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Kevin Smokler: The Shelf Talker: Lorrie Moore, Rebecca Solnit and Silly Putty Top
Welcome to the Shelf Talker, a semi-regular tra-la-la through the the world of books, authors and readings. Send tips, recommendations and backhanded compliments. to tst@booktour.com. Or follow us on twitter @book_tour.   Scary Smart Solnit: Our friends at Bomb Magazine just gave us a sneaky peaky at their fall issue which features an interview with Rebecca Solnit , a wandering-academic-professional-smart-person who lives just up the road from TST HQ.  Ms. Solnit has a new book out called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extrodinary Communities that Arise in Disaster which looks at several large urban areas (San Francisco, Halifax, Nova Scotia, New Orleans), the horrific events that brought them low (the 1906 earthquake, a 1917 industrial explosion, Hurricane Katrina) and how those communities rebuilt themselves into something different and something more. We haven't heard but we're assuming the egg of this idea was Solnit's work on "Detroit Arcadia" , an article she wrote for Harper's in 2007 where she took a walk around America's first deceased industrial metropolis and found it wasn't quite as deceased as we might think. "Detroit Arcadia" remains one of the finest pieces of cognitive journalism TST has ever read, and in an instant, made us Rebecca's Solnit's biggest fan. And more than a bit intimidated. For you see, Rebecca Solnit is smart. Not like made-a-witty-remark-over-canapes kind of smart but scary, wide-ranging, we-have-nothing-to-add-here-and-will-now-slink-away-to-play-with-Silly-Putty kind of smart. The only other writer we've met in her league is fellow San Franciscan Jonathon Keats whom we mentioned in a previous column as the kind of smart that makes you feel dumb for say, metabolizing. Should they mate and produce offspring, we'd probably have dystopic update of The Sneetches on our hands, where the starbelly would be replaced by how well one can win NEA Grants while taking an afternoon nap. None of which will stop us from dropping in on Ms. Solnit when she hits the road in September for a quick costal two-stop (Bay Area, New York City). To show our appreciation, We're thinking a case of Vernors Soda , as it is from Detroit. Or perhaps just a closed mouth, vigorous nodding and a lack of dumb questions.   More Moore. Does the name Lorrie Moore mean anything to you? To us, she's only like the best short story writer ever . Someday when we meet our maker, we've instructed whoever's left to throw us into a hole with a jar of peanut butter, Purple Rain and a paperback of Ms. Moore's collection Self Help . Only then will we sleep content. Sadly then that being a Lorrie Moore fan is a little like placing long bets on Axl Rose. She doesn't tour all that much, takes a goodly pause between books and never volunteers to go yap with Bill Moyers about what a dreadful mess the we're in. She's the Bill Withers of contemporary literature, a graceful genius who isn't that interested in feeding her audience's ravenous appetite for more. More Moore. All changes this fall as Lorrie Moore has a new novel dropping called A Gate at the Stairs , which is about September 11 and a woman-coming-of-age and midwestern colleges and oh, it's Lorrie Moore for heaven's sake, it doesn't matter. We're still there even its about grades of sandpaper.   Gate opened with a front page review this past weekend in the New York Times where Jonathan Lerthem began with the phrase "I’m aware of one — one — reader who doesn’t care for Lorrie Moore , and even that one seems a little apologetic about it." Moore will uncharacteristically be supporting the books with nearly a dozen appearances on both coasts and Chicago, before, one assumes, disappearing until the invention of Hoover Cars. This is justification enough for us to see Ms. Moore when she visits, even though Gate requires exactly zero more support than its already getting. We can't help ourselves. We just want to give Lorrie Moore and uncomfortable hug. And perhaps Vernors.   Corrupting the (Reading) Youth of America   TST leap from our office bean bag chair when a friend sent us The New York Times's latest installment of their Future of Reading Series which profiles Laurie McNeil, a Georgia middle school teacher. Ms. McNeil is part of a growing movement to corrupt the youth of America by (gasp!) allowing her students to chose their reading list for the school year instead of assigning it to them. The thinking goes: A student who has made a choice of what to read, even within an the academic context, will grow to see reading as an lifetime activity of pleasure instead of one resented, slogged through and abandoned the Monday after graduation. We accept that some cultural calamity might befall the nation if its tenth graders didn't all read Wuthering Heights together but we love this idea still. And not just because commanding TST to read The Age of Innocence in 1988 under pain of detention forever equated great literature to a trip to the orthodontist. We love it because its flexible enough to both include the classics and empower the student, because it rewards creative instead of just reliable teaching and because it understands the world to which these students belong. Choice is a given not an earned privilege. Literary education can then be about how to make informed choices which see reading as a long journey with many points of interest, instead of a few to be noted and forgotten before entering adulthood. Which is precisely what happened to us. Our interest in literary classics was little more than obligatory (about like an interest in proper foot hygiene) until a friend asked if we'd like to read one together every few months, followed by rich dessert and cigars. Choice, paired with hedonism and a beautiful way to convert "should" into "want"   F*** To All That Would you like to read an oral biography of the F word? We practically leaped off our sofa with a "Would I!"even after our initial disappointment that the author was not referring to "fabulous" "filibuster" or "fudgesicle." Still we thank the New Yorker' s Book Bench blog for alerting us to this anthology edited by one Jesse Sheidlower, with a forward by Louis Black. Mr. Black has never said "fudgesicle" in polite compnay so far as we know. The Book Bench has missed a platinium opportunity to assemble its parent publication's most dignified contributors and have them all pronounce "fuck" into a YouTube ready camera. TST would pay good coin to hear this stink bomb of the English language escape the lips of Roger Angell, William Trevor or anyone in bow tie and suspenders.   Recommended: "Slanted and Enchated"by Kaya Oakes Slanted and Enchated: The Evolution of Indie Culture by Ms. Kaya Oakes is the first book with the word "indie" in its title TST didn't feel like was whispering "poser!" at him from behind its dust jacket. Ms. Oakes and we are around the same age and yet while she was most likely writing for zines and going to warehouse punk shows, TST was most likely buying white Miami Vice blazers and memorizing the dance steps from Breakin' . We would have gladly been "indie" had we known that was an option as "indie" has been lionized by innumerable rock journalists, radio shows and colossal music festivals. Indie is now default for "cool."  But we are as last-to-hear-about-it then as we are now. And yet Ms. Oakes doesn't mythologize the movement she chronicles. Nor does she make the mistake of thinking its existence depends on jeering at whatever it is not ( Michael Azerrad has some explaining to do here). Her treatment of the evolution of "indie culture" and all the loadedness that term carries with it--from Beats to Diggers, from college radio to riotgrrls--is wise, expansive and a little wistful. It understands both history and its passage. And it carries no bitterness that "indie" is largely gone, not because it was defeated but because it triumphed. The tools of communication and creativity are now in the hands of the many instead of the few. The distinction between what is mainstream and what isn't hardly matters anymore because cultural choices beyond the mainstream are infinite. It is nearly impossible to write about your own youth and the larger culture that enrobed it without sounding self-congratulatory. Yet Kaya Oakes has done that impossibler. She's written about "indie" in a way that the hopelessly square readers still feel included. Which, to our understanding, was the idea behind "indie" all along.  More on Books
 
David Roberts: Cleaning some of the Fox off of Van Jones Top
grist.org A while back I lampooned a Glenn Beck segment on Van Jones , who's an advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to Beck, Jones is the man on the inside for a vast cryptosocialist conspiracy involving the Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, the Center for American Progress, George Soros, ACORN, Al Queda, and the Trilateral Commission. Everything that goes bump in Beck's closet at night. Back then I still thought the Gomer Pyle meets Father Coughlin shtick was harmless, too clownish to be taken seriously. Ah, those innocent days before the nation was locked in a room with frantic teabaggers. Since then Beck's fruitcakery has taken off all over the rightosphere and gotten him what every demagogic infomercial host craves above all else: attention. Advertisers have sprinted away by the dozens, but there are more than enough angry old white people to boost cable ratings. I suspect his effort to slime Jones will have little effect, as long as the White House doesn't get jumpy. Nobody who isn't already around the bend buys this stuff. It's a game Rupurt Murdoch's playing. He knows it will implode sooner or later, but he's going to suck every last Nielson point out of it. Meanwhile, Beck is selling fear like hotcakes, effectively inciting people to violence, telling them their country is being taken from them by blacks and commies. Even black commies! The longer Beck goes on, the higher the chances that a Fox viewer with a screw loose will take him seriously and hurt someone. Think Murdoch's ratings will take a hit if that happens? Me neither. It's morally reprehensible, but what can you do? It's a free country and people are free to be two-bit hucksters. Anyway, just for the record, let's address a few of the Not-Too-Swift Boat attacks. (Where you're done here, you might also check out some similar fact-checking from Eva Paterson , Jones' old boss.) • Van Jones is not a "Green Jobs Czar." There is no such thing. There has never been a job with that title. No one in the administration has ever used that term. Jones is special advisor for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at CEQ . "Green Jobs Czar" a title made up by the media. Beck's obsession with the term -- common parlance in politics since Nixon -- is as inexplicable in substance as it is creepy in intensity. Regardless, Jones doesn't have mysterious and unaccountable powers to shape the economy. In fact he's a newbie, a low-level political appointee with two Senate-confirmed layers between him and Obama. But of course, he's black. And Beck's audience just knew a black president would bring in more of his kind. You know how those people behave. There goes the neighborhood. • Jones is not a "criminal" or an "ex-con" (speaking of barely sub-rosa racism). In 1992, while still attending Yale Law School, Jones volunteered as a legal monitor at a peaceful protest in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. It was in San Francisco, not L.A. He, some other legal monitors, and some protesters were briefly and illegally arrested. They were released in four hours, and later received a legal settlement over the violation of their rights. They were never charged with a crime, much less convicted. The same thing -- improper arrest during peaceful protest -- happened to Jones twice more; again, no charges were ever filed. That is the basis on which Sean Hannity called Jones an "ex-con" on national television. Stay classy, Sean. • Jones is not a black nationalist or a communist. Beck's entire fevered fantasia is spun out of a single article about Jones, based on an interview he did with a local paper in 2005 -- long before he or anyone who knew him thought he'd ever work for the government. It's actually a fascinating story on a human level. It recounts Jones' evolution as a progressive from angry young radical protester to community organizer to activist bent on a strategy of unity and comity. It's subtitled, " Van Jones renounced his rowdy black nationalism on the way toward becoming an influential leader of the new progressive politics ." If you're interested in anything deeper than cable gimcrackery, I recommend giving it a read. If you know Jones, you know he's extremely candid; you also know the guy absolutely loves talking, loves the richness and drama of language, loves a funny or dramatic turn of phrase. (Would that more progressive leaders loved language the same way.) So things like this, when he talks about his anger at police overreaction -- Convinced that American society needed a wake-up call on race, Jones abandoned his plan to become a journalist, concluding that he would rather make news than report it. "If I'd been in another country, I probably would have joined some underground guerrilla sect," he said. "But as it was, I went on to an Ivy League law school." -- are just funny to me. But they're easy to demagogue. Of course it's true that Jones was a self-styled radical in his youth. Hell, I was once a "self-avowed" libertarian. People grow up. Around 2000, faced with a fractured and infighting movement, he had something of a breakdown/epiphany . He turned his back on radicalism and focused on finding a political program that inspires and unifies. If there are two signal features of Jones' subsequent activism, one is that it builds bridges among demographics that have historically approached one another with suspicion; the other is that it relies crucially on both the private and public sectors. It reclaims what conservatives have stolen and perverted: respect for free markets, patriotism, and family values. Indeed, when Jones talks about targeting jobs and economic development at struggling urban areas, he sounds like nobody so much as the late Jack Kemp. I once saw him deliver a short talk to a crowd of largely white, middle-aged, besuited businessmen at a Wall Street Journal business conference; he was sandwiched in the middle a long line of droning talks. Within 10 minutes, he had the executives on their feet in a standing ovation. They don't do that for communism. If you want to know what Jones thinks now, instead of what he thought in his early 20s, read his book: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems . He's out to save America's free-market economy and get its people working. If the conservative movement were smart it would take yes for an answer and claim him as one if its own. But then, it's not smart. It's Beck. If it's not going to claim him, the right is correct to fear him, though. He has synthesized the best of environmentalism, progressivism, and capitalism into a program with appeal both broad and intense. It's particularly notable among young people, but Jones gets acclaim from virtually everyone who's met him or seen him speak. The more his kind of can-do, entrepreneurial, win-win green solutions spread, the more modern-day conservatives look like panicked, lumbering dinosaurs. Sooner or later the American public will see something like this: They'll see that Jones bears no resemblance to the caricature painted by the right. That caricature is just another shadow on the wall of Plato's cave (or Fox's studio, as the case may be). It's another campfire story, another cloud for righties to shout at, another adrenalin boost for a frightened, angry, shrinking audience. This too shall pass. More on Glenn Beck
 
Apple Store Robbed In New Jersey In 30 Seconds, Caught On Tape (VIDEO) Top
A New Jersey Apple store was hit by a smash-and-grab robbery that took only 31 seconds to complete. The thieves smashed in the front window of the store and raced in, grabbing as much merchandise as they could before dashing back out the broken window. The police do not have any suspects. WATCH: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Send us tips! Write us at tv@huffingtonpost.com if you see any newsworthy or notable TV moments. Read more about our media monitoring project here and click here to join the Media Monitors team. More on Crime
 
Joe Territo: Michael Jordan Bringing His Motorcycle Racing Team to New Jersey Labor Day Weekend Top
This Jersey Guy is not ashamed to say that since New Jersey is not New York, we get a little excited whenever a celebrity sets foot in our state. With that gawker mentality we report that former pro basketball legend Michael Jordan is expected to be in Millville, N.J., this weekend at New Jersey Motorsports Park as owner of Jordan Suzuki (yes, you read that right, Jordan Suzuki), a team entered in an American Motorcycle Association race (yes, you read that right too). According to a report in the Daily Journal , Jordan is an active manager of the two-rider team - so he likely will be very visible at the event. However - sorry fans - he is not planning to sign autographs. Why is Air Jordan now hitting the pavement? "He looks at it the same way he did basketball," one of his riders told the Daily Journal. "He wants to win."
 
The Media Consortium: Daily Pulse: Goldfish and the Public Option Top
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger Last night, thousands of Americans attended vigils for healthcare reform sponsored by MoveOn.org. (Photos from the New York vigil here .) The president says that a public option isn't the most important part of health care reform, but it's a make-or-break issue for his liberal base. The public option U.S. legislators are considering would be a government-administered health insurance plan, similar to the insurance currently available to federal employees. It could reduce health care costs in two main ways: i) competition with private insurance companies, ii) using the government's massive purchasing power to negotiate better prices. Not everyone who supports competition is also in favor of driving a hard bargain on prices. A so-called "strong" public option might use both cost-cutting components. An anonymous "senior official" told Politico that President Obama has no plans to insist on a public option when he outlines his vision for health care reform. Pundits reacted to the Politico piece as proof that the president had thrown the public option under the bus, but pundits have the short-term memories of goldfish. We had this same discussion in the week of August 20th, and it wasn't new then. Yesterday's leak is in line with what the White House has been saying for weeks. "No plans to insist" means that the president likes the public option, but he won't threaten to veto a bill that doesn't include one. Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn't consider the public option to be the most important component of health care reform. Here's what's really new: Yesterday, we learned that after months of hovering above the fray, President Obama will finally dive in to the specifics of the health care debate in a special address before Congress on Sept 9. This visit wasn't necessarily supposed to happen. As Mike Lillis observes in the Washington Independent, Obama was initially regarded as a strategic genius for avoiding the Clinton-era "mistake" of getting bogged down in the details of the bill . After a summer of trench warfare, four bills passed their respective committees and we're still waiting on a fifth. The fights have exposed a deep rift between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party and driven a wedge between Obama and his progressive base. Perhaps the biggest drawback of Obama's hands off approach is that administration can't make a positive case for reform because nobody knows what it's going to look like. So, the president has decided to step in and dictate terms to Congress. But White House officials admitted to Politico that they haven't actually decided what the president is going to say in his supposedly pivotal address. The president is in a tough spot. If he's going to pass a bill, he has to placate the conservative Democrats in the Senate and the progressives in the House. As Brian Beutler notes at TPM, a critical mass of House progressives have threatened to vote against any bill that lacks a public option and Speaker Nancy Pelosi warns that she can't pass a bill without one. The president has until Sep 9 to decide which side he's on. This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net . This is a project of The Media Consortium , a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder .
 
Jenny Slate & Nasim Pedrad: 'SNL' Adds Two Cast Members Top
NEW YORK — "Saturday Night Live" will begin its fall season with two new cast members. A person close to the show confirmed that Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad (NAH'-seem PEH'-drad) have joined the show. The person requested anonymity because NBC has not made an official announcement. Both comedians have connections to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, the New York- and Los Angeles-based comedy theater that also birthed the careers of numerous "SNL" cast members. Slate previously partnered with Gabe Liedman for the comedy show "Gabe & Jenny." Pedrad, born in Tehran, Iran, previously had a one-woman show, "Me, Myself & Iran." "SNL" premieres Sept. 26. More on SNL
 
Taxi Cab Explodes In Midtown Manhattan (VIDEO) Top
A taxi cab caught fire before exploding on a crowded Manhattan street this morning. The injury-free incident happened on 53rd and 7th Avenue just after rush hour. NBC New York reports that "a small fire erupted in the car around 9:30 a.m" which then spread to the gas tank "causing the vehicle to explode." More details to come as they emerge... WATCH: Get HuffPost New York On Facebook and Twitter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at NYTips@huffingtonpost.com
 
Tom Ridge: I Avoid Red And Orange Ties Top
"All I wanted was to make sure I didn't wear an orange or red one," adding, "I wish I could say I picked it out, but somebody gave it to me."
 
Michael Henry Adams: A House in the Hamptons?: Historic Vacation Spots of the Black Elite Top
Beautiful, prosperous black Americans at their ease in high-summer; Prince Kunle Omilana and Princess Keisha Omilana It's an iconic notion, the secure Kennedy compoundat Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, that's recently been in the news. Here, season after season, assured of belonging , different generations perennially return 'home' to a settled environment that's steeped in nostalgia, and cosseted in love. Not every American is privileged to enjoy such a special place, surely not most African Americans. But some, seemingly born under an auspicious star, apparently have always gathered to share their leisure pursuits with others who were similarly favored. Even opulent Newport, with its eclectic palaces, called "cottages", had a venerable small collection of black entrepreneurs from Boston and New York, who took up residence during warm weather. Seeking business opportunities among the white elite, soon they constituted an African American aristocracy. The uncontested leader of this group was George T. Downing, son of Thomas Downing, Wall Street's famed oysterman and abolitionist. He had married Serena Leanora de Grasse on November 24, 1841, so that forty years later, surrounded by a large, accomplished, well dressed, brood, with their spouses, the Downings of New York, Newport and Washington, appeared as solid and handsome as any of the nation's most affluent citizens. An abolitionist himself, George Downing built Newport's luxury Sea Grit House Hotel in 1854. He was already Newport's leading confectioner and caterer, working for families like the Wetmores and Kings, who were happily supplied with Downing's esteemed boned turkeys and pickled oysters, that so pleased Queen Victoria, she sent had sent his father a gold watch in thanks. Even an arson fire, destroying his five-storey hotel in 1860, didn't deter him. The most prestigious Downing enterprise was his management of the café and dining room of U.S. House of Representatives at the Capitol. Granting Downing an opportunity to effectively influence policy-makers, as he insisted on serving blacks, after a decade, his concession was taken away. Yet so valued was Downing as a Republican stalwart who could reliably rally black voters, that, in 1903, visiting Newport, before he departed, President Roosevelt made sure to stop to greet George Downing. August is ebbing away and this week the Obamas have finished turning scenic Martha's Vineyard upside down. Having a quick holiday at this secluded resort, they were only emulating the practice of other well-to-do blacks who have been spending summers here for well over a century. "The Vineyard has had standing, socially, among African Americans since after the Civil War" says long-term resident Agnes Louard, a dignified retired educator from New York. A member of Oak Bluffs' vaunted "Polar Bears," Mrs. Louard explains authoritatively how blacks, seeking employment among white Methodists, who popularized open-air revivals called camp-meetings, ultimately imitated their employers by seeking Godly communion and innocent fun on 'the Vineyard' during their time off, too. "At first, like whites, we lived in tents as well, and even after whites built cottages, for years most blacks had only the Shearer Cottage boarding house in which to stay. In the late 1920's Dr. Norman Cotton and his wife Bertha, she came from Boston, and their two daughters, were some of the first of our people to acquire a large house on the water. In those days, apart from Madame C. J. Walker, most 'colored people' didn't have separate vacation homes." The unique "black-owned vacation house," to which Mrs. Louard referred, was Villa Lewaro, the county estate of black America's legendary hair-care and cosmetics magnate, at Irvington, New York. Neighbors, including Roosevelt's, Goulds, Astors, and Rockefellers, were aghast to learn that their exclusive and restricted community had been invaded by a "Negress, building a most pretentious house..." The estate's name was devised by family friend, Enrico Caruso using the first two letters of Madame Walker's name, and of her daughter's, A'Leia Walker Robinson. Designed by New York State's first licensed African American architect, Vertner Woodson Tandy, the Italian Renaissance-style structure derived its distinctive semi-elliptical portico from Mc Kim, Mead & White's nearby Frederick Vanderbilt house: Frank R. Smith, of Righter & Kolb, who decorated Madame Walker's Harlem townhouse, as well as the elegant Fabbri residence on East 95th Street, specially designed furniture for the great hall and dining room at Villa Lewaro, that was manufactured by cabinetmakers Berkley & Gay. Veritably black America's 'White House', during an epoch when most African Americas who had ventured abroad or earned advanced university degrees, felt that they knew each other, for over fifty years Villa Lewaro was in a class by itself. Heir to a portion of the fabled Walker fortune, A'Lelia Ransom Nelson, whose father was the Walker Company's business manager and legal officer, worked and wintered in New York and eventually summered at Oak Bluffs. As faithfully as migrating birds, her daughter, Gill Nelson, the acclaimed writer and son, Stanley Nelson, an award winning film maker, still vacation here. "We gained some political momentum with the arrival of future congressman, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.", boasts Mrs. Louard, relating yet more fascinating Vineyard lore. "In the early thirties he bought a house on the hill for his new wife Isabel, a former Cotton Club and Broadway star. They adoringly called each other Bunny, so their highly hospitable home was named, 'Bunny Cottage'." As I can attest, Mrs. Powell was justly renowned for her Bloody Mary cocktails, the secret ingredient of which was Clamato juice. Hosting celebrities like Mrs. Powell's movie-star sister, Fredi Washington, or Bill 'Bo Jangles' Robinson, the remarkable tap-dancer, the Powell's prominent presence, boating, fishing, cycling, golfing and gardening, 'just like white folks', helped to quickly attract other blacks to Oak Bluffs. Novelist Dorothy West was their next door neighbor and Isabel's sometimes deceitful nemesis, a lesbian who once asked an embarrassed homosexual Langston Hughes "to father her child." Dashing Dr. Binga Dismond, an ardent yachtsman, was a neighbor of the Cottons, both on Harlem's Striver's Row, and at Oak Bluffs. For all their relative ease, in the past, as now, most black men, just as most white men who vacationed on the Vineyard, were merely members of the 'working rich'. Employing cars, planes, trains, helicopters and ferries, usually they could only only join their families on the weekends. By the 1940's however, Dismond and other 'super-rich Negros', such as his Harlem neighbor, Dr. Walter Ivey Delph, and dentist Dr. Chester Redhead began to divide their vacation between the Vineyard and an African American enclave, as historic as Newport's. In time Earl Graves, the publisher, purchased Dr. Delph's house, and E. T. Williams, a successful developer, also moved between Oak Bluffs and Sag Harbor. "Sag Harbor, just beyond the Hamptons, offers blacks a community in close proximity to summer houses of America's white leaders. Moreover, our sheltered public beach in the harbor, is superior to all their private and discriminatory ones" insist Dr. Redhead from the terrace of his modernist hillside house at the water's edge. Mr. Williams and his lovely wife Lyn, who was born and reared in Baltimore, agree. They reside in a compound of several acres, focused on a remolded and extended shingled house from the 1850s, once owned by a black sea captain who hunted sperm-whales for their oily flesh, that was rendered to light lamps. "Apart from slaves at work on Dutch farms, there were black sailors here early on, whose skill had been learned in Africa. Many were free men by the time of the Revolution and some became prosperous owners of property. It was with this background in mind, that Dr. Dismond formed the Azure Rest development, just after the Second World War. Tandy was his architect; and he designed several modern houses on the water for their friends from Harlem. They've mostly been long-altered and several are now owned by whites." "Today," says a smiling Susan Taylor, whose tenure at Essence Magazine is considered as monumental as Diana Vreeland's reign at Vogue , " there's far more freedom. Blacks live everywhere in the Hamptons now, anywhere in the country really, if they wish. Only I'm glad I live in Sag Harbor, where one can not only get Colson Whitehead's book or hear him lecture at the library, but one can ask him over because he lives up the block. Such an old-fashioned, unashamed race-proud sentiment is highly characteristic of the trail-blazing Ms. Taylor. Several years ago, with fellow midtown Manhattan resident, Reggie Van Lee, she made the end-of-summer Hampton's benefit of a small black dance company, into the must-do event, not just for African Americans, but for all discerning Hamptonites! A big blow-out, hosting a thousand, in an enormous semi-public sculpture garden, in years past, Ronald K. Brown's Evidence Dance Company's On Our Toes, in the Hamptons gala was thoughtfully scaled down this season. A graceful pageant, a spectacle of vivid color, against a white backdrop, it was staged poolside, at the serenely contemporary private house of Judge and Mrs. Bernard Jackson, at Watermill. But in order to ease access to local permits, it featured a local caterer, as opposed to Norma Jean Darden. Ms. Darden had always before offered such nice baby lamb chops, curried shrimp and other delectable things to nibble on with one's' refreshing drinks, that Noel Hankin gets Moet-Hennessey to supply. Harriet Cole, of Ebony , from the fashion world, Rene Hunter, accompanied by designer Michael Mc Collom and Steven Robinson, Susan Taylor and her agreeable husband Khephra Burns, the governor's lovely wife Michelle Patterson and actress Lynn Whitfield, looking absolutely marvelous---everyone, who was anyone, with the obvious exception of the Obamas, was there.
 
Mike Lux: The Speech and the Fig Leaf Top
Big Media frequently (usually?) gets it wrong, but their hyping out about the big gamble Obama is making with this health care speech to Congress is actually correct. He is raising the stakes for himself very high, not just through the roof but to the moon and stars. If he fails now to get health care passed, it will be the biggest Presidential level political fiasco since Carter's botched rescue attempt of the hostages in Iran. You have to give the President credit for his courage. The willingness to take big gambles and then make them work is a hallmark of greatness. The confusing thing about what we are hearing about the speech, though, is whether he will be climbing those steps in front of a joint session of Congress and the entire nation, taking the big gamble and giving this profoundly important speech, to call retreat. A speech at the Capitol to a joint session of Congress is like a general bringing out the trumpeters who will, as the great Civil War battle hymn says, never call retreat. It's that call to arms to charge forward, to go boldly and confidently into a new future. Outside of the annual State of the Union speech, these kinds of speeches are reserved for the biggest occasions - when we're going to war, at moments of great national import. But leaks coming out of the White House is that Obama is going to use the speech to announce a "sort of scaled back bill that would focus on insurance reforms that both sides could agree to, but would not have a full public option, instead would have a so-called trigger." Another article discusses an internal debate where, "both camps accept that the administration proposal will be less generous than what has emerged from either the [Senate] HELP or House committees." I'm not sure what to make of all this, but color me skeptical about what is really going on inside the White house right now. In spite of all the macho quotes from anonymous sources (there's something odd about being macho and anonymous at the same time, isn't there?) about the "left of the left" being the problem, and about how great the White House would look if we stood up to the left, the President is way too smart to make a major speech in front of a joint session of Congress in order to call retreat, to pass a bill that, "pretty much everyone can agree to", a bill which most commentators would describe as a big defeat. And he is too smart to give a speech whose main result would be a massive civil war inside the Democratic Party, with House progressives, labor, MoveOn.org, Howard Dean, bloggers and online activists screaming bloody murder and denouncing him as a sell-out. I think the President understands that such a civil war would kill health care reform for good, and hurt him politically a great deal. In spite of all the speculation about this speech offering more specifics, what I am guessing will happen is that Obama will stay with the basic strategy he committed to on this issue in transition: keeping his options open. I think his goal in the speech will be to reframe the issue, make that call to arms to get it done, but instead of burning the bridge between progressive and conservative Democrats, he will try to reinforce the bridge and keep negotiations going by trying to bring his party together. I have always believed, and continue to, that at the end of the day, the House will pass a fairly strong bill with a good public option, and the Senate will pass a mushed-up compromise with less coverage and a trigger or co-op or some other unworkable thing. After that, the final question will be determined by who blinks in conference committee and takes a fig leaf compromise, and who stays resolute until the end. One side will walk away with some phony rhetorical nod that will allow them to go to the media and say they forced a compromise, and one side will win the policy fight. I still believe it could be the good guys. I'm guessing Obama understands the dynamic, and that he will not intentionally blow up the entire process by doing a major, high-stakes speech in front of Congress where he announces that he's decided to give up and go out with a whimper. I think he will give a strong speech about the need to go forward on health care, while continuing to keep his options and the negotiations process moving ahead. I believe this not because I have blind faith and trust in the President, but because I think it's the only path open to him that actually makes political sense right now.
 
Bruce Wilson: Divorce Rate in Gay Marriage-Legal MA Drops To Pre-WWII Level Top
James Dobson Claimed Gay Marriage Would "Destroy the Earth." [ below: A classic 2006 Daily Show episode examines claim that gay marriage has destroyed Massachsusetts. ] The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Mass. Hysteria www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests In an August 20th column for the Chicago Tribune , Steve Chapman writes, Opponents of same-sex marriage reject it on religious and moral grounds but also on practical ones. If we let homosexuals marry, they believe, a parade of horribles will follow -- the weakening of marriage as an institution, children at increased risk of broken homes, the eventual legalization of polygamy and who knows what all. Well, guess what? We're about to find out if they're right. Unlike most public policy debates, this one is the subject of a gigantic experiment, which should definitively answer whether same-sex marriage will have a broad, destructive social impact. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have all decided to let gays wed. Actually, the "experiment" has been running in Massachusetts for fully 1/2 decade now. Over three years ago I wrote a story, " Christian Right Wrong on Gay Marriage ", summing up the apparent non-impact of the then-2 year "experiment". Now, we have 4 consecutive years of data. According to the most recent data from the National Center For Vital Statistics , Massachusetts retains the national title as the lowest divorce rate state, and the MA divorce rate is about where the US divorce rate was in 1940, prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that triggered the US entrance into World War Two. Provisional data from 2008 indicates that the Massachusetts divorce rate has dropped from 2.3 per thousand in 2007 down to about 2.0 per thousand for 2008. What does that mean ? To get a sense of perspective consider that the last time the US national divorce rate was 2.0 per thousand (people) was 1940 . You read that correctly. The Massachusetts divorce rate is now at about where the US divorce rate was the year before the United States entered World War Two. Back in summer 2006, after more than a year of poring over accumulating data I reported what was, to my mind, a foregone conclusion; after two years of legal gay marriage, the Bay State still boasted the lowest divorce rate of any state in the nation. That was notable in light of the absurdly histrionic claims made by leaders on the Christian right that legal gay marriage in Massachusetts would be an "apocalypse" that would destroy the institution of marriage and lead to the destruction of Western Civilization or even the Earth itself. Now Steve Chapman has taken the next step. As he writes in his Chicago Tribune column, I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators -- marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it. You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states. One of the "conservative thinkers" who Chapman tried to solicit a prediction from, Maggie Gallagher, was active in the push to pass California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. Ms. Gallagher later responded, as I describe later in this story, to Mr. Chapman but she has narrowed her predictions dramatically since claiming, in 2003 it would adversely impact marriage and cause a rise in divorce rates. Gallagher new position is, in essence, that gay marriage will cause problems for gay marriage critics. In short, it appears the word is getting out that gay marriage has little impact other then 1) allowing gay couples to marry and 2) providing marriage fees for clerics who conduct such marriage ceremonies. The real question is this -- how long will it take for the truth to diffuse, out into wider society ? [ below: predictions about gay marriage prior to its legalization in Massachusetts ] "marriage bears a real relation to the well-being, health and enduring strength of society" - Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in a February 5, 2004 Wall Street Journal opinion article" "This is an important victory for those of us who wanted to preserve traditional marriage and to make sure that the mistake of Massachusetts doesn't become the mistake of the entire country" - Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, commenting on a March 30, 2006 Massachusetts Supreme Court Ruling barring out of state same sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. "This is only the beginning, if we allow this [ same sex marriage ] to happen we will, in effect, have destabilized the basic institution of our society, which is marriage between a man and a woman" - Brian Camenker, President of the Parents' Rights Coalition, as quoted by MassNews, March 2000 "Taxpayers and businesses should not be compelled to subsidize either homosexual unions or non-marital heterosexual partnerships, both of which undermine the institutions of marriage and family." - Acting President of the Massachusetts Family Institute, Dan Englund, as quoted by MassNews, March 2000 "There is a master plan out there from those who want to destroy the institution of marriage." - Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) during the July 2004 U.S. Senate debate on the "Federal Marriage Amendment". "the sexual revolution led to the decoupling of marriage and procreation; same-sex "marriage" would pull them completely apart, leading to an explosive increase in family collapse...." - Charles Colson, Christianity Today, June 2004 "We must aggressively combat the homosexual effort to destroy the tradition of marriage. This nation is on the precipice of moral devastation." - Jerry Falwell, July 14, 2003 "Pro-homosexuality activists try to portray the success of their cause as inevitable. But it is not. The churches can stand against the tide of relativism and libertinism in our culture. And they can help to reverse the tide, restoring marriage to its proper place of honor" - Former President of The Institute on Religion and Democracy, Dianne Knippers, as quoted on the website of Concerned Women For America "....a person can use his or her right to object out of conscience and refuse to comply with this crime [ gay marriage ] which represents the destruction of the world." - Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, in a May 3, 2005 interview with Fides new service. "Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated. Such conduct violates both the criminal and civil laws of this State and is destructive to a basic building block of society -- the family." - Judge Roy Moore, Feb. 15, 2002 "Marriage is the union between a man and a woman is a truth known to each one of us already, and any attempt to allow same-sex marriages is a detriment to the family unit and hurts our state and nation." - Texas Governor Rick Perry, in an August 2005 mass email to supporters "Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It [ same-sex marriage ] will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth." - James Dobson, Focus on the Family, October 2004 speaking at a rally for OK GOP Senate candidate Tom Coburn "It seems the more people consider the long-term impact of homosexual marriage on the family and society, the more they oppose homosexual marriage," - Dr. Ron Crews, President of The Massachusetts Family Institute, quoted in a January 7, 2004 "Coalition For Marriage" press release "Any redefinition of marriage must be seen as an attack on the common good....I would hope that those who promote same-sex unions will not be so naive as to fail to recognize the impact that redefining marriage will have on American culture....Strengthening marriage in the face of widespread cohabitation and the galloping divorce rate needs to be the concern of every citizen. Radically redefining marriage will simply serve to intensify the assault on marriage and the American family." - Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, October 2, 2003 "just a fraction of a master plan to destroy everything that is good and moral here in America." - description of the gay rights movement, from an early 1980's fundraising letter sent by Robert C. Grant of the group "Christian Voice" Those predictions above, made prior to the May 17, 2004 court decision that made gay marriage legal in Massachusetts, represent the spectrum of dire claims made about the allegedly disastrous impact gay marriage would have on the Bay State, American society, the family, Western Civilization, and the World. "Global thermonuclear war" could have been inserted in place of "gay marriage" in some of the quotes and they would have made more sense. After the June 26, 2003 Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas , which struck down Texas' anti-sodomy law, Gallagher wrote , at the National Review Online, that "We are poised to lose the gay-marriage battle badly. It means losing the marriage debate. It means losing limited government. It means losing American civilization." Six years later, American civilization appears to be more or less intact. Gallagher also made more specific claims: "The good news is that a marriage recovery appears to be on its way: Rates of divorce have dropped, illegitimacy is leveling off, marital fertility is on the rise, adult commitment to marital permanence is increasing, and the next generation's dislike of divorce is rising; the consensus that children do better when parents get and stay married is now broad, if shallow. The bad news is that gay marriage will gut this marriage movement, and reverse these gains." But legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts appears to have no effect on the Massachusetts divorce rate. That poses a big problem for highbrow critics of gay marriage such as Gallagher -- who has come up with a new list of the alleged horribles that legal gay marriage will spawn. In a Thursday, August 20th column at the National Review Online, Maggie Gallagher responded to Steve Chapman's request for predictions about the tangible effect gay marriage might have in the future but her new predictions aren't about the wider societal impact and amount to this: the success of gay legal marriage, as an institution, will cause problems for critics of gay marriage. Here are Gallagher's predictions: 1. In gay-marriage states, a large minority people committed to traditional notions of marriage will feel afraid to speak up for their views, lest they be punished in some way. 2. Public schools will teach about gay marriage. 3. Parents in public schools who object to gay marriage being taught to their children will be told with increasing public firmness that they don't belong in public schools and their views will not be accomodated [sic] in any way. 4. Religous institutions will face new legal threats (especially soft litigation threats) that will cause some to close, or modify their missions, to avoid clashing with the government's official views of marriage (which will include the view that opponents are akin to racists for failing to see same-sex couples as married). 5. Support for the idea "the ideal for a child is a married mother and father" will decline. In a similar way, Galileo's insistence that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice-versa caused problems for opponents of the Heliocentric theory such as the Catholic Church. But, in time the Church learned accept the new outlook because scientific data supported it. So, perhaps there's hope that Maggie Gallagher and other critics of gay marriage may yet come to accept that after a half decade of legal gay marriage in Massachusetts, life continues as before. More on Mitt Romney
 
Sen. Fritz Hollings: Still Campaigning Top
From time to time I am asked the difference between being Governor and Senator. Senators and Congressmen are constant campaigners. Governors are doers. Coming to the Congress, Senators have taken a poll; they know the issues, and the first thing a pollster will tell you is don't split or divide the voters. You're trying to get the most votes possible so identify with the issue; make a favorable comment on both sides, and say you are "troubled" or "concerned" over the issue. The game of a Senator is "I introduced," "I sponsored," "I made a talk." Identify early on with the policy or issue, never having any idea about implementing the policy. In short, the pollster will teach you not to lead. Only identify. And survival in the Congress will have you constantly campaigning for money and re-election. As Governor, the crazy Legislature might give you what you propose, and then what are you going to do? How are you going to implement? How are you going to see it through, make it work? The first order of a Governor or President is to sit down and think it through. Assume the policy or program has passed Congress and now you've got to make it work. You begin to think how you can avoid trouble; smooth over troubling issues; beat the regular opposition; take care of the sore-heads in your own party, and head-count. If you don't have a pretty good chance of enactment, you never propose. A President's time is limited and he's got no time like a member of Congress identifying or hit-and-run driving important needs. He has to lead for the real needs of the country. You'll never find the real needs of the country in a poll because the pollster avoids asking questions -- for example, about taxes. When has a pollster asked: "Do you believe that the government ought to pay for the government it provides?" You'll never find a Marshall Plan in a poll. But the people will let you know. I watched the Obama campaign develop. We in South Carolina had lost textile jobs long before Paulson's stimulus last September. Obama won the primary, but he and the other candidates never mentioned the devastation of "free trade" or jobs lost from imports. In the Presidential forum, questions on trade or jobs were never asked. But by the time the candidates reached Pennsylvania and Ohio, that's all they were asked. Obama even gave out pins with his picture and the slogan "Buy America." The will and the needs of the people had come through. That's what's coming through now. Most think the upset at town hall meetings is over health care. But it's mostly over jobs and the economy. President Obama is mentioning creating jobs with a stimulus that is spent because we spent the last eight years stimulating the economy or doubling the debt $5 trillion. He never mentions the loss of jobs in the trade war. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a cheaper country to produce. The textile industry, the furniture industry, the automobile industry, was lost long before Paulson stimulated. Now they talk of an oxymoron - a jobless recovery. The voters were up tight last November at Obama's election. They were sick and tired of the hit-and-run "identifiers" from Congress and settled on a smart, capable, hard-working individual whom they thought would listen and lead. Obama finally listened in the campaigns of Ohio and Pennsylvania, but he's gone back to the pollstered handlers of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. They have him out campaigning around the clock. Axelrod and Emanuel act like re-election is tomorrow; they want to handle the six o'clock news, the day-to-day headline. They have no idea of getting anything done. For example, they had President Obama make his first announcement to close Guantanamo. No idea of getting it done, Guantanamo is now on hold. Responding to an underground move to get at Cheney's abuses, they had Obama rush out to the CIA and assure the agents that they were not going to be made criminals. Now, Obama's Attorney General is investigating the agents for crime. And, of course, health care. They enlisted Speaker Pelosi because she acts like an executive. With limited time and control in the House of Representatives she can get things done. She got it done. Now all hell's broken loose. We have a mess. I thought I could help with the elimination of the corporate tax and replacing it with a 5% VAT. A 3% VAT is better than tax-neutral. It actually cuts corporate taxes. It allows business to produce 22% cheaper and export 27% cheaper. Instead of cutting Medicare and increasing several other taxes, a 1% more VAT would pay for health care. An additional 1% will allow exemptions for a VAT on essentials and begin paying down the debt. No doubt a winner! Except for Corporate America. The financial crowd, that got the country in trouble in the first place -- the big banks, Wall Street, and Corporate America have no regard for the economy of the United States. They are interested in continuing to make big profits in China and India and the economies of China and India. Eliminating the corporate tax would make them go to work and worry about unions instead of a guaranteed profit in China. Some on the corporate board may suggest that they start producing again, creating jobs in the United States. But the CEO in charge has got three years to get the stock up, show big profits, and he wants to continue in China for his bonus and golden parachute. So Corporate America and the financial crowd oppose cutting their taxes. This is the crowd with the money for campaigns. I made this tax cut proposal to pay for health care to friends in Congress. But Axelrod, Emanuel, President Obama and my friends in Congress have got to get the money for the campaign. Jobs and the economy will have to wait. The CEO of Boeing is reported to favor moving Boeing's production to China. I knew we needed the automobile industry to make the tanks like we did in World War II. But if the airport industry that has succeeded with government research and government subsidies is now moving to China -- veritably moving the economy to China -- we just as well close the Pentagon, rent it out to the lobbyists, and move the government to China, because we can't defend the country. A few years ago, Barack Obama campaigned for the Illinois Legislature and got elected. Once in the Legislature, he campaigned for Congress and lost. Then he campaigned and got re-elected to the Legislature. Then he campaigned for the U. S. Senate and got elected. Once in the Senate, he campaigned for the Presidency and got elected. President Obama's principal experience in government is campaigning. But now as President, he's got to govern. The President will have to do a lot of campaigning his fourth year in office. But for the first three years he should stay in Washington and figure out how to head the country in the right direction. Otherwise, his fourth year he'll be headed in the wrong direction. More on Barack Obama
 
Byron Williams: Still Clinging to the Barbarity of the Death Penalty Top
Regardless of where you come down on the death penalty, Cameron Todd Willingham is a name you should not forget. In this week's New Yorker, investigative reporter David Grann writes a very convincing article that Willingham, who was executed by the state of Texas in 2004, was most likely an innocent man. Willingham was convicted of murdering his three children by setting fire to his wood-frame house in Corsicana, Texas. The first problem Willingham faced was an inability to afford legal representation. Death rows across the country are filled with those who must rely on public defenders. After reading Willingham's story in The New Yorker, one can't help but ask, at a minimum, have innocent people been executed? It is a question death-penalty advocates are unable to address without sinking to the depths of the gruesome and barbaric. Since it is impossible to avoid error, the only way one can support the death penalty is to suggest that we have expendable portions of society. That may sound over-the-top, but what else could explain supporting a policy that is costly, inefficient, economically subjective and, if carried out, offers no adequate recourse should the ultimate mistake be made? There is no dependable data that proves the death penalty saves lives, as some would suggest. But it has been proven that capital punishment is more costly than life without the possibility of parole because of the expensive appeal process. This leaves some death-penalty advocates to suggest limiting the appeal process. This option -- which is a proven applause line on the campaign trail -- reveals the extent to which some people are willing to go to maintain a system that does not work. Anyone who cavalierly recommends reducing the appeal process is, in effect, arguing on behalf of the best way to ensure more innocent people are put to death. Since 1976, more than 130 individuals on death row have been exonerated. DNA testing, which was developed in the 1980s, has definitely changed the dynamics. But DNA testing is used sparingly. Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, which has used DNA testing to exonerate prisoners, estimates that roughly 80 percent of felonies do not involve biological evidence. In 2000, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan exonerated 13 individuals on death row and then suspended the state's death penalty. Ryan had been a longtime advocate of capital punishment, but he declared that he could no longer support a system that has "come so close to the ultimate nightmare -- the state's taking of innocent life." Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has said that the "execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event." But our continued support of the death penalty suggests that it is not intolerable. A majority of Californians still favor the death penalty, but a new public-opinion poll by UC Professor Craig Haney reveals that support for capital punishment has eroded significantly since 1989, the last time a detailed statewide survey on the topic was conducted. Sixty-six percent of 800 respondents in the new poll expressed support for the death penalty, compared to 79 percent in 1989. Haney's findings are consistent with the findings of a recent statewide Field Poll that asked one question about capital punishment. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to that survey support the death penalty, the Field Poll found. The proportion of adult Californians who view themselves as "strong" supporters of the death penalty has dropped from 50 percent in 1989 to 38 percent today. Conversely, fewer than 9 percent were "strongly opposed" to capital punishment 20 years ago, compared to 21 percent today. "These changes appear to be related to changes in the way Californians view the system of death sentencing, rather than just the punishment itself," said Haney. It is easy to parse out the most heinous crimes as Exhibit A as to why we need to maintain the death penalty. Public policy, however, cannot be based on the exception. Continued support of a system that can possibly execute an innocent person means there is an error percentage higher than zero that one is willing to live with. If there can be no perfect system, why not discontinue the barbarity? That way, on the rare occasion that an innocent person is wrongfully convicted, there remains the possibility of proving that person's innocence while that person is still alive. Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist and blog-talk radio host. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his Web site: byronspeaks.com
 
Some Schools Excusing Kids From Obama's Back-To-School Speech Top
Some suburban school districts were kept busy Wednesday clarifying their positions on a controversial back-to-school Webcast next Tuesday by President Barack Obama. More on Barack Obama
 
Heather Robinson: The Scots and the Terrorist: He That Pities the Brute Top
Commentator Thomas Sowell does a great job in his column this week unpacking the misguided and dangerous thinking behind the Scottish government's foolish and immoral decision to release Abdel Baset al-Megrahi -- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb sent 270 innocent people to their horrific deaths over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Sowell quotes philosopher/economist Adam Smith: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." Like many a profound truth, this one has been articulated by more than one great thinker. One insight I recall from my abbreviated Sunday school career was spoken by a Jewish sage: "He that pities the brute is a brute to those deserving pity." The Torah also says, "In the eyes of a righteous man, a vile person is despised." In today's world of moral relativism, the imperative to forgive at all costs is viewed as an automatic virtue--at least in polite company. But the people doing the forgiving (and in this case, the freeing) on behalf of the rest of us seem more likely to choose, as beneficiaries of their benevolence, those who commit acts of abject, irrevocable evil than lesser offenders. For instance, there have been rumors that Bernard Madoff, perpetrator of history's largest investment fraud, may be dying of cancer. If such rumors turn out to be true, will anyone dare to suggest Madoff be allowed to die at home by the side of his wife Ruth? I doubt it. Ask most people, and they will vehemently insist Bernard Madoff is pure evil, an unrepentant sociopath. Perhaps he is. But Madoff robbed people of their money, not of their lives. Whereas al-Megrahi plotted the murder of 270 innocent people and robbed them, and their families, of those lives forever. It seems pity is all too often reserved for people who commit acts of absolute, irrevocable evil. The worse the offense, the more automatic must be the mercy towards the perpetrator. Perhaps the logic is that acts of unmitigated evil are so difficult to comprehend, their perpetrators must be insane, and therefore deserving of pity. Even if there is some grain of psychological truth in this formulation (and I'm not convinced there is), how is it a sound basis for making policy or legal decisions? What sort of message does this bizarre reasoning send to those contemplating evil acts? What sort of harm does it do to the innocent families of the innocent victims? Yesterday British newspapers reported some background suggesting the Scottish government's decision may have had more to do with coin than compassion: Lord Trefgarne, a senior member of Britain's House of Lords, wrote to Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill in July "to say the bomber's fate was of 'grave concern' to a lobbying group he chairs, the Libyan British Business Council. The council includes petroleum giants like Shell and BP," according to The New York Post. So in some cases, the motives behind all this forgiveness are probably just old-fashioned corruption. The sage and the philosopher of yore saw clearly what befuddles our modern social engineers. Pitying brutes tends to backfire. And it is the innocent who pay the price. Heather Robinson also blogs at www.heatherrobinson.net. More on Bernard Madoff
 
Chez Pazienza: What a Long, Strange, Thoroughly Obnoxious Trip It's Been 2: Battle Lines Top
Oh the sheer volume of e-mail I've been getting over the past 48 hours from outraged Boomers and Woodstock-philes. I thought those guys were supposed to be all about peace and love. I'm not going to bother addressing every single complaint I've received or every issue taken with the piece I posted two days. I won't get into how the nonsense I write is, above all, designed to entertain, provoke and make people laugh -- and how even semi-regular readers should be able to spot when I'm being deadly serious and when I'm purposely amplifying my opinion on a subject just to see who I can poke with a stick. But I will expound on one quick point hinted at in the middle of all that "disgusting, megalomaniacal venom" (as one reader so poetically put it) published here and at my own site on Tuesday. I'll do this because a lot of people latched onto what was essentially a throw-away line and used it to really hammer me -- and I feel like it might be a good idea to clarify exactly what I was getting at. The line in question was this one: "...It can easily be argued that the real reason for the Vietnam protests in the first place was that none of the hippies wanted to get stuck going to war -- 'cause, wow, bummer man." First of all, at its core this was mostly me being a glib smart-ass. Of course it was an oversimplified generalization of what was happening on the streets of America during the Vietnam war -- and I freely admit that it bordered on being in bad taste. (Once again, what do you expect from a guy who lists himself as a "Guitar Hero" in his bio?) But there actually was and is a point worth making about the Vietnam protests as organized and carried out by the Woodstock generation I was so gleefully lambasting -- the people young enough at the time to risk being drafted and sent overseas. Let me explain it by way of a personal belief of mine (it's one I've also heard Bill Maher espouse): You don't get to call yourself courageous when your actions are essentially being undertaken to save your own ass. Specifically, if you were of draft age in the late 60s and were protesting the Vietnam war, there's a pretty good chance that the impetus for all your outrage at the injustice being perpetrated on the other side of the world -- and make no mistake, Vietnam was absolutely an immoral, unjust, thoroughly unnecessary war -- wasn't so much your conscience as it was the desire not to wind up in a body bag. Yes, of course you didn't want to see innocents die, be they American or Vietnamese, and you certainly understood that 'Nam was a political miasma above all else. But would any of this really have spurred you to action the way the potential threat of losing your own life could? You would've been angry and indignant, yes, but to the point where you were willing to face down a phalanx of riot cops, burn a government document or surreptitiously kite off to Canada? Would you really have taken such drastic measures had you not been so personally affected by what was going on in Vietnam? Let me answer for myself (and the Woodstock crowd will no doubt claim that this is the chicken-shit nature of my generation, running and hiding while theirs would just as soon have stood up and fought for what was right): If I thought I was gonna be drafted to go get blown up in the jungle somewhere, I might very well be out in the street raising holy hell, calling every political figure currently in power a war criminal. I protested Iraq, but I admit that I rallied with nowhere near the ferocity that I would have had my own rear end been on the line. The threat of imminent death to yourself or those closest to you whom you love -- your friends, brothers, boyfriends, etc. -- tends to really put things in perspective. Incidentally, do me the favor of not lecturing me on how many of those who protested Vietnam were in college and therefore theoretically may have been subject to exemption. Regardless, the knowledge that all it would take was one slip-up on your part -- or an escalation on the part of the government -- to suddenly land your ass on a bus to Parris Island must've felt like the proverbial Damocletian sword hanging over your head 24/7. Once again, would I be marching in the street and/or doing drugs by the handful if I thought that's what the future might hold for me or someone close to me? Probably. If the end justifies the means, then regardless of the reason, the Vietnam war protests were an unquestionable good. My issue as stated two days ago was never really about that anyway; it was about how that brand of protest -- the crazy street fair as effective activism -- has been held up as the standard to which all protests since the 60s must, ironically, conform. It goes back to my central argument in the piece -- that those who lived through the 1960s believe that their way of doing things was and still is the right way because, well, it worked back then. The fact is, that kind of activism doesn't really work anymore -- mostly because the political power structure in this country doesn't fear the individual anymore. It fears numbers. It fears group-think. Regardless of what the "right way" to protest these days may be, why weren't the protests against the war in Iraq larger and smarter than they actually were (when God knows they should've been)? Because hundreds of thousands of young people -- the ones right up the street from you, maybe even you yourself -- weren't in danger of being forced to go to war. Which leads to one final question, and it's a tough one: Given what we can now witness firsthand, live on TV and the internet, about the horrors of war -- will this country ever see another conflict that mobilizes an entire generation of American kids to march willingly into battle, without protest? You do a lot of thinking about just what's worth dying for when it's you who's being told -- not asked, told -- to put your life on the line. More on Vietnam
 
Akituusaq, Rare Walrus Born In Captivity, Dies At Coney Island Aquarium Top
NEW YORK — A young walrus that was among only a handful ever born in captivity has died at a New York City aquarium. Officials at the New York Aquarium on Brooklyn's Coney Island say Pacific walrus Akituusaq (ah-kee-TOO'-sak) died Tuesday of pneumonia despite around-the-clock attention from veterinarians. The walrus was born at the aquarium in the spring of 2007 and beat the odds by living a little over two years. It was one of only five born in captivity known to have survived the first year. New York Aquarium director Jon Forrest Dohlin says the staff is "deeply saddened." The walrus is survived at the aquarium by its mother, Kulusiq (KOO'-loo-sik), and another walrus born in 1982. Its father died last year at about age 14.
 
Mayor Bloomberg Wants To Outlaw Carrying Guns While Drunk Top
NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to make it illegal in New York City to possess a firearm while drunk.
 
Dwight Gomas, Wrongfully Accused Inmate, Spent 17 Months In Rikers Because Of Botched Fingerprints Top
An innocent Georgia man spent 17 months on Rikers Island on robbery charges before a sharp-eyed detective noticed he was the victim of mismatched fingerprints, the Daily News has learned.
 
Anna Burger: Change to Win: Mobilizing for a New American Dream Top
Our economy is transforming. Bailouts to big banks and shameless corporate greed have left us with a faltering economy, a weak job market and crumbling financial system that has made workers more vulnerable than ever. In order to put workers back on the path of prosperity, we need to build a new American economy where the jobs of the 21st century are good, middle class jobs. The jobs at Wal-Mart, in nursing homes, in our growing fields and warehouses, in weatherizing and retrofitting our buildings, and for those who care for us at our hospitals and in our hotels. The American Dream is realized or lost at work. Good jobs that provide paychecks that allow working families to buy cars, homes and educational opportunities are the foundation of the American Dream. Workers are demanding government action to implement progressive legislation that brings back balance and fairness: the Employee Free Choice Act, real health care reform, investment in a clean energy economy, and financial regulatory reform. Workers will accept no less than a new American Dream. With Labor Day rapidly approaching and the Congressional recess coming to an end, we are on the verge of witnessing some of the most critical debates in our nation's history, and the unions of Change to Win will be on the frontlines to fight for the reforms that will strengthen America's middle class and rebuild the economy. We will mobilize to move America forward so that we all prosper and create an economy and country that we are proud to leave to the next generation. Despite the hardships, there are signs of hope and renewed determination emerging across the country. In the past year, we helped elected a new President who places the well-being of working families at the core of his leadership and policies. And we have seen the labor movement grow for the first time in years, showing that when workers are given the choice, they choose to join together in unions. Workers at the largest pork processing plant ratified their first union contract after a 15 year battle -- improving wages, benefits and working conditions for thousands of workers. The Teamsters organized more than 43,000 workers in 2008, the most in a single year in more than 50 years. The union expects to exceed that number in 2009. They are also collaborating with environmental allies Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council in an innovative program to clean up trucking in our nation's ports. 13,000 home care attendants in Missouri's consumer directed home care program voted to join the Missouri Home Care Union. The UFCW along with a broad coalition of labor, environmental and community groups launched a new campaign challenging Wal-Mart to support the American Values Agenda for Change, including worker rights, quality jobs, equal opportunity, corporate responsibility and a healthy environment. The Laborers' International Union is engaged in a nationwide effort to train and organize thousands of workers in green jobs such as home weatherization. A new worker movement is building in the Inland Empire region of California among warehouse workers who are standing up to the biggest retailers in the nation: Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, and Sears/Kmart. A strong labor movement is at the heart of American prosperity. Decades ago, America's workers fought to bring us the eight-hour work day and the weekend, health care and paid vacations, safe jobs and pensions to retire on. America's unions helped create the middle class. Today, America's unions will reignite that same spirit and determination to give all working families a stronger voice in the workplace, in our communities, and in the global economy. We will not sit by the wayside. We are a movement in motion. More on Labor
 
Jeff Danziger: Late Summer Baseball Top
More on Baseball
 
Enzi On Health Reform: "I'm Pretty Sure It's Going To Fail" Top
Despite continuing to claim he's working on bipartisan health care reform, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) has been quoted, yet again, condemning the effort. The latest evidence comes from an Americans for Prosperity event on environmental legislation, following the White House's recognition of the his intransigence. Via Think Progress : Enzi and John Barrasso, Wyoming's delegation in the U.S. Senate, have been among the leaders of those opposing the cap and trade legislation, which Enzi referred to as a "cap and tax." It is a "hidden tax" in which the government will print and sell certificates to companies who will pass the expense on to customers, Enzi said. [...] Congress won't start serious work on cap and trade until after the health care bill is taken care of. That (the health care bill) is going to take awhile and I'm pretty sure it's going to fail, Enzi said. Further undermining Enzi's stated desire for a deal is this news from Greg Sargent : A top official with a committed anti-reform group tells me that Mike Enzi, one of those GOP Senators, strongly suggested at an event hosted by the group that he would oppose whatever proposal emerged from the Gang of Six talks. Ultimately, Sen. Enzi's comments seem to suggest that his commitment to achieving bipartisan health care reform legislation is about as strong as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's commitment to his marriage vows. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Mark Sanford
 
Nathan Lewis: The IMF Destroys Iceland and Latvia Top
The International Monetary Fund operates primarily as a banker bailout machine. They cajole and tempt and confuse and threaten the leaders of governments worldwide to pay off the failed bets of the big bankers using the taxpayer funds of their countries. This has been going on a long time, at least since the early 1980s. Thus, I am not in the teeniest bit surprised that the same thing is happening today in Iceland and Latvia. This article by Michael Hudson has some of the details: For the past decade Iceland has been a kind of controlled experiment, an extreme test case of neoliberal free-market ideology. ... Is there a limit, a point at which government will draw a line against taking on public responsibility for private debts beyond any reasonable capacity to pay without drastically slashing public spending on education, health care and other basic services? ... The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations , and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings. Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts -- Iceland's bankrupt Kaupthing and Landsbanki with its Icesave accounts, and heavily debt-leveraged property owners and privatizers in the Baltics and Central Europe -- but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders. This is the trick: replacing private debts with public obligations. Lots of people loaned money to banks and corporations in Iceland. They are now facing huge losses. What is supposed to happen here is: they take their losses. There was no government guarantee. Why should someone with no relation to this business deal have to pay off their losses just because they happen to live in Iceland? The government of Iceland may not actually have the money to pay this off. They would have to borrow it. When the IMF makes a "rescue loan" to a government, the money spends no time in Iceland or Latvia. It goes directly to the foreign creditors, in places like New York and London. However, the debts remain, to be paid off by the taxpayers of Iceland. Taxes rise, which just makes a bad economic situation worse. Valuable and important services are cut -- precisely when they are most needed. Then, the IMF "advisors" come in and start to make a lot of demands. For example, they may demand that the government sell off "public infrastructure" and the assets of failed banks (which still have considerable value) to pay off the loans which were used to bail out the bankers in New York and London. Who buys this "public infrastructure"? Typically, it's the bankers in New York and London! Normally, at very good prices -- very, very good prices. Extraordinarily good prices. Prices for assets in a crisis are normally very low. But, a government that can be coerced into bailing out the bankers can also usually be coerced into selling off state assets at values that no private owner would accept. Hudson calls this "neoliberal free-market ideology." Of course, it has nothing to do with the principles of capitalism. You could call it a form of fascist imperialism. I think John Perkins , author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The History of the American Empire , would agree with this terminology. It is hard to tempt and cajole and confuse world leaders when you use unpleasant terms like "fascist imperialism." That's why these proposals are camouflaged with labels like "neoliberal free-market principles," when they have nothing to do with free-market principles. It's not about "conservative" and "liberal." It's about us against the banker imperialists. The IMF should be abolished. More on Iceland
 
Gayle Greene: To Med or Not to Med Top
If you're in the sleep medication business, these are not bad times economically: sales of sleep meds are up. But if you're a person facing the question, to med or not to med, you may be confused. We hear a lot of contradictory claims: hype, on the one hand, assurances made by advertising and some doctors that there's no problem taking sleep meds, and scare stories, on the other hand: look at Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger. How to sort through the hype and the hysteria to make a decision that's right for you? As someone who's struggled with insomnia all my life, I face the question on a nightly basis, whether it's better to tough it out without sleep or reach for a sleep med. As the author of INSOMNIAC , a first person account of living with insomnia, I spent six years researching sleep meds, and may have some information that will help. I'd advise turning to meds as a last resort, after you're tried everything else, a final line of action rather than a first. They're not demon drugs, but neither are they harmless. They require thought and attention. No sleep med on the market today is problem-free. None gives deep, natural sleep through the night and keeps on working indefinitely. All interfere with the structure of sleep, so that if we take them continuously, we may be robbing ourselves of the restorative benefits of sleep. Most have adverse effects on memory and coordination. Some may be addictive. But for me, living on the 2-4 hours that seems to be my lot is just too awful -- so sleep meds are a part of my life. If you decide to go this route, find a doctor who will work with you -- no mean feat, since doctors are caught in the same hype and hysteria that infects so much thinking about medications. You may meet the kind of doctor who whips out a prescription pad before you've stopped talking, and sends you out of the office with a drug that's wildly inappropriate; or you may come up against the censorious doctor who makes you feel like a junkey for asking for a sleep aid. Most of us have encountered these extremes. As for the doc who makes you feel like a criminal, it may help to know that hypnotics, as FDA-approved sleep meds are called, are drugs regulated in a way that makes many doctors reluctant to prescribe them. They are regulated by the Controlled Substances Act, which categorizes substances according to their medical uses and potential for abuse and dependence. They're "schedule IV," which is better than I, II, or III, but still, these are controlled substances, under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. FDA guidelines suggest limiting the use of most hypnotics to seven to ten days up to a maximum of a month, yet many of us take them for much longer. When they're prescribed for more than a month, the doctor is at legal risk. Antidepressants -- which include the older drugs like Elavil, Deseryl (trazodone), and the newer SSRIs, Paxil, Zoloft -- are not "controlled substances," which may be one reason they're so often prescribed for sleep. These work for some people, but not others. For me, they're disastrous: they fog my brain, speed my heart, and don't help my sleep. But no two people react to a drug the same way -- even antihistamines, the staple of most over the counter sleep remedies and of cold medicines like Benedryl, are unpredictable, working like a soporific for some people and like speed for others. Someday, perhaps, a doctor will be able to take a blood test, assess your DNA, and with this information, be able to tailor a prescription precisely to you. But for now, no doctor can guess how a drug will work for you -- only you can be the judge of that. You have to be willing to come back and say, can I try something else? And for that, you need a doctor who's willing to stick with you through trial and error. Then, find out what you're putting in your body. Read the package insert, get on the web and find out all you can about it. Know what category of drugs the medication belongs to, the effects it's likely to have. (There are user-friendly, reliable Web sites that have information on drugs, listed below, and also sites like Sleepnet and TalkaboutSleep and Sleepstarved -my own site--where people talk about their experiences with drugs.) The longer acting drugs, the benzodiazepines (Ativan, Valium, Restoril,) are more likely to get you through the night, but may also leave you hungover the next day, since they hang around the system longer, and may also be more addictive. The shorter-acting, so-called non-benzodiazepines (Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata), may be out of your system so fast that they don't get you through the night, though a low dose may help get you back to sleep when you wake up after a few hours. (That's the way I use Ambien; but if you use a med this way, be careful to allow time for the effect to wear off before you have to swing into action the next day.) Then, if you continue taking a med for any length of time, keep tabs on yourself. Make sure it's not affecting your personality or mood. If you begin to feel not yourself, consider that it may be the med. Ambien, though it agrees with me, can have some pretty weird effects: people waking up to find candy bar wrappers and crumbs in their bed, having telephone conversations they don't remember, driving and not remembering. Sometimes this happens because you've taken too much of the drug, or for too long, or mixed it with alcohol, or because you've taken it before you left the office or the party and driven home. (Never take a sleep med anywhere but in bed, when you are about to go to sleep!) Or, it may happen simply because you react bizarrely to this drug. "These drugs do things we do not understand," as Daniel Kripke says, whose website, The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills , may put you off them forever. So, try around to find out what works, then monitor yourself--then manage the drug. Take as little as you can to get by with, even if the bottle tells you to take more. The smallest dose is always the best dose. Drugs lose their effect over time, and if you start high, you'll habituate faster--and be more likely to become dependent. Try taking a break from the med; consider alternating it with another type of drug, say, a short-acting non-benzo with an antihistamine. Make sure the dose doesn't creep up. Be careful of creative combinations: that's what did in Jackson and Ledger. The good news is that there's wider choice of drugs than there used to be -- the several kinds of antidepressants, the older and newer benzos and non-benzos, the over the counter antihistamines -- and this makes it likelier that you'll find something that suits your biochemistry. The bad news is that nobody knows what any sleep med does over time -- they haven't been tested over time. Only two FDA approved sleep meds, Lunesta and Rozerem, have been okayed for indefinite use, and even these have not been tested for anything like the duration many of us take them. We're between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to meds. Lack of sleep is bad for mood, health, and memory; sleep meds may be bad for memory, health, and sometimes bad for mood. Only you can do the risk benefit calculations to decide whether the risk is worth the benefit to you. But if you're careful, and lucky, you may find some med that works for you. Websites: www.webmd.com , www.pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx , www.mayoclinic.com/index.cfm , www.medem.com , www.sleepstarved.org , www.sleepnet.com , www.talkaboutsleep.com http://health.ucsd.edu/news/2002/FNbookPILL.pdf More on Sleep
 
Security Assigned To Oversee Deviant Guards At US Embassy In Kabul Top
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer KABUL - The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has banned alcohol and assigned American personnel to watch over the embassy's security guards following allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. An independent watchdog group alleged this week guards hired by a private contractor were threatened and intimidated at their offsite living quarters, and photos were released of guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with booze. The State Department inspector general is leading an investigation of the contractor, ArmorGroup North America. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry held a meeting with embassy staff on Thursday to discuss the situation, said embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. "We've already started to make changes to remedy some of the problems," Hayden said. Alcohol has been prohibited at Camp Sullivan -- the offsite location where ArmorGroup guards live -- and diplomatic security staff have been assigned to the camp, the embassy said. The embassy "will continue to take every possible step to ensure the safety and security of American Embassy personnel, while respecting the values of all Afghans, Americans and contract employees and visitors from other countries," an embassy statement said. The ArmorGroup security personnel guard the gates to the embassy road and perimeter and screen visitors. The Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group, said the nearly 450 ArmorGroup guards live and work in an oppressive environment in which they are subjected to hazing and other inappropriate behavior by supervisors. In at least one case, supervisors brought prostitutes into the quarters where the guards live, a serious breach of security and discipline, the group said this week. In other instances, members of the guard force drew Afghans into activities forbidden by Muslims, such as drinking alcoholic beverages, it said. The situation led to a breakdown in morale and leadership that has compromised security at the embassy, where nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work, according to the nonprofit group. The embassy has been targeted in insurgent rocket attacks, and suicide bombs have exploded at or near its gates. Militant attacks have risen across Afghanistan the last three years. In the latest violence, Britain's defense ministry said a soldier was killed Wednesday in a bomb attack in Helmand province. The death raised the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 211. More on Afghanistan
 
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: SEC's Tough Talk Won't Stop Madoff Flim Flams Top
The 450 page SEC report on Bernie Madoff's flim flam simply says what a college freshman business student could've figured out and that's that the SEC turned a blind eye toward Madoff's crooked wheels and deals. Investigators knew he was a fraud. Whistleblowers said he was a fraud (and that included a family member). Reporting agencies documented that he was a fraud. Yet there was the SEC's blind eye. SEC Chair Mary Schapiro and House Democrats have practically sworn on a stack of bibles that this sordid and slimy history is all done with. Schapiro tells everyone who'll listen that her new hard nosed SEC regulations guarantee that another Bernie Madoff type financial flim-flam can't happen. The pending regulations impose tough new reporting requirements, a hawk like oversight of funds, accounts and the managers that run them, streamlined investigation procedures, oodles of whistleblowers encouraged with generous bounties to spill the beans, a spanking new staff and a bulging budget. The problem is that these things were more or less in place when Madoff stiffed hundreds of unsuspecting investors out of their nickels and dimes and millions. What it comes down to in order to ensure there's no more Madoff type shenanigans has less to do with the SEC having more money, more staff, and more rules but the political will to crack the whip effectively on the Wall Street greed merchants. This means thorough investigations, prosecutions, and slapping big fines and jail sentences on lawbreakers. This has been a totally foreign concept to the SEC. It may still be. The red flags fly high on the new SEC reforms. Congress still has to approve the sweeping new changes. Despite congressional posturing and Wall Street saber rattling, it's not a slam dunk. In July Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, praised Schapiro but also warned that before comprehensive financial reform legislation is passed that Congress needed to know exactly how Madoff organized his business operations and how he perpetrated these frauds. How he perpetrated his frauds! That's been amply documented in the hours of court testimony and rulings, legions of SEC reports, whistleblower revelations, and packs of investor statements and depositions. Then there's the history of the SEC's sweetheart hand hold with Wall Street. The snuggle up between the regulator and regulated starts with who's minding the SEC store. The cross traffic between Wall Street financial analysts, lawyers, and accountants have been well documented. Many of them work for a time at the SEC and then land lucrative gigs at Wall Street financial firms. The ties that bind was on obscene display when former SEC assistant director Eric Swanson romantically wined and dined Madoff's niece, who just happened to be of all things a compliance attorney at Madoff Investment Securities. A former SEC investigator Gary Aguirre, zeroed in on the SEC-Wall Street hand hold when he investigated an alleged insider trading scam by Pequot Capital a few years back. Aguirre screamed that SEC officials blocked him for three years from pursuing the investigation. The sole reason was politics. Aguirre was canned in 2005. But he was vindicated two years later in a joint report by the Senate judiciary and finance committees that blasted SEC officials for political meddling in the investigation and verbally berated the agency for failing to pursue the case. The SEC's inspector general even urged disciplinary action against senior SEC officials. The IG could have saved the paper. An administrative law judge said no dice on punishment. The periodic screech from the public, Congress and financial industry watchdog groups has always crashed hard against the long standing cozy relation between Wall Street and the SEC. The agency's inability to root out Wall Street scams and jail the scam artists has nothing to do with too loose jointed rules, paltry staff, or lack of cash but the political will by the SEC to fully enforce the rules. Without that the SEC's tough talk won't stop more Madoff flim flams. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com More on Financial Crisis
 
Dan Agin: Book Review: Not A Chimp--Genes, Apes, and Humans Top
Some people argue that humans are merely crazy apes, but the counter-argument, that humans and apes are dramatically different, is not easily dismissed. Truly, it's a question of focus--and the focus often depends on hidden philosophical attitudes. Western religions, for example, abhor the idea that humans are not unique creations of some divine entity, indeed creations in the image of that entity. In the opposing camp are those who focus on the reality of human evolution from an ape lineage, on the extreme similarities between apes and humans in physiology and behavior, and on the solid evidence that apes and humans have diverged as a consequence of only a relatively small number of different genes. The argument, of course, began in the middle of the 19th century with Darwin's On the Origin of Species , but this is a new era in science and the language of the argument has changed. So if humans are merely animals, how different are we from other animals? In this context, let's define "animals" as all living multi-cellular creatures other than humans that are not plants. In recent decades it has become apparent that the cognitive skills of many animals, especially non-human primates, are greater than previously suspected. Part of the problem in research on cognition in animals has been the intrinsic difficulty in communicating with or testing animals, a difficulty that makes the outcome of a cognitive experiment heavily dependent on the ingenuity of the experimental approach. Another problem is that when investigating the non-human primates, the animals whose cognitive skills are closest to that of humans, one cannot do experiments on large populations because such populations either do not exist or are prohibitively expensive to maintain. The result is that in the area of primate cognitive research reported experiments are often anecdotal, i.e., experiments involving only a few or even a single animal subject. But anecdotal evidence can often be of great significance and have startling implications: a report, even in a single animal, of important abstract abilities, numeric or conceptual, is worthy of attention, if only because it may destroy old myths and point to new directions in methodology. In 1985, T. Matsuzawa reported experiments with a female chimpanzee that had learned to use Arabic numerals to represent numbers of items. This animal (whose name is "Ai") can count from 0 to 9 items, which she demonstrates by touching the appropriate number on a touch-sensitive monitor. Ai can also order the numbers from 0 to 9 in sequence. The famous bonobo chimpanzee Kanzi, reared by biopsychologist Sue Savage-Rimbaugh, although unable to speak words, understands spoken English and communicates by punching symbols on a special keyboard. Ai and Kanzi are not unique, but teaching chimpanzees to communicate with us is not easy and not quickly accomplished even if you know how to do it. The name "chimpanzee" usually refers to members of a species called Pan troglodytes , animals found in a broad but discontinuous distribution across equatorial Africa. Such are "common chimpanzees" and are distinguished from their close relative the pygmy chimpanzee or bonobo ( Pan paniscus ), which lives only south of the Congo River in the current-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Genetic similarity as close as that between humans and chimpanzees should lead routinely to classification in the same genus. But adopting that logic would make us all chimpanzees or all chimpanzees members of the genus Homo--an idea that makes many people uncomfortable. The biologist Linda Vigilant has pointed out that in contrast to what many people believe, chimpanzees and humans are not distinguished by tool use, hunting, or group aggression--both species demonstrate those behaviors. The unique attributes of humans include advanced culture and technology: complex spoken language, art, and sophisticated tool use. We're also uniquely susceptible to malaria, a habitual upright gait, and certain cancers as human-specific features. A handful of genetic or biochemical differences have been identified, but chimps and humans shared a common ancestor only approximately 5 to 7 million years ago, and it's not simple to find genes that hint at selection over such a short time. Into this debate about similarities and differences between chimpanzees and humans now arrives a new book by Jeremy Taylor, a UK BBC science journalist and film producer. It's an interesting and readable book, particularly since Taylor takes a strong position in the debate. His focus is on differences, but his argument is biological rather than religious or philosophical. He makes three main points: 1) We have been evolving much faster than the chimpanzees. The rate of evolution in the human genome has apparently increased since we and the chimps split from a common ancestor. At least 7 percent of human genes have evidently changed within the past 50,000 years. 2) We humans have apparently domesticated ourselves in exactly the same way that we have cultivated farm animals, dogs, and crop plants from their wild progenitors. 3) Taylor believes that misguided scientists have suggested a closer genetic relationship between humans and chimpanzees in order to build sympathy for an endangered species. These are strong views. Many people (including myself) may be opposed to Taylor's conclusions, but this is a provocative book that should be read by anyone interested in the debate about similarities and differences between humans and chimpanzees. Jeremy Taylor. Not A Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human . Oxford University Press, September 2009.
 
Han Shan: Chevron's 'Dirty Tricks Operation' in the Amazon Top
If you can't win the argument, change the subject. That seems to be oil giant Chevron's strategy, as it battles a lawsuit for massive contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

 After 16 years in litigation, a monumental environmental lawsuit by 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos against Chevron appears to be drawing to a close. The oil company has publicly said that it expects to be found liable for up to $27 billion in damages for what has become known as the 'Amazon Chernobyl.' And in less than a week, a high-profile documentary film about the case- acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger's CRUDE - comes out in U.S theaters. And so, time to change the subject. Ready for Chevron's 'September Surprise?'

 On Monday, Chevron breathlessly declared that it had video footage implicating the judge presiding over the trial in a "$3 million bribery scheme."

 Except it didn't.

 The company instead revealed videos showing a former Chevron contractor named Diego Borja and an American businessman named Wayne Hansen, who appear to be trying fruitlessly to entrap the presiding Judge, Juan Nuñez. Borja and Hansen secretly shot the videos themselves using a spy-camera pen and watch they bought in a catalog. As The San Francisco Chronicle reports: The closest the conversation comes to the suggestion of bribery happens when Hansen at one point abruptly asks the judge, "Do you want part of, of my contract?" The judge responds, "I don't have anything to do with that." Then Hansen appears to correct himself, and says he's talking about money that would go to the government, not the judge. Borja and Hansen also ask him several times whether he will rule against Chevron, and he repeatedly tells them they must wait for the verdict to find out. These excerpts are from Chevron's transcript. Hansen : They've been the guilty party for more than many years, right? Nuñez : You'll see that, sir. What you want to find out is whether it's going to be guilty or not, I'm telling you that I can't tell you that, I'm a judge, and I have to tell you in the ruling, not right now. The Chronicle article continues: But as Nuñez prepares to leave the meeting, Hansen asks him again. Hansen : Oh, no, I, I know clearly how it is, you say, Chevron is the guilty party. Nuñez : Yes, sir. A ha! He said yes! He said yes! Gotcha! Predetermination! Corruption! Disqualification! Except that if you watch the video, Hansen's tortured Spanish statement about Chevron being el culpable - the guilty party- comes as people are shuffling papers and preparing to leave the room. It's not at all clear who the judge is answering or speaking affirmatively to. You can't see the judge when you hear his muffled "yes, sir" and one gets the sense that he's just trying to finish up this meeting that he apparently attended as a favor to an acquaintance. And that's Chevron's smoking gun -- the judge's single, hardly intelligible, and un-directed "yes, sir" at the end of a meeting at which he has repeatedly said that he cannot predict his verdict. As the oil giant's PR flacks and executives worked up a sweat fanning the flames of its contrived controversy, the judge defended himself to the Associated Press: "Never, never, never have I said that it will go against" Chevron, the judge said. "They asked me if a sentence would come out. I said, 'Yes sir, a sentence will come out.' For or against? I have never said anything." The "bribery plot" Chevron trumpets in its press release has nothing to do with the judge or the court, and instead centers around a separate meeting at which the former Chevron contractor and American businessman discuss payments to a single, excitable man who claims to be connected to Ecuador's ruling party, for access to government contracts for remediation of Chevron's contamination. In fact, the whole episode raises more troubling questions about Chevron than about the judge or Ecuador's judicial process that the company has spent so much time impugning. 

Chevron denies it had anything to do with soliciting or supporting the apparent sting operation by the former logistics contractor for the company. But Chevron executives have had the video since June, and didn't notify any Ecuadorian or American authorities in advance of its media blitz. Chevron also admits that it paid for the relocation of the former Chevron contractor and his family to the U.S., and has provided other "interim support." Even more suspicious is the fact that Chevron has not allowed reporters covering the story to speak to its former contractor, or the American businessman for whose benefit the meetings were set up. 

Steven Donziger, an American lawyer who advises the Amazonian communities in the lawsuit, says it "reeks of a Nixon-style dirty tricks operation and Chevron's fingerprints are all over it."

 For years, the company has been losing the argument, so it changes the subject: "There is no contamination. But if there is contamination, it's not dangerous. And if it is dangerous, it's not ours. And if it's ours, uh, uh... Corruption! Extortion! Defamation! Left-wing tyranny!" 

This specious "bribery plot" is Chevron's latest attempt to change the subject and delay the ruling in the case.

 Nothing that Chevron presents in the videos alters the underlying facts of the case. 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos living in the Ecuadorian Amazon continue to suffer a severe public health crisis, including an epidemic of cancer, miscarriages, birth defects, and other ailments. The formerly pristine rainforest and Amazon waterways have been poisoned. And it is due to the fact that the oil company operated using substandard practices that were obsolete in order to increase its profit margin by $3 per barrel.

 But you don't have to take my word for it. Go see the new documentary film CRUDE , and judge for yourself . The film looks at the unprecedented legal battle in the Amazon from all sides. Besides raving about how thrilling and gripping it is, reviewers have praised CRUDE for its "balance," "depth," "intellectual honesty," and "even-handed manner."

 Unfortunately for Chevron, the truth has a way of bubbling to the surface, like crude in the steamy jungles of Ecuador.

 CRUDE opens in New York on September 9th, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, and about thirty more cities across the country. Click here to see when it's coming to a theater near you and visit www.ChevronToxico.com to learn more about Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign . More on Video
 
Allison Kilkenny: A Moment's Silence For The Public Option Top
President Obama shocked his overly trusting base this week when he announced that he has no intention of addressing the public option debate in his prime time speech to Congress on September 9. Pro and anti-reform protesters are waging epic battles in town halls, and yet the Progressives' General has "no plans to insist on [the public option] himself," according to Politico . It looks like the reason Obama can so cooly omit the popular public option is because the initiative is dead, and has been dead for quite a while, and there's no reason to mention something that will not be in the final bill. To soothe Progressives, Congressional representatives like Ben Nelson are using an invented term called the "trigger" to create the illusion of a public option that may exist at some point in the future. The public option will not be part of healthcare reform, but should the insurance companies "fail" (again, whatever that means) at self-reform, then this failure would act as a "trigger" or catalyst for an eventual public option. "A public option as a fallback position is a concept I think that could be acceptable," Nelson says, "If it's a cooperative under certain circumstances that might be acceptable." To be clear: a "trigger option" means the public option does not exist, and it will not exist until an undefined series of events occur whereupon the public option --- which has not been explained or outlined -- will magically pop into existence. This isn't a compromise. It's an insult. Nelson's claim is like robbers explaining to a bank's manager that they're temporarily borrowing the money, plan to invest it, and will return the loot (plus interest) at some undefined future date. Only a sucker (or maybe Ben Bernanke or Hank Paulson) would take such a scurrilous group at their word, so please excuse Progressives if they don't believe Ben Nelson, or President Obama, when they say, "Sorry, folks, no public option, but this new mysterious deal is much, much better." It appears as if Congress and the President either don't remember what they were fighting for, or aren't interested in achieving it any longer. Cenk Uygur raises a critical point today when he states , "Without a public option, this whole thing is a joke." Passing reform without the public option is not only a joke, but it's an insult to all the Progressives, health advocates, activists, doctors, and nurses, who fight for a public option precisely because they know it's the only path to meaningful healthcare reform. Watered down bills, hybrids, triggers, and so-called "compromises" (tantamount to full surrender) are all window-dressing for a Democratic President and Democratically-controlled Congress capitulating to a fringe mob of radicals and coterie of corporate insurance and pharmaceutical companies by killing the public option. Uygur argues that the Progressives should vote no on Obama's healthcare bill if it doesn't include a public option, and I agree. If Democrats buckle on the public option, not only will Republicans feel buoyed up by the surrender, but Democrats will lose all credibility with their base. They will permanently become the Party of Surrender, and the healthcare reform disaster will infect all future areas of contentious policy. The death of the public option will mean the death of the Democrats. Cross-posted from Allison Kilkenny's blog . Also available on Facebook and Twitter . More on Health Care
 
Dave Johnson: Who Opposes American Manufacturing? II Top
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF. A country's economic power comes from manufacturing. But while other countries have industrial policies, America has a de-industrialization policy. We have handed our country's manufacturing capacity over to other countries, and as a result we have to borrow more and more to be able to buy the things that we used to make. How did this come to be? Who would be against American manufacturing? The other day, in the first Who Would Be Against American Manufacturing? post I wrote about representatives of foreign interests lobbying in the US for trade policies that benefit companies in other countries at the expense of America's factories, workers, companies, communities and economic power . It is to be expected that a country will work to increase manufacturing within its borders - even if we don't - and these firms helping the efforts of other countries are required to register with the Department of Justice as "foreign agents." I traced an anonymous comment left at my own blog back to one of these, after I wrote about President Obama's upcoming "China tire case" trade decision. But are all foreign agents registering, as they are supposed to? The other day I came across an interesting example of an organization that is working to convince Americans to hand over our manufacturing capacity to other countries. In my post, National Association Of Manufacturers Blasts ... American Manufacturing? I wrote, "Why is the NAM blasting Meyerson for writing a column promoting American manufacturing? ... They quote Daniel J. Ikenson of the Cato Institute. . . . Cato receives a great deal of financial support from non-manufacturing interests including commodities and securities traders, tobacco companies, communications companies, software companies and oil companies. They also receive support from non-American manufacturing interests, including the Korea International Trade Association." Let's connect the dots. For some reason NAM blasts a writer for supporting American manufacturing, and quotes the Cato Institute for support. The mission statement of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies promotes "open markets. They claim that "open markets mean wider choices and lower prices for businesses and consumers." They advocate that the United States open its markets to anyone, no matter what, even advocating American policies that "are not contingent upon reciprocal policies in other countries." They say, "Studies by Trade Center scholars have found benefits in the elimination of U.S. trade barriers regardless of what other countries choose to do." Got that? They are saying we should allow other countries to cheat and like it , that free trade as a one-way street where we only buy and they only sell is just fine, and basically that we should just give up our manufacturing capacity and let other countries have it without a fight . Just let them take it from us - and by the way anything else is "protectionism" and "politicization of trade." America should not "dictate marketplace results, or increase bureaucratic interference in the economy as a condition of market access." The mission statement goes on about how the United States should lead by example and just open our markets, etc... It's just amazingly anti-American. Go read it. WHY would Cato Institute advocate this? Is it just weird libertarian cult ideology? Perhaps a look at who is paying for this advocacy will provide a clue. While mostly funded by individuals, Cato's funders include many of the usual right-wing funding suspects: Koch, Scaife, tobacco companies, Exxon and other oil companies, Wall Street... But one sponsor jumped out at me: the Korea International Trade Association . (Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Volkswagon are sponsors as well.) Dots connected: Cato is receiving funding from the Korea International Trade Association, and then turning around and advocating that American hand over its manufacturing capacity to other countries! So I checked, and did not find that Cato Institute registered as a "Registered Foreign Agent." Why not? Also, according to SourceWatch , Cato provides "substantial" funds to several other "like-minded" think tanks. It would be interesting to see how many of those think tanks also advocate that America hand its manufacturing capacity over to other countries, and I am certainly interested in finding out whether Cato possibly serves as a "pass-through" for funds from outside of the United States. Is there "intellectual money-laundering" going on here? Is funding from non-American sources reaching into our internal trade-policy discussion without disclosure? If so, we need to know about it. Let me be more specific: Is the Justice Department enforcing the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and investigating potential violations? Is there a public-interest group that will investigate potential "intellectual money-laundering"? More Funny Business In the previous Who Would Be Against American Manufacturing? post I brought attention to the American Coalition for Free Trade in Tires , which had commissioned a "Rutgers economist" to come up with some rather fascinating numbers claiming that if we don't turn our tire manufacturing over to China it would cost 12 to 25 jobs for every manufacturing job we lose if we do. Good one! Scary! While researching the story I came across an interesting article about American government officials leaving and taking lobbying jobs selling out American manufacturers, Chinese Tire Producers Hire Top Former U.S. Government Trade Officials In '421' Dumping Case It didn't take long for a handful of the Bush administration's top trade officials to start representing foreign business interests. ... five recently departed senior trade officials at the Department of Commerce who are representing Chinese tire companies in the "Section 421" case that was recently brought before the International Trade Commission ... have been hired by the "American Coalition for Free Trade in Tires"... This is serious stuff and they are getting serious money cashing in from the jobs they did for the government, to sell out the country. Go look at who these people are , and who they worked for in the government. Clearly there was a culture of helping the other side for cash during the Bush years. Look at what these people are doing! Perhaps things like this helps explain why President Bush never followed through with remedies each time the ITC found that China was taking over another American industry with low prices. Next Post: Who Else is Against American Manufacturing? So in the previous post I found actual foreign agents working to undermine American manufacturing capacity. In this post I looked at some American groups who are working very closely, perhaps too closely, with foreign interests while they work to undermine American manufacturing capacity. In the next post I will look at how some purely American interests profit from undermining American manufacturing capacity. Wealth comes from making things. Economic power comes from manufacturing. Every other country knows this. It's time we remembered it.
 
Mike Sandler: Let's put a Saddam Mustache on Climate Change Top
Calling all graphic designers, artists, Banksy , anyone! We need to Photoshop Saddam Hussein's mustache onto climate change. It's the only thing that will motivate people to action on climate change. Most people think climate change is an interesting topic for a seminar or lecture, not an ongoing worldwide emergency , and we need some sort of visual equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. But, you know, more tactful. The old photo of a polar bear was effective on the 3% of us who like furry critters, but the other 97% seems to be distracted by American Idol or whatever it is that other Americans do while I sit at my computer worrying about climate change. See, when it came to invading Iraq in 2003, I just don't recall Bush having to compromise very much. Maybe I'm naïve, but I didn't see him out "buying" votes from budget-conscious Blue Dogs. I don't remember any cost-benefit analysis comparing the pros and cons of invading Iraq or any pesky budget deficits getting in the way. I don't think Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had to negotiate their war plans, like saying, "OK, we wanted a full invasion, but we'll scale it back so we can get the votes we need." They didn't have to cater to that one grumpy committee chair from some barely populated mid-western state . I do remember being denigrated as unpatriotic and wimpy when I was out at the anti-war protest wearing a Darth Vader helmet with my "No War for Oil" sign. To this day, I don't recall hearing much discussion about reducing the military budget so that we can ensure health care for 40 million Americans, let alone preserve the planet for future generations. I'm not saying we should stop defending our nation, but I find it surprising how different the political discourse was around invading Iraq in 2003 from today's political discourse around climate change. And why? Perhaps there was something about Saddam Hussein's mustache that stirred the American soul. Maybe it reminded people of Hitler and Stalin, or maybe it was just so foreign looking , so un-American, that it made us want to go over there, and shave it right off! (Somebody will have to confirm this with Sarah Palin, since she seems to be the arbiter of "true" Americanism.) I admit that the country has gained some awareness of climate change in the 4 years since "An Inconvenient Truth" and Hurricane Katrina, but we've also continued to emit a lot of greenhouse gases. The good folks at 350.org are trying to convince Americans that we don't have 20 years to ponder our options about what to do about climate change. The earth's atmosphere is already at 387 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere, and climbing, and the safe level is back at 350 ppm. We don't have the luxury of waiting for China and India to get rich enough to take action before us, and really, that's just a cop out anyway. We're Americans, we're world leaders, we take bold action, right? (Yee haw?) But maybe we need some motivation, like tacking an evil-looking mustache onto a melting glacier. More on Climate Change
 
New jobless claims dip less than expected to 570K Top
WASHINGTON — New jobless claims fell slightly last week while the number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose, a sign the job market's recovery will be long and bumpy. While most economists believe the recession has ended, they predict the jobless rate will keep rising until at least next summer as the country struggles to mount a sustained recovery. The worry is that household incomes will remain depressed and consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the total economy, will continue to lag. "The lack of job creation remains a big headwind for cash-starved and credit-constrained consumers and thus a major impediment for the fledging recovery," Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in research note. Most retailers posted sales declines last month as shoppers restrained back-to-school purchases to focus on necessities. Discounters did better than upscale chains, but the results Thursday raised further concern about the upcoming holiday season. The Institute for Supply Management said its service index, which covers hospitals, retailers, financial services companies and more, inched closer to growth in August, but still contracted for the 11th straight month. The Labor Department said the number of laid-off workers applying for benefits dipped to 570,000 last week from an upwardly revised 574,000. That was a weaker performance than the drop to 560,000 claims that economists expected. The number of people receiving jobless benefits totaled 6.23 million, up 92,000 from the previous week, which had been the lowest level since early April. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected that number, which lags new claims by a week, to fall to 6.13 million. Economists closely watch initial claims, which are considered a gauge of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire new workers. First-time claims have trended down in recent months and are well below the recession's high of 674,000 hit in the first week in April. But even with the improvement, they are running at levels well above the 325,000 mark considered a sign of a healthy labor market. The Labor Department on Friday will release a report on the employment picture in August. Many economists believe it will show the jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent, up from 9.4 percent in July, but that the number of layoffs slowed to 225,000, from 247,000. In minutes of their August deliberations released Wednesday, Federal Reserve policymakers said that a poor jobs market, evaporated wealth, hard-to-get credit and stagnant wages meant that consumers were still facing "considerable headwinds." Obama economic adviser Christina Romer said last week that unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and some private economists are forecasting it will hit 10.3 percent next summer before starting to improve. But Vice President Joe Biden issued an upbeat report card on the economy Thursday, saying that the massive stimulus program had been more effective "than we had hoped." Still, consumers are not spending enough to boost retailers' bottom lines. Discounter Target Corp. and warehouse club operators Costco Wholesale Corp. and BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. said sales at established stores dropped, but also beat analyst expectations. A 5 percent jump at TJX Cos., which operates discount chains TJMaxx and Marshall's, topped expectations. But upscale retailers, including Saks Inc. and Nordstrom Inc., reported a weak month. On Wall Street, stocks traded in a narrow range as investors found little in the economic reports to push the market higher after a four-day slide. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 10 points in morning trading, and broader indices also edged up. The recession, which began in December 2007 and is the worst since World War II, has eliminated a net total of 6.7 million jobs. The Labor Department report Thursday showed that the four-week average of initial jobless claims edged up to 571,250 last week, compared with 567,250 the previous week. Even with the rise in continuing claims to 6.23 million for the week ending Aug. 22, that four-week average dipped slightly to 6.22 million. When federal emergency programs are included, the total number of jobless benefit recipients was 9.14 million people in the week that ended Aug. 15, down from about 9.18 million the previous week. Congress has added up to 53 extra weeks of benefits on top of the 26 typically provided by the states. The large number of people remaining on the rolls indicates that unemployed workers are having a hard time finding new jobs. More job cuts were announced this week. Washington-based manufacturer Danaher Corp. said it will lay off about 3,300 of its roughly 50,000 employees, an increase from the 1,700 cuts it announced in the spring. American Airlines said it is cutting 921 flight attendant jobs as it deals with an ongoing downturn in traffic and lower revenue. Among the states, California had the largest increase in claims of 8,632, which it attributed to greater layoffs in the construction, trade and service industries. The next largest increases were in Ohio and New Hampshire. The state data lag initial claims by a week. Michigan had the largest drop in claims of 2,968, which it attributed to fewer layoffs in the auto industry. The next largest decreases were in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Alabama. ____ AP Retail Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.
 
Len Berman: Top 5 Sports Stories Top
Happy Thursday everyone, here's my Top 5 for September 3, 2009 from www.LenBermanSports.com . 1. Quick Hits Senator Schilling. Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has some interest in Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat. So do I. Who knew the Canadian Football League had standards? Winnipeg says they are not pursuing Pacman Jones. They want good athletes "on and off the field." The big names all cruised at the U.S. Open. Next up for Roger Federer, Lleyton Hewitt in the third round. Jason Giambi's first hit as a Colorado Rockie, a pinch hit two run single, is the game winner against the Mets. The Rockies lead the Giants by one game for the National League wild card. Welcome to fall. College football season begins tonight. 2. Joe Fan If the average fan wants to go to the World Series at Yankee Stadium he can kiss his wallet goodbye. Only 735 tickets out of 50,000 will be available to the "general public" per game. Season ticket holders and Major League Baseball get the rest. So you wanna take Johnnie to his first World Series game? Get ready to pay the scalper. Hey, you think they made the World Series and Super Bowl for regular people? 3. Thursday Night Football The final pre-season games are tonight and tomorrow. They get them out of the way early so the teams can heal up for the regular season next week. While many eyes and ears will be on Michael Vick in the Meadowlands facing the Jets, I'll be thinking of a player who won't see action. Giants wide receiver David Tyree won't play with a hamstring injury. 19 months ago he made arguably the greatest catch in Super Bowl History. The helmet catch. Without it, the Giants don't upset the Patriots. That is the last catch he made in a Giants uniform. He'll likely be cut. What have you done for me lately? 4. Turf Toe The 0-16 Detroit Lions have a little quarterback competition going. But one of the contenders, Daunte Culpepper, injured his toe requiring stitches. He stubbed it on his carpet at home. Is that what they mean by piling on? 5. Descend it like Beckham A California sperm bank is setting up shop in New York. They feature samples of famous lookalikes. Do you want your offspring to look like David Beckham or Manny Ramirez? They can help. Of course they don't guarantee that traits will be passed on. And I'm thinking given the vagaries of conception, do you really want your daughter looking like Manny Ramirez? Happy Birthday to a couple of Olympians. The Flying Tomato, snowboarder Shaun White. 23. And softball pitcher Jennie Finch. 29. Bonus Birthday: Actor Charlie Sheen. 44. Today in Sports: Ty Cobb gets his 4,191st and last career hit. His record would be eventually eclipsed by Pete Rose. 1928. Bonus Event: The Yankees stall at Fenway Park hoping that a Sunday curfew will end the game. Fans become irate and litter the field with garbage. The Red Sox forfeit the game. The Commissioner later overrules the forfeit and fines the Yankees for their tactics. 1939.
 
Viggo Mortensen: Love Or Lose His Bob Haircut? (PHOTO, POLL) Top
Viggo Mortensen is at the Venice Film Festival to premiere his long-awaited cinematic version of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" Thursday night. Thursday at a photo call Viggo, 50, arrived by boat in a "Make Art, Not War" t-short and a middle-parted, shoulder-length bob. PHOTO: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Dr. Michael J. Breus: Off to College, Probably Not Off to Sleep -- Part 2 Top
Ah, there's nothing quite like dorm room living : Tight quarters. Old, rickety furniture and carpeting. A small, hard bed. Thin walls and rowdy neighbors. Late-night hallway parties. Perhaps a humming mini-refrigerator and an annoying roommate with whom you share absolutely nothing in common. Now, that might not sound so pleasant if you're over the age of, say 30, but for many college students, it's acceptable--a kind of hazing period during the transition from high school to the big school. But none of this bodes well for sleep hygiene . I don't know any college student who isn't sleep deprived and living on caffeine . Last week , I dispensed some secrets to settling into college life without losing too much sleep over it. The dorm room deserves special attention. It's where college students will spend a great deal of time mixing attempts to get some shut-eye and a host of other activities--socializing, writing papers, studying, talking on the phone, hanging out, listening to music, and so on. Whether it's your first-born making the move to college or you yourself are about to move on up, heed these dorm room makeover tips :   If possible, strategically arrange the bedroom furniture around any incoming light and noise. Face the bed west if possible so that you don't get direct sunlight in the morning. Avoid placing the bed directly across from a window that faces east (or you will be rising with the sun). If you can get away from the noise but that puts you in the light, move away from the noise and buy some blackout shades . Consider the use of a room divider or screen. This will give you more privacy and help dampen light (and some noise) coming from your roommate. Decorate the area around the bed differently than the rest of the room. Keep it clutter-free, and try not to snuggle up with your cell phone. Teddy bears are better sleepmates. Splurge on good bedding materials that are comfortable for you: soften up a hard mattress with a featherbed (which is like a big body pillow you rest on top of the mattress), lots of pillows consider a mattress topper, and a plush comforter . Keep high-wattage lights away from the bed. Most dorm rooms are equipped with desks. Keep the high-wattage lights there and install low-wattage lights (45 watts or less) anywhere near the bed. Position your entertainment , television and/or computer area so it's not directly aligned with your line of vision when you're in bed. Again consider the use of covers for the monitor and turning off the CPU itself at night. Bedside sleepsavers: Eye shades. Ear plugs. Sound machine to wash out background noise. Reading lamp or book light. Drape clip. If the room is equipped with draperies, try clipping the drapes together at night using a chip clip so there's no light leaking through the crack. Aromatherapy. Watch out for alarm clocks that light up the whole room. But all that aside, I'll admit that the most challenging task of all awaits: Having that straightforward conversation with your roommate(s) about the "rules." What if one of you needs to stay up late finishing a lab report, tapping on a laptop with the lights on? What if your roommate wants to invite the entire floor to party in your room until the wee hours of the morning on the night you've promised yourself to go to bed early? How will you manage living with someone who likes to keep to a totally different sleep schedule than you? Conversation. You must have it. Early and often. Good luck, my aspiring graduates. Cheers to the new academic year. Sweet Dreams, Michael J. Breus, PhD The Sleep Doctor ™ This article on dorm room makeovers is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog . More on Sleep
 
Zandile Blay: Naomi Campbell Is Really Into This Whole Russian Thing ... Top
Truth be told, I can't say that I blame her. The supermodel, who has been flaunting her love affair with (married? not married?) Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin, is clearly in love. In addition to globe trotting from Dronin's homes in Brazil and Ibiza, it appears her Moscow man also has a home in Russia. That's where legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld caught up with Campbell for this mini photoshoot. The leggy beauty dons a variety of lux brand from Chanel, which Lagerfeld designs, to Yves Saint Laurent and Marc Jacobs. The singular theme was obviously Russian chic, hence oversized furs and accessories . The shoot appears V Magazine. She's beautiful, wealthy, in love (with someone even wealthier) and wearing the latest couture ... Must be nice.... Read more from Zandile on her daily fashion blog, The Blay Report . More on Russia
 

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