Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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Obama Lightsaber Photo, Olympics Rally (SLIDESHOW) Top
President Obama rolled out the red carpet for Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid Wednesday with a White House rally in support of his hometown's bid . "Chicago is ready. The American people are ready. We want these games," Obama said. "If you choose Chicago, I promise you this - Chicago will make America proud, and America will make the world proud." Not just the bid's cheerleader-in-chief, Obama also got in on some of the action. More on Photo Galleries
 
Blackwater Offers Training To 'Faith Based Organizations' Top
In its ever-evolving re-branding campaign, Blackwater has created a new alter-ego for part of the company's business. Meet the "Personal Security Awareness" program, which appears to be an off-shoot of Erik Prince's Greystone, Ltd., a classic mercenary operation registered offshore in Barbados. More on Blackwater
 
Kate Kelly: Organize Your Recycling Top
Many years ago recycling happened naturally. In the early 1900s, people "made do" and re-used, from jars for canning home produce to hand-me-down clothing and toys for children. And items were frequently transformed to new uses. Good lumber from a ramshackle house was removed and used in building a new house; old newspapers were stuffed into walls for insulation; worn-out clothing was cut up for quilts. The world has changed, and today we create a lot of waste. Colin Beavan's recent No Impact Man (book, film, and blog), promotes a zero-waste lifestyle, but most of us probably would be content if we could simply do a better job of buying a little less and recycling a lot more. In my household, I am a militant recycler of frequently-used items like newspapers and cans, but when I wrote about how the current "green" light bulbs (CFLs) need to be recycled http://http://americacomesalive.com/blog/2009/08/green-light-bulbs-have-mercury.html , I realized my downfall on recycling was with the items we don't "use up" very regularly. I turned to experts for advice on how to handle the more random items. Here's a sampling of the great comments I received: Where to Stash As with all things, families that habitually recycle have a convenient place to store odd items such as used light bulbs, batteries, styrofoam, printer cartridges, expired medicines, old paint, pesticides, and e-waste is key. Bins or boxes in a garage were recommended by many people. Marcia Blackwell in Long Branch, New Jersey keeps a milk crate in her garage to hold Ziploc bags of smaller recyclables. Her efforts extend to offering to be a drop-off point for her neighbors, and she takes everyone's items with her when she drops off her own. Some people prefer to keep small items like used batteries in a brown bag or sandwich bag near where they store new ones. Another woman puts batteries and items like printer cartridges directly into her car trunk so that she has them with her if she drives by a drop-off point. Jennifer Kaplan keeps a used battery jar on her kitchen counter the way one would store flour or sugar--a good reminder! Jennae Petersen who blogs for Green Your Décor, has young children so she dedicates baskets on a high shelf in a laundry room to recyclables like batteries and light bulbs. Her kids drink Capri Sun, so she collects those pouches, too, and send them to TerraCycle, a company that turns them into products like backpacks and purses. A company rep for Kangaroom Storage Recycle bags pointed out that their bags are made of recyclables and are washable and reusable. They can stand on their own but are easy to carry, making them an ideal product when it's time to take the items for drop off. Where to Drop Off Most communities have a hazardous waste day a couple of times a year. When you get the mailing, note the date on your calendar so that it definitely goes on your "to do" list. In addition, many retailers now take back hard-to-dispose of items: Printer cartridges and some office equipment--Office Depot and Staples. CFL bulbs--Home Depots and Ikea. Batteries-- Batteries Plus accepts old batteries at all their stores, and their rep notes that 88 percent of the mercury and 54 percent of the cadmium that is deposited in our landfills (that eventually seeps into the soil and water) comes from the billions of used batteries that are simply tossed out. Rechargeable batteries and cell phones-- Call2Recycle ( www.call2Recycle.org ) runs programs at RadioShack, Home Depot, Lowe's, Staples, and Target. These stores should have drop-off boxes. At Wal-Mart you can pick up a mailing label and send your cell phone to a collection point for free. Television sets-- Sony provides a $100 credit on televisions you bring back when buying a new one. Justine Suh, a green business consultant and founder of GreenScoutReport.com stresses the importance of not dumping e-waste into the trash stream. "The materials in e-waste are really bad for the environment, so find a place for your toners and old computer equipment. Most office supply stores will take these items at no charge." Apple and Dell also accept old computers. In addition, there are websites like www.earth911.com where consumers enter their zip code and the type of item they want to recycle, and they are directed to a nearby collection point. (I now know that if I want to drop off batteries before my county's hazardous waste day there's a place near my local Target.) When pressed for something that most people don't think to recycle, Justine Suh noted, that she worried about old sneakers. "The rubber in shoes does not decompose and it stays with us for a very long time." If gently-used shoes can be donated to a place where they will go to good use, then great. Otherwise, check out Recycled Runners at http://www.recycledrunners.com /. It offers an online directory of locations where you can drop off running shoes. Sheil Caldwell stresses the importance of everyone re-using bags for groceries. She created a Bagonizer that attaches to the front of a shopping cart, eliminating the bottom-of-the-cart dive when you're checking out, and it stores multiple bags within it. And for additional ideas on recycling, check out www.conscious-cow.org
 
Nathan Hegedus: "Guantanamo Swede" Allegedly Caught With Suicide Bomb in Pakistan Top
Guantanamo Bay made Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali a martyr while he still lived, and breathing martyrs cause all sorts of trouble. Ghezali was arrested with seven to nine other people, including three Swedes, in Pakistan late last month. They claimed they were on their way to South Waziristan, in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, but now news reports are coming out that the group was caught with a bomb belt and detailed maps of Western embassies and may have been planning to blow up the Danish embassy in Islamabad. You can read the original story in Swedish here . In 2001, Ghezali was captured in Pakistan, supposedly an al-Qaeda fighter fleeing the Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan. He spent more than two years locked up on our hot corner of Cuba, standing out from the pack because he is Swedish -- the Guantanamo Swede, the Cuba-Swede, or more prosaically, Prisoner 166. The US let him go in 2004, after much diplomatic pressure from Sweden, saying he was of no intelligence value and charging him with nothing. A convicted jewel thief and bank robber, as well as apparently a passable soccer player, Ghezali said he was innocent and had been tortured. He threatened to sue the US government and went home to Örebrö, the mid-sized Swedish city where he grew up the son of an Algerian father and a Finnish mother. He wore an anti-Guantanamo T-shirt at a Stockholm protest in 2006 and published a book in Swedish. But, more or less, he went quiet, you know, the bad kind of quiet. "The years he spent in Guantanamo changed him. It affected him psychologically. He became quiet and unobtrusive," said Aisar Al Shawabke, the spokesperson at the Örebro mosque, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen (same article as above). Now it seems clear that Ghezali is not, after all, a good guy of any sort. But here is what we do not know. How bad was he before Guantanamo? Did Guantanamo make him a terrorist, like a small-time drug dealer who goes hard in prison? Or was he the hard core terror guy corrupting the innocent ones (you know, there are innocent people at Guantanamo)? This case crystalizes the difficulties of closing the prison at Guantanamo -- streaming hundreds of traumatized radicals into the world, most with none of the calming democratic influences Ghezali encountered upon his return to his provincial Swedish city. So we either tortured a dope into a dangerous terrorist (albeit a clumsy one who has been caught twice). Or we turned a terrorist into a human rights poster boy, one with real cache -- Guantanamo survivor -- in both Sweden and the radical Islamicist world. We bypassed all normal channels so we had to let him go, and Sweden had no reason not to press for his release. Was the Swedish government just supposed to take Dick Cheney at his word? Right. The normal channels worked rather well in putting away another Swedish terrorist -- Oussama Kassir. The Lebanese-born Kassir was sentenced to life in prison yesterday, albeit for activities in a completely different vein from Ghezali's. But back to Ghezali. He could have done real damage here, taking down a Western embassy in unstable, nuclear Pakistan, which is at the heart of strategic US security concerns (more so than even Iraq and Afghanistan). The United States created, one way or another, the mess that is Ghezali. And what a mess it is. More on Afghanistan
 
Mark Miller: Older Entrepreneurs and the Great Recession Top
Is entrepreneurship really a young person's game? You'd think so reading David Leonhard's column today in The New York Times . In an otherwise interesting piece about the Great Recession's split personality, Leonhardt drops in this comment: "The reasons for the slow churn are obviously complex. The baby boomers are moving out of the ages at which people typically start businesses." Leonhardt goes on to cite a variety of other factors holding back the economy, including declines in manufacturing, education and infrastructure that supports business startups. I'm sure many of these reasons are valid--but the aging entrepreneur argument doesn't hold water. In fact, baby boomers are more active entrepreneurs than most other age groups. I draw that conclusion from the latest Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity , which was released in May. The index, prepared by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, measures the rate of business creation at the individual owner level, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The index shows that in 2005 Americans age 54-65 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity among all demographic groups; .34 percent of people in this age group started businesses. The second-highest rate was found among people age 35-44; they had a .30 startup rate. But guess who came in right behind them? People age 45-54 (.29 percent). Not surprisingly, seniors -- people over age 65 -- had the lowest rate of entrepreneurial activity, at .21 percent. What's going on here? It's no secret that boomers don't intend to retire. Most have been saying for quite a while that they intend to keep working past traditional retirement age. But that doesn't mean they'll all be staying in Corporate America. Many are burned out on big companies and want to try their hand running their own show before they hang it up for good. And their current employers aren't likely to keep them around, anyway, considering the state of the job market and ageist attitudes toward older workers. That means many will head off to start their own businesses. All those factors will drive a major trend toward boomer entrepreneurship in the years ahead, The trend could really move into high gear if the Obama Administration is able to pass strong health care reform legislation. Many boomers are clinging to their jobs for dear life just for the employer-provided health insurance. Many would quit their jobs in a New York minute to start their own businesses if reasonably-priced health insurance could be guaranteed. The ensuring entrepreneurial wave would have a big impact on job creation and innovation in our economy.
 
Human Rights First: Generals on Torture, Lawyer on Gitmo: Word is Spreading Top
Cross-posted from the Human Rights First Blog Two interesting reads that pick up our work on torture and Guantanamo this week: Tom Ricks comments in Foreign Policy on the op-ed published last week in the Miami Herald by the two chairs of our military coalition denouncing Cheney, calling it "the best article I read on the eighth anniversary of 9/11." If you missed the article, it's worth a read . It's pretty rare that two retired generals denounce a former Vice President. Another of Human Rights First's partners was featured in the New York Times yesterday - Rich Zabel, the co-author of our In Pursuit of Justice reports . It says of his work with us: Mr. Zabel is also co-author of two extensive reports prepared for Human Rights First on prosecuting terrorism in the federal courts. It is an apt topic, given that the Obama administration is currently studying whether to try more detainees in civilian courts, in New York and elsewhere. The report makes a strong case that the federal courts can handle such cases. Check out the article in the City Room . More on Guantánamo Bay
 
Dr. David Tillman: The Truth About the Motion Picture and Television Fund Top
Facts can be inconvenient when a writer's purpose is to grab attention and evoke outrage among his readers. And so it was with Robert J. Elisberg's September 8 column on the impending closure of the Motion Picture and Television Fund's (MPTF) Long Term Care Unit (LTCU). Calling the people who made this difficult and painful decision a "death panel" is outrageous, irresponsible and has no bearing on the truth. But the truth doesn't seem terribly relevant to Mr. Elisberg. If he had bothered to check his facts instead of parroting the arguments of those who oppose the closure, Mr. Elisberg would have discovered a very different and far more complicated story than the one he chose to tell. One of the only things he got right is that this is a very difficult situation and a microcosm of what is happening to health care providers throughout the country. First, no one has died as a result of this decision or from transfer trauma. The California Department of Health Services actively investigates cases of transfer trauma as part of its supervision of health care providers. In its annual 2009 survey, the Department investigated complaints about 17 deaths among residents at the facility and four former residents who had already transferred. In their official report, they determined that the complaints were "unsubstantiated." And they did not report any cases of transfer trauma. Further, the number of deaths since the announcement is similar to those for the same time periods in 2007 and 2008. Suggesting otherwise impugns the integrity and professionalism of the men and women who care for our residents and only serves to create fear and anger. It is hard for any reasonable person to argue that MPTF is abandoning our residents. Yes, the unit is closing and we are not happy about it. Twenty-three similar units in California have closed or announced they are closing in the past two years. Most, if not all of these facilities gave their patients the 30-day notice required by the State of California. MPTF announced in January that the LTCU would close by the end of the year so that our residents and their families would have 12 months to identify new facilities with our help. We have identified 22 high quality community nursing homes to which people can relocate and we are committing millions of dollars for community care teams comprised of geriatricians, geriatric nurse practitioners, social workers, clergy, activities staff and volunteers to assist in the transition and in the continuing care of our former residents if that is their desire. In fact, 26 residents have successfully transferred. One family member felt so positively about her mother's experience that she documented it and it can be viewed on our website here . The financial reasons for this decision have been explained in a number of public and private forums and can also be found on our website. Had Mr. Elisberg bothered to ask we would have been happy to review them with him as we have with many other journalists. To address them in this context does not do justice to the complexity of the system of reimbursement for care and the cost of delivering that care. The bottom line is that the LTCU loses nearly $1 million a month and if it is not closed, the entire organization will be bankrupt within five years and we will no longer be able to provide health care, social services and financial assistance to the 60,000 industry members and their families who rely on us every year for services. And here is the rest of the story that Mr. Elisberg chose not to tell. MPTF still maintains an active retirement community on our Woodland Hills campus that is NOT closing. We provide housing and services to 214 people in our residential and assisted living facilities and our memory care unit. The campus also has a state-of-the-art health and wellness center and we provide a host of medical and other services to residents and industry members from the community. The MPTF Palliative Care program we offer to those on our campus and in the community, including some of our former residents has won multiple awards, including the National Consensus Project's 2008 Quality in Palliative Care Leadership Award. MPTF is the primary health care provider to 60,000 industry members at six health centers throughout LA County. In a Patient Assessment Survey administered by the California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative, MPTF ranked in the 90th percentile in ratings of overall assessment of healthcare. The Director of MPTF's Community Social Services recently accepted the 2009 Community Service Award from Aging Services of California in recognition of our Center on Aging. But for the social workers, the highest level of recognition comes from those whose lives the Fund helped put back on track. People like Tim James who said, "I was injured on the job and found myself unable to work. The people at MPTF's financial assistance office embraced me and never made me feel ashamed or embarrassed about asking for help.... I am so grateful to the Fund for helping me get back on my feet again." It would cost at least $36million to keep the LTCU open for three more years as some residents and their families have demanded. Thus far, no one has offered to donate anything remotely close. The Board of Directors and Trustees -- a group of volunteers from many sectors of the entertainment industry -- struggled mightily for years to find an alternative to closure that would ensure the Fund's continued viability. But they were confronted with the same financial realities that are facing health care providers throughout the country. We remain committed to serving each and every one of our residents, patients and clients with the respect and dignity they deserve. That is not as interesting as Mr. Elisberg's story, but also unlike his, it is true. More on Health Care
 
Kathy Plesser, MD: Video: When Fibroids Require a Hysterectomy or Uterine Artery Emobolization Top
Fibroids are a common benign condition which usually doesn't require treatment.   Dr. Poyner describes the symptoms and indications for hysterectomy and also about uterine artery emobolization, a method of shrinking fibroids in women who have completed childbearing. Interviewee: Elizabeth Poynor, MD, PhD FACOG Gynecologic Oncologist This post was originally posted on BeetMedicine.TV by the site's medical director Peter Pressman .
 
Mark Olmsted: What's It Going to Take, Barack? A Screed Top
I admire Barack Obama very much. He's smart as hell and his attempt to change the tone of politics has been admirable. But it has failed. These right-wingnuts who have hijacked the Republican party aren't interested in bipartisanship. They're interested in one thing and one thing only: Power. They don't like to be out of it and they want it back. They're not interested in getting anything done except making sure the rich stay rich. They don't believe in global warming, they don't care about the poor, they don't give a shit that there are 47 million uninsured and most bankruptcies are due to medical bills of people with insurance . They love going to war. High defense spending gives them a woody. Some of them ran from Bush at the end of his administration because he was politically toxic, but they never really disagreed with anything he did. They were pro-Iraq and, of course, pro-tax cuts. And when they needed to win the votes of the elderly, they were all for Medicare Part D, a giant government health program if there ever was one. They would have all voted against the original Medicare and now pose as its greatest defenders. Medicare, the epitome of socialized medicine. They are hypocrites, liars and racists. The signs at the 9.12 rally were stomach-churning, replete with references to "zoos" and "Africa." Participants said ridiculous and stupid things like "America is being taken over by Muslims" and Obama was equivalent to Joseph Stalin and Hitler--men responsible for the death of 100 million people between them. What's it going to take, Barack? Do you want to be liked so badly that you just refuse to see there is absolutely no placating these people? This is a democracy. We have elections so that the winners can get things done, not placate the losers or remain polite in the face of vicious calumny. Enough of Mr. Cool! Call these liars out ON A DAILY BASIS if you have to, and if you're so sure you need to remain "Presidential" send out attack dogs. The masses just to the right of middle, who voted for your replete with their doubts, are being swayed by this outrageous bullshit because they're not hearing the truth from you. You can't depend on Rachel Maddow to set the record straight, too many of these dazed souls are watching Bill O'Reilly because he's no smarter than they are, and they like it that way -- that's why they voted for Bush. These Americans don't respect intellect, they suspect it. Attack the health insurance companies for what they are, leeches who make $300 billion a year doing as little as possible. Don't leave to all to Anthony Weiner. Say out loud that Glenn Beck calling you a racist is obscene, as it would require you to hate your own mother. Call them windbags, deluded and uncaring--or get Rahm Emmanuel to. NO MORE MR NICEGUY. It's not working -- it's already cost you the public option. You won with 54% of the vote and have double majorities in Congress. ACT LIKE IT. Call us out into the streets. If they get 50,000 in D.C., we should get a million. The haters are never going to like you, they're never going to work with you, they encourage the birthers and the deathers and they're in the pockets of the corporate overlords. Publish their donor lists. Show indignation over signs that denigrate Kennedy. Fight back, for crying out loud! More on Barack Obama
 
The New Homesteaders: Off-the-Grid and Self-Reliant Top
You may have heard about them: Off-the-gridders living in radical opposition to modern amenities by growing their own food and cutting themselves off from the rest of society. Not so. Sure, more people are choosing to cut their dependence on the power grid, the grocery story and fuel pump. But these new homesteaders are hardly radicals--they are simply DIYers who, for a variety of reasons, revel in self-reliance. This is their story. More on Green Living
 
Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of 17 Journalists in Russia Top
Only Iraq and Algeria outrank Russia on the list of most life-threatening countries for the press. Seventeen journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000. In only one case have the killers been punished. This is a sorry record for a great and powerful nation that embarked on democratization after more than 70 years of brutal repression. That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists is releasing an unprecedented report that calls on the international community to help reverse this slide toward lawlessness. Our mission is to protect journalists, and we are less and less able to do so in Russia. Though we continue to appeal to Russian authorities to bring to justice those who murdered our colleagues, we can no longer leave it at that. This report is more than an expression of our outrage. We propose concrete guidelines and present hard facts for restarting investigations into these unsolved murders. More on Russia
 
ACORN Orders Independent Investigation Following Controversial Videos Top
WASHINGTON — An advocacy group under fire after employees were caught on camera appearing to advise a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp to lie about the woman's profession to get housing help said Wednesday it is ordering an independent investigation. The group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, said it is refusing new admissions into its service programs. ACORN will work with its advisory council, which includes prominent supporters of President Barack Obama, such as John Podesta, president of the nonprofit Center for American Progress, and Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to name an independent auditor and investigator, ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement. The investigation will examine all the systems and processes called into question by the video, Lewis said. In addition, ACORN won't accept new admissions into its community service programs, effective immediately, and within the next few days will conduct staff training, she said. Lewis said the steps were being taken in response to "the indefensible action of a handful of our employees." The moves are among several developments in recent days involving ACORN, a liberal-leaning group that is a popular target for Republicans. In addition to the hidden-camera video, it is under scrutiny for several voter-registration fraud cases. Some Republicans are urging the Justice Department to investigate ACORN. The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, and the Census Bureau last week severed its ties with the group for the 2010 national head-count. Asked Wednesday about the controversy, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that "obviously the conduct that you see on those tapes is completely unacceptable." "I think everyone would agree with that. The administration takes accountability extremely seriously," Gibbs said. "I think the Census Bureau evaluated and determined that this group could not meet the bureau's goal of achieving a fair and accurate count in 2010." Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., said he's asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repeal a nearly $1 million grant it awarded to ACORN earlier this month. FEMA awarded $997,402 to ACORN in New Orleans on Sept. 4 as part of its Fire Prevention and Safety Grants program. The group plans to use the money to assess fire safety in the homes of low and moderate-income families and hand out smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and other fire prevention gear, ACORN's Brennan Griffin said. FEMA had no immediate comment on Bilirakis' request. Gibbs said he assumed that federal agencies "constantly evaluate to ensure that any grantee is living up to what has to happen in order to fulfill that grant application." The video released Monday was among several that have prompted the firing of at least four ACORN employees in Baltimore and Washington. It was created by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles and posted on BigGovernment.com, where O'Keefe identifies himself as an activist filmmaker. In the film, O'Keefe and Giles enter an ACORN office in Brooklyn and O'Keefe can be heard stating that "we have a unique life situation" and asking if the pair qualify for housing help. The ACORN housing coordinator and office administrator apparently urge the couple to lie about the woman's profession, with the housing coordinator suggesting that the woman launder the money. "We have all been deeply disturbed by what we've seen in some of these videos," Lewis said, adding that the group "will go to whatever lengths necessary to re-establish the public trust." ___ Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report. ___ On the Net: ACORN: http://www.acorn.org
 
Worlds Oceans Warmest On Record This Summer Top
WASHINGTON — The world's in hot water. Sea-surface temperatures worldwide have been the hottest on record over the last three months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. Ocean temperatures averaged 62.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the June-August period, 1.04 degree higher than normal for the period. And for August the world sea-surface average was 62.4 degrees, 1.03 higher than usual, also the warmest for August on record, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said. The report is based on data back to 1880. The combined land and water temperature worldwide was 61.2 degrees, third warmest on record for the three-month period. For August it was 58.2 degrees, fourth warmest. Climate change has been raising the planet's average temperature steadily in recent decades. All of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1997. ___ On the Net: NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov More on Climate Change
 
Jenifer Fox: 10 Tips for Discovering Your Child's Strengths Top
Strengths are the activities, relationships and ways of learning that energize people. They are the inner qualities that make us feel most alive and because of that, they are the places where we have the potential to make our most meaningful contributions to life. Strengths are different than interests because strengths are innate and children will be drawn to them for their entire lives, while interests may be fleeting. When strengths and interests combine, children can develop passions. Strengths can be developed at a very early age and parents can help out. Below are some simple guidelines to get you on the way to helping your children discover their strengths. 1. Use play and cultivate the imagination. During imaginative play, children are free to unleash and exercise their Strengths. Watch children at play and you will learn a great deal about what they prefer, how they socialize, and the unique ways they view themselves. Play encourages cognitive enrichment and emotional growth. 2. Seek out what makes your child unique. Little quirks can be clues to strengths. Something as simple as a child's tendency to demand that his mother use a certain purse over another may signal a strength in something as seemingly unrelated as design. What initially may look like "showing-off" might be an early sign of a child who has a strength for entertaining. Sometimes the most unusual things signal the areas of deepest strength. 3. Keep a Strengths Journal. Take note of the things your child does -- anything that strikes you about his/her behavior. Here are a few of the kinds of questions that will guide you: • What causes your child to express joy and happiness? • What are the things that keep his attention the longest? • Are there sounds or words he reacts to more than others? • Is he generous? How does he show this? • Does he show sympathy? Is he caring or funny? Give examples. • What are the first thing he says in the morning and the last thing he says at night? 4. Create family traditions. Creating family traditions helps children discover their relationship strengths. Relationship strengths are the things you do for and with other people that make you feel proud. In order for children to figure this out, they need to reflect on their interactions with others and recall the ones where they felt the most positive. Family traditions give children positive memories. How do you celebrate birthdays? For example, if you have a tradition of making the birthday child a king or queen for the day and you repeatedly do the same nice things -- like let them choose their favorite meal -- later in life children will recall this and be more apt to want to do this for others. The more traditions you develop where children have an active role in creating meaning for others, the easier it will be later in life to identify what causes them feel good contributing to others. 5. Listen to children. They know their strengths better than anyone. In order to listen effectively, you must ask a lot of questions. Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Show your child you are interested in his perspective. For every answer you receive, follow up with another question; "Why do you think that?" Genuinely listen and reflect back your child what you believe you heard him say. If a child tells you he no longer wants to play soccer, rather than tell him why he should, say, "I hear you saying soccer no longer interests you, can you tell me why?" 6. Resist the urge to evaluate everything and overstate expectations. While most parents want their children to succeed, sometimes they unintentionally burden children by evaluating everything they do. When your child shows you a picture she drew, instead of saying it is good, ask her what she likes best about drawing. Over-evaluation, whether negative or positive, makes children worry about how well they are doing, and this stifles their ability to take risks. Children need to feel like they can experiment with many things and that failing is OK and sometimes part of the journey toward discovering what they love to do most. Unreasonably high expectations often pressure children to perform and conform within strictly prescribed guidelines, and they deter experimentation, exploration, and innovation. Children love to please adults and sometimes they perform in order to gain your approval or meet your expectations rather than because they truly enjoy the task. The more children are free to explore and try new things, the easier it will be to discover strengths. When you let go of the expectations you have for what you want them to do and how you want them to do it they are freer to discover what they really feel energized by. 7. Strengths are more than interests. Help children discover both. Strengths are the positive feelings that children have when they perform different actions. Interests are the areas where they apply their strengths. For example, a child may be drawn to animals and therefore it can be said they have an interest in animals. However, one child may like to care for animals while another may enjoy training them. The strength for one child is caring and for the other it is teaching. The strength is what someone likes to do, while the interest is where they like to apply it. The strength can be transferred to other interests. For example, the child who likes to train animals may also like to teach children. When you help children discover both their strengths and their interests, they have a good chance to develop a true passion. 8. Let them tell their own stories. Kids don't care if you walked ten miles to school. To discover their strengths they want to know you care about what their unique experiences in the world are, not necessarily how you did things. Let them find their own paths; they may not want to play basketball just because you did. Sometimes kids forgo their own passions to please you. 9. Don't compare them to their older siblings. There is nothing more hampering of children's abilities to discover their strengths than when they feel they are constantly being compared to their perfect siblings. Every child will be unique and different. The differences are causes for celebration not comparisons that may make them feel not good enough . You can see the differences in your children early on in their lives. The more you celebrate this, the better. 10. Give them as many choices about what to do as possible. Do you want children to help around the house? Use it as an opportunity to discover their preferences and let them choose among the jobs you have for them to do. Do you want them to participate in school activities? Encourage them to choose between a variety of things to do, support their choices even if they aren't what you would pick. Discovering strengths happens through a process of self-reflection. All of the above tips will help children develop positive and creative thoughts which will help them decide what their true passions are in life.
 
Suren Ramasubbu: Internet Filtering Software Makers Held to Higher Standard on Sharing User Data Top
After the Chinese government's ill-advised Internet filtering mandate , since rescinded , caused an uproar, companies that make Internet filtering and parental monitoring software are in the news again for controversial reasons. AP broke this story about EchoMetrix Inc. , the maker of Sentry and FamilySafe parental control software, collecting data from its users and selling it to other companies and marketers that wish to study kids' online behavior. Prior to that, Symantec announced a list of kids' top 100 search terms , data collected through its OnlineFamily.Norton service. The title of the official announcement proclaimed, " School's Out and Your Kids Are Online: Do You Know What They've Been Searching For This Summer? ", drawing sharp criticism from the likes of D.C. Vito, Executive Director of The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) , a non-profit providing multimedia skills to youths, parents and educators. D.C. Vito raises the question, This company has a multi-million dollar annual budget, so what do you think it does with the statistics and demographics it compiles from the users of this "free" service? Internet filtering and parental control products may not be preferred by every parent. Many parents choose to simply discuss appropriate usage with their children; many others use Internet filtering products as training wheels until they feel confident. While the decision makers who purchase and setup the software are parents or school administrators, the actual end users whose browsing behavior is being monitored are children -- a highly targeted demographic for marketers and companies that want to sell products to them. While EchoMetrix actually makes money out of the data it sells to marketers, Symantec's announcement is more of a social observation and a "teachable moment" for parents, though the company is arguably using the widely published announcement to promote its service. Neither Symantec nor EchoMetrix are violating privacy laws, since the data under question is aggregated across thousands of anonymous users over time, and there is no way to attribute the overall behavior to a specific user. Ethical questions arguably remain, though. Were the parents informed that the data will be used for marketing purposes? Was this made obvious enough when they signed up, or was it obscured inside the fine print? Were the kids aware that they are going to be judged by the world at large, along with their peers and friends? Probably not. At Mobicip.com , a parental control and Internet filtering service for the iPhone and iPod Touch, we have stayed away from using data on our user behavior for any purpose, mainly due to the arguably ethical and potential PR issues associated with it. This is not a new controversy. David Burt at FilteringFacts.org writes about a now-defunct company called N2H2, a top-selling vendor to public schools in 2001. David writes, the thinking was that since this was "anonymous, aggregate data" there were no privacy concerns. The company also felt that since notification about the monitoring and reuse of data was in the product End User License Agreement (EULA), this would also help cover the company. The reality was that these defenses were of almost no use during the PR firestorm that followed. According to this 2001 AP report , privacy groups called the filtering company a "corporate predator" and were incensed over reports the information would be sold to the Defense Department for recruiting. Mr. Burt concludes, What's the takeaway here? Just because what a company is doing with user data is legal, described in the EULA, and anonymous does NOT necessarily mean it's going to be OK with customers. Apparently, this conclusion applies only to Internet filtering software companies. Even the big G does it. Yes, Google publishes the Zeitgeist -- a list of top and fast-rising searches on Google published on a daily basis -- which is then aggregated into an annual Zeitgeist that has been published since 2001. For instance, Obama and Palin figured in the 2008 US list , not at all surprising, but an interesting fact/trivia nevertheless. How did Google know? According to Google Zeitgeist, our search team studied the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed in to the Google search box. Except where noted, all of these search terms are most popular for 2008. All of the search queries we studied are anonymous -- no personal information was used. The annual report is typically met with good coverage by magazines and blogs , but seldom has the issue of Google "spying anonymously" on user behavior ever been raised. It appears that Internet filtering companies have a special obligation because of the unique nature of the demographic that uses the service. As a society, we are more sensitive to anyone collecting anonymous information about our children, especially if it is used for marketing purposes, than we are to collecting anonymous information about ourselves.
 
John Tomasic: All the News That's Fit to Link Top
Colorado GOP politicians have been moving in the last week to block followers on Twitter whom they suspect aren't fans or fellow travelers but merely liberals fishing for right-wing tweets to mock. Of course they won't succeed in being exclusive on Twitter because Twitter doesn't care what you think about the people on the other end; it just wants more of them. It wants to indiscriminately cast your bon mots (and your mal mots) far and wide, and then farther and wider, and so on. It's not a list-serve. It's the Twitter. You're either on it or you're off it. You can use it and you can enjoy it, you can hate it too, but you can't stop it from being what it wants it to be! It's the kind of thing news organizations are still (still!) learning about the web. As local conservatives try to rein the Twitter, newspapers are contemplating exiting the digital dance floor to sit in the paid balcony booths. New media journalism analyst Michael Massing reports in the New York Review of Books that in the next year, news publishers plan to erect pay walls for access to web content. They have to stop the bleeding somehow of course and someone, somewhere soon has got to figure out a replicable way to make the web pay journalists to do real reporting. Pay walls, though, seem a stop gap, a half measure that goes against the grain of the medium. The publishers know, because they surf the web, that the link is more valuable than the words. At least, the link is a new kind of powerful fundamental vocabulary that all journalists have to utterly master. The workable free link as footnote, aside, commentary, road trip or some combination of all of the above is the digital thing itself. We have to keep greasing that skid not seek to hobble it. In other words, welcome Huffington Post Denver edition! Like media consumers across the state, the Colorado Independent (of which I am the editor and the Center for Independent Media network of which it is a part) has eagerly anticipated the launch of Arianna's mile-high vertical, captained by editor Ethan Axelrod , and we look forward to a long, prosperous and influential relationship. The biggest news in Colorado media in the last decade perhaps remains the shuttering with a whimper last February of the storied Rocky Mountain News . The state has since seen a host of small and innovative news / journalism web-based experiments. The Huffington Post's presence here will encourage more such experiments, as a smart platform and major distribution center for daring journalism and sharp criticism. (To say nothing of almost-nude photos and celebrity gossip!) During the election season last year, I worked for the Huffington Post, as one of the editors of its OffTheBus citizen journalism project . It was a wild ride, the center of a political and new-media journalism storm, an experience from which I sometimes feel I am still recovering and for which I will remain forever grateful. OffTheBus reached out to citizens and bloggers across the nation and around the world, including bloggers at Colorado Confidential, an earlier version of the Colorado Independent, and saw their contributions take flight, stirring debate in all corners and prodding old-school journalists to new highs and lows. Would that the Huffington Post were here in Denver this spring and summer, when the Colorado Independent played a key role in prying open the secrecy-shrouded and otherwise controversial chancellor selection process at Colorado State University . Or when we threw a spotlight on the repeated open meetings violations committed by the state's Independent Ethics Commission , formed by the voters through the initiative process to increase government transparency! Or when we drew aside the green-wash veil covering the less-than environmentally friendly practices of electric power-generating co-ops in the state. The Huffington Post is here now, though, a major Denver hub in the global digital-information economy. It will purvey far and wide all the news that's fit to link. More on Twitter
 
FBI Fearful Of Madrid-Style Train Bombings; Set For More Raids Top
Fearful of a Madrid-style subway train bombing, authorities are poised to make more raids to seize bomb-making materials at locations in Queens, sources said Wednesday. The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team arrived in New York in anticipation of the offensive to thwart a Denver-based terror cell with ties to Al Qaeda, police sources told the Daily News.
 
FDNY Responding Faster Than Ever Before Top
NEW YORK (AP/ 1010 WINS) -- The FDNY is responding to fires faster than ever, and there have been fewer deaths this year than ever before.
 
Reese Schonfeld: CNN Has Lost Its Way Top
As the progenitor of CNN and the man who told the New York Times editorial board back in 1980 that CNN's editorial strategy was built based upon "live, live and more live," I should be the last person to say that CNN made a mistake by going live to the Tea Party protesters in Washington last Sunday. When I heard one of the protesters demanding that President Obama and his "kind" were leading us to Communism, I had little doubt what "kind" he was talking about. Giving an audience of millions to enraged extremists is too great a gift to qualify as "freedom of speech." I have written before that as my news mentor, UP's Bill Higginbotham said, "We don't have to quote every word that we hear, or show every picture we get." We do not have to give voice to the haters among us. I suppose no one could've stopped a Congressman from calling President Obama a liar because the networks had to carry his speech live, but CNN did not have to give live access to the voices of hatred at the Capital this weekend. When I ran the company, their voices would've been fed live into our editing rooms, where editors would've picked out the sound bites that were worthy of airtime. It may take an extra 10 minutes to get it on the air, but it performs as a necessary filter. I have just seen last week's numbers, and I am glad to report that CNN's open air practice didn't do them any good in the ratings. For the first time that I can remember, MSNBC beat CNN in every single one of the demographics in primetime and in two (18-34 and 25-54) of the three demographics in total day. MSNBC beat CNN in total primetime viewing, but CNN edged them in total day. Fox, of course, swept them both in every category, and in primetime finished in the top ten of "adults 25-54" for the first time in a long time. It also finished eleventh in total day 25-54s. We know where the passion lies, and it ain't coming from the liberals. President Obama is suffering from over-exposure and under-performance. It's about time he stopped talking and started doing. Otherwise, CNN will have no ratings at all. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Alan Alda: My Friend Larry Gelbart Top
Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are. Some people even said at the time that his episodes of M*A*S*H, with their unblinking account of the costs of war, helped our country lose its patience with the one they were then fighting in Vietnam. He certainly pointed us, with zero sentimentality, toward a more compassionate look at one another. Many physicians have told me they entered medicine to become the kind of doctor they saw in the character of Hawkeye Pierce. Larry, who died September 11, at 81, had a graceful presence and humble affability that didn't hint at his enormous influence. He inspired many other writers, although few could match his skill at folding words together like verbal origami. But, I remember him above all for being the one everyone at the table wanted to be sitting next to. Wit wafted from him like perfume from a rose. He was incandescent. Larry's genius for writing changed my life because I got to speak his lines -- lines that were so good they'll be with us for a long, long time; but his other genius -- his immense talent for being good company -- that's a light that's gone out, and now we're all sitting here in the dark.
 
NY Food Bank Demand Rising Top
Though Ben Bernanke declared Tuesday a "likely" end to the recession, the forecast has yet to improve at the Food Bank for New York City. Some 90% of the bank's member organizations are reporting increases in the number of people coming to them for emergency food assistance, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Food Bank. More on The Recession
 
Joseph Cao: "Future Of GOP" Voted To Rebuke Wilson Top
Joseph Cao was hailed six months ago as the future of the GOP. Yesterday, he voted to rebuke Joe Wilson. Can the most endangered Republican in the House survive? As he made his way to the podium to give his health-care speech last Wednesday--a speech that would draw boos from Republican lawmakers, trigger Joe Wilson's now-notorious outburst, and eventually be likened to Nazism by angry protesters--President Obama was able to find at least one friendly Republican face in the crowd. "I love this guy!" Obama announced to Republicans gathered nearby as he shook hands with Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA). More on GOP
 
Karen Salmansohn: Want Happier Love? Use Your A.M. to Aim You Rightly! Top
NOTE: The following is an adapted excerpt from best selling author Karen Salmansohn's newest book Prince Harming Syndrome -- which gives a modern twist to Aristotle's happiness philosophies by merging them with cognitive psychology, brain science, and energy theories from quantum physics - all delivered with feisty humor. (Hence why Jon Stewart of the Daily Show said: "Salmansohn has the soul of a stand up comic. The battle of the sexes has a brave new gladiator." ) Salmansohn is presently writing a separate 30 Days To Happier Love Workshop Blog at her site - www.notsalmon.com - to further jumpstart you to go skiddadling towards happier love. For the ultimate full throttle jumpstart, check out the full book Prince Harming Syndrome . >>>>>> I'm a big believer that mornings are your trajectory for your day. You must use your a.m. to aim you rightly. FOR EXAMPLE: If a rocketship is off a few degrees before it launches itself towards the moon, it might wind up in Uranus. Ditto on your day. If you start off aimed in a thought direction towards what you don't want, you will find yourself feeling as if you're stuck in Uranus. Hence, you must make sure your day starts off aimed consciously at what you want -- so you increase your likelihood of being over the moon about your life! Aristotle was famous for believing that the best way to start any project -- including the project called "Your Life" -- is to begin with your final purpose in mind -- or what Aristotle calls your "teleology." "Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?" Aristotle asked. Right now I will take up Aristotle's advice -- and clearly state my teleology for you: I want to give you techniques to break bad relationship patterns for good, so you can snag a happily ever after love future. Now it's your turn. How do you envision your teleology of a happily ever after love future? I want you to write an email to yourself -- filled in great detail with a description of what healthful, happy love looks like, sounds like, feels like, smells like, tastes like, quacks like. I did this every morning for the last year -- and this truly helped me stay focused and energized to find the happily after love I've finally found. Sure along the way I found lots of disappointing love -- but this email visualization practice helped me to keep my eye on the prize of what I wanted in love -- and thereby I found it. Here's what I did - and still do. Every morning when I wake up I go to the gym, and I look at my Love, Work, Happiness Goals -- which I have typed into an email -- which I've been sending (and re-sending) to myself every morning for the last year. Every morning I edit it a wee bit -- tweak it ever so slightly -- so these goals stay fresh for me. As I edit, I really get myself excited about the kind of life I want to create for myself. I then send it to myself -- so I can re-read it again later (and even re-re-read it throughout my day). Post-tweaking, I work out at my gym - while I'm still in this highly enthusiastic positive frame of mind about the kind of life I want to create for myself. I put on my favorite upbeat music -- to get myself into an even more excited state. I've found that when I merge this "thought exercise" with "physical exercise I get even more positive results even more quickly. I got this technique from Tony Robbins -- and I gotta say, I've personally found that exercising while I'm thinking positive thoughts has truly helped me in speeding up getting what I want in the long-term. And in the short term, I simply feel more confident and at peace throughout my day! This merging of "thought exercise" with "physical exercise" technique works for many reasons -- for neural scientific as well as metaphysical reasons. Suffice to say -- I recommend it strongly. Basically, what you have in your life always begins with your thoughts. Your thoughts create your habits/actions -- which create your life. If you can master your thoughts, you will master your life. Thoughts with strong emotion will create the most change. The more you can increase your feeling for what you want -- the more you increase the reeling in of what you want! Hence why when you're highly angry -- and thinking too much about all your past love disappointments -- you attract more "love disappointments" in your present. Again - this is true for multiple reasons (psychological, neural scientific and metaphysical) - which I discuss further in Prince Harming Syndrome Know this now : If you want to find happier love in your life, you must start with thinking positively about finding positive love in your life. It's like this : If you want to change the picture on a TV screen because you don't like what you're seeing, you can't do it by wiping the screen with a cloth. You must change the programming to start seeing a new picture. Ditto with your life. If you don't like what you're seeing on your movie-for-one-called-Your-Life -- if you want to start watching different/happier love scenes -- you must change your inner programming. Guess what? Even if you don't fully understand or believe in this theory -- you are doing this theory -- and hence you are getting what you are presently getting in your life. It's as if right now you're playing a game in which you don't know the rules -- and so you don't fully know why you're getting what you're getting. But -- this theory is the raison d'etre behind what you're getting. And the sooner you accept this raison d'etre, the sooner you can let go of your grapes of wrath! Your Assignment: For the next 30 days I want you to quiet your busy brain and meditate on your "living happily ever after love future" for five minutes -- three times a day - by sending and re-send - then reading - and re-reading this email throughout your day. Do not envision a specific person you know in your love future. Leave room to meet someone even better than who you now know. Also, get your full body into the feeling of calm and safety when you read (and re-read) this email. Envision being with someone who makes you feel emotionally safe and loved. This "visualization assignment" is the first of many assignments I give in Prince Harming Syndrome -- as well as the easiest and most important. There's a famous Japanese principle -- called "Kaizen" -- that celebrates the joy of doing small tasks that over time add up to the joy of experiencing large life changes. These small "Kaizen" visualization assignments will only take up a total of fifteen tiny minutes in your day. But if you do them, you will change your entire life for years to come. Actually, Kaizen assignments remind me of something funny Woody Allen once said. A funny but wise Woody Allen quip : Woody says he believes there's life on other planets-- and they're far ahead of us technologically. Not because they're light-years ahead--but because they're fifteen minutes ahead. If we all just had those extra fifteen minutes we could accomplish so much more! The good news : You do have those extra fifteen minutes -- and so there's absolutely zilcho excuses for you not doing these "living happily ever after" self-email visualizations for five minutes, three times a day -- and keep on doing them for the next 30 days! Psychologists believe to really drill in a neural pathway shift it helps to do a new habit for 30 days in a row. I agree. And so it seems does Aristotle -- who said it well when he said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. (...) Thus, it is not enough to perform one act of generosity in order to be generous; it is necessary to act constantly according to the dictates of reason." Ditto on performing visualizations of your happily ever after future. You must make this your new 30 days in a row habit. Know this now : Even if you don't see results immediately, change will be starting to happen once you start this new 30 day visualization program. Seeing is not always believing. However, seeding is believing. What you seed is what you get. If you are seeding positive thoughts and positive actions, you can feel certain that overtime success will eventually blossom! Journalists have described bestselling author Karen Salmansohn ( www.notsalmon.com ) as "Deepak Chopra meets Carrie Bradshaw." Her books have sold over 1 million copies worldwide -- creating a new breed of self-help for people who would not be caught dead reading self-help! Her books have been read/loved by Jon Stewart, Madonna, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Marisa Tomei, Arianna Huffington -and more! She's been on THE TODAY SHOW, THE VIEW, Jeanne Moos' CNN segments, Bill Maher's show (etc) - plus in the NYTimes, Business Week, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Glamour, Self (etc). Her latest book, PRINCE HARMING SYNDROME ( www.princeharming.com ) puts a modern twist on the ancient Greek happiness philosophies of Aristotle -- merging it with modern cognitive therapy and a touch of quantum physics -- offering women empowering insights and techniques to break limiting beliefs and (b)lame excuses so they can finally live and love happily ever after! More on Jon Stewart
 
Thomas Frank: The Left Should Reclaim 'Freedom' Top
There are few things in politics more annoying than the right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word "freedom" that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all. Equally annoying is the silence of Democratic Party leaders on the subject. They spend their careers hearing this fatuous argument from the other side, but challenging conservatism's claim to freedom seems to be beyond their powers. Or beneath their dignity. Or something. Today they're paying for that high-mindedness. While Democrats fussed with the details of health-care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself. Any increase in the size or duties of government, the right tells us, necessarily subtracts from our freedom. Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health-care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains. "What we're going to end up with is higher taxes, bigger government and less freedom for the American people," House Republican Leader John Boehner said on Fox News in July. "We're going to have a real fight for how much freedom we're going to have left in America." People working the freedom vein were numerous at the large protest that took place in Washington on Saturday. Sponsors included the Institute for Liberty, Let Freedom Ring, Young Americans for Liberty, the Campaign for Liberty, the Center for Individual Freedom, and BureauCrash a.k.a. "the Freedom Activist Network." FreedomWorks, the grass-roots pressure group, prepared a video for the occasion which encouraged people to believe that the administration's many policy "czars" revealed its kinship to the Russian autocracy of old. That our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable. But they did. You can see it in that famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting from 1943: "Freedom from Want," an illustration of one of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms." Strange though it might sound, this is a form of freedom that pretty much requires government to get involved in the economy in order to "secure to every nation," as Roosevelt put it, "a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants." The idea is still enshrined today in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I doubt that a U.N. endorsement is a seal of approval that today's right will find reassuring, however. It's far more likely that they would see it as a confirmation of the satanic wickedness of the "Four Freedoms" and the Roosevelt presidency generally. Conservatives of the 1930s, led by an upper-crust outfit called the American Liberty League, certainly felt that way. "That Roosevelt was a dictator there was no doubt; but Liberty Leaguers were not quite sure what kind," wrote the historian George Wolfskill in "The Revolt of the Conservatives," a 1962 study of that organization. "Some thought he was a fascist, others believed him a socialist or Communist, while others, to be absolutely sure, said he was both." Today, of course, we know that the right's tyranny-fears were nonsense. Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN. Even such pits of statism as Britain and Canada remain free societies, generally speaking, despite having gone skipping blithely down the universal-health-care road to serfdom decades ago. For the sort of people who gathered on the Mall last weekend, however, I doubt that such observations would matter in the least. Their conception of freedom soars on by a force all its own, carried aloft on the wings of pure abstract reasoning: Government intervention equals tyranny. Liberalism is forever a form of despotism-in-waiting. The reality of misgovernment, meanwhile, is not something you can grasp simply by donning a tricorn hat and musing on the majesty of Lady Liberty. It requires, among other things, close attention to the following irony: That many of the most destructive and even corrupt policies of the past few decades were engineered by exactly the sort of people who claim to be motivated by freedom and liberty. Our friends on the Mall no doubt imagine themselves as guiltless accusers, but if they really want to understand how our country got to this sorry state, they need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Read other Opinion Journal articles: Max Baucus: The Senate Is Ready to Act on Health Care John Fund: Acorn Runs Off the Rails
 
Credit Swaps Are Back En Vogue As Market Confidence Returns Top
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., credit-default swaps have lost their stigma for disaster and are contributing to the growing confidence in the credit markets. More on Goldman Sachs
 
Poll: Majority Dismiss Right Wing Healthcare Attacks As "Scare Tactics" Top
Wow, this is cause for cautious optimism: Buried in a new Bloomberg poll is evidence that solid majorities dismiss all the leading right wing health care talking points as "scare tactics." Not kidding! It's true. The poll tested a range of attacks and asked whether they were "legitimate" or a "disortion" and a "scare tactic." The results:
 
Lora Somoza: A Goodbye to a Girl's Best Friend Top
I just spent yesterday morning caressing her face, kissing her forehead, telling her how much I love her and stroking her soft, sleek fur. My dog had just died. When I first met Sophie, it was already set in stone. I was a goner: Hook, line and sinker. There was no choice in the matter. I belonged to her and she belonged to me. I had been thinking about getting a dog for a while but had been ping ponging back and forth on what kind. Then one day at work, a woman from a nearby rescue walked up to our office and wanted to see if she could find this black lab puppy a home. She was only 5 months old and had already been through hell: cigarette burns on her belly, beaten with a broom, terrified. And all she had to do was look at me with those deep brown, soulful eyes and I thought, "Oh. There's my dog." I took her home and she was so timid and frightened. She would crawl all the way under the bed and hide in the corner. But in less than a few days, that personality I would grow to love and cherish started to bloom. She began to sleep on the corner of my bed, which became her spot for the next twelve years. I was working some long hours then and Sophie let me know. She tore up my yard a dozen times. Of course, it was stupid of me to keep replanting. She destroyed my rose bushes, lavender and even a freshly planted apple tree. All of which she dragged into the house through the doggie door and tried to replant in my white couch. She also shredded about $700 worth of lingerie. Apparently we both had expensive tastes in undergarments. While I tried to keep my head from spinning off, Sophie would jump up and down, crying happily, "Mommy's home! Mommy's home!" The replanting completely forgotten. I began taking her to Hollywood Hounds, a doggie day care center, for my long workdays. (That's right, I'm one of those people.) She would hate to be separated from me, dragging her claws the whole way into the building. She always had this sad, pathetic look on her face, as if I were abandoning her for life, but all was completely forgiven when I met her at the end of the day. I would take her hiking often, one her favorite activities. She knew exactly where we were going and started that happy whine about half a mile away. We'd take off and I loved to watch her run. When she was little, she'd run diagonally, her hind legs racing her front paws. I half expected to watch her tumble heels over head. Yet she grew into her gate. She became Sophie the ballerina. She had such long graceful legs and moved like a purebred racehorse. She hated the rain. Especially her first few years, I would have to literally drag her outside. Sophie would act like I was torturing her, looking up at me with that "Why are you trying to kill me?" face and we would stand in the rain, waiting each other out. Of course the umbrella was over her, not me. But she absolutely adored the snow. I had never seen any purer joy than when Sophie discovered snow. We had one of those giant storms in New York and I was afraid of how the little princess who hated getting her paws wet would react. But she dove into the snow and took off running. She spent the afternoon rolling around, making her own version of a snow angel. Snow was her greatest pleasure, but put it in a pool and melt it, no way. Labs are supposed to love swimming pools, but not Sophie. She was terrified of pools. Wouldn't get near them. Yet she never met an ocean she didn't love. She danced about beaches of Southern California, Mexico and the Jersey Shore. Sophie was extremely well traveled. We'd take road trips to Arizona, San Francisco, Palm Springs and beyond. She'd jump in the passenger seat ( her seat) and immediately nap. She racked up thousands of frequent flier miles jetting coast to coast. She drove cross-country once and even took up residence in the Beverly Hills Peninsula Hotel for about a month. But she was not a snobby dog. Sophie enjoyed the country life as well. Especially the time she ran happily into the field and rolled around doing the twist on her back... only to come back over to me and to share how she'd been frolicking in bear crap. She loved babies but hated repairmen. She had a ferocious bark and made the most protective guard dog. She needed to be introduced to people cautiously, as she never fully got over the trauma of her puppyhood. But once she realized you were one of the "good ones," she'd love you for life and happily try to lick your face off. Sophie had her "people." Her fans. She would chase bunnies in her sleep and get so excited that she'd bark and fart at the same time, a special talent I coined "Farking." When she got one of her favorite treats, she would carry it around the house back and forth for 10 minutes before deciding whether or not to eat it or bury it, saving it for later. I did not fully understand the reasoning, but it made perfect sense to her. She thought little white doggies were appetizers but had several mad crushes throughout her life, including a weimereiner, a doberman puppy and a ridgeback, all of which made her whine with delight when she saw them and prance about. She knew which shoes meant time for a walk and would jump up and down with excitement. She would lie on her back, balancing a toy between her two front paws. She would never leave my side when I was sick or suffering from a darker case of the blues. She was always there, lying on her corner of the bed. Sometimes sprawled out across half of the bed. She always nursed me back to health with her unwavering love. A lot of people tell me that Sophie won the lotto with me, or that I took great care of her. But the truth is, she took the greatest care of me. She was there for every success, every heartache, all the celebrations, all the dark times. Her fur dried a waterfall of my tears. She could always make me smile by trying to lick my face off or with her helicopter tail going madly round and round. In the past year, Sophie started to feel her age. Those beautiful, graceful legs began to stiffen and I found myself hoisting her up onto the bed and off. No longer would I come home to see her dozing on the couch, the floor was fine. Her own medicine cabinet began to fill with prescriptions for her liver, arthritis, bronchial passages, and pain. But she still seemed happy, enjoying our shortened walks, her toys and her treats. A couple of months ago, she began to collapse, her arthritic legs giving out from under her. She would look up at me, those deep brown eyes so vulnerable and fearful, as if to say, "Why can't I get up?" And I would lie with her until she was ready to try again. Then she'd get up, shake it off, and wag her tail, ready to meet the day. The cough developed last week. At first, I thought it was her bronchitis and maybe she just needed a stronger dose of medicine. But the look in her eyes, that helpless, frightened look she had as a puppy came back. The Vet said pneumonia and my heart stopped. I spent hours with her in the hospital, stroking her face, telling her how much I loved her, rubbing her belly, trying keeping her calm. But within 3 days, she was in an oxygen tank, barely hanging on. She died the next morning. My sweet girl was gone and my heart broke into hundreds of pieces, all in the shape of her beautiful brown eyes. I kept thinking, if only I brought her to the vet sooner... I should have walked her more, petted her more, loved her more. If only I had a little more time with her. I just wanted more time. But there is never "enough" time when you lose a loved one, is there? There's no such thing. So, I say to you, my beloved Sophie, thank you. Thank you for loving me 150 percent, 150 percent of the time. Thank you for your constant companionship, your unwavering loyalty, your infectious enthusiasm and those beautiful understanding eyes. I'm so grateful that you picked me to spend your 12 years with. I will love and miss you always. More on Death & Dying
 
Dr. Johnny Benjamin: No Longer Want to Be Like Mike? Top
His ‘Air-ness’ is taking a great deal of heat these days over his induction speech during the Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies.  I’ve heard and read very few positive comments about his 23 minutes of reflection. I’ll preface my comments by saying that I like many others enjoyed Michael Jordan’s athletic prowess but my favorite player is Julius Erving.  I am not a devoted Jordan fan and have never purchased a pair of his sneakers.  They cost too much and in all honesty I never had that much game…though I was no punk either.  With that said here we go. I apparently stand alone in my appreciation for the first real glimpse into the man Michael Jordan, sans the marketing façade.  Until now, I think that the world has seen mostly only what Madison Avenue and Brand Jordan carefully scripted and manufactured for public consumption. At the basketball HOF we finally got an opportunity to see Michael Jordan raw…straight no chaser.  The real MJ may not have pleased you or maybe he even offended your sensibilities.   Furthermore, I believe that the only people more disappointed than apparently many of the sportscasters, pundits, talking heads, professional writers, bloggers and people standing around the office water cooler is Mr. Jordan’s team of high powered public relations and marketing people that wove this billion dollar fantasy. This HOF soliloquy has obviously been brewing in Michael for quite some time.   Most likely, his image consultants have for years convinced him that discussion of all matters political, racial, the least bit controversial or even substantial were strictly verboten.  He traded his right of free speech and freedom to voice his opinions for a boat load of cash.    I saw his speech as cathartic.  He must feel 1,000 pounds lighter and probably slept like a baby.  Michael Jordan after all of these years finally said what he truly felt; without concern for spin, image, market share or repercussion.  Michael Jordan is an uber-competitive person that sees everyone, and I do mean everyone, as a potential threat to his throne or some may say his ego.  He clearly has friends but they obviously are not off-limits.  They too can find themselves squarely in his cross hairs.  You may not have liked the real MJ that was finally revealed to the world. You may have even felt duped for all of these years. But at the end of the day, did you really think that he could fly? More on Sports
 
Google To Buy Brightcove Internet TV Service Provider, Rumor Reports Top
Google Inc. is reportedly weighing the acquisition of Internet TV service Brightcove Inc. for between $500 and $700 million. Reports of the acquisition talks come from PBS MediaTwit's Mark Glasser's post on Twitter (@mediatwit). More on Google
 
Ruth Sinai: Racism, Israeli Style Top
The school year got off to a rocky start in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva, just east of Tel Aviv. Petah Tikva is Hebrew for "opening of hope," but for more than 100 black-skinned children, Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia, it was hardly a hopeful beginning to their lives in the Holy Land when several local schools refused to accept them. Reporters and editors were quick to spot the tear-jerking potential of cute first graders, little skullcaps on their head and shiny backpacks on their backs, waiting forlornly in school and city halls while their parents pleaded for them to be allowed into classrooms. Headlines and government officials were quick to denounce the schools for racism. Incidents of racism in Israel, a nation of Holocaust survivors and immigrants whose self-image is molded by the racism Jews suffered abroad, are always intriguing. They shed light on what constitutes racism in the eyes of the country's Jewish majority, and the case of the kids in Petah Tikva is particularly telling. Racism toward Ethiopian immigrants, who have been coming to Israel for the past 30 years, has less to do with their skin color and more with continuous doubts on the part of the country's religious establishment about their Jewishness and their claims to be descendants of the 12 tribes. As a condition of their acceptance they are forced to undergo conversion and to enroll their kids in religious schools, meaning their choice of schools is somewhat limited. Thus the education department in Petah Tikva found itself short of slots for its new Ethiopian students and demanded they be accepted into three schools that are considered private but get a substantial amount of funding from the government. These, however, claimed that the immigrant children were not suited to their high academic standards. The public religious schools, too, refused to take the kids, arguing that they had accepted many immigrant children and it was now time for the private establishments to share the load. Just a case of private school elitism? A mundane manifestation of NIMBY? Hardly. In recent years several incidents have come to light of public religious schools instituting separate classes, separate busing, even separate recess times for Ethiopian kids. One mayor refused to accept them altogether citing an overburdened public school system unsuited to the needs of the African kids who hail from a very different culture and society. But the Ethiopians are not the only children targeted by bigoted religious school officials. Some ultra-Orthodox girls schools, run by sects of Jews of European origin (Ashkenazi Jews) have for years refused to enroll girls whose parents or grandparents were born in Arab countries (Sephardi Jews). Perhaps as a result of summer doldrums and a dirth of news, the Petah Tikva affair prompted an impressive public uproar -- from calls to cut off government funding to schools that refuse to accept Ethiopian children, all the way to demands that police be mobilized to escort the kids into class. Shades of Little Rock. The Petah Tikva schools, private and public, were forced to back down and accept the children. The media and government congratulated themselves for combating an ugly manifestation of prejudice. Admirable? Hardly. Just ask any Arab student from the Galilee who has tried to rent an apartment in Jerusalem, any Arab engineering graduate who has tried to get a high-tech job, any Arab shop assistant in suburban Tel Aviv who is forbidden to speak Arabic to her colleagues lest she alienate Jewish customers. It's not simply a case of double standards. Israel, a complex mosaic of ethnic groups, is oblivious and indifferent to its deeply rooted racism against Arab citizens, who constitute 20% of the population. The biblical injunction of not doing unto others what you would not have done to you is buried under Israel's complex struggle for existence in a hostile environment and an innate need to perpetuate its status as the victim it once was, a need that blinds it to the suffering of others. More on Ethiopia
 
Celia Alario: Just in Time: Youth Journalists Take On Climate with 'Project Survival Media' Top
Help is on the way folks! I can lose sight of how starved I am for some good news about the state of the media, until finally, every once in a while something comes along that really gives me a big serving of hope. Just in time, here comes ' Project Survival Media '. Check out their promo video and get a taste for yourself! Project Survival Media , the brain child of youth media maker Shadia Fayne Wood, is a global youth journalism network that aims to influence the outcome of the landmark United Nations Climate Negotiations (COP 15) by broadcasting what they believe is the most critical message of our time: As world leaders negotiate a new climate treaty, "Survival is Not Negotiable." No duh, right? Seems like anyone could agree to that . Well, unfortunately the fine print of current negotiations makes you realize otherwise. This December, world leaders are coming together to decide on a climate policy for the entire world. The youth from Project Survival Media believe (and I agree!) that the policy being debated is woefully inadequate. These youth are not buying the rhetoric from US lawmakers that this is the best the USA can do based on economic and political realities. They are blending advocacy, digital witnessing and citizen journalism, with a sprinkling of moxy and a whole lot of cool-factor to push the envelope on anything ever done before in the world of independent media coverage of mass mobilizations and international policy meetings. Their plan is to provide an antidote to the mainstream media's traditionally lacking coverage of the issue. They are also redefining what it means to be an 'expert' on the issue, with a focus on the voices of those who are already being disproportionately impacted, and those who have found successful global and local solutions for a better future. Project Survival Media is still recruiting their team , and is calling all passionate youth journalists who want to use their skills to: - Launch "Survival," to the forefront of the international political debate - Amplify voices underrepresented by traditional media, and - Report on the most compelling climate stories from around the world. There are seven media teams, one for each continent. They plan to build stories together that focus on those roles in society most impacted by climate change: factory workers, farmers, mothers, organizers, and health care providers. Who is eligible? Unfortunately I am too old to do anything more than cheer them on by retweeting their stuff and feverishly updating my Facebook status with their news. They want: -Any young person between the ages of 15-30 who has some experience in any of the following: blogging, reporting, photography, or videography -Any young person who has either a background in climate change, human rights issues, or global or local environmental justice struggles and lives anywhere on one of the seven continents -- aka Planet Earth. Click Here to complete an application to be on one of the Project Survival Regional Media Teams. ALL Applications must be submitted by: September 18th, 2009. Hurry folks, that dribbling sound is the ice caps melting. More on Climate Change
 
Lee Stranahan: Max Baucus Releases Health Care Bill With Bi-Industry Support Top
WASHINGTON, D.C. - After months of hearing skeptics doubt him, Senator Max Baucus (D - Lobtana) today achieved his goal of presenting a health care reform bill that 'threaded the needle' of achieving full support from both major political parties - the drug company lobby and the insurance industry lobby. Baucus was hiding in his office behind a large pile of money and not available for an interview but issued the following written statement... I can proudly say that I have managed to create a bill with no widespread support from Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or the people of Montana. My bill also does nothing to advance either health or care or reform. Also, my bill is very boring to read and has no pictures or pop-ups. However, it seems to have made the health insurance and drug lobbyists happy since they have told me that I can take the week off from fellating them. Media reaction has been predictably positive. Spokespeople from major television networks have stated that the Baucus plan will keep them selling commercial air time 'forever'. An extra provision in the Baucus plan would not only fine Americans for not buying health insurance but would also fine them trying to skip Viagra commercials with their TiVo. White House reaction to the Baucus plan was mild considering that Baucus's plan is pure, condensed evil. President Obama pledged to go on as many TV shows as possible, not to ever mention that Senator Baucus was embarrassingly corrupt and hoped his natural charm would make viewers forget that he'd promised to fight against lobbyists. Viewers were expected to buy it. More on Max Baucus
 
Jerry Weissman: Obama on the Stump Top
After his formal address to a Joint Session of Congress last Wednesday about his health care reform proposals, President Obama went out on the stump to seek the support of the public. According to CBS News , by Saturday, when he got to Minneapolis to speak "to more than 10,000 people at the Target Center," it was for the fifth time that week. The setting was like that of his stump speeches during his campaign for the Presidency and, as in those times, he called upon two of his familiar rhetorical devices: the human interest story and anaphora, or the repetitive use of a key phrase. (For a fuller discussion of anaphora, please see my earlier blog about his Inaugural Address and my prior blog on his health care speech.) Saturday's human interest story was about a campaign appearance candidate Obama made in Greenwood, South Carolina, and about a city councilwoman there named Edith Childs. Ms. Childs is known as the "Chant Lady" because she had a reputation for stirring up crowds at public meetings by chanting. Here's how Obama described his event in Greenwood to his audience in Minneapolis: Suddenly I hear this voice shout out behind me: "Fired up?" And I almost jumped out of my shoes. But everybody else acts like this is normal and they all say, "Fired up!" And then I hear this voice: "Ready to go?" And the people around me, they just say, "Ready to go!" I don't know what's going on. So I look behind me, and there's this little woman there...[and] for the next five minutes, she starts chanting. She says, "Fired up?" And everybody says, "Fired up!" "Ready to go?" "Ready to go!" And this just keeps on going. And I realize I'm being upstaged by this woman. And I'm⎯she's getting all the attention, and I'm standing there looking at my staff and they're shrugging their shoulders. But here's the thing, Minneapolis. After about a minute, maybe two, I'm feeling kind of fired up. I'm feeling⎯I'm feeling like I'm ready to go. Then, as any good speaker would, Obama segued from Ms. Childs' story to his own message, and he did so with his own repetitive phrases: And it goes to show you how one voice can change a room. And if it changes a room it can change a city. And if it can change a city it can change a state. And if it can change a state it can change a nation. If it changes the nation it can change the world. It can bring health care to every American. It can lower our costs. It can make your insurance more secure. Returning to Ms. Childs' technique, Obama asked the crowd in Target Center, I want to know, Minnesota, are you fired up? The crowd shouted back, Fired up! Obama asked, Ready to go? The crowd shouted back, Ready to go! Obama led the crowd in two more rounds of the chant, with a crescendo of volume, laughter, and applause each time, and then concluded: They can't stop us. Let's go get this done. Thank you, everybody. God bless you. These rhetorical skills helped Barack Obama win the election. Will they help his health care reform plan win?
 
Georges Ugeux: How Did Europe Respond to the Lehman Collapse? Top
As we reflect on the event that has become the symbol of the financial crisis, the Lehman collapse of September 24, 2008, the national reactions on both sides of the Atlantic offer interesting comparisons. In a strange way, the U.S. was better prepared to manage such an event, namely because it was happening within a single country. But this is not the only reason: after all, in the first days of the crisis the European Central Bank acted more decisively than the Federal Reserve. The main reason is that it took place in the domestic market for U.S. financial institutions and in a foreign market for everybody else. While on the surface this should not matter but it does -- one of the great challenges of international finance is to have the same visibility and the risk management domestically and abroad. While the European reaction has been forceful and avoided major bankruptcies such as Lehman Brothers, Europe did not take any major steps towards reforming the system and chose to blame the others: Wall Street, the United States regulatory system, the bonus system, offshore tax havens, and American greed Part of this was an opportunity to express their criticism of a system that at least Continental Europe perceives the U.S. system as Michael Douglas expressed it in the "Wall Street" movie: "greed is good; greed is what America is all about". However, they stopped short of admitting that European regulators failed as much as their U.S. counterparts and that European Banks had as many toxic assets as those in the U.S. The interventions in the form of stimulus packages were also very different, but contrary to U.S. public assumptions, they were much more substantial in Europe than the official numbers would appear. One of the ways Europe contributed to stabilizing potential problems for consumers is the enormous amount it spent through increased claims for unemployment benefits. The collapse of Lehman Brothers also reflects differences between the legal systems. While the liquidation of the hedge funds is fairly straightforward in the U.S., the UK system proved to be totally inadequate and 3,500 clients of 700 hedge funds representing $ 65 billion could not access their money. The UK Government recently asked the banks to "write a will" explaining how they should be liquidated in case of collapse. The lesson has been heard. What American public opinion and the media sometimes characterize as "socialist Europe" is often misunderstood. One of deepest beliefs in Europe is that compensation should remain within some limits and that the more you earn, the more you should contribute to the social welfare. The gap between low salaries and high salaries is three times wider in the United States than in the rest of the world. It is a fundamentally different way of expressing solidarity. While consumers on both sides of the Atlantic have felt the sting, with unemployment rates rising dramatically, the Europeans tend to have the advantage of a system where European consumers still continued to spend money while keeping a healthy 10% average savings rate. In contrast, in the U.S. consumer credit is in a free fall, undercutting the economic recovery. The drop by 10% on an annual rate in July 2009 is mostly due to the brutality of the unilateral credit lines by the credit card companies who systematically increase rates and play tricks on the new Credit Card Act of 2009. The $ 38.5 billion of late fees for 10% of the accounts penalize the least favored customers. The differences of attitudes correspond are fundamentally cultural. It is the system of values that makes the type of interventions different. It does not mean it is better or worse. But at least the United States Government is actively pursuing regulatory reforms while Europeans have not yet finished finger pointing at...the others. More on Stimulus Package
 
Senate Votes To Allow Guns On Amtrak Top
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to permit passengers on the Amtrak passenger railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage. The proposal, approved by a 68-30 vote, seeks to give Amtrak riders rights comparable to those enjoyed by airline passengers, who are permitted to transport firearms provided that they declare they are doing so and that the arms are unloaded and in a securely locked container. "Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America's federally subsidized rail line," said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who made the proposal. Wicker's amendment would deny the railroad its $1.6 billion taxpayer subsidy unless it changes the gun policy. Current Amtrak policy, put in place after the bombings of passenger trains in Madrid five years ago, prohibits weapons, including firearms, from being carried on its trains. Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Amtrak permitted firearms to be carried on its trains so long as they were separately secured in locked baggage or carrying cases. But it added restrictions on carrying weapons after 9/11 and imposed a total ban on all weapons after the Madrid bombings. Wednesday's vote was the latest in a string of victories for gun rights activists in the Senate despite Democrats' sizable majority. Some 27 Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, voted for the amendment, many from western or southern states. Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who aligns with Democrats and is one of the chamber's most liberal members, also voted on the pro-gun rights side. Opponents of changing the policy back, such as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., say it would be too costly and burdensome to return to the old policy. Durbin said that "Amtrak doesn't have the security infrastructure, the processes or the trained personnel in place to ensure that checked firearms would not be lost, damaged, stolen or misused." The chief author of the underlying transportation appropriations bill, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said implementing the policy would be too costly. "Amtrak would have six months to build a process for checking and tracking firearms. It would have to find the manpower necessary to screen and guard firearms and it would have to purchase the equipment necessary," Murray said. "If they do not comply, Amtrak will shut down." Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he "doesn't have problems with people transporting guns on trains so long as steps are taken to make sure they're secured and properly stowed." He added that some senators are eager to get back in good stead with the National Rifle Association after crossing the group by voting to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and to defeat a proposal to permit people with concealed weapons permits to carry hidden guns outside their home states. The legislation still must be reconciled with a House-passed measure than does not contain the gun rights provision.
 
Jennifer Aniston Singing On Ellen: Watch & Rate It (VIDEO) Top
Jennifer Aniston sang "I've Got A Crush On You" on "Ellen" Wednesday. Aniston recently announced she will sing in an upcoming movie "Goree Girls," based on the real-life story of a 1940's Texas country band made up of female prisoners. Aniston at first refused, and then tried to get Ellen (future "American Idol" judge) to duet, before warbling out a verse. WATCH: Get HuffPost Entertainment On Facebook and Twitter! More on Jennifer Aniston
 
Franny Armstrong: Oh No, Not Another Film About Climate Change Top
"But didn't Al Gore already make the climate change documentary?" has been a common question over the five years we've been making The Age of Stupid . Which never fails to raise a weary smile. Casablanca had already done love, so why bother with Brokeback Mountain ? Apocalypse Now did war, what's the point of Three Kings ? Love and war will soon become minor concerns to us humans, as the full horrors of climate change begin to unfold. When I started my first documentary, McLibel , I never for a moment thought it would have any effect on that immovable corporate mountain called McDonald's. I just found the story of two people daring to stand up to Big Mac enormously inspiring -- and felt that others would too. But only ten years later -- thanks also to Fast Food Nation , Jamie's School Dinners and Super Size Me -- there has been a sea-change in public awareness about healthy eating, McDonald's UK profits have collapsed and advertising junk food to children is now banned. Someone recently called independent cinema documentaries "The new rock'n'roll". Forget writing books, singing songs, taking photographs, or even building websites. If you have a burning idea you need to communicate -- uncensored -- with maximum possible emotional punch and a potential audience of tens of millions, a doc's the way to go. So in my not very humble opinion we need more, not less, films about every aspect of the climate crisis and how we might yet solve it. Inconvenient Truth did the science. Fantastic. 11th Hour investigated climate change alongside its non-identical twin, peak oil. No Impact Man gets on to practical solutions from an individual's perspective and The Power of Community does the same at the community level. Our film, The Age of Stupid, focuses on the big moral human stuff. Which is all good. But even the most powerful film in the history of cinema is never going to change anything if nobody sees it. McLibel eventually managed to amass 25 million viewers, with no distribution budget whatsoever and just me on the team. For The Age of Stupid we now have more than 1,000 volunteers working from every corner of the planet and a small (but dwindling) pot of cash. So together we're aiming for ten times McLibel's viewers: 250 million people. It kicks off next Monday, September 21st at the Global Premiere in New York. Movie stars, politicians and climate thinkers will arrive at our solar-powered cinema tent by sailing boat, bike, rickshaw, skateboard or low-carbon transport of their choice, before braving the photographers on the green carpet. Following the screening of The Age of Stupid , we will be joined live by scientists on a melting glacier in the Himalayas and in a rainforest in Indonesian. And then Radiohead's Thom Yorke will wrap the evening with a little live music. All of which will be broadcast live by satellite to 440 theatres across America and then to 52 countries, from Argentina and Austria to Papua New Guinea and Peru. And if we do reach 250 million people, and the majority of them do agree with the film's key thesis -- that unless we move very very fast we will make the planet uninhabitable -- then so what? What influence could 250 million angry, inspired, motivated citizens possibly have in 2009, the year of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, when the Governments of the world will come together in December to finalize the successor to the Kyoto Treaty? Tickets for The Age of Stupid Global Premiere on Sept 21 - one night only - http://www.ageofstupid.net More on Climate Change
 
Julie Farby: No-Name Bush Speechwriter's "Tell-All" Magnum Opus Will Save Journalism! Top
Some speechwriter for George W. Bush you've never heard of named Matt Latimer, who had the joy -- no, the privilege -- of serving El Presidente numero 43 during the tail-end of his eight-year term screwing America from behind, is giving the nation a much anticipated behind-the-scenes glimpse into the total disintegration of the Bush White House in its final days as it dealt with the 2008 presidential race, the Wall Street collapse, and a host of other problems it had not the faintest clue how to solve. Of course, this mid-level White House wordsmith is clearly the only one to know anything about the inner-workings of the Bush White House (more even than the man himself), since he worked in the White House turning nonsensical ideas into coherent sentences and witty sound-bytes for Fox News to run on repeat during the President's final 22 months. That's almost two years! Which was more than enough time for Matt Latimer to realize his dreams of going to Washington to usher in the next Reagan Revolution wasn't going to happen with a president who'd rather put whoopee cushions on chairs in the West Wing than have a serious discussion about the economic meltdown consuming the nation. In 2007 I finally made it to the Bush White House as a presidential speechwriter. But it was not at all what I envisioned. It was less like Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing and more like The Office . After watching Karl Rove's bizarre farewell to White House staffers and hearing the president dismiss the conservative movement I believed in ("I know it sounds arrogant to say," he told me, "but I redefined the Republican Party"), I thought I could muddle through till the end. Washington might not have been the city I had dreamed of, but I figured things couldn't get much worse. Spoiler alert: He's wrong. They do! But before all hell breaks loose, this VIP White House insider got just enough juicy tidbits to ensure his post-Dubya days wouldn't be spent toiling away in shameful obscurity but as a full-fledged celebrity. We're talking Levi Johnston level star here! Exciting, little-known morsels of fun -- like how even as he was shoring up his case to win the worst president ever award, George W. Bush still found time for the important stuff like making everyone laugh with his unique blend of wit and charm, despite capitalism as we know it crashing down around him. To look like we were doing more, we announced various initiatives, such as assembling an alliance to encourage lenders to renegotiate loans. For a while, the communications guys -- Ed Gillespie and Kevin Sullivan -- wanted the president to give a toll-free number for Americans to call for assistance with their mortgages. I thought that was embarrassing, as if George W. Bush were Jerry Lewis. Yeah, cause that's what's embarrassing about his presidency. Wanna know something else? Much like our soon-to-be-famous new friend and journalist extraordinaire Matt Latimer, Dubya didn't much care for any of the available presidential options to replace him in 2008 since none had the special God-given gift of being born a Bush. The president, like me, didn't seem to be in love with any of the available options. He always believed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. "Wait till her fat keister is sitting at this desk," he once said (except he didn't say "keister"). He didn't think much of Barack Obama. After one of Obama's blistering speeches against the administration, the president had a very human reaction: He was ticked off. He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming. "This is a dangerous world," he said for no apparent reason, "and this cat isn't remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you." He wound himself up even more. "You think I wasn't qualified?" he said to no one in particular. "I was qualified." Wait, did Dubya just call Obama "this cat?" The president didn't think much of Joe Biden either. "Dana, did you tell them my line?" the president once asked with a smile on his face. "No, Mr. President," Dana Perino replied hesitantly. "I didn't." He paused for a minute. I could see him thinking maybe he shouldn't say it, but he couldn't resist. "If bullshit was currency," he said straight-faced, "Joe Biden would be a billionaire." HAHAHAHAHA. OMG, it just doesn't get much better than that. For reals! Bush also considered Sarah Palin to be one of the biggest idiots he'd ever met, not counting all those A-holes in Congress he always had to go in front of and say big words to. "This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for," he said. "She hasn't spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let's wait and see how she looks five days out." There's a bunch more stuff about how Bush didn't like McCain either, mostly because McCain refused to be seen with Bush and spent the last year or so bashing his administration, which made things kinda awkward, but heck, anything was better than having some crazy Dem in office. Cause then everyone would know how much Bush sucked and that wouldn't be good for him or the Republican party he helped destroy. So that was that. Thank you Matt Latimer for doing the whole world a favor and proving once and for all that Mike Huckabee was all wrong about journalism being a rotting, maggot infested corpse of lies and misinformation. The fourth estate is alive and well my friend!
 
Michael J. Panzner: Feeding the Ducks on Wall Street Top
Since March, stocks have gone from strength to strength, recovering more than 40 percent of what they lost in the selloff from the October 2007 peak. Not everyone is jumping on the bullish bandwagon, however. Reports indicate that many of those at Main Street's front lines are following the old Wall Street dictum: When the ducks are quacking, feed them. In fact, despite talk in Washington and elsewhere that the economy is on the road to recovery, those who are in the best position to judge future prospects have been cashing out. Acccording to Fortune , officers and directors have been dumping stock in the companies they work for and oversee "like there's no tomorrow." "While a wave of insider selling doesn't necessarily foretell a stock market downturn," the magazine noted, "it suggests that those with the first read on business trends don't believe current stock prices are justified by economic fundamentals." Insiders aren't only fading the rally personally. The firms they are associated with for are also slashing purchases of company-issued shares, suggesting they are not a bargain. According to a Bloomberg report citing research by Standard & Poor's, U.S. firms "spent the least on share buybacks in the second quarter since at least 1998." Indeed, a growing number of them are going the other way, seeking to raise cash by selling stock. Reuters last week noted that "September is on pace to be the busiest month for secondary issuance since May, which to some portfolio managers is a sign companies are taking advantage of the market while they still can." Other knowledgeable sellers coming are also coming out of the woodwork, including big-time financial operators. The Wall Street Journal reported that "private-equity firms are increasingly taking advantage of an improved IPO environment to exit from their investments," while Bloomberg said that "buyout managers and their bankers are seizing on an upswing in capital markets to sell shares in companies they own to pay down debt and distribute profits to their investors." Of course, just because those who presumably have some sense of whether stocks are cheap aren't buying doesn't mean they can't go up. Sometimes, relatively thin trading conditions, aggressive speculation, and sheer momentum can push prices higher of their own accord, especially when, as we've seen lately, the volume one might expect to see in a genuine bull market is lacking. This morning, in fact, the Wall Street Journal revealed that "even as mom-and-pop investors sit out the rally, short-term players -- including some classic individual day traders -- appear to be making a comeback." Among other evidence, the newspaper cited increasing activity in "leveraged" exchange-traded funds, as well as financial stocks and other volatile shares, "favored tools among short-term traders such as hedge funds and day traders." In the end, however, bull markets cannot be sustained by animal spirits alone; they need the support of strong fundamentals. Based on what those in the know have been doing, that key ingredient (still) seems to be missing. More on Financial Crisis
 
Bob Cesca: With a Health Care Plan This Insane, Who Needs Wingnuts? Top
There's one positive political aspect to this epic fight for healthcare reform. We now know for sure which congressional Democrats have to be vigorously challenged and defeated the next time they come up for re-election. The healthcare reform debate has forced the toxic slag to gurgle to the surface and consequently revealed a few Democratic senators who, at every turn in this process, have proved to be far more interested in protecting their own asses by way of protecting the asses of their bosses in the healthcare mafia. Suffice to say, Joe Lieberman has to be sending lots of "thank you" gift baskets and ponies and backrubs to the offices of Max Baucus and Kent Conrad. In fact, Baucus and Conrad -- the matchstick men of healthcare reform -- have been so insufferable, I almost forgot about Lieberman. Almost. In fact, apart from the Republicans from whom we expected outlandish lies and cartoonish behavior, Baucus and Conrad have been much more obstructionist and damaging to real healthcare reform, chiefly because they possess a disproportionate level of power in relation to the nine people in the upper Midwest they represent, and because their ideas would be laughable if they weren't so ineffectual and dangerous. To wit: Baucus Plan is just as craptastical as we all suspected it might be. First, Baucus' entire goal was to construct a bipartisan plan. Mission accomplished. Insofar as both parties hate it. Just as we predicted, Baucus tailored his plan to appeal to the Republicans who, as it turns out, don't support the plan anyway. For example, one of his concessions to the Republicans was tort reform language which not only won't work , but has also failed to bring in any Republicans (bad policy -- bad politics). Meanwhile, the bill is so diluted and bad that roughly half of the Democrats on the Finance Committee appear to be opposed to it. Good job, senator! Furthermore, as I described last week , there are individual mandates, but no public insurance option. Baucus included his buddy Conrad's pathetic co-ops which are destined to fail due to their limited bargaining power. The government subsidies in the Baucus Plan don't extend deep enough into the middle class in order to protect families from massive healthcare debt if a family-member becomes sick or injured. Put another way, mandates would imprison families and force them to buy insurance policies that could still bankrupt them if they actually need to use their insurance for an emergency situation like an accident or being diagnosed with cancer. The Baucus Plan also discriminates against low-income Americans . In one of the most awful provisions of the plan, the "free rider" provision, Baucus taxes business $400 for each hiree who qualifies for subsidies. So this tax incentivises businesses to not hire poor or disadvantaged workers. By the way, $400 doesn't seem like a lot until you read that it's actually "$400 multiplied by the total number of employees at the firm." The list goes on and on. By Max Baucus' own estimation, his plan carries a price tag of $880 billion over ten years. The press is tossing some very serious kudos and political cover his way because this is clearly less than the $1 trillion mark. It's also $20 billion less than the number President Obama mentioned in his address to Congress last week. And it's the Baucus Plan that many centrist Democrats -- the budget hawks and fiscal conservatives -- appear to prefer. Allow me to underline this again. The centrist Democrats prefer a bill that more closely resembles the Baucus Plan which will cost around $880 billion over ten years . Fiscal conservatives prefer this. Lawmakers who are worried about government spending appear to be supporting a plan that would cost around $880 billion. But wait. If the centrist Democrats were legitimately worried about government spending and deficits, they ought to be supporting the Kennedy Bill (the HELP Committee bill) instead, which, according to the CBO, clocks in at $611 billion over ten years , due in part to the inclusion of the public option. Unless we use backwards wingnut math , $611 billion is significantly less than $880 billion. So the incontrovertible reality is that the Kennedy Bill is the more fiscally conservative healthcare reform bill. So why aren't the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives in the Democratic Party flocking to embrace it? The answers are obvious. One, the fiscal conservatives aren't always fiscally conservative (most of them voted for the Bush wars, the Bush tax cuts and the Bush Medicare Part-D blank check). And two, the Baucus Plan forces you and me to pay more cash to their contributors in the health insurance industry. This works out very nicely for senators like Max Baucus who, as Roy Sekoff pointed out, has pocketed millions in contributions from the healthcare industry . So how do the blue dogs and conservadems worm their way around the glaring inconsistency between their so-called "fiscal conservatism" and the cost of the Baucus Plan? Enter Senator Kent Conrad. Ryan Grim reported Tuesday that Conrad is changing the rules in the middle of the game in order give more weight to the Finance Committee bill and, in the process, "kneecapping" the bills with the public option -- the Kennedy Bill and the House bill. In short, Conrad has asked the CBO to use cost projections that span 20 years instead of the 10 year terms the office had been previously employing. This will make healthcare reform more difficult to pass because the cost projections will balloon and will be less accurate to predict over an unwieldy 20 year span -- especially the bills with the relatively new public insurance plan. Plus, due to the political stigma on the more liberal bills, the significantly larger price tags will hurt those bills the most, allowing more room for demagoguery. Put in medical terms, Conrad has infected all of the reform bills with a virus, and he's calculating that the inaccurately perceived "fiscally conservative" bill will have a stronger chance of surviving the pandemic. He's willing to risk crushing the entire reform effort before he allows the Kennedy or House bills to become law. Yeah, and they say the House progressives are the troublemakers. That's rich. Nevertheless, the Baucus Plan is better than the current system . But that's kind of like saying, to paraphrase Larry David, it's the "good Hodgkins" -- cancerous, but not as deadly. Either way, their obvious and hackish corruption coupled with this awful plan has made it easy for us to pick the villains out of a lineup. We can be grateful for that, at least. Now it's just a matter of what we do with this stockpile of information. Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go! More on Max Baucus
 

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