used to measure their progress and improve their advising and support services. In discussions about the intersection of technology and education, it’s always tempting to imagine that technology has the upper hand, deciding the fate of the teachers and students who use it. But in truth, the conflict is not between the Web and academic tradition. Today, as always, it’s real people who must figure out which sorts of teaching and learning they value, who should provide what kinds of higher education to whom, and how education can be made relevant by using the best technology at hand. More on Technology
 
Len Berman: Top 5 Sports Stories Top
Happy Thursday everyone, here's my Top 5 for September 17, 2009 from www.LenBermanSports.com 1. Quick Hits The Jets were fined $75-thousand, and G.M. Mike Tannenbaum and former coach Eric Mangini $25-thousand each for lying about Brett Favre's injury status last year. You may have been tired of the Brett Favre story, but not his fans. Favre's jersey is the top seller in America. And would you believe Michael Vick's is the top seller in 3 states? Yankee catcher Jorge Posada was suspended 3 games for being a hothead. Actually he and two others were suspended for their Tuesday night fight with Toronto. NCAA president Myles Brand dies of cancer at the age of 67. 2. The Jewish Jordan Remember a few years back when Tamir Goodman was touted as the "Jewish Jordan?" He wound up playing basketball at Towson. He then played in the Israeli basketball league. But now, at the age of 27, he has retired. Michael Jordan, he was not. (Who is?) But how sad. I was so hoping that pamphlet on the "Great Jewish Pro Athletes" could have been expanded by 5 pages. 3. PSL's Yesterdays item about contraction in pro sports sparked some great emails from Top 5 subscribers. Here's the best. Steve G. told me that 8 years ago he put his 6 year old son on the waiting list for Giants tickets. The wait was over 30 years. Last week his son, now 14, was offered a chance to buy season tickets at $250 per game per seat and a PSL (Personal seat license) of $7500. His son said take the money and buy big screen TVs for every room in the house! Smart kid. 4. Fred Cusick (1918-2009) Many New Englanders wanted me to mention the passing of longtime Boston Bruins TV announcer Fred Cusick. He was their voice during the glory years of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. In this era of announcer schtick, Fred was a solid and knowledgeable voice without the hype. Subscriber Ron T. put it best. "I'm not a huge hockey fan but his calls are legendary around Boston. He had zero ego and his on-air personality was always all about the game that was going on down on the ice." How refreshing. 5. Fore! Make your reservations. Just one month until opening day for a new golf course in Australia. 848 miles and 171 yards. It stretches clear across the Outback. You play a hole, spend the night, and drive to the next tee. As you approach your ball you might run into sheep, kangaroos, or you might not find your ball if birds of prey swoop down and swipe it. Sounds like fun, but hell on caddies. Happy Birthday: The Baby Bull. Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda. 72. Bonus Birthday: Another Hall of Famer, this one in football. George Blanda. 82. Today in Sports: Reggie Jackson hits his first career home run. 1967. Also Reggie Jackson hits his 500th career homer. 1984. Bonus Event: Cy Young and the Boston Pilgrims clinch the American League Pennant. They go on to beat Honus Wagner and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first ever World Series. 1903. More on Sports
 
Sarah Chasis: Obama Administration Reveals Bedrock Ocean Policy Details - and They're Strong Top
Hailing from Hawaii and Illinois - President Obama knows oceans and the Great Lakes firsthand. And before his first year is out, he could quietly revamp the way our nation manages and protects these resources, all with the stroke of a pen. Today the administration brought us significantly  closer to making this environmental history. Like a Clean Air Act or a Clean Water Act - bedrock environmental laws that radically improved the way we protect and manage these resources - President Obama is in the process of creating a landmark national healthy oceans policy and plan of action for our seas. We got our first glimpse today of what the administration is proposing in an Interim Report issued today by the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, which President Obama established in June . Today's news indicates this policy is true blue . The details released today reveal the Obama Administration is crafting the most progressive, comprehensive national action for our oceans that we have ever seen. It is a ambitious, targeted and detailed game plan for saving our seas. This will be the first time we have ever had this kind of action for healthy oceans from any President in U.S. history. Now, Americans will have the chance to weigh-in through a 30-day public comment period and through a series of regional listening sessions around the country. The first kicked off in Alaska last month and the second will occur today in San Francisco (see what our CA Advocacy Director will say when she testifies in SF today here , and follow my fellow NRDC ocean team member Laura Pagano as she live blogs from the event.) Next week will be a hearing in Providence, followed by Honolulu, New Orleans and Cleveland in the weeks after. What we saw today from the Obama Administration lays the groundwork for protecting our oceans from the threats they face. It lays out a vision and recommends the adoption of a national policy that highlights the need to protect, maintain and restore ocean, coasts and Great Lakes ecosystems-something this country has never had. Here are a few details : It proposes establishment of a high-level National Ocean Council co-chaired by the President's Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to oversee implementation of the policy. It also lays out a detailed work plan for that Council, including calling for the development of strategic action plans (within 6 to 12 months) to address priority issues such as ocean resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change and ocean acidification; regional ecosystem protection and restoration; water quality improvement, particularly from land-based sources; and changing conditions in the Arctic. These priorities are right on point, and the plan of action is strong. If adopted, the recommendations in this report will guide the federal government's actions across a range of issues. From overfishing and pollution, to warming temperatures and acidification - a national ocean policy and plan of action will strengthen the government's ability to tackle each and every one of these challenges. And it helps us be smart about the way we use our ocean resources. Right now, our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes are governed by more than 140 laws and 20 different agencies, each with different goals and often conflicting mandates. We cannot continue to let chaos manage the way we rule our seas - this policy will help restore order. Take ocean acidification for example - an issue where NRDC has been on the frontlines of (and actually just released a new documentary called Acid Test , narrated by Sigourney Weaver and shown on Discovery's Planet Green in August). What does a national ocean policy do to address this challenge? While most people know that the most important step in protecting our seas from the effects of acidification is to cut carbon dioxide pollution - they may not know the second step is to make it as healthy as possible so it can be more resilient to the effects. Just like a healthy person is better able to handle an illness, a healthy ocean is better able to withstand additional stress. This policy is the prescription they need. Overfishing is another great example where a national oceans policy will help - giving the government more ability to revive struggling fish populations (important when worldwide 90 percent of large fish like tuna are already gone) and address destructive fishing practices. And developing this policy is especially critical now - as our country moves forward in developing the clean, renewable energy off our coasts for the 21st century. A policy like this can help the government make sure it's protecting ocean resources while moving forward with such development, making sure it's done right from the start. This list goes on - in fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find an issue affecting our oceans' health where a national oceans policy wouldn't help. And it doesn't stop at the environment - this policy can also help the economy . Our oceans and Great Lakes are economic engines - providing more jobs and more economic output than the entire farm sector (contributing more than $230 billion to the nation's GDP annually). The Obama Administration is charting the course for healthy oceans, and from what we've seen today they're on the right path. We look forward to helping sail the ship. Join me in sending your support for a national policy for healthy oceans by taking action here . This post originally appeared on NRDC's blog .
 
David Kirby: New Study: Hepatitis B Vaccine Triples the Risk of Autism in Infant Boys Top
"The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal doesn't cause autism." -- Dr. Paul Offit, "Autism's False Prophets" "16 studies have shown no causal association between vaccines and autism, and these studies carry weight in the scientific industry." -- Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC Today Show Medical Editor Conventional wisdom holds that the autism-vaccine question has been "asked and answered," and that at least 16 large, well-constructed epidemiological studies have thoroughly addressed and debunked any hypothesis that childhood vaccination is in any way associated with an increased risk for autism spectrum disorders. But there are several critical flaws in such an oversimplified generalization, and they are rarely given close examination by public health experts or members of the media. To begin with, it is unscientific and perilously misleading for anyone to assert that "vaccines and autism" have been studied and that no link has been found. That's because the 16 or so studies constantly cited by critics of the hypothesis have examined just one vaccine and one vaccine ingredient. The current US childhood immunization schedule calls for 28 injections with 11 different vaccines against 15 different diseases by two years of age. Of those 11 vaccines, only the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) shot has been studied in association with autism, (although a CDC study of an MMR-plus-chickenpox vaccine did show that the risk for febrile seizures in infants was doubled.) Meanwhile, those 11 vaccines contain scores of ingredients, only one of which, thimerosal, has ever been tested in association with autism. It is illogical to exonerate all vaccines, all vaccine ingredients, and the total US vaccine program as a whole, based solely on a handful of epidemiological studies of just one vaccine and one vaccine ingredient. It is akin to claiming that every form of animal protein is beneficial to people, when all you have studied is fish. Now, a new study has shown that giving Hepatitis B vaccine to newborn baby boys may triple the risk of developing an autism spectrum disorder. An abstract of the study was published in the September, 2009 issue of the respected journal Annals of Epidemiology . In it, Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman of the Graduate Program in Public Health at Stony Brook University Medical Center, NY, wrote that, "Boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine during the first month of life had 2.94 greater odds for ASD compared to later-- or unvaccinated boys. Non-Hispanic white boys were 61% less likely to have ASD." The authors used U.S. probability samples obtained from National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) 1997-2002 datasets. The conclusion states that: "Findings suggest that U.S. male neonates vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine had a 3-fold greater risk of ASD; risk was greatest for non-white boys." The author's new study used a different database than their earlier study (NHIS vs. NHANES) and they found same thing, suggesting a validation of their findings. Critics will point out that this sample was limited to boys born before 1999, so the results are only applicable to that U.S. male birth cohort, and that the study's cross-sectional design limits inferences on causality. Another weakness is that the autism diagnoses were parent reported. On the other hand, these results are generalizable to US boys age 3-17 born prior to 1999; vaccination status was confirmed through medical records; and there was controlling for confounders that may be associated with care seeking behaviors. (The P-value equaled 0.032) The full manuscript is currently under review by another journal. Assuming that the full manuscript is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it will be among the first university-based population studies to suggest an association between a vaccine and an increased risk for autism. And that would be in direct contradiction to all those MMR and thimerosal studies that purportedly found no such link. Does that mean that Hepatitis B vaccine causes autism? Of course not (though any relative risk above 2.0 is general considered to prove causation in a US court of law). But there are other studies, both published and greatly anticipated, which might support a hypothesized causal association between HepB vaccine and ASD, at least in boys. Any day now, data culled from CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network (ADDM), is expected to be published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, and the numbers are expected to put the rate of autism at around 1 in 100, or higher. ADDM researchers examine the education and (when possible) medical records of all eight-year-old children in selected US cities and states. They look only at eight-year-old cohorts to allow time for all diagnoses to be made, reported and counted. So far, ADDM has published data from just two birth cohorts: children born in 1992 (eight-year-olds in 2000) and those born in 1994 (eight-year-olds in 2002). The 1992 cohort revealed an estimated ASD rate of one in 166, or 60-per-10,000. (This has since been revised to 67-per-10,000, or one in 150). For the 1994 cohort, the estimate was virtually unchanged, at 66-per-10,000. But CDC data for the same six ADDM locations showed an increase in ASD from 6.7 for 1992 births to 7.4 for 1994 births. And now the total average number is expected to exceed 100-per-10,000 for the 1996 birth cohort, born just two years later. The overarching question, of course, will be, "why?" There are many possible explanations, though a 50% increase in just two years is astonishing, no matter what its cause. One possible answer is the Hepatitis B vaccine, (which also contained 25 micrograms of mercury containing thimerosal up until 2002). Introduced in 1991, it was the first vaccine ever given on a population basis to newborn babies (within the first three hours after delivery) in human history. But according to the CDC's National Immunization Survey , only 8% of infant children received the Hep B vaccine at birth in 1992, when that cohort showed an ASD rate of 1-in-150. By 1994, the number of children receiving Hep B vaccine had reached just 27% -- and the same cohort showed a 10% ASD increase in locations where both years were measured. But by 1996, Hep B coverage rate had risen to 82%. And that is the cohort whose ASD rate rose to around 100-per-10,000 or more. Correlation, obviously, does not equal causation. But the uptake rate of that particular immunization is at least one environmental factor that did demonstrably change during the period in question. In addition, some recent studies and Vaccine Court decisions have supported the contention that Hepatitis B vaccine can damage myelin -- the nervous system's main insulating component -- at least in certain genetically susceptible adults and infants. A study published last October in the journal Neurology found that children who received the Hepatitis B vaccine series were 50% more likely to develop "central nervous system inflammatory demyelination" than children who did not receive the vaccine. Most of this increase was due to the Engerix B brand of the vaccine, manufactured by the UK's GlaxoSmithKline. That brand increased the risk of demyelination by 74%, and patients with confirmed multiple sclerosis were nearly three times more likely to develop the disorder. "Hepatitis B vaccination does not generally increase the risk of CNS inflammatory demyelination in childhood," the authors concluded. "However, the Engerix B vaccine appears to increase this risk, particularly for confirmed multiple sclerosis, in the longer term. Our results require confirmation in future studies." Let's hope that future studies of neonatal HebB administration, demyelinating disorders, and ASD are completed as quickly as possible. More on Autism
 
Sam Chaltain: Rethink Learning, Now Top
This fall, as young people across the country settle back into the rhythms and requirements of a new school year, the rest of us might want to heed the words of a former U.S. president and ask ourselves an old question: “Is our children learning?” The answer, of course, is that we can’t know for sure, since our education system isn’t even being asked to measure whether or not young people are learning – only whether they are demonstrating progress on basic-skills standardized tests in 3 rd and 8 th grade reading and math. As everyone knows, learning involves more than basic skills and regurgitating information. It requires higher-order skills and the capacity to digest, make sense of, and apply what we’ve been taught. We can do better. We can have schools in every neighborhood that teach children both basic- and higher-order skills, that allow creativity and innovation to flourish, and that lead all children to discover how to fully and effectively participate in our economy and democracy. Before that can happen, however, we need to start having a different conversation. We need to restore the focus of public education reform to its rightful place – on learning, and on the core conditions that best support it.  To bring about this subtle shift of thinking, a growing coalition of organizations is asking the nation to help rethink learning now ( rethinklearningnow.com ) by sparking a national conversation about schooling – and how best to improve it so that all children can finally receive, 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education , a high-quality public education. Aside from releasing three provocative, conversation-starting PSAs ( watch them here ), the campaign’s first step is to invite people to recount powerful learning experiences and identify the attributes that made those experiences so successful. Already, the campaign has collected a diverse set of stories – from citizens to Senators to the Secretary of Education himself – and begun outlining a core set of essential conditions for schools to cultivate. Dwayne B. from Maryland wrote about an unlikely spark for his learning experience – a prison cell. “The nonsense that I'd spent hours talking about on street corners was no longer as important and I found myself with a real need to communicate, to understand what was written in the books I'd been reading for years.” Al F. from Minnesota wrote instead about his 4 th grade teacher, Mrs. Molin, and the impact she had on her students. “We need to make sure today's students are able to learn in that kind of creative, nurturing environment, so they can find their own passions and become strong, well-rounded adults.” And Arne D. from Chicago talked about spending time in his mother’s after school tutoring program on the South Side of Chicago. “Everyone was challenged to do his or her best, every single day,” he wrote. “It was the ultimate in high expectations, both for individuals and the group as a whole.” In the weeks and months ahead, as the number of stories grows over time, the campaign is representing visually, via a tag cloud , the attributes that appear most often across people’s experiences. The purpose is to identify the core conditions that best support powerful learning so that all of us can be more prepared to ask our lawmakers to institute reforms based more clearly on what young people need in order to thrive – and stay – in school. Of course, if the campaign’s only plan was to gather stories and assume that by their sheer weight and beauty mountains would move, we’d all be wasting our time. So Rethink Learning Now is following two strategic paths simultaneously - one grassroots, one grasstops - and intending for them to converge as Congress eventually turns its attention to ESEA. This fall, while people around the country reflect on their personal learning experiences, leaders of the campaign’s supporting organizations will be meeting with each other and with key offices on Capitol Hill, gathering information, refining policy proposals, and establishing the campaign as a way to link the needs of policymakers with the insights of the general public. The campaign will also sponsor three policy briefings this fall - one for each of the campaign's core pillars: learning , teaching , and fairness . Along the way, campaign supporters will provide feedback on all proposals – and ensure that all recommendations are aligned with the collective insights of the campaign’s participants. Additionally, up to 14 different regional meetings will occur across the country (a calendar will be added to the campaign web site later this fall). And there is early talk of hosting a national convening of all of the campaign's participants sometime next year. In that sense, the Rethink Learning Now campaign is best understood as a coordinated one-two punch: first, establish clarity around the core objectives of effective school reform: powerful learning, highly-effective teaching, and a system committed to ensuring fairness; and second, take that coordinated energy and apply it toward specific proposals that result in a better, more attuned ESEA that empowers educators to create healthy, high-functioning learning environments. Join the chorus – and share your voice – at rethinklearningnow.com . More on Al Franken
 
Rihanna Shows Off Nipple Ring With Sheer Tank Top Top
RiRi was spotted heading into Da Silvano restaurant in the West Village wearing a very sheer tank top. In cases such as these, most people, you know, wear a bra. More on Celebrity Skin
 
GOP Leadership Worried About Damage To Party's Reputation From Base Top
"I would point out that the greatest anxiety about the president's policies tends to come from independents," he said. Long before the tea parties or Wilson's outburst, Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had struggled to moderate the rhetorical excesses of House conservatives hammering away on Obama's birth certificate, decrying the creation of "death panels" and ferreting out signs of creeping socialism. More on GOP
 
Joe Klein: The Afghanistan Problem -- Why Are We In Helmand? Top
In addition to all the other problems we're facing -- the corruption of the Karzai government, the election chaos, the porous Pakistani border -- it has become apparent that we're pursuing the wrong military strategy in this frustrating war. More on Afghanistan
 
Pelosi: Democrats Facing Toughest Midterms Ever Top
The 2010 congressional elections will be the "toughest midterm elections Democrats have ever faced," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged today. More on Nancy Pelosi
 
Taylor Branch To Reveal "The Clinton Tapes" Top
It has been nearly forty years since three young Democratic activists named Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, and Taylor Branch moved into a small apartment together in Austin, Texas, to wage a presidential campaign for George McGovern. In the decades since, the Clintons have taken that political fire to the center of American political life, while Branch has chosen a quieter course, writing three definitive volumes on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and winning both the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur "genius" grant. Yet at the height of Bill Clinton's ascent--for the full eight years of the presidency--the historian and the politician reunited for a secret project, hidden from even Clinton's closest aides. Meeting late at night and sometimes through the night, Clinton and Branch embarked on a series of seventy-nine conversations about politics, the presidents, the Whitewater investigation, and yes, even Monica--recording every word for posterity. Acutely aware that their tapes could be subpoenaed at any moment and desperate to avoid making them public, Clinton squirreled away the cassettes in his sock drawer and has never spoken of them nor made them public. But this month, Branch releases a 670-page mammoth tome, The Clinton Tapes, that mines those conversations and delves into Clinton's presidency and state of mind through a tumultuous and historic eight years. Branch sat down on the sprawling porch of his Victorian home in Baltimore to discuss the project, the experience, and the book. More on Richard Nixon
 

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