Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Jeffrey Sachs: A Lobbyist's Failed Defense Top
If the preposterous piece by Mr. Joel Jankowsky in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal had been published in any other newspaper, we'd guess it was a spoof. Mr. Jankowsky, a lobbyist and partner at Akin Gump, bemoans the limits being placed on lobbying activities, even though those limits remain weak and porous. "Talented women and men who registered themselves as lobbyists under the Lobbying Disclosure Act are being excluded from contributing their expertise at a critical time in our nation's history," writes Mr. Jankowsky. Mr. Jankowsky rightly argues that big campaign contributors have far too much influence and access in the Administration, but does so through a contorted logic that completely whitewashes the role of lobbyists in the money-choked politics of Washington. Lobbyists may indeed be talented people of expertise, but they are part of a dysfunctional system that has turned policy over to the highest corporate bidder and that puts our economy and society in jeopardy. Lobbying needs far stronger constraints than the tiny but salutary steps being put into place. Lobbyists for powerful corporations are crawling over every piece of pending legislation- from health care, to banking regulation, to climate change -- keeping a chokehold on deep reforms. Jankowsky says that lobbying is transparent. That's true in the trivial sense that lobbyists register and declare their earnings. Of course it's the activities behind closed doors and off the record that are killing our economy and confidence in the political system. Special interests have already spent $2.5 billion dollars this year on 13,000 lobbyists like Mr. Jankowsky and his colleagues at the firm Akin Gump, with many contributing their expertise to gutting financial oversight of Wall Street, delaying control of greenhouse gas emissions, and preventing real controls on health insurance costs. (all data are drawn from http://www.opensecrets.org ). Akin Gump has lobbied in the past for AIG, the scandalous insurance company that has cost taxpayers more than $100 billion in direct bailouts. Akin Gump is a favorite lobbying firm for big oil, major health-sector companies, and financial firms that helped to lead us to catastrophe. Already in 2009, Akin Gump has collected more than $23 million in lobbying fees. Mr. Jankowsky assures us that lobbying has little to do with "the influence of money on the policy-making process," since lobbyists are "professional advocates" who have not given any money to the President's campaign. He should know that lobbyists and campaign contributors have quite an overlap. Akin Gump employees have already contributed $469,000 in campaign funds in the 2009-10 election cycle, including $62,000 from Mr. Jankowsky himself. A lobbying firm like Akin Gump curries favor and standing through the campaign contributions of the firm's partners. It wins lobbying contracts in view of its political standing. Whether the campaign contributions are a direct pass-thru of the lobbying fees, or are independent of those fees, the result is similar: corporate money finds its way into the campaign coffers via the lobbying firms, and everybody - from the candidate to the lobbyist to the corporate interest - is pleased with the closed circle of money, camaraderie, and favored policy positions. Lobbyists for major corporations win their influence in many other ways as well. Perhaps the most direct is that they are part of the well-heeled revolving door of Washington employment. Mr. Jankowsky himself went from being Legislative Assistant to House Speaker Carl Albert to his current employment at Akin Gump. There are dozens more examples in Akin Gump, which is just one among many major revolving doors in Washington. Indeed, influential lobbying firms have an endless stream of good jobs to offer the members and staff of Congress and the Executive branch after serving in the US Government. American politics is suffocating on corporate money. Corporate lobbyists constitute a major conduit for the purchase of public policies. The wild excesses of lobbying and corporate power have contributed to our deepening crises in finance, health care, transport, the environment, and more. At the least Mr. Jankowsky could spare us the pontificating and stop rubbing our noses in the mess. More on Wall Street Journal
 
MSNBC Viewers Donate Over $50,000 To Afghan Orphanage Top
MSNBC Nightly News viewers have raised more than $50,000 for an orphanage in Afghanistan, the program reported Tuesday. Last Friday, Nightly News aired the story of a remarkable orphanage in Kabul that is caring for 150 children who have lost their parents due to decades of war, bombing and the Taliban. After airing the broadcast, MSNBC viewers responded in droves to support the nonprofit, to the point that the orphanage administrators were afraid their servers would crash from e-mail donations. In addition to thousands of dollars in one-time donations, viewers promised long-term sponsorships to 130 of the children at the orphanage: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy The orphanage is sponsored by the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, which operates nine orphanages and cares for 350 Afghan refugee children across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Visit their site to learn more about the organization or to sponsor a child at one of their orphanages. More on Afghanistan
 
Antonia Juhasz: Chevron Gets Fixed Top
On Sunday, Chevron became the first oil company to come under a Yes Men Audience Attack . ( See Video, Photos, and Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum's Blog of event) Chevron was chosen because Chevron is different from other oil companies. It is bigger than all but three (only ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are larger). It is facing the largest potential corporate liability in history ($27 billion) for causing the world's largest oil spill in the Ecuadorian rainforest. It is the only major U.S. Corporation still operating in Burma and, with its partner Total Oil Corp., is the single largest financial contributor to the Burmese government. It is the dominant private oil producer in both Angola and Kazakhstan, with operations in both countries mired in human rights and environmental abuses. It is the only major oil company to be tried in a U.S. court on charges of mass human rights abuse, including summary execution and torture (for its operations in Nigeria). It is the only oil company to hire one of the Bush Administration's "torture memo" lawyers (William J. Haynes). It is the largest and most powerful corporation in California, where it is currently being sued for conspiring to fix gasoline prices. It has led the fight to keep California as the only major oil producing state that does not tax oil when it is pumped from the ground, thereby denying the state an extra $1.5 billion annually. It is the largest industrial polluter in the Bay Area and is among the largest single corporate contributors to climate change on the planet. Chevron is also the focus of one of the world's most unique and well-organized corporate resistance campaigns. That campaign got a jolt of energy when Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum came to San Francisco on Halloween weekend for a special screening of The Yes Men Fix the World . Global Exchange and I teamed up with Andy (the movie's co-writer, director, and producer) and a host of the Bay Areas most creative activists, to lead an entire movie audience out of the theater, into the streets, and in protest of Chevron. We spread the word early, far, and wide: The Yes Men are coming! The Yes Men are coming! They will not only fix the world, they will fix Chevron too! Larry Bogad, a Yes Man co-hort and professor of Guerilla Theater, helped concoct a masterful street theater scenario. A crack team of protest and street theater organizers was compiled, including David Solnit of the Mobilization for Climate Justice and Rae Abileah of Code Pink . Rock The Bike signed on and the word kept spreading. On Sunday, the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District was filled beyond capacity with an audience that came ready to protest. They laughed, clapped, booed, and cheered along with the film. When the movie ended, Andy answered questions, I talked about Chevron, and Larry laid out the protest scenario. Three Chevron executives, protected from the early ravages of climate change in SurvivaBalls , were dragged up the street by dozens of Chevron minions with nothing but haz-mat suits to protect them. Those unable to afford any protection (i.e. The Dead) followed close behind. Next came resistance: the Chevron street sweepers, actively cleaning up Chevron's messes who were followed by the protesters, ready to change the story. We didn't have a permit, but we took a lane of traffic on 16th street anyway. The police first tried to intervene, then they "joined in," blocking traffic on our way to Market and Castro. As we marched and the music blared, people literally came out of their houses and off of the streets to join in. Passersby eagerly took postcards detailing Chevron's corporate crimes. Once we arrived at the gas station, I welcomed everyone and explained that we were at an independent Chevron (as opposed to corporate) station, whose owner (whom I'd been speaking with regularly) had his own list of grievances with his corporate boss. The particular station was not our target of protest, but rather, the Chevron Corporation itself. Larry and Andy than led the entire crowd in a series of Tableaux Morts. The Chevron executives in their SurvivaBalls drained the lifeblood from the masses. The people began to rebel, forcing the SurvivaBalls into the "turtle" position to fend off the attacks. Ultimately, the separate groups saw their common purpose in resisting Chevron's abuses. The dead rose, the Chevron minions rebelled, and the sweepers and protesters joined together. They all chased the Chevron executives off into the distance, and then danced in the streets, rejoicing in their shared victory! The Chevron Program I direct at Global Exchange seeks to unite Chevron affected communities across the United States and around the world. By uniting these communities, we build strength from each other, and become a movement. By expanding, strengthening, and highlighting this movement, we bring in more allies and create a powerful advocacy base for real policy change. Those changes will reign in Chevron, and by extension, the entire oil industry. And, by raising the voices of those hardest hit by the true cost of oil and exposing how we all ultimately pay the price, we help move the world more rapidly away from oil as an energy resource altogether. More on Gas & Oil
 
Maine Gay Marriage Vote: Early Returns Close Top
PORTLAND, Maine — Gay marriage was put to a vote in Maine on Tuesday in a closely watched referendum that gay-rights activists across the country hoped would prove for the first time that their cause can prevail at the ballot box. Voters had to decide whether to repeal or affirm a state law that would allow gay couples to wed. The law was passed by the Legislature in May but never took effect because of a petition drive by conservatives. Early returns showed a close contest, as had been forecast. With 70 of 608 precincts reporting, the gay-marriage side had 53 percent to 47 percent for the other side. A vote to uphold the law would mark the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed gay marriage. That could energize activists nationwide and blunt conservative claims that same-sex marriage is being foisted on states by judges or lawmakers over the will of the public. However, repeal – in New England, the region of the country most supportive of gay couples – would be another heartbreaking defeat for the marriage-equality movement, following the vote against gay marriage in California a year ago. It would also mark the first time voters had torpedoed a gay-marriage law enacted by a legislature. When Californians rejected same-sex marriage, it was in response to a court ruling, not legislation. Maine's secretary of state, Matthew Dunlap, said turnout seemed higher than expected for an off-year election and voter interest appeared intense. Even before Tuesday, more than 100,000 people – out of about 1 million registered voters – had voted by absentee ballot or early voting. Five other states have legalized gay marriage – Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut – but all did so through legislation or court rulings, not by popular vote. In contrast, constitutional amendments banning gay marriage have been approved in all 30 states where they have been on the ballot. "If we don't win, then Maine will have its place in infamy because no state has ever voted for homosexual marriage," said Chuck Schott of Portland, who stood near a polling place in Maine's biggest city with a pro-repeal campaign sign. Another Portland resident, Sarah Holman said she was "very torn" but decided – despite her conservative upbringing – to vote in favor of letting gays marry. "They love and they have the right to love. And we can't tell somebody how to love," said Holman, 26. Hundreds of gay-marriage supporters gathered in a Portland hotel ballroom in the evening to await the results. On display was a three-tiered wedding cake topped with two grooms on one side, two brides on the other, and the words "We All Do." In addition to reaching out to young people who flocked to the polls for President Barack Obama a year ago, gay-marriage defenders tried to appeal to Maine voters' independent streak – a Yankee spirit of fairness and live-and-let-live. The other side based many of its campaign ads on claims – disputed by state officials – that the new law would mean "homosexual marriage" would be taught in public schools. Both sides in Maine drew volunteers and contributions from out of state, but the money edge went to the campaign in defense of gay marriage, Protect Maine Equality. It raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine. Elsewhere on Tuesday, voters in Washington state decided whether to uphold or overturn a recently expanded domestic partnership law that entitles same-sex couples to the same state-granted rights as heterosexual married couples. Among other ballot items across the country: _ Measures in Maine and Washington that would limit state and local government spending by holding it to the rate of inflation plus population growth. _ A measure in Maine that would allow dispensaries to supply marijuana to patients for medicinal purposes. It is a follow-up to a 1999 measure that legalized medical marijuana but did not set up a distribution system. _ An Ohio measure that would allow casinos in four major cities: Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo. ___ David Crary reported from New York.
 
'09 Exit Polls: Voters Approve Of Obama, Wary Of Economy Top
Vast economic discontent marked the mood of Tuesday's off-year voters, portending potential trouble for incumbents generally and Democrats in particular in 2010. Still the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey looked less like a referendum on Barack Obama than a reflection of their own candidates and issues.
 
Jeff Danziger: Bloomberg Reelected Top
 
Mary J. Blige At World Series: Singer Will Perform National Anthem At Game 6 Top
LOS ANGELES — Mary J. Blige is going back to the Bronx. Major League Baseball says the Bronx-born singer will perform the national anthem at Yankee Stadium before Game Six of the World Series on Wednesday. Blige is the latest superstar to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the championship matchup between the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies. John Legend and Alanis Morissette have also lent their voices to the traditional pre-game performance. Blige, 38, has won six Grammy awards since her 1992 debut, "What's the 411?" More on World Series
 
Dan Solin: Preferred Stock Is Not Preferred Top
How many times have you heard this: Preferred stock is the best of both worlds: The upside of common stock and the protection of bonds? Not so fast. According to a study by Guohua Li, Ph.D and Edward O'Neal, Ph.D., principals of SLCG, Inc. , this view of preferred stock is "overly simplistic." From July, 2007 to March, 2009, the S&P Preferred Stock Index fell by almost 70%, while common stocks fared relatively better, losing 50%. The bond markets had positive returns. There is nothing "preferred" about those results. When things are rosy, common stock holders are well rewarded. Holders of preferred stock receive far more modest returns. So much for the upside. What about the downside? There is a reason for the much touted higher yield of preferred stocks. They are much riskier than bonds. In a down market, the shares of preferred and common stock have to descend to zero before the bond holders are affected at all. Contrary to traditional wisdom, it appears that holders of preferred stock get the worst of both worlds. Preferred stock is riskier than bonds, but it doesn't have the same upside as common stock. The bad news doesn't stop there. Issuers of preferred stock are primarily financial institutions. Holders of preferred stock typically are not aware their stock is concentrated in this risky and volatile sector. Preferred stock is also costlier to trade because it is significantly less liquid than common stock. If your broker has recommended preferred stock for your portfolio, you need to be aware of these risks. There is a more fundamental issue here. Why are you using a broker? Dan Solin is the author of The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read. The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein. Furthermore, the information on this blog should not be construed as an offer of advisory services. Please note that the author does not recommend specific securities nor is he responsible for comments made by persons posting on this blog.
 
Gerald Sindell: Why the American Genius for Math Vanished Top
Why can't little Tiffany learn to program? What happened to the American genius for math? I've been wondering about this for a long time, but suddenly I saw the cause during the World Series last night. Imagine a computer that runs on chewing tobacco. Shouldn't be that hard -- just picture your basic Major League Baseball manager, leaning on the dugout rail. He looks worried. Then he spits. That one. Now, if you could look inside the heads of the two guys running the contenders in the World Series this week, you'd see a 3D array of numbers flying by. With every pitch, with every attempted steal, with every out, an entire universe of numbers inside the manager's head is re-computed. I had taken a hiatus from baseball for quite a while, but with two California teams in the playoffs my wife and I decided to get into the spirit. Although the Dodgers and the Angels have gone by the wayside, we're completely hooked. And having not watched television coverage of baseball for quite awhile, I suddenly realized why American's math scores have gone in the toilet for the last ten years. Baseball is a game of numbers, of billions of statistics of the most arcane kinds which record everything that's ever happened in professional baseball going back more than 100 years. The statistical history of baseball may be the single greatest resource of meaningful numbers on the planet, including the human genome. And probably a lot more important. When I was a kid, and when Nate Silver (statistics genius) and Michael Lewis ( Moneyball --basically about how understanding the numbers in baseball is more important than wads of cash for name players) were kids, everyone knew the batting averages of every player on the home team. We knew slugging percentages, on base percentages. We understood the implications of having a switch hitter deep in the lineup. We knew that the catcher ran the defense -- that only he knew what pitch he was signaling the pitcher to throw next, and that the catcher knew what the odds were a particular batter was going to pull or flare that pitch. We understood that the catcher's job included subtle shifts of the outfield and infield almost all the time. Raising my kids under the kind tutelage of Vin Scully, the dean of all baseball announcers, they learned that baseball was a deep game of complex strategies. The battle between pitcher and batter was just the simplest surface of what was actually going on. When Scully was calling a game, the video director would follow Scully's cues. So if the real duel was about the shortstop sneaking up behind the runner at second for a pickoff play, the camera would constantly check back at second, because that's where, according to Scully, that particular runner, point two six five percent of the time against lefties, could be picked off. Now, none of my guys has yet won a Nobel for science, but with that kind of rich, hands-on training, they could have easily won it if they had really wanted it. Now to the current absolutely barren "coverage" of the playoffs and World Series. The video direction, and the announcers, cover the pitcher, pitch placement, and almost nothing else. We almost never see where the infield is set, and never where the outfielders are playing. What we do get is lots of shots of players spitting -- the result of a long lens raking through the dugout, magnifying the effect, so half the time us TV viewers can't tell if it's raining or just a vast downpour of spit. And what about that rich field of high definition screen real estate? So much space, so little information. We get a little box that shows the runners on base and the count on the batter, but nowhere do we get the batter's NAME (unbelievable, actually) their average during the season, their average during the playoffs, or any of the dozens of bits and pieces that are running through the manager's mind as he decides what to do next, pitch by pitch, out by out. Baseball strategy really is something of a computer that runs on a chaw of tobacco. But with the current coverage that has dumbed the game down to only its most surface components, all little Tiffany gets to see, is the spit. Meanwhile, her innate genius for numbers is being cruelly starved.
 
Lloyd Chapman: Details of Obama Small Business Conference Remain a Mystery Top
Two weeks after President Barack Obama announced a special conference to discuss increasing the flow of credit to small businesses, no information about the date, time, location or attendees has been made available. The American Small Business League (ASBL) is skeptical about the true purpose of the conference. The ASBL predicts that the actual purpose of the meeting will be to try and change the long standing federal definition of a small business as "independently owned" to include firms owned by wealthy venture capitalists that backed President Obama's campaign. If this conference does take place, I doubt there will be one person in the room like myself who has a documentable track record of fighting for legitimate small businesses. I'm sure there will be sham small business groups that are actually backed by the Fortune 500 corporations that are currently receiving most federal small business contracts. There will also be a significant number of venture capitalists that are trying to highjack federal small business programs. The ASBL is concerned that not only will the conference not help small businesses, but a proposal may even come out of the conference to close the SBA under the guise of bolstering the agency by combining it with the U.S. Department of Commerce. In the past, combining small agencies with the Commerce Department has been a technique used in Washington by previous administrations to quietly close agencies. The Minority Business Development Agency was essentially closed in this way. If President Obama wants to help small businesses he needs to make good on his campaign promise to, "end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php The best way to do that is for him to pass H.R. 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contacting Act of 2009. This bill would redirect over $100 billion a year in current federal infrastructure spending to the middle class firms where nearly all new jobs are created. http://www.asbl.com/documents/hr2568.pdf According to the most recent data released by the Obama Administration billions of dollars in federal small business contracts have been diverted to firms like: Textron, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace (BAE), Rolls-Royce and French firm Thales Communications. http://www.asbl.com/documents/20090825TopSmallBusinessContractors2008.pdf In February of 2009, Obama officials awarded a $128 million small business contract to, Fortune 500 firm, Bechtel Bettis Inc. http://www.asbl.com/documents/20090806BechtelSB_DOE.pdf More on Timothy Geithner
 
Disgrasian: Tila Tequila's Alter Ego "Jane" Hijacks Her Twitter Account Top
At what point can we say that Twitter's jumped the shark? When your boss joins? When your mom joins? How about when your alter ego starts Tweeting , as was the case Monday with Tila Tequila? The Twitter account of Tila , who has professed to suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder), was hijacked briefly this week by one of her alters, "Jane." Tila's describes Jane on her MySpace page as "crazy" and someone who "always wants to kill me." (Then again, after the Twitter-jacking, she also called Jane her "Sasa Fierce" [sic] and boasted that she had her alter ego 10 years before Beyonce "came wit that," so, uh, Jane also appears to be a career asset.) And what else did we learn about Jane Monday? She favors ALL CAPS like Tila, can't spell "buffoon," and seems to have something against Pee-wee's Playhouse . Here's a snapshot of what she had to say: Jane was not long for Twitter, however, and left about as quickly as she came : Which was probably for the best, cuz can you imagine if Jane had Tila's Twitter habit-- 21,000+ Tweets and counting? The entire internet would probably blow up into a million, gonzo, fame-whoring pieces. [ Tila Tequila Twitter ] [ Tila Tequila MySpace ] More on Twitter
 
Carl Pope: Playing by Polish Rule Top
This post is long -- but it's one of my most heartfelt, so I hope you'll bear with me. As I write this, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has begun deliberation on the Clean Energy Act, the major omnibus climate and energy bill that Committee Chair Barbara Boxer has been working on for months. The committee almost didn't meet, because Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the ranking minority member, chose to boycott the markup and claimed that this should prevent work from proceeding. Boxer decided otherwise, but the Republicans are boycotting anyway. Inhofe's stunt is simply the latest evidence that the United States has slipped without any amendment to our Constitution into a lethally weak political system like the one that took Poland from being a major power to impotence and, eventually, national extinction in the 18th century. I call this system "Polish rule." It's not minority rule, in which public officials representing a minority govern. The United States was under minority rule for most of its history, until female suffrage in 1921. But the government was not paralyzed -- because while minority rule may be unfair, the government can still make decisions. In Poland, it was called the "Liberum veto." Any member of the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) could block action on any item. From 1669 onward, the Sejm was disrupted more and more frequently by deputies exercising this veto, often at the behest of foreign powers such as Russia and Prussia. Shortly after a terrified nation repealed the Liberum veto in 1791, Poland's neighbors took advantage of the weakened nation to partition it. Poland ceased to exist until after the First World War. Polish-rule tactics now govern Washington. The primary one is the "procedural filibuster." It enables a single senator to bring the Senate to a halt by refusing to give unanimous consent for the Senate to proceed. Only if 60 senators vote to cut off debate can legislation resume progress. There is no need for the recalcitrant minority to actually filibuster -- they just need to not show up and vote, since an absence counts as a vote to prevent proceeding with legislation. The procedural filibuster was an inadvertent result of a 1975 compromise that was intended to make breaking the real filibuster easier. And for years after 1975, it had more or less that effect -- filibusters remained rare. But in 1993 Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole decided to use these rules to convert the Senate from a majoritarian body with occasional filibusters to a body in which forty senators, representing as little as twelve percent of the nation's population, could prevent any action. He did this by persuading the Republican minority in the Senate to act as a parliamentary block -- a direct challenge to the design James Madison and the Founding Fathers had in mind for the Senate. Dole's goal was quite explicit -- delegitimize the Clinton administration by making the country impossible to govern, just as 18th century Poland had been. 1993 was the Sierra Club's -- and the nation's -- first encounter with Polish rule in its full flower. As the 104th Congressional session wound to an end, with Clinton's program blocked in the Senate, one remaining bill hung in the balance -- the California Desert Protection Act. In any previous Congress, this bill, which was a California-only wilderness act that had support from both of the state's senators, would have sailed through. But owing to Dole's new principle, it was filibustered. Party strategy now trumped senatorial courtesy. On the final day of the Senate, environmentalists finally managed to round up the 60th vote -- Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana -- and the desert was protected. But the rest of the environmental agenda from that Congress -- Superfund reform, mining-law changes, other public lands acts, renewal of the Endangered Species Act, Cabinet status for the EPA -- lay in ruins. When George Bush was elected, Democrats used the filibuster more often than the historical norm -- but it never became the ordinary course of business. When Barack Obama was elected, however, the Republican minority returned to Dole's now fully burnished suite of Polish-rule tactics. Not only would the procedural filibuster be used but also the art of blocking the confirmation of Presidential appointees by a single senator placing a "hold" on the nomination. During the first year of the new Administration, these holds sprouted like weeds. Nominees were routinely blocked -- even when the minority agreed they were well-qualified -- as a form of blackmail to force the Administration to change Executive Branch policy. Now we see Inhofe finding another lever to prevent the Senate from doing the public business. Returning the Senate to majoritarian rule is, in my view, the most important challenge facing the country. The Republicans must not be allowed to use obstructionism to overturn election results -- they lost in 2008 when the country voted for change. Now they are successfully blocking that change, and they should be held accountable But so must the Democrats. If all 60 Democrats in the Senate were to unite (indeed, if only a majority of them did) and make a commitment  not to allow obstructionism to govern any longer, then they could regain control of the chamber. My friend Andy Stern has pointed out that "there is no such thing as a Republican filibuster." The most controversial recent filibuster threat came not from a Republican but from Independent Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats. It's interesting to recall that it was only 15 years ago that Senator Lieberman decried the filibuster as a symbol of what was wrong with Washington -- and wanted to reform it. If Democrats want to insist on letting senators vote, then they have the votes. It will take discipline and fortitude, but it can be done. But restoring democracy to the Senate must be a higher priority for at least 51 of them than retaining their own personal Polish-rule veto over legislation that they don't like. It was the notion that every member of the Sejm was too important to be overruled by the majority that led Poland down the path to partition. Today, that idea flourishes deeply and widely in the U.S. Senate -- on both sides of the aisle. Senators need to stop thinking of themselves as Polish aristocrats and start behaving like public servants in a democracy governed by a constitution -- not the rules of a private club.
 
Michael J. Panzner: Treasury Officials Meet With Financial Bloggers Top
Taking its cue, perhaps, from the Obama Administration's reported efforts to reach out to the political blogging community in the hopes of cultivating broad support for its ambitious agenda, the Treasury yesterday organized a meeting between various Department officials and a group of economics and finance bloggers. Among the bloggers who attended the "discussion," which centered on financial reform, the Treasury's efforts to stabilize the financial system, and the challenges ahead, were the publishers of Naked Capitalism , Interfluidity , Marginal Revolution , Kid Dynamite’s World , Across the Curve , Accrued Interest , The Aleph Blog , and Financial Armageddon (one of my two blogs). While Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith has done a good job in  "Curious Meeting at Treasury Department"  of summing up what transpired -- which, admittedly, left most of us feeling like we had more questions after it ended than when it started -- I did learn a few things at the gathering that I found particularly interesting: In response to a question about what would happen if, as Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have concluded about past financial crises , the current episode also proves to be a "protracted affair," it wasn't clear that there was a "plan B" in place if things don't recover in 2010 as many mainstream analysts expect. In fact, the suggestion from one official was that the tenure of the current crisis would likely be nearer the shorter end of market expectations. There was also a bit of a disconnect between the remarks Treasury Department officials have made in public forums and what was said at the meeting. Last Thursday, for example, Bloomberg reported that Secretary Geithner spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago and said, “You can say now with confidence that the financial system is stable, the economy is stabilized....You can see the first signs of growth here and around the world.” Yesterday, however, a number of those who attended clearly acknowledged that things could (still) go wrong and said such fears kept them awake at night. While that is not unusual in and of itself, at the very least it adds to doubts I and others have had about the true state of the banks, the financial system, and the economy. The meeting appeared to confirm the strong grip that Wall Street has on the levers of legislative power. In response to a throwaway remark by one of the bloggers present that discussions about the overly large size of the financial sector relative to the real economy were "not politically correct," one official suggested the reality was just the opposite, and that a substantial majority of the public agreed with that assessment. If you take that together with the assertion that the Treasury -- and, by extension, the Administration -- is fully committed to financial reform, as well as the fact that the Democrats dominate Congress, the implication is that other forces -- namely, the moneyed interests and their lobbyists -- are standing in the way of necessary change. Nothing new there, I guess More on Financial Crisis
 
GOP Boycotts Senate Climate Change Hearing (VIDEO) Top
Barbara Boxer is out in front on climate change in the Senate. As a result, she spent much of Tuesday sitting by herself. From the beginning, it was a bizarre day for Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee and the climate-change debate in general. Making good on their boycott threats from last week, none of the seven committee Republicans were in their seats at the start of Tuesday's hearing. This attempt to stall the committee from beginning to mark up the Kerry-Boxer climate bill was based on the EPW rule that at least two members of the minority have to be present before opening a markup. But that's just a nicety, and Boxer isn't known for being all that nice. "Sen. Boxer has been as patient as I've ever seen her. I've been with her since 1982," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Boxer doesn't need to be patient, necessarily. She doesn't really need any Republicans to simply pass the bill out of the committee, which has 12 Democratic senators to the 7 from the GOP. Democrats weren't surprised that one side of the committee dais was empty. They already had their one-liners ready to go: Republicans weren't entirely absent from the hearing. Retiring Ohio Sen. George Voinovich appeared to deliver a prepared statement on behalf of his missing colleagues that well exceeded the typical five-minute limit on speeches. Then he, too, vanished. What Voinovich and the Republicans claim they want is a full analysis of the bill by the Environmental Protection Agency, which would take another five weeks. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Reid have agreed to wait for the EPA report before beginning the process of final passage on the Senate floor, but that probably wouldn't mean any delays -- the bill has five more committees to get through before Reid can reconcile its various amended versions. The Republicans want the report now. "Madam Chairman, asking for an EPA analysis is not a stalling tactic. This is not a ruse to prevent the committee from marking up a climate bill," Voinovich said. "Rather, this is a genuine attempt to make sure that members of this committee, both the majority and the minority, have the best information available as we debate and amend a bill that will have consequences for every person in our country." The committee just heard from 54 witnesses on nine panels last week, Boxer countered, and has an atypically large amount of data available for review. Voinovich left anyway. After they'd taken their best shots at the empty chairs, committee Democrats left, too, leaving Boxer to chair a committee of one. As promised, Boxer brought an EPA official to answer questions from the missing Republicans later in the day, but none materialized. The GOP still wants the report, Voinovich wrote in a statement later Tuesday. "Having a briefing does nothing to change that." While Boxer sent the EPA deputy on his way Tuesday evening, Inhofe hastily announced a press conference that he abandoned just as quickly. An Inhofe staffer announced to the assembled reporters that Republicans had heard Boxer planned to move her committee into markup at any moment, and Inhofe wanted to be ready to rush into the hearing room and object, the staffer said. Tragically, that scene never came to pass. Instead, Boxer adjourned the committee to hold a press conference of her own. It sounded like another Yes Men stunt , but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed a theoretical Senate climate change bill on Tuesday evening. Not the Kerry-Boxer bill, though. Boxer pounced on the news anyway, calling the Chamber's support of a prospective weaker bill a "game changer" at her press conference Tuesday night. "The Chamber stands ready to work with Congress to resolve this issue in a bipartisan manner that recognizes regional differences, the state of the technology, and the compelling need for a solution that minimizes overall economic impact," head Chamber lobbyist R. Bruce Josten wrote in a letter to Boxer and Ranking committee Republican James Inhofe (R-Okla.). The letter praised the spirit of compromise displayed by Kerry and Graham in supporting further funding for nuclear power, so-called "clean coal" and domestic drilling, as well as renewable energy sources. Josten reserved the rest of the Chamber's compliments for Republicans, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who quickly emerged last week as a primary threat to the bill in Boxer's committee. The chair herself, not so much. Even if it's not the "fundamental shift" Boxer called it Tuesday night, Josten's professed desire for some kind of reform marks a reversal for the Chamber, which claims to be the nation's largest business lobby. The group's reputation has been damaged repeatedly in the past month as a series of companies sought to distance themselves from the Chamber's opposition to the climate bill or just left the umbrella group outright. Last week, the Chamber also began openly working against health care reform. The Republicans missing from Boxer's hearing earned the public support of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) Tuesday afternoon. Graham has been the Olympia Snowe of climate change since partnering with Kerry to write a New York Times op-ed stressing the need for reform, but he doesn't seem to feel the same pressure he felt a month ago to have a bill to show the international community in Copenhagen in December. Neither does Kerry, for that matter. "I welcome the opportunity to go at this in a deliberate and thoughtful way," he told reporters Tuesday afternoon. "Obviously it's pushed back, but that's okay." The United States can still be a productive participant in the Copenhagen discussions, Kerry said, as long as they have a "framework" take to the world stage. Kerry said European Union President Fredrik Reinfeldt, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, agreed with that assessment Tuesday morning. The White House will provide its own ideas for a basic framework on Wednesday, Kerry said, when he and Graham will meet with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. But since climate change won't be done this year, there has been talk of pushing it back beyond the 2010 elections, for the safety of Democrats up for reelection in red or fossil fuel-heavy areas. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon that while he does not support it, he has heard the prospect of a years-long delay floated in "street talk among staff" working on the issue. At that prospect, Kerry balked. "There's no way that we can afford to do that. There's just no way," he said. "I don't know what an election has to do with the temperature of the Earth being kept at 2 degrees Centigrade. It has nothing to do with it. And the notion that this should be delayed for some artificial schedule is just beyond consideration here. We have an obligation to make this happen, and unless we set some targets, we're going to fall short with disastrous consequences." Offered a worst-case scenario, Kerry did acknowledge the political realities. "If you get into September of next year or something, that's a different story," he said. "But I don't think we're going to get there." More on Climate Change
 
Black Cowboys Teach Inner City Kids Horsemanship, History Top
Kids from rough areas in New York City have found a home away from home on a 25-acre ranch in Queens, CNN reported Tuesday. Since 1994, the Federation of Black Cowboys have been teaching inner city kids horsemanship and history to keep them away from gangs and drugs. "I've seen a guy get shot dead, point [blank] range, right in front of me -- dropped him, boom," D'vonte "Boney D" Jemmott, 15, said of the neighborhood where he grew up. "I've seen dudes get beat up, chased home, all sorts of things. I've seen all sorts of different drugs being ran around. If I wasn't down here," he said, "I'd probably be involved with things like that -- robbing people, probably hurting people -- because I've seen a lot of that stuff done around my way." CNN reports that thousands of kids have been introduced to the stables since 1998, and a small number return for longer mentorships. Members of the federation, who go by nicknames like "Ma" and "Little Red", work first and foremost to make their aspiring junior wranglers feel safe. They also teach kids about "the forgotten black West" and the role that black cowboys had in shaping America's history. But the cowboys need some help, CNN reported. The nonprofit survives on donations, and with few current contributors, the stables are falling into disrepair and the federation's museum is presently a dilapidated trailer containing a hodgepodge of memorabilia and artifacts. If you want to learn more about how to help the Federation of Black Cowboys you can visit their site and also make a donation to their cause. At the time of print, their site seemed to be temporarily down, so if you would like to make a donation we suggest you contact them directly at (718) 925-0777.
 
Mitchell Bard: Candidate Obama Might Have Some Questions for President Obama Top
As Barack Obama stood in Grant Park a year ago tonight and gave his victory speech, it was a galvanizing moment, one I (and millions of others) will never forget. A year later, many of the president's supporters are expressing concern as to whether he has kept faithful to the vision he laid out in his campaign. Today, Arianna argued that candidate Obama might not be so thrilled with the job President Obama is doing. She wrote: "Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, 'that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?'" I understand the dismay some, like Arianna, are expressing. It's hard to read headlines on HuffPost like " Obama Administration Helps House Gut Post-Enron Reforms " and not wonder where the "change" we were promised is hiding. I find myself torn between two points of view I find compelling. On the one hand, it would have been virtually impossible for a president to come in and undo decades of corruption and inertia in Washington politics in one year. The mountain the president had to climb in this regard was immense. To me, though, the biggest problem has been that Obama lacks a necessary partner in this epic struggle: Congress. As I wrote in September in the context of the health care debate, it seems to me that the Democrats in Congress have forgotten that the president won 365 electoral votes last November, and that the American people strengthened the Democratic majorities in both the Senate and House. From the fight over the stimulus legislation, through the battle over the budget, and careening right into the war over health care reform, Congressional Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people bestowed a mandate on them to enact the president's agenda. For some inexplicable reason, they've been scared of the Republicans, who retain the ability to be obstructionist, but don't have any power to actually do anything. (Making the Republicans filibuster something is not a bad thing.) If Obama has been timid, the Democrats in Congress have been straight-out terrified. And despite the Democrats on Capitol Hill not pulling their share of the "change" weight, Obama did manage to get through stimulus legislation and important programs in the budget, and health care reform has gotten further along in the process than it ever has before. Not to mention the general competency and positive world view that Obama has brought to the White House, a huge change from his bumbling, toxic and disastrous predecessor. At the same time, I would be lying if said I wasn't disappointed with Obama's leadership. I applauded his early efforts at bipartisanship, but once the Republicans revealed themselves to be completely uninterested in any kind of cooperation, only focused on blocking the president at every turn, his attempts to come up with bipartisan solutions morphed from being admirable to being naive and counterproductive. (I agree with Arianna that I couldn't care less what Olympia Snowe does or does not want in health care reform legislation.) I appreciated Obama's desire to learn from past mistakes and allow Congress to generate legislation, rather than imposing solutions on the legislators (after the Clinton administration's failed attempt at health care reform). But coming off the election, the president had enormous political capital (really a blank check to move forward with anything he campaigned for), and I can't help thinking that he didn't make enough use of it. Some more outspoken leadership was necessary (and missed). And most of all, the president hasn't done enough to foster the idea that his is an administration of change, just like he promised. Arianna is unhappy that Larry Summers has an influential position in the Obama White House, and such an objection is understandable, given his close ties to the kind of deregulation, anything-goes attitude that contributed to creating the economic mess the administration now has to try and clean up. But to me, the problem isn't who the president does and doesn't hire. It all comes down to him. When he spoke to a joint session of Congress about health care, it re-ignited action on reform and turned the mood around. It was an important speech and an important show of leadership from the president. I'd like to see more moments like that one. During the campaign, every time writers (and I was one of them, on occasion) groused that Obama wasn't hitting back hard enough when his opponents attacked, his strategy always seemed to pay off in the end, making the pundits look bad. So I can't help feeling like he must know what he is doing now, that there is a strategy behind his less-than-assertive public approach to his presidency. But as each day goes by, it becomes harder to have faith. As Arianna noted, the ability to make pitch-perfect course corrections during the campaign was a key to Obama's success. Hopefully, he will continue that trend in the second year of his presidency. Just over 10 months ago Obama took the oath of office with unfair expectations hovering ominously over his head, so I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But, as Arianna's article shows, that benefit is not extended by all, and it is not available indefinitely. One thing I think we can all agree on is that President Obama would benefit from a little infusion of Candidate Obama. The future of his presidency may depend on it. More on One Year Later
 
Patrick Duffy & A Crab Talk About Losing Their Virginities (VIDEO) Top
Um, apparently the Crab (Patrick Duffy's BFF) lost his virginity to Dame Judi Dench, who, in addition to having a penchant for cross-species sex, also has sticky fingers when it comes to prescription drugs. Patrick, on the other hand, lost his virginity to a girl who smelled like corn chips. Of course this isn't the first time the Crab has one-upped Patrick by getting down. When the pair talked threesomes a few weeks back, the carnal crustacean claimed he, Courtney Cox and the wardrobe lady got it on at the first season wrap party for "Friends" in 1994. Patrick had no such stories about "Step by Step." WATCH: Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on Funny Videos
 
Final House Health Care Bill To Be Unveiled Top
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected to unveil a revised health care reform bill - known as a manager's amendment -- Tuesday evening after taking the concerns of her caucus into account. Pelosi said late last week that she was leaning against allowing individual floor amendments, so what you see here is likely what you get. If it passes the House, it'll be merged with the Senate version in conference committee and then will come back for one final vote before heading to the president's desk. Rival factions within the party still differ on how far the bill should go to prevent any money that has somehow come into contact with federal money from then funding abortions, whether undocumented workers can somehow participate in the health care system short of getting treated for free in hospital emergency rooms, and whether states should be allowed to choose to move to a single-payer system if they decide to, among other differences. The House health care bill unveiled Thursday was stripped of a provision that would allow individual states to implement single-payer health care if they elected to. HuffPost readers read through it and found that it also requires chain restaurants with more than 20 locations to post calorie information on the menu. It bars the federal government from bailing out the public option and adds that there "shall be no administrative or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology" established by the head of the public insurance plan. And it addresses health disparities while making specific reference to protecting populations discriminated against due to sexual orientation or gender identity. The stripping of the single-payer provision, which Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) originally moved through the Education and Labor Committee, particularly galled HuffPost readers as well as Kucinich himself. Kucinich tells HuffPost that the Congressional Budget Office scored his amendment as having zero effect on the federal budget, a sign that it was at least considered to be included in the manager's amendment. Kevin McKeown, a city councilmember from Santa Monica, California, wrote in to protest the removal, arguing that if California passes single-payer legislation, it ought to be allowed to become law. "This year I had our city finance department calculate how much money single-payer would save just our city, just on health care for our own employees," said McKeown. "States poised to enact their own single-payer should not be disempowered by this bill." Another reader, Jake Orlando, noted that the bill specifically mentions gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in a section dedicated to addressing health disparities. "It's a quite small mention, but at least worth noting in the LGBT community," Orlando writes. "We know the Republicans would have gone out of their way to exclude us from mention of existence." Fernando Castro noticed that the bill will require chain restaurants to publish calorie content on the menus. It'll be tough to reduce health care costs, after all, if the obesity epidemic continues apace. Section 2572 requires that restaurants with more than 20 locations "shall disclose in a clear and conspicuous manner in a nutrient content disclosure statement adjacent to the name of the standard menu item, so as to be clearly associated with the standard menu item, on the menu listing the item for sale, the number of calories contained in the standard menu item, as usually prepared and offered for sale." Reader Zen Tiger noted that while the government freely bails out Wall Street when it runs into trouble, no such help would be forthcoming for the public health insurance option. "In no case shall the public health insurance option receive any Federal funds for purposes of insolvency in any manner similar to the manner in which entities receive Federal funding under the Troubled Assets Relief Program of the Secretary of the Treasury," reads the bill. A high number of readers wrote in surprised that the public option was as limited as it is in the bill. That surprise is partly the fault of reporters - including myself - who haven't been clear that only certain people would be eligible for it. If you have employer coverage, for instance, you're not eligible. However, this FDL post from Jon Walker explains how the number of people eligible for it is liable to expand over time. Thanks to the many people who read parts of the nearly 2,000 word health care bill last week. If you give this one a look and find anything interesting, let me know at ryan@huffingtonpost.com. If you don't want your name published, please say so. We'll post the bill as soon as it's out.
 
Doris Kearns Goodwin Wants "More LBJ" From Obama When Dealing With Congress (VIDEO) Top
Noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke with MSNBC's Ed Schultz tonight about the Obama presidency as it reaches the one year mark. Polls show that Obama's influence with voters has waned somewhat, but Goodwin dismissed that as irrelevant right now. What's important, she said, is what have we learned of the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership style of this new president cause that's what's going to be with us in the months and years ahead. And I think we've seen his steady and calm. We've seen he's poised. We've seen that when he gets to make a decision he has information that he brings in and he has strong voices that can compete with him. However, she did echo criticism of President Obama that he has not handled Congress deftly, or perhaps brusquely, enough. Goodwin thinks "so far we could use a little more LBJ, I think, with Mr. Obama - threatening, cajoling... And I think that's something that he's going to have to learn some more of." WATCH: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Send us tips! Write us at tv@huffingtonpost.com if you see any newsworthy or notable TV moments. Read more about our media monitoring project here and click here to join the Media Monitors team. More on Barack Obama
 
Johann Hari: Why Is Anti-Gay Violence Soaring in Britain? Top
The fight to win legal equality for gay people is almost won in Britain – yet the taste of champagne has been tainted by an unexpected dash of blood. In the past few years, gay people have finally begun to exercise the same rights as their straight siblings, yet there has been a sharp surge in violence against us. In London, recorded homophobic attacks are up by 20 per cent. In Glasgow it's 32 per cent; in Liverpool it's 40 per cent; in Greater Manchester it's 63 per cent. James Parks is only the latest face to be kicked in by this trend: last week, the off-duty police officer left a club in Liverpool with his boyfriend and was lynched by a group of 20 teenagers who smashed his skull and left him close to death. In a recession, violence always rises, and violence against minorities rises more. Attacks on Muslims, Jews, and black people are also spiking across Britain. But recorded violence against gay people has shown the most extreme rise. Last year, an 18 year-old hairdresser in Liverpool called Michael Causer was sleeping on a friend's sofa after a party when he was woken up. A witness testified that a group of teenagers yelled, "You little queer faggot!" They said they were going to cut out his body-piercings with a knife, and started burning his legs with a lighter. He was found bleeding to death later, dumped in the road outside, after having his head smashed in with a hardback book. At the trial, one of the 19-year-olds tried for the murder said he was acting "in self-defence" – against a smaller, seven-and-a-half stone boy with no history of violent behaviour. A witness said that during the attack, he had yelled: "He's a little queer, he deserves it!" Yet the jury found him not guilty. What can we do to stop this surge? The answer does not lie in new laws; these attacks are already highly illegal. It lies in changing the culture of two core British institutions that are still tolerating anti-gay bigotry – our schools, and our police service. Almost all the new homophobic attacks have been carried out by teenagers who are in – or just out of – the education system. It is not a coincidence that our schools are the one place where homophobic violence is still absolutely mainstream. The official schools inspectorate, Ofsted, says that homophobia is "endemic" in our playgrounds and our classrooms. A study by Stonewall found 41 per cent of gay children are beaten up, and 17 per cent have been told they're going to be killed (it's 10 per cent higher still in faith schools). The young people who attacked PC James Parks were simply taking that culture out of the playground and onto the streets. This doesn't have to happen. Michael Causer's mother, Marie, says: "This generation of infants needs to be educated. You hear youngsters as young as four and five saying 'Go away, you're gay.' It might be a word to them, but their parents need to pull them up and tell them that it's wrong. They need better education to let them know that gay people are no different." When this is tried, it works. The Stonewall study found that in schools with a consistent policy of punishing homophobic language, gay children were 60 per cent less likely to be attacked. That fall in violence could ripple out from the school gates - but today, only 6 per cent of schools adopt this policy. The Government should immediately make it mandatory. What about the police? There are some terrific police officers who are appalled by anti-gay crime – I'm related to one – but they remain too few. A major 2005 study for the Home Office found that homophobia and sexism are "all but endemic within the police service." It was "not just in every force we surveyed, but in every part of every force." One of the authors, Professor Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics, said: "It is quite clear that gay and lesbian officers find themselves in a very uncomfortable position in the police service. ... Sexist and homophobic language is now largely ignored and even tacitly accepted." Little seems to have changed since the report. This week, a lesbian police officer called Sergeant Jasmine Stewart is appearing before a tribunal. She says her colleagues called her "a poof" and refused to work shifts alongside her. She gave evidence that a senior officer had said she had caused a "drop in morale" in the station. If the police are happy to talk about "faggots" when the door is shut, what do they do when one of them walks through the door needing help? In too many cases, they do too little. To pluck one example: in Brighton a few weeks ago, two gay women – aged 18 and 22 – were repeatedly punched in the face by a gang of thugs. They went straight to the police – but it was 12 days before officers appealed for witnesses, long after the trail had gone cold. Yet the 2005 report contained some good news. Racist language had "all but disappeared" from the police force. Why? "Because officers know it will lead to disciplinary action." Of course some racist attitudes remain, but they have been driven underground by a tough policy of requiring police officers to talk about black and Asian people respectfully. It means there are fewer cases like the Steven Lawrence abomination, and so fewer murderers walking our streets. The same could be done with gay people. All it takes is political will. Of course, any move to ensure gay people are treated the same as everyone else is immediately labeled "political correctness" and smothered in exaggeration and distortion. The defenders of homophobia can no longer, in polite society, say they think gay people are disgusting and immoral. Too many people have grasped the simple, humane truth that every human society in history has had 3 to 5 per cent of people who were attracted to their own gender, and it does no harm to anyone. So the homophobes have resorted to other tactics. One that has been growing over the past year is to claim that gay people who are trying to stop bullying and intimidation are "the real bullies," trying to "silence" poor embattled homophobes. The logic of this argument is rarely spelled out. Were Martin Luther King and the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan equally bigoted? The Grand Dragon was intolerant of black people; King was intolerant of racism. When you put it like this, the bogus nature of this way of framing the debate becomes clear. To one side, there are people who believe an entire group of human beings is inferior and deserve lesser rights, simply because of a naturally occurring and harmless difference. To the other side, there is a group of straight and gay people who say sexual orientation is a trivial subject and we should all be treated the same. Yes, both sides should have the right to speak freely – but nobody should pretend there is a moral equivalence. There are even people who hint that this violent backlash against equality is evidence that gay people should have stayed in the closet. With faux compassion, they say – well, this is what happens if you "flaunt" your sexuality by behaving like everybody else. Do they realise what they're saying? The great civil rights advances in the 1960s in the US were followed by a sharp rise in anti-black violence. Should black people have stayed out of the polling booths and at the back of the bus to avoid the wrath of racists? The problem is not with the victims; it's with the thugs attacking them. We have come so far in this country thanks to the decency and compassion of most British people – but we have only reached the half-way point. The battle to change our laws was a crucial stage. Now we need to change our institutions. The people who oppose these humane measures hissing "PC! PC!" – or "it's my religion!" – should know what they are doing. They are ensuring more innocent people like James Parks and Michael Causer – or your son, or sister, or neighbour – will be lynched, simply because they were born gay. Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here . You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com To see Johann debating this issue against a Christian fundamentalist, click here . Johann is also a contributing writer for Slate magazine. To read his latest article for them - about the loon Ayn Rand - click here . You can follow Johann on Twitter at www.twitter.com/johannhari101 More on Gay Rights
 
Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin To Co-Host Oscars Top
LOS ANGELES — Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are taking on the Oscars. The two Hollywood veterans will share hosting duties at the 82nd Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Tuesday. Telecast producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman said Martin and Baldwin are "the perfect pair of hosts for the Oscars." The producers have said they hope to resurrect Oscar's ratings and make the show more fun by building on the changes introduced at February's ceremony, which tinkered with the way awards were presented and featured Broadway-style musical interludes. Bringing in a pair of hosts, while not unprecedented, continues that theme of change. "Very early on, we talked about a pairing as part of our concept of the show, having tradition and also freshness walking hand in hand," Shankman said in an interview Tuesday. "Steve anchors it in so much tradition and Alec ... besides being a former Oscar nominee, he is just hot, hot, hot right now. And the two of them I know adore each other." A pair of hosts helmed the inaugural Oscar ceremony in 1929: Douglas Fairbanks and William DeMille, then president and vice president of the film academy, co-hosted the show. The last time multiple hosts graced the Oscar stage was in 1987, when Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn and Paul Hogan shared hosting duties. "In the modern television era, this is the first time there will be two co-hosts on the same stage," academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger said Tuesday. Hugh Jackman sang and danced as host of last year's Academy Awards, which saw a ratings boost from the previous year. The 41-year-old actor declined to reprise his hosting role before Mechanic and Shankman were named as producers. Splitting hosting duties between two funny fellows ups the show's fun factor, Mechanic said – "taking a little starch out of the shirts, so to speak." "We can move things along more easily by taking out some of the stilted banter that goes on between presenters and let the hosts guide us through the evening," he said Tuesday. Martin has hosted the show twice before, in 2001 and 2003, and has appeared as a presenter several times. Baldwin is a first-timer as Oscar host, but was a co-presenter in 2004. Baldwin, 51, who stars on NBC's "30 Rock," called the Oscar gig "the opportunity of a lifetime." He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2003 for his supporting role in "The Cooler." Martin said that he is "happy to co-host the Oscars with my enemy Alec Baldwin." The 64-year-old entertainer is currently on tour in support of his latest banjo album. He and Baldwin share the screen in Nancy Meyers' film "It's Complicated," due in theaters next month. Besides the dual-host approach, the 2010 Oscars have already undergone a major makeover. The academy moved its honorary Oscars, often a long-winded affair that bogged down the ceremony, to a separate event in November. And in the biggest change in decades, the academy doubled the number of best-picture nominees from five to 10. Academy overseers hope that might open the top category to a wider range of films, including commercial movies that could attract more TV viewers. Telecast plans are shaping up well, said Mechanic, who made three promises about the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony on March 7, 2010: "It will be more fun this year, it will be faster this year and it will be the best of the best." ___ On the Net: http://www.oscars.org More on The Oscars
 
Virginia Governor's Race 2009: McDonnell Beats Deeds Top
WASHINGTON — Republicans wrested Virginia from the Democrats Tuesday in a one-sided sweep of top offices, and New Jersey's unpopular Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine fought for his political life as independent voters swung behind the GOP in elections in both states. It was a troubling sign for President Barack Obama and his party heading into an important midterm election year. Conservative Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in the Virginia governor's race over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds was a triumph for a GOP looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008. It also was a setback for the White House in a swing state that was a crucial part of Obama's electoral landslide just a year ago. In New Jersey, the early vote count showed Republican challenger Chris Christie leading Democrat Corzine. Exit polls showed independents heavily favoring Christie. Voters in both Virginia and New Jersey said their top concern was the economy. Elsewhere, Maine voters weighed in on same-sex marriage in a closely watched initiative, and New York and California picked congressmen for two vacant seats. A slew of cities selected mayors, and Ohio voted on allowing casinos. One year after Obama won the White House in an electoral landslide and Democrats expanded their majorities in Congress, much of the focus was on Virginia and New Jersey. The outcomes were sure to feed discussion about the state of the electorate, the status of the diverse coalition that sent Obama to the White House and the limits of the president's influence – on the party's base of support and on moderate current lawmakers he needs to advance his legislative priorities. As if on cue, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid indicated Tuesday that Congress may not complete health care legislation this year, missing Obama's deadline on his signature issue and pushing debate into a congressional election year. The president had personally campaigned for Deeds and Corzine, raising the stakes in low-energy off-year elections. Thus, even one Democratic loss was a blot on Obama's political standing to a certain degree and signaled potential problems ahead as he seeks to achieve his policy goals, protect Democratic majorities in Congress and expand his party's grip on governors' seats next fall. Democrats had won big victories in Virginia in 2006 and 2008, and they have considered New Jersey a stronghold. But interviews with voters leaving polling stations in both states on Tuesday were filled with reasons for Democrats to be concerned and for Republicans to be optimistic. Early returns in Virginia showed that by a 2-1 margin McDonnell was winning rapidly growing, far-flung Washington, D.C., suburbs – places like Loudoun and Prince William counties – that Republicans historically have won but where Obama prevailed last fall by winning over swing voters. Republicans swept all three statewide Virginia offices up for grabs: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. "Bob McDonnell's victory gives Republicans tremendous momentum heading into 2010," declared Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "His focus on ideas and pocketbook issues will serve as a model for Republicans running next year." Independents – the crown jewel of elections because they often determine outcomes – were a critical part Obama's victory in Virginia and across the country. But after more than a year of recession, they fled from Democrats in a state where the economy trumped all. And exit polls indicated they were doing the same in New Jersey. The Associated Press exit polls showed that nearly a third of voters in Virginia described themselves as independents on Tuesday, and nearly as many in New Jersey did. They preferred McDonnell by almost a 2-1 margin over Deeds in Virginia, and Christie over Corzine by a similar margin. Last year, independents split between Obama and Republican John McCain in both states. The surveys also suggested the Democrats had difficulty turning out their base, including the large numbers of first-time minority and youth voters whom Obama attracted. The Virginia electorate was whiter in 2009 than it was in 2008, when blacks and Hispanics turned out in droves to elect the country's first black president. Democratic victories in both Virginia and New Jersey in 2005 preceded big Democratic years nationally in 2006 and 2008. Tuesday's impact on Obama's standing and on the 2010 elections could easily be overstated. Voters are often focused on local issues and local personalities. Yet, national issues, like the recession, were clearly a factor, with voter attitudes shaped to some degree by how people feel about the state of their nation – and their place in it. It was also difficult to separate Obama from the outcomes after he devoted a significant chunk of time working to persuade voters to elect Deeds in Virginia and re-elect Corzine in New Jersey. More than four in 10 voters in Virginia said their view of Obama factored into their choice on Tuesday, and those voters roughly split between expressing support and opposition for the president. People who said they disapprove of Obama's job performance voted overwhelmingly Republican, and those who approve of the president favored Deeds, the Democrat. The Obama factor was similar in New Jersey, though there were slightly more voters who said the president did not factor into their choice. Obama campaigned in person for both Deeds and Corzine and was featured in their advertisements. He characterized the two as necessary allies in the White House's effort to advance his plans. And he deployed his political campaign arm, Organizing for America, in an effort to ensure the swarms of party loyalists and new voters he attracted in 2008 turned out. He also spent energy trying to ensure the Democrats would pick up the GOP-held vacant 23rd Congressional District seat in New York, where Democrat Bill Owens faced conservative Doug Hoffman. That's the race that highlighted fissures in the Republican Party between conservatives and moderates, illustrating problems the GOP could have in capitalizing on any discontent with Obama and Democrats that Tuesday's results may show. Obama needs all the lawmakers he can get to pass his legislative priorities of health care and climate change, but defeats Tuesday could make it much harder for him to persuade moderate Democrats from right-leaning states and conservative districts, who are hearing from voters worried about his expansion of government at a time of rising deficits, to get on board. Defeats also could tease out upcoming problems for Democrats, particularly in moderate districts and in swing states like Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, as they defend their turf next fall. In 2010, most governors, a third of the Senate and all members in the House will be on ballots.
 
The Best Of Levi Johnston's Twitter Top
i FEEL LIKE I'M IN A RAP VIDEO EVERYTIME I COME HERE.. !! WHATS THE DEAL WITH THE TAXI DRIVERS NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH IS IT A LAW AGAINST IT? More on Twitter
 
RJ Eskow: Base to Obama: Come In, Please Top
As Year One of the Obama Era draws to a close, the recent Arianna Huffington / David Plouffe exchange illustrates a structural defect in the coalition Obama's seeking to build. And make no mistake: Some might call it The Year of Living Non-Dangerously, but it looks more like a deliberate strategy. It's not waffling or weakness: Barack Obama wants to become the Tony Blair of American politics. The President seems to be deliberately moving his party rightward in order to capture the political spectrum from center/right to left, freezing out the Republican Party. It worked for Blair, but will it work here? Or will he lose his base in the process, damaging his own effectiveness? 365 days after his election, here are some pointed - and sometimes painful - questions. In many ways disappointment with the Obama Presidency was inevitable. The President consciously (and tactically) presented himself as all things to all people, a kind of Rorschach Test on which people could project their own hopes and dreams. But a million different dreams had to collapse into a single reality when the real-life Presidency began, in much the same way that a "probability wave" of many trajectories collapses into a single photon in physics. But it's more than that. The campaign made implicit promises of trustworthiness and new-style politics, as well as some explicit promises that have been jettisoned without explanation. He reversed himself on key health care pledges without explaining to his supporters why, and he broke his promise on ending government security much the same way. His handling of government spying abuses raises our first question: Would we have ever learned about Watergate if Barack Obama had been President? He did not run as a center-Right Democrat, nor did he promise to restore the Clinton Administration if elected. There may be good reasons to govern from the center-Right, but he hasn't given his supporters the courtesy of an explanation. And the Clinton Administration was a deep pool of extraordinary talent, so it was wise to draw from it - in most cases. But in many critical jobs - especially Treasury - his choices have been disappointingly weak. Then there's the whole issue of governing from the center. Here the question becomes, Would Barack Obama be a better President today if he had never read 'Team of Rivals'? Sure, it's inspiring to read how Lincoln drew his bitter opponents into his government, wisely and selflessly. But, leaving aside the challenge some historians have made to that book's thesis, is the President learning that some of his rivals may not have the same high moral standards as Lincoln's? Most politicians want to please everyone, especially those that don't like them. Let us hope that this emotional impulse is not being masked in the cloak of false pragmatism. In other words, Has the President written the wrong future biography for himself? Is he aspiring to be Lincoln when the times call for Roosevelt? Which leads us to the next question: Is the President's Big Tent big enough to include his supporters? The President has projected an almost visceral dislike of bloggers, and his Cabinet boasts few DC outsiders like the ones that formed his initial base. Rahm Emanuel showered progressive activists with "F bombs" recently. By contrast, during his Presidency Bill Clinton spoke with warmth and empathy about the ragtag protesters at Seattle's World Trade Organization meeting. Many get the sense that Obama sees young (and not so young) activists as foolish and naive, a source of unpredictability and disorder that just makes him uncomfortable. That impression may be false, but it is an impression nevertheless. Pace Mr. Plouffe, the base's disappointment with the President is not based on "frustration with the pace of change." It's based on their fear that the President may not really be interested in fundamental change. If that is anyone's fault, then to a large extent the blame lies with the President - and his advisors and communicators. Some (in the Administration and elsewhere) may say, Who cares? What difference does it make if a group of granola-eating activists and bloggers is unhappy? We've got a center-right coalition to build. We're about the hard work of day-to-day governance. But Democrats would be foolish to assume that any future election will be an easy one. A dispirited base damages a campaign at its foundation, and at its heart. Perhaps the President should consider a sit-down with his critics on the Left, as well as those on the Right. If nothing else, he should use them as an excuse for passing legislation he supports anyway. Compromise is the lifeblood of politics, as long as it's not done too quickly - or too cynically. Obama's lack of specificity on health reform and his willingness to defer to Congress could be seen as expediency, or as more Rorschach Politics. (As long as it's called "health reform" and it passes, we win. ...) Unnecessary compromise dilutes the outcome, especially when one's opponents lack good will. We wish the President every success at Year One. We remain guardedly optimistic, despite the disappointments. We would pitch in and help ourselves, if we were welcomed. And we recognize that politics is hard, messy, and filled with compromise. But, if greatness is a combination of talent and historical need, this President has the potential for greatness. So the final question is this one: Does the President understand that compromising with cynics can lead to a half-cynical outcome? RJ Eskow blogs when he can at: A Night Light The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog Website: Eskow and Associates More on One Year Later
 
Alan Schram: Buffett Buys a Railroad: What Does It Mean for Investors? Top
Berkshire Hathaway just made its largest acquisition ever, buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, a railroad company, for over $35 billion. This is a large bet by the most successful investor of all time that the US economy will improve and prosper. Actions speak louder than words. What does that action mean for investors? For one thing, it reflects Buffett's confidence in the prospects of the economy, prospects upon which a railroad company depends. And Buffett is convinced that economic activity will pick up. In fact, he is confident enough that he is willing to use debt and issue Berkshire shares, two methods he had only used sparingly in the past, in order to close the deal. This should also tell you something about valuations in general, particularly those of large cap stocks, and especially in comparison to other available investment alternatives. In the last nine years, U.S. equities have lost almost half of their purchasing power (adjusted for inflation). Treasury bonds have done much better. Because it is easy to extrapolate the most recent past into the future, so many people are now gloomy about the future prospects of equities. But history shows that past periods where bonds outperformed stocks have been great times to buy stocks. According to Jeremy Siegel from the University of Pennsylvania, in all previous cases of 10-year periods where stock returns have been negative, subsequent 10-year returns were over 10% real, more than double the return of government bonds. So every time stocks have performed poorly for 10 years, they have performed better than average for the next 10 years, and beaten bonds by 2 to 1 on average. In the 20th century, not exactly a calm, worry-free period, stocks in America had a real (inflation adjusted) return of 6.9% a year, versus 1.5% for Treasury bonds. Yet in 1932, investors were melancholy about stocks. The entire world was in depression, capitalism seemed like a failed experiment, unemployment was 25%, and Nazi Germany was advancing. But the S&P rose 34.8% a year over the next five years. And in 1949, U.S. budget deficit as a percent of GDP was much higher than it is today, communism was spreading, and the Soviet Union was threatening a nuclear annihilation. Stocks rose 23.2% a year for the next five years. The past decade was the worst for stocks in 70 years. We just experienced the most severe recession since the Great Depression ended. And I believe our experience in the coming decade will be similar to the historical examples above. If stocks revert to their 20th century mean, they will post high real returns, and significantly outperform bonds. And Warren Buffett is betting that way. Alan Schram is the Managing Partner of Wellcap Partners, a Los Angeles based investment firm. Email at aschram@wellcappartners.com. More on Warren Buffett
 
Kathleen Reardon: Is The President Really In Charge? Top
Well, that would explain things, wouldn't it? He wouldn't be the first president not really in charge. Remember Cheney ? Wasn't he in charge when George W. Bush was president? So, perhaps this time our guy isn't in charge. Why else would he be thinking of sending thousands of troops to Afghanistan? Why would he have nearly abandoned a health care public option? What happened to getting rid of lobbyists? And, why does he tell us nothing for so long, and then deliver one of his teleprompted speeches thinking we'll be mesmerized by the rhetoric instead of engaging in the openness promised by his administration? It's a scary thing to think that the man in charge may not be at all. Possibly he opened one of those early days briefings and discovered he'd better start practicing obsequiousness with some of the generals and God knows what other powerful forces or he'd be on his way out in four years, and that's if he turned out to be lucky. Otherwise, the whole thing doesn't make sense. This promising president, determined to bring about change, has mostly given us more of the same. Does he know something he just can't tell us? That would be good. I guess. Is he preparing for events in Pakistan that require troops on the ground in Afghanistan? Has he simply forgotten Vietnam? Or for that matter, the Russians experience in Afghanistan? Is he so unnerved about a possible universal health care debacle on his watch that he'll take nearly anything that gives off a whiff of victory? A lot of us have gone through these kinds of mental gymnastics. But maybe the Chenyesque, Darth Vadar types are corralling power. The question is: Who are they? The economic advisory what's-in-it-for-me, keep-out-the-women-with-opinions cadre has always looked scary to me? Weren't they a big part of the economic problems we're now in? So, why are they so powerful? Why is this president with so much to offer abdicating responsibility, hiding behind his press secretary, giving us so little to go on, and leaving us in the dark? Is it because he never was the courageous leader we considered him to be? Or is it because he simply never had a chance? Dr. Reardon also blogs at bardscove . More on Afghanistan
 
Kenneth C. Davis: A Lady and a Penguin (Not a Dirty Story) Top
Generally, we don't associate the iconic Penguin Books with "dirty books." And neither did a British jury. On November 2, 1960, Penguin won a landmark British publishing case when Lady Chatterley's Lover was deemed "not obscene" by a jury of three women and nine men. Penguin had published the novel, written in 1928, to mark the 30th anniversary of Lawrence's death. During the six-day trial, many British literary lights including E.M. Forster, took the stand to defend the book. In the end, the prosecution was simply behind the times: counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones at one point asked the jurors -- Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read? The famed story of a love affair between an aristocratic lady and her groundskeeper had been cleared for sale a year earlier in the United States. In defining "obscenity," Associate Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a famous 1964 Supreme Court decision, I know it when I see it. People have been arguing over obscenity and pornography (which in the original Greek meant "to write about prostitutes"), almost since there was writing. For publishers, the label has been a mixed blessing. Books have been burned, banned from the mails, and yanked from library shelves. But the phrase, "Banned in Boston," eventually became a favorite selling slogan. And many books once deemed "dirty" are now bona fide classics. Do you think you know obscenity when you see it? Unwrap the plain brown paper around this quiz about some notorious "obscene" books. 1. Which hefty novel depicts a character reading "Titbits" magazine on the toilet, allowing "his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read"? 2. Which memoir did poet Ezra Pound once call "a dirty book worth reading"? 3. What Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, among the most frequently challenged books in American schools, was once banned in a Minnesota town for including the words "damn" and "whore lady"? 4. Which 1881 poetry collection, now considered an American classic, was withdrawn from circulation by its publisher under a District Attorney's threat of obscenity charges? Adapted from Don't Know Much About Literature . Answers 1. Ulysses (1922), by James Joyce. The character described is Leopold Bloom. 2. Tropic of Cancer , by Henry Miller. The novel was published in France in 1934, but banned in the U.S. until 1961. 3. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee. 4. Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1881 edition). In 1865, Whitman had been dismissed from his day job as a clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs after James Harlan, Secretary of the interior, found and read a working copy of Leaves of Grass and considered it obscene. Here is a link to a brief D.H. Lawrence biography at Poets.org
 
Dr. Belisa Vranich: Dorothy Was a Feminist Top
I knew it. Any chick capable of dealing with a tornado, juggling three men with lots of emotional baggage, a dog-lover and brave enough to confront witches and blustering men hiding behind loudspeakers had to have a cool story we didn't know about. She's got her canine companion, some sassy red heels and -- at least in Judy Garlands case -- those big glassy eyeballs. "Rediscovering Dorothy" is just in its beginning stages, but you gotta love the interview with Gloria Steinem and all the USA lovin' Americana. Ease on down the internet and check out the trailer of this fab documentary I found -- cause we've all got a little Dorothy in us all. http://www.rediscoveringdorothy.com/
 
Robbie Vorhaus: Winners Get Up One More Time Top
It took me one year to write the proposal for my new book, One Less, One More™, and then after all that work, I didn't sell the book. Did I give up? Lance Armstrong said, "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." When I was around 8-years-old, inside every piece of Dubble Bubble gum came a small color comic strip called, "Fleer Funnies." If I collected 500 comics - that's 500 pieces of gum, mind you -- I was eligible for a free t-shirt featuring the comic's main character, "Pud." Figuring I probably chewed at least five pieces of Dubble Bubble every day, it took me over 14 weeks to claim my prize. I hurriedly packed my 500 comics in a big envelope and mailed them off, impatiently watching the mail every day, waiting for my t-shirt to arrive. One week turned into a month, into several months, and still no t-shirt. Finally I asked my dad what to do. After several minutes of questioning, my father asked, "Did you include your name, telephone number or address in the package? How are they going to know where to send it?" What did I do? I started chewing more gum, collecting more comics. Even though the contest ended before I collected another 500 pieces of gum, I felt great. First, I learned a valuable lesson and wouldn't make that mistake again (one less), and I was inspired (one more) to chew more Dubble Bubble gum and blow bigger bubbles! Over ten years later, I took the train from Philadelphia to New York City's Pennsylvania Station. Taking the elevator up to Seventh Avenue, this guy, just a little older than me, asked if I had seen a brown wallet on the ground. He told me a heart breaking story about traveling to see his sick mother and that someone had either stolen his wallet, or in his confusion, had lost it. "Can I borrow $10?" he asked, genuinely distressed. "I promise, when I get home to Mom, I'll send you $15 in return." I was touched by his appeal, and feeling compassionate and charitable I gave this young man my address, phone number, $10, and sent him off with a hug and well wishes for his mother. Okay, I was scammed. But I forgave him (one less), and reminded that every experience is the seed for greater opportunity, which inspired me (one more) to become more charitable to those truly in need, specifically the hungry. Today, three of my favorite causes are The Farm Sanctuary , Save the Children , and The Heifer Project . Current day: From the first light of inspiration to write my new book One Less, One More™ -- Discovering Lifelong Peace, Happiness and Success One Day at a Time, the underling premise always remained the same: To change your life and the world around you, do one less negative thing, and one more positive thing, every day for the rest of your life. Simple idea, big results. Now what? I initially thought I only had two choices: Either, completely write the book and sell it; or, I could write an inspiring non-fiction book proposal, sell it to a creative publisher I admired, and together we would create a wonderful book, a call to action for people, businesses, and governments all over the world. Since I prefer collaboration, I chose to write a solid book proposal. This was going to be fun. I would get the proposal to Paul, my literary agent, who would quickly sell it to a major publisher, who in turn would send me an advance, which would allow me to spend the next couple months happily completing my manuscript, and soon enough I would be surfing Amazon.com to find my book listed in the top 100 bestsellers. Hello, is that Oprah calling? Okay, I can be naïve sometimes. Still, I was certain I'd get a publisher for several reasons. First, I've been using One Less, One More with my high-profile clients for years and know it works. Secondly, I've got a good 20+ year reputation and solid platform, and although like a shrink I can't publicly identify my famous clients by name, over the years I've appeared regularly on TV and in other major media as an advisor for crisis and reputation management. Plus, as a former journalist, I can write. Also, for years I've helped so many of my friends write their successful non-fiction book proposals, I was sure I had the formula down pat. I really thought selling my book would be easy. I was wrong. For one year I worked on the One Less, One More proposal. I outlined the chapters, wrote a compelling and inspiring sample chapter, made sure my marketing plan was perfect, didn't oversell my bio, yet made it clear I was qualified and capable to write this book, and promoting the project would be my new full-time job. Bottom line: this version of my proposal didn't sell. Do you think I quit? I tell my clients all the time: The only difference between a winner and loser is the winner gets up one more time. One last story. I was a boy scout. One year to raise money, our troop held a pretzel-selling contest. The winner, the boy selling the most amount of pretzels, received an official Boy Scout of America sleeping bag. I wanted that bag. In my mind, it was already mine. Every day after school, until after sundown, I walked the streets of my Levittown, PA neighborhood, selling pretzels in Red Rose Gate, Cobalt Ridge, Snowball Gate, Forsythia Gate, Juniper Hill and Upper Orchard. Prior to cell phones, it was not uncommon for my father to light up a Lucky Strike, get in his Chevrolet Corvair, and drive the streets, calling for me to stop selling pretzels, and come home for dinner. I was determined to become the Boy Scout Pretzel Selling Champion. One of my Boy Scout friends called me just hours before the end of the contest and asked the number of pretzel cases I sold. He told his grandmother, who in turn bought from him the same number of pretzel cases as I sold, plus one. He won. I came in second and won an official Boy Scout of America knapsack. My parents were furious. I wasn't. I told them not to be angry (one less), because I confidently (one more) knew I had sold more. I was grateful for my knapsack, proud of my accomplishment, and my parents felt better. One less, one more! I lost $10 to guy who scammed me at Penn Station, but my conviction to share my abundance with the hungry remains strong. I didn't win the pretzel selling contest, but I won the integrity and persistence competition. My book proposal initially didn't sell, and you'll soon read in my upcoming blogs, it's all for the best. And one day, I'll own a Pug Dubble Bubble t-shirt. I'm sure of it. More on Book Publishing
 
Rep. John Conyers: A Patriot's PATRIOT Act Top
My Judiciary colleagues Jerrold Nadler, and Robert C. Scott joined me in penning this piece. In 1928, the Supreme Court heard its first challenge to a secret government wiretap.  The court upheld the warrantless surveillance in that case, but Justice Brandeis dissented.   While the wiretap evidence was important to a federal prosecution, he warned that "experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent."  Brandeis' view was vindicated forty years later, when the Supreme Court overruled that decision and held that government wiretaps require warrants and probable cause.  The House Judiciary Committee will take up legislation tomorrow to revise a number of provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, and we would all do well to heed Justice Brandeis.  Everyone agrees on the critical importance of fighting terrorism and crime.  And no one should question the motives of the law enforcement, intelligence, and military services who are on the front lines of this struggle.  But good intentions are not enough to preserve our liberty, and the current PATRIOT Act simply grants too much unchecked authority to our government.  In our view, it should be tightened up to ensure our government gets the information it needs, and keeps out of the information it doesn't. For example, under current law, the government can get a secret intelligence court order requiring any person or business in the United States to turn over any information considered "relevant" to a foreign terrorism investigation.  The information does not have to involve a foreign agent or terrorism suspect, it simply has to be useful to investigators.  If a terrorism suspect visited a bar or restaurant -- or a bookstore -- the government might consider the credit card records of every other person who visited the establishment that night to be "relevant."  The government's showing need not meet any meaningful evidentiary threshold - a mere statement of facts giving rise to the government's belief that the information is relevant is enough. Even more troubling are PATRIOT Act provisions allowing the government to obtain information on US citizens without any court review whatsoever by issuing so-called "National Security Letters."  These "NSLs" allow the FBI to compel banks, phone companies, internet service providers and others to produce customer records, while forbidding the businesses from telling anyone that their records have been searched.  Once again, under current law, the government may exercise this power if it believes records are relevant to an investigation, even when the records do not directly relate to any terrorist or foreign agent. As legislators sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States, we are obliged to craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values.  The old Franklin saw that those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither may be clichéd, but that is because it is true.  That is why we have introduced a new PATRIOT Act bill that ensures our government has the power it needs to fight terrorism and defend our nation, and at the same time better protects the constitutional rights and freedoms that Americans cherish.  Our bill would tighten the standards for NSLs and for secret court orders compromising the records of US citizens, and includes a range of other protections to ensure these powers are available where needed, but cannot be abused.  It would also require enhanced oversight and reporting to Congress, so that any misuse of these powers can be uncovered and fixed. When he spoke before our founding documents at the National Archives last May, President Obama echoed Justice Brandies:   "As a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on [the Constitution's] enduring principles for expedience sake."  He was exactly right, and we urge the President and all members of Congress to take that principle to heart as we work together to craft a revised PATRIOT Act of which all patriots can be proud. More on Supreme Court
 
Mayhill Fowler: A New Foreign Policy: Hillary Clinton Targets Pakistan Top
As Afghanistan and Pakistan grabbed the world headlines for the last week in October, in one breaking story after another, we could discern, at last, the structural and strategic underpinnings of the Obama administration's foreign policy. In this regard, Hillary Clinton's trip to Pakistan was a landmark occasion, obscured somewhat by the week's tumble of events: Senator John Kerry's return from Afghanistan and his very telling address at the Council on Foreign Relations a week ago Monday, the subsequent revelations about the connections between Hamid Karzai's brother and the CIA, the terrorist killings in Kabul and Peshawar Wednesday, the rumors about Abdullah Abdullah bowing out of the run-off election in Afghanistan, Abdullah's formal withdrawal Sunday and the hasty confirmation of Karzai as Afghan President once again. But ground zero for the week was Hillary Clinton's three-day visit to Islamabad and Lahore, her first to Pakistan as Secretary of State, which began inauspiciously on the day of the terrorist attacks and was widely derided in the Pakistani press and cursorily covered here at home. As of yesterday, for example, The Onion 's YouTube video "U.S. Condemned for Pre-Emptive Use of Hillary Clinton Against Pakistan" had over 125,000 views while excerpts from the question-and-answer session between Mrs. Clinton and seven Pakistani journalists, which appeared on Pakistani television, had a tenth of that. Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at Mrs. Clinton's visit to Pakistan if, as I believe, it was both her real debut as Secretary of State and a peek at how the Obama administration is going to play the difficult hand it has been dealt in South Asia. After nine months as President, Barack Obama has yet to make a convincing argument to the American people for the long war in Afghanistan that most military professionals and policy experts conclude, however reluctantly, is inevitable. At this point, the delay is a political calculation: what is the last possible minute, in order not to take away the gathering momentum behind health insurance reform, to announce that more young Americans are going to Afghanistan? Complicating the near-certainty that this will be most unwelcome news (and surprising to some) is a general confusion in American minds. What exactly is the Obama administration's foreign policy? Are we for or against further Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for example? Even as President Obama repeats his mantra, "We must win in Afghanistan," he is telling the Karzai government that their (green) army and (corrupt) police force must bear the brunt of the war against the insurgents or America's forces will leave. The inherent contradiction makes this a hollow threat. The President's speech last March about Afghanistan, on the occasion of his sending an additional 20,000 troops there, only confused us, for Obama went from a clear statement that we were in the country to destroy al Qaeda to a commitment for everything from Afghan women's rights to better schools--the old Bush doctrine of nation-building, in short. Probably not one in twenty Americans could say now what was in that speech or characterize Obama's general policy in the region. But the deterioration of South Asia, with the subsequent possibility that not only both Afghanistan and Pakistan could in a few years fall to fundamentalist Islamic regimes or descend into failed states but also that India would be affected and China and Iran might respond in ways we oppose--the domino theory realized at last--is a situation that our President has yet to use his pulpit to address cogently and realistically. However, the President may decide to lead us, every day that passes and he does not is an opportunity lost that may not come again. One thing is already certain, however, and Secretary of State Clinton's Pakistan visit dramatized it. In the television-saturated world of the early twenty-first century, a "hands across the sea" opening gambit no longer works. The world has seen American friendliness and grown accustomed at best, weary and cynical at worst. After President Obama's Cairo speech, for example, we discovered just how little weight a few Arabic phrases and gestures carry when they are not accompanied by at least one of the American actions for which Arabs yearn. And so Pashtun Pakistan was unimpressed, even at times insulted, by Hillary Clinton's moments of descent into what the Pakistani press called her charm offensive last week. At worst, Clinton displayed false bonhomie--the claim from a guest to an acquaintanceship with a host far greater than actually exists--with the sort of cringe-inducing comment that the world has come to expect from Vice-President Biden. (His July remark that "Ukraine has the world's most beautiful women," for example, elicited an appalled reaction from a populace sensitive to the fact that Kyiv is the mail-order bride capital of the world and Odessa a principal conduit for trafficking in the sex trade.) Similarly, terrorist-embattled Pakistanis were not impressed by Hillary Clinton's testimonial to her love for kebabs and the salwar kameez as proof that she is a friend to the Pakistani people. The low point of Clinton's Pakistan visit, from a public relations point of view, was the so-called town hall meeting Friday afternoon, near the end of her trip, at the National Art Gallery in Islamabad with a large group of professional women. These business leaders, teachers and parliamentarians should have been an audience with whom Mrs. Clinton could connect. Her advance team, however, explained to the room (the women restively awaiting Clinton's late arrival) that the format for the event would be like the television show "The View." Is it any wonder that the university professors and women like Ameena Saiyid, a managing director of Oxford University Press with an OBE, were insulted? They had serious and detailed questions about national security and American intentions and did not want to hear Mrs. Clinton wax generally, as she did, on training our "habits of the heart" to better learn and to compromise. This Pakistan trip, which also included fraught conversations with a delegation of business leaders at Governor's House in Lahore, with tribal leaders from the Northwest Territories in Islamabad and with confrontational students at Government College University, was a far cry from Hillary Clinton's first trip to Pakistan fourteen years ago when she was First Lady. On that previous trip, accompanied by her daughter, Chelsea, and a Wellesley classmate who covered the trip for CBS News, Mrs. Clinton was introduced to a carefully selected group of women at a ladies' lunch hosted by Benazir Bhutto. Clinton paid a social call on a politician's wife who kept purdah. She was presented with flowers, demonstrations of local crafts and a celebratory evening in the old Mogul fort in Lahore, complete with dancing elephants and fireworks. Clinton's trip "blends the giddiness of a sorority spring break with the sober feel of a graduate seminar on the responsibilities of sisterhood," Todd Purdum wrote for the New York Times back in 1995. "In Pakistan Mrs. Clinton, a Midwestern-born Methodist, awoke at dawn to the prayer call of a muezzin over the loudspeakers of a mosque, and shared with schoolgirls her thoughts on the politics of meaning. . . ." Purdum's account of that trip shows not only that condescension can move in many directions but also how far civic life has frayed in a fledgling democracy whose culture we Americans have so poorly understood. When Mrs. Clinton made her "chick trip" to Pakistan, American-Pakistani relations were cool, particularly since President Clinton refused to certify Pakistan for nuclear nonproliferation and therefore economic sanctions against the country came into effect. But our relationship since then has become much worse. Last week Mrs. Clinton flew into a hail of negativity , reflected in the headlines of the Pakistani English-language news, print and online: "Anti-US Wave Endangers Efforts in Pakistan," "US Aid Fails to Win Pakistan," "Pakistanis Snub Clinton Diplomacy." In a recent poll , more than 52% of Pakistanis believe that America is responsible for the violence tearing apart their cities; only 15% blame terrorist groups. Almost 80% of Pakistanis believe that al Qaeda's main goal is standing up to the United States; over half the people support that goal. Further charging the toxic atmosphere was a Pakistani dubiousness about Mrs. Clinton herself. People remembered her January, 2008 display of ignorance about Pakistani governance; at that time she speculated about then President Musharraf's standing for election when in fact he was not required to run. A surprising ignorance--perhaps thoughtlessness is a better word--colored Mrs. Clinton's October, 2009 remarks about Pakistan, as well. In her interview with Pakistani journalists, Mrs. Clinton made the astounding admission that it had never occurred to her that Pakistanis might take amiss--as indeed they have--the U.S. Congress's back-and-forth on whether or not to attach strings to the Kerry-Lugar aid bill that is going to triple new aid to Pakistan. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, I have never visited Pakistan; nevertheless, the likelihood of a Pakistani push-back fueled by the sense that they have been insulted was the first thing that came to my mind. What Americans say in public are the kind of remarks that Pakistanis say in private--and vice versa. In terms of public versus private diplomacy, Americans and Pakistanis are polar opposites. And so Mrs. Clinton said to the journalists , who like many other Pakistanis grilled her about the terms of Kerry-Lugar, that she was surprised by the Pakistani reaction. "It was not on my list of worries," she said, before going on to flatter her hosts with the compliment that Pakistanis read U.S. legislation much more carefully than Americans do. On topics ranging from American drone attacks to our current silence on the Kashmir dispute, Pakistanis challenged the Secretary of State. She had expected confrontation--indeed the primary purpose of her visit seems to have been a public relations and media blitz to begin to try to repair American-Pakistani relations. "I don't expect this to happen overnight," Mrs. Clinton told the journalists. "The spirited conversation we have had here today . . . has been very helpful to me." One of the male journalists echoed her sentiment with a "yes." So perhaps in terms of a better understanding between Americans and Pakistanis this overture was a very small start. At least, I try to tell myself that. As John Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations a week ago, "Pakistan could eventually become the epicenter of extremism in the world. We have enormous strategic interest in the outcome of the struggle in Pakistan." The day after Hillary Clinton left Pakistan, a girls' school in the Khyber region was bombed. More than 200 girls' schools have been destroyed in the past year. Friday: What was good about Clinton's visit, and what her actions in Pakistan reveal about our new foreign policy . More on Pakistan
 
Andres Ramirez: America Is Still Holding on to Hope Top
Cross-posted with the NDN blog . A year ago, millions of voters across America flocked to the elections polls to elect Barack Obama as our nation's president. I remember that night vividly, as it was a culmination of the longest American presidential campaign cycle in history. A campaign cycle in which a candidate, who was virtually unknown just 5 years before the election, inspired Americans to renew their Hope. He inspired Americans to renew their Hope in government, to renew their Hope in politics, to renew their Hope in each other and to renew their Hope in America. I remember sitting in the war room for the Nevada State Democratic Party in Las Vegas analyzing exit polls and tabulating results from states across the country. The numbers coming in were indicating that this election would be won by our nominee, but having been fooled in the previous two election cycles, I waited frantically until I knew this victory was certain. As the results continued to move Obama closer to the victory margin, I ran from the war room to join my fellow Americans in celebration. I laughed, I shouted, and I even cried that night as I was so moved by what had just happened. As an American who has been fighting for civil rights and human rights for so long, and who was on the verge of losing all Hope in our country, that night changed so much for me. That Americans were in need of Hope was no mystery. America was taken to the brink of ruin under failed leadership and governance by the previous presidential administration. The situation left Americans with not much else, but Hope. To summarize briefly, millions of Americans were without jobs or losing their job, millions of Americans lacked health insurance, our educational systems were underfunded, our infrastructure was literally collapsing, our financial systems collapsed, our auto industry collapsed, our energy sources are outdated and insufficient, and thousands of Americans were sacrificing their lives in the two wars overseas. There was not much left in America but Hope. When the president was elected, the NY Times published in piece detailing the historic win of President Obama and noting: The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis -- a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama's call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. Despite this reality, Republicans leaders have been desperately attempting every method possible to prevent President Obama from moving America in a different direction. Engaged in what I call "Operation Obstruction," they have stalled the president's agenda to lift this country out of the ruins that he inherited. However, they have not prevented President Obama from enacting several significant pieces of legislation in his first year in office as reported in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification -- 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round. Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, set aside land in the West from development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army's Future Combat System. So what has all this obstruction accomplished for the Republicans? No much. America is still largely where it was on election night a year ago. If we look at the graph above, it shows that despite all the efforts of Republicans to persuade Americans to abandon their call for change, Americans remain committed to steering away from the failed policies of the previous administration. In short, America is still holding on to Hope. More on One Year Later
 
Stanley Kutler: Follow the Money Top
By Stanley Kutler Sen. Russ Feingold has called the glut of unlimited campaign contributions nothing more than "legalized bribery." And who among his legislative colleagues deserves to be hit with this denunciation? "Not me," say Max Baucus, the largest single recipient of health industry funds, and Joe Lieberman, the senator from Aetna Insurance, and, for that matter, just about all of the rest of Congress. In June 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the intended effects of campaign contributions when it ruled in Caperton v. Massey that a West Virginia judge who failed to recuse himself had run a "serious risk of actual bias" because a person with a personal stake in the case had acquired "significant and disproportionate influence" over the judge by having raised funds for him and directing his election campaign. The issue, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, "centers on the contribution's relative size in comparison to the total amount of money contributed to the campaign, the total amount spent in the election, and the apparent effect such contribution had on the outcome of the election." One-time U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, now counsel for many conservative causes, insisted in Caperton that the "improper appearance" of campaign money in judicial elections was critical. "A line needs to be drawn," he said," to prevent a judge from hearing cases involving a person who has made massive campaign contributions to benefit the judge." Now comes Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which, in a 4-3 vote, has drawn a different line and adopted a rule stipulating that campaign contributions, endorsements and paid ads are not enough to force recusal. The majority acted to "send a message that making lawful contributions is not a dishonorable thing to do and it's not a dishonorable thing to receive." In a hearing on the ruling, the League of Women Voters and a retired associate justice proposed that recusal be triggered if a judge had received a contribution of more than $1,000 from a single source. In the end, two prominent lobbying groups, the Wisconsin Realtors Association (WRA) and the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Association (WMC), persuaded the court that unlimited contributions are protected "free speech." Two of the four judges of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are beneficiaries of the WRA and WMC's largesse. Wisconsin voters have seen John Grisham's novel "The Appeal" come to life. The book portrays powerful vested interests that wage a deceitful campaign in an unnamed state, pouring millions of dollars into successfully electing a Supreme Court justice, who then works to overturn an important lower court environmental ruling. The grease of corruption pervades Grisham's imaginary state. Wisconsin, which likes to see itself in the mirror of its century-old tradition of squeaky-clean progressive government, has had two Supreme Court elections in recent years, contests marked by the influx of WMC money. The manufacturers and commerce group carefully selected unknown, quite obscure lower court judges Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman as candidates. The WMC lavished an unprecedented $2 million on each and financed deceitful ads. For the first time in 41 years, a Wisconsin Supreme Court election--Gableman's--resulted in an incumbent's defeat. In the state court's ruling on campaign contributions, both successful candidates were in the majority. Money trumps all. For Wisconsin, the change is all too apparent. Forty years ago, the state tried a state legislator accused of accepting a $50 bribe. Later, a district attorney brought charges against a highly respected state senator for allegedly illegally making two overseas telephone calls. Justice Ziegler stepped aside in 2007 in a case between the WRA and the town of West Point after the town noted she had received $8,625 in campaign contributions from the realtors association. The court divided and returned the case to the lower courts, which ruled in favor of the town. But several months later, Ziegler participated in a case that the WMC considered critical and she wrote a 4-3 decision favoring the organization's position, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in business tax refunds. Following her election, Ziegler's new high court colleagues rather gently reprimanded her for not recusing herself in cases involving a bank where her husband was a paid director. Some reprimand. Gableman's election brought complaints from lawyers that he had violated the judicial code by lying about his opponent's record. Gableman, the court's newest judge, unabashedly supported the WMC's position on the campaign contributions rule. Gableman ripped into the League of Women Voters--notoriously nonpartisan--calling it a "left-wing" group that advocated the regulation of campaign speech and demanded government "regulators" who would oversee judges. Gableman said the WMC's approach properly "memorializes the First Amendment rights of the people to express their political views." For Gableman, First Amendment rights are all about money--and probably not much else. At one point, he demanded that a spokesperson for the League of Women Voters account for George Soros' contributions to the group. Progressive attorney Ed Garvey, a veteran of notable run-ins with the state court on its ethical rulings, said the court's majority served notice that "it ain't [a fight using] bean bags--it is pitched battle. A once great court is deeply divided, with a majority that believes money is speech! Absurd but real." Money is awash in our politics, and it has invaded the judicial arena. Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has noted that 14 states since 2006 broke records for spending in state judicial contests. She particularly drew attention to the influx of special interest money in state judicial elections, calling it a dangerous threat to "the integrity of judicial selection," one that could "compromise public perception of judicial decisions." O'Connor said she feared that the judiciary would become "another political arm of the government." It is somewhat late in the day to lament the politicization of the judiciary, a condition that has always existed, but extravagant campaign contributions have now perilously altered the landscape. Justice O'Connor must be appalled by the Wisconsin ruling. Perhaps it challenges the U.S. Supreme Court's Caperton decision, which held that campaign contributions could force a judicial recusal. The Caperton majority confronted determined dissenters, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia. Will the Wisconsin ruling provide them with new ammunition and cover in following Wisconsin's lead? The fight over O'Connor's concern for "the integrity of judicial selection" is not over. Equal justice under equal law for all, we often proclaim; but when disproportionate advantage is given to one class or one group, the damage to that tenet is profound. We struggle today with the consequences of legislation that effectively reduced government's power to regulate unbridled buccaneering in the pursuit of wealth for individual gain, and at the expense of many. The Wisconsin state court judges denounced "regulators" and invoked the insidious notion that we should trust our watchmen to watch themselves. What happened in Wisconsin is a microcosm of our present nightmares and failures. Stanley Kutler is the author of "The Wars of Watergate," and other writings.
 
Jenna Busch: The Fourth Kind Review Top
I love alien movies.  Really, it's the only genre that can still scare me.  I'm not saying that other spooky things don't give me pause or make me jump.  It's just that there is really no mystery left.  Sure, movies about serial killers make me triple check the lock on my door, but I watch cable.  I know what horrible things they can do.  I'm desensitized.  I'm always up for a good monster movie, but when I go home, I'm not really worried that a werewolf is going to attack me or that Gary Oldman in a top hat is going to offer me absinthe and bite my neck.  But aliens?  I'm hardly expecting alien lizards to come to our planet and steal our guinea pigs.  I'm just saying that, unlikely as it probably is, something could be out there.  Maybe. So here is what you need to know about The Fourth Kind .  Since the 1960's there have been an unusual number of disappearances in Nome, Alaska.  Sure, lots of people think these things are the fault of suicide, alcoholism and accidents in the wilderness.  Dr. Abigail Tyler, a recently widowed psychiatrist in the area believes it might be something else.  Using hypnosis, she discovers that her most disturbed patients all seem to have similar visions.  An owl that is not an owl waking them up at 3:33 am.  (By the way, I have woken up at that exact time for the past few mornings.  No owl, but my cat staring at me is just as disconcerting.)  And they all have violent reactions to the memories.  She begins to believe that these people may have been abducted by aliens. What we see is a re-enactment of the story along with the supposed footage of actual events. (In case you were wondering, the title is in reference to the 1972 scale of measurement.  An alien encounter of the first kind is a UFO sighting. The second kind is evidence.  The third is contact.  And the fourth kind is abduction.  The visual that word gives me has been completely destroyed by the South Park anal probe episode.)   The film begins with Milla Jovovich telling the audience that she'll be portraying Tyler and that the archival footage of her work and interviews is real.  It's really not important whether or not you believe that.  If you want to do the research and see if this person actually exists, there are plenty of websites that will be happy to mess with your head and/or comfort you with facts and figures.  We are shown the footage and the re-creation at the same time, often with Tyler and Jovovich/Tyler speaking the same lines simultaneously.  When the story goes deeper into Tyler's experiences, Jovovich is on screen alone.  The through-line of the story is provided by footage of an interview that Tyler gave to Olatunde Osunsanmi (the film's writer and director).   The interview shows Abigail getting more and more rattled as she starts to crack from the grief over her husband's death and the fear that this might be happening to her too. I'm trying very, very hard not to spoil things for you when I speak about the performances.  Let me just say that everyone was convincing ... with one exception.  Will Patton, who plays the doubting sheriff, looks as if his head is going to explode in every scene.  A sheriff like that would have been demoted to desk duty long ago.  I kept wanting to yell, “do less” at the screen or hoping that some secret was going to be revealed.  Something that would explain his odd behavior.   The Fourth Kind was one of the scariest things I've seen in years.  I'm going out to see it again, which tells you how much I care whether or not it's a hoax.  With the exception of Patton's performance, I enjoyed every thrilling minute of it.  Like Drag Me to Hell did earlier this year, The Fourth Kind made horror fun again.  God, I hope it's a trend.  (And considering the disappointing performance of Saw VI and the success of Paranormal Activity , that seems to be the case.) It's the reality of the whole thing that got me.  (I'm talking about abduction, not the footage.  There was one particular moment that tipped me off.  You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.  I've read reviews that claim “the audience is too sophisticated to believe that this is real footage,” etc.  To which I must respond, “Yeah, so what?”  I'm also too sophisticated to believe that a clown doll is going to come to life and kill someone.  It's still fun to watch.) Like I said, the reason alien movies still have the power to scare me is that no one has been able to prove that the crazy abduction people are lying.  Um...I hope they are. 8.5/10    
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)